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~ 0&J(}{;&.· Aq]#qJ~g by Paul E. Hoffman Like many prominent persons of his time, Hernando de Sota's date of birth is unknown. Estimates range from 1496 to 1501.1 But De Soto's own testimony in late Octaber 1535 was that he was thirty-five, and thus born in 1500.2 The idea that he was born in 1496 seems to have arisen from De Sota's testimony in 1536 that he was "about forty" and from an effort by later writers to make Lambert A. Wilmer's biographical "facts" fit with the date (1519) that De Soto was alleged to have gone to the Indies. Wilmer himself says that De Soto was born in 1500.3 Until additional evidence turns up, a birth date of 1500 seems most likely. The place of De Sota's birth remains controversial. Both Villanuevas in the immediate vicinity of Badajoz have claimed him on the basis of Garcilaso de la Vega's statement that De Soto was born in Villanueva,.de Barcarrota. Villanueva de la Serena is not mentioned in any account or document. Saying De Soto was born in Barcarrota seems to have been Garcilaso's droll way of resolving the rival claims of Jerez de los Caballeros and Badajoz. Barcarrota lJohn R. Swanton, Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission, 1938, reprint with introduction by Jeffrey Brain (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 67; curiously, Swanton mentions that De Soto stated his age and place of birth in manuscript sources but fails to say what he said. 2Merits and Services interrogatory for Alonso Martin de San Benito, Lima, 26 October 1535, in Jose Toribio Medina, ed., Descubrimiento del oceano Pacifico: Vasco N uiiez de Balboa, Hernando de Magallanes y sus compaiieros, 3 vols. (Santiago, Chile: Imprenta Universitaria, 1913-20),2:360. 3James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), 198; Wilmer claimed that De Soto came under Pedrarias's protection at age seventeen, spent six years at a university (Zaragoza), and then in 1519 [at the age of twenty-threeJ went to the Indies with his patron, who had returned to Spain in that year. Lambert A. Wilmer, The Life, Travels and Adventures ofFerdinand de Soto, Discoverer of the Mississippi (Philadelphia: J.T. Lloyd, 1858), 18-20. is roughly halfway between them. Local lore to the contrary, there is no evidence De Soto was born or lived there.4 Solar and Rujula make a case for Jerez de los Caballeros on the basis of two documents. The first is De Soto's expediente for membership in the Order of Santiago. Among the testimony of nine witnesses is the explicit statement of Suero Vazquez de Moscoso that De Soto was born in Jerez and Alvaro Romo's less direct statement that De Soto's parents had lived in Jerez after their marriage and that he had seen Hernando in his parents' home there.5 The second document is De Soto's will, in which he makes provision for the construction of a chapel in the church of San Miguel in Jerez de los Caballeros, in which he was to be buried and his parents reburied. His will does not say he was a native of that town. 6 To these Swanton added the statement of the Gentleman of Elvas that De Soto was born in Jerez de Badajoz,7 Porras Barrenechea notes that De Soto claimed to be a native (natural ) of Jerez in testimony given at Seville in 1536, although in another place he said that he was a vecino of that town, which is not a claim of nativity.8 Finally, Badajoz was mentioned during his life as his birthplace. For example , the order for the investigation of his lineage preparatory to granting him membership in the Order of Santiago states that he was a native (natural ) of Badajoz, and that is where the inquiry was conducted. Ordinarily, such inquiries were made in the person's hometown because that was where the most reliable witnesses as to his ancestry would be found. In a similar vein, his dowry agreement with Isabel de Bobadilla (November 14, 1536) states that he was a native (natural) and vecino (owner of a house) of BadajoZ .9 The question of his birthplace thus resolves itself into the rival claims of 4Garcilaso de la Vega, La Florida, trans. Charmion Shelby, herein, vol. 2. 5Antonio del Solar...

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