Neptune's Needle

Spanish conquistador and explorer...

At the age of fourteen, with at most a basic education, Hernando joined the 1514 expedition of Pedro Arias de Avila to Castilla del Oro, modern Panama. In 1523 de Soto served as a captain in Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba's conquest of Nicaragua.

De Soto's contract with the king was signed on 20 April 1537. He had five years to explore the territory from the Rio de las Palmas (the modern Soto la Marina River) in Mexico to the cod fishery in Newfoundland before selecting 200 leagues (about 650 miles) of coast that would define the territory he could conquer. He was allowed to grant encomiendas of Indians and was given numerous economic benefits, including the governorship of Cuba, which he intended to make his supply base.

The de Soto expedition sailed from San Lucar on 6/7 April 1538 in ten ships. Recruitment of the 700 persons on board had been helped by the arrival of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who, having just returned from his famous walk across northern Mexico, hinted that great wealth might be found in the interior of North America, although he declined to join the expedition.

The fleet arrived at Santiago de Cuba on 9 June 1538. De Soto spent the time through the following spring accumulating supplies and sending Juan de Asasco to scout the west coast of Florida for a port to be used as a landing and supply point. (A west coast port avoided the lengthy and often difficult return voyage that a landing on the east coast of North America would have involved.)

De Soto sailed for Florida on 18 May 1539. After some difficulties due to weather and shallow waters in the bay that the expedition entered, approximately 600 men and 240 horses landed on 30 May. Most scholars place the landing on the south shore of Tampa Bay, perhaps at Rustin, but the documentary evidence is not so exact. The de Soto expedition's precise route during the next four years is disputed, but its general track is not. On 8 May 1541 his scouts came to the Mississippi River. After building barges, the army crossed into Arkansas, where it spent the rest of the year.

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Peter Richards