The People of the Stone

In completing the sixth and final novel of THE PEOPLE OF THE STONE saga--CHILDREN OF THE CIRCLE--the choice of including the historical figure of Hernando de Soto as a central focal point for the time period and locale of this story detailing the end of Native American prehistory, especially in the eastern U.S., was not a difficult one to make.  Rarely do such clearcut historical events provide an identifiable marker for a major turning point as does the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in North America in the 1530's.  The virtually contemporary and equally fascinating journeys of De Soto in the southeastern U.S. and Coronado's in the American southwest have long been pointed to as the major events in the changing of North America's past from a native to a European-oriented direction.  That the journey of Coronado is the one with which most Americans are familiar is probably more a function of location and the more deeply-rooted Spanish culture that resulted there than the actual impact either of these two fascinating men had on the populations they encountered.  Without a doubt, the overall cultural impact of the amazing four year journey of De Soto's army through most of the current states of the southeast, beginning in 1539, affected far more native peoples and cultures than did Coronado's more limited incursion into the broader area of the Southwest--at least at the time and soon after their initial journeys.  Still, outside of the immediate area of the southeastern states, this far more interesting and impactful journey of one of the most gifted of all the major Spanish conquistadors of that spectacular era--De Soto--remains one of the least studied events and personages of major importance outside of select professional circles.

                      WHY IS HERNANDO DE SOTO THE FORGOTTON MAN AMONG THE GREAT CONQUISTADORS?

In beginning my research on De Soto in preparation for ending my book series detailing the spread of Native American cultures from the end of the Ice Age to the arrival of the first Europeans, it immediately became apparent that he must have been one of the most complex personalities among all those few men for whom history has created such a special niche.  The names of Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, Coronado, and Ponce de Leon usually ring out before the name of De Soto pops up.  Again this is due more to the enduring influence of the Spanish culture in all its attributes, from language to religion, that has remained over the centuries in those areas with which these  other men's names are synonymous.  The casual student, however, would most likely not be familiar with just how many other important places there were in Central and South America in which De Soto was also a major player.  Few, if any, of the major conquistadors had his own hand in as many of those powerful adventures and events of the first half of the Sixteenth Century in the then New World as did Hernando de Soto.  By best estimates he arrived here as a teenager and, through hard work and good fortune no doubt, quickly earned a name for himself as a competent soldier and leader of men much older than himself.  Let's take a brief look at his background in order to better understand the seminal importance of this man's place in native American history.

De Soto came from a specific area of Spain, Extremadura, unique for producing most of the conquistadors who would make such huge names for themselves in the New World.  Much might be made of the commonality of the background and personalities of these men, many of whom knew each other personally or were even related.  (De Soto, for example, was a business partner with one of the de Leon brothers when he began his Florida incursion.)  Hernando "made his bones" so-to-speak in Panama (now Nicaragua) early on as a fast-rising soldier there under one of the most brutal of the early consquistadors, a man named Pararia.  Later, having missed out on the Cortez expedition, he still found his way to Mexico and was serving there when he found out about Francisco Pizarro's upcoming invasion of what would become Peru.

  De Soto was in command of a small but efficient force of about twenty and offered his services to the Pizarro brothers for their secretive and highly risky adventure.  Recognizing both his skill as a soldier and the critical importance of his additional troop strength to their own ridiculously small force, the Pizarros immediately made him one of their most trusted captains.  It was De Soto, along with the most competent of the four Pizarro brothers in all likleihood, Hernando Pizarro, who rode alone together to make the critical first face-to-face confrontation with the Inca emperor, Atahuallpa.  This confrontation would lead to the almost incomprehensibly total conquest of the great Inca empire in such a remarkably short time by a force of much less than two hundred determined men.  De Soto's own critical role in the sucess of that conquest has often been overlooked, not the least for the reason that he survived the many intrigues and murders that followed the Pizarros and their equally forgotton partner Almagro soon afterwards.  It was while in Peru myself last year that I became intrigued with the story of these incredible (yes, exceptionally cruel) men, especially De Soto, realizing that I might soon have to allot him a more pivotal role in my upcoming final novel on prehistoric native America.  After much reading about his life and his truly amazing adventure in North America, which came after he had used his Inca gold to buy the governorship of Cuba and the unexplored lands of La Florida, I became more intrigued by what must have been a very complex man, despite his obvious moral and character flaws regarding his treatment of native peoples.

(Note:  For interested readers, the books of Charles Hudson are by far the most thorough and current on the De Soto expedition in the Southeast.  Dr. Hudson has spent many years tracking the exact route of the long expedition across several states, where every small town seems to claim a de Soto connection.  Hudson's books are also rich in the anthropology of the peoples the expedition affected and the archeology of recovery that still continues in its path.  I highly recomment his books.)

