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Hernando de Soto and his men were
long credited as the first Europeans to
see the Mississippi River. In fact, de
Soto’s journey was one of the most dramatic
failures of Spanish exploration, both in terms
ofthe riches he did not find and for a violence
that shocked even some contemporary
Spaniards. Yet in ways that de Soto had not
intended, his expedition contributed to Euro-
peans’ knowledge of the New World.
By the time of his venture into southeast-
ern North America (1539), de Soto was an
experienced conquistador. He had served
under Pedrarias Dávila, the brutal governor of
Panama responsible for the execution of Vasco
Núñez de Balboa. While still a young man, de
Soto became rich from raids on Panamanian
Indians and slave trading in Nicaragua. As
leader of Francisco Pizarro’s cavalry, de Soto
and his horsemen were the first Europeans to
meet the Inca leader Atahualpa. De Soto
returned to Spain a wealthy man in 1536 and
married, but he soon grew restless. He asked
Charles V for permission to return to the New
World to conquer Ecuador, Colombia, and
Guatemala. The king instead appointed him
governor of Cuba and granted him royal
asiento(permission) to explore and conquer
“La Florida,” a vaguely defined region includ-
ing not only the Florida peninsula but lands
stretching from the Carolinas to Texas.
Every explorer who preceded de Soto into
La Florida had met with disaster. Alonso
Alvarez de Pineda charted the Gulf Coast from
Florida to Mexico in 1519, proving Florida was
not an island and claiming Texas for Spain.
Alvarezde Pineda was the actual European
discoverer of the Mississippi River, whose out-
lets he explored before resuming his voyage
west. At their settlement on Mexico’s Río
Pánuco, however, he and most of his crew
were killed by the Huastec. Lucas Vásquez de
Ayllón, a judge at Santo Domingo’s supreme
court, sponsored exploration of the northern
Florida coast and led a 1525 attempt to estab-
lish a settlement near Cape Fear, North Car-
olina. This, too, was a failure that cost its
leader his life. The efforts of Juan Ponce de92
Hernando de Soto
and “La Florida”
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