50 Fun Facts About Hernando De Soto

William Powell's huge painting of de Soto reaching the great river hangs in which Washington building?

The US Capitol's Rotunda holds it, the last of eight big history paintings Congress commissioned; the real scene was far less grand, the river first glimpsed through thick forest.

In which Spanish region was de Soto born?

Extremadura was poor, so its young men looked overseas for their fortune; three towns in its province of Badajoz still claim to be de Soto's birthplace.

Which order of knights held de Soto's boyhood home, Jerez de los Caballeros, in the 13th century?

The Knights Templar held the town until the order was dissolved in 1312; de Soto's will asked that he be buried there among his family.

Pedrarias Dávila, the governor who took the teenage de Soto to the Americas, had which famous explorer beheaded in 1519?

Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to reach the Pacific from the Americas, had been promised one of the governor's daughters before Pedrarias had him tried and executed.

De Soto grew rich trading enslaved Indians in which Central American land?

Nicaragua: he helped conquer it in 1524, sat on the town council of León and traded in enslaved Indians, wealth that paid for the ships he later took south.

Which monarch approved de Soto's plan to conquer Florida in 1537?

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, risked nothing: de Soto had to meet every expense himself, and his own rewards were to come out of the colony's income.

Whose conquest of the Inca Empire did de Soto join as a captain?

Francisco Pizarro made him captain of horse and chief lieutenant in return for the ships de Soto had lent to the venture.

Which mountains did de Soto's army cross in the summer of 1540, hunting for gold?

The Appalachians: the woman ruler of Cofitachequi had spoken of gold and silver in the Blue Ridge, and she slipped away from her Spanish captors during the climb.

What game is de Soto said to have taught the captive Atahualpa?

Chess filled the months while the Inca's subjects heaped up his ransom in gold and silver; the two men became friends, and de Soto taught him some Spanish too.

Where was de Soto when the Spanish decided to execute Atahualpa?

Scouting for a rumoured Inca army, he found no trace of one, and rode back to learn that the emperor he had befriended was already dead.

Which post did de Soto hold in 1534, two years into the conquest of the Incas?

Lieutenant governor of Cuzco was his last post in the Inca lands; refused the second-in-command's place on the march to Chile, he packed up his treasure and sailed for Spain.

Which chivalric brotherhood admitted de Soto on his wealthy return to Spain in 1536?

The Order of Santiago made him a knight on his return, and his will asked for its red cross to be laid on the black cloth over his tomb.

Which governorship did de Soto receive in 1537 as his base for conquering Florida?

Cuba was his at once under the royal grant, while Florida's governorship would follow only once he had conquered it, and entirely at his own expense.

Whose tales of surviving years as a castaway in North America fascinated de Soto?

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had just come home from years lost in North America, and reportedly would have joined de Soto himself but for a squabble over his contract.

What had an earlier Spanish expedition done at the 'Bay of Horses', near de Soto's first winter camp?

Eaten its horses: the starving men of the Narváez expedition killed them for food, and de Soto's scouts found the skulls on the beach a decade later.

Where is de Soto generally thought to have landed in May 1539?

Tampa Bay is the usual choice, but the landing camp has never been found, and some historians argue for Charlotte Harbor further down the coast.

What did de Soto name his Florida landing place, first sighted on the feast of Pentecost?

Espíritu Santo, Spanish for the Holy Spirit, honoured the feast day; within months he ordered the garrison he had left there to abandon it and march north to join him.

Juan Ortiz, the castaway who became de Soto's interpreter, told of a rescue later echoed in the story of whom?

Pocahontas: Ortiz said a Florida chief's daughter begged for his life as he lay bound over a fire, and some scholars think John Smith borrowed the tale decades later.

How did the lost Spaniard Juan Ortiz look when de Soto's horsemen found him in Florida?

Naked, holding a bow and arrows, he was nearly speared by a lancer before he made the sign of the cross and stammered a few words of half-forgotten Spanish.

After de Soto died, his successor first tried to lead the army to safety overland, getting as far as which present-day state?

Texas proved too dry and too thinly settled to feed an army that lived by raiding village granaries, so the Spaniards turned back to the river they had left.

De Soto's first winter camp, at the Apalachee capital Anhaica, lies beneath which modern state capital?

Tallahassee: the camp turned up in 1987 about a mile from Florida's capitol, when a state archaeologist spotted Spanish artefacts by chance; a pig's jawbone helped clinch it.

Acipenser desotoi, a big fish of Gulf Coast rivers named in de Soto's honour, is what kind of fish?

A sturgeon: the Gulf sturgeon was named for de Soto in 1955 because he explored the rivers where it spawns, from Louisiana round to Florida's Suwannee.

What did the woman ruler of Cofitachequi give de Soto when his army reached her town in 1540?

Freshwater pearls were the only treasure there: the 'gold' the Spaniards had been promised proved to be copper and the 'silver' sheets of mica.

In which modern state do most scholars place Cofitachequi, the chiefdom de Soto reached in 1540?

South Carolina: its main town is usually placed near present-day Camden, and by the time Juan Pardo's Spaniards arrived in 1566 the chiefdom appears to have lost much of its former power.

Which paramount chief lured de Soto to the fortified town of Mabila in 1540?

