In its condition of a high flood, the river there opens toward a vast expanse of water, called, by the narrator, “the sea,” reaching east over Lake Maurepas and onward to the Gulf. It seems indeed not unlikely that the Mississippi at that place may have then had even so great a depth; for in a sharp curve at New Orleans it was once found by the Mississippi River Commission to have a sounding of 208 feet. On the large scale maps recently published by the Commission, the maximum depth of the river close to the departure of the Bayou Manchac is noted as 145 feet; and in the sharp bend in the east part of New Orleans, 188 feet.
Sailing on the wide Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne, with the very low lands inclosing the latter probably then submerged, Moscoso and his men would regard all that expanse of fresh water, reaching from the Bayou Manchac nearly a hundred miles east to the Mississippi Sound, as “a very large bay” of the sea. They would consequently be surprised at the very long distance to which the Mississippi sent its waters without their becoming salt; whereas even the greatest floods could not freshen the sea very far out from the mouths of the delta. The Portuguese Relation says that the Mississippi, before the departure from Aminoya, had risen, in such a high flood, to the ground at the town, where the brigantines were built, floating them; and we may infer, with good assurance, that the same flood continued, at nearly its full height, through the next two weeks, till July 16, when they came to Bayou Manchac and the vast fresh water expanse stretching thence far to the east.
Fifty-two days were spent in slow coasting, with frequent landings, and long delays for storms and to provide shell-fish for food, between the Mississippi and the Panuco River, which was entered September 10, 1543; and there the Spanish town of Panuco welcomed the surviving three hundred and eleven of De Soto’s men.
Looking back over the history of this expedition and its results, we see that little was gained for geographic knowledge, and nothing for the honor of Spain or the extension of her colonies. With the clearer light which now enables all civilized nations to recognize the great truth of the brotherhood of all mankind, we are pained to read, throughout this narrative, of the wanton cruelties, murderous warfare, dishonesty and shameless perfidy, with which the Indians were treated by De Soto and his men from the beginning to the end of their expedition. These men were the finished product of medieval chivalry; they had mostly an inordinate self-esteem; and they called themselves Christians, and De Soto died with Christian serenity, in penitence and faith; but in their conduct toward the savages every Christian or humane sentiment was sacrificed to the love of gold and self-advancement. The first white men to voyage far on the Mississippi, and to deal largely with its native people, deemed them outside the pale of human sympathy or mercy.
No geographer, nor expert draftsman for mapping, appears to have been enlisted by De Soto in his grand company of followers. But soon after the expedition was disbanded in Mexico, testimony of those who came back to Europe was taken by some unknown compiler as the basis for a revised map of the “Gulf and Coast of New Spain.” This map, preserved at Madrid in the Archives of the Indies, was lately ascribed to the year 1521, in the exhibition sent by Spain to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It is reproduced by Harrisse in his great work, The Discovery of North America, and is proved by him to belong to the end of 1543 or some later date. It shows the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, from Georgia to the Panuco river, and extends inland as far as the country was known, however vaguely, from the explorations of De Soto and Moscoso. The ultimate sources of the Mississippi river, called by Biedma and on this map the Espiritu Santo, are placed on the northwestern flank of the Appalachian mountain belt, due north of Tampa Bay. Thence two streams, meant for the Tennessee and Cumberland (or perhaps Ohio) rivers, of which De Soto had accounts from the Indians, flow west and unite to form the Espiritu Santo, near whose west bank, close below the confluence of a large tributary from the northwest, is Guachoya, the place of De Soto’s death. Many other names are also noted, mostly of towns or districts of Indian tribes, derived from his expedition. No indication of the Ohio (probably) nor the Missouri, nor of the Red river as a tributary of the Mississippi, is given by this map. Its northern boundary, beyond which it has only blank space, is at the supposed Cumberland river, and at the mountains adjoining the sources of the northwestern tributary, that is, the Arkansas river. The Mississippi empties into the Vaya (Bay) del Espiritu Santo, which is also called Mar Pequeña (Little Sea), taking the place of the lakes north of New Orleans, and thus confirming my conclusions as to Moscoso’s passage into the Gulf. Excepting the long tributaries from the northeast, no greater prominence is given to the Mississippi than to several others of the many rivers pouring into the Atlantic and the Gulf along all this coast.
Here cartography rested during a hundred and thirty years. The next contribution from exploration of the Mississippi was by Marquette’s map in 1673.
These studies, indicating that Pineda and Moscoso came and went through the large lakes north of New Orleans, answer the question asked by Dr. Walter B. Scaife in 1892, doubting that Pineda entered the Mississippi, and considering instead that the Rio del Espiritu Santo on the maps sent to Spain by Garay and Cortes represents Mobile River and Bay. This view is elaborately stated by Scaife in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. XIII (Supplement, pages 139–176). Among other historians who have adopted this view are Peter J. Hamilton (in Colonial Mobile, 1897), and Prof. Alcée Fortier, president of the Louisiana Historical Society (in A History of Louisiana, 1904). But their difficulties and objections against identifying the Mississippi as the great river where Pineda careened and repaired his vessels are removed by his coming through Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas.
Not until a hundred and eighty years later, in 1699, have we any historic records of entry or departure through the delta mouths of the Mississippi. Then, on the second day of March, Iberville and Bienville, brothers destined to become illustrious by founding the French colony of Louisiana, entered the eastern mouth of the delta with rowing boats; and in September a small English frigate entered one of the mouths and ascended the river to “English Turn,” a great bend ten miles below the site of New Orleans.
Warren Upham.
St. Paul, Minn.