The Hernando de Soto expedition: history, historiography, and "discovery" in the Southeast 9780803271227, 9780803221574

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
List of Illustrations (page xix)
List of Tables (page xx)
Editor's Preface (page xxi)
Introduction (page xxiii)
Part 1. The Sources
An Official's Report: The Hernández de Biedma Account (Ida Altman, page 3)
The Incestuous Soto Narratives (Patricia Galloway, page II)
The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher (Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl, page 45)
La Florida del Inca: Garcilaso's Literary Sources (Lee Dowling, page 98)
"So Unbelievable It Has to Be True": Inca Garcilaso in Two Worlds (David Henige, page 155)
Part 2. The Expedition
Hernando de Soto before Florida: A Narrative (Curt Lamar, page 181)
Hernando de Soto and His Florida Fantasy (Ignacio Avellaneda, page 207)
Soto's Problems of Orientation: Maps, Navigation, and Instruments in the Florida Expedition (Robert S. Weddle, page 219)
Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida: How Good Were Estimates? (Ross Hassig, page 234)
Of Roads and Reifications: The Interpretation of Historical Roads and the Soto Entrada (Jack D. Elliott Jr., page 246)
Disease and the Soto Entrada (Ann F. Ramenofsky and Patricia Galloway, page 259)
Part 3. The Expedition and Indian History
Conjoncture and Longue Durée: History, Anthropology, and the Hernando de Soto Expedition (Patricia Galloway, page 283)
From Chiefdom to Tribe in Northeast Mississippi: The Soto Expedition as a window on a Culture in Transition (Jay K. Johnson, page 295)
The Historical Significance of the Soto Route (Charles Hudson, page 313)
Part 4. The Expedition and Euro-American History
The Expedition of Hernando de Soto and the Spanish Struggle for Justice (Ralph H. Vigil, page 329)
Law, Legitimacy, and the Legacy of Hernando de Soto (Lawrence J. Goodman and John R. Wunder, page 355)
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés: Chronicler of the Indies (Juan Bautista de Avalle-Arce, page 369)
The Representation of Violence in the Soto Narratives (José Rabasa, page 380)
Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto (Patricia Galloway, page 410)
Bibliography (page 437)
The Contributors (page 473)
Index (page 477)

Citation preview

The Hernando de Soto Expedition

OTHER TITLES BY PATRICIA GALLOWAY AVAILABLE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS

Choctaw Genesis, I500-1700 The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex Artifacts and Analysis

The Hernando de Soto Expedition History, Historiography, and

“Discovery” in the Southeast

Edited by Patricia Galloway

With a new preface by the editor

University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London

Publication of this book was assisted by a grant from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Culture and Education and United States’ Universities. © 1997 by the University of Nebraska Press Preface to the New Edition © 2005 by the Board of

Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America ©

First Nebraska paperback printing: 2005 Library of Congress Cataloging-

in-Publication Data The Hernando de Soto expedition: history, historiography, and “discovery” in the Southeast / edited by Patricia Galloway; with a new preface by the editor.—Bison Books ed.

p. cm. Originally published: c1997. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-1I 3: 978-0-8032-7122-7 (pbk.: alk. paper}

ISBN-10: 0-8032-7122-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Soto, Hernando de, ca 1500-15 42.

2. Southern States—Discovery and exploration—Spanish—Historiography. I. Galloway, Patricia Kay.

EI25.S7H473 2005 970.01 '6'092—dc22 2005022125

Patricia Galloway Preface to the New Edition

Impact of the Book: Reviews, 1997-2003

As several observers noted when The Hernando de Soto Expedition first came out, the book represented an effort to place the study of the Soto expedition on a firmer historiographical footing, one that would not be disregarded by a broad range of disciplines that had concerned themselves with this chapter of North American history. A more determined aim for the book was to delay the confident positivist march toward a seamless narrative of the expedition (this time bolstered by archaeology)—to call a time-out from yet another Euroamerican reconstruction of other peoples’ history privileging the biased witness of European testimony. Nearly ten years since its date of publication, it is clear that the book as a whole, and a good number of its constituent essays, have indeed had an impact: it has been read and used and adopted at a time when history, ethnohistory, archaeology, and anthropology have all been involved in a reflexive examination of their epistemological and discursive practices. The story of that impact begins with the official reception of the book as mediated by book reviews in journals—academic and popular, revered and obscure. The Hernando de Soto Expedition was published in 1997. Most reviews appeared in 1998 (11) and 1999 (8), while outliers appeared in 2000 (4) and even in 2003 (1).! The reviews appeared in general regional magazines (2); historical journals (17), including journals published by state historical societies in the Southeast, specialized journals (including top-tier publications), and two international journals; and the same range of archaeological and anthropological journals (4). A list of the reviews is included at the end of this preface.

Eight of the reviews, not surprisingly, were written by scholars identified with the area of exploration or ethnohistorical research, while others were written by scholars less familiar with the subject matter but not with the methods addressed. The familiar trope of deploring the inconsistency

vi Preface to the New Edition

and/or variable quality of a volume of collected essays—which seems to have

become an ineradicable meme even in the face of a growing emphasis on multivocality in historical writing—was countered by several reviews that found the book admirably organized; some reviewers singled out for praise the very essays that others found marginal. Full reviews appearing in major journals (American Anthropology, Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Journal of Southern History, and Southeastern Archaeology) were, in general, more critical; and these, without exception, were interested in and praised the critical methodological focus of the book, even when they had issues with points made by individual authors. Because The Hernando de Soto Expedition was an intervention in an ongoing debate about the usefulness of narrative chronicle evidence to the reconstruction of a positive history of events, review authors’ own positions in this debate made them more or less sympathetic to the overall skeptical thrust of the book. With one possible exception, no reviewer completely rejected the book or its premises, and many accorded it high praise. Ironically, because it appeared the same year as Charles Hudson's Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun (which carries a rejoinder to this text in an appendix because it engages at many points with the underlying methods used in the reconstruction of the Soto route), it was reviewed together with Hudson’s book in five cases and with Hudson’s and other books on similar themes in three other cases.” One reviewer remarked that it was a pity this book did not come out earlier, so as to enter the debate earlier; and another wondered whether the contributors had read other collections and documentary publications. In fact, I as editor did make every effort to work with the authors on this matter and to have my own work acknowledge and connect with other works that were coming out as the editorial process unfolded. In the bibliography that accompanies this edition—answering the complaint of a lack of one from two reviewers—it will be obvious that this was the case. (We apologize to reviewers for the hard labor they incur for accepting a book

for review that has endnotes rather than footnotes and recognize that they may not always read every note!) It remains the case, however, that in the context of the long list of Soto-centric publications that appeared during the middle to late nineties, this book took a unique critical standpoint, although in the broader discourse about conquest, borderlands, and Native American history it conformed to emergent methods and issues. The Making of the Book, 1991-97

Just to go behind the scenes for a moment, it may be of interest to the reader to know just why the book was so long in the making. This will be no news to any editor of a proceedings volume—and such readers can skip

Preface to the New Edition vii

this section—but it is an interesting reflection on the making of knowledge in history and the social sciences and a coda on the effects of centennial celebrations. As an employee of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History interested in colonial history, I was the designated commem-

orative celebration organizer, and my preference in this area was to use such “celebrations” as an excuse to move scholarly enterprises ahead. This I had done already in 1982 for the tricentennial of the La Salle expedition, mobilizing the resources of the Mississippi Historical Society (MHs) to bring in speakers for the March meeting and obligate those speakers to provide written essays. Additional essays were solicited to fill in the blanks that could not be addressed in the scope of one two-day meeting. The result was La Salle and His Legacy: Frenchmen and Indians in the Lower Mississippi

Valley, which is a volume very similar to this in its careful attention to texts and new archaeological findings.* Because that volume was published by the University Press of Mississippi, whose staff I could drive across town

to consult with at any time, and because my employment at the time was devoted solely to French colonial scholarship and editing, La Salle and His Legacy came out at the end of the year in which the meeting was held, barely

ten months later. Although the La Salle tricentennial model was reused for the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Soto expedition (which itself was riding on the Columbus quincentenary, such as it was, as a more relevant focus for states in the American South and the Mississippi Valley), conditions had changed rather dramatically in the intervening ten years: the topic itself was of greater national interest; contestation of Euroamerican discourse about exploration and conquest history had increased exponentially; I had the opportunity to work with the University of Nebraska Press, which was more specifically focused on ethnohistory; and my own professional duties had changed, though most of my interests had not. Once again an MHS meeting became the venue for new scholarly papers, with additional support from the Mississippi Humanities Council for honoraria and travel; and once again I was able to solicit papers that would address additional issues. By this time I knew more people and had more contacts; I had met some scholars as a result of serving as Mississippi’s deputy representative on the regional De Soto Trail Commission. Finally, there was more critical scholarship on the Soto expedition available and already having an impact thanks to the work being done by Charles Hudson and his students. This meant that I had more material to choose from and also that I could cast a wider net by, in effect, commissioning studies. In my current occupation of archival educator I am happy to say that the files of the press and my own files make it possible to reconstruct the chain of events that led to the volume’s publication.

viii Preface to the New Edition

June 1991 Book proposal submitted July 1992 Initial submission reviewed March 1993 Full manuscript mailed to the press November 1993 Publication approved February 1996 Revisions completed; final manuscript mailed to the press

April 1996 Copyediting began June 1996 Copyedits sent to contributors for comment August 1996 Edited manuscript returned to the press September 1996 Copyediting completed October 1996 Production (design and typesetting) began February 1997 Final galleys mailed to the press

March 1997 Index completed Why did it take twenty-six months to complete revisions and the second review of the book? Some of the reasons were personal. In 1990-91 I was completing the first draft of Choctaw Genesis on my own time. My responsibilities at work had evolved, and I had way more to do than in 1982. I was

now manager of information technology for the Department of Archives and History as well as in charge of special projects (this was not the only quincentenary project), so my administrative duties had increased significantly. As an editor I was editing Mississippi Archaeology twice a year and the Proceedings of the French Colonial Historical Society once. During the 1993~94 school year I was in Chapel Hill beginning my quixotic pursuit of a PhD in anthropology (and coincidentally completing the editing of Choctaw Genesis}, carrying a full load of core and seminar courses and trying to keep up with students nearly half my age. In spite of the heroic efforts of Altamese Wash, my assistant in charge of file preparation, the project had to fit in with all of the other things that were going on and moved in steps that focused more on quarters than months or weeks.

Another part of the delay was due to the absence of a technology now taken for granted: I and most of the contributors did not have access to the Internet until the middle 1990s at the earliest (historians at least can recall that they were seldom the first to get access on college campuses). So although nearly all of the contributions were made in digital form and many of us had fax machines at our disposal, contributions were not emailed to me, and the editorial process itself was still telephone and paper based. In other words, communication during most of the genesis period for the book was still moving at the more leisurely speed of the U.S. mail or, at best, of one of the express services (even overnight isn’t as good as instant, particularly when some change must be made and the process repeated). I could not just jump in the car and drive to Lincoln in a few minutes to speed

Preface to the New Edition ix

things along, even if the production schedule of a larger press had not been too complex for that. Finally, I had to work with other people’s research schedules. One good example is the work of Martin Malcom Elbl and Ivana Elbl, whose remarkable learning on the subject of the Portuguese exploration literature I was fortunate enough to include as a result of a fortuitous meeting with Ivana at the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies conference in New Orleans in April 1990. Although these two scholars had produced a paper in time for the MHs conference, their critical approach to the question of literary sources for the Fidalgo de Elvas account, so crucial for understanding the Soto expedition, was so new that the couple wanted to do more research. In fact, as the project went on they produced a major revision of their initial views. The result, one of the most widely cited essays in the volume, was clearly worth waiting for. More disappointing were my efforts to obtain new scholarship on Oviedo and his sources for the Soto expedition. Through contacts I learned of several scholars working on Oviedo editions or studies of Oviedo sources, but all those I talked to were in the early stages of their research or were not interested in this part of Oviedo’s work. In the end I obtained contributions from several scholars who could provide background on Oviedo and a critique of his work’s effects, but to cover this important source I had to write about it myself. Finally, I did in fact wait to see the results of other projects, hoping that something in the way of new critical scholarship on sources would emerge. I was personally disappointed in the De Soto Chronicles project, which I had hoped would provide not only consistent translations by the same hand but transcriptions or at least reprints of the original Spanish and Portuguese. * Neither were included, although the publication did assemble useful ancillary essays. I felt there was little point in going back to edit scholars’ contributions to cite these translated texts since our interest and focus was on the original languages. Impact of the Book: Citations and Areas of Research

Certainly one of the most significant things this book provides is to put into the hands of archaeologists and historians alike a means for judging the sources themselves. I remain unreconstructedly opposed to the a la carte method of historical writing that draws one item from column A and another from column B, without telling the reader that the column B choice

just (somehow) tastes better with the first item than with the column A choice the chef intended—especially when we are completely dependent upon the chef’s intentions for the existence of the food at all. The essays

x Preface to the New Edition

on sources that I was able to secure from Altman, the Elbls, Dowling, and Henige (an internationally recognized expert, by the way, on oral tradition

and how it gets into written form) provide a depth and sophistication of analysis and sourcing that were previously unavailable for these materials. Until (and even when} we have the competent critical edition of the sources for which we are still waiting, this group of papers will remain significant as a convenient compendium. This fact was also recognized by reviewers, even

those with more positivist leanings who admitted to a little queasiness at the textual critique—which they tended to damn or trivialize with that scary

word “deconstruction” in spite of the fact that most of the critique is no more than the disciplined source criticism historians learned long ago from biblical scholarship and that they often use when they are conversant with the embedding culture of their period and can actually read the languages of the sources. On the other hand, one reviewer especially interested in the Native American perspective called for more, not less, textual critique. Many reviewers found that the book’s interdisciplinarity added not only to its depth and complexity but, ironically perhaps, to its interest to a wide range of readers. As the book was put together, I found it vital to call on experts from many fields to undertake studies that historians or archaeologists had been unable or unwilling to do or that had not been undertaken for this particular expedition and region. This was especially true with respect to the critical evaluation of the sources themselves, but it also applied to the “microhistorical” essays about the expedition. For example, I obtained an essay from Ross Hassig, whose work on trails and travel in colonial Mexico made him particularly well placed to address the so-called problem of the Spanish league. Ann Ramenofsky was persuaded to join me in working again on the topic of disease, this time to compare the possible effects of diseases

in people and in Spanish-owned animals over the years-long course of the expedition. Robert Weddle, having spent years in the study of the Gulf of Mexico borderlands and the surveying and navigational instruments that supported it, agreed to try to answer the question of just how much useful information the expedition members could really have had about where they were at any given time, even when they did write something down. Jay Johnson was prevailed upon to expand on current archaeological work in cooperation with the Chickasaw Nation to address the complex problem of the impact of the expedition on Native American political structures and to critique what were at the time the commonly accepted stagist theories of Mississippian devolution. And for the many readers who asked the question “Who were these guys anyway?” the late Ignacio Avellaneda wrote about the “army” as a whole, while Curt Lamar, John Wunder, and Lawrence Goodman told us more about Soto himself, his career, and its impact on some of his nearest and dearest.

