In May of 1542, Soto sickened and died on the banks of the Mississippi, leaving the command to Luis de Moscoso. When the local Indians suspiciously asked where Soto had gone, Moscoso replied that he had ascended into the sky. In fact, with a ballast of sand, Soto had been surreptitiously cast into the Mississippi River to hide his mortality from the Indians. The humanitarian friar Bartolomé de Las Casas observed, “We do not doubt but that he was buried in hell … for such wickedness.”
