DeSoto's Florida Trails
by Donald E. SheppardDeSoto dispatched his shallow draft brigantines, the ones used by Anasco to explore the harbor, to take control of a town he had found at the end of the bay: UCITA. As the Moon filled the harbor's tide rose more each day, allowing the ships to move closer to the beach. On the sixth day, June first, DeSoto, his livestock (pigs and dogs), horses and horsemen were off-loaded onto Cape Haze. With lighter loads, stronger currents and Spring Tides, the ships began to move over the harbor's sandy shallows.
The fleet sailed up the harbor to within a mile of Locust Point, the closest mainland to the channel at the head of the bay, where the men were disembarked. They made their way through the marshes toward the village of Ucita, two leagues from where they landed.
The harbor's Indians, having been aware of the ships for nearly a week, had fled, much to DeSoto's disappointment. His style of capturing the chief and enslaving the citizens in a dawn raid had been thwarted. Hostages were not to be taken en masse from Ucita, setting off a series of mishaps which would disrupt the campaign for months. Without forced labor, the men would have to perform all the menial tasks associated with landing and carrying supplies overland on their departure, and the transport captains would get but few captives to take with them.
The horsemen, herding the livestock, were misled by Anasco's captives on their way toward Ucita, a twelve league trip. That moonlit ride would be the army's longest in Florida. Having lost their way in darkness, they found themselves on the opposite side of Tippecanoe Bay from DeSoto's shore camp. They slept where they were, just above El Jobean. DeSoto's men watched their campfires, seperated from them by only a few miles of trail.
The next morning the horsemen found their way to DeSoto's camp while the men cleared trees around the village site for pasturing horses and safety from attack. "During that week the ships arrived near the town, unloading them little by little with small boats, and thus they unloaded all the clothing and supplies that they carried." On June third, with all the dignitaries and necessary paraphernalia ashore, DeSoto took formal possession of La Florida.
Riders and boatmen scouted the area for natives but few were captured. Horsemen and troops were dispatched to explore distant native trails for well provisioned villages. Fourty soldiers were attacked by natives three leagues (8 miles) into the interior - one soldier was killed.R E The natives fled.
Biedma, the King's Agent, says, "As soon as we disembarked, we found out that there was a Christian in the land who was one of those who had gone with Panfilo de Narvaez, and we went in search of him (Inca says they got lost, off-trail, to a place from which they could see the ships' topsails); a chief (Mococo) who was about eight leagues (21 miles) from port had him. We came upon him on the road; he was coming toward us, for when the chief found out that we were there, he asked him if he wished to come where we were.
"He said yes, and the chief sent nine Indians with him. He was naked like them, with a bow and some arrows, his body decorated like an Indian. As we came upon them, they... fled into a small nearby forest. The horses reached them, and gave a lance-blow to the Christian Indian who might have been killed since he had forgotten our language. He remembered how to call to Our Lady, and by this he was recognized as a Christian..." His name was Juan Ortiz.
He would serve DeSoto as a guide and interpreter for the rest of his life. DeSoto would reward Chief Mococo with excess hardware when the port was abandoned. Florida's pioneers would find some of it and call Chief Mococo's village site "Old Spanish Fields" (John Lee Williams Map, 1837, above).
Ortiz had been captured at Ucita before escaping to Mococo. He had been guided to a bridge two leagues from Ucita, crossed it, then fled six additional leagues to Mococo's Village. Both Ucita and Mococo can be located with unusual precision using that and other observations.
Upon the army's departure from Ucita, Biedma says, "We went west and then turned northwest." Rangel says, "...they spent that night at the river of Mococo... And they made two bridges on which this army crossed the river..." Inca says, "...they marched toward Mococo's village."
DeSoto's Thirty Lancers, returning to Ucita along the trail he took to north Florida, described what they encountered along their way. The night before reaching Ucita they camped three leagues short of Mococo's village and eleven leagues short of Ucita. Continuing, just over one league from Ucita they feared for the safety of the men left at port when no horse tracks were found in a clearing (the large creek bed of north Tippecanoe Bay), but were pleased to find fresh tracks and ash from clothes being washed at a lake less than half-a-league from the village.
