Hernando de Soto, at the age of…

Hernando de Soto, at the age of eighteen or nineteen, had sailed to the New World in 1514 with the first Governor of Panama, Pedrarias Dávila.

Brave leadership, unwavering loyalty, and clever schemes for the extortion of native villages for their captured chiefs, had become de Soto's hallmark during the conquest of Central America.

Having gained fame as an excellent horseman, fighter, and tactician, he is notorious for the extreme brutality with which he has wielded these gifts.

Hearing Cabeza de Vaca’s stories of gold found routinely by the native peoples along the Chatahoochee River north of present Atlanta, De Soto had led his five hundred-man expeditionary force from the Florida Panhandle in the spring of 1540 through present Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee.

Continuing his ruthless practice of ransoming captured village chiefs for food and sex slaves, de Soto turns south toward the Gulf of Mexico to meet two ships bearing fresh supplies from Havana.

En route, a river in southern Alabama leads de Soto into the fortified town of Mauvila, or Maubilla (near present Mobile).

The Spaniards, ambushed on October 18 by the Mobilians under the leadership of Tuskaloosa, manage to fight their way out, then attack and burn the city to the ground.

Twenty Spaniards die and most are wounded during this nine-hour encounter, and twenty more will die during the next few weeks.

The Native American warriors of this area, numbering between two thousand and six thousand, die fighting in the fields, by fire in the city, or suicide.