De Soto
De Soto names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
De Soto da so'to, Ferdinand
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
da so'to, Ferdinand, a Spanish soldier and explorer. He was born about 1496. He accompanied Pizarro in his conquest of Peru. Being deceived by reports as to the wealth of Florida, he was eager to explore that country. Charles I made him governor of Cuba and Florida. In 1538 De Soto sailed for Cuba with ten ships, 600 men in armor, and a complement of sailors. Leaving his wife to govern Cuba, he landed at Tampa Bay, Florida, June 10, 1539. He sent most of his ships back to Cuba and started westward with his army in search of gold. He began the march with a number of horses. He brought also a flock of swine, which he purposed to drive along for food in case provisions should become scarce. Many of these are said to have escaped into the forest, and to have been the ancestors of the half wild razor-back hogs formerly characteristic of the Southern States. The first winter was spent on the banks of the Flint River in Georgia. The command subsisted largely on corn and game obtained from the natives. In the following spring De Soto and his men, burdened with heavy armor, toiled painfully over the Appalachians into the country of the Cherokees. Here they spent several months, wandering up and down the valleys of the Alabama in search of gold. In a battle with the Choctaws a score of his men were killed and two hundred were wounded. One Spanish chronicler of vivid imagination avers that 70 Spaniards and 11,000 Indians fell in the conflict. The second winter was passed on the banks of the Yazoo River among the Chickasaws. In May, 1541, De Soto discovered and crossed the Mississippi River somewhere not far from the present site, it is believed, of Memphis. In the presence of a body of natives, stated at 20,000 although there may not have been more than a dozen, De Soto erected a huge cross made from the trunk of a pine tree, and took possession of the Mississippi in the name of the king of Spain. After resting a few days the adventurers went up the western shore, it is thought, as far as New Madrid, Mo. The ensuing summer and winter they spent, still searching for gold, in the wilderness drained by the head waters of the Arkansas in a vain endeavor to reach the Spanish coasts in Mexico. In the spring of 1542 they returned to the Mississippi. De Soto contracted a fever and died. His soldiers buried him at first in a trench near an Indian village; but fearing either that the Indians might discover and mutilate the body, or else that the savages might discover that the great captain was dead and thus be emboldened to attack the now weakened and dispirited army, they hollowed out the trunk of an evergreen oak, placed the body of De Soto in it, weighted the rude coffin with armor, and sank it in the bosom of the "Father of Waters." This expedition was in many respects the greatest and most remarkable expedition of exploration ever undertaken in the New World. It is to be regretted that those who lived to tell the story were not content with the statement of the plain facts. See Hennepin ; Joliet
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FERNANDO, a Spanish de los Caval at Jeres at Jeres discoverer; born leros, in Estremadura, about 1496, of a good but impoverished family; accompanied Pedrarias Davila to Darien in 1519; served on the expedition to Nicaragua in 1527; and afterward assisted Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, returning to Spain with a fortune. Charles V. now gave him permission to conquer Florida at his own expense, and appointed him governor of Cuba; and in 1538 he sailed richly equipped rom San Lucar with a rich company. The fleet anchored in the bay of Espiritu Santo (now Tampa Bay) on May 25, 1539; the ships were sent back to Cuba, and the long search for gold was begun. For three years, harassed by Indians and enduring every privation, the company continued the quest. In 1541 the Mississippi was reached and crossed, and the third winter was spent on Washita river. Returning to the Mississippi in the spring, De Soto, worn out by disappointments, died of a fever on its banks, in June, 1542; and that his death might be concealed from the Indians, was lowered at midnight into the waters of the great stream he had discovered. In the following his panions, reduced to half their original number, sailed down the river, and finally reached the town of Panuco, in Mexico.
De Soto a city of Missouri
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city of Missouri, in Jefferson co. It is on the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern railroad. In the neighborhood are important lead and zinc mines. The city has a large trade in grain, flour, produce, and live stock. Its industries include a shoe factory, shops. flour mills, and railroad machine Pop. (1910) 4,721; (1920) 5,003.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's put De Soto's first winter "on the banks of the Flint River in Georgia"; in 1987 the archaeologist Calvin Jones found the actual camp under a housing lot in Tallahassee, Florida — the Governor Martin site, the Apalachee town of Anhaica, identified by Spanish chain mail, coins and pig bones. A federal De Soto Expedition Commission under John R. Swanton mapped the route in 1939, and later work by Charles Hudson and others has revised it again, though the Mississippi crossing (somewhere in the Memphis–Helena stretch) and even the landing bay remain argued over. What has changed most is the judgement: where Aiton's called it "the greatest and most remarkable expedition of exploration ever undertaken in the New World," historians now stress the enslavement, massacres and introduced disease that helped shatter the Mississippian chiefdoms the Spaniards passed through. Collier's other De Soto, the Missouri railroad town of 5,003 people in 1920, is still there and still about the same size, but the lead and zinc mines are gone.
Written for this edition, 2026.