and lanced to death Indians brave enough to pursue the invaders onto open
ground. Spanish reinforcements arrived; Mabila’s walls were breached, and
the town was set afire. Now fighting resumed inside the town. Tascaluza’s
fate is unknown, but his son and perhaps as many as , other Indians
were killed in battle, burned, or committed suicide to escape capture. De
Soto’s victory cost his side dead and wounded men; seven horses
died, and twenty-nine were wounded. Much of the Spaniards’ baggage and
equipment was burned or carried away early in the fury, including most
of the looted pearls and the priests’ and friars’ sacramental wine. Soldiers
now wished to head south to the Gulf, establish a coastal colony, and re-
new contact with Cuba, but de Soto, having yet to discover portable riches,
was resolved to persist inland. The expedition would indeed progress many
hundreds of leagues farther, extending an epic that, after Tascaluza and
Mabila, would become ever more bizarre, appalling, and illuminating.
So with the approach of winter, wounded and ragged Spaniards slogged
westward through cold swamps and over countless creeks, finally fording
the river Apafalaya (now called Black Warrior). De Soto had been informed
of a lush chiefdom and town called Chicaza a bit farther west, in present-
day east-central Mississippi. When they arrived at Chicaza, the Spaniards
found a town smaller than imagined, and empty. (News from Mabila had
probably traveled ahead of de Soto.) The Spanish moved in for the win-
ter, expanding shelter for a much-needed rest. Most nights throughout the
frigid season of –, however, were disturbed by harassing local war-
riors. Finally soldiers captured two Chicazas, and de Soto used them to gain
contact with the elusive chief. Frequent visits and flattering gifts ended
nocturnal disturbances, and Spanish vigilance relaxed. De Soto feared that
the chief schemed to entrap him, but rather than display suspicion or hos-
tility, the commander invited the chief and his principals to a feast. It was
the Spaniards’ delectable entrée, pork, presumably barbequed in native
fashion, that ultimately led to outright fighting. The Chicazas so loved the
pig meat that they broke into Spanish sties at night and slaughtered and
carried off a number of hogs. Here then, among linear ancestors of Chicka-
saws, may have begun the most welcoming of native responses to Euro-
pean imperialism. Surely Indians craved possession of horses, guns, and
iron pots and tools nearly everywhere, but it was the pig that found its
place, ultimately, in native cosmology. More than a century and a half
later, for instance, and more than a thousand miles to the northeast, near
the Great Dismal Swamp, a Quaker smith explained to a missionary local
native (probably Nansemond) eschatology: When a ‘‘good Indian’’ died, he