What could these half-clad redskins do against men in steel armor, and with sword, buckler, and arquebusier? The Castilians drove them into their fortification like sheep, and there massacred them as they had the fierce warriors under Tuscaloosa. According to old accounts, two thousand of the Indians were slain, although the native warriors inflicted quite a loss upon their attackers. The invaders secured provisions, corn, and female slaves, which they transported with them in their journey towards the northwest.
The Spaniards took their battles lightly, for they considered it all a part of the day’s work. They resumed their march, but now they must have been pretty sure that no El Dorado could exist in this flat and somewhat marshy country. Still, they were cheerful, and when, a few weeks later, they came upon a great muddy river which was so wide that they could not see a man upon the other bank, they felt that certainly their trip, their many discomforts, and their losses, had not been in vain. When they viewed the turbid current of the Mississippi they were filled with silent awe, and a priest, holding the cross of Christ high in the air, blessed the surging flood, while De Soto cried out: “I take you in behalf of the King of Spain, and shall call you mine own from henceforth!”
This gallant cavalier was a man of resource. He set his soldiers immediately to work constructing boats, and, gradually moving up the river in order to find a place where it would be possible to cross—for the little army was upon high bluffs (now called the Chickasaw Bluffs)—he transported all in safety to the other side and into the land of Arkansas, the seventh State of the present Union, upon whose soil these restless explorers had set their feet.
They wandered towards the setting sun. Here were vast plains filled with herds of buffalo and roving bands of hostile redskins, from whom they learned that other white men had preceded them, although rumors of the adventurous Coronado’s march had traveled eastward by word of mouth among the native inhabitants of the plains. This Spaniard had traveled thither from Mexico, and, could the two parties have met each other, there would have been great rejoicing. But there was to be no such good fortune, and De Soto’s men found only simple, but treacherous natives.
The Spaniards lost some of their horses. The escape of these was fortunate for future generations of pioneers, as many an emigrant in later years was able to cross the plains by capturing and taming one of the descendants of these fugitives from the bit and the saddle.
The adventurers wandered about for many months, wintered in a well-provisioned village near the Red River, within the present State of Louisiana, then, to the great joy of the now well-seasoned veterans, De Soto told them that he was about to return to the great, turbid Mississippi. He informed the wanderers that he intended to build boats, send them down the stream and across the Gulf of Mexico, to Cuba, and to transport thither many other men and a plentiful supply of provisions, so as to establish a colony in his Kingdom of Florida.
The conception was a grand one. Yet the imaginative and jealous Castilian had not reckoned with one powerful enemy, that cruel and unrelenting persecutor called Death.
The active brain of this gallant explorer was busy with perfecting his plans for the founding of a settlement in the wilderness. He carefully selected the officers and crews who were to take charge of the vessels which he proposed to build. He chose those who were to remain with him upon the banks of the rolling Mississippi. Some were set to work cutting timbers; others collected gum from pine trees; while still others put up forges and made nails from bits of iron which they had carried with them. All were busy and active in preparation both for the stay of those who were to colonize this country, and the departure of those who were to leave. Yet the fever was in the veins of our venturesome Castilian and his customary vigor was slackened. De Soto grew so weakened that he had to be carried to his tent and was delirious.
While upon the Red River, one of the malaria-breeding mosquitoes had driven his tiny sting into the flesh of the brave adventurer. He had sickened from the poison, yet refused to give up to the disease, until the fever was raging in his veins. He now sank rapidly. Yellow fever had doubtless assailed him, and his system, already weakened by much exposure and by shock of battle, could not throw off the inroads of the dread disease. He sank day by day. When he knew that the end was approaching, he called his officers together, asked their forgiveness for any wrong which he might have done them, and named Moscoso de Alvarado to succeed him to the command of the expedition. Officers and bluff soldiers all swore allegiance to their new leader. The dying explorer begged his followers to carry out his ideas in the settlement of the vast country of Florida, and this they promised him that they would do.