Preface to the New Edition xi

I have increasingly felt that other issues needed to be addressed over and above any interest we may have in “what happened.” The most obvious manifestation of this concern was in my own essay that ends the book—an attempt to figure out why in our suddenly heritage-obsessed world we care so much about something like the Soto expedition and why we choose the versions of the stories we want to tell about it in the present. But there was more driving my question: I wanted to have the carping ignorance of “things were different then so you can’t judge them by today’s standards” addressed in this context too. I was unable to persuade Lewis Hanke to emerge from retirement and address the sixteenth-century view of the morality of the Soto entrada itself, but Ralph Vigil and José Rabasa were both prepared to weigh in and tackle different aspects of the question. As those of us attempting to make our way as humanists or social scientists in today’s large universities can attest, the machinery of citation analysis in the humanities and social sciences is woefully inadequate in comparison to that of the sciences. It is not possible to provide any accurate account of the impact of the reviews and the book itself simply because so many

citations appear in books that are not indexed or in journals that are not part of the main indexing process. In my own reading of relevant subsequent works and in my examination of citations of my own works, I have noticed that this volume is cited most frequently, at least partly because there are more authors and more topics to interest readers. I have also been gratified

to notice that, as the reviewers predicted, some essays from this volume are consistently cited along with Hudson’s Knights of Spain whenever the Soto expedition itself is at issue, and the volume is likely to be cited alone when the critical reading of texts as part of an ethnohistorical or historical archaeological enterprise is at issue. In 2002 the Galloway and Ramenofsky essay on diseases led to a notable mention in Charles Mann’s cover study

on the Americas in 1491 for Atlantic Monthly.° Thanks to Google it is possible to know that essays from the book have even begun to be assigned for student reading on archaeological and historical syllabi in the academy. Finally, certainly due at least in part to this book, I have myself received a lot of books on this and other explorations to review, and, ironically, will soon publish a paper (written for the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of La Florida del Ynca) about an unsuspected influence of Garcilaso de la Vega’s account of the expedition on John Swanton’s understanding of the historic location of Native Americans. This volume only began to lay the tough groundwork needed to bring

to bear on the Soto expedition all of the best methods of historical, archaeological, literary, and cultural analysis that we have at our disposal, but I hope that at least next time a Soto centennial rolls around (2041)— assuming, sadly, that new editions of the sources in the original languages

xii Preface to the New Edition

have not been achieved—the book might ground a grant proposal justifying completion of that task. I hope now that the broader distribution of the book in paperback form, with the addition of a bibliography to improve it as a scholarly resource, will add to that impetus or even make it unnecessary. Notes 1. By far the majority of the reviews cited and listed here were collected by the publisher through the usual review-elicitation process, while a few more were uncovered through online searches. It is likely that others exist and were not discovered, but this list is thought to be representative. 2. Charles M. Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the.South’s Ancient Chiefdoms (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997). 3. Patricia Galloway, ed., La Salle and His Legacy: Frenchmen and Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1982). The echo in the title of John Francis McDermott's The French in the Mississippi Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965) and Frenchmen and French Ways in the Mississippi Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969) represents their inspiration for the pattern of this book. 4. Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon James Knight, Jr., and Edward C. Moore, eds., The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 15391543 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993). 5. Charles C. Mann, “1491,” Atlantic Monthly, March 2002, pp. 41-53. The reference to our work is found on page 45, accompanied by a caricature of conquistadors herding pigs over whom hover several flies.

Reviews of The Hernando de Soto Expedition 1998

Archaeology/Anthropology American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (September); reviewed, with Knights of Spain, by George Sabo III (University of Arkansas). American Antiquity 63, no. 3 (July); book note by Sissel Schroeder (University of Wisconsin). Southeastern Archaeology 17, no. 2 (Winter); review by Gregory Waselkov (University of Southern Alabama).

General Choice 35, no. 7 (March), brief note by M. A. Burkholder (University of Missouri-St. Louis).

. Preface to the New Edition xiii History Chronique 60, no. 2; brief note [author not named]. Florida Historical Quarterly 77, no. 2 (Fall); review by Amy Turner Bushnell (College of Charleston). Georgia Historical Quarterly 82, no. 3 (Fall); review, with Knights of Spain, by Fred Lamar Pearson (Valdosta State University). Imperial Commonwealth History 26, no. 3 (September); review by Glyndwr Williams (Queen Mary and Westfield College, London). Journal de la Société des Américanistes 84, no. 1; review by Eric Taladoire (Université de Paris I).

New Mexico Historical Review 73, no. 3 (July); review by William H. Broughton (Arizona Historical Society). Southern Historian ‘19; review, with Knights of Spain, by Thomas S. Jennings {University of Alabama).

1999

Archaeology/Anthropology Journal of Anthropological Research 55, no. 3 (Fall); review by Jerald Milanich (University of Florida).

General Mississippi Quarterly 53, no. 4 (Fall); review, with Knights of Spain, by John Juricek (Emory University).

History Alabama Review 52, no. 4 (October); review, with Knights of Spain, by Kathryn E. Holland Braund (Auburn University). American Indian Culture and Research Journal 23, no. 1; review by James A. Lewis (Western Carolina University). The Americas 55, no. 3 (January); review, with Knights of Spain and David Ewing Duncan, Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas (1995; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), by Lawrence Clayton (University of Alabama). Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30, no. 3 (Winter), review by Jon Muller (Southern Illinois University}. Journal of Southeast Georgia History; review, with Knights of Spain, by James J. Miller (Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research). Journal of Southern History 65, no. 1 (February); review by Jane E. Dysart (University of West Florida).

xiv Preface to the New Edition

2000

History Ethnohistory 47, no. 3-4 (Summer); review, with Knights of Spain and three other books, by Cynthia Radding (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). Gulf South Historical Review 15, no. 2 (Spring}; review by James E. Lake (University of Miami}.

Hispanic American Historical Review 80, no. 3 (August); review, with Jerald T. Milanich, Florida’s Indians from Ancient Times to the Present (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), by Patricia Wickman (Seminole Tribe}. Journal of American History 86, no. 4 (March); review by Robert L. Gold (Museum of the Florida Keys).

2003

History Latin American Perspectives 30, no. 6 (November); review, with Knights of Spain and three other books, by Steven Scheuler (Valdosta State University).

Historiography is an unceasing struggle against our tendency to anachronic misinterpretation. Paul Veyne, Writing History

Contents

List of Illustrations ix List of Tables x

Editor’s Preface xi Introduction Xili Part 1. The Sources Ida Altman

An Official’s Report: The Hernandez de Biedma Account 3 Patricia Galloway

The Incestuous Soto Narratives II Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher A5 Lee Dowling

La Florida del Inca: Garcilaso’s Literary Sources 98 David Henige “So Unbelievable It Has to Be True”: Inca

Garcilaso in Two Worlds IS§ Part 2. The Expedition Curt Lamar

Hernando de Soto before Florida: A Narrative 181 | Ignacio Avellaneda

Hernando de Soto and His Florida Fantasy 207 Robert S. Weddle Soto’s Problems of Orientation: Maps, Navigation,

and Instruments in the Florida Expedition 219 Ross Hassig Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida:

How Good Were Estimates? 234 Jack D. Elliott Jr. Of Roads and Reifications: The Interpretation of

Historical Roads and the Soto Entrada 246 Ann F. Ramenofsky and Patricia Galloway

Disease and the Soto Entrada 259 Part 3. The Expedition and Indian History Patricia Galloway Conjoncture and Longue Durée: History, Anthropology,

and the Hernando de Soto Expedition 283

XVili Contents

Jay K. Johnson

From Chiefdom to Tribe in Northeast Mississippi: The Soto Expedition as a Window ona Culturein Transition 295 Charles Hudson

The Historical Significance of the Soto Route 313 Part 4. The Expedition and Euro-American History Ralph H. Vigil

The Expedition of Hernando de Soto and the ,

Spanish Struggle for Justice 329

Lawrence J. Goodman and John R. Wunder

Law, Legitimacy, and the Legacy of Hernando de Soto 355 Juan Bautista de Avalle-Arce Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés:

Chronicler of the Indies 369 José Rabasa

The Representation of Violence in the Soto Narratives 380 Patricia Galloway

Bibliography 437 The Contributors 473

Index 477 Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto 410

Illustrations

Astrolabes from Soto’s time 225 Earthworks in the eastern United States 315

Site clusters comprising the chiefdom of Coosa 317 The route of the Hernando de Soto expedition 320 Powell’s DeSoto’s Discovery of the Mississippi A415 Alaux’s painting of Soto discovering the Mississippi 420 Soto designs proposed for post office

in Jackson, Mississippi 423 Wedding of Alfonso Ortiz and Soawana A25 Handbill from the Desoto Committee

Coahoma County, Mississippi 428

Tables Word bytes from the chroniclers on Casqui and Pacaha 166

Arriero journey from Mexico City to Veracruz, 1803 239

Diseases that originated in Europe 263 Diseases added to expedition in Cuba 264 Probable diseases transmitted to Southeastern natives 274

Editor’s Pretace

When I first came to the study of the Hernando de Soto expedition some ten years ago as an ethnohistorian, I was appalled by the general lack of modern historiography of the expedition, and I spent a good deal of time carping loudly to that effect. I soon realized, however, that I ought to stop complaining unless I had something constructive to offer, and so I decided to try to find a way to do just that. I found experts and pestered them until they consented to help by carrying out original research to fill in yet another puzzle piece. The Mississippi Humanities Council funded travel and honoraria for many of these contributors to present their papers and exchange ideas at the 1991 meeting of the Mississippi Historical Society; the Mississippi Historical Society graciously provided honoraria for some of the remaining contributors. Other papers were offered as news of the project spread. Elbert Hilliard, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, gave this project a home as part of the department’s activities for the Columbus Quincentenary. Altamese Wash, secretary to the Special Projects Section, did the initial preparation of the electronic text in her usual efficient style. Ihope that the result is a workable historiographical prolegomenon to the study of the expedition and especially of the people whose lives it touched. Together with the recent publication of translations of many of the sources, this volume should serve as a jumping-off point for the next round of Soto scholarship—in fifty more years. Patricia Galloway

Introduction

In the press to learn new things about where Hernando de Soto went in time to commemorate his having gone there, most recent scholarship on the Florida expedition has ignored a good number of historiographical issues that have never been resolved. Most crucially, we still do not possess critical modern editions, in their language of origin, of the expedition’s key documentary texts. The present volume cannot fill that lack, but we hope it will do the next best thing: make it clear that further progress cannot be made without the availability of such editions and without the serious reconsideration of the historiographical issues that the undertaking of such a task will raise. These chapters are divided into several thematic groups. The essays in Part 1, “The Sources,” examine the critical questions raised by the major sources. In her chapter Ida Altman definitively situates Hernandez de Biedma’s account, discussing both Biedma’s charge with respect to the expedition and the nature of his account as a document. I examine the production process of the major narratives, of Oviedo, “Elvas,” and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, to question possibly unrecognized intertextuality. Ivana and Martin Elbl delve into the context and internal references of the Gentleman of Elvas’s tale in an effort to uncover its source, while also bringing to light the historical context in which it was composed. Lee Dowling reviews the evidence for Garcilaso’s literary sources and the value of La Florida as a historical document for Garcilaso’s life. Finally, David Henige reviews the historiography of Garcilaso’s work and the important question of its standards of truth.

