II THE ROUTES OF PINEDA, NARVAEZ, AND DE SOTO AND MOSCOSO
In 1519 Alonso Alvarez de Pineda (or Pinedo) was sent as commander of an expedition of three or four sailing vessels to explore the coast of Florida and the northern half of the Gulf of Mexico, under a commission from Garay, the governor of the Spanish settlements in Jamaica. The resulting map, transmitted by Garay to Spain, gives a somewhat correctly proportioned outline of the entire gulf, with Florida, Cuba, and Yucatan inclosing it on the east; and the Mississippi is named Rio del Espiritu Santo (River of the Holy Spirit). In Harrisse’s Discovery of North America (1892, p. 168), a translation from the contemporary Spanish account of this expedition says, concerning the Mississippi, that the ships “entered a river which was found to be very large and very deep, at the mouth of which they say they found an extensive town, where they remained forty days and careened their vessels. The natives treated our men in a friendly manner, trading with them, and giving what they possessed. The Spaniards ascended a distance of six leagues up the river, and saw on its banks, right and left, forty villages.”
Pineda’s map shows the Mississippi as if it had a wide mouth, growing wider like a bay in going inland, and it has no representation of the delta; but this river and the several others tributary to the gulf are all mapped only at their mouths. What he meant for the Mississippi is more clearly indicated by the map sent to Spain by Cortes and published there in 1524, which shows the Rio del Espiritu Santo flowing through two lakes close to its mouth, evidently intended to represent Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne. The same delineation of the Lower Mississippi is given also by the Turin map, of about the year 1523. Both these maps, doubtless based on information supplied by Pineda, display the course of the Mississippi above Lake Pontchartrain to a distance of apparently at least a hundred miles, where it is represented as formed by three confluent streams. Through questioning the Indians, he probably learned of the Red river, and of its northern tributary, the Black, which would be the two inflowing streams at nearly the distance mentioned from Pontchartrain.
The little ships of Pineda’s expedition therefore must be supposed, according to these maps, to have entered the Mississippi by one of its numerous outflowing navigable bayous, which, before the construction of levees, discharged a considerable part of the waters of the great river through Lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain, and Borgne. The Indian town noted at the mouth of the river may have been at the mouth of the bayou, that is, on or near Lake Maurepas; or it may have been near the chief place of outflow from the main river, which was most probably then, as in recent times, at Bayou Manchac, 117 miles above the site of New Orleans by the course of the river, and 14 miles below Baton Rouge. There is no reason to distrust the statement that within six leagues thence up the Mississippi the Spaniards observed forty groups of temporary or permanent Indian dwellings. If the ships only entered the mouth of the bayou (or of the Amite river, through which the several bayous send their waters to the lake), being there careened and repaired, it is easy to infer that some of the Spaniards ascended the Amite and Bayou Manchac in small boats to the Mississippi, noted the width of that mighty stream, sounded its great depth, and reported its Indian villages. The delta, jutting out as a long cape, was neglected by Pineda in his mapping, which was accepted generally by cartographers. The chart of Vespucci’s first voyage, more truthful as to this river’s embouchure, had been lost and forgotten.
Harrisse, from a thorough study of records of Pineda’s cruise, concludes that he came to the Mississippi in April or May, 1519, remained at the Indian town forty days, as stated, and went onward, exploring the coast of Louisiana and Texas, in June and July. He coasted beyond the Panuco river, but turned back when he reached the neighborhood of Vera Cruz, already occupied by Cortes. The next year Pineda again voyaged to the Panuco, with many men and horses, to establish a colony, in which endeavor he and most of his company were killed by the Indians.
The next expedition noting the Mississippi river was under the command of Pamphilo (or Panfilo) de Narvaez, for exploration and colonization of the country north of the Gulf of Mexico, from Florida westward nearly to the Panuco river, over which he had been given the title of governor. Grandly but ignorantly planned, this expedition was most utterly disastrous. Out of the three hundred men who began it, only Cabeza de Vaca, the historian of their shipwrecks and wanderings, with three others, survived to reach Spanish settlements.
