Written by Donald E. Sheppard
Drawings: Cheryl Lucente

CHARLOTTE HARBOR

Hernando de Soto landed near a native village at the head of Charlotte Harbor on June 1, 1539. That site became a shore camp for off-loading ships until his horsemen were shown the way there and his men had time to clear the trees around the village, Ucita, for pasturing horses and safety from attack.^E

There's an earthen appendage hooked southward into the cove next to DeSoto's shore camp site (photo at left). It was probably Ucita's fishing enclosure. Tippecanoe Bay, beside it, with six feet of water at low tide (1774 Harbor Chart), accomodated DeSoto's off-loading of ships with boats. There was a deep pit described next to the enclosure in the 1849 Township survey. It may have been dug by DeSoto's people to widen the enclosurer's barricade to use as a pier.

On Tuesday June 3, 1539, with all the men and dignitaries quartered in Ucita, with the necessary paraphernalia, DeSoto took formal possession of La Florida:^R all of today's North America.

Riders and boatmen scouted the area for natives but few were captured. Horsemen and troops were dispatched to explore distant native trails for well provisioned villages. Fourty soldiers were attacked by natives three leagues (8 miles) into the interior - one soldier was killed.^{R E} The natives fled.

Biedma, the King's Agent, says, "As soon as we disembarked, we found out that there was a Christian in the land who was one of those who had gone with Panfilo de Narvaez, and we went in search of him (Inca says they got lost, off-trail, to a place from which they could see the ships' topsails); a chief (Mococo) who was about eight leagues (21 miles) from port had him. We came upon him on the road; he was coming toward us, for when the chief found out that we were there, he asked him if he wished to come where we were.

"He said yes, and the chief sent nine Indians with him. He was naked like them, with a bow and some arrows, his body decorated like an Indian. As we came upon them, they... fled into a small nearby forest. The horses reached them, and gave a lance-blow to the Christian Indian who might have been killed since he had forgotten our language. He remembered how to call to Our Lady, and by this he was recognized as a Christian..." His name was Juan Ortiz.^{R E I DeSoto}

He would serve DeSoto as a guide and interpreter for the rest of his life. DeSoto would reward Chief Mococo with excess hardware when the port was abandoned. Florida's pioneers would find some of it and call Chief Mococo's village site "Old Spanish Fields" (John Lee Williams Map, 1837, at right).

Ortiz had been captured at Ucita before escaping to Mococo.^I He had been guided to a bridge two leagues from Ucita,^I crossed it, then fled six additional leagues to Mococo's Village.^I Both Ucita and Mococo can be located with unusual precision using that and other observations.

Upon the army's departure from Ucita, Biedma says, "We went west and then turned northwest." Rangel says, "...they spent that night at the river of Mococo... And they made two bridges on which this army crossed the river..." Inca says, "...they marched toward Mococo's village."

DeSoto's Thirty Lancers, returning to Ucita along the trail he took to north Florida, described what they encountered along their way. The night before reaching Ucita they camped three leagues short of Mococo's village and eleven leagues short of Ucita. Continuing, just over one league from Ucita they feared for the safety of the men left at port when no horse tracks were found in a clearing (the large creek bed of north Tippecanoe Bay), but were pleased to find fresh tracks and ash from clothes being washed at a lake less than half-a-league from the village.

Recall, too, that the men spent their first night ashore at a camp at the end of the bay which went up to Ucita, two leagues from where they landed.^{E I}

Those measures, two leagues west to a bridge, just over a league from a clearing, less than half-a-league from a lake and two leagues from where the men landed converge at Ucita (on map at left). Mococo's village was eight leagues up and across the Myakka River from Ucita.

Today Ucita is a subdivision with man-made canals running through it. The port's main anchorage is below it on a straight line down the Myakka River, making ships' topsails visible for miles upstream, as reported by the scouts who found Juan Ortiz.^I

Those scouts were probably standing on the "conspicuous Indian Mound" shown upstream of Ucita in the 1849 Township Survey (right). Inca says Ucita's dead were kept at one.

DeSoto's boatmen found a large number of Indians on an island two leagues from camp^R (on Hog Island). Troops were sent to from Ucita to round them up,^I but most had fled. Some were captured, among them women and children, others were killed.

