DeSoto's Southern Trail
by Donald E. SheppardDeSoto's navigators reasoned that this "Great River," the Ocmulgee, was the Peace River which flows into Charlotte Harbor, their port of entry in Florida. After all, on their way up the Gulf Coast they had encountered only two other large rivers: the Suwannee and the Apalachicola. When they departed Florida from Marianna, headed northeast, they crossed two big rivers, the Chattahoochee and the Flint Rivers which, they figured, were the Apalachicola and the Suwannee Rivers, respectively. The next great river they would logically encounter would be, according to their logic, the Peace River, Gulf Coast Florida's other "Great River." The Gulf of Mexico, in their eyes, was the southern east-west shoreline of this "Island" of North America.
"...as he (chief Chisi/Ichisi) was the first who came in peace, they did not wish to be tiresome. They were there Thursday, the first of April, and they placed a cross on the mound of his town and informed them through the interpreter of the sanctity of the cross, and they received it and appeared to adore it with much devotion... Friday, the second day of the month of April, this army departed from there and slept in the open (between high hills five miles beyond Jeffersonville), and the next day they arrived at a good river (the Oconee) and found deserted huts, and messengers arrived from Altamaha and led them to a town (Toomsboro) where they found an abundance of food, and a messenger from Altamaha (the chief beyond the river) came with a present, and the following day they brought many canoes and the army crossed (the Oconee River, with pigs, horses and supplies, into today's Oconee) very well."
Another Chronicler says, "Here we found a river (the Oconee River) that did not flow to the south like the others that we crossed. It flowed east, to the sea where the lawyer Ayllon had come (the Atlantic Ocean, on the coast of which their kinsman, a wealthy judge named Ayllon, had been shipwrecked the decade before they left Spain), and because of this we gave much more credit to what the Indian boy (Perico) told us, and we believed all of his lies. This province was well populated with Indians and they all served us (freeing our scouts, who were otherwise engaged patrolling for Indian ambush, to explore beyond the range of immediate army reinforcement). We questioned the Indians about the province we were searching for (Eupaha, according to the Indian boy), which was called by them Cofitachique, and they told us that it was not possible to go there; there was neither road nor anything to eat on the way, and we would all die of hunger."
"From there the governor sent a message summoning the chief Camumo (scouts probably found him at today's Harrison, 13 miles east of Oconee), and they said that he ate and slept and walked continually armed, that he never took off his weapons, because he was on the frontier of another chief called Cofitachequi, his enemy, and that he would not come without weapons, and the governor replied and said that he should come as he might wish. And he came and the governor gave him a large feather colored with silver, and the chief took it very happily and said "You are from heaven, and this your feather that you gave me, I can eat with it, I will go forth to war with it; I will sleep with my wife with it."
"This chief was subject to a great chief who is called Ocute, and he asked the governor to whom he had to give tribute to in the future, if he should give it to the governor or to Ocute... and he (DeSoto) responded that he held Ocute as a brother, that he should give Ocute his tribute until the governor should command otherwise. From there the governor sent messengers to Ocute, and he came there, and the governor gave him a hat of yellow satin, and a shirt, and a feather, and he placed a cross there in Altamaha, and it was well received."
"The next day, the eighth of April, the Governor departed from there with his army, and he took Ocute with him, and they went to sleep at some huts (today's Tennille), and on Friday they arrived at the town of Ocute (Davisboro). And the Governor got angry with him, and he (Ocute) trembled with fear; and after that a great number of Indians came with supplies, and they gave the Christians as many Indian burden bearers as they wished, and a cross was placed, and they appeared to receive it with as much devotion and adored it on their knees, as they saw the Christians do."
"So that they (the Natives) would remember them, the governor gave them, among other presents, two swine, male and female, for breeding. He had done the same for the chief of Altapaha and the lords of the other provinces who had come out peacefully and made friends with the Spaniards. Though hitherto we have not mentioned that we brought these animals with us, it is true that DeSoto brought more than three hundred head, male and female, which multiplied greatly and were exceedingly useful in the great necessities that our Castilians suffered in this discovery. If (by now) the Indians have not destroyed them, it is probable that... there are many of them there today (when this report was published in 1609), for besides those the governor gave to the friendly chiefs, many others were lost along the roads, though they were well and carefully guarded. While on the march one of the companies of cavalry (horsemen) was assigned to herd and guard them."
[Garcilaso de la Vega, the "Inca," the only DeSoto chronicler who has not commented so far in this particular narrative, says at this point] "We have not mentioned hitherto a piece of artillery the governor brought along with his army... the governor, having seen that (a cannon) served for nothing except a burden and annoyance, requiring men to care for it and pack mules to transport it, decided to leave it with the chief (of) Cofa (Ocute) to keep... So that he might see (the importance of) what he (DeSoto) was leaving for him, the governor ordered the piece aimed from the house of the chief toward a large and very beautiful live-oak tree that was outside the village, and he knocked it down entirely with two shots, at which the chief and his Indians were amazed."