Tuskaloosa, seized as a hostage, promised the Spaniards supplies at Mabila and sent runners ahead to fill the town with warriors; the city of Tuscaloosa is named for him.

The battle of Mabila in 1540, among the bloodiest ever fought between Europeans and Native Americans, took place in which present-day state?

Alabama: the palisaded town burned down with the Spaniards' baggage inside, and where exactly it stood has been argued over for centuries.

After the costly battle at Mabila, what did de Soto do when told his supply ships had arrived?

He hid the news and marched inland, unwilling to go home a failure; the fleet waited in vain, and his battered army fought on for three more years.

The modern economist Hernando de Soto, author of The Mystery of Capital, shares the explorer's name and comes from which country?

Peru, the land his namesake helped to conquer, is home to the economist, who argues that poor people prosper once they hold legal title to their homes and businesses.

In 1541 de Soto's army became the first Europeans known to have crossed which river?

The Mississippi was to de Soto mainly an obstacle: his chroniclers just called it the Río Grande, and it cost him a month of barge-building before a crossing made at night.

At Casqui in 1541, de Soto raised a tall cross after the chief asked for help with what?

A drought was starving the town, the chief said; the Spaniards made the cross from two pines, and the downpour that followed did wonders for de Soto's reputation.

Of what did de Soto die on 21 May 1542?

A fever, perhaps malaria, took him within days; knowing he was dying, he called his officers to his bedside and named the man who would lead them on.

What did de Soto tell local peoples he was?

An immortal Son of the Sun, he claimed, which left his men a problem when he died: how to explain away a god who was plainly mortal.

What did de Soto's men do with his body?

Sank it in the river, by night: they had buried him in the camp first, then feared the fresh earth would betray the secret, so they dug him up and weighted the shroud with sand.

What did de Soto's estate include at auction after his death, besides slaves and three horses?

Seven hundred hogs: the herd he brought along as a walking larder multiplied on the march, because he let his men eat pork only when the maize ran out.

Whom did the dying de Soto choose to command the expedition after him?

Luis de Moscoso Alvarado had been demoted for negligence a year earlier, so the choice surprised the officers; easygoing and popular, he brought half the army out alive.

In 1543 the survivors of de Soto's expedition finally reached Spanish territory in which present-day country?

Mexico: 311 survivors came ashore at the Pánuco River that September, where, by one account, they fell to their knees and kissed the sand.

How did the survivors of de Soto's expedition finally escape?

In homemade boats: seven small vessels, knocked together over a winter by soldiers turned shipwrights, carried about half the original army to safety.

Which chronicler's account of de Soto's expedition, La Florida, do historians treat as closer to literature than history?

Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, never saw Florida: the son of a conquistador and an Inca princess, he wrote decades later from old soldiers' memories and embroidered freely.

Who translated the Gentleman of Elvas's chronicle of de Soto's expedition into English in 1609?

Richard Hakluyt called his version Virginia Richly Valued, using de Soto's Florida to advertise the riches lying next door to England's new colony at Jamestown.

The 'Gentleman of Elvas', whose eyewitness account of de Soto's march was the first to be printed, came from which country?

Portugal: Elvas is a town on its Spanish border, and the knight's account, printed at Évora in 1557, beat every Spanish version into print; his name has never been discovered.

Near which Florida city does the De Soto National Memorial commemorate the 1539 landing?

Bradenton: the memorial stands where the Manatee River meets the bay, though historians do not agree that de Soto's army actually came ashore there.

Which carmaker sold the DeSoto brand from 1928 to 1961?

Chrysler created DeSoto in 1928 to take on Pontiac and Studebaker in the mid-price class, and built more than two million of the cars before dropping the name.

The Hernando de Soto Bridge carries Interstate 40 over the great river at which city?

Memphis: locals call it the M Bridge for its double-arch outline, and it opened in 1973, upstream of the stretch where de Soto's army is thought to have crossed.

Whom did de Soto leave to govern in his place when he sailed for Florida in 1539?

His wife, Isabel de Bobadilla, governed in his name for four years, one of the first women to run a Spanish colony; she never saw him again.

De Soto's fleet left Spain in 1538 from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the port at the mouth of which river?

The Guadalquivir runs down from Seville, where the teenage de Soto had first signed on for the Indies; this time he sailed in command of more than 600 volunteers.

In de Soto's day, how much did the Spanish name 'La Florida' cover?

The whole Southeast: Spain's 'La Florida' had no fixed borders and took in most of what is now the southern United States, which is how a Florida expedition could end a thousand miles from the peninsula.

In spring 1541 de Soto demanded 200 porters from which people, who attacked his camp instead?

The Chickasaw crept up at night with fire hidden in clay pots and burned the camp, killing a dozen Spaniards and dozens of horses before the survivors could arm.

After crossing the great river in 1541, de Soto's men became the first Europeans to set foot in which present-day state?

Arkansas: they wandered it for almost a year, and the chiefs and towns named in their journals are the first recorded names of anyone living there.

To hide de Soto's death, what did his men tell the local chief had become of him?

He had risen into the sky, as he had done before, said his successor, and would be gone some time; the chief was not fooled for long, and the army soon moved on.

In his will, what did de Soto ask to have built for his tomb in his home town's church?

A chapel, with funds for masses to be said there for his soul; instead he lies an ocean away from Spain, in a grave that nobody has ever found.