These chapters all reflect the strong turn to close textual analysis that modern historiography has taken. As a group, they do not deny the historical significance of the Soto histories, but they do argue that these texts tell us as much or more about their authors and the contexts in which they were written as they do about actual expedition events. Heretofore, there has been a naive tendency to accept the written accounts of Soto’s expedition at face value, to assume that their authors were eyewitnesses or were informed by eyewit-

nesses who were themselves honest testators to their experience. Yet, in

xxiv Introduction

these essays, we begin to see that once we understand the intellectual world of Renaissance historians, the indissolubly literary character of their work becomes clear. If we assume that the evidence we retrieve from these texts

contributes to our understanding of “how things actually were,” then we must understand also that we will have to work a lot harder than we have in the past to retrieve this evidence. But that is getting a bit ahead of the story. The chapters in Part 2 provide historical background for “The Expedition” itself, as well as its participants. Curt Lamar offers an account of Soto’s previous career in Central and South America, while Ignacio Avellaneda examines the records of the expedition’s survivors to attempt a social characterization of the group. Robert Weddle addresses problems of orienteering, while Ross Hassig looks at the very well documented use of those same measures in La Florida. Jack Elliott, in a philosophical vein, questions the usual assertion, based on sadly deficient evidence, of the very existence of specific “trails.” Ann Ramenofsky and Patricia Galloway investigate the health status of the members of the expedition {including horses, dogs, pigs, and less visible passengers} and focus on the expedition itself as a disease vector passing through the Southeast. These chapters as a group focus on some of the “microhistorical” issues that are amenable to attack through the analysis of detailed evidence of the everyday, prosaic activities of expeditioneering. By taking a different look at already known but incompletely evaluated evidence, most of the papers take up some issue that has been raised but left unsolved in the existing literature. The issue of how the expedition maneuvered and of how Soto might have known where he was at any given time is central. There has been much discussion on this point, reminiscent of scholastic debates over angels and the heads of pins, but no one has endeavored to look at the concrete evidence that exists from different but better-known places so as to offer a clearer picture of the actual practices of Spanish travelers. Much of the scholarship on these issues has suffered from the same kind of presentism that we have seen with treatment of the sources; yet a few simple facts such as those exposed by Hassig and Weddle can bring into focus practices so taken for granted by sixteenth-century Spaniards that they were rarely overtly documented. The definitive history of the expedition itself remains unwritten, but these chapters illustrate that there is no lack of information to make it as well served by historical scholarship as are the Spanish conquest activities in the rest of the

Americas. , “The Expedition and Indian History” deals with the use of expedition evidence to write the Indian history of the sixteenth-century Southeast. I discuss the difficulties inherent in using evidence of a temporally circumscribed event to explain large-scale historical process. Jay Johnson shows how concrete archaeological evidence may be used to check the accuracy of contem-

Introduction xxv

porary and historical accounts. And Charles Hudson argues that the real significance of efforts to establish “what happened” lies in the possibility of adding earlier “history” to the documented past of Native Americans. In a sense these three papers outline some of the main premises of ethnohistory as a historical enterprise. First, we have to consider whether ethnohistorical research—by definition, research in documents written by out-

siders about people who have had little or no opportunity to correct the record from their own viewpoints—can achieve the same standards as history that is more readily documented. Hudson has argued elsewhere that even if this is not possible, the enterprise is important enough to warrant an attempt. Yet remedies are available for many of the inherent problems in this type of work: we can use archaeological evidence if we realize that it must bear a dialectical relationship to the documentary evidence and that it must often be privileged over the documentary. We can study the documentary evidence rigorously, too, as part 1 suggests. In short, we argue here, by implication, that it is possible to write the history of the native peoples as well as the conquistadors on the basis of possibly retrievable evidence. But for whom and why do we want to do this? The activities of the Quincentenary were perhaps most significant for the opportunity they provided Native Americans to argue for their own, unequivocal view of their own history, one that differs from the Euro-American view that has been constructed through the enterprise of Western historiography, and one that transcends the Western interpretation, whose basis in the violence of conquest disqualifies it from any serious claims to truth. This viewpoint has caused some historians to rethink and more carefully theorize what history can and cannot do in terms of establishing “what actually happened” in the course of the violent encounter of cultures in the sixteenth-century Southeast. “The Expedition and Euro-American History” situates the expedition accounts as documents of colonialism. Ralph Vigil takes a hard look at the accounts in the context of the sixteenth-century discussion of human rights. Lawrence Goodman and John Wunder discuss the struggles of Soto’s Inca daughter for recognition as emblematic of Indians’ effective use of the Spanish legal system. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce situates the major chronicler, Oviedo himself, in a Spanish-Caribbean social context, thereby exposing the limitations and biases inherent in his writings. José Rabasa then explores how Oviedo’s discourse is permeated with the implicit violence of colonialism. Finally, I trace the reception of the Soto story as part of American popular history and show how both serious Soto scholarship and the image of Soto have changed with the vicissitudes of popular interest. Collingwood’s phrase describing history as “the past encapsulated in the present”—the past as understood for specific purposes by a specific present—

xxvi Introduction

seems increasingly prescient as American historical studies have responded to the serious challenges of European philosophical critiques during the past twenty years. In this study of the history of the Soto expedition, we focus less on the Spaniards, more on the Native groups they encountered. We have become at least mildly suspicious of the usefulness of the evidence at hand and even of the conventional enterprise of history writing. But most important, I think, we have come to admit that very little of the preceding scholarship answers the questions that interest us today. We can only hope that our successors will not say the same of us.

Part 1

The Sources

Ida Altman An Official’s Report: The Hernandez de Biedma Account

Of the four known accounts of the Hernando de Soto expedition into the southeastern interior of the present United States, that of the royal factor Hernandez de Biedma is the briefest. It is also the only one that is primary— that is, it was written by a man who participated in the expedition from at least the time it departed Cuba in 15 39 until it reached Panuco in New Spain in 1543. Hernandez de Biedma’s account is, by all appearances, a firsthand,

contemporary, succinct, and straightforward report of the events he witnessed. Historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists frequently use it in their attempts to reconstruct the trajectory and experiences of the expedition, or the geography, culture, society, and economy of the native peoples tne

expedition encountered, but the Biedma account has attracted little (or no} attention for its own sake, perhaps because of its very brevity and lack of elaboration. Yet, while undoubtedly lacking the drama or detail—and the problems that they raise—of the other chronicles, the Hernandez de Biedma narrative is not without interest. Given the document’s importance as a primary

source and the frequency with which it is cited, it is appropriate that it receive consideration here. Among the known Soto narratives, Luis Hernandez de Biedma’s chronicle is the only holograph manuscript written by an eyewitness. The document may be found in the Patronato section (Patronato 19, ramo 3) of the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, having previously been housed in the Archivo General de Simancas and transferred to the Archive of the Indies with all other records in Simancas pertaining to the Americas. Patronato is a special section that includes, in particular, many of the records relating to the early exploration, conquest, and governance of the Indies. All the documents con-

tained therein were moved there from other locations, hence they are no longer in their original archival “context.” Of course, the same may be true of many of the records extant in these archives. Nonetheless, the special nature of the Patronato section guarantees that, whatever might have been consid-

4 Ida Altman ered the proper place to file the report of an expedition written by a royal offi-

cial in the early sixteenth century, it cannot be discerned from the document’s present location. One cannot be certain, therefore, if this report was solicited, if it was accompanied by or filed with other reports of the same events or by letters commenting on or amending such reports, or if it was indeed reviewed and commented upon by officials in the Indies or in Spain. It is not at all uncommon to find some indication of a document’s eventual disposition either written on or attached to it (for example, the granting or denial of a petition by officials in Seville, the review on appeal to the Council of the Indies of a sentence handed down by one of the audiencias in the Indies, or the like). In this case, however, there is no notation regarding the report’s disposi-

tion. If another folio or two was once appended, it has since been detached and is unlikely to be found. The report is twenty folios in length, with an additional folio describing the contents as “Relacion del suceso de la jornada del Capitan Soto y de la calidad de Ja tierra por donde anduvo” (“Account of the events of the journey of Captain Soto and the character of the land it traversed”). The title just preceding

the narrative is “Relacion de la isla de la Florida.” The report is written in clear, educated, and highly legible script, and Hernandez de Biedma’s signature at the end appears to be an identical match to the text’s handwriting. If

the signature—and hence, probably, the writing—were not Hernandez de Biedma’s own, normally we would expect to find some notation to that effect, with the name of the scribe who had prepared the copy and a statement that the chronicler had signed the original, but again, any such notation or clarification is lacking. Appended to the narrative, although in a different hand, is a list of 221 survivors of the Soto expedition, grouped according to their geo-

graphical origins.! The document was apparently copied by Juan Bautista Munoz in 1781. This copy is now part of the Munoz Collection in the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid and was published by Buckingham Smith in 1857.2 Smith’s transcription evidently was made from the Munoz copy, as it includes Munoz’s comment that Biedma presented the account to the Council of the Indies and that the Council informed the king of this in 15 44.3 Possi-

bly when Munoz transcribed the document, he saw such a notation, but, as suggested above, any addendum is now lost to us. As factor, Luis Hernandez de Biedma was one of three royal officials in the expedition charged with the oversight and administration of property belonging to the Crown; the other two were the contador (accountant) Juan de Anasco and the treasurer Juan Gaitan. Avellaneda has pointed out that all three of these men survived the expedition, evidence perhaps that their offices and position shielded them from many of the expedition’s rigors.4 It seems likely, although there is no way to be sure, that Biedma, as factor, was charged with recording the official account of the expedition. The nature of

; An Official’s Report 5 Biedma’s chronicle would seem to substantiate such an assumption. The document’s tone is almost invariably neutral, and the author never once refers to himself or to his role in any of the events described. Clearly, Biedma did not write the account so as to enhance his own reputation or to draw attention to his own actions or contributions, nor to those of anyone else. In fact, of the expedition’s participants, Biedma refers directly only to Soto (again in neutral terms, neither praising nor criticizing], to the shipwreck survivor and interpreter Juan Ortiz, and to Luis Moscoso, who took over as governor after Soto’s death. Biedma also mentions two other Spaniards who had previously led expeditions into the same region—Panfilo de Narvaez and Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon. Of what, then, did Hernandez de Biedma write? He recorded the names of the indigenous “provinces,” or “pueblos,” the Spaniards happened upon, describing the town, types of dwellings, and local economy (whether based on

agriculture, hunting, or fishing and if surpluses existed or not). He also recorded the time spent traveling from one place to another and the length of the expedition’s stays in particular places. For the most part, detail is minimal. Towns or provinces are generally described as either “large” or “small,” but population estimates are usually lacking. The narrative does record specific numbers in episodes of conflict (or near-conflict], however. In these instances, Biedma records the number of native warriors or canoes involved, as well as the number of casualties on both sides. There is generally more detail, as is to be expected, on Spanish losses, but there are some exceptions, as in the case of Mabila, where, the narrator states, all the defenders died. One has the impression this is a bare-bones account, as if the author took relatively little interest in the events recorded—which is curious, given that no matter how light his duties might have been, no member of the expedition would have escaped entirely the duress and frustration that characterized the undertaking. One might imagine that stoicism, combined with the factor’s consciousness of writing a report intended for official eyes, might account for the dispassionate tone of the narrative. Recall that Biedma never once praises Soto’s decisions or actions. In fact, virtually the only exceptions, negative or positive, to the account’s neutral tone occur in references to the actions of the indigenous peoples encountered: the defenders of Mabila fought like “bravos leones” (fierce or savage lions}, a guide who misled them was “mentiroso” (deceitful; this judgment despite the Spaniards’ repeated use of treachery, deceit, force, and threats of force to obtain food, accommodations, or bearers for the expedition). Neither does Biedma provide much in the way of ethnographic detail or discussion of the expedition’s motives. (Except when describing Cofitachique, for example, Biedma barely mentions treasure or the quest for it.) It is even more difficult to explain Biedma’s lack of precision when discussing those subjects one would expect to be most closely related to his position and

6 Ida Altman charge. Biedma’s figure of 620 men who first arrived in Florida is probably closer to being accurate than some.‘ But the shortcomings of the survivor list, if indeed it was prepared by Hernandez de Biedma, are harder to understand, since at some point the survivors were all together in one place, and they were not, after all, particularly numerous. We come again, then, to the question of what Hernandez de Biedma included in his chronicle. Above all, his account reflects a constant preoccupation with the logistics of supply and transport. As has been noted, Biedma scarcely mentions the expedition’s search for treasure and the often violent methods the Spaniards employed to find it. (The only treasure acquired, the pearls at Cofitachique, was mostly pilfered from burial sites, although apparently without provoking resistance.) By contrast, he consistently notes the availability (or lack) of food supplies at various stopping points, describing their nature and extent, and commenting upon whether the expedition might expect to find food in the subsequent leg of the journey—concerns, one might imagine, more appropriate to a quartermaster than to a factor. While it is not inconceivable that Biedma might have performed such a function, nonetheless there is no indication that he was directly involved in the distribution of food or in the maintenance of supplies; rather, Biedma’s account simply suggests that supply was a major concern for all the members of the expedition. Given the often arduous nature of the journey and all the uncertainties it entailed, such a preoccupation would not have been surprising. If one accepts the premise, however, that Hernandez de Biedma’s account was intended to be not a personal memoir but rather a report for official consideration, such an emphasis would seem to require further explanation. Along with his preoccupation with obtaining food supplies, Biedma also frequently refers to the concomitant need to obtain indigenous workers to serve as bearers to carry supplies and equipment. A third major preoccupation is the necessity of finding trustworthy guides and effective interpreters. These concerns were unquestionably legitimate, given the circumstances, for without food, equipment, guides, and interpreters the expedition could not hope to survive and achieve its aims. Yet, however immediate and crucial, they would have been subordinate, at least in principle, to the expedition’s ultimate objective—which was not merely survival and the geographi-

cal reconnaissance of the region but rather the discovery and seizure of treasure. It was, after all, this hoped-for treasure that would enrich both the participants and (presumably of interest to the factor Hernandez de Biedma| the royal coffers. But Biedma’s narrative virtually excludes any discussion of the efforts made to find treasure or of the expedition’s ultimate failure in this regard.

