would ‘‘go to a warm Country, where they had fat Boar and Roasting Ears all
the Year long; these being the most excellent Food they can imagine.’’^5 In
March , though, Spaniards were neither amused nor forgiving. When
they finally caught three of the Chicaza hog thieves, de Soto had two of them
executed; the third suffered amputation of both hands and was returned
to the chief as a warning. In the meantime, some of de Soto’s officers, act-
ing on their own initiative, had ridden about the countryside expropriating
valuables from surrounding towns and incurring wrath sufficient, it seems
likely, to unite regional networks under the Chicaza chief for making re-
venge.
The attack came at night while the Spanish were sleeping and their sen-
tinels were inattentive. Chicaza warriors crept into the town from all four di-
rections carrying firepots. Awakened by flames, smoke, and drumming that
reminded them of Italian infantry, the Spanish never organized themselves,
and few were able to mount horses. One Chicaza warrior died, lanced by de
Soto himself. Twelve Spaniards, however, were killed by archers or burned
alive, and no fewer than fifty-seven horses were killed, most with skillfully
placed arrows. (The Chicazas understood that horses, more than firearms,
were Europeans’ principal military advantage.) Perhaps as many as fat
pigs burned in their sties, while an estimated piglets wriggled out and
escaped. (Conceivably some of these were ancestors to a huge feral popu-
lation in the near future.) Soldiers and footmen who had not lost clothing
and equipment at Mabila now were reduced to near-nakedness, unarmed
or only partially equipped. The Chicazas planned to finish the Spaniards the
next night, but a rainfall wet bowstrings and saved the surviving invaders.
By April, though, having rested, repaired, and healed a bit, the diminished
invaders moved on, now northwesterly.
In what is now called De Soto County, Mississippi, immediately below
Memphis, Hernando de Soto and his men approached the lushest expres-
sions of Mississippian culture then in existence. These chiefdoms and
towns—Quizquiz, Pacaha, Casqui, Quiguate, and others—were gifts of the
Mississippi River landscape. Fine loess soil, windblown from the west for
thousands of years, settled here among the rivers’ meanders. The great river
being ever changing, especially here, many meanders became separated
over time from the river channel, creating C-shaped oxbow lakes. Especially
around these, Mississippian towns and extensive farms grew up. Such rich
lands were flood prone, to be sure, but such friable soils, easily worked with
wooden and bone tools by a people without draft animals and plows, were
well worth seasonal risk. To the north, on a similar landscape in present-day