Almost two years were spent in marches through inhospitable forests and swamps, fording rivers, and fighting with many tribes of Indians, but finding nothing worth plundering. After much suffering in the winter camps, in the spring of 1541 the weary and wellnigh despairing expedition came to the Mississippi River, probably at the Lower Chickasaw Bluff (in Memphis, Tennessee, and extending ten miles down the east bank of the river), near the northwest corner of the present state of Mississippi, at the distance of about four hundred miles north of the Gulf, but twice as far by the tortuous watercourse. Armed Indians in two hundred canoes, coming from up the river, saluted the Spaniards, and the chief said to De Soto “that he had come to visit, serve, and obey him; for he had heard that he was the greatest of lords, the most powerful on all the earth.” The Indians were doubtless treacherous; but here, as usual, the Spaniards were the first aggressors. When the canoes drew off from the shore, “the crossbow-men, who were in readiness,” according to the Portuguese Relation, “with loud cries shot at the Indians, and struck down five or six of them.”
Delay for thirty days was required in making four large boats to transfer the cavalry and foot soldiers across the river. Beginning one morning three hours before daybreak, by many trips to and fro, they had all crossed before the sun was two hours high, effecting this important movement without molestation by their vigilant Indian enemies. Wherever they marched, the poor native people were robbed, some of them were treacherously killed, and others, taken captive, were compelled to carry burdens, or otherwise to aid the invaders. The Relation says of this river, which it calls the Rio Grande: “The distance [to cross it] was near half a league: a man standing on the shore could not be told, whether he were a man or something else, from the other side. The stream was swift, and very deep; the water, always flowing turbidly, brought along from above many trees and much timber, driven onward by its force.”
Nearly another year was spent in marches, exploration, and campaigning against the Indians, west of the Mississippi, and on April 17, 1542, De Soto came again to the Mississippi, at the Indian town of Guachoya, close below the mouth of the Arkansas river. There he sank into a deep despondency, worn out by the long series of disappointments and losses which had attended the whole course of his expedition; he became sick with malarial fever; and on May 21 he died, after appointing Luis de Moscoso as his successor in command. To conceal his death from the Indians, the body, wrapped in blankets and heavily weighted with sand, was sunk in the middle part of the Mississippi. The new governor and leader, Moscoso, then told the chief of the Guachoya Indians that De Soto “had ascended into the skies, as he had done on many other occasions; but as he would have to be detained there some time, he had left him in his stead.”
Moscoso, after consulting the other officers, decided to march southwestward, hoping to reach Mexico; and half a year was lost in going far southwest, repenting, and returning to the Mississippi at an Indian settlement called Aminoya, where the Spaniards found a large quantity of maize, indispensable for their sustenance. This place was a short distance above Guachoya, and apparently above the mouths of the Arkansas and White rivers, on the same (west) side of the great river. Seven brigantines were there built, on which, July 2, 1543, the Spaniards, reduced to three hundred and twenty-two, embarked to go down the Mississippi, taking with them about a hundred Indian slaves to be sold if they should reach Spanish settlements. Two weeks were occupied in descending the river, by rowing and the aid of the strong current, covering a distance which was estimated as about 250 Portuguese or Spanish leagues. (From the mouth of the Arkansas to the Bayou Manchac, by the course of the Mississippi, is a distance of 446 miles, and to the present mouths of the delta, 672 miles.) The debouchure of the Mississippi was described as follows:
“When near the sea, it becomes divided into two arms, each of which may be a league and a half broad.... Half a league before coming to the sea, the Christians cast anchor, in order to take rest for a time, as they were weary from rowing.... [Here Indians came, in several canoes, for an attack.]... There also came some by land, through thicket and bog, with staves, having very sharp heads of fish-bone, who fought valiantly those of us who went out to meet them.... After remaining two days, the Christians went to where that branch of the river enters the sea; and having sounded there, they found forty fathoms depth of water. Pausing then, the Governor required that each should give his opinion respecting the voyage, whether they should sail to New Spain direct, by the high sea, or go thither keeping along from shore to shore.... It was decided to go along from one to another shore....
“On the eighteenth day of July the vessels got under weigh, with fair weather, and wind favorable for the voyage.... With a favorable wind they sailed all that day in fresh water, the next night, and the day following until vespers, at which they were greatly amazed; for they were very distant from the shore, and so great was the strength of the current of the river, the coast so shallow and gentle, that the fresh water entered far into the sea.”
Luis Hernandez de Biedma, a factor or agent for King Charles V, was a member of De Soto’s expedition, of which, after returning to Spain, he submitted a report in 1544. From the translation of that report, given by Buckingham Smith in the same volume with this narrative of “The Gentleman of Elvas,” we have the following considerably different description of what was thought to be the junction of the Mississippi with the gulf:
“We came out by the mouth of the river, and entering into a very large bay made by it, which was so extensive that we passed along it three days and three nights, with fair weather, in all the time not seeing land, so that it appeared to us we were at sea, although we found the water still so fresh that it could well be drunk, like that of the river. Some small islets were seen westward, to which we went: thenceforward we kept close along the coast, where we took shell-fish, and looked for other things to eat, until we entered the River of Panuco, where we came and were well received by the Christians.”
By comparing Biedma’s report with the Portuguese Relation, I am convinced that the brigantines did not pass down the Mississippi to its delta, but went out to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Bayou Manchac, Lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain and Borgne, and Mississippi Sound. In other words, Moscoso, with his squadron, took the same passage that Pineda had taken, in 1519, for his entering the Mississippi. Several points in the two narratives need now to be explained in detail, as to their harmony with this conclusion.
First, the Indians had villages near the Bayou Manchac; but probably there were no inhabitants near the true mouth of the river, at the end of the delta. Second, under this view, we must regard the Portuguese statement of a division of the river, into two arms or branches, as referring to the large outflow, at a time of flood, to the Atchafalaya River. Instead of receiving an inflow at the junction of the Red River, the flooded Mississippi there sent out a portion of its current, by the mouth of the Red, to the Atchafalaya; which also, when the Red is at a higher stage than the Mississippi, takes a part of the current of the former, carrying it south by a much shorter course to the Gulf. Third, another statement of the Relation, noting the great depth of forty fathoms where their branch of the river “enters the sea,” must be then interpreted as found in the bend of the Mississippi from which the Bayou Manchac flows away.