"The Chief sent him (DeSoto) two thousand Indians bearing gifts, namely rabbits, partridges, corn bread, two hens, and many dogs (possem), which are esteemed among the Christians as if they were fat sheep because there was a great lack of meat and salt. Of this there was so much need and lack in many places and on many occasions that if a man fell sick, there was nothing with which to make him well; and he would waste away of an illness which could have been easily cured in any other place, until nothing but his bones were left and he would die from pure weakness, some saying: "If I had a bit of meat or some lumps of salt, I should not die." The Indians do not lack for meat; for they kill many deer, hens, rabbits, and other game with their arrows. In this they have great skill, which the Christians do not have; and even if they had it, they had no time for it, for most of the time they were on the march, and they did not dare to turn aside from the paths (which were Indian trails between Indian villages). And because they lacked meat so badly, when the six hundred men with DeSoto arrived at any town and found twenty or thirty dogs, he who could get one and who killed it thought he was not a little agile. And if he who killed one did not send his captain a quarter, the latter, if he learned of it... gave him to understand it in the watches or in any other matter of worth that arose with which he could annoy him. On Monday, April 12, the governor left Ocute, the Chief having given him four hundred tamemes, that is, Indians for carrying."
"...and they gave us some of the foods they had and told us that if we wished to go make war on the lady of Cofitachiqui, they would give us all that we might want for our journey. They told us that there was no road by which to go, since they had no dealings with one another because they were at war; sometimes when they came to make war on one another, they passed through hidden and secret places where they would not be detected... Having seen our determination, they gave us eight hundred Indians to carry our food and cloths, and other Indians to guide us; we headed straight east and traveled for three days. The Indian (boy named Perico) who had deceived us told us that in three days he would get us there."
"and (we) arrived at Cofaqui (today's Louisville), and the principal Indians came with gifts... This Chief Cofaqui was an old man, full-bearded..."
"By the way that they were going, which proved to be the narrowest point of the province of Cofaqui, between, they left it in two daily journeys..."
Along the way, they "...reached a province of an Indian lord called Patofa (approaching today's Waynesboro), who, since he was at peace with the lord of Ocute and the other lords round him, he had heard of the governor some days before and desired to see him..."
"This land, from that of the first peaceful chief (at Montezuma) to the province of Patofa - a distance of fifty leagues (one-hundred and thirty-two miles, the actual distance between them) - is a rich land, beautiful, fertile, well watered, and with fine fields along the rivers..."
At Patofa, the Indian boy named Perico) said, "...that four day's journey thence toward the rising sun (east-north-east) was the province of which he spoke (it would be found 80 miles, straight line distance, from there). The Indians of Patofa said that they knew of no (intermediate) settlement in that direction, but that toward the northwest they knew a province called Coza (which others called "Coosa"), a well provisioned land and of very large villages (which would be encountered months later in North Georgia). The chief told the governor that if he wished to go thither (toward the northwest), he would furnish him service of a guide and Indians to carry (the burdens); and if (DeSoto wanted to go) in the direction indicated by the youth (east-north-east) he would also give him all those he needed..."
"On Thursday, the fifteenth of that month, Perico, the Indian boy who had been their guide since Apalache (above Panama City, Florida), began to lose his bearings, because now he did not know any more of the land, and he made himself out to be possessed (he was 26 miles south of the road he should have been on thru Augusta - from which their destination was only 60 miles away)... they had to take (other Indian) guides... in order to go to Cofitachequi, across an uninhabited region of nine or ten days' journey."
Rangel, DeSoto's secretary, says here, "Many times I am amazed by the gambling spirit, or tenacity or pertinacity, or perhaps I should say constancy, because it gives better impression of the way these deceived conquistadors went on from one difficulty to another, and from another to yet a worse one, and from one danger to others and others, here losing a comrade and there three and over there more, and going from bad to worse, without learning their lesson. Oh marvelous God, what blindness and rapture under such an uncertain greed and such vain preaching as that which Hernando de Soto was able to tell those deluded soldiers that he led to a land where he had never been... because he knew nothing of the islands of the land to the North (today's America), knowing only the method of government of... Nicaragua, and of Peru, which was another manner of dealing with the Indians; and he thought that experience from there sufficed to know how to govern here on the coast of the North, and he deluded himself, as this history will relate..."
"...Friday, the sixteenth of the month, the Governor and his people spent the night at a creek (just above Waynesboro)... then crossed an extremely large river, divided into branches, and broader than a long shot of a crossbow (the Savannah River at Shell Landing, 26 miles below today's Augusta), and it had many bad fords of many flat stones, and it came up to the stirrups, and in places up to the saddle pads. The current was very strong, and there was not a man on horseback who dared to take a foot soldier on the river. The foot soldiers passed across further upstream on the river, through very deep water... They made a string of thirty or forty men tied one to another, and thus they crossed, the ones holding themselves to the others; and although some were in much danger, thanks to God not one drowned, because they aided them with the horses, and gave them the butt of their lance or the tail of their horse, and thus all came forth and slept in the forest (in South Carolina, on Full Moon)."