Such an omission can only have been deliberate. And if we accept that it

An Official’s Report 7

was, then we must also reconsider the question of how straightforward Biedma’s account really is. Why would Biedma provide so much detail regarding logistics and supply and virtually none relating to the search for treasure? The obvious explanation lies in the ultimate failure of that quest, and hence of the expedition, which ended not in profit but in loss. Biedma would have

been as sharply aware of this failure as anyone. It is possible, then, that Biedma chose to downplay the expedition’s ultimate shortcoming, emphasizing instead its relative achievements in the face of difficulty—the logistical problems that were overcome, as well as the adversity and hardships that expedition members faced. This argument would explain, at least in part, why Biedma included some events in his narrative and excluded others, suggesting that what has been considered the most impartial of the Soto expedition accounts is not without its own particular bias. Nor should we expect it to be. Part of the richness and fascination of the early chronicles and relations of the Indies is the individuality and distinctiveness of each account; they reflect differences in objective, audience, style, context, perspective, and chronology. As impersonal and impartial as Hernandez de Biedma’s account may appear, he, like other officials reporting from the Indies, was well aware of his intended audience, as well as the impact his report could have on his career. At the same time we must consider the possibility that the factor was simply doing his best to comply with the charge he received to write the expedition account. Since we cannot know for sure that he even received such a charge, much less what it stipulated, any discussion of the extent to which he complied with it must be entirely speculative; yet the account does offer some clues. The preoccupation with supplies, guides, and the location of centers of population makes more sense if part of the factor’s role was to evaluate

both the feasibility of an expedition of this size and duration and the possibilities for future Spanish settlement and exploitation of the people and countryside. Biedma’s references to the expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez and Lucas de Ayll6n might have been intended to suggest an implicit comparison between those prior failures and the Soto entrada (which undoubtedly was better equipped and prepared). Biedma refers three times to each of those earlier attempts and provides some detail on Ayllén’s failure and death.° At the same time, these references to the other expeditions also make sense in the context of the narrative, as they appear at the points where the Soto group retraces those earlier movements. What about Biedma’s assessment of the region’s potential for colonization?

The factor never directly comments on the suitability of the land for European-style agriculture or stock raising, or of the people for encomienda labor,

observations typically made by Spaniards reporting on areas recently en-

8 Ida Altman tered.” This omission might have been due to Biedma’s relative inexperience in the Indies. Before going to Florida he probably spent only a year or so in Cuba, along with the other expedition members who had been recruited and organized in Spain. By the late 15 30s, when he arrived in Cuba, the island's indigenous population was so reduced that the encomienda barely figured as an important source of labor. Biedma’s unfamiliarity with that institution’s potential might have accounted, therefore, for his not mentioning it in relation to the people he observed. Yet that occasion, taken together with his failure at

any point in the account to suggest what might be promising sites for the founding of towns (the early, sometimes premature, establishment of towns was another standard feature of Spanish conquest), tends to cast some doubt again on the likelihood that Hernandez de Biedma was concerned to provide much information to the Crown or other officials regarding the potential for and feasibility of permanent settlement of the areas the expedition crossed. It has been suggested that Biedma’s narrative is a firsthand and contemporary account of the expedition, but precisely when and how the report was written is not clear. The information regarding the “provinces” contacted and the number of days the Spaniards traveled between or remained in specific locales suggests that the author periodically set down fairly detailed notes (as he certainly would have had time to do). That he did not do so on a daily, or perhaps even weekly, basis is suggested by the often slightly imprecise notations of time—they were in Cofitachique either ten or eleven days, for example; or they stayed in the province of Chiha to rest their horses either twenty-

six or twenty-seven days.’ This imprecision may be merely conventional (equivalent to the “mas o menos” frequently found in sixteenth-century Spanish documents, particularly with respect to testimony referring to numerical quantities such as age or periods of time elapsed). Because other numbers are given quite precisely in Biedma’s account, we might infer that the in-

exact ones were not recorded contemporaneously but were recollected at some later time. We must bear in mind, however, that Biedma, as factor, pre- | sumably was a man of numbers who had some familiarity with accounting and calculations and who therefore would have placed more importance on numerical precision than many of his contemporaries. This leads us to yet another possibility, indeed, probability: that Biedma’s official narrative was written only after the expedition survivors had arrived in Mexico. It may even have been copied—probably by the author himself, since there is nothing to suggest that the signature is not his own—before it was submitted to the authorities. In the original document in the Archive of the Indies there are repe-

titions of words and clauses that did not find their way into the published transcription. Deleted from page 60 of the Smith volume, for example, is the

repetition of the sentence “para poder atravesar a la otra mar tornamos la vuelta del sur y volvimos con el cacique adonde habiamos puesto la cruz,”

An Official’s Report 9

and on the same folio of the original, the phrase “por alli habia” is also erroneously repeated twice in succession. These repetitions, together with the fine quality of the document (the penmanship is invariably neat and even, and the writer uses a convention not normally found in more prosaic or hastily prepared documents—the first word of a new page appears just below and at the right-hand side of the last line of the page preceding it}, surely indicate that the extant document in Seville is a copy of another, probably earlier, draft, but whether Hernandez de Biedma himself made the copy cannot be determined unless it could be compared with other documents known to have been written by him. Such a comparison has not been possible because at present virtually nothing is known of the factor’s career before or after the expedition. He does not even appear in a separate entry in the Catdlogo de Pasajeros a Indias: there only exists a reference to him in the entry for Luis Moreno, who is described as a free black man (“de color loro”) and vecino of Ubeda in southern Spain who went to “la Florida en compania del factor Luis Hernandez Biedma.’” Biedma was from Ubeda, so Luis Moreno might have been a family retainer or former slave, or—since he apparently had been manumitted recently—sim-

ply someone seeking employment and passage to the Indies. If Moreno reached Florida, he apparently did not survive the expedition.!° The group from Ubeda and Baeza (in the sixteenth century the two Andalusian cities were considered virtually a single entity) was fairly substantial, accounting for 9 of the 221 survivors that appear on the list attached to Hernandez de Biedma’s account. Yet nothing is known of Biedma’s prior connection, if any, with any of the other expedition members (other than Luis Moreno} from his

home city or with Hernando de Soto or any other prominent participants. Nor have any details of his subsequent career surfaced, although it is thought that he might have gone to Guatemala. To conclude, I would suggest that neither the account’s apparent impartiality nor the absence of any personal narrative voice can justify the assumption that it lacks a point of view or a particular objective. Similarly, the fact that what has come down to us is a document dating from a time not long after the expedition ended does not mean that the narrative was not amended, rewritten, or in fact written some time after the events described took place. In reading and using an account as short as this one, that encompasses an extended period of time and the activities of several hundred men interacting with a diverse range of societies and cultures over a considerable geographical expanse, it would behoove us to pay attention to both what is included and what is not. As he wrote his report, Biedma doubtless had in mind both his professional obligations and his personal interests, and he shaped his report so as to best reconcile the expedition’s realities with the possible responses of the official audience that would consider his description of those realities.

10 Ida Altman

Notes 1. Ignacio Avellaneda uses this list as one of the sources for his study Los sobrevivientes de la Florida: The Survivors of the De Soto Expedition (Gainesville: P. K. Yonge Library, 1990) and has shown that it is incomplete. 2. Buckingham Smith, Coleccion de varios documentos para Ia historia de Florida y tierras adyacentes, vol. 1 (London: Tribner, 1857), 47—64. 3. Smith, Coleccion, 64 n. 4. Avellaneda, Sobrevivientes, 71. 5. See Avellaneda, Sobrevivientes, 6—9. 6. See Smith, Coleccion, 52. 7. See, for example, the 1525 letter from Pedrarias de Avila, governor of Tierra Firme, to the emperor, translated and commented upon in James Lockhart and Enrique Otte,

eds., Letters and People of the Spanish Indies: Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976], 7—14.

8. Smith, Coleccién, 52. g. Crist6bal Bermudez Plata, comp., Catdlogo de pasajeros a Indias durante los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIIII (Seville: Imprenta editorial de la Gavida, 1942), 2:4132. 10. See Avellaneda, Sobrevivientes.

Patricia Galloway

The Incestuous Soto Narratives

Researchers studying Hernando de Soto’s 1539—43 journey through the Southeast have made much of the need to reconstruct the route as a whole.! Yet no one, historian or anthropologist, has studied each of the accounts of the journey as a whole. Since no single account satisfies all the wishes of any

researcher, the tendency has been to choose one account to serve as the framework for the reconstruction, adding incident and detail from the others uncritically and at will.2 That procedure is simply not historiographically sound, because each account owes specific features not to what happened, but to rhetorical purpose. In addition, and more seriously, several of the accounts borrow materials from literary tradition and possibly from one another as well. Without a clear grasp of the possibilities for interdependence, we cannot evaluate the quality of the data they make available.

I believe that there are clearly demonstrable relations of dependence among three of these accounts: André de Burgos’s Elvas, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés’s Historia general de las Indias, and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s Florida. At best they are secondary sources, with all the problems of context and authorial intention such a remove introduces. Although a com-

plete source study of any one of them is not my aim here, a unidirectional chain of influence can, I believe, be established among them. The notion of intertextuality conjures up a picture of a world of texts interacting with one another, but at no time was this notion less ludicrous than in the Renaissance, which was also the Spanish Golden Age and the age of the conquest narratives with which I am concerned. The evidence of intertextual influences, however, is not disembodied, and to establish the possibility that they occurred we must understand the circumstances in which the authors composed their texts and evaluate the likelihood that any given author had access to the other text(s) whose influence on his work one is attempting to demonstrate. In this chapter I discuss several modes of intertextual influence in the accounts of Soto’s expedition, the signs by which they reveal them-

12 Patricia Galloway

selves, and the implications of such influence for the evidentiary validity of the texts. Oviedo’s Ranjel

There is good reason for considering the narrative attributed to Rodrigo Ranjel as the most immediate of the secondary sources for the Soto expedition, even though his original account is lost and now only exists embedded in Oviedo’s Historia general, the relevant section of which remained in manuscript until 1851.4 According to Oviedo, Ranjel’s original account was a daily diary, supplemented by statements Ranjel made to the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, which apparently reviewed the conduct of Soto’s expedition (but unhappily seems not to have left a detailed record of its proceedings), and by additional information the Audiencia directed Ranjel to give to Oviedo.‘ It seems likely that Oviedo wrote down the account before any other had been recorded, with the possible exception of Luis Hernandez de Biedma’s “official” report. Oviedo must have obtained the information from Ranjel by 1546. As warden of the fort of Santo Domingo, Oviedo was ordered to remain at his post in 1542 instead of returning to Spain, as he had wished, to oversee the publication of a new edition of his Historia general, which he had expanded from thirteen books (1535 edition] to fifty. Oviedo was finally permitted to return to Spain in 1546. This new information on Florida that he had gained from Ranjel was to have been added to Book 17 of Part 1 on Cuba and Florida, but Oviedo had to return to his duties in Santo Domingo in 1549 without having succeeded in arranging for the publication of his expanded edition. He left a manuscript of all these volumes behind in Spain.‘ The very good reason for accepting the facts as Ranjel related them, to the extent we can be sure which ones they are, is that he was Soto’s private secretary on the expedition and therefore likely to have been privy to most of the events that took place. Presumably that is why he was called to testify before the audiencia. His testimony was evidently not fatal to his own career: Ranjel later settled in Mexico and became alcalde mayor of Panuco.® The quantity of factual information in Oviedo’s Ranjel, which includes distances and names of towns far in excess of what is found in the other narratives, does suggest that Ranjel was near enough to the expedition’s leader to hear the interactions that took place between the interpreters and the Indians met along the way. Still, the text is not completely reliable in reporting everything that transpired; Oviedo reported that on several occasions Ranjel’s class loyalties prevented him from giving details of internal squabbles. This is only one clue to the work that must be done to interpret this source.’ Reservations aside, however, I think the two other authors under consid-

| The Incestuous Soto Narratives 13 eration rendered this source the surest sign of veneration: they lifted information and even phrases from it, without considering that sometimes what

they lifted may have been Oviedo and not Ranjel. To demonstrate that Oviedo’s work was itself a secondary intertext is my first concern, however, since all the other sources are so frequently measured against it. It is appropriate to begin consideration of Oviedo’s work with the evaluation written by William Prescott more than a hundred years ago. Prescott’s Aristotelian rhetorical spirit is reflected in his evaluation of Oviedo, for he

first complains that the Spaniard’s style “is cast in no classic mold. His thoughts find themselves a vent in tedious, interminable sentences, that may fill the reader with despair; and the thread of the narrative is broken by impertinent episodes that lead to nothing.” Prescott derides “the tawdry display of Latin quotations” liberally sprinkled throughout Oviedo’s work as giving the impression of a want of scholarship, though he credits the Spaniard with great

persistence in the pursuit of evidence both from “the most eminent men of his time” and from “popular tradition and the reports of the common soldiers.” But perhaps the most telling of Prescott’s complaints is that Oviedo failed to adhere to artistic ideals of unity and smoothness of narrative. The Spaniard’s recourse to such a number and variety of sources without the imposition of a teleological unity made his work “a medley of inconsistent and contradictory details, which perplex the judgment, making it exceedingly difficult, at this distance in time, to disentangle the truth.” I dwell on this evaluation of Oviedo because the very criticisms Prescott leveled at him are those that inclined him and most historians since his time to give Oviedo’s work credit for considerable authenticity. Such lack of art, Prescott felt, evinced “a mind intent on the facts with which it is occupied, much more than on forms of expression.’”!9 But does Oviedo’s treatment of his sources really demonstrate the artless honesty of the man of action, or does it merely lack certain rhetorical techniques routinely recognized in the nineteenth century as owing more to art than truth? One means of assessing Oviedo’s fidelity to his sources does exist, and it is even related to the region of concern here. Oviedo included in his Historia general aversion of the “joint report” by Alvar Nuhez Cabeza de Vaca and Andrés Dorantes on the Panfilo de Narvaez expedition; this version may be compared to Cabeza de Vaca’s own version, the Naufragios. The ordering of events is substantially identical in the two versions. It is unlikely that both authors

would make identical alterations in their accounts, and it is also unlikely that Cabeza de Vaca ever saw Oviedo’s version. Nor did Oviedo here add material to his source to any significant extent; if anything, he or his source oc-

casionally compressed and telescoped events, introducing some confusion. Where there was amplification of the story, it was added by Cabeza de Vaca, especially in first-person speeches attributed to himself, in dramatization of

14 Patricia Galloway

the hardships suffered by him and his fellow survivors, and self-justificatory appraisal of Narvaez’s decisions.!! One wonders if perhaps the joint report was itself rather confusing, so that Cabeza de Vaca, aided by memory, could add to it and explain, but the best Oviedo could do was attempt to smooth out the narrative. Finally, Oviedo recast the narrative in the third person, whereas Cabeza de Vaca’s version is cast in the first person, plural for the most part but singular where he himself offers opinion. Oviedo’s well-known personal commentary is quite properly obtrusive; Cabeza de Vaca biased his own version more effectively and to a much greater degree by subtly adding material and emphasis.

