Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi / American Pioneers and Patriots

by John S. C. Abbott

The Spaniards, who had entered the city with hideous yells of triumph, being thus frustrated in the main object of their expedition, found, by inquiry, that at the distance of several leagues easterly from the sea-coast, among the pleasant valleys of the mountains, there were populous cities, where abundance of booty might be found.

The whole number of Spaniards, then invading Peru, did not exceed two hundred and fifty. The Peruvians were daily becoming more deeply exasperated. With such a number of men, and no fortified base to fall back upon, Pizarro did not deem it safe to enter upon a plundering tour into the interior. Keeping therefore about one hundred and thirty men with him, and strongly fortifying himself at Tumbez, he sent De Soto, at the head of eighty men, sixty of whom were mounted, back into the mountains, to search for gold, and to report respecting the condition of the country, in preparation for future expeditions.

The bad fame of Pizarro was spreading far and wide. And though De Soto enjoined it strictly upon his men, not to be guilty of any act of injustice, still he was an invading Spaniard, and the Peruvians regarded them all as the shepherd regards the wolf. De Soto had passed but a few leagues from the seashore, ere he entered upon the hilly country. As he was ascending one of the gentle eminences, a band of two thousand Indians, who had met there to arrest his progress, rushed down upon him. His sixty horsemen instantly formed in column and impetuously charged into their crowded ranks. These Peruvians had never seen a horse before. Their arrows glanced harmless from the impenetrable armor, and they were mercilessly cut down and trampled beneath iron hoofs. The Spaniards galloped through and through their ranks, strewing the ground with the dead. The carnage was of short duration. The panic-stricken Peruvians fled wherever there was a possibility of escape. The trumpets of the conquerors pealed forth their triumphant strains. The silken banners waved proudly in the breeze, and the victors exultingly continued their march through one of the defiles of the mountains.

Whatever excuses De Soto may make for himself, humanity will never forgive him for the carnage of that day. Having thus fairly embarked upon this enterprise, where he was surely gaining military renown, infamous as it was, and where there was the prospect before him of plunder of incalculable worth, De Soto seems to have assumed to act upon his own responsibility, and to have paid very little regard to the authority of Pizarro, whom he had left behind. He had already penetrated the country much farther than he had been authorized to do by the orders of his superior. One of the men, whom Pizarro had sent with him, very probably as a spy upon his movements, deserted, and returned to Tumbez with the report that De Soto was already practically in revolt, and had renounced all dependence on Pizarro. For this alleged insubordination, Pizarro did not venture to call his energetic lieutenant to account.

In the mean time, Pizarro was exploring the country in the vicinity of Tumbez, for the site of the colony he wished to establish. He selected a position about ninety miles south of that city, in a rich and well-watered valley which opened upon the placid surface of the Pacific. His troops were transported to the spot by the two vessels. Here he laid the foundations of a town, which he called San Miguel. With timber from the mountains, and stone from the quarries, and the labor of a large number of natives, who were driven to daily toil, not as servants, by the stimulus of well-paid labor, but as slaves, goaded by the sabres of their task masters, quite a large and strongly-fortified town rapidly arose.

De Soto continued his explorations in the interior for some time, and discovered a very magnificent highway, leading to the capital of the empire. It was smoothly paved with flat blocks of stone, or with cement harder than stone. He returned to San Miguel with the report of his discoveries, and quite richly laden with the gold which he had received as a present from the natives, or which he had seized as what he considered the lawful spoils of war. The sight of the gold inspired all the Spaniards at San Miguel with the intense desire to press forward into a field which promised so rich a harvest.

It was ascertained that the Inca had command of an army of over fifty thousand men. Pizarro, leaving sixty men in garrison at San Miguel, set out with one hundred and ninety men to visit the Inca in his capital. De Soto accompanied him. It was not ostensibly a military expedition, seeking the conquest of the country, or moving with any hostile intent whatever. De Soto had a conscience; Pizarro had none. Whatever reproaches might arise in the mind of De Soto in reference to the course he was pursuing, he silenced them by the very plausible assumption that he was an ambassador from the king of Spain, commissioned to make a friendly visit to the monarch of another newly-discovered empire; that he was the messenger of peace seeking to unite the two kingdoms in friendly relations with each other for their mutual benefit. This was probably the real feeling of De Soto. The expedition was commissioned by the king of Spain. The armed retinue was only such as became the ambassadors of a great monarch. Such an expedition was in every respect desirable. The fault—perhaps we ought in candor to say the calamity—of De Soto was in allowing himself to be attached to an expedition under a man so thoroughly reckless and unprincipled as he knew Pizarro to have been. Perhaps he hoped to control the actions of his ignorant and fanatic superior officer. It is quite manifest that De Soto did exert a very powerful influence in giving shape to the expedition.

An Indian courier was sent forward to Cuzco, one of the capitals of the Peruvian monarch, with a friendly and almost an obsequious message to the Inca, whose name was Attahuallapa. The courier bore the communication that Pizarro was an ambassador commissioned by the king of Spain to visit the king of Peru, and to kiss his hand in token of peace and fraternity. He therefore solicited that protection in passing through the country which every monarch is bound to render to the representatives of a foreign and friendly power.

Pizarro, as it will be remembered, was a rough and illiterate soldier, unable either to read or write. In this sagacious diplomatic arrangement, we undoubtedly see the movement of De Soto's reflective and cultivated mind. The expedition moved slowly along, awaiting the return of the courier. He soon came back with a very indefinite response, and with a present of two curiously carved stone cups, and some perfumery. The guarded reply and the meagre present excited some alarm in the Spanish camp. It was very evident that the expedition was not to anticipate a very cordial reception at the Peruvian court. Pizarro was much alarmed. He was quite confident that the Inca was trying to lure them on to their ruin. Having called a council of war, he urged that they should proceed no farther until he had sent some faithful Indian spies to ascertain the intentions of Attahuallapa.

But De Soto, whose youthful energies were inspired by love and ambition, was eager to press forward.