Tennessee history, preservation and educational artifacts

It was one of the most important journeys in the annals of world history. The vast reaches of North America harbored legends and myths that explorers found too seductive to ignore. The Spanish forays into Central and South America had made the European nation the greatest world power of its day. The success had also shown the value of colonialization in securing claims and establishing a satellite position where a nation could develop the region’s agricultural resources, plant craftsmen, and use the settlements as jumping off places for continued exploration. Spain quickly learned that a successful colony depends upon the ability of settlers to brave the day-to-day life in a new land and establish families, whose children will grow up with a native’s knowledge of the region and could use those skills to further the reaches of the colony. One of these children was Hernando De Soto – a man whose military career would carry the nation of Spain into the forbidding North American wilderness, establish a permanent presence on the upper continent, and leave behind a legacy whose influence would still be felt to this day.

As a child, DeSoto had grown up in a day of Spanish conquest that fueled the imagination of the young man. He envied the successes of Balboa and other famous Conquistadors and wanted to j

oin their ranks. At an early age, he was befriended by one of Columbus’ captains named Ponce De Leon and the ensuing relationship would have a profound affect on the young adventurer. As was the custom in the day, he was sponsored into the Spanish officers corps by De Leon and enlisted into the Spanish forces in 1530 with Francisco Pizarro to help conquer the Inca empire in Peru.
The young Spaniard learned quickly in the Central American forests and proved himself to be an able commander. In August, while taking a leave from the conquering force, DeSoto’s forces executed Incan Emperor Atahualpa against his wishes. De Soto was furious with men. The Spaniard’s main tactic in dealing with natives was the kidnapping of leaders, whom they would ransom back in exchange for treaties and footholds in the new world. DeSoto had now lost a negotiating tool with the Incas and forced Pizarro and the men to march on the Incan city of Cuzco and seize it.
In his early years in Central America, De Soto amassed a fortune in the spoils of his conquests over the native peoples and was becoming regarded as a respected member of Spain’s powerful warrior caste. In 1535, he departed Peru for Spain to talk to King Charles I about conquering Florida. He arrived in 1536 and presented his plan to the Crown. De Soto had read the reports from the other expeditions along the western coast of the isthmus and believed an equipped Spanish force could travel inland and establish colonies along the great river, (the Mississippi) and the outer coasts. He had crude maps from backwoods traders of Native American trails that showed a passageway for men and horses. The King’s officers told De Soto North American colonialization had been tried once before by Panfilo De Navarez and failed miserably, but De Soto argued his new knowledge of the region and his experience in Central America with the native tribes would serve him well in accomplishing the goal of gaining a foothold and tapping the wealth all knew existed in the North American interior.
Charles I respected De Soto and his accomplishments in Central America and wanted to capitalize on Spanish footholds in Central and South America. He provisionally signed onto an agreement that made De Soto Governor of Cuba and also of the land known as Florida. The King gave him seven ships, but only four years to colonize the region. The King allowed him to select what people he wanted for the journey, but Charles I forbade lawyers from joining the venture as "they were known to cause trouble over land titles and the division of crown spoils."
With engineers, blacksmiths, and a host of skilled and semi-skilled men and their families that were fairly educated, the 44-year-old De Soto set sail for Cuba. Once there, he turned the duties of his office over to his wife, who was a capable administrator, and left with the expedition to Florida.
After a wait of seven days for the Spring tides to allow him entrance to Port Charlotte on the west coast of Florida, De Soto disembarked where he marched his men and a large number of horses inland to build a stronghold from which they could start their march north. De Soto immediately began gathering information from the natives on the layout of the region’s northern territories. He bartered with the chiefs for the most ablest of guides who could interpret the languages of other tribes. Many tribes on the Florida coast could already speak Spanish as they often traded with the visiting ships. De Soto constantly searched for information on possible gold mines and other valuable resources. He felt, if he could quickly locate them and establish a small settlement, Spanish colonialization of the region would take care of itself.
As October neared, the Army was established enough to start their journey. They marched off on the first of many Indian trails towards present-day Tallahassee where they camped with the Apalachee tribe. As they continued their march upward through Georgia, DeSoto was thinking his theory of Florida being part of a large island was true. The native guides spoke a language that seemed universal among those they encountered. It was, however, an ancient dialect known as the Mobilian trade language. It was a corruption of Choctaw and other tribal dialects that, once learned, enabled coastal tribes to communicate with each other. DeSoto dealt with the natives he met like he did those in Central America and the language that was so helpful to him began turning into his worst enemy. De Soto traveled into the present-day region of Columbia, South Carolina and marched north to the area around Tryon, N.C.
