time. He even lent money to the king. Perhaps to get rid of him, the king sent
him off to “conquer, pacify, and people” La Florida. For those tasks, de Soto
assembled an expedition over twice the size of those of Ayllón and Narváez.
Undoubtedly an able man, he was also intensely cruel, reputedly “much
given to hunting Indians on horseback.” Like other Spanish conquistadors,
he also used attack dogs against the Indians, animals “so fierce that in two
bites they laid open their victims to the entrails.” Dogs and horses terrified
the natives, who were not used to dealing with animals. The use of dogs and
horses would be given full scope during de Soto’s rampage through what
became the modern states of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
Well prepared in advance by having brought iron chains and collars with
him from Spain, de Soto used such Indians as he did not immediately hang
or “put to the sword” as pack animals, taking their food, robbing their tombs
for trinkets, and raping their women. Leaving behind a five-year-long trail of
burned-out villages, rotting corpses, and mutilated Indians but gaining little
knowledge and no gold, he reached the Mississippi (which the Spaniards
called Río Espírtu Santo) and crossed it into what is now Arkansas. There he
died in May 1542, having won a place in history as one of the most brutal and
destructive of explorers.
Following on the heels of the explorers, and reaping the hatred they
had sown, the Jesuits attempted in 1567 to establish the first of their out-
posts in La Florida. Within five years, the local Indians had managed to
drive them away. The friars learned from this defeat that they could not
control Indians who were living “in the state of nature.” To render them
susceptible to conversion, they had to be “reduced” into something as
close as possible to a European pattern.Reducciónbegan with relocating
Indians in new settlements grouped around churches.
Such church settlements had to become self-sustaining, so the mission-
aries soon began to import European tools and animals. Since the Indians
had had neither plows nor animals to pull them, the ox-drawn plow was the
most revolutionary of the Spaniards’ initial innovations. Cattle, burros, or
horses and sheep or goats followed. Then, the priests taught the natives
blacksmithing and weaving. Not much attention was paid to teaching liter-
acy, but much consideration was given to dress, particularly to getting
Sugar, Slaves, and Souls 49