The scouts who went to explore distant trails sent DeSoto good news. They had found food at Paracoxi,^DeSoto the next village beyond Mococo, seventeen leagues to its northeast^I ...twenty leagues from the coast^B ...and only twenty-five leagues (60 miles) from Ucita.^{I-Chap X}

They also reported that beyond Paracoxi was a place called Ocale where there is a great plenty of all things; fowls, turkeys and herds of tame deer... and an abundance of gold and silver, and many pearls... "where we may pass the winter."^DeSoto

Narvaez had led his army northeast from Ucita, given that he missed Mococo and Paracoxi, to a place with food twelve leagues ahead (today's Arcadia). Aiming next for "Apalachen gold, very far from there,"^V he turned north and went inland of the Peace River. Starvation would lead him to the Great Swamp,^V where DeSoto would find traces of him ^I along his way to Ocale.

DeSoto stayed at Ucita for six weeks. He wrote a letter to Cuba, the transport vessels were sent on their way and his ships were secured at anchor. French Corsairs plied the new world waters, so DeSoto left 26 horsemen, 60 foot soldiers and heavily armed sailors to guard them.^{R E I} He led his army toward Ocale via Mococo's village and Paracoxi. Horsemen would drive the pigs.

THE GRAND ENTRADA

DeSoto's army left Ucita on (the New Moon of) July 15th, 1539.^R They marched west,^B past the lake where the men washed clothes, past Ucita's fishing enclosure, past their landing campsite and the clearing at the head of Tippecanoe Bay. They turned northwest,^B bypassed the burial mound from which scouts had sighted the ship's topsails, forded the creek near the bridge which Ortiz crossed headed to Mococo village, then avoided the swamps the horsemen had slogged on their way into Ucita. They blazed a trail inland (forest in photo above) of the Myakka River (below). Livestock needed a wider path than the natives' nearby riverbank trail.

The army camped beside the river,^R six leagues from Ucita, their first night out. That trail was the only one from Charlotte Harbor on the John Lee Williams Map of 1837. The next day they crossed a bridge they built^R over Myakka River's bend seven leagues from Ucita and one league from Mococo.^I

The next morning the army's horses were spooked by a rabbit and ran back for more than a league before terrified troops could reassert control over them.^R The horses had fled southwest, turned at Howard Creek to avoid the bridge, then stopped, as horses do when they pass fresh scents. DeSoto's people called Lake Myakka, accordingly, "The Lake of the Rabbit" and had built and crossed two bridges just after leaving Ucita, all as Rangel reported.

With Paracoxi Village their intermediate destination, DeSoto's army continued northeast^I for three days, marching eleven more leagues. They spent their first night at what they called the lake of St. John, east of Sarasota Bay. The next day they crossed a desert plain where DeSoto's servant died of thirst. Horses drank what could be carried and, as one can see, there are no lakes, springs, sink holes or creeks along that trail in July, an unusual place in Florida. The third day they came to the plain of Guacoco,^R Florida's largest field of pebble phosphate deposit, 130,000 acres of nature's fertilizer, then stopped.

DeSoto's ambition, to march his army rapidly, six leagues the first day and five the second, proved to be more than they could handle. They averaged just under four leagues each of their last three days on the trail. That pace, about four-and-a-half (6+5+11 over 5) leagues (about 11 miles) per day, would hold for years, even with captives acquired to lighten their loads.^I That weekly schedule, five days on the road then several at leisure, would hold as well, with few exceptions.

They called that entire province, from Ucita north, by its richest village's name: Paracoxi.^{B E DeSoto} The Spaniards found maize (corn) growing there for the first time in Florida^R and spent the next three days leisurely harvesting it across three leagues of cultivated fields; first to Luca then to and around Paracoxi Village,^R for a total of seventeen leagues traveled from Mococo's Village to Paracoxi Village.^I

Inca says that village was located twenty-five leagues^I north-north-east^I of Ucita, which is the distance they had marched in that direction (see map above). Biedma says that Paracoxi Village was up to twenty leagues from the coast^B - the Gulf Coast shipping lane off St. Petersburg.

Surrounded by surface mines today (photo at right), Paracoxi Village was located at Brewster, an abandoned city in a moonscape of mines. Scouts sent from Ucita the week before reported "a wide body of water three leagues beyond..."^I (above Brewster, draining east to the Peace River and west out a narrow creek northwest of Brewster). "It had such deep mud on either side that it was impassable for the army to cross (in the direction they had been heading for the last week), but they had found a better crossing just two days away..."^I at Lake Hancock's spillway (northeast of there - photo below - just above Bartow, flowing southeastward into the Peace River). The army headed northwest from Paracoxi Village, then turned to the northeast again at Bradley Junction, around the swamps and toward the spillway, camping beyond Vicela,^{R E} a phosphate plant today.

