1539. EXPEDITION OF DE SOTO. 45 stance, Espiritu Santo. Here they landed, and De Soto took formal possession of the country in the name of the emperor. No Indians were to be seen, and the Spaniards encamped securely on the shore; but during the night they were attacked with great fury, defeated and driven to their vessels. De Soto again disembarked his troops, and marching cautiously, encamped in a village six miles from the shore, which was deserted at his approach. Hirrihigua, its chief, was implacably hostile. Narvaez had cut off his nose, and caused his mother to be torn in pieces before him by his dogs. De Soto sought, by messages and presents, to appease him, but in vain. "I want none of their speeches; bring me their heads," he replied. Leaving here a garrison, and having recovered Ortiz, a companion of Narvaez, and having captured a number of Indians for guides, he set forth for the village of Aceura. The route of the Spaniards lay through tangled thickets, deep morasses, and quaking prairies. At length they came to a deep river, bordered by an impassable swamp, perhaps the Withlacoochee, and here the Indians that beset them disputed their passage; but after three days' fighting, and incredible hardships, they forced a passage, and reached the village. It was deserted, and the Spaniards, harassed day and night by the savages, set out again to seek the country of Ocali, where there was, they heard, perpetual spring, and whose warriors were cased in gold. But they were disappointed, and passed on to what they heard was the great and rich province of Appalachee. Vitachuco, one of the chiefs of that region, was hostile; but he was won by the presents and promises of De Soto, and came with his warriors and people to make a display of his power and magnificence. In the midst of the rejoicing and parade, the treacherous Spaniards seized the chief, attacked, slaughtered and dispersed his unsuspecting people. Thence they marched to the north, crossed the "Great Morass,"-where Narvaez had been finally defeated and driven back to the sea-doubtless the Okeefinokee swamp, and, after an obstinate battle for two days with the Indians, encamped for the winter at the Anhayca, the chief village of Appalachee, nearly one hundred leagues north from the bay of Espiritu Santo. The winter was spent in continual contests with the Indians. Early in March, 1540, they set out for the country of Cofachiqui, perhaps on the Savannah river. The country was fertile, the Indians were friendly, their queen received them with great hospitality; above all, they received "fourteen bushels" of pearls, and they were assured that there were enough of them in the neighboring villages to load all their horses. Here the Spaniards wished to stop and form a colony, but De Soto refused his consent, seized his unsuspecting hostess and set out to the west, traversed the Cherochee country, passed through the country subject to the chief of Cosa, and reached the territories of Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa was the great chieftain of the south-west. He was of gigantic size, of high spirit, and ruled over a confederacy of tribes. He received the strangers with kindness; and they in turn seized him as a hostage, to secure the submission of his people, and marched on till they reached his principal town, Mauvile, now Mobile. Here many thousand Indians assembled to rescue their chief, and expel the invaders. The Spaniards were suddenly attacked with great fury; the battle lasted all day; the town was burned, eighty-three Spaniards, with forty-two horses, were slain, a great number, including De Soto himself, were wounded; several thousand Indians perished. But for the armor and fire-arms of the Spaniards, none of them would have escaped. All their ammunition and baggage were lost; but what, even in this extremity, concerned them most, all their wine and flour were gone, and it was no longer possible to celebrate the mass. At this juncture it was ascertained that their ships had returned to the bay of Achusi, or Pensacola bay; and, weary of their misfortunes, the Spaniards determined to abandon the country and return home. De Soto was rendered desperate by his misfortunes, and foresaw in this spirit of his men the ruin of his hopes; and, determined to die rather than to return, he broke up his encampment and turned to the north-west, and, after a long march, encamped at the village of Chicasaw. The Indians there were peaceable, but the characteristic cruelty of the Spaniards could not be restrained; and the Indians, in revenge for the massacres, mutilations, and enslavement of their people, assembled, attacked and burned their camp. Forty men were slain, fifty horses, the remainder of their baggage, the greater part of their arms and clothing were destroyed. After this disaster, they removed and fortified themselves for the winter at Chicacilla. Early in the spring they resumed their march, and, after much suffering and many disasters, reached a great river, named by them the Rio Grande, by the Indians, Chucugua, Tumaliseu, Tapata, Mico, and, at its mouth, Ri. It was well described by the old chronicler, "The river in this place was a half league from one shore to the other, so that a man standing still could scarce be discerned from the opposite shore. It was of great depth, of wonderful rapidity, and very muddy; and was always filled with floating trees 1542. EXPEDITION OF DE SOTO. 47 and timber, carried down by the force of the current." Here the Spaniards prepared boats, and crossed the Mississippi; and, after wandering through the territories of various tribes, the most of whom were hostile, encamped for the winter at Utianque, on the Arkansas, near the western border of that State. De Soto's spirit was broken by misfortune, and, in utter despair of finding either the gold or the glory he coveted, he resolved to seek again the Mississippi, and, if possible, the sea. Accordingly, early in the spring he set out, and, after long and tedious marches, reached the great river at Guachoya, about twenty miles below the mouth of the Arkansas. Thence he sent a party to seek the sea. After an absence of eight days, they returned and reported that they had advanced only fifteen leagues, on account of the great windings of the river, and the swamps and torrents with which it was bordered. Their report broke the spirit of De Soto. Despair seized his mind, disease attacked his frame, and, on the 21st of May, 1542, he died, and his body was sunk in the Mississippi. Luis de Moscoso succeeded to the command. Hearing