De Soto began getting information from his advance parties that tribes were indicating a wealth of gold in the region of the great mountains to the west. The land was under the domain of the Cherokee– a tribe De Soto had dealt with a few times in areas of North Georgia. His men marched towards a Cherokee village that sat where present-day Asheville is today.
The 600-man force was beginning to have a profound impact on the tribes they encountered in the region. Diseases ran rampant through the villages, De Soto made slaves of many and enforced Spanish law on those he encountered. In addition, he was becoming known among them for kidnapping tribal leaders and ransoming them for provisions– actions which often brought on attacks from the native tribes.
The Cherokee were already getting wise to the Spanish and hid their food from them when they appeared. The Cherokee elders near present-day Asheville told De Soto his best bet for gold would be in a region west of the Smoky Mountains. After trading out for supplies, De Soto and his men marched south along the mountains. They camped on the Oconaluftee River and were greeted by Cherokee carrying mulberries, which they had never seen or tasted before and wrote about extensively. After camping and resting for a while, De Soto and his men continued their march along the Smoky Mountains until they reached the gap of the Little Tennessee Valley. The men crossed over the river and fanned out into what was then the Cherokee capitol territory.
After a few days, one of De Soto’s scouting parties returned. In one of the journals kept on the march, it was written that the men carried news of a possible find.
"The Chief told us that thirty leagues away (75 miles west of the Smoky Mountains) there were mines of yellow metal in a place called ‘Chisca’ and that he would furnish guides who would take our people there and back."
De Soto dispatched a small party of men to the region who later returned and told him the mines’ metal was in fact copper and another yellow metal that wasn’t gold. With other areas showing promise, De Soto passed on the journey and headed south into the area around Lookout Mountain and ventured west into Alabama.
The strain on De Soto’s expedition was starting to show. Many had been killed in native attacks or slipped away from the colonial army to search for themselves. De Soto often did head counts and kept his people tightly around him. The "conquest of North America" was proving to be a disaster.
After dealings with the Choctaw and Chickasaw, De Soto got word of a "great northern sea" and ventured back north to find it. His expedition followed the ancient Natchez Trace and ventured as far north as Clarksville and made camp near the present-day Tennessee-Kentucky border. He didn’t find the great northern sea De Soto opted not to go any farther and turned west towards the Mississippi River. He approached the great river near present-day Lawrenceburg, Tenn. After a brief rest, he marched his men towards lower Tennessee With his men now weary and suffering from hunger, heat, and disease, De Soto and his men began clearing the forests around present-day Memphis and started building boats and barges to cross the great river. After close to two years on the march, many were growing weary of the travels, including Hernando De Soto.
On May 20, 1542, De Soto died near the west bank of the Mississippi at the mouth of the Arkansas River. While lingering in the final moments, De Soto turned over command of the expedition to Luis De Moscoso De Alvarado and charged him with leading the expedition out of the wilderness.
Alverado took the expedition west to Red River territory in Texas and, failing to meet up with another expedition, turned back and marched to the Mississippi River, where the expedition sailed down the river and found their way to a Spanish settlement on the Mexican coast. After nearly four years in the North American continent exploring more than 350,000 square miles, 311 survivors, out of the original 640 who began the march in Florida, set sail for Spain and Portugal, including Alvarado. De Soto’s mission of conquest and colonialization of the region was unsuccessful and dealt the Spanish Crown its first big defeat in the New World. The survivors, however, came away with a new knowledge of the region that was documented for the first time and offered valuable insight into the tribes that occupied southeastern North America. Spanish explorer Don Pero Menendez de Aviles would eventually establish the City of Saint Augustine 23 years later and it would remain Spain’s northernmost outpost in North America throughout the region’s colonial history, however, numerous expeditions would operate out of the city and up the North American coast.
The journals and diaries of the exploration went home to Spain with the expedition’s survivors. While many would lay forgotten in Spain for centuries, others would lay the groundwork for the coming European settlement of the region and change the face of not only the North American continent, but of the world itself.