On the whole, it would seem that the more “objective” presentation of the materials of the joint report is to be found in Oviedo’s Historia general. A comparison of the language and style of Oviedo’s “Ranjel” with that of the “joint report” passages in the Historia general shows that neither is particularly distinctive stylistically. Thus what we have before us is most likely Oviedo’s, and not Ranjel’s, own words. But the fidelity to event and sequence noted when comparing Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios with the joint report in Oviedo allows us to assume with considerable confidence that we have in Oviedo most of what Ranjel wrote. One very important exception lies in the missing final two chapters, discussed below. The structure of Oviedo’s version of the Ranjel narrative is far more complex than the straight-line journey that appears in the only primary source, that of Biedma. Oviedo was more skilled than Biedma in handling the rhetoric of the narrative form, and he added two main varieties of complication: his own commentary on events, which provides a counterpoint of hindsight, and stylistically sophisticated sequential segments of text covering the same time period—”“ meanwhile” passages detailing the simultaneous activities of various detachments sent on errands by Soto. To ignore Oviedo’s commentary for a moment and turn to the structure of the account itself, the very length of Oviedo’s chapters immediately suggests

that art rather than life is at work here. Although he took his raw material from Ranjel, Oviedo was at liberty to segment it as he wished. He seems to have had in mind a central composition in which the focus of greatest length is on the Cofitachequi-to-Athahachi segment of the journey (Chapter 26], with Coga as the centerpiece. Chapters 21 to 26 progressively lengthen, then

subsequent chapters shorten nearly symmetrically. Parallel “meanwhile” passages bracket the central chapter as well, appearing in Chapters 23, 24, and 28; presumably Chapter 29 would also have had a parallel passage. Thus, although there is no reason to imagine that these events did not take place, we must also concede that Oviedo handled them artistically, structuring and arranging them to suit his own purpose. At this distance in time and with no access to the original source, we cannot determine what that purpose was,

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 15

but Oviedo’s narrative skill and focus were undoubtedly intended to influence his readers and must also influence us to some degree. Hence, if we are influenced by Oviedo’s art to see Coca as the most extensive of the polities observed along the way, as one group of researchers has been,!2 we may be re-

sponding to rhetoric rather than reality, particularly if other sources are not so sure of Coca’s importance. Oviedo’s commentary itself is of two kinds. The first is “framing” information: first, an introductory passage (Chapter 21 of Book 2) about Soto’s career up to 15 39, most of it unlikely to have appeared in Ranjel’s diary; then, the circumstances of his acquisition of Ranjel’s data and its nature {Chapter 26}; and, finally, the table of contents indicates that had the concluding Chapter 30 survived, it would have closed with a passage about the fates of the sur-

vivors, although the extant summary is too brief to provide any detail. Oviedo’s second kind of commentary is more worthy of the name, for it is a repeated leitmotif of condemnation of Soto’s incompetence and his violent methods. Oviedo’s commentary is particularly interesting in light of the spiritual conversion he had experienced by 1546 and his own personal animus against Soto.!3 In his 1535 first edition of the Historia general, which lacked any account of the Soto expedition, Oviedo ridiculed Bartolomé de Las Casas for his foolish trust of Indians, whom Oviedo saw and portrayed as inferior and depraved, deserving of the harsh treatment they received from the conquistadors.'4 By contrast, the commentary in Oviedo’s revised text, written after his conversion, includes frequent harangues against Soto for his cruelty to the natives. Although Oviedo still approved of the conversion of the Indians and argued for Spanish settlement, he also condemned Soto for many of the very activities of which Las Casas, as Defender of the Indians, had accused Oviedo and others: killing Indians for sport, torturing Indians for loyalty to their chiefs, chaining and enslaving Indians, and taking Indian women as consorts. Oviedo also expressed a concern for the souls of the conquerors who had behaved in such a manner: when he spoke in Chapter 24 of the reforms initiated by the Spanish government—presumably the New Laws of 1542— his list of their advantages placed the cessation of ill treatment of Indians last, after better service to God and king and peace of mind for the conquerors. Oviedo may be present in the narrative in much more subtle ways as well. Although Oviedo overtly judged Soto and his methods harshly in his commentary, several passages clearly express Oviedo’s attitudes without giving the reader a signal that they are his. One example is an incident, ignored by Biedma and displaced elsewhere by Garcilaso in favor of a lengthy excursus on the dogs of the conquest, which appears in Burgos’s “Elvas” in nearly identical form. It is an episode explaining the epithet “Mala Paz” (“Bad Peace”), given by the expedition to a town between Utinamocharra and Aguacaley-

16 Patricia Galloway

quen in the upper Florida peninsula. The Indians of this town sent an impostor to portray their chief and stand hostage for the release of his people; the impostor later fled into the woods and was singled out for capture by a greyhound.!5

Among the serious differences Oviedo had with Bartolomé de Las Casas was the latter’s assertion that the Spaniards had no right to conquer the Indians of the Americas and could more successfully lead Indians to conversion than impose it. Las Casas proved his point by a missionary experiment beginning in 1537 in Guatemala, where Spanish peasants and Indians were settled on an equal footing in farming communities where mission services were made available, an experiment called “Vera Paz” (“True Peace”).!6 Although it may well have been the case that Soto’s men themselves were ridiculing Las Casas in naming a town “Mala Paz”—apparently Soto’s desire to be granted the governance of Guatemala had been thwarted by the Las Casas project!” — it was not so striking an incident that every narrator highlighted it. Oviedo, however, had reason to do so. That the incident appears nearly identically in Elvas and similarly in Garcilaso may not merely reflect its authenticity. A second example of Oviedo’s rhetorical manipulations is simpler. It occurs in the passage that describes a messenger from Ichisi coming to size up

the expedition. The messenger wants to know who Soto is, what he wants, and where he is going. Soto replies that he has come from the king of Spain and the Pope to bring the faith. He says that the Indians must yield obedience to the Pope in spiritual and the king in temporal affairs, and that if the Indians do so he will treat them well and allow them to live in peace.'® This is quite an important passage, because it also describes the erection of a cross on a native-built mound. Yet it is likely that the incident did not occur just as described. Biedma does not mention it at all; in Garcilaso it becomes a matterof-fact exchange in which Soto asks for peace and supplies. The most similar account is again in Elvas, where the Indian’s speech is typically elaborated into an oration. Although it ends with the questions posed in Ranjel’s version, Soto replies by calling himself a child of the sun looking for the greatest province, and a cross is set up in the town plaza after priests give the Indians basic religious instruction.!9 Anyone acquainted with the regulations that the Spanish Crown imposed on its conquistadors can see that, however similar Elvas’s version is, Oviedo has made the incident into an explicit presentation of the requerimiento, the text to be read to the Indians offering them a spiritual good and demanding obedience. The reading of this text, whether the Indians understood it or not, provided the Spanish with an excuse for the enslavement of adult males if the Indians failed to comply. Oviedo was well acquainted with this text, since he was the first conquistador to utter it in the New World in 1513.2° It is difficult to judge the extent to which Oviedo may have manipulated

. The Incestuous Soto Narratives 17 the structure of the Ranjel narrative. As we have seen with the two Cabeza de

Vaca versions, if comparison with another independent version shows an identical ordering of events, sequence at least has probably not been manipu-

lated, since it is unlikely that more than one author would have made the same modification independently. Oviedo, however, may have had the oppor-

tunity to see other accounts; as royal historiographer, he could surely have perused any official reports, such as those of Biedma or the friar Canete,?! or indeed of other survivors of the expedition whose accounts have not come down to us. He may also have seen the source of part of the Elvas account in some manuscript form; although he died in the year the Elvas account was published, he was in Spain from 1546 to 15 49 and enjoyed important connections both at Court and in the close-knit world of Spanish publishers and let-

ters.22 Indeed, other researchers have suggested that the parallels between Oviedo’s Ranjel and Burgos’s Elvas are too close to be mere coincidence, and that Oviedo must have borrowed from the Elvas account. I will suggest, however, that the argument that “Elvas” borrowed from Oviedo’s Ranjel is more persuasive.

The last two chapters of Ranjel’s narrative are now available to us only through the chapter headings found in an eighteenth-century copy by Juan Bautista Munoz (the last official Chronicler of the Indies) of the index to Part 1 of Oviedo’s work. It is interesting to speculate as to why they became separated and lost from the manuscript of the Historia general. Oviedo is known to have indulged in constant revision and reworking of his history, and the ed-

itor of the 1851 first “complete” printing of the work, based on the Munoz copy, openly stated that he simply could not find the missing two chapters, which were, by one scholar’s estimate, among no fewer than sixty missing chapters “whose one-time existence can be established.”23 Previous researchers have simply acknowledged the fact with regret and passed on, but this loss seems to me significant. The first of the missing chapters detailed the death of Soto and the subsequent events up to and including the escape to Mexico. Ranjel himself clearly could not have omitted these events in oral testimony before the Audiencia,

even if he discontinued his diary after the death of his patron. It is unlikely that such an account was not written down at least at the same time as the rest of Ranjel’s testimony. It is plausible, however, that Oviedo, who is known for his constant revisions, could not resist tinkering with the episode of Soto’s death, which would have offered an ideal opportunity for his previous moralizing to round itself out. And although a lengthier version in process of revision may indeed have survived in the original Monserrat manuscript of the Historia general, the entire expedition account was in a section now lost. Unfortunately, the Truxillos copy from the sixteenth century is in-

18 Patricia Galloway

complete, while the eighteenth-century Munoz copy of the Monserrat manuscript remains truncated as well. The situation of the second missing chapter is even more simply explained. It detailed the fates of the survivors and contained a summary of the natural history of Florida. Since many of the survivors were still in Mexico and Peru when Oviedo returned to Santo Domingo in 15 49, he must have been aware of the opportunities he still had for amplification. It is worth noting in this connection that there are extant some seventy-nine additional chapters on natu-

ral history topics added to the Historia general after 1547, though none of these discuss the natural history of La Florida.?4 Thus, concerning Oviedo’s treatment of the Ranjel account of the Soto expedition, we may safely assume a number of things: first, that Oviedo likely did not tamper much with the overall sequence of events but did add intentional structure and emphasis; second, that Oviedo did add silent as well as overt commentary to the narrative; and third, that the version of Ranjel that has reached us through Oviedo is at least partly the result of the vicissitudes of sixteenth-century publishing: there is no doubt that the concluding chap-

ters were once extant and it is reasonable to suspect that people in Spain could have seen them. Elvas

Although his identity is still not definitely known after more than four hundred years, the “Fidalgo de Elvas” is presumed to have been one of eleven surviving members of the estimated twenty-one Portuguese who joined the Soto expedition in Spain. Written ostensibly by the man who was its principal informant, the original narrative does not exist in manuscript; rather it was published in an “as told to” version in Portuguese in 1557 by André de Burgos and later popularized by several English translations published by Hakluyt in

the early seventeenth century.2> The published account was supposedly based upon Elvas’s notes, kept during the expedition. Ethnographers have judged that Elvas was not as close to Soto or as well informed concerning the particulars of the route as Ranjel was, since fewer town names are mentioned in the Elvas narrative and it presents a less clearly sequential route. The Elvas narrative does offer a good deal more circumstantial detail, however, than Oviedo’s Ranjel, and the rank of the anonymous “gentleman” and the chivalric duties assumed to attach to such rank have led readers to assume that he took part in the major events of the expedition. Indeed, the account fits Prescott’s guidelines for judging it that of a man of action, since it seems on the whole rather sober and not given to extraneous digression, especially compared with Garcilaso’s narrative. But such facile evaluations are at best premature and at worst flawed. To

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 19

date there has been no serious study of the Elvas text, literary or historical, and those who have been eager to see corroboration of Ranjel in Elvas have been understandably reluctant to undertake such study. To have done so might have raised the question of whether Ranjel had actually borrowed from Elvas, a possibility that has suggested itself, based on internal evidence, ever since historians first became aware of the Ranjel source in 1851. In evaluating

the Elvas narrative, as in evaluating Oviedo’s Ranjel, we have also to deal with intertextuality. But we must also consider the role of the book’s publisher, and indeed the operation of the sixteenth-century book trade itself. These crucial factors have heretofore been ignored in the case of the Elvas narrative. Elvas’s most recent translator, James A. Robertson, has acknowledged that “there is no way of telling just how much the narrative was edited by André de Burgos, its publisher, or by any other person.” Although, Robertson notes, “Burgos asserts in his foreword that he ‘did not write it but only published it’ ...the narrative may, indeed, have come into the hands of the publisher after the death of the author, but this is not known.” The role of André de Burgos is very important here, since it not only suggests why the Relacam was printed in the first place, but also, given Burgos’s ties to both Oviedo and Elvas, that there could have been a very real connection between the Ranjel . and Elvas accounts that had nothing to do with their having both been written by witnesses to the same events. The organization of the book trade in sixteenth-century Iberia affected its product materially. Printer, publisher, and bookseller were often one and the same, and publisher and bookseller nearly always were. As was the case all over Europe, printing shops were also centers for the meeting of literary men and other intellectuals. Because publishers were directly involved in so many aspects of the book business, concerns with marketing were always important, and publishers searched high and low for material to satisfy market demand, sometimes commissioning authors and translators, sometimes collecting manuscripts to be printed.2” Texts themselves, both fictional and historical, repeatedly attributed their sources to manuscripts found in a printer’s or publisher’s shop (Garcilaso, Cervantes, Oviedo}, and since this topos was even used to lend the appearance of truth to fiction, it must have been a common and believable situation in real life. The demand in this market was for adventure romances, the models for which were the hugely successful Amadis de Gaula and Palmerin of England cycles.?8 Ten years after publishing the Elvas Relacam, André de Burgos pub-

lished the first two parts of the Palmerin of England cycle.29 Indeed, even Oviedo had composed a romance called Don Claribalte, first printed in 1519.99 The situation was further confused by the practice, followed by the authors of chivalric romances, of claiming to be merely the editor or transla-

20 Patricia Galloway

tor of an authentic historical work.*! In such a context it is hard to tell what is history and what romance; indeed, in several instances romances did pass as histories, only later to be proved fraudulent.?2 In the case of the Elvas narrative, we know that Oviedo’s Ranjel is relatively authentic, and we see that Burgos’s Elvas compares closely with Ran-

jel, so it seems logical to think that Burgos did work from an authentic source, especially if we assume that the only connection between the two authors’ works is that their main informants were both present on the same ex-

pedition. But upon further examination it is possible to discern several unique features of the Elvas narrative that owe more to the European literary tradition than they do to the straightforward account of a simple soldier, or even a well-connected conquistador. The Elvas narrative, for example, contains several speeches that purport to quote from the greetings of various Indian caciques, yet all of them are nearly identical in tone, intent, and often in phrasing: the speaker places his people and their possessions at the disposal of Soto and then asks how he may be of service to the Spaniards. These speeches might be of great interest if we had any guarantee that they reflected even hollow verbal ceremony of an authentic nature, but such greetings can be found duplicated, if not word for word,

then at least sentiment for sentiment, in contemporary chivalric romances like those pilloried by Cervantes in Don Quixote. They are literary devices, not real speeches. Because the speeches reproduce conventions of European feudal power, and because they are so conventional, we will never know from them what kind of power—if any—southeastern caciques wielded over their

people. It is not warranted, therefore, to take them seriously as indicating that the cacique in question—and it will be noted that such speeches were put into the mouths only of leaders of the “provinces” distinguished by Burgos’ Elvas—had a right to speak for those he claimed to rule.