In April, 1528, after a stormy voyage from Cuba, Narvaez landed on the west coast of Florida, probably at Tampa Bay. Amid great hardships, the expedition, mostly afoot, but having forty horses, marched through woods and swamps, crossed rivers, found an Indian town called Apalachen, and, finally turning back, came again to the sea, probably at the site of St. Mark’s, about fifty miles east of the Appalachicola River. Not finding his ships, on which he expected to re-embark, Narvaez consulted his followers, and they decided, although destitute of tools, to construct boats and voyage westward along the coast. More than forty had died of disease and hunger, and ten had been killed within sight of their camp and boat-building, by arrows of Indian foes, before they embarked, late in September, reduced to the number of two hundred and forty-seven, in five frail vessels, to be propelled by oars, but also provided with sails. They had no adequate means to carry water, and consequently suffered terribly from thirst, as well as hunger. On the sea they were in great peril during storms; and on landing they were assailed by the Indians with stones and arrows.
About the end of October the wretched flotilla reached the Mississippi, of which Cabeza de Vaca wrote in his Relation, as translated by Buckingham Smith:
“My boat, which was first, discovered a point made by the land, and, against a cape opposite, passed a broad river. I cast anchor near a little island forming the point, to await the arrival of the other boats. The Governor did not choose to come up, and entered a bay near by in which were a great many islets. We came together there, and took fresh water from the sea, the stream entering it in freshet. To parch some of the maize we brought with us, since we had eaten it raw for two days, we went on an island; but finding no wood we agreed to go to the river beyond the point, one league off. By no effort could we get there, so violent was the current on the way, which drove us out, while we contended and strove to gain the land.
The north wind, which came from the shore, began to blow so strongly that it forced us to sea without our being able to overcome it. We sounded half a league out, and found with thirty fathoms we could not get bottom; but we were unable to satisfy ourselves that the current was not the cause of failure.”
During the next week the boats, being rowed and drifted westward, were separated by storms; that of Narvaez may have foundered; others were driven ashore and wrecked. Those of the men who escaped from the sea mostly perished by hunger and cold, while some were enslaved by the Indians. Cabeza de Vaca was held in servitude on and near the island where he was wrecked, probably the island of Galveston, during about six years. Thence escaping, with two Spaniards and a negro of their company, he wandered across Texas, Chihuahua, and Sonora, securing the friendly aid of the Indians all the way, and coming to Spanish settlements on the Pacific coast, near the mouth of the Gulf of California, at the end of March, 1536. The next year he returned to Spain, where his Relation was published in 1542. A map of his wanderings was made in Mexico for the viceroy, but it has not been preserved. No addition to the knowledge of the Mississippi was derived from this expedition.
Grander, equally foolhardy, and scarcely less direful in its experiences, was the expedition of Hernando (Ferdinand) de Soto, similarly planned for discoveries, conquest, and the establishment of a colonial government. He attained to a possession of the country granted to him, but only by burial in its great river.
By a strange infatuation, Cabeza de Vaca, arriving in Spain, and being questioned by his kinsfolk, gave them the impression that Florida, then including a large region northwest of the peninsula, was “the richest country in the world.” This was near the truth, if understood with reference to capabilities for agriculture; but the Spaniards pictured such wealth of gold and silver as had been recently plundered from Peru and Mexico. A soldier of fortune, De Soto, who was of noble lineage, formerly poor, but who had become suddenly rich with Pizarro from the spoils of Peru, was eager for greater wealth and power. Returning to Spain he secured appointment as governor of Cuba, with a commission to extend Spanish dominion over Florida and the country north of the Gulf of Mexico, where he was to be the feudal lord and governor. It was the same commission as that which had lured Narvaez to his death; but it was thought to be a sure passport to great wealth.
Many young gentlemen of the noblest families in Spain, and some from Elvas in Portugal, flocked to De Soto’s standard. One of the Portuguese, whose name is unknown, wrote the narrative, published in 1557, which is our chief source of information concerning the route and history of the expedition. An English translation of this Relation of “A Gentleman of Elvas,” made by Richard Hakluyt, was published in 1611, and was reprinted for the Hakluyt Society in 1851. Another translation, by Buckingham Smith, from which ensuing quotations are taken, was published in New York by the Bradford Club in 1866.
