13. The Spaniards next set out to journey farther westward, and the guides brought them to the Mississippi. The point where the Father of Waters was first seen by White men was a little north of the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude; the day of the discovery can not certainly be known. The Indians came down the river in a fleet of canoes, and offered to carry the Spaniards over; but a crossing was not effected until the latter part of May.
14. De Soto's men now found themselves in the land of the Dakotas. The natives at one place were going to worship the Spaniards, but De Soto would not permit such idolatry. They continued their march to the St. Francis River; thence westward for about two hundred miles; thence southward to the tributaries of the Washita River. On the banks of this stream they passed the winter of 1541-42.
Death of De Soto.
15. De Soto now turned toward the sea, and came upon the Mississippi in the neighborhood of Natchez. His spirit was completely broken. A fever seized upon his emaciated frame, and death shortly ensued. The priests chanted a requiem, and in the middle of the night his companions put his body into a rustic coffin and sunk it in the Mississippi.
16. Before his death, De Soto had named Moscoso as his successor. Under his leadership, the half-starved adventurers next crossed the country to the upper waters of the Red River, and then ranged the hunting-grounds of the Pawnees and the Comanches. In December of 1542 they came again to the Mississippi, where they built seven boats, and on the 2d of July, 1543, set sail for the sea. The distance was almost five hundred miles, and seventeen days were required to make the descent. On reaching the Gulf of Mexico, they steered to the southwest, and finally reached the settlement at the mouth of the River of Palms.
17. The next attempt to colonize Florida was in the year 1565. The enterprise was intrusted to Pedro Menendez, a Spanish soldier. He was commissioned by Philip II. to plant in some favorable district of Florida a colony of not less than five hundred persons, and was to receive two hundred and twenty-five square miles of land adjacent to the settlement. Twenty-five hundred persons joined the expedition.
Pedro Menendez.
18. The real object of Menendez was to destroy a colony of French Protestants, called Huguenots, who had made a settlement near the mouth of the St. John's River. This was within the limits of the territory claimed by Spain. The Catholic party of the French court had communicated with the Spanish court as to the whereabouts and intentions of the Huguenots, so that Menendez knew where to find and how to destroy them.
Founding of St. Augustine.