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Hernando de Soto The written history of Arkansas began with the arrival of Spaniard Hernando de Soto and his expeditionary force in . Born of a noble but nearly impoverished family in western Spain around , de Soto had to borrow money to come to the New World. Arriving on the sickly coast of Panama in , the teenage Spaniard quickly became an outstanding soldier.De Soto took part in savage expeditions against Indians in Panama, Nicaragua, and Peru. De Soto perfected his skill at killing Indians from none other than Hernando Pizarro during his conquest of the extraordinarily rich Incan empire of Peru. After two decades, de Soto returned to Spain and married Isabel de Bobadilla.After a few years in retirement enjoying the wealth that came from robbing and enslaving Indians, de Soto set about to explore mainland North America under a charter from King Charles V. De Soto’s army landed in the Tampa Bay area in , and from there moved northward through modern Florida, Georgia, South Carolina,Tennessee,Alabama,and Mississippi.By the time the Spanish force, which originally numbered about six hundred soldiers,  horses, war dogs, and twelve priests, reached the Mississippi River, it had been reduced to a mere shadow of its glory. The previous October in modern Alabama, de Soto’s force suffered many losses and wounds during the battle of Mauvilla—so they were ready to lick their wounds before figuring out how to get the remainder of the army across the vast Mississippi. Amazingly enough, some of the European women who accompanied the expedition lived to experience the endless trek about modern Arkansas. The only portion of the Spanish party that held their numbers against the constant onslaught of Indian attacks were the hundreds of hogs that accompanied the expedition, and which were the personal property of de Soto. Only after de Soto died and his effects were auctioned did the pigs finally get eaten by the half-starved soldiers.  Tradition holds that escaped pigs from the Spanish herd became the ancestors of today’s wild hogs. Pigs were not native to the New World. The Mississippi River did not deter the Spanish. Interestingly, the various “chronicles” of the de Soto entrada do not record that their discovery of this vast river had much impact on the expedition. De Soto was a commander of a conquering army, neither a botanist nor naturalist of any kind, so rivers were seen as mere obstacles. The de Soto trek was a string of bloody encounters with one Indian force after another, and it hung together because of de Soto’s personal leadership. When the expedition came upon a wide brown river, he simply ordered his engineers to build rafts. From the moment he arrived on the eastern shore of the Mississippi, de Soto faced daily attacks by Indian archers in giant painted canoes.He mounted a heavy guard and had his engineers erect a dry dock, where four large rafts were constructed and “caulked with hemp and flax.” These were large vessels, capable of transporting fifty or sixty soldiers, horses, and baggage. In keeping with his reputation for bold military leadership,de Soto launched the crossing at : A.M. In an amazing act of naval daring, de Soto got his whole expedition, pigs and all, safely across the river by about : the same morning. One biographer of de Soto has written of the remarkable crossing of the great river, “incredibly, not a single person was lost, not a horse nor piglet, though Ranjel [one of the explorers who left a written account] says the men all agreed ‘nothing so difficult could ever be offered them again.’” De Soto came to his position as leader of a huge military expedition into “Florida” as a hardened military commander, having fought with Pizarro in Peru, where he personally lead expeditions to lance fleeing Indians. (Within three hours of the surrender of the Inca, de Soto’s men had created a cache of looted gold and other valuables worth , pesos. The Spanish had to keep their forges running at night in order to melt the huge amount of looted silver and gold objects.) If rich civilizations like this could exist in places like Peru in South America, why not on the mainland north of the Florida coast? On May , , de Soto sailed a small armada from Havana bound for the western coast of modern Florida. Drawing upon his ill-gotten  NATIVES, EXPLORERS, AND EARLY SETTLERS [3.15.156.140] Project MUSE...

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