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Hernando de Soto among the Apalachee
"A genuine tour de force for the integration of anthropology, archaeology and ethnohistory at this first, unequivocal de Soto expedition site."--Russell K. Skowronek, Santa Clara University "Indispensable. . . . Will be of interest to southeastern archaeologists, historians of Hispanic America, scholars interested in the early exploration of the Americas . . . and laymen in Florida and surrounding states."--Charles Hudson, University of Georgia Charles Ewen and John Hann chronicle the discovery and excavation of the only known campsite of Hernando de Soto's ten-state odyssey in La Florida during the 16th century. Located in downtown Tallahassee in sight of the state capitol, the site was rescued at the last minute from developers—a story almost as compelling as that of de Soto’s expedition.
The book has three historical background, archaeological excavations at the site, and a retranslation of the 16th-century narratives relating to the winter encampment. A prologue and epilogue fit the work into the wider context of the Contact Period.
John Hann has retranslated the narratives of the De Soto expedition in Apalachee Province--with startling results. Small liberties taken with the original translations presented a misleading picture of the Apalachee and their culture. These versions, coupled with evidence recovered from the winter site, give a new view of the impact of Europeans on the native inhabitants of La Florida.
Of particular interest are the discovery, excavation, and preservation of the site. Showing how luck and timing are crucial factors in some important discoveries, Ewen and Hann describe the interaction of archaeologists with private developers, state and city government, and the public and the media. Although it contains information that will be useful to scholars, the book is written in a popular style that makes it accessible to general readers.
Charles R. Ewen, associate professor of anthropology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, is the author of From Spaniard to The Archaeology of Cultural Formation at Puerto Real, Haiti . John H. Hann is a research historian at the San Luis Historical Site and a leading scholar on the missions of Spanish Florida. He is the author of The Land Between the Rivers (UPF, 1988), Missions to the Calusa (UPF, 1991), and History of the Timucua Indians and Missions (UPF, 1996).
The book has three historical background, archaeological excavations at the site, and a retranslation of the 16th-century narratives relating to the winter encampment. A prologue and epilogue fit the work into the wider context of the Contact Period.
John Hann has retranslated the narratives of the De Soto expedition in Apalachee Province--with startling results. Small liberties taken with the original translations presented a misleading picture of the Apalachee and their culture. These versions, coupled with evidence recovered from the winter site, give a new view of the impact of Europeans on the native inhabitants of La Florida.
Of particular interest are the discovery, excavation, and preservation of the site. Showing how luck and timing are crucial factors in some important discoveries, Ewen and Hann describe the interaction of archaeologists with private developers, state and city government, and the public and the media. Although it contains information that will be useful to scholars, the book is written in a popular style that makes it accessible to general readers.
Charles R. Ewen, associate professor of anthropology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, is the author of From Spaniard to The Archaeology of Cultural Formation at Puerto Real, Haiti . John H. Hann is a research historian at the San Luis Historical Site and a leading scholar on the missions of Spanish Florida. He is the author of The Land Between the Rivers (UPF, 1988), Missions to the Calusa (UPF, 1991), and History of the Timucua Indians and Missions (UPF, 1996).
239 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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November 24, 2013
The co- author of this book, Charles R. Ewen, happens to be the brother of my kayaking friend Meg Ewen. She mentioned her archaeologist brother the first time we hiked to the Winfield Mounds during a trip on the West Branch of the DuPage River. I was able to find a copy of Ewen’s work on Amazon, and have been looking forward to reading about this time and place about which I’ve known very little. We all hear in school that DeSoto “discovered” the Mississippi River, but that’s about it. Turns out, even scholars have struggled with a dearth of information about the Spanish explorer. Several accounts were written in the 16th century, but the route of the expedition has been sought for many years. Until the work by Charles Ewen and John H. Hann, no actual DeSoto site had ever been documented. Hernando DeSoto among the Apalachee no doubt has scholarly importance, but Ewen and Hann reward even a casual reader like myself with colorful history and a clear description of their scientific work.
This book has three parts. The first is really the tale of locating and preserving the site, which involved a combination of good luck, scholarship, and intuition, employed by scientists as well as citizens with a strong sense of responsibility. Archaeologists had suspected that SeSoto had wintered in 1540 in the Talahassee, Florida area. The histories (nicely summarized by Ewen in a helpful prologue) reported that DeSoto’s force of some 600 men had fought the local Indians and then occupied and fortified their large town, called Anhaica Apalachee. But up to modern times the archaeological record had been sparse in a heavily-populated and –developed area of the Florida State Capital. In 1987, seeing construction about to begin on a large lot near the grounds of former Governor Martin’s residence, Calvin Jones, a Florida archaeologist, asked the construction company for permission to dig some test pits. He expected to find evidence of a late 16th century mission. The work returned results -- but not of mission buildings -- prompting further excavation and broader test borings throughout the area. With the aid of volunteer workers and the cooperation of the developers, artifacts were uncovered that suggested they had found the site of DeSoto’s 1540 winter encampment: chain mail, crossbow darts, and wrought iron nails among increasing ceramic evidence that a large Apalachee town had existed there as well. Once the importance of the site was realized, archaeologists faced the hardly minor problems of funding and securing the excavation.
