A Narrative of the expedition of Hernando de Soto into Florida published at Evora in 1557Knight of Elvas
History
A Narrative of the expedition of Hernando de Soto into Florida published at Evora in 1557
Knight of Elvas
America -- Discovery and exploration; Florida -- History -- To 1565; Soto, Hernando de, approximately 1500-1542
On Wednesday, the third of March, of the year 1540, the Governor
departed from _Anaica Apalache_ to seek _Yupaha_. He commanded his men
to go provided with maize for sixty leagues of desert. The horsemen
carried their maize on their horses, and the footmen at their sides;
because the Indians that were for service, with their miserable life
that they led that winter, being naked and in chains, died for the most
part. Within four days' journey they came to a great river; and they
made a piragua or ferry boat, and because of the great current, they
made a cable with chains, which they fastened on both sides of the
river; and the ferry boat went along by it, and the horses swam over,
being drawn with capstans. Having passed the river in a day and a half,
they came to a town called _Capachiqui_. Upon Friday the 11th of March,
they found Indians in arms. The next day five Christians went to seek
mortars, which the Indians have to beat their maize, and they went to
certain houses on the back side of the camp environed with a wood. And
within the wood were many Indians which came to spy us; of the which
came other five and set upon us. One of the Christians came running
away, giving an alarm unto the camp. Those which were most ready
answered the alarm. They found one Christian dead, and three sore
wounded. The Indians fled unto a lake adjoining near a very thick wood,
where the horses could not enter. The Governor departed from
_Capachiqui_ and passed through a desert. On Wednesday, the twenty-first
of the month, he came to a town called _Toalli_; and from thence forward
there was a difference in the houses. For those which were behind us
were thatched with straw, and those of _Toalli_ were covered with reeds,
in manner of tiles. These houses are very cleanly. Some of them had
walls daubed with clay, which showed like a mud-wall. In all the cold
country the Indians have every one a house for the winter daubed with
clay within and without, and the door is very little; they shut it by
night, and make fire within; so that they are in it as warm as in a
stove, and so it continueth all night that they need not clothes; and
besides these they have others for summer; and their kitchens near them,
where they make fire and bake their bread; and they have barbacoas
wherein they keep their maize; which is a house set up in the air upon
four stakes, boarded about like a chamber, and the floor of it is of
cane hurdles. The difference which lords or principal men's houses have
from the rest, besides they be greater, is, that they have great
galleries in their fronts, and under them seats made of canes in manner
of benches; and round about them they have many lofts, wherein they lay
up that which the Indians do give them for tribute, which is maize,
deers' skins, and mantles of the country, which are like blankets; they
make them of the inner rind of the barks of trees, and some of a kind of
grass like unto nettles, which being beaten, is like unto flax. The
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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