Mississippian culture in the Southeast (AD 1000-1600) evolved a rich artistic tradition. The items on these pages come from the area De Soto marched through. The effigy vessel (7.5 inches high) and the stone axe (13 inches long) are representative of this culture in Arkansas. The axe, which is carved from a single piece of stone, was probably a badge of office.
Good timber surrounded the village, and the few artisans still alive had clung to their tools. They made more nails out of their meager supply of horseshoes and other iron, contrived ropes out of bark, and sails out of shawls collected from the Indians. To escape a flood that sent the river out of its banks, they put their horses on anchored rafts and saved themselves by climbing to the tops of their huts. Indians kept paddling around their refuge in canoes. Suspicious of their intent, Moscoso had one of his men seize a native. Under torture the fellow said that 20 chiefs of the surrounding tribes were conspiring to attack the invaders. A sign would be the approach of Indians bearing gifts of fish to lull the camp into relaxing its guard. When the native chiefs showed up with fish as predicted, the Spanish laid hold of them, cut off each man’s right hand, and sent the victims back to their villages to report that their scheme was known. Although some of the chiefs persisted in their intrigues, Moscoso, very much on guard now, was able to outwit them, force submission, and acquire through it all more heaps of shawls out of which to make sails.
By July the fleet was ready—seven brigantines and several Indian-style war canoes lashed side by side. They loaded the vessels with casks of fresh water and several hundred bushels of corn scoured from a countryside that could ill afford the loss. During the last days of work they killed and ate the poorest of the horses. The soundest, 22 all told, were put aboard, as were a hundred slaves. The rest of the Indians they had dragged along with them were turned loose in this country where the tribes were hostile to them.
The river journey was a series of violent, if intermittent, battles. Indians from towns they passed swarmed after them in canoes, raining arrows on them. Ten Spaniards and an unknown number of slaves died, and because the horses were slowing their flight, Moscoso at last put ashore at a defensible spot, killed them, and dried the meat.
After 17 days they reached the Gulf, turned west, and on September 10, 1543, after weeks of combatting fretful seas, contrary winds, thirst and hunger, 311 survivors (again not counting captive Indians) reached the Pánuco River. Said Elvas: “Many, leaping ashore, kissed the ground; and all, on bended knees, with hands raised above them and their eyes to Heaven, remained untiring in giving thanks to God.”
The artist’s stone palette (12.5 inches in diameter) was found at Etowah Mounds State Historic Site, Georgia. The engraving has been interpreted as snake emissaries of the sun god, which is represented by the eye.
One of the most extraordinary marches in the annals of the New—or Old—World had come to a profitless end.