The good news, of course, was that a large part of the site was preserved as an archeological park, and the dig proceeded under new University of Florida Ph.D Charles Ewen, who had done his dissertation on 16th century Spanish settlement in Haiti. Part II of this book describes the work at the dig as it proceeded, with the typical archaeological methods such as stratigraphy and ceramic analysis helping to date the site and prove it really was DeSoto’s camp. Another trick I had never heard done before was the early use of an 8-inch power auger lowered through a wooden box that would preserve, for detailed analysis, material turned up by the corkscrew blades. This allowed systematic sampling of a large area around the governor’s mansion, and eventually helped identify the great extent of Anhaica Apalachee. As Ewen points out, a modern archaeological dig basically destroys the site as thoroughly as a construction project would, but the exhaustively scientific recording of data makes the difference. The findings of this crew included evidence that substantiated the historic accounts: postholes indicating the dwellings and temples of the large Apalachee settlement; native goods left behind by the fleeing Indians; certain areas of the town that had been changed by the addition of Spanish buildings and defensive structures; European artifacts such as Spanish pottery and coins; and evidence of the horses and pigs DeSoto had brought along.
Part III of the book, by John Hann, contains new translations of the historic documents relevant to the Governor Martin site. These are excerpts from four accounts of DeSoto’s encounter with the Apalachee. They are surprisingly readable, considering the 470-some years that separate us from the authors. The difficulty for me was facing the matter-of-fact brutality employed by the Spaniards in their march through Florida. It’s one thing to read about inhumanity in a history book – quite another to read it in the words of a Spaniard who took part in the slaughter. The account of the “Gentleman of Elvas” was published in 1557, the work of a Portuguese member of DeSoto’s expedition. This valuable account chronicles in some detail the combat and the hardships endured by the men, DeSoto’s dealings with the natives, his strategies and tactics. The narrator, like his Spanish comrades, reveals much of his values by his respect for the courage and fighting spirit of his enemies, while seeming to find nothing wrong with acquisition of the Apalachee’s food and shelter, enslavement of women and children, and torture and execution of captives. An account by Garcilosa de Vega, which appeared in print in Lisbon in 1605, was extremely detailed, based on information direct from soldiers who had been with DeSoto. Another account was by Rodrigo Ranjel, who was DeSoto’s private secretary throughout the campaign; his daily journal contains a wealth of information. The original manuscript has been lost, but a copy was published by a Spanish historian in 1851. The last account was an official report to the crown by Luys Hernandez de Biedma, who was the part of the DeSoto expedition as the king’s agent. Details from these different sources helped researchers zero in on the location of Ahaica Apalachee in terms of description of the topography, distance from the ocean and rivers. Ewen describes archaeology as the completion of a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box. But in this case, at least, these historic descriptions of the winter encampment provided a picture for the archaeologist to refer to in reconstruction of a moment in history.
This book has three parts. The first is really the tale of locating and preserving the site, which involved a combination of good luck, scholarship, and intuition, employed by scientists as well as citizens with a strong sense of responsibility. Archaeologists had suspected that SeSoto had wintered in 1540 in the Talahassee, Florida area. The histories (nicely summarized by Ewen in a helpful prologue) reported that DeSoto’s force of some 600 men had fought the local Indians and then occupied and fortified their large town, called Anhaica Apalachee. But up to modern times the archaeological record had been sparse in a heavily-populated and –developed area of the Florida State Capital. In 1987, seeing construction about to begin on a large lot near the grounds of former Governor Martin’s residence, Calvin Jones, a Florida archaeologist, asked the construction company for permission to dig some test pits. He expected to find evidence of a late 16th century mission. The work returned results -- but not of mission buildings -- prompting further excavation and broader test borings throughout the area. With the aid of volunteer workers and the cooperation of the developers, artifacts were uncovered that suggested they had found the site of DeSoto’s 1540 winter encampment: chain mail, crossbow darts, and wrought iron nails among increasing ceramic evidence that a large Apalachee town had existed there as well. Once the importance of the site was realized, archaeologists faced the hardly minor problems of funding and securing the excavation.
