By Natalie van Hoose
Archaeologist Dennis Blanton organized the salon to gather de Soto experts from across the Southeast to review the state of archaeological scholarship; analyze the cache of new artifacts; reflect on persistent problems; and plot future lines of inquiry.
Photo credit: Jett Loe / TAC
A road-killed hog lay near the turn for Deer Run Plantation, its pink underbelly showing through black bristles. Feral hogs, destructive invaders throughout the South, are often said to be descendants of pigs brought by Hernando de Soto in one of many pieces of national lore that surround the 16th-century Spanish conquistador and his 4,000-mile trek deep into the American interior. It was a cool March evening; woodsmoke and cricket-song rose in the air. And 11 archaeologists from across the Southeast were gathering at Deer Run, a country estate outside Albany, Georgia, in the latest attempt to run one of the most vexingly elusive figures in their field to ground.
In the nearly 500 years after his death on the banks of the Mississippi River, evidence of de Soto has been scarce in the archaeological record, even as historical records of his 1539-1543 entrada abound. The pugilistic conquistador led some 600 men, numerous horses and pigs, and Indigenous captives—chained together and forced to carry the army’s heavy equipment—across about a quarter of North America, in pursuit of wealth and power. Eyewitnesses recorded the journey in chronicles that detail cultures, events, dates, geography, flora, and fauna—in some cases, providing the only surviving documentation of Indigenous communities who encountered the European intruders. Yet for hundreds of years, artifacts linked to de Soto’s expedition have been extremely rare. Even the entrada’s route remains in hot dispute. The Apalachee capital of Anhaica in present-day Tallahassee, where the Spaniards spent their first winter, has earned widespread consensus among archaeologists that “de Soto slept here.” But agreement doesn’t come easy. “It’s kind of mystifying why it’s so darn hard to find evidence of a 600-person army,” said Dennis Blanton, an associate professor of anthropology at James Madison University.
That’s now changing. Over the past 12 years, archaeologists have discovered hundreds of 16th-century Spanish artifacts in the field, thanks to metal detection—a technology long stigmatized due to its association with relic-hunting. Metal detectors are uncovering iron chisels, blades, punctured pendants, jangly copper tinkler cones, falconer’s bells, pieces of chain, and many other objects associated with early Spanish exploration and trade. The deluge of finds is allowing archaeologists to study the evolution of de Soto’s entrada over time, as well as Indigenous responses to the sudden incursion of Europeans and foreign wares. But as the artifact count mounts, it raises complex questions about how to distinguish the signature of de Soto from other Spanish expeditions and the dynamics of Native-to-Native trade. Blanton, sensing the field had reached an inflection point, proposed a salon. He envisioned a weekend over which de Soto experts from across the Southeast would review the state of archaeological scholarship; analyze the cache of new artifacts; reflect on persistent problems; and plot future lines of inquiry—all face to face. While the salon’s aim was to discuss and debate the meaning of the rapidly growing collection of 16th-century artifacts, the larger prize would be a deeper understanding of Spanish exploration and early colonization on a regional scale. “If we get the de Soto story right, we have this opportunity to reconstruct, in a sense, Native American cultural geography,” Blanton said. At his invitation, a band of archaeologists, some of whom had spent half a century chasing de Soto, assembled for a weekend at Deer Run, the private hunting grounds and farm of Doug Ivester, a former CEO of Coca-Cola, and his wife Kay. The Fernbank Museum of Natural History co-sponsored the salon. At an outdoor dinner of barbeque and Brunswick stew, Blanton faced a cumulative 492 years of archaeological expertise seated at the picnic tables before him. “I hope that this is sort of a crucible…that some sparks will be struck, and some magic will ensue,” Blanton told the group in his introductory remarks. “What that looks like, I don’t know.”
Deer Run was a strategic setting. The 25,000-acre property encompasses multiple well-preserved archaeological sites, including a trio of massive mounds and the remains of a 16th-century Indigenous village that, according to Blanton’s research, are the vestiges of Capachequi, a polity previously known only from the de Soto chronicles. The alignment between the entrada’s descriptions of Capachequi, the sites’ distance from Tallahassee, and the presence of 16th-century Spanish artifacts comprise a near slam-dunk case that the village is where de Soto made his first major stopover after overwintering in Florida—another dot on the map of the contested route. Capachequi also offers an opportunity to understand a southeastern Indigenous culture on its own terms.
This is an excerpt of The Hunt for Hernando de Soto Heats Up in American Archaeology, Fall 2024 | Vol. 28 No. 3. Subscribe to read the full text.
FURTHER RESEARCH
Archaeological identification of historically referenced sixteenth-century Native provinces: the example of Soto’s Capachequi, Dennis Blanton (2023)
The Rocky Road from Tampa to Chicasa: Hernando de Soto’s Tribulations in the Interior Southeast, Lecture by Charles Cobb, Florida Museum of Natural History (2019)
The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1539-1543, two-volume set, editors Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon James Knight, Edward C. Moore (1995), University of Alabama Press
