DeSoto's Trail
by Donald E. Sheppard
DeSoto's Army crossed Florida from their landing place then wintered above Panama City. Natives attacked them constantly. Ships, left behind at Port Charlotte, advanced with supplies. One was sent west to find a port at which to supply the army the next year. It returned from Mobile Bay with captives to guide the army overland to that port.
Distracted by a young native's claims that gold could be found "toward the sun's rising," Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama were plundered by DeSoto's people. While heading back toward Mobile Bay they lost their spoils in the fires of Mabila. None were allowed to escape to the ships with that bad news.
DeSoto led them northward for isolation in Tennessee. Attacked there at springtime, he continued north thru Kentucky and into Indiana, his scouts as far as Chicago. Finding a great lake but not an Ocean there, he turned west, across Illinois, still searching for the sea. Crossing the Mississippi River, which obviously drained a continent and not an island, a disgusted DeSoto turned south thru the mountains of Missouri, beyond which he wintered then died in Arkansas.
His confused army headed for Mexico, Spain's nearest outpost on this continent. They passed thru Louisiana and Texas, the scouts beyond Austin. Finding only desert, all retreated back to build escape boats that winter in Arkansas. They drifted down the Mississippi River at springtime, then coasted the Gulf to Mexico.