There were more volunteers than could be accepted; and after an exultant voyage to Cuba and thence to Florida, De Soto landed, with about 600 men and 213 horses, at Tampa Bay, May 30 (old style), 1539.
Almost two years were spent in marches through inhospitable forests and swamps, fording rivers, and fighting with many tribes of Indians, but finding nothing worth plundering. After much suffering in the winter camps, in the spring of 1541 the weary and wellnigh despairing expedition came to the Mississippi River, probably at the Lower Chickasaw Bluff (in Memphis, Tennessee, and extending ten miles down the east bank of the river), near the northwest corner of the present state of Mississippi, at the distance of about four hundred miles north of the Gulf, but twice as far by the tortuous watercourse. Armed Indians in two hundred canoes, coming from up the river, saluted the Spaniards, and the chief said to De Soto “that he had come to visit, serve, and obey him; for he had heard that he was the greatest of lords, the most powerful on all the earth.” The Indians were doubtless treacherous; but here, as usual, the Spaniards were the first aggressors. When the canoes drew off from the shore, “the crossbow-men, who were in readiness,” according to the Portuguese Relation, “with loud cries shot at the Indians, and struck down five or six of them.”
Delay for thirty days was required in making four large boats to transfer the cavalry and foot soldiers across the river. Beginning one morning three hours before daybreak, by many trips to and fro, they had all crossed before the sun was two hours high, effecting this important movement without molestation by their vigilant Indian enemies. Wherever they marched, the poor native people were robbed, some of them were treacherously killed, and others, taken captive, were compelled to carry burdens, or otherwise to aid the invaders. The Relation says of this river, which it calls the Rio Grande: “The distance [to cross it] was near half a league: a man standing on the shore could not be told, whether he were a man or something else, from the other side. The stream was swift, and very deep; the water, always flowing turbidly, brought along from above many trees and much timber, driven onward by its force.”
Nearly another year was spent in marches, exploration, and campaigning against the Indians, west of the Mississippi, and on April 17, 1542, De Soto came again to the Mississippi, at the Indian town of Guachoya, close below the mouth of the Arkansas river. There he sank into a deep despondency, worn out by the long series of disappointments and losses which had attended the whole course of his expedition; he became sick with malarial fever; and on May 21 he died, after appointing Luis de Moscoso as his successor in command. To conceal his death from the Indians, the body, wrapped in blankets and heavily weighted with sand, was sunk in the middle part of the Mississippi. The new governor and leader, Moscoso, then told the chief of the Guachoya Indians that De Soto “had ascended into the skies, as he had done on many other occasions; but as he would have to be detained there some time, he had left him in his stead.”
Moscoso, after consulting the other officers, decided to march southwestward, hoping to reach Mexico; and half a year was lost in going far southwest, repenting, and returning to the Mississippi at an Indian settlement called Aminoya, where the Spaniards found a large quantity of maize, indispensable for their sustenance. This place was a short distance above Guachoya, and apparently above the mouths of the Arkansas and White rivers, on the same (west) side of the great river. Seven brigantines were there built, on which, July 2, 1543, the Spaniards, reduced to three hundred and twenty-two, embarked to go down the Mississippi, taking with them about a hundred Indian slaves to be sold if they should reach Spanish settlements. Two weeks were occupied in descending the river, by rowing and the aid of the strong current, covering a distance which was estimated as about 250 Portuguese or Spanish leagues. (From the mouth of the Arkansas to the Bayou Manchac, by the course of the Mississippi, is a distance of 446 miles, and to the present mouths of the delta, 672 miles.) The debouchure of the Mississippi was described as follows:
“When near the sea, it becomes divided into two arms, each of which may be a league and a half broad.... Half a league before coming to the sea, the Christians cast anchor, in order to take rest for a time, as they were weary from rowing.... [Here Indians came, in several canoes, for an attack.]... There also came some by land, through thicket and bog, with staves, having very sharp heads of fish-bone, who fought valiantly those of us who went out to meet them.... After remaining two days, the Christians went to where that branch of the river enters the sea; and having sounded there, they found forty fathoms depth of water. Pausing then, the Governor required that each should give his opinion respecting the voyage, whether they should sail to New Spain direct, by the high sea, or go thither keeping along from shore to shore.... It was decided to go along from one to another shore....