The good news, of course, was that a large part of the site was preserved as an archeological park, and the dig proceeded under new University of Florida Ph.D Charles Ewen, who had done his dissertation on 16th century Spanish settlement in Haiti. Part II of this book describes the work at the dig as it proceeded, with the typical archaeological methods such as stratigraphy and ceramic analysis helping to date the site and prove it really was DeSoto’s camp. Another trick I had never heard done before was the early use of an 8-inch power auger lowered through a wooden box that would preserve, for detailed analysis, material turned up by the corkscrew blades. This allowed systematic sampling of a large area around the governor’s mansion, and eventually helped identify the great extent of Anhaica Apalachee. As Ewen points out, a modern archaeological dig basically destroys the site as thoroughly as a construction project would, but the exhaustively scientific recording of data makes the difference. The findings of this crew included evidence that substantiated the historic accounts: postholes indicating the dwellings and temples of the large Apalachee settlement; native goods left behind by the fleeing Indians; certain areas of the town that had been changed by the addition of Spanish buildings and defensive structures; European artifacts such as Spanish pottery and coins; and evidence of the horses and pigs DeSoto had brought along.
Part III of the book, by John Hann, contains new translations of the historic documents relevant to the Governor Martin site. These are excerpts from four accounts of DeSoto’s encounter with the Apalachee. They are surprisingly readable, considering the 470-some years that separate us from the authors. The difficulty for me was facing the matter-of-fact brutality employed by the Spaniards in their march through Florida. It’s one thing to read about inhumanity in a history book – quite another to read it in the words of a Spaniard who took part in the slaughter. The account of the “Gentleman of Elvas” was published in 1557, the work of a Portuguese member of DeSoto’s expedition. This valuable account chronicles in some detail the combat and the hardships endured by the men, DeSoto’s dealings with the natives, his strategies and tactics. The narrator, like his Spanish comrades, reveals much of his values by his respect for the courage and fighting spirit of his enemies, while seeming to find nothing wrong with acquisition of the Apalachee’s food and shelter, enslavement of women and children, and torture and execution of captives. An account by Garcilosa de Vega, which appeared in print in Lisbon in 1605, was extremely detailed, based on information direct from soldiers who had been with DeSoto. Another account was by Rodrigo Ranjel, who was DeSoto’s private secretary throughout the campaign; his daily journal contains a wealth of information. The original manuscript has been lost, but a copy was published by a Spanish historian in 1851. The last account was an official report to the crown by Luys Hernandez de Biedma, who was the part of the DeSoto expedition as the king’s agent. Details from these different sources helped researchers zero in on the location of Ahaica Apalachee in terms of description of the topography, distance from the ocean and rivers. Ewen describes archaeology as the completion of a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box. But in this case, at least, these historic descriptions of the winter encampment provided a picture for the archaeologist to refer to in reconstruction of a moment in history.
May 17, 2013
A terrific literal mapping out of DeSoto's trek across Florida and his visit near Tallahassee. Very thorough and lots of cross referencing done within the volume itself. The best of this is reading the translated journals of those who chronicled the hike.
The focus is the Christmas encampment near Tallahassee. The well noted archaeological work, what is found, theories based upon mostly empirical data and the journals can ease the reader into a comfort of more historical facts than in some similar works.
In my case, i am sure to return to the journals and re-read them. Parts of it are quite something. At one point a journalist queries as to why, in that God had brought DeSoto to conquer the land for the Kingdom of Spain, the hikers couldn't get the indians to see the conquistador's superiority. Afterall, the Spanish visitors have "cut off their [the indian's] noses and their hands". Why can't they all be friends?, he wonders. I can see how this attitude would greatly perplex those with today's flowery, "reality" television laced and sugary view of the world today.
A definite book to read for better understanding of the impact of the Spanish on the indians in Florida - Despite much of what is going on this year of 2013 in Florida involving something called 'Viva 500' where much of what is written in this book is flipped for seemingly politically correct reasoning. Forgive me if I take my history with more factual accuracy than the fictional white washing today.
The focus is the Christmas encampment near Tallahassee. The well noted archaeological work, what is found, theories based upon mostly empirical data and the journals can ease the reader into a comfort of more historical facts than in some similar works.
In my case, i am sure to return to the journals and re-read them. Parts of it are quite something. At one point a journalist queries as to why, in that God had brought DeSoto to conquer the land for the Kingdom of Spain, the hikers couldn't get the indians to see the conquistador's superiority. Afterall, the Spanish visitors have "cut off their [the indian's] noses and their hands". Why can't they all be friends?, he wonders. I can see how this attitude would greatly perplex those with today's flowery, "reality" television laced and sugary view of the world today.
A definite book to read for better understanding of the impact of the Spanish on the indians in Florida - Despite much of what is going on this year of 2013 in Florida involving something called 'Viva 500' where much of what is written in this book is flipped for seemingly politically correct reasoning. Forgive me if I take my history with more factual accuracy than the fictional white washing today.
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