As I have said, the Elvas narrative is clearly richer in description than Oviedo’s Ranjel. The Elvas narrator is particularly concerned with geography, for example: at more or less frequent intervals he summarizes the geography of the journey to that point in the narrative, and he also provides regional descriptions of topography, particularly as the expedition pursues its course west of the Mississippi. We should note that this structural emphasis provides a good argument for the authenticity of these geographical and topo-

graphical asides, since it seems to reflect the same dichotomy seen in Biedma’s account while by no means echoing it: assurance east of the Mississippi versus confusion to the west. The Elvas narrator is also fond of descriptions of natural history and Indian lifeways. In the first instance, he goes little beyond Oviedo’s Ranjel. Indeed, it is worth noting that the placement within the narrative of Elvas’s descriptions of wild foodstuffs—both flora and fauna—tends to correlate with Ran-

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 21

jel rather too neatly. Since both narrators are describing flora and fauna that are distributed widely across the region, it seems more than coincidental that their descriptions appear at approximately the same points in the narrative. The Elvas narrator is much more obsessed by gold than Ranjel: he variously describes how the young guide taken in Napetuca demonstrated how gold was made; how a chief of Acoste told of a land where gold was made; and how gold alloy knives were seen in Cofitachequi. All of this material is unique to Burgos’s Elvas.

Concerning Indian practices and customs, there is still less correlation (in several instances, the Elvas descriptions do not appear in Ranjel at all). When the two accounts do correlate in their descriptions, the Elvas version is routinely much longer and more elaborated. The Elvas narrator also appears to be more suspicious of Indian cunning than Ranjel: both recounted the “Mala Paz” incident of the impostor chief, but the Elvas narrator also describes a similar event when the Pacaha people attempted to substitute a false cacique, and another in which the people of Aquigate succeeded in pulling off almost

an identical replay of the “Mala Paz” incident. More careful study of the structure of the Elvas text may suggest that the Mala Paz incident has been rhetorically multiplied precisely to convey a tone of suspicion. Yet if the Elvas narrator appears more suspicious of Indians, he also seems less reticent than Oviedo/Ranjel about Spanish cruelty—this despite Oviedo’s commentary. It is the Portuguese narrative that tells of Soto’s proclivities for maiming messengers and that tacitly approves of several outrageous affronts to Indian hospitality at Chicaca. The codicological structure of Burgos’s Elvas narrative is very different from the one Oviedo used. Here the account has been divided into forty-four much briefer chapters, most of them of similar length, although interestingly a string of noticeably longer chapters (Chapters 13—17]) covers the same mate-

rial as Oviedo’s longer chapters. In these chapters, as is the case with the Oviedo chapters covering the same material, the narrator emphasizes the Cofitachequi-Coga area, but in the Elvas narrative the central focus is on Cutifachiqui rather than Coca. I suspect that in the original, now missing seg-

ment of Oviedo/Ranjel there may have been much less emphasis on the Autiamque-to-Mexico section of the narrative, since in Elvas this occupies sixteen chapters, or fully 35 percent of the length of the account, while in Oviedo we have only the single Chapter 29 in chapter-heading form—not adequate evidence for certainty, but a good suggestion of Oviedo’s intention to treat these materials with much greater brevity than Elvas. The structure of individual chapters in Elvas is quite repetitive: many of them begin with an account of the daily events of travel and end with a description either of the day’s stopping place or of some other item the author was fond of describing. This gives the Elvas narrative a distinctive rhythm

22 Patricia Galloway

that makes it seem to differ dramatically from Oviedo’s Ranjel. Yet the overall arrangement of the narrative—its opening with a look back at the past before the expedition, its recounting of the journey, and its closing with a pure description of the geography and natural history of all of Florida—exactly duplicates what would have been the overall structure of Oviedo’s Ranjel had the last two of Oviedo’s chapters survived. In addressing the crucial question of a possible dependence of Elvas on Ranjel, nothing can be asserted if a good likelihood for access cannot be established. The Portuguese Relacam was published in the same year that Oviedo died, leaving the second and third parts of Oviedo’s Historia general still in manuscript, at least one copy of which was deposited in an unknown monastery.33 (Barcia’s claim that he used the second part of Oviedo’s Historia generalin published form in 1557 has been refuted‘; Barcia was undoubtedly referring to a 1557 printing of Book 20 alone.*} The publisher André de Burgos, a Spaniard who began his publishing career in Seville during the years 1542—49,2° may have had the right connections to obtain access to Oviedo’s work if the whole of it was, as has been suggested, potentially accessible to his printer at the time of his death.3’ In fact, during the time André de Burgos plied his trade in Seville, he had been Oviedo’s publisher at least once and perhaps twice. In 1545 Burgos had published a second edition of Oviedo’s romance Don Claribalte.38 It seems unlikely that Oviedo

would not have discussed the book’s publication with Burgos after he returned to Spain the following year. The second possible connection between Burgos and Oviedo is a more complicated story. On three separate occasions during 1526 Oviedo had obtained permission from the Crown to publish a translation of Boccaccio’s I] Corbaccio; then, in 1546, Burgos published the

first known Spanish translation of the work, which he attributed to Diego Lépez de Ayala.3? It is possible that the translation was actually Oviedo’s work, as Turner suspected and Avalle-Arce also accepts,*° but even if it was not, its publication would have presented another cause for discussion between Oviedo and Burgos. I think it is quite unlikely that Burgos, as one of Oviedo’s publishers, did not know of his revised edition of the Historia general, or something of its contents. Moreover, I think it is likely that he not only knew of it, but he was surely aware of the problems Oviedo encountered—in having a revised second edition of the first part published and in making arrangements for the publication of the remainder of the work.*! Burgos subsequently served as printer to the new archiepiscopal see and eventually the university in Evora, Portugal, and his patron there was Cardinal Henrique, brother of the king of Portugal; Philip II of Spain was the son of Henrique’s sister. Although we cannot know for certain that Burgos had obtained access to some copy of Oviedo’s Ranjel, there is enough circumstantial evidence to make the argument that the similarities in both manuscripts are

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 23

more than coincidental. First, it should be noted that the Elvas narrative did not appear until after Oviedo was dead and his work completed and locked

safely away from overt publication. Indeed, it was published more than twelve years after most of the “gentlemen of Elvas” should have returned home. It should also be noted that in 15 57, at the age of three, the child Sebastian became king of Portugal, whereupon his uncle Henrique began intriguing to replace the boy’s mother as regent, a project in which he shortly succeeded.*2 Finally, if one peruses the list of books published by Burgos in Evora,

one quickly sees that the Relacam was an exceptional addition to the list, both in genre and in subject matter. Portuguese interests in India and Africa were then in decline, and a romantic account of Soto’s heroic efforts in the New World would have provided a welcome respite.*2 And why is this gentleman of Elvas not named? Certainly not because the writing of histories was too shameful an occupation—Cabeza de Vaca did not

find it so. Previous commentators have not settled upon any particular authorial candidate, perhaps because there was in fact no specific gentleman of Elvas. The Relacam, contrary to expectation, really has no particular Portuguese focus and certainly does not highlight the activities of any single Portuguese hero, as it doubtless would if it had come directly from the pen of a Portuguese expedition survivor.** Only a few of the elements that it contains independently of Ranjel are specifically Portuguese: the superior splendor of the Portuguese gentlemen at the muster in Seville (which André de Burgos could have observed personally) and the appointment of André de Vasconcelos as captain of horsemen. Perhaps André de Burgos, taking his cue from the enormous success of the Palmerin romance cycle which saw its birth in Portugal (and which Burgos himself reprinted in 156745}, and from the desire of his patron to see Portuguese heroes given credit for their part in the discov-

eries of the New World, simply found a willing author from among his acquaintance to add some of the reminiscences of one or more of Soto’s Portuguese companions to the narrative of Oviedo’s Ranjel. This would explain the close agreement between the two narratives, and particularly their oftencited agreement on events they do not portray. I have already discussed the strong parallels between the “Mala Paz” incident in Ranjel and Elvas. Two additional examples show the kind of struc-

tural parallel and verbal echo that argue strongly for a borrowing from Oviedo’s Ranjel to Burgos’s Elvas. Both are descriptive passages, and both de-

scriptions could appropriately have been placed at numerous points in the narrative, so their placement may be considered optional. Yet, significantly, they appear at almost the same point in both narratives—which is perhaps the most suspicious coincidence—and in addition they demonstrate similar phraseology. The first is a description of the cloth and clothing made from mulberry bark by the natives. Europeans found this craft impressive and the

24 Patricia Galloway cloth attractive, and described it regularly. Here Oviedo’s Ranjel and Burgos’s

Elvas describe the style of a mantle worn by the Indians and made of this cloth:

Ranjel Elvas

hacen muy lindas mantas, cobre se as indias com estas y ponensse una de la cinta mantas, poe buna aoderredoro abaxo y otra atada por un si da cinta pera baixo y outra lado y metida la cabeca sobre por cima do ombro con ho los hombros, como aquellos braco dereito fora a maniera bohemianos o egipcianos.. .46 y uso de ciganos.. .4” (They make very fine mantles, (The Indian women cover them-

and they wear one from the selves with these blankets, girdle down and another draping one around themselves fastened on one side with from the waist down and the other the end over the shoulders over the shoulder with the right like those Bohemians or arm uncovered in the manner and

gypsies. . .'’48} custom of gypsies.’4}

It seems highly unlikely that both sources would have described the mantle so similarly and employed exactly the same simile had they owed nothing to one another, but even if this could be proved a commonplace, the structural placement of the passages is suspiciously similar. The placement of the passages in their respective texts is not precisely the same—Ranjel places it at Ichisi, Elvas just before, at Toalli—but the placement in Elvas is doubtless influenced by the fact that the description forms part of a longer description of Indian domestic arrangements that is placed so as to take advantage of a chapter opening break (Elvas, xlv). And though Ranjel claims that thread spun

from mulberry fibers was finer and stronger than the finest Portuguese thread, Elvas makes no such invidious comparison, as one would expect! Another example is to be found in both authors’ descriptions of native fortifications. Biedma claims that the first fortified towns were seen in the province of Chiaha, yet Elvas observes and describes such fortifications only at Ullibahali, before Tuasi. Oviedo/Ranjel, though also stating that such fortifications were first seen at Chiaha, describes them, in nearly the same language and rhetorical sequence as Elvas, in an “old village” on the other side of

Tuasi, a village that no other narrative mentions as noteworthy and that therefore may have simply presented a handy rhetorical empty space to be filled. Both Oviedo/Ranjel and Elvas describe the town’s fortifications in identical sequence, speaking first of upright posts, then of interwoven horizontal poles, and finally of surface plastering leaving loopholes for shooting. Once again the language of at least part of each description of the wall construction is very similar:

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 25

Ranjel Elvas

Vembarranlos por de dentro y ... envarrada de dentro y de

por defuera, e hacen sus fora y com suas seteiras.. .5! saeteras a trechos.. .5°

(overlaid with clay within (plastered within and without ,

and without. They make and had loopholes. . .53} loopholes at intervals. . .}5?

