rent, watched helplessly. Quigualtam’s sailors, still singing songs and in-
sults, turned on the brigantines and let fly a blizzard of arrows. The pursuit
continued through the night and into the following day, when the Spanish,
battered, depleted, and without rest, passed beyond the chief ’s territory.
But now another polity (its name unreported) was violated, and the fleet
was beset by yet another flotilla of war canoes, this time numbering about
fifty. Shortly after this frightening assault was broken off, a third, although
smaller, group of canoeists engaged the Spaniards. When these finally with-
drew, the exodus continued in peace to the Mississippi’s mouth. Resting for
the coming ordeal on the Gulf, however, the Spanish were confronted yet
again, this time by natives who seemed huge in size—like ‘‘philistines’’—
and quite dark-skinned from the sun. These were fishers, not farmers, and
they fought not only with bows and arrows but with spear-throwers that ex-
tended the range of heavy, pointed projectiles, and with war clubs studded
with large fish teeth.
The Spanish escaped on July and found Mexico, at long last, early in
September. Of the -odd who had entered Tampa Bay in , approxi-
mately had survived. This number, probably a good estimate, presum-
ably does not include a few men who deserted the expedition along the way.
The black paramour of the Lady of Cofitachequi was probably not the only
African slave who, smitten by a native woman, escaped with his love and
disappeared, as it were, into an American culture. Likewise, one of de Soto’s
Spanish officers took up with a native woman in the next-to-last, western
leg of the adventure and refused under threat to return to ranks. These were
not the first Africans and Europeans to go ‘‘native,’’ nor by any means the
last. Disaster that the de Soto saga surely was, it had other consequences,
too, and reveals much else about native civilizations.
tSurely the Spaniards would have turned back to Cuba by mid- or
persisted in their expedition and starved to death had they not encoun-
tered one people after another who represented the Mississippian cul-
tural tradition. Willingly or not, Apalachee, Cofitachequi, Coosa, Tasca-
luza, Chicaza, Quizquiz, Casqui, Pacaha, Quiguate, Utiangue, and others
all fed the invaders from their often vast stores of corn, beans, squashes,
fruits, breads, and ‘‘little dogs.’’ Had the Spaniards instead encountered
only early Woodland tradition folks—with their small villages, subsistence
agriculture (if that), gathering, and hunting—the invaders might well have
been fatally discouraged before they starved. On the other hand, it is diffi-