Written by Donald E. Sheppard
Drawings: Cheryl Lucente

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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) 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

Sources of this information, from simple to detailed, by Conquistadors
DeSoto's Alabama Chronicles, by:  Biedma,  Rangel,  Elvas,  Inca

(Having marched 80 miles (6 Leagues per day) from Mabila in 5 days) "The Christians (scouts on horseback) had discovered, on the other side of the river, a town (Northport, near today's Tuscaloosa Airport) 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 (Tuscaloosa), from which they had transferred all the corn to the other side of the 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."

"A raft of logs was made ("in four days"), which was finished on the twenty-ninth of the month (a week after the army arrived at the large pastures southwest of today's Tuscaloosa, directly opposite the Indians, who were very near today's Tuscaloosa Airport), and they made a large cart to carry the raft up to Mosulixa..." "...transported one night a half league up river" from Tuscaloosa's pastures... " and having launched it in the water, sixty soldiers entered in it..."

"The next day, Wednesday, all the army went to a town that is called Zabusta (on the Sipsey River, 12 miles northwest of Northport - "The Christians (had) mounted their horses and went upstream to assure the crossing where the governor, with all those who remained with him...") ...crossed the (Sipsey) river 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 (the west side of Sipsey River Valley, on dry land), because up river (the Sipsey River) they found another good town (the horsemen found it; we call it Fayette) and took its lord, who was named Apafalaya, and brought him as guide and interpreter, and that bank was called the river of Apafalaya"... the Sipsey River. DeSoto's army pillaged that valley, the richest in Northwestern Alabama, for one week while marching 4 days through it. Chief Apafalaya may have helped the Natives of Northport oppose DeSoto's Black Warrior River crossing. He lived in Fayette, however, at the center of his valley kingdom.

"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."

"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."

"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, under the Full Moon) arrived very late at night at the town of the lord..." Lawrenceburg, 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 the week before Christmas)."

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." His calculated isolation of his army beyond the center of this island would encourage them to march northward in the Spring. His calculation was correct: none of his army would attempt to escape back to the ships. They would Winter at Lawrenceburg for four months and the ships would be back in Cuba by then

Historians have failed to track DeSoto to and across the Tennessee River; they supposed that DeSoto crossed the Tombigbee River, wintered in Mississippi, then proceeded west. 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 primary mission of attracting settlers to North America.

Had DeSoto needed only food and shelter that Winter he would have halted his army on 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. Had DeSoto been seeking only food and shelter for Winter he would never have passed Northport, much less Sipsey River Valley. He crossed the Tennessee River, instead, to isolate his army in America's Interior.

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