Certainly the choice of words in making a technical military description of a defensive structure was probably limited, but there was no requirement to mention the wall’s loopholes immediately following the description of its

mud plastering, and I again submit that this kind of similarity of textual structure, and especially location in the narrative, is more than coincidence. A further example shows a similar kind of linguistic dependence in spite of an altered context. Ranjel mentions that among the gifts given to Soto by the chief of Xuala were petacas, which Ranjel goes on to define as boxes or chests of basketry with covers, meant for carrying dry goods. Elvas does not enumerate any such gifts from Xuala, but he does relate the story of an imprisoned female leader of Cutifachiqui who he says escaped just after their departure from Xuala with a petaca—he uses the word and gives a definition—full of fine pearls. Why use and explain the term, which is a Nahuatl word and not from the language of the Cofitachique region, if not for the fact that Ranjel had also introduced it at just this point in the narrative?54 Examples like these, in which identical descriptive materials that could have been placed elsewhere in the narrative—and frequently were, by Biedma or Garcilaso— are found in the same or nearly the same place, can be multiplied manyfold. I am satisfied that they establish a dependence of one narrative upon the other, and that the dependence rests with Burgos’s Elvas. As for the material in Elvas that Oviedo’s Ranjel does not contain, at least some of it, in addition to the flowery speeches already mentioned, could have come from the literature of the period. This is particularly true of the opening chapters, which dwell on matters wholly ignored in Oviedo. The anecdote told about Vasco Porcallo’s overseer in Cuba, who thwarted a suicide epidemic among Indians enslaved in the mines by threatening to commit sui-

cide himself so as to pursue them in the other world, sets out a common theme in the folklore of Mediterranean Europe.55 An anecdote about a Spanish castaway who was nursed to health by Cuban Indians and rose to unite them under his rule is taken from Peter Martyr’s Decades.*® One of the episodes in the elaborate story of Juan Ortiz’s life as a captive of the chiefs of Ucita and Mocogo—none of which appears in Ranjel—describes Ortiz’s rise to favor after he is set to guard corpses and rescues that of a noble child from a

marauding wolf. This tale has classical echoes, but Garcilaso, with his ten-

26 Patricia Galloway

dency toward literary embellishment, borrowed a theme from Amadis de Gaula to make the marauder a lion! Certainly some material in Burgos’s Elvas does come from an independent source, probably a military man active in the expedition. This is most obvious in the parallel segments that describe the actions of several scouting parties. Elvas describes in detail how Juan de Anasco returned to the original landing place from Apalache to fetch the men and boats that had been left behind, whereas Ranjel describes this episode in a single sentence. And Elvas gives details—though not including those of Ranjel’s deeds—of the battle of Mabila, and particularly of various Spanish assaults; of the excursion of Soto with half his army to attack the feigned rebels of Sacchuma; he alone tells us of the defiant men of Alimamu, in their staked fort, who were first encountered by a scouting party led by Juan de Anasco; of how the boats used to cross the Mississippi were brought upstream to Aquixo to be recycled; and of how the people of Pacaha were pursued in boats by the Spaniards to their hiding place. These are clearly the experiences of a firsthand participant, and because some of them are never even mentioned in Oviedo, we might also assume that this narrator sometimes accompanied detachments where Ranjel was not present: he may even have been a trusted comrade of Anasco. What is not certain is that our additional observer must have been a “gentleman,” as in several cases both cavalry and footsoldiers were present. We should be careful not to overstate the implications of these independent elements in Burgos’s Elvas. Most incidents are presented in both, and apart from Oviedo’s commentaries, there is very little in Ranjel that is not also re-

flected, with embellishment, in Elvas. Moreover, the parallelisms, particularly those attributable to literary structure, are simply too thorough-going, too little accountable merely to two observations of the same event, to have stemmed only from both Ranjel and Elvas’s having been present on the expedition. The implications of a probable strong dependence of Elvas on Ranjel

are serious, because their close agreement on town names, distances, and other matters thus loses its corroborative force. Probably the most important addition in Elvas is an apparently more coherent account of Spanish dealings with Indian groups in the neighborhood of Chicaga, but it too is of relatively little consequence in terms of added objective information. Finally, there is actually some advantage to be gained from the probable dependence of Elvas on Ranjel when it comes to considering the Indian groups encountered west of the Mississippi, for which Oviedo’s Ranjel is incomplete. If we can assume that both are at least drawn from the same source, then Elvas plus Biedma may prove adequate for a sixteenth-century view of the lower Mississippi. To summarize, I think I have shown that Oviedo’s connection with the publisher André de Burgos at just the time when he was trying to get the revised Historia general containing the Ranjel account printed, together with

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 27

the extremely close correlations between the two sources, make it possible to argue that there was an actual borrowing from Oviedo to Elvas. Clearly something was added: there was another participant informant used, but whether he was Portuguese, or indeed a gentleman, remains moot. Finally, in the Elvas account there was a good deal of borrowing from contemporary literary tradition to gloss the events in Florida with a chivalric mist that had no connection to actual ethnographic fact. Hence while Burgos’s Elvas certainly contains segments that are properly secondary, those segments are clearings in

a forest of intertextuality that makes the text as a whole overwhelmingly tertiary.

Garcilaso Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida has led such a controversial life as a source for the ethnography of the Southeast that its use must be carefully justified. Still, ethnographers have formulated excuses of the weakest sort for their use of the Inca’s descriptions of Indians. “Mental pictures of specific events are not easily forgotten or contradicted,” Brain claims,°’ in defiance of eighty years of studies of eyewitness testimony that offer ample evidence to the contrary.°8 Indeed, in the case of La Florida, it is not even certain whose memory may be at issue most of the time. I will argue that except for the passages that stem explicitly from specific sources (and that have most to say about Spaniards, not Indians), it has been substantially borrowed from Elvas and—even

worse—supplemented with Garcilaso’s Inca memories. For that reason, I must once again contextualize the source in the literary discourse of Renaissance Iberia and demonstrate its derivative nature and discursive purpose. The story of Garcilaso’s life is often told by those who are sure that his genealogy as the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador somehow privileges his view of the world of North American Indians. For our purposes, the most important parts of this story concern his education and his exposure to the world of letters in Spain, and, indeed, his knowledge of New World In-

dian traditions. Much of what has been written about his life, however, is based on what he has seen fit to tell us through his works in his persona as narrator. Indeed, it is probably because Garcilaso places himself so centrally within his narratives that there has been so much attention paid to his life, whereas little is known of Ranjel and even less of the obscure “gentleman of Elvas.” Garcilaso was not just any mestizo boy, and Cuzco, where he grew up, was hardly a frontier outpost. The city had been the Inca capital, the “world’s na-

vel.” Under the Spaniards it remained a center of culture, society, and learning, and there Garcilaso had access to as good a basic European education as he could have obtained anywhere in the New World. Like the sons of other

28 Patricia Galloway

conquistadors, he attended classes taught by the canons of the cathedral chapter of Cuzco, where he learned Spanish composition, the principles of arithmetic needed for keeping accounts, and at least such Latin as was required for the catechism and the mass. Garcilaso’s friends and acquaintances in Cuzco included a number of his father’s friends, veterans not only of the conquest of Peru but also of the Soto expedition. Garcilaso tells us at the end of La Florida that most of the Soto survivors went to Peru to serve the king in the civil wars that broke out there in 1544, and that he knew many of them. Indeed, several are specifically named in his work, including Gonzalo Silvestre, the man most scholars believe was nearly the sole source for La Florida. Since Garcilaso was born in 1539 and lived in Peru until 1560, he had ample opportunity to hear of the events of the Florida expedition from these men. His understanding of the traditions of his Inca family, gathered as a boy from his mother’s relatives, contributed enormously to Garcilaso’s history of Peru, the Comentarios Reales de los Incas. They are also important to La Florida, since, as I will show, Garcilaso seems to have assumed a sort of Indian uniformitarianism by which he applied these Inca traditions and lifeways to his understanding of the polities of Florida.5® Most of what explicitly spills over into La Florida the narrator even describes as having been experienced by himself. More significant, perhaps, is the insight he gained of the possibility of civilization and culture among natives of the Americas, which

was the basis of the central argument of the Comentarios Reales and informed La Florida importantly. What remains to be evaluated is the extent to which Inca ethnography became southeastern ethnography. Although the 1544 civil war in Peru led to great upheavals for Garcilaso connected with his father’s vacillating allegiance, more significant for his work was the presence of the Soto expedition survivors. It is important also that at the age of five he experienced the highly unchristian spectacle of Spaniards butchering each other in ways no Indian could ever have dreamed of. Although his father came out of the wars on the right side and had his estates restored, in the reorganization that followed, Spanish conquistadors were obliged to make marriages with Spanish women, and Garcilaso’s father took a Spanish wife, arranging a remarriage for his former Inca wife with a merchant. Yet Garcilaso apparently continued to live with his father, serving him as amanuensis when some years later the elder gentleman was appointed corregidor of Cuzco. When his father died in 1560 Garcilaso traveled to Spain to bury him with the money he had been bequeathed to further his education. His initial wish was to obtain proper recompense for his father’s services in Peru, and he went to court in Madrid to undertake that task, where he met Bartolomé de Las Casas and Hernando Pizarro.© Rejected at court because his father had been

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 29

credited with saving the rebel Gonzalo Pizarro’s life, he joined the emperor’s army, fighting possibly in Italy and certainly against the moriscos in 1568 near Granada under the leadership of Don John of Austria, attaining the rank of captain. After this brief career, he left the army and returned to the estate of his father’s brother in the small town of Montilla. Garcilaso’s task in Montilla was to aid in the management of his uncle, the Marquis of Priego’s estates.°! During his time in Montilla he began to write, embarking first upon the task of translating from Italian one of the most complex of Renaissance philosophical works, the Dialoghi d’amore of the exiled Spanish Jew Leon Hebreo, which he completed in 1586. In Montilla he also began work on both the Comentarios Reales and La Florida and had at least

partly finished the second. It is suggested that during this period he spent time interviewing Gonzalo Silvestre, who had returned to Spain in 1556 and was living in Las Posadas. In 1589 his uncle’s death endangered Garcilaso’s source of income; by that date, too, Gonzalo Silvestre had also apparently died. By 1592 Garcilaso had changed his residence to Cérdoba, where he obtained a position as steward of

the Hospital of the Immaculate Conception, which required that he take minor religious orders. By this time, La Florida had been completed; the Comentarios Reales would be completed by 1604. But already in 1592 Garcilaso was embarked on the second part of the Comentarios, which would be completed before the time of his death in 1616. Garcilaso’s position in the Spanish literary world was not preeminent, but neither was it obscure. The circles in which he was accepted in Cordoba in-

cluded a prominent group of scholars, philologists, and biblical exegetes, among them not a few poets, including Gongora, perhaps the most influential poet of the day. Garcilaso had been born Gomez Suarez de Figueroa; when he began to write he decided to adopt the name of an ancestor of his grandfather's

generation, who had achieved great fame as a lyric poet, adopting Italian models into Spanish, and additional acclaim as a soldier, dying in 15 36. It seems to me that a strong case can be made for Garcilaso’s having constructed for himself quite intentionally the persona of an ideal Spanish Renaissance man. Clearly he chose to be a European; he not only chose the name of the father of Spanish Renaissance poetry, he emulated the elder Garcilaso’s career as soldier, poet, and translator. Doubtless familiar with all of his predecessor’s writings, he would have had a useful guide to hand for this project of self-fashioning in Castiglione’s Cortegiano; the elder Garcilaso had supplied an introduction to the famous Spanish translation of it by his friend Boscan.

The young mestizo must have hoped the world would need to distinguish him from his ancestor, since he phrased his new name “El Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega.”

Clearly also Garcilaso chose not to be an Indian, in spite of his rhetorical

30 ©6Patricia Galloway

references. When his reputation grew, the dispossessed Incas in Peru requested his help at court in arguing their right to a pension, and Garcilaso declined; he also apparently acquiesced tamely when the Spanish government demanded that the second part of the Comentarios reales lose its “royal” ap-

| pellation and become a “general history.” If we depend upon the inventory of Garcilaso’s library alone, it is clear that his exposure in Spain to the literary models current in Renaissance Europe was very wide. He had read both ancient and modern historians; a selection of the better fiction of the day, cast in the typical mold of chivalric romance; se-

| rious works of biblical exegesis; studies in the philology of the modern European languages; and the greatest examples of forensic oratory.*¢ He was, in short, far better-read than the majority of even his literate contemporaries. It is important to understand how La Florida fits into Garcilaso’s literary career, for thus may be gleaned some hints about his purpose in writing it. Commentators on his work frequently treat Garcilaso’s translation from the Italian of the Dialoghi d’amore as apprentice work, but as we have already seen in Oviedo’s case, translation was perhaps one of the primary marks of a Renaissance literary man. Garcilaso’s famous namesake had spent many years in Italy and become an exponent of Italianate sentiment and style. By undertaking this translation, Garcilaso not only demonstrated that his mestizo descendant could also master the most important literary language of Renaissance Europe, but showed that he could grasp the complexities of Neoplatonist thought, which later pervaded his historical work.® And his translation, although it was placed on the Index almost as soon as it was published, was nevertheless approved by a list of distinguished priests and accepted with thanks by Maximilian of Austria, to whom it was dedicated. The most important context for La Florida, however, is undoubtedly the Comentarios Reales de los Incas, in both its parts. Part 1 of the Comentarios tells the story of the rise of the Inca state, and tells it against a background of the “barbarism” that preceded it, thus portraying it as an integral step in the universal spiritual progress of mankind by preparing the way for the Incas’ conversion to Christianity.°” Part 2—diplomatically retitled Historia General del Peru—tells of the Spanish conquest and the conversion of the Inca state. Garcilaso began writing Part 1 before or at the same time as La Florida, and he completed Part 2 after La Florida was in print. Thus it is quite evident that the composition of La Florida falls quite literally in the midst of Garcilaso’s work on his Peruvian history. La Florida, therefore, can be seen in two ways. Because Garcilaso had no privileged access to the precontact past of the Florida Indians, the book can be seen as a conquest narrative alone, a sort of dry run for his work on Part 2 of the Comentarios. On the other hand, it is possible to see La Florida as a compendium, additionally incorporating the aims of the first volume of the Co-

