their way south again, then westward through the Arkansas River Valley.
The farther west they traveled, the more marginal were the inhabitants to
Mississippian culture. Populations were more sparse, and corn was less cul-
tivated. The Arkansas was an important trade route between the Mississip-
pian farmers to the east and the buffalo and deer hunters of the southern
plains to the west. Valley peoples, such as the Tula (whose town was located
near present-day Fort Smith), were handlers and shippers of meat, hides,
and tallow from the hunters, and salt, shells, beads, pottery, and fine copper
adornments from the Mississippi and the Gulf. De Soto intended to winter
among the Tula, but they resisted, shocking the Spaniards with their tacti-
cal ingenuity and ferocity. Knights of Spain were obliged to slaughter Tula
women, who were as determined as their men to kill or die. Dead or alive,
the Tula presented a frightening aspect. Practitioners of cranial deforma-
tion, their foreheads sloped backward from their eyebrows to the backs of
their heads, and they tattooed their faces, including the exteriors and interi-
ors of their lips. The Spanish happily departed Tula in October and marched
southeastward, along the sunnier southern bank of the Arkansas.
A bit downstream from present-day Little Rock, de Soto and his men,
slaves, and horses spent the frigid winter of – in a populous Mis-
sissippian town called Utiangue. Local natives supplied (willingly or not)
ample corn, beans, nuts, and fruits, but for meat the Spaniards relied on
their native slaves to snare innumerable rabbits. Suffering extreme cold and
deep snows, the invaders survived—except Juan Ortiz, de Soto’s essential
chief translator. So early in March, when they set out once more for the Mis-
sissippi, the expedition was effectively blinded and crippled. At Guachoya,
on the western bank of the river again, de Soto fell ill while sifting conflict-
ing information about distance to the Gulf of Mexico and the intentions
of a great chief on the eastern shore named Quigualtam. According to the
chief of Guachoya, there was no land route to the Gulf; one of de Soto’s
lieutenants reconnoitered and confirmed this. The chief also claimed that
the ominous Quigualtam would visit in friendship, or he would attack any
time. De Soto, furious and vindictive, ordered the razing of Anilco, a rival
town, and the massacre of all its males.
Quigualtam, meanwhile, rebuked de Soto’s invitation in a manner in-
finitely more insulting to the Spanish than Aquijo’s silent withdrawal on
the river. Quigualtam never visited anyone, he sent word, but expected all
servilely to visit him. He was the Great Sun, who with his brother, Tat-
tooed Serpent, ruled all absolutely, sacrificing enemies or his own sub-