“On the eighteenth day of July the vessels got under weigh, with fair weather, and wind favorable for the voyage.... With a favorable wind they sailed all that day in fresh water, the next night, and the day following until vespers, at which they were greatly amazed; for they were very distant from the shore, and so great was the strength of the current of the river, the coast so shallow and gentle, that the fresh water entered far into the sea.”
Luis Hernandez de Biedma, a factor or agent for King Charles V, was a member of De Soto’s expedition, of which, after returning to Spain, he submitted a report in 1544. From the translation of that report, given by Buckingham Smith in the same volume with this narrative of “The Gentleman of Elvas,” we have the following considerably different description of what was thought to be the junction of the Mississippi with the gulf:
“We came out by the mouth of the river, and entering into a very large bay made by it, which was so extensive that we passed along it three days and three nights, with fair weather, in all the time not seeing land, so that it appeared to us we were at sea, although we found the water still so fresh that it could well be drunk, like that of the river. Some small islets were seen westward, to which we went: thenceforward we kept close along the coast, where we took shell-fish, and looked for other things to eat, until we entered the River of Panuco, where we came and were well received by the Christians.”
By comparing Biedma’s report with the Portuguese Relation, I am convinced that the brigantines did not pass down the Mississippi to its delta, but went out to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Bayou Manchac, Lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain and Borgne, and Mississippi Sound. In other words, Moscoso, with his squadron, took the same passage that Pineda had taken, in 1519, for his entering the Mississippi. Several points in the two narratives need now to be explained in detail, as to their harmony with this conclusion.
First, the Indians had villages near the Bayou Manchac; but probably there were no inhabitants near the true mouth of the river, at the end of the delta. Second, under this view, we must regard the Portuguese statement of a division of the river, into two arms or branches, as referring to the large outflow, at a time of flood, to the Atchafalaya River. Instead of receiving an inflow at the junction of the Red River, the flooded Mississippi there sent out a portion of its current, by the mouth of the Red, to the Atchafalaya; which also, when the Red is at a higher stage than the Mississippi, takes a part of the current of the former, carrying it south by a much shorter course to the Gulf. Third, another statement of the Relation, noting the great depth of forty fathoms where their branch of the river “enters the sea,” must be then interpreted as found in the bend of the Mississippi from which the Bayou Manchac flows away.
In its condition of a high flood, the river there opens toward a vast expanse of water, called, by the narrator, “the sea,” reaching east over Lake Maurepas and onward to the Gulf. It seems indeed not unlikely that the Mississippi at that place may have then had even so great a depth; for in a sharp curve at New Orleans it was once found by the Mississippi River Commission to have a sounding of 208 feet. On the large scale maps recently published by the Commission, the maximum depth of the river close to the departure of the Bayou Manchac is noted as 145 feet; and in the sharp bend in the east part of New Orleans, 188 feet.
Sailing on the wide Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne, with the very low lands inclosing the latter probably then submerged, Moscoso and his men would regard all that expanse of fresh water, reaching from the Bayou Manchac nearly a hundred miles east to the Mississippi Sound, as “a very large bay” of the sea. They would consequently be surprised at the very long distance to which the Mississippi sent its waters without their becoming salt; whereas even the greatest floods could not freshen the sea very far out from the mouths of the delta. The Portuguese Relation says that the Mississippi, before the departure from Aminoya, had risen, in such a high flood, to the ground at the town, where the brigantines were built, floating them; and we may infer, with good assurance, that the same flood continued, at nearly its full height, through the next two weeks, till July 16, when they came to Bayou Manchac and the vast fresh water expanse stretching thence far to the east.
Fifty-two days were spent in slow coasting, with frequent landings, and long delays for storms and to provide shell-fish for food, between the Mississippi and the Panuco River, which was entered September 10, 1543; and there the Spanish town of Panuco welcomed the surviving three hundred and eleven of De Soto’s men.
