DeSoto's Florida Trails
by Donald E. SheppardWith Paracoxi Village as their next destination, DeSoto's army continued northeast for three days, marching eleven more leagues. They spent their first night at what they called the lake of St. John, east of Sarasota Bay. The next day they crossed a desert plain where DeSoto's servant "died of thirst." Horses drank what could be carried and, as one can see, there are no lakes, springs, sink holes or creeks along that trail in July, an unusual place in Florida. The third day they came to the plain of Guacoco, Florida's largest field of pebble phosphate deposit, 130,000 acres of nature's fertilizer, then stopped.
DeSoto's ambition, to march his army rapidly, six leagues the first day and five the second, proved to be more than they could handle. They averaged just under four leagues each of their last three days on the trail. That pace, about four-and-a-half (6+5+11 over 5) leagues (about 11 miles) per day, would hold for years, even with captives acquired to lighten their loads. That weekly schedule, five days on the road then several at leisure, would hold as well, with few exceptions.
They called that entire province, from Ucita north, by its richest village's name: Paracoxi. The Spaniards found maize (corn) growing there for the first time in Florida and spent the next three days leisurely harvesting it across three leagues of cultivated fields; first to Luca then to and around Paracoxi Village, for a total of seventeen leagues traveled from Mococo's Village to Paracoxi Village.
Inca says that village was located twenty-five leagues north-north-east of Ucita, which is the distance they had marched in that direction. Biedma says that Paracoxi Village was up to twenty leagues from the coast - the Gulf Coast shipping lane off St. Petersburg.
Surrounded by surface mines today, Paracoxi Village was located at Brewster, an abandoned city in a moonscape of mines. Scouts sent from Ucita the week before reported "a wide body of water three leagues beyond..." (above Brewster, draining east to the Peace River and west out a narrow creek northwest of Brewster). "It had such deep mud on either side that it was impassable for the army to cross (in the direction they had been heading for the last week), but they had found a better crossing just two days away..." at Lake Hancock's spillway (northeast of there - photo below - just above Bartow, flowing southeastward into the Peace River). The army headed northwest from Paracoxi Village, then turned to the northeast again at Bradley Junction, around the swamps and toward the spillway, camping beyond Vicela, a phosphate plant near Mulberry today.
The next day they hiked three leagues, crossed the spillway, then camped on a plain half-a-league beyond at a place called Tocastenear a large lake: today's Lake Hancock. The plain is near a hugh hill overlooking Lake Hancock from the south. The view from its summit is spectacular.
Since leaving Mococo Village DeSoto had led his army northeast, away from Florida's sandy, unfertile coast, but was again thwarted by swampland impassibility northeast of Tocaste. Called the Green Swamp today, it covers 870 square miles. Disney World was developed on its eastern wetlands. Without a guide, DeSoto recrossed the spillway in search of a better trail to Ocale, whose neighbors, "living in other lands where it was summer most of the year, had gold in abundance."
On the third day DeSoto found, and was led by, a guide to a broad road leading away from the swamp to a passage through another which was free of mud at its entrance and exit. Rangel called it the swamp of Cale, others called it a river or The Great Swamp. All described today's Green Swamp outlet at the Hillsborough River. With flat sand approaches, trails from points south once converged at that site. The Fort Foster Bridge was built there by the U.S. Army in 1828. Trails across it led into hostile Seminole Indian Country.
DeSoto dispatched several riders on a nearly Full Moon with orders to advance the army. They first had to back-track, unseen for safety, through an inhabited region where they reported natives performing pagan ceremony around giant fires. When they reached the spillway they were helped by the cavalry to ward-off morning attackers. Once at Tocaste, riders were dispatched with more food for DeSoto. They rode twelve leagues to the Great Swamp, where he said he would wait for them.
The next day the army advanced over the spillway and for the next two they headed for the Great Swamp, camping at today's Lakeland then ten miles west of there then at the swamp. DeSoto had already crossed it and ridden six leagues into Ocale Province, a place reported by Elvas to lie west of Paracoxi Province. Biedma says 15 or 20 leagues from Paracoxi Village. Inca calls it Acuera Province and says it was "about twenty leagues from Paracoxi Village on a line running more or less north and south." All described today's Dade City, as bountiful today as reported then.
The army spent three days crossing the Great Swamp and hiking the six leagues up the trail DeSoto took into Ocale. DeSoto had planned for them to spend the winter there.
Narvaez had crossed the Great Swamp, at the same place and for the same reasons eleven years before DeSoto. He encountered several hundred Indians while crossing it "with great difficulty," but was led to their village half-a-league away, (above Branchton) where Narvaez found large amounts of maize. When Cabeza de Vaca was dispatched to find a harbor reported to be nearby (Tampa Bay), he rode down the north bank of the Hillsborough River to wetlands filled with oysters and a river he could not cross.
The Hillsborough River re-broadens below the Great Swamp crossing place; raccoons eat the oysters there today. Much of that extensive swamp, around today's Rock Hammock, would be drained by Tampa's Bypass Canal into McKay and Hillsborough Bays. Vaca returned to camp.
When others re-crossed the swamp and went down the river's south bank toward Tampa (Fort Brook) they found a shallow bay, Hillsborough Bay (cut by the bypass canal today), on May 22, 1528, four days after New Moon. Spring Tides occured when they examined it - they could wade across most of it. The deep water of Tampa Bay looked to them like the Gulf of Mexico. They returned to camp with news that the harbor was too shallow for ships. Narvaez led his army up the shallow Gulf Coast, looking for them.
At Dade City, Inca says they "encamped in some very beautiful valleys having large maize fields, so productive that each stalk had three or four ears..." Elvas says, "The governor ordered all the maize which was ripe in the fields to be taken, which was enough for three months." To their good fortune, two captured Indians reported that "seven days' journey farther on was a very large province with maize in abundance, called Apalache." DeSoto immediately set out with 50 horsemen and 60 foot soldiers to confirm that much-needed-winter-food-supply was at Apalache. Biedma says, "...traveling ever toward New Spain, at a distance of ten to twelve leagues from the coast."
Biedma's New Spain was Mexico; his "coast" was the Gulf's "shipping lane," deeper than four brazas (23 feet), as shown by the transport captains at landfall. On average, that depth of water occures about ten miles (4 leagues) offshore from western peninsular Florida's shoreline, placing DeSoto's trail about six to eight leagues (15 to 20 miles) inland of that shoreline. Months later when DeSoto's Thirty Lancers returned on that same trail from Apalache, it took them exactly seven days to get back to Dade City at the Great Swamp.