The next day they hiked three leagues, crossed the spillway, then camped on a plain half-a-league beyond at a place called Tocaste near a large lake:^R today's Lake Hancock. The plain is near a hugh hill overlooking Lake Hancock from the south. The view from its summit is spectacular.

Since leaving Mococo Village DeSoto had led his army northeast, away from Florida's sandy, unfertile coast,^R but was again thwarted by swampland impassibility northeast of Tocaste.^I Called the Green Swamp today, it covers 870 square miles (Disney World was developed on its eastern wetlands). Without a guide, DeSoto recrossed the spillway^{R E I} in search of a better trail to Ocale, whose neighbors, "living in other lands where it was summer most of the year, had gold in abundance."^E

On the third day DeSoto found, and was led by, a guide to a broad road^R leading away from the swamp to a passage through another which was free of mud at its entrance and exit.^I Rangel called it the swamp of Cale, others called it a river or The Great Swamp. All described today's Green Swamp outlet at the Hillsborough River. With flat sand approaches, trails from points south once converged at that site. The Fort Foster Bridge was built there by the U.S. Army in 1828. Trails across it led into hostile Seminole Indian Country (Laumer 1968; Mahon 1967:104).

DeSoto dispatched several riders^{R I} on a nearly Full Moon with orders to advance the army. They first had to back-track, unseen for safety, through an inhabited region where they reported natives performing pagan ceremony around giant fires.^I When they reached the spillway they were helped by the cavalry to ward-off morning attackers.^I Once at Tocaste, riders were dispatched with more food for DeSoto.^I They rode twelve leagues to the Great Swamp, where he said he would wait for them.^I

The next day the army advanced over the spillway and for the next two they headed for the Great Swamp,^{R E I} camping at today's Lakeland then ten miles west of there then at the swamp. DeSoto had already crossed it and ridden six leagues into Ocale Province,^I a place reported by Elvas to lie west of Paracoxi Province (see map above).^E Biedma says 15 or 20 leagues from Paracoxi Village. Inca calls it Acuera and says it was "about twenty leagues from Paracoxi Village on a line running more or less north and south." All described today's Dade City, as bountiful today as reported then.

The army spent three days crossing the Great Swamp^I then hiked six leagues up the trail DeSoto took into Ocale.^{R E} DeSoto had planned for them to spend the winter there. Inca called it Acuera Province, but Acuera was actually a village located near Zephyrhills (photo above left).

Narvaez had crossed the Great Swamp, at the same place and for the same reasons eleven years before DeSoto.^I He encountered several hundred Indians while crossing it "with great difficulty," but was led to their village half-a-league away,^V (above Branchton) where Narvaez found large amounts of maize. When Cabeza de Vaca was dispatched to find a harbor reported to be nearby (Tampa Bay), he rode down the north bank of the Hillsborough River to wetlands filled with oysters and a river he could not cross.^V

The Hillsborough River re-broadens below the Great Swamp crossing place (image above); raccoons eat the oysters there today. Much of that extensive swamp, around today's Rock Hammock, would be drained by Tampa's Bypass Canal into McKay and Hillsborough Bays. Vaca returned to camp.

When others re-crossed the swamp^V and went down the river's south bank toward Tampa (Fort Brook) they found a shallow bay, Hillsborough Bay (cut by the bypass canal today), on May 22, 1528, four days after New Moon. Spring Tides occured when they examined it - they could wade across most of it.^V The deep water of Tampa Bay looked to them like the Gulf of Mexico. They returned to camp with news that the harbor was too shallow for ships. Narvaez led his army up the shallow Gulf Coast, looking for them.^V

RIDGES AND FLATWOODS

At Dade City, Inca says they "encamped in some very beautiful valleys having large maize fields, so productive that each stalk had three or four ears..." Elvas says, "The governor ordered all the maize which was ripe in the fields to be taken, which was enough for three months." To their good fortune, two captured Indians reported that "seven days' journey farther on was a very large province with maize in abundance, called Apalache." DeSoto immediately set out with 50 horsemen and 60 foot soldiers to confirm that much-needed-winter-food-supply was at Apalache. Biedma says, "...traveling ever toward New Spain, at a distance of ten to twelve leagues from the coast."

Biedma's New Spain was Mexico; his "coast" was the Gulf's "shipping lane," deeper than four brazas (23 feet), as shown by the transport captains at landfall. On average, that depth of water occures about ten miles (4 leagues) offshore from midwestern peninsular Florida's shoreline, placing DeSoto's trail about six to eight leagues (15 to 20 miles) inland of that shoreline. Months later when DeSoto's Thirty Lancers returned on that hundred-league-long trail from Apalache, it took them exactly seven days to get back to Dade City.