Recall, too, that the men spent their first night ashore at a camp at the end of the bay which went up to Ucita, two leagues from where they landed.
Those measures, two leagues west to a bridge, just over a league from a clearing, less than half-a-league from a lake and two leagues from where the men landed converge at Ucita. Mococo's village was eight leagues up and across the Myakka River from Ucita.
Today Ucita is a subdivision with man-made canals running through it. The port's main anchorage is below it on a straight line down the Myakka River, making ships' topsails visible for miles upstream, as reported by the scouts who found Juan Ortiz.
Those scouts were probably standing on the "conspicuous Indian Mound" shown upstream of Ucita in the 1849 Township Survey. Inca says Ucita's dead were kept at one.
DeSoto's boatmen found a large number of Indians on an island two leagues from camp (on Hog Island). Troops were sent to from Ucita to round them up, but most had fled. Some were captured, among them women and children, others were killed.
The scouts who went to explore distant trails sent DeSoto good news. They had found food at Paracoxi, the next village beyond Mococo, seventeen leagues to its northeast ...twenty leagues from the coast ...and only twenty-five leagues (60 miles) from Ucita.
They also reported that beyond Paracoxi was a place called Ocale where there is a great plenty of all things; "fowls, turkeys and herds of tame deer... and an abundance of gold and silver, and many pearls... where we may pass the winter" according to Desoto.
Narvaez had led his army northeast from Ucita, given that he missed Mococo and Paracoxi, to a place with food twelve leagues ahead (today's Arcadia). Aiming next for "Apalachen gold, very far from there," he turned north and went inland of the Peace River. Starvation would lead him to the Great Swamp, where DeSoto would find traces of him along his way to Ocale.
DeSoto stayed at Ucita for six weeks. He wrote a letter to Cuba, the transport vessels were sent on their way and his ships were secured at anchor. French Corsairs plied the new world waters, so DeSoto left 26 horsemen, 60 foot soldiers and heavily armed sailors to guard them. He led his army toward Ocale via Mococo's village and Paracoxi. Horsemen would drive the pigs.
DeSoto's army left Ucita on (the New Moon of) July 15th, 1539. They marched west, past the lake where the men washed clothes, past Ucita's fishing enclosure, past their landing campsite and the clearing at the head of Tippecanoe Bay. They turned northwest, bypassed the burial mound from which scouts had sighted the ship's topsails, forded the branches near the bridge which Ortiz crossed when he had fled to Mococo's village, then avoided the swamps the horsemen had slogged on their way into Ucita. "And that day they spent the night at the river of Mococo, bringing behind them many pigs that had been brought over in the armada for food in an emergency."
The army camped beside the river, six leagues from Ucita, their first night out. That trail was the only one from Charlotte Harbor on the John Lee Williams Map of 1837. The next day they crossed a bridge they built over Myakka River's bend seven leagues from Ucita and one league from Mococo.
They stopped to visit Chief Mococo, two leagues from where they had camped. He shed tears at the army's departure, knowing that other natives would retaliate for his kindness to the invaders once they departed. The army turned northeast, passed by Lower Myakka Lake, bridged Howard Creek two leagues beyond Mococo, then camped on Lake Myakka's north shore, one league beyond the bridge. They had marched five leagues their second day on the trail. DeSoto's Thirty Lancers, on their last night down that trail, would also camp there; three leagues from Mococo's village, eleven leagues from Ucita.
The next morning the army's horses were spooked by a rabbit and ran back for more than a league before terrified troops could reassert control over them. The horses had fled southwest, turned at Howard Creek to avoid the bridge, then stopped, as horses do when they pass fresh scents. DeSoto's people called Lake Myakka, accordingly, "The Lake of the Rabbit" and had built and crossed two bridges just after leaving Ucita, all as Rangel reported.