Hernando De Soto Expedition: from Apalachee To Chiaha

Abstract

The De Soto Commission (Swanton 1939) reconstructed De Soto's 1539-1543 route through the Southeast. In this paper we report our research on the segment of that route from northern Florida through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, ending at Chiaha in eastern Tennessee. I Ne believe that our reconstruction is more accurate than that of the De Soto Commission, and that continued archaeological and documentary research into the De Soto expedition's route will greatly enrich our understanding of southeastern Native American societies. In recent years it has become evident to students of the aboriginal Southeast that the reconstruction of the route of Hernando De Soto's exploration by the U.S. De Soto Expedition Commission (Swanton 1939) contains errors of interpretation. Recent examinations of portions of the Commission's route by Brain et al. (1974), Lankford (1977), and Smith (1976) have raised doubts about it, and this has led to new research and to new reconstructions of portions of the route. Several new kinds of evidence have made these revisions feasible, indeed necessary. Recent advances in archaeological research have provided a strong basis for new revisions, and, partly as a byproduct of this research, new understandings of sixteenth-century aboriginal settlement patterns have come to light. During Swanton's era, information on the late prehistoric Southeast was at best rudimentary, and at worst wildly erroneous, and when this information was used to amplify documentary evidence for the De Soto expedition, it simply compounded error. Additionally, recent advances in the dating of historic artifact types have made it possible to identify the artifacts carried by the sixteenth-century Spanish explorers (Brain 1975; Fairbanks 1968; Smith 1976, 1984). Moreover, there is evidence that the materials that the Indians obtained from the earliest explorers were quickly used as grave goods (Smith 1984: 45). Hence, wherever these artifacts occur in aboriginal sites, it suggests that these sites were visited by Europeans, or at the very least that the sites were population centers that date to the sixteenth century. Another source of new information is additional documents that have come to light since the Commission's research. Especially important is a document by Juan de la Bandera, scribe for Juan Pardo's second expedition, which has greatly amplified our understanding of Pardo's expeditions in 1566-1568. Our recent studies based on this document (DePratter, Hudson, and Smith 1983) have enabled us to achieve a detailed reconstruction of Pardo's route in which he visited several of the same towns visited by De Soto twenty-seven years earlier. Specifically the Bandera document has allowed us to establish probable locations for Hymahi or Aymay (Pardo's Guiomae), Cofitachequi, Xuala (Pardo's Joara), and Chiaha, as well as the general location of the Chisca Indians. Even though the locations of these sites are at present only probable, we expect that archaeological research will make it possible to establish one or more of them with certainty. Short of this, we feel that we now have some reference points in the interior that are more securely established than in any previous work on this part of the De Soto route. In our reconstruction of the De Soto route, we have relied heavily on the account by Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto's secretary, and upon the account by the Gentleman of Elvas. In cases where we were doubtful about Bourne's translation of Ranjel, we read the original, as published in Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes' Historia General y Natural de las Indias. The accounts of Luis Hernandez de Biedma and Garcilaso de la Vega are far less useful as evidence for locating the activities of De Soto and his men with respect to time and place, though we have used both of them as ancillary evidence. Garcilaso is remarkably unreliable for the route from Apalachee to Chiaha, and particularly so for the segment of the route from Apalachee to Cofitachequi, where his narrative is curiously condensed. He does not even mention the chiefdoms of Capachequi (though, as will later be seen, he gives valuable details about a village that may have been the main village of Capachequi), Toa, and Ichisi. He appears to have had Ichisi in mind in his discussion of what he calls Altapaha, this latter word being evidently a confusion of the Altamaha of the other chroniclers. Moreover, when he narrates the expedition's progress from Altapaha to Cofa (which the other chroniclers call Ocute) and Cofaqui, he spuriously inserts some material on the Chalaques, who were not encountered until a month later, as the expedition went from Cofitachequi northward to Xuala (Garcilaso 1962: 263-271).