Many readers have asked for me to provide an account of the expedition of Hernando De Soto in Tennessee. It has been difficult to do because many of the journals and diaries of the expedition were not deemed credible by historians and Native American landmarks identified in their records could not be found or matched. The naming of the Appalachian mountains after the gulf coast Apalachee tribe shows the sometimes inaccurate Spanish logic. It is becoming clearer to historians that De Soto ventured deeper into Tennessee than anyone previously thought. Numerous Cherokee stories speak of the Spanish visits to villages and legends of their actions persist in many other tribal histories. The Cherokee’s hatred of them was such that all words of reference to the Spanish were completely wiped from their language. The territory referred to as "Chisca" is now believed to be located near Knoxville. The other "yellow metal" described by De Soto’s men that wasn’t gold could very well be zinc, which Knoxville still mines in abundance.
Special thanks for this story has to go to the staff and Park historians of the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Saint Augustine, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, and the Southeastern Archaeological Association.
The new information being uncovered by historians is showing that De Soto’s impact on the region could have had a "domino effect" that changed the make-up of southeastern North America. The tribes in the southeastern region were much like their Central American counterparts in that many lived in cities and had complex social orders. Following De Soto’s expedition, which often brutalized the tribes, many were wiped out by European diseases and surviving residents scattered to the safety of the wilderness to avoid catching the diseases thwarting the growth and survival of many landmark villages. Unlike Central America and Europe, they had no Emperors to whom they owed great allegiance nor a centralized capitol that could be seized to contain an area.
In addition, many of the diaries could not be corroborated with other "official reports" from that era. It wasn’t until 1994 that archaeologists and historians finally discovered De Soto’s true landing site in Florida was at Port Charlotte and not Tampa Bay as previously believed.
It is also interesting to note that Europe’s only knowledge of the tribes in North America came from Hernando De Soto’s expeditionary accounts. They would constitute an era of prejudice that would last for hundreds of years among Europeans settling in the region. The journals blamed the natives for De Soto’s death and literally depicted them as "red devils" and savages. Their descriptions are where the "red" color designation for Native Americans evolved.
There are few, if any, markers commemorating the passage of De Soto in Tennessee. The force traveled an average of 13 miles per day and probably camped at numerous points around the Natchez Trace. In addition, historical officials say the present-day Fort Campbell Air Field and the Davy Crockett home in Lawrenceburg were other possible sites. Memphis they know for sure was a camp site as De Soto’s men spent a good deal of time there making boats and barges. The French would later build a fort on the Mississippi at Memphis and maintain it as a trading post, which would also provide details of pre-Tennessee natives and settlements.
There were some Spanish mining attempts in the Smoky Mountain region, but they were carried out by individuals privately. In recent years, abandoned mine sites in the mountains have been identified as being of Spanish origin. It is now believed that the mysterious Melungeons are descended from survivors of the Don Pardo expedition that followed De Soto’s into southeastern America– probably using Spanish intelligence gained from the expedition. When the Melungeons were "rediscovered" by John Sevier in the 18th century, neighboring Indian tribes informed Sevier that the Moorish settlers were prolific miners of the region. In fact, strange smelting-type ovens of Melungeon origin can still be found in certain regions of Southern Appalachia.
Within a few years of De Soto’s expedition, other European settlers would begin arriving and gold-seeking conquistadors would fall from power on the world stage. European traders would eventually get a stray nugget here and there from the Cherokee, but no word was forthcoming as to its origin. There are many Cherokee legends, however, that speak of Spanish gold expeditions in the region and one of a lost treasure that was captured by the Cherokee during an attack on a Spanish caravan. The caravan, which was believed to have included, silver, furs, and close to a ton of locally mined gold nuggets, was said to have been hidden somewhere in the Smoky Mountains by the Cherokee. While the reports of the attack were confirmed, no expeditions were mounted by the Spanish to find the caravan and it still remains listed as one of the "Lost Treasures of Southern Appalachia".
America’s first great gold strike would later occur in Northern Georgia not far from the path where De Soto’s men would march. It would start the first gold rush in American history. There would be a few other strikes in the Southern Appalachian area, but most would play out quickly. As late as the 1930s, however, the Eagle Creek Mine on Fontana’s North Shore was an active producer of copper. One little known fact about it is that miners had to remove gold vein deposits in order to get to the copper. While De Soto’s expedition took place over three hundred years ago, officials say it will be years before the extent of De Soto’s travels in Tennessee and the southeast will be known as more facts and journals are being uncovered in Spain.