Discovery of the Americas, 1492-1800

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

Valdés, whose commentary suggested that he
was disgusted by the behavior of his country-
men. The Gentleman of Elvas completed his
long, detailed memoir in 1557. These first-
hand accounts, and Garcilaso de la Vega’s
romantic history, La Florida del Inca(1605),
gave Europeans their personal views of the de
Soto expedition. Each contained clues about
the geography, wildlife, agriculture, and native
peoples of La Florida, but the chroniclers
retold their experience as men—like de Soto—
who were mostly concerned with gold and
survival. By reading these accurate accounts,
however, Europeans now realized that La
Florida was a rugged land of real and complex
dangers. It was neither ripe for easy coloniza-
tion and religious conversion nor was it a
country, like Peru, where fabulous wealth
made peril worth the risk. De Soto’s experi-
ence presented Europe with a forbidding por-
trait of Florida that had a chilling effect on
exploration for a century.
Yet Spain continued to consider the region
its possession and dealt harshly with other
European attempts to settle there. French


Huguenots under the guidance of French
explorer Jean Ribault established two forts in
northern Florida along the St. Johns River in
1562 and 1564. Perceiving a dual threat of
French claims to the land and Protestantism,
King Philip II of Spain dispatched a military
expedition under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.
On September 8, 1565, Menéndez established
St. Augustine on the northeastern coast of the
Florida peninsula. He then turned his atten-
tion inland to the French forts, capturing
them and slaughtering all but a few of the
hundreds of inhabitants. Spain’s hold on the
territory remained weak despite some suc-
cessful efforts by Franciscan missionaries to
settle beyond St. Augustine in the late 1600s,
but St. Augustine endured to become the old-
est European city in the United States.
It was not the legacy that Hernando de
Soto had in mind when he set off on his expe-
dition. But if he deserves criticism for his bru-
tal mistreatment of the Native Americans he
encountered, he also deserves some credit for
providing Europeans with their first true look
into the great wilderness called La Florida.

Hernando de Soto and “La Florida” B 105

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