Written by Donald E. Sheppard
Drawings: Cheryl Lucente

INTRODUCTION  TRAIL TO THIS POINT
BEYOND   S.E. ALA   REFERENCES   DeVACA
STATES   SPANISH LAND in AMERICA: 1670

Northward from Mabila

"From the time Governor DeSoto entered Florida until leaving the battlegrounds of Mabila, one hundred and two Christians had died, some of their illness and others being killed by the Indians. He remained in Mabila (with 540 soldiers, 200 horses and 300 pigs, camping at interval around Alberta) for twenty-eight days (one moon cycle) because of the wounded, during which time he was always in the open fields. It was a very populous and fertile land. There were some large enclosed towns and a considerable population scattered about over the field, the houses being separated from one another one or two crossbow flights." © UA Press '93

You can read the translated details of Alabama's Conquest
written by/for Conquistadors: Biedma, Rangel, Elvas + Inca

NEW: DESOTO'S ALABAMA TRAIL DETAILS ON GOOGLE EARTH
and CONQUEST CALENDARS

"The Christians had discovered, on the other side of the river, a town (Northport) that seemed good to them from a distance (from the east bank of Black Warrior River), and well situated, and on Sunday, the 21st of November, Vasco Gonzalez found a town, a half-league (one-and-a-quarter miles) from it which is called Mosulixa (today's Tuscaloosa), from which they had transferred all the corn to the other side of the (Black Warrior) river, and they had it in heaps, covered with mats, and the Indians were on the other side of the water (with the corn), making threats." ^R

"A raft of logs was made ("in four days"), which was finished on the twenty-ninth of the month, and they made a large cart to carry the raft up to Mosulixa..."^R "...transported one night a half league up river"^E in the darkness of New Moon from Tuscaloosa's pastures... "and having launched it in the water, sixty soldiers entered in it..." ^R

"The next day, Wednesday (December First, 1540), all the army went to a town that is called Zabusta (12 miles north of Northport) ...crossed the river (North River into Apafalaya Province) in the barge and with some canoes (which had been abandoned on Black Warrior River's west bank during the dawn raid on Northport); and they went to take lodging in another town on the other end (above Samantha, at the north end of that valley), because up river (the Sipsey River) they found another good town (today's Fayette) and took its lord, who was named Apafalaya, and brought him as guide and interpreter, and that bank (of Sipsey River) was called the river of Apafalaya..." ^R DeSoto's army would pillage that province, on very rich land (photo below), for over a week.

"And so that you know, reader, what life those Spaniards led, Rodrigo Ranjel, as an eyewitness, says that among many other needs of men that were experienced in this enterprise, he saw a nobleman named Don Antonio Osario, brother of the Lord Marquis of Astorga, with a doublet of blankets of that land, torn on the sides, his flesh exposed, without a hat, bare-headed, bare-footed, without hose or shoes, a shield at his back, a sword without a scabbard, the snows and cold very great; and being such a man, and of such illustrious lineage, made him suffer his hardship and not lament, like many others, since there was no one who might aid him, being who he was, and having had in Spain two thousand ducats of income through the Church; and the day that this gentleman saw him thus, he believed that he had not eaten a mouthful and had to look for his supper with his fingernails." ^R

"I could not help laughing when I heard him say that noblemen had left the Church and the aforementioned income in order to go to look for this life at the sound of the words of DeSoto. Because I knew Soto very well, and although he was a man of words, I did not believe that he would be able with such sweet talk or cunning to delude such persons. What did such a man wish, from an unfamiliar and unknown land? Nor did the Captain who led him know more of it than Juan Ponce de Leon and the licenciado Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon and Panfilo de Narvaez, and others more skillful than Hernando de Soto, had been lost in it. And those who follow such guides go from some necessity, since they find places where they could settle or rest, and little by little penetrate and understand and find out all about the land. But let us go on; small is the hardship of this nobleman compared to those who die, if they do not win salvation." ^R

Inca says, "...they entered another (province), called Chicasa. The first pueblo of this province that our men reached was not the principal one, but one of the others in its jurisdiction. It was situated on the edge of a large and deep river (the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals) having very high banks. The pueblo was on the side of the river from which the Spaniards approached.

"...When our men came in sight of the pueblo they saw in front of it a squadron of more than fifteen hundred warriors, who came out to meet the Castilians as soon as they appeared. They skirmished with them, and having made some show of defense they withdrew to the river, abandoning the pueblo, from which they had taken their property, women, and children. They had decided not to fight a pitched battle with the Spaniards but to oppose their crossing the river, which because it carried a great deal of water, was very deep, and had high and steep banks they thought would obstruct their road and force them to take another route.

"Therefore, as the Spaniards fell upon the Indians furiously, they threw themselves into the water and crossed the river, some of them in canoes, as they had many and very good ones, and some of them swimming, urged on by their fear.

"They had the main body of their army on the other side of the river facing the pueblo, where there were eight thousand warriors, whose purpose was to defend the crossing of the river. Their encampment extended for two leagues along its banks, so that the Castilians could not cross in all that distance.

"Besides this opposition that the Indians gave the Christians at the river, they harried them at night with the sudden attacks and alarms that they gave, bands of them crossing the river in their canoes at various points and then joining together, thus molesting our men greatly. In order to defend themselves the latter made use of a very clever stratagem. This was that in three landing places along the river in that space the Indians had occupied, where they came to disembark, they dug pits at night (on the Full Moon of December 13, 1540) in which crossbowmen and harquebusiers could take shelter. When they saw the Indians they allowed them to land and leave their canoes, and then they fell upon them and did them much damage with their swords, because the enemy had nowhere to run. They mistreated them thus three times, whereupon the Indians, chastised for their boldness, did not dare cross the river again. They only waited with much care and alertness to oppose our men's crossing.

