DE SOTO DISCOVERS THE MISSISSIPPI[52]
A.D. 1541
JOHN S. C. ABBOTT
From the eastern coast of Florida the Spaniards made early explorations of the interior until they reached the Mississippi River. Florida, which was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513, was soon visited by other voyagers, and in 1528 Panfilo Narvaez made a disastrous march into the forests. One survivor of his party, Cabaça de Vaca, afterward crossed the Mississippi, near the site of Memphis, and made his way to the Spanish settlements in Mexico.
Still the vast Florida region was unexplored, but in 1539 Hernando de Soto, the companion of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru (1532) landed, with upward of six hundred men, at what is now called Tampa Bay, on the west coast, in search of the fabulous wealth believed to await him. "For month after month and year after year the procession of priests and cavaliers, cross-bowmen, arquebusiers, and Indian captives laden with the baggage, wandered on through wild and boundless wastes, lured hither and thither by the ignis fatuus of their hopes." Through untold hardships, increased by fierce battles with the Indians, they traversed wide regions now embraced in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, reaching the great river probably in the spring of 1541, and still looking for the "phantom El Dorado."
De Soto directed his footsteps in a westerly direction, carefully avoiding an approach to the sea, lest his troops should rise in mutiny, send for the ships, and escape from the ill-starred enterprise. This certainly indicates, under the circumstances, an unsound, if not a deranged, mind. For four days the troops toiled along through a dismal region, uninhabited, and encumbered with tangled forests and almost impassable swamps.
At length they came to a small village called Chisca, upon the banks of the most majestic stream they had yet discovered. Sublimely the mighty flood, a mile and a half in width, rolled by them. The current was rapid and bore upon its bosom a vast amount of trees, logs, and driftwood, showing that its sources must be hundreds of leagues far away in the unknown interior. This was the mighty Mississippi, the "Father of Waters." The Indians at that point called it Chucagua. Its source and its embouchure were alike unknown to De Soto. Little was he then aware of the magnitude of the discovery he had made.
"De Soto," says Irving, "was the first European who looked out upon the turbid waters of this magnificent river; and that event has more surely enrolled his name among those who will ever live in American history than if he had discovered mines of silver and gold."