Looking back over the history of this expedition and its results, we see that little was gained for geographic knowledge, and nothing for the honor of Spain or the extension of her colonies. With the clearer light which now enables all civilized nations to recognize the great truth of the brotherhood of all mankind, we are pained to read, throughout this narrative, of the wanton cruelties, murderous warfare, dishonesty and shameless perfidy, with which the Indians were treated by De Soto and his men from the beginning to the end of their expedition. These men were the finished product of medieval chivalry; they had mostly an inordinate self-esteem; and they called themselves Christians, and De Soto died with Christian serenity, in penitence and faith; but in their conduct toward the savages every Christian or humane sentiment was sacrificed to the love of gold and self-advancement. The first white men to voyage far on the Mississippi, and to deal largely with its native people, deemed them outside the pale of human sympathy or mercy.
No geographer, nor expert draftsman for mapping, appears to have been enlisted by De Soto in his grand company of followers. But soon after the expedition was disbanded in Mexico, testimony of those who came back to Europe was taken by some unknown compiler as the basis for a revised map of the “Gulf and Coast of New Spain.” This map, preserved at Madrid in the Archives of the Indies, was lately ascribed to the year 1521, in the exhibition sent by Spain to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It is reproduced by Harrisse in his great work, The Discovery of North America, and is proved by him to belong to the end of 1543 or some later date. It shows the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, from Georgia to the Panuco river, and extends inland as far as the country was known, however vaguely, from the explorations of De Soto and Moscoso. The ultimate sources of the Mississippi river, called by Biedma and on this map the Espiritu Santo, are placed on the northwestern flank of the Appalachian mountain belt, due north of Tampa Bay. Thence two streams, meant for the Tennessee and Cumberland (or perhaps Ohio) rivers, of which De Soto had accounts from the Indians, flow west and unite to form the Espiritu Santo, near whose west bank, close below the confluence of a large tributary from the northwest, is Guachoya, the place of De Soto’s death. Many other names are also noted, mostly of towns or districts of Indian tribes, derived from his expedition. No indication of the Ohio (probably) nor the Missouri, nor of the Red river as a tributary of the Mississippi, is given by this map. Its northern boundary, beyond which it has only blank space, is at the supposed Cumberland river, and at the mountains adjoining the sources of the northwestern tributary, that is, the Arkansas river. The Mississippi empties into the Vaya (Bay) del Espiritu Santo, which is also called Mar Pequeña (Little Sea), taking the place of the lakes north of New Orleans, and thus confirming my conclusions as to Moscoso’s passage into the Gulf. Excepting the long tributaries from the northeast, no greater prominence is given to the Mississippi than to several others of the many rivers pouring into the Atlantic and the Gulf along all this coast.
Here cartography rested during a hundred and thirty years. The next contribution from exploration of the Mississippi was by Marquette’s map in 1673.
These studies, indicating that Pineda and Moscoso came and went through the large lakes north of New Orleans, answer the question asked by Dr. Walter B. Scaife in 1892, doubting that Pineda entered the Mississippi, and considering instead that the Rio del Espiritu Santo on the maps sent to Spain by Garay and Cortes represents Mobile River and Bay. This view is elaborately stated by Scaife in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. XIII (Supplement, pages 139–176). Among other historians who have adopted this view are Peter J. Hamilton (in Colonial Mobile, 1897), and Prof. Alcée Fortier, president of the Louisiana Historical Society (in A History of Louisiana, 1904). But their difficulties and objections against identifying the Mississippi as the great river where Pineda careened and repaired his vessels are removed by his coming through Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas.
Not until a hundred and eighty years later, in 1699, have we any historic records of entry or departure through the delta mouths of the Mississippi. Then, on the second day of March, Iberville and Bienville, brothers destined to become illustrious by founding the French colony of Louisiana, entered the eastern mouth of the delta with rowing boats; and in September a small English frigate entered one of the mouths and ascended the river to “English Turn,” a great bend ten miles below the site of New Orleans.
Warren Upham.
St. Paul, Minn.
(To be continued.)
