DE SOTO, FERDINANDO (1496 ?-1542), a Spanish
captain and explorer, who is frequently accredited with the
honour of being the discoverer of the Mississippi, and is
certainly one of the most remarkable of the Eldorado
adventurers of the 16th century. He was torn at Xeres
de Caballeros, in Estremadura, of an impoverished family
1 This is borne out by the register of his birth and baptism, and by
words in his last letter to his wife, " I die at thirty-four." The
dates (1762-94) given in nearly every biography of Desmoulins arc
certainly inaccurate. of good position, and was indebted to the favour of
Pedrarias Davila for the means of pursuing his studies at
the university. He commenced active life in 1519 by
joining his patron in his second expedition to Darien,
where he distinguished himself by his ability and the inde
pendence of his demeanour. In 1528 we find him exploring
the coast of Guatemala and Yucatan, and in 1532 he
led a reinforcement of 300 volunteers to the assistance
of Pizarro in Peru. To him was due the discovery of the
pass through the mountains to Cuzco ; and in the capture
of that city and in other important engagements he bore a
brilliant part. After the completion of the conquest De
Soto, who had landed in America with " nothing else of
his own save his sword and target," returned to Spain with
a fortune of " an hundred and fourscore thousand duckets,
which enabled him to marry the daughter of his old patron
Davila, and to maintain " all the state that the house of a
nobleman requireth." The Emperor Charles V., to whom
he had lent a portion of his wealth, appointed him governor
of the Island of Cuba, and adelantado or president of
Florida, which was then the object of great interest, as
possibly another Peru. In 1538 he set sail with an
enthusiastic and richly furnished company of about 600
men, of whom several had sold all that they possessed to
furnish their equipment. Landing in May 1539 at Espiritu
Santo Bay, on the west coast of the present State of Florida,
the explorers continued for nearly four years to wander from
one point to another, ever deceived in their expectations,
and ever allured by the report of the wealth that lay
beyond. The exact line of their route is in many places
difficult to identify, but it seems to have passed N. through
Florida and Georgia as far as 35" N. lat., then S. to the
neighbourhood of Mobile, and finally N.W, towards the
Mississippi. This river was reached early in 1541, and the
following winter was spent on the Washita. As they were
returning in 1542 along the Mississippi, De Soto died
(either in May or June), and his body was sunk in its
waters. On the failure of an attempt which they made to
push eastwards again, his men, under the leadership of
Moscoso, were compelled in 1543 to trust themselves to the
stream. A voyage of nineteen days brought them to the
sea, and they then held along the coast to Panuco, in
Mexico.
Of this unfortunate expedition three narratives are extant, of
seemingly independent origin, and certainly of very different
character. The first was published in 1557 at Evora, and pro
fesses to be the work of a Portuguese gentleman of Elvas, who
had accompanied the expedition : Rela^am verdadcira dos Tra-
balhos q ho Goueriwdor do Fernado d Souto <fc ccrtos Fidalgos Portu
gueses passarom no d scobrimeto da Provincia da Frolida. Agora
nouamete feita per hu Fidalgo Dcluas. An English translation was
published by Hakluyt in 1609, and another by an anonymous
translator in 1686, the latter being based on a French version
which had appeared at Paris in 1685 from the pen of Citri de
la Guette. The second narrative is the famous history of Florida
by the Inca, Garcilasso de la Vega, who obtained his information
from a Spanish cavalier engaged in the enterprise ; it was com
pleted in 1591, first appeared at Lisbon in 1605 under the title
of La Florida del Ynca, and has since passed through many
editions in various languages. The third is a report presented
to Charles V. of Spain in his Council of the Indies in 1544, by
Luis Hernandez de Bieclma, who had accompanied De Soto
as His Majesty s factor. It is to be found in Ternaux-Compans s
Recueil de Pieces sur la Floride in the Historical Collections of
Louisiana, Philadelphia, 1850, and in W. B. Rye s reprint for
the Hakluyt Society of Hakluyt s translation of the Portuguese
narrative .
See Bancroft s History of the United States, vol. i. ;
M Culloch, Researches Concerning the Aboriginal History of
America; Monette, History of the Discovery and Settlement of the
Valley of the Mississippi.