vague rumors of Spaniards to the west, he set out in June, with the remains of the army, to the westward, in the hope of reaching Mexico. For three months they wandered, and passed at length over immense plains, covered with buffaloes, to a desert at the base of a range of high mountains. Wearied and dispirited, they turned their course, and reached the Mississippi above the mouth of the Arkansas. Here they wintered again, and prepared to descend the stream in the spring to the sea. Timber was found in the forests. All their iron implements, even to the fetters of their slaves, were wrought into nails. Grass served them for ropes. And thus they built seven small vessels, and, on the 2d of July, 1543, they embarked and followed the river, for twenty days, to its mouth, continually harassed by the Indians; and thence sailed along the coast fifty days, to the westward, and at length arrived at the Spanish settlement of Panuco. And thus ended the great expedition. De Soto wandered over a great part of the continent in quest of wealth and fame; and found nothing so great as his grave. Of that chosen band of cavaliers, so brilliant and so confident, that followed him, scarcely three hundred, naked, battered and famishing, returned to ask the charity of their countrymen. The career of Spanish conquest to the northward was effectually checked. And but for the motives that religious and national hatred supplied, Florida might have remained unoccupied and unexplored. To furnish an asylum for his perse cuted countrymen of the Reformed faith, Admiral Coligni projected a colony in the New World; and, on the 18th of February, 1562, he sent out John Ribault, with a colony of French Calvinists.* A settlement was made below the Cambahee, named Carolana; and Ribault, leaving his colony, returned to France. Discontent sprung up, a mutiny ensued, and the settlement was abandoned. Two years later, another colony was sent out under the worthy Laudonnierre; and, on the river of May, with psalms and thanksgiving, they laid the foundations of what they hoped would be a secure retreat for the people of God. But the information was conveyed to Spain that a band of heretics had located themselves within the limits of the empire; and, in 1565, Pedro Melendez de Aviles was sent out by the king, with orders to exterminate them. On St. Augustine's day he landed on the coast, built a fort that yet perpetuates, in the name of the chief city of Florida, the day of its foundation, and from thence, marching secretly and rapidly by land, he surprised the Huguenot settlement of Carolana, and massacred the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex. Ribault was at sea; when he returned he was induced, with his companions, to surrender, upon the faith of the oath of Melendez. They gave up their arms, and were massacred. The crime was soon avenged. Dominic de Gourges, a Catholic of Gascony, once himself the victim of Spanish cruelty, burned with the desire of avenging his countrymen. For this purpose he fitted out an expedition, approached the coast, surprised and stormed the Spanish forts, put their inhabitants to the sword, and hanged their leaders on the same trees on which some of the French had been hanged. Melendez returned, repaired his posts, fortified St. Augustine, and governed his colony for ten years. For a century the Spaniards made no further progress in the colonization of Florida. A few scattered missions, indeed, were established, and a religious province, named St. Helena, was chartered by the Holy See, and placed under the care of the Franciscan monks. The whole of Florida, with its vague limits, was attached to Mexico; but of the results of the great expeditions, and of the great sacrifices, of the heroic age of Spanish enterprise, there remained only the colony of St. Augustine. * A catalogue of the authorities in regard to the Huguenot and Spanish settlements in Florida, may be found in Sparks' American Biography. 1608. SETTLEMENT OF CANADA. 49 The French made early and more successful attempts to explore and colonize the New World.* In 1535, James Cartier entered and explored the St. Lawrence to the Isle of Orleans; and, six years later, in conjunction with Roberval, led out a colony to that region, which he named New France. It failed, and for sixty years no further effort at colonization in America was made; but, in 1608, Samuel Champlain brought out a colony to the Isle of Orleans, and laid the foundation of the city of Quebec, and, five years later, of Montreal. In the same year of his arrival, Champlain, to secure the friendship of the Indians inhabiting the banks of the St. Lawrence, accompanied them in an expedition against their enemies, on the shores of the lake that bears his name. The allies gained a victory over their foes; and that event secured for three generations the alliance of the Algonquins, and the implacable hatred of the Iroquois. This fact determined the course of French exploration. The Iroquois confederacy, powerful in their union, and more powerful from the firearms they obtained from the Dutch, effectually barred the progress of the French traders and missionaries to the south, while their alliance with the Algonquins of the east, secured to them the friendship of the Algonquins of the west. Accordingly, very early explorations were made in the direction of the great western lakes. In 1616, Le Caron, a Franciscan, the companion of Champlain, penetrated the wilderness to the waters of Lake Huron; and, along with Viel and Sagard, labored for ten years as a missionary among the tribes there and on the Niagara. The purposes of Champlain were more religious than commercial; he esteemed "the salvation of a soul worth more than the conquest of an empire;" his charter recognized the Indian convert as a citizen of France, and the Franciscans were chosen to conduct his missions. As elsewhere, however, the more active order of the Jesuits took possession of the missions, and, in 1634, Brebœuf and Daniel, and later, Lallemand, passed by way of the Ottawa to Lake Huron and to the Sault Ste. Marie,† and established at St. Joseph, St. Louis, and St. Ignatius, villages of Christian Hurons. In 1640, Raymbault and Pigart followed, and in the next year roamed as missionaries with the Hurons of Lake Nipissing. Later in the same year, Raymbault and Jogues passed, in a birch canoe, around the north shore of Lake Huron to the Sault Ste. Marie, met there a council of the Chippewas, and learned Bancroft, vol. 3. + Falls of the river St. Mary's, between Lakes Superior and Huron. |