DE SOTO’S CAMPS IN THE CHICKASAW COUNTRY IN 1540-1.
North Americans will probably always take a special interest in the adventures of the army of the Spanish commander De Soto, apart from the general charm of the subject, for it is to the chronicles of the same that they are indebted for the very earliest accounts of the Indian nations, who, in the sixteenth century inhabited the territory now comprising the southeastern quarter of the United States.
The route pursued by the expedition during the years 1539 to 1543 has long been the subject of much discussion, but no satisfactory conclusions have been arrived at concerning the matter as a whole. Indeed there can scarcely be said to be a single point on the entire line of march which has been established beyond cavil. It is not now my intention to add to the mass of general comment, but merely to treat of a certain point of the route which personal enquiry and exploration in the field have enabled me to make up my mind about in all surety.
This point is the location of the particular village of the Chickasaws in northeastern Mississippi, where De Soto went into camp on December 17, 1540, and of the smaller village to the northward whither he retreated about the first week in the ensuing March, after the fierce night attack of the natives which almost ruined the Spaniards.
Before proceeding to give my own conclusions as to the true position of these villages, it is but proper to furnish an abstract of the descriptions given by the old writers, together with the opinions of the modern historians of Mississippi and of other people now inhabiting the northeastern counties of the State. The various authorities (excepting the popular views) will be quoted in the order in which they have appeared in printed form before the world.
The anonymous “Gentleman of Elvas” one of the Portuguese volunteers, an eye-witness, comes first. His work, the “True Relation” etc., appeared in 1557. He says that Chicaza was a small town of twenty houses, and that the land was thickly inhabited, and that it was fertile, the greater part being under cultivation. Also that the Spaniards removed from that town where they wintered to the one where the cacique was accustomed to live, half a league off, because it was in the open country, on a prairie favorable for them.
The second authority is Garcilaso de la Vega, “the Inca,” who, however, was only a compiler, writing in 1591, from information given by three separate members of the little army. His book, “La Florida del Ynca” etc., first appeared in 1605. It furnishes a more elaborate account of the Chicaza transactions than the proceeding one, and to the following effect. The place had two hundred fires and was situated on a hill extending north and south, which was watered by many little brooks covered with nut, oak, and other similar trees. In order to lodge more commodiously they built themselves houses with wood and straw that they procured from the neighboring villages. Three days after the fight referred to, the General ordered the force to advance a league, search for wood and straw, and build a town to be named Chicacilla.
Factor Biedma’s account of the expedition, first published (in French) in 1841, is a very brief one. In the Chicaza affair, Buckingham Smith (1866) renders his words as stating that the army moved to “a cottage about a mile off.”
Nor does the abridged journal of Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto’s private secretary, which was not printed till 1851, afford any information as to the first town. But he relates how the Spaniards, after their defeat, at once went to a savana or prairie a league off, where they erected huts and barracks, and established camp on a declivity and hill.
As may be easily supposed the next Europeans to visit that region, the English and French traders and soldiers of the eighteenth century, had more urgent matters to attend to than the verification of historical statements, for no mention of De Soto or the expedition is made in their scanty writings or reports on this region, and apparently the Chickasaws had forgotten all about his invasion. The American settlers of nearly a century later were still less likely to know about the matter, for the De Soto expedition can scarcely be said to have become known to people in general in the United States till after the publication of Theodore Irving’s interesting book in 1835.