DeSoto's Florida Trails
by Donald E. SheppardIn late September, with a well-fed army supported by captives from four provinces (Paracoxi, Ocale, Caliquen and Napituca), DeSoto set out once more toward his planned winter encampment at Apalache. The trip would take two weeks; the men would rest for several days along the way. From Napituca it is only ten leagues (26 miles) to Tallahassee, across the St. Marks River. The army stopped to bridge that river on their first night out, four leagues from Napituca. The chief of a nearby village, Uzachil, who had sent flute players to amuse the men further back on the trail, sent dressed deer while they built a bridge of logs at or near that river's natural bridge. The army, accordingly, named the St. Marks River "The River of the Deer."
After completing the bridge the following day, "The army crossed the river, (and) marched two leagues through a country without timber," arriving at a place where they "found large fields of maize, beans and calabashes." They called that plentiful village Hapaluya; it was located ten miles southeast of Tallahassee. There's one gigantic farm there today, clearly visible from outer space.
That night, under a Full Moon, DeSoto rode four more leagues into Uzachil: today's Tallahassee. The villagers, however, had fled into the forests. The army caught up and captured many of them while pillaging the surrounding fields for the next several days. More captives were shackled around the neck and chained to the others. They gathered, ground and carried maize for the troops and their horses.
Inca, who called this village Osachile, says, "Because of the short time that the Spaniards were in this province and because it was small, though well populated... and supplied with food... it will be appropriate, in order not to leave it so soon, for us to describe the site, plan, and appearance of this pueblo..." Among other things, he says the chief lived on "a high point" of earth "three pikes high" (over 30 feet). Topography would indicate that he was describing the high "natural hill" under Florida's Capitol building.
The army departed westward, crossed a dry Ochlockonee River, and spent the night at a "pine wood," about five leagues west of Florida's Capitol by following the course of the "Old Spanish Trail" to Midway and beyond. The next day they continued to "Agile" four-and-a-half leagues up the road at today's Quincy. That area was labeled "Tup-Hulga Reservation" in 1827 by John L. Williams (Map of Western Part of Florida). These natives had never seen Christians before. One of DeSoto's troops was grabbed in his genitals by an unhappy female captive there; he survived, but just barely.
The next day, DeSoto, in the vanguard, came to the Apalache Swamp, the Apalachicola River, Florida's largest, twelve leagues beyond Uzachil's boundary; the Ochlockonee River. The army would camp at a large pasture two leagues from the Apalache Swamp while crossing it in groups during the next several days.
Today's Woodruff dam spans 8,800 feet across the Apalachicola River's mammoth hundred foot deep gorge at Chattahoochee. Inca says the banks were half-a-league apart, as they are today below the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers. With extensive swamps on either side, the river flowed around an island where DeSoto crossed it, a mile below today's dam. Elvas says that the river was wider than a crossbow shot. It still is, despite the upstream dam (beyond the bridges in photo below).
Old Florida trails converged at this place on Florida's original Township Survey. The railroad follows DeSoto's narrow foot path through that gorge's forest. The east bank, where DeSoto descended into it, and the west bank, where he built a stockade, look the same today as described then. It took the army several days to bridge and cross this river. Indian resistance was intense. This mammoth river was the provincial boundary of Apalache.
Once all had crossed, DeSoto's army left the stockade and proceeded two leagues up the west bank to camp at a village called Vitachuco, which had been set ablaze just prior to their arrival; today's Sneads. The army passed through rich fields to Calahuchi Village, camping just north of today's Cypress then, having lost their only good guide, they came to a deep ravine that was difficult to pass two leagues down the road. They met extreme resistance from the Apalachens at this ravine, the worst they had seen in Florida.
That ravine, with banks over eighty feet over Spring Creek today, even though it is dammed, still looks like Inca described it. That creek rises from Blue Spring and flows southwest into the Chipola River. Pioneer maps show the trail from the Apalachicola River crossing place passing north of Blue Spring to avoid that gorge, then continuing west to the Chipola River's natural bridge, two leagues from the spring. But DeSoto was "carrying as guide an old Indian woman who got them lost..."
Once the fighting was over they "marched two leagues more through a country without cultivated fields..." Those fields are still not farmed, as most east and west of them are. DeSoto's army camped at today's Florida Caverns State Park on the Chipola River.
The next morning they crossed the Chipola River's "natural bridge." DeSoto proceeded two leagues (5 miles) in advance with the horsemen and a hundred foot soldiers into the principal village of Iviahica Apalache, where the lord of all that land and province lived. The natives had fled.
Iviahica Apalache Village was located at yesteryear's Webbville, just northwest of today's Marianna, eleven leagues from the Apalachicola River's swamp. DeSoto established his winter headquarters there. His "panhandle monsters" were that swamp and the ravine; our's would be the enduring myth that Tallahassee was the location of Iviahica Apalache. Tallahassee was just another stop along DeSoto's way, which accounts for the paucity of archaeological evidence of his presence being found there after sixty years of digging.
Iviahica Apalache's fields are deep, rich, red mineral sediments nestled between rolling, sandy hills and spring-fed streams. Vegetables grow in profusion. One look in the fields tells the story of a thousand year occupation. The fields are strewn with fragments of cultures which settled and farmed there from time to time. The black farmers who live on Union Road, which cuts through what used to be Iviahica, are a beautiful, hard working and proud people; most of their ancestors were born there. The setting is rural Alabama; livestock are pastured on several southern-style plantations. Pigs, chickens, beans, squash, corn and insects are abundant.
Churches and small cemeteries dot the forested landscape. The Old Spanish Trail bends north into Alabama and the Pensacola Road forks off to the southwest there.
Rangel says, "The province of Apalache is very fertile and very abundant in supplies, with much corn and beans [ fesoles] and squash [calabazas], and diverse fruits, and many deer and many varieties of birds, and near the sea there are many and good fish, and it is a pleasant land although there are swamps; but they are firm because they are over sand." DeSoto would spend the winter there.