Ortiz had returned to Cuba with the explorer’s ships after they had failed to make contact with the land party and then had been hired by Narváez’s distraught wife to search for her husband in a pinnace she provided. On visiting Narváez’s initial landing place at Tampa Bay, Ortiz had been captured and had lived ever since with a group that controlled part of the region around the bay. He knew the Timucuans’ language and could speak through interpreters to other Indian groups. But in all that time he had never been far afield and could report only rumors about distant places. Gold? There was none near at hand, but far to the north was a powerful kingdom abounding in maize. Its inhabitants might know of minerals.
A scouting party dispatched to investigate returned with a tantalizing message that would be repeated over and over during the long trek: the gold was somewhere else, this time at a place called Cale, where the warriors wore golden helmets. De Soto nodded complacently. In a region as vast as Florida, he told the Gentleman of Elvas, there were bound to be riches.
Mindful still of the colony he was supposed to found, he left Pedro Calderón near Tampa Bay with three small ships, their sailors, and a hundred soldiers. They had two years’ supply of food and seed for planting. If he found a better place to settle, he would let them know. Meanwhile the other caravel and the five big ships were to return to Havana for fresh supplies and new recruits.
Moving inland farther than Narváez had and marching in divisions, the army moved north. Tough going. Rains were heavy that year. Bogs oozed; lakes and streams rose. The wayfarers waded some streams and bridged others. The men herded the pigs through the mud—the sows had farrowed and there were about 300 now—grooming horses, setting up wet camps and then, tired out, pulverizing, in curved log mortars, the grain they had taken from Indian fields and storage cribs so they could boil it into gruel. Discontent boiled up. There’d better be gold somewhere in this hellhole.
There was none at Cale, but a little farther on.... They straggled through the vicinity of today’s Gainesville and, inclining a little west of north, reached a village called Aguacaliquen. There an advance party captured several women, one of whom was the daughter of the cacique, or chief. The father was told he could not get her back until he had guided the Spaniards into the territory of the next tribe to the west. This he did while several of his villagers followed, playing on bone flutes as a sign of peace and begging that father and daughter be released.
When pleas produced nothing—De Soto feared being left in the wilderness with no guides—the Indians decided to ambush the Spaniards at “a very pleasant village” called Napituca, near today’s Live Oak, Florida. De Soto’s interpreter, Juan Ortiz, discovered the plot and gave warning. Spirits leaped. After two months of being harassed by Indian guerrillas, the Spaniards could at last vent their frustration on a massed army—about 400 Indians, as it turned out. Giving thanks to God, the cavalry charged, lances thrusting, swords slashing. Bellow of arquebuses, zings of crossbow darts, yells of “Santiago!” from pike-wielding foot soldiers. Scores of Indians died; hundreds were captured, including a remnant that fled into two nearby lakes and, by hiding in the cold, night-shrouded waters, evaded capture until morning—a brave stand that won both admiration and kind treatment from the Spanish force.
Not all the captives were handled that generously. Their services were needed. During marches males were linked by chains and iron collars and forced to serve as porters for the army. Women, historian Garcilaso de la Vega wrote after talking to participants in the adventure, served as “domestics,” grinding the rations of maize, cooking the meals, and so on. Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto’s private secretary, was more specific: the soldiers desired women for “foul use and lewdness.” Whenever the conquerors seized a new village, its cacique was impressed as a hostage and guide and released only after his subjects had served as bearers over the next stretch of the journey. Rebels against the enslavement received punishments designed to warn other recalcitrants. Some had a hand or nose cut off, a few were tied to stakes and burned or shot to death with arrows fired by Indian auxiliaries. Now and then one was torn to pieces by the Spaniard’s war dogs. They accepted the ordeals with a stoicism that won the grudging approval of the expedition’s chroniclers.
In October 1539, De Soto’s army entered the land of the Apalachees. According to Ranjel, they found “much maize and beans and squash and diverse fruits and many deer and a great diversity of birds and fish.” Like Narváez before them, they decided to winter at the fruitful spot, site of today’s Tallahassee.
They evicted the Indians of the main town, Anhaica, and settled down in the log and straw houses. Taking advantage of a high wind, the Indians burned most of the place. Later, the intense cold killed almost all of the despondent Indian slaves captured at the battle of Napituca. In spite of the misfortunes, De Soto decided to use Apalachee as a center for future explorations. He sent Juan de Añasco and 30 cavalrymen south through bogs and sniping Indians to Tampa Bay to bring up Calderón’s hundred soldiers and the three small ships. When the vessels arrived at the very harbor from which Narváez had sailed (as revealed by the remnants of the forge and the grisly piles of horse bones) De Soto dispatched the ships west under Francisco Maldonado to find a protected bay to which the reinforcements waiting in Havana could be brought the following summer.
Meanwhile another distraction arose. Working through a chain of interpreters, Juan Ortiz learned from an Indian captive that a truly rich country, Cofitachequi, lay to the northeast, in the vicinity of what is now Camden, South Carolina. Promptly, De Soto decided to take his regrouped army there.