"The governor and his captains, seeing that it was impossible to cross the river where they were because of the strong opposition that the enemy was making, and that they would lose time in awaiting a moment of carelessness on their part, ordered that a hundred of the most diligent men who knew something of the art should build two large barks (as they had done two weeks before to cross the Black Warrior River at today's Tuscaloosa), which they also call pirogues. They are almost flat and will hold many people. In order that the Indians might not find out what they were doing, they went into a forest that was a league and a half up the river and a league back from the riverbank.

"The hundred Spaniards assigned to this task worked so quickly that they finished the pirogues in the space of twelve days. In order to carry them to the river they made two carts of appropriate size, and by means of pack animals and horses that pulled them, and the Castilians themselves who pushed the carts and at difficult places carried the barks on their shoulders, they got them to the river one morning before dawn at a very spacious landing place that was there. There was also a good landing on the other side.

"The governor was present when the barks were launched on the river because he had ordered that he be advised of it beforehand. He directed that ten cavalrymen and forty infantry who were expert marksmen embark in each of the boats as quickly as possible before the Indians should come to oppose their passage. The foot soldiers were to row, and the cavalrymen rode their horses into the boats so as not to be delayed in mounting when they reached the other side.

"However silently the Spaniards attempted to launch the barks in the river and go aboard them, they could not avoid being heard by five hundred Indians who were patrolling the opposite bank of the river. They ran to the crossing and, seeing the barks and the Spaniards who were attempting to pass over, they raised a loud alarm, warning their men and asking for help, and then went to the landing to oppose their passage.

"Fearing that still more enemies would come, the Spaniards embarked as hastily as possible. The governor wished to cross on the first trip, but his men prevented him because of the great danger there was on that first voyage, until the landing place should be cleared of enemies. Our men thus hastily applied themselves to the oars, and all of them reached the other bank wounded because the Indians shot arrows at them from the bluff entirely at their pleasure.

"One of the barks struck the landing squarely and the other fell downstream from it, and because of the high bluffs along the river, the men could not land. Thus they were forced to row hard to get up to the landing.

"Those in the first bark jumped ashore... As soon as the infantry who were in the first boat came ashore, they went into a small pueblo that was on the very brink of the river, and did not dare leave it because they were few and all of them were wounded, as they had received most of the arrows. Those in the second pirogue, as they found the landing place free of the enemy, came ashore more easily and without any danger and ran to help their companions who were fighting on the plain.

"The governor went across on the second trip with seventy or eighty other Spaniards, and as the Indians saw that their enemies were numerous and that they could not resist them, they retreated to some woods that were not far from the pueblo, and from there they went to the place where their people were encamped. The latter had heard the shout and alarm that their scouts had given and ran quickly to defend the crossing, but on meeting the scouts and learning from them that many Spaniards had already crossed the river, they went back to their army where they prepared to defend themselves.

"The Christians went after them, intending to fight, but the Indians remained quiet, fortifying themselves with wooden palisades and with the same shelters that they had built for their lodgings. Some of them came out very boldly to skirmish, but they paid for their daring because they were killed with lances, as their swiftness could not equal that of the cavalry. That whole day was spent in this manner, and the following night the Indians left and did not reappear. Meanwhile the whole Spanish army had crossed the river."

Rangel says, "they crossed very well in a barge on Thursday, the sixteenth of the month..." ^R

"And the Governor advanced with some on horseback (through Florence and up Shoal Creek into Tennessee, while the army crossed the river), and they (with DeSoto) arrived very late at night at the town of the lord..." ^R Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, 40 miles from the Tennessee River crossing place. DeSoto's mounted Thirty Lancers covered that same distance in Florida during a similar phase of the moon. "...and all the people were gone. The next day Baltasar de Gallegos arrived with the thirty (horsemen) who went with him (still ahead of the army). They were (all) there in Chicasa that Christmas (once the entire army trickled into Lawrenceburg)." ^R

DeSoto's isolation of his army, above the Tennessee River, precluded any thought of their escape back to the waiting ships at Mobile Bay. That river flows north from there, into what DeSoto believed was the Pacific Ocean on the north shore of this "Island of Florida." Isolation of the army beyond the center of this island would encourage them to march northward at springtime. DeSoto's calculation was correct: none of his army would leave. They would winter at Lawrenceburg for four months; the ships would be back in Cuba by then.

Historians have failed to track DeSoto to and across the Tennessee River. They all supposed that DeSoto crossed the Tombigbee River, wintered in Mississippi, then proceeded west at springtime. The Tombigbee River may have been large at that time, almost a lake, but it could NOT have had the flow which the Spaniards described given the close proximity of its headwaters. Besides, DeSoto's isolation of his army, well away from his ships at port in Mobile Bay, was critical to his mission to attract settlers to his planned colony in North America.

Had DeSoto needed only food and shelter that Winter he would have halted his army at the Black Warrior River or in Sipsey River Valley, given that food and housing were plentiful at both. Containing his army on either of those rivers, however, would have been nearly impossible given that both flow into Mobile Bay, as does the Tombigbee River. He crossed the Tennessee River, instead, to isolate his army from the sea.

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