                                                        The Death of De Soto and How It Has Affected His Legacy

   Perhaps one of the reasons that De Soto has often been overlooked or underappreciated as a person of great historical impact was the somewhat mysterious, even ignominious, death he found.  Unlike those other conquistadors who returned with their massive wealth to Spain to carve out great estates, or even lke Cortez who did so in Mexico, De Soto squandered his on what was viewed at the time as a failed enterprise.  He had no children, only a young widow beset by countless lawsuits against his remaining estate, to preserve his name.  The survivors of his great expedition had a vested interest in telling their own side of the story, casting further clouds over the legacy of de Soto.  Others like the Pizarro brothers and Almagro in Peru met various famous deaths in battle or by assassination or execution for rebelling against higher authority at approximately the same time.  Even Coronado achieved lasting fame with the legends of Cibola and the Seven Ciites of Gold still perpetuated by his equally failed expedition, along with the many place names he bestowed surviving in an area that still highly honors its Spanish heritage.  De Soto's end came, probably due to a common fever, along the banks of the Mississippi River over a year before the actual end of the expedition that bore his name.  That more than half of his army managed to survive and tell the tale of his many failures after four years of endless wandering in what to them was a vast wasteland without the riches of gold and silver--the true measure of success in those days-- undoubtedly led to the further tarnishing of his historical image, especially in a region where the larger English heritage eventually superceded both the earlier, even though important, native and Spanish ones.

As a writer of fiction, I must confess that at the outset of beginning my novel with the intention of including De Soto as a character with more of a role than I had originally anticipated, it initially gave me some measure of satisfaction to contemplate "killing him off"  for his many crimes as part of the inevitable conclusion of the Native American story in the eastern U.S.  Like many others who have felt this no doubt, an extensive reading of the events and people of this critical time period throughout the Americas cannot help but leave one with an emptiness for what was lost and the cruelties of the men and the culture which initiated many of those tragic events.  However, as I delved deeper into the man himself and took into account the time and place he came from, some fuller appreciation--if not sympathy still--began to emerge for this one unique man in particular--a man who both achieved and lost so much.  After all, for the writer at least,  the tragic figure is far more interesting than the "good man" who merely walks through life and accepts his role without fighting back against the vagaries of the everyday existence that separates us all from the greatness others manage to achieve, even at the ultimate cost to others and to themselves.  CHILDREN OF THE CIRCLE does not end with the death of De Soto, but his appearance and journey in the southeast forces the inevitable ending of the great native American cultures, which this author has spent the last six years portraying in his books. Like the minor character that the native peoples may have seen him as at the time, here he dies off-stage so-to-speak, and the story goes on briefly to end from the perspective of just what the De Soto expedition might have meant to the native peoples suddenly and unwillingly thrust into its amazing passage through so many of their unique lands and tribal cultures.

For those readers of the book who will wonder what happened to De Soto, I offer this brief Epilogue to the final events as portrayed in the last chapters of CHILDREN OF THE CIRCLE.

  True to his wishes, De Soto was buried secretly after his death, allegedly due to a fever, although no one can be certain, since he had enemies in his own camp by that time and slow-acting poisons are a possbilitly and certainly not unknown in those turbulent times, particularly if those who kept the records of the expedition were somehow involved.  When local native chiefs became suspicious and asked to see De Soto's body, it was secretly dug-up for fear that the great leader's "mortality" would be discovered, then placed in a hasty wooden casket, rowed out into the Mississippi river at night, and unceremoniously dumped over the side to be lost forever to the mysteries of history.  This must certainly say something about how his own men viewed their leader at this point in the expedition. His remaining possessions were quickly auctioned off to his army, almost as if to erase his memory within his own command.  Interestingly enough, his three surviving horses, a most valuable commodity at that point of the expedition still, brought the same amount as his three human slaves.  The most interesting items, to this writer at least, to be sold off were the nearly seven hundred PIGS de Soto had assiduously kept with the expedition for nearly three years, despite the many times of hunger among his men.  In fact, this herd had begun as about half that number when unloaded from the ships and had doubled in size even with the many losses over three years.  One can only imagine the great "Barbeque" (a Caribbean word the Spanish borrowed, by the way) that must have resulted from that auction by hungry soldiers who had eyed those pigs as they had munched on parched corn and nuts for three years!  Those who won these various auctions were allowed to pay with promisory notes, all that they had to offer by that point in time.  What a great irony it must have been that such a fortune as De Soto had won in Peru came to such a sad end that later his estate had to try to collect notes given by common soldiers for the sale of a PIG!

With that ended one of the most amazing careers in the history of both exploration and military conquest.  His army continued to wander westward for nearly another year before returning to the Mississippi, building boats, and fighting their way down to the Gulf of Mexico, where just over half of the original army of more than 600 eventually found their way back to Cuba, from where they had started.  It is easy for anyone reading about these people to develop a severe dislike for those men, due to their many cruelties and lack of moral behavior.  But to say that they lacked character is to ignore the times they lived in and the culture that produced them. The sheer scope of their visions, their feats of endurance, and their perserverance in the face of the unknown deserve some measure of credit, if not respect perhaps, at the very least.  Would many of us act so differently if placed on an alien planet with beings we were told were not even true humans by what we believed, especially if they possessed something we coveted above all else in our own culture or were seen as souls to be converted by whatever means necessary?  It is easy to cast these conquistadors onto the moral scrapheap of history, but men like Hernando de Soto and others did, after all, represent the "best" of their time and culture and should be viewed as such through the ever-hazy lens of time.

  This writer sincerely hopes the reader will take the opportunity to compare and contrast one of these men with one of the "best and the brightest" of the native peoples, who were caught up in the vortex of those amazing and impactful events and judge for him or herself.  It is this comparison that forms the backdrop of the story for CHILDREN OF THE CIRCLE and brings to a conclusion the 12,000 year plus journey of this important book series, which I have been privledged to offer you, the reader.

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