DeSoto, his company, Juan Ortiz and his Chroniclers proceeded north from Dade City. They followed the Withlacoochee River through its State Forest, a game preserve today, described then as being abundant in "fallow deer... red deer like large bulls... very large bears and panthers."^I They crossed Florida's rock phosphate ridge; "as it had maize in abundance, they gave it the name Villafarta," ^E meaning "fertile place" in Spanish. Then they bridged the Withlacoochee River and entered another province with "many forests and streams that flowed through it, and very level." ^I

The last were Florida's "flatwoods," as pioneers would call them, from the Withlacoochee State Forest north to Tallahassee. Giant pine trees (pictured at left) would be "harvested" there by "naval stores" companies who would first drain the trees of sap to distill for turpentine and caulk residues, then build railroads through that flat sandy country to haul the massive felled timbers to market.

Most of DeSoto's trail from Dade City was a railroad until recently. It went through Rital, Istachatta, Inverness, Hernando and Dunnellon. DeSoto's secretary would call them, respectively, Ytara, Potano, Utinama, Mala Paz (Bad Peace) and Cholupaha,^E each at just over ten mile interval. They traveled 20 leagues in doing so.^I The rock phosphate ridge that DeSoto came to thirteen leagues north of Dade City became well known to the U. S. Army. On it was fought the biggest battle of The Seminole War (Mahon 1967: 135; Sprague 1964 [written in 1848]).

DeSoto's guard called today's Hernando "Bad Peace" for New Moon misbehavior by the natives. Although they^{E R} only alluded to it, Desoto probably slaughtered a number of these natives. Evidence of that has been found nearby at both Ruth Smith and Tatham Mounds. The Seminole Indians called that area Char-lo-pop-ka (Sprague 1964:279). DeSoto's captives called it Cho-lu-pa-ha. Today it is called Tsala Apopka, probably derived from the ancient name. Only Inca called it Ocale, the name the others assigned to the entire province.

DeSoto's division built a wooden bridge near Cholupaha^E to cross the River of Discords^R between "precipices on either side as high as the length of two pikes and as perpendicular as two walls" ^I (a "pike" is ten feet long. That bridge was built on the Withlacoochee River at Dunnellon, with the only banks that high on the river (shown on the Township Survey, 1845, made before the river was damaged by phosphate dredging and mining). Those banks allowed spanning an otherwise swampy river. The Spaniards called it the River of Discords because DeSoto's favorite greyhound, Bruto, was killed chasing Indians in it.^I

DeSoto left Dunnellon bound for Caliquen Village,^E sixteen leagues up the way, according to native captives.^I His group marched the first eight leagues in two days, but half way through their third day, probably while struggling to ford the Waccasassa River and Otter Creek, DeSoto and his guard proceeded to Caliquen Village on the Suwannee River.

That village was located just west of today's Chiefland at yesteryear's Janney, once an outpost for the Peninsular Naval Stores Company which harvested its flatwoods. Its a ghost town today, one league south of the Suwannee River. Chief Caliquen lived on one of the high hills located two miles below Lower Clay Landing, overlooking his village.^I

Elvas called this place Caliquen, Biedma and Rangel called it Aqua-calecuen. Cabeza de Vaca with Narvaez, whose trail DeSoto's would merge with there, had called its chief Dul-chanchellin.^V Only Inca called it Ochile, which would confuse him and later DeSoto trail seakers for years.

DeSoto captured the chief in a dawn raid then returned down the trail to his division, three leagues back.^I They had advanced in his day-long absence, probably another four leagues or so, making the distance between the Withlacoochee River at Dunnellon and Caliquen Village on the Suwannee about sixteen leagues. Because the village was large, its chief held hostage, and Apalache's riches further confirmed by natives there, DeSoto sent for his army in Ocale.^{E R} Riders were dispatched on the Full Moon.

Meanwhile, in Caliquen, DeSoto learned about Chief Caliquen's warring brother, Napituca,^I whose village was on the road to Apalache. DeSoto was told, in detail, of the plight of the Narvaez Expedition, by natives, for the first time in La Florida.^E Narvaez had been defeated at Napituca.

Over the next several weeks, while the army advanced from Ocale, DeSoto pastured his horses in Caliquen. Troops had buried DeSoto's heavy implements before advancing - believing in their imminent return to winter in Ocale.^E Once the army was reassembled and more captives taken, DeSoto led his army north, across the Suwannee River into the flatwoods, headed for Napituca.^E

Part 3 - Napituca and Paradise            YOUR STATE