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 31

mentarios by emphasizing the spiritual advancement of New World Indians.® If this is true, then Garcilaso’s information about southeastern cultures must be untrustworthy. If Garcilaso’s mestizo heritage was a source of internal conflict for him, as biographers have argued, he certainly claimed it was a source of insight, and hence we must see it as a source of a certain kind of bias. In fact, Garcilaso’s adherence to a scheme of universal history that equated certain stages of civilization with levels of spiritual progress apparently made him believe that, like some modern archaeologists, he too could make lawlike generalizations about cultures he had never seen. At several places in La Florida he applies examples of lifeways explicitly taken from his Inca experience to the Indians of the Southeast, and I will suggest in a moment that he did this silently in several other places. He was concerned to deliver a specific picture of Indian culture, and where he lacked detail he resorted to the Renaissance practice of writing what should have been there.®? Garcilaso allowed his narrator to state his explicit aim of giving equal place to Spaniard and Indian. The effect of his portrayal of the valor, honor, and gentility of the natives was a radical revision of the image of the native warrior, making him over—as he had made himself—into a caballero worthy of comparison with Spaniards. The question is whether that image was true to the facts or true only to the spirit of the facts, true to Garcilaso’s knowledge or to his desire. The problematic status of European sources for the portrayal of Indian history is explicitly raised in the Comentarios, because European works detailing the history of the conquest of Peru were already in existence and in need, Garcilaso felt, of explicit correction. It affected the style of the work, since Garcilaso quoted printed sources frequently and at length, often to be discussed and compared with other printed sources or eyewitness accounts. Garcilaso was, however, silent about this problem in La Florida, instead de-

pending upon “an intricate system of accreditation allegedly based upon three eyewitness accounts.””° Only infrequently are the alleged written accounts of the soldiers Coles and Carmona actually quoted, and never at substantial length. Nor does the narrator ever explicitly cast doubt on either of these sources, but a careful reading of the text shows that nearly everything

that is explicitly attributed to them pertains not to the Indians but to the , Spaniards and their actions. There was, therefore, no need for an explicit revision of existing accounts of southeastern Indians, because the only existing

accounts he claimed to have used were integral to the verisimilitude of his narrative and were additionally so unspecific about the culture of southeastern Indians. Zamora has fully demonstrated Garcilaso’s conviction that the purpose of the conquest of the New World was part of the divine plan for the universal spread of Christianity, but that the civilized sedentary Indian cultures

32 Patricia Galloway

of the New World counted as a praeparatio evangelica, signalized by his comparisons not only of the Inca state but also of the cultures of Florida with the Ancients of classical antiquity, certain emblematic personages of whom were seen in the Renaissance as Christian precursors.”! But although he borrowed this project of placing the Indian peoples of the New World in the context of universal history from José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las

Indias, he also opposed Acosta’s view that Indian idolatry was equivalent to satanism and that the Indians therefore deserved punishment through subjugation. 72

To the contrary, Garcilaso emphasized the validity of Indian religious practices as preparatory for the acceptance of Christianity by constantly referring to Indian eagerness to receive its message, and this is as evident in the Florida as it is elsewhere. The narrator is constantly concerned to reprove the Spaniards for not taking advantage of this eagerness, especially in the elaboration of the episode at Casqui when the cross placed upon a mound led to mass adoration and successful prayers for rain. Constant emphasis is placed upon the sedate nature of a monotheistic Indian religion that worshipped the sun and cared reverently for the remains of ancestors—a religion, one might add, that is portrayed as sharing basic assumptions with that of the Incas. Garcilaso’s personal sentiments toward Soto himself may have been an important ingredient in his decision to write about the conquest of Florida. His

portrayal of Soto in the Comentarios is a sympathetic one. Soto is always seen as the moderate and courtly but supercompetent lancer, not among Pizarro’s original hardy veterans but trusted enough to be sent along with Pizarro’s brother to persuade the Inca Atahualpa to come into captivity by meeting with him in the midst of an army of fifty thousand men. Soto’s speech to Atahualpa is a version of the requerimiento, but phrased in such a courtly manner that the narrator says Atahualpa would doubtless have acquiesced immediately on all points if the interpreter had only rendered it properly; even at that, Soto’s demeanor was so clearly noble and impressive that the Inca knew the barbarous version he was hearing had to be wrong. Yet another authority on the conquest of Peru, Agustin de Zarate (also one of Gar-

cilaso’s most trusted sources], placed the initial misinterpreted requerimiento in the mouth of Bishop Vicente de Valverde, as it would more properly

have been; Garcilaso clearly exploited the potential for Soto to display courtly behavior in this scene, which Zarate does not elaborate.”3 Garcilaso says that Atahualpa, reassured by Soto’s courtliness and the inevitability of his father’s prophecy of dominance by a new people, marched to meet Pizarro in Cajamarca, where after failure to respond to harsh demands by Valverde he

was seized, held for ransom, and eventually killed. But Atahualpa was a usurper. Even after the Spaniards had been seen on the Peruvian coast, he had

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 33

fought with the army of the rightful Inca, his half-brother Huascar, and taken him into custody; at that time, he had murdered Garcilaso’s entire Inca family save his mother and uncle, as is gruesomely described in the closing chapters of the first part of the Comentarios. We are also told that none of the surviving Inca nobility regretted the death of Atahualpa. Soto figures importantly in a second episode. Sent to Cuzco to estimate whether the holdings of the Inca were sufficient to meet the unbelievable ransom of a room full of gold offered by Atahualpa, Soto passed through the town where Huascar was being held by Atahualpa’s men. According to Garcilaso, Huascar begged Soto to stay with him and keep his brother’s captains from killing him, offering to double Atahualpa’s ransom, but Soto did not understand him and stuck to his orders. Since Atahualpa suspected that Soto would in time communicate the true state of affairs to Pizarro, he sent a message for his men to kill Huascar, which they did.”4 Thus as Garcilaso tells the story, Soto was indirectly responsible for the death of both Incas. Soto is thus not so much a character in the Comentarios as a part of the machinery fulfilling the purposes both of the prophecy of the father of both Incas, Huayna Capac, to the effect that strange bearded people would come to end Inca dominance of Peru, and of the march of Christian history. But it is worth noting that very few of the Spaniards are so fully portrayed in the Comentarios as Soto is in La Florida, and this is so because in a very substantial sense the two works are of different genres; where the former is in a very overt sense a set of commentaries on existing histories, the latter is an adventure tale with a hero, and as I shall demonstrate, its commentaries are tacit. To show how this is the case, I must discuss Garcilaso’s use of sources in La Florida. I will begin with the sources that Garcilaso claimed to have used and openly cited, since the narrator of La Florida defines his historical truth in terms of the authority of eyewitness testimony. None of Garcilaso’s alleged sources, however, was of the same immediacy as those contributing to the other Soto narratives I have reviewed. It is certain, as I have said, that Florida veterans came to Peru at the time of

the civil war and remained there, and that Garcilaso was acquainted with them. He even drew upon his principal source, Gonzalo Silvestre, for facts in the writing of the second volume of the Comentarios, and Silvestre’s personal copy of Lopez de Gdmara’s Historia, which is one of the sources Garcilaso was correcting in that work, has been found and purchased by the national library of Peru. It bears holograph marginal notes by both Silvestre and

Garcilaso attesting to their critical responses to Gomara’s assertions.’5 Henige has pointed out, however, that the feats of memory attributed to Silvestre in the Florida narrative are unlikely,” and the notes in Gomara do not

34 Patricia Galloway

account for the Florida material. It must be remembered that even as early as 1567, when Durand claims Garcilaso began work on La Florida,’’ Silvestre would then have been stating his definitive account nearly thirty years after the events. But if we consider that it is much more likely that the major part

of the work was done in Montilla in the 1580s, then Silvestre would have been nearly seventy, and other evidence suggests that he was ill and depen-

dent upon Garcilaso for funds.’8 |

There is no particular reason to doubt that Garcilaso may have been made privy to what was presented to him as a great deal of remembered material, except for the highly suspicious fact that the whole of the narrative is “festooned” with just the same kind of protestations of truth that characterize the fictional romances of the age—including Oviedo’s Claribalte—and that the period around 1600 in Spain was particularly noted for pseudohistorical hoaxes.”? There is also cause for concern in the assumption that the wealth of detail to which archaeologists are so devoted could possibly have been retained in such completeness by Silvestre for fifty years after the experience. Henige’s work and that of others on the reliability of oral historical sources, together with recent work by cognitive scientists on memory, suggests that this would have been impossible (particularly as Silvestre himself came from a culture that had lost a good deal of its oral historical tradition), and that so much material must have been borrowed from a written source, obtained from additional informants, or quite possibly invented. Garcilaso’s use of numerical data, which is quite out of any reasonable agreement with the other sources where comparable figures are given, comes in for particularly hard criticism from Henige and on that score is wholly discredited.®° Two groups of notes written by lesser members of the expedition, Alonso de Carmona and Juan Coles, were indeed allegedly used to add corroboration to the main narrative, although no one but Garcilaso has ever claimed to have seen them. Garcilaso refers to these as “sworn testimony”; Carmona’s “Peregrinations” in Florida and Peru were allegedly sent to him in Spain, while he found Coles’s account among a set of notebooks gathered by the Franciscan friar Pedro Aguado and left in the hands of a printer of Cordoba. Garcilaso refers to himself as an acquaintance of Carmona, presumably from early days in Peru, but claims no such knowledge of Coles. Finally, he also says that neither man wrote of any incident in which he did not personally figure, nor did e1ther one set down the names of the places connected with events. José Durand has discussed the verisimilitude of these two sources, and argues that the finding of Coles’s manuscript is believable on the face of it because Garcilaso several times had dealings with printers in Cordoba, on dates that precede his completion of La Florida.®! As far as Carmona is concerned, Durand finds Garcilaso’s acquisition of such a manuscript equally persuasive, since

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 35

Carmona died an alderman of the town of Priego in 1591 and Garcilaso had dealings with officials of Priego during his sojourn in Montilla.82 Among other narratives of the conquest of Florida, Garcilaso acknowledges having read Cabeza de Vaca’s account of the Narvaez expedition, the Naufragios, and since the Comentarios refer to several other general histories of the conquest period—Lopez de Gémara, Acosta, Las Casas—we should assume that as in the case of the Comentarios he used whatever was in print at the time (another argument for his use of Elvas}. At the time of his death Garcilaso’s library contained “four books about Florida,”83 but we do not know which ones these were or if he had previously owned or had access to others. In Spain he clearly had access to all the literary riches of the Renaissance flowering of the Spanish Golden Age, since his circle of learned friends was wide and his own library showed strikingly broad reading preferences. The explicit attributions to be found in his three historical works, which as we have seen he was working on concurrently, demonstrate that he was making good use of everything he could get his hands on. True to his time, Garcilaso was familiar with the known classics of ancient history, and makes specific references in the Florida to Plutarch, Lucan, Xenophon, Livy, Tacitus, and Caesar, which latter Durand maintains was his most important model for La Florida.84 This would not be unusual, since Caesar’s works were considered to be the most appropriate models for commentaries on specific contemporary events by most historians of Garcilaso’s day.85 And as he had done in the Comentarios, Garcilaso drew classical parallels to events of the Florida expedition. Many of these references are explicit: two examples are the comparison of the barge of the Lady of Cofachiqui coming to meet Soto with that of Cleopatra meeting Marc Antony and the likening of the Indians’ failure to attack at strategically propitious times because of superstition to a similar behavior of Caesar’s barbarian enemies. Other references are more difficult to discern because the reference is either not specific or is not even treated rhetorically as a reference. Garcilaso’s substitution of a lion for the wolf threatening Ortiz’s guardianship of the dead is not only zoologically impossible but probably borrows from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe; while the elaborate portal to the temple at Talomeco, with its twelve great statues worthy of the great temples of Rome, not only refers to “paintings of Hercules” for a comparison with the weapons carried by two of them,

but alludes clearly in the whole description more to the famous twelve worthies of Minerva’s tapestry than to twelve giant Indians, and too closely echos the arrangement of the twelve apostles at Spanish medieval church portals for us to be wholly convinced of a native reality.86 And as ChangRodriguez has argued, many of these classical references—and thus the descriptions that made them apply as parallels—are taken into the service of Garcilaso’s moral purpose of arguing the justifiability of equating the civili-

36 Patricia Galloway

zations of the New World with those of the Ancients, hence with precursors of Christian civilization.®’ It is also quite possible that Garcilaso used other contemporary sources that he did not cite. Apologists for Garcilaso’s truthfulness in describing his sources have alluded to his own assertions about his allegiance to truth. It has been suggested, for example, that because the Florida was printed in Lisbon and dedicated to the Duke of Braganza, and because Garcilaso claimed in his preface that he wished to be a Portuguese citizen, he would have mentioned use of a Portuguese source, Elvas, if he had used it. Garcilaso could hardly have avoided knowing Elvas’s published work, since his own was not completed until 1591 and only published in 1605. In any case, as Henige has pointed out, it is hardly conceivable that the aging Silvestre would have been

unaware of the publication of the Elvas account, and he may even have sought out Garcilaso for spite because he was not mentioned in it.88 I would even suggest that it is not unrealistic to assume that there was not only a copy of Gémara annotated by both hands to prompt memories, but also a similarly annotated copy of Burgos’s Elvas, and that it should be sought among known copies. Nor, finally, is it impossible that Garcilaso could have had access to Biedma’s report and the unpublished manuscript of Oviedo’s great work, especially if a copy of the latter remained in a monastery; Garcilaso certainly knew of the first part of Oviedo’s work and thus of Oviedo’s role as Chronicler of the Indies; he must have known of the existence of additional unpublished material.

Henige presents strong arguments for the influence of these sources on Garcilaso’s work, in spite of his failure to mention them. Two of these are worth repeating here. First, Garcilaso’s failure to mention the name of his chief informant is highly suspicious once we come to consider why he should have omitted it. Second, it is quite amazing that segments of the journey that Garcilaso failed to mention precisely coincide with those that were not elaborated in Ranjel and Elvas—dquite an extraordinary coincidence if indeed Gar-

cilaso’s source was wholly independent of them: “Besides two completely different sets of figures, the major difference between Elvas and Garcilaso is not one of substance but derives from the orgy of speechifying by all hands, the welter of dubious ethnographic detail, an odd fixation with horses’ colors and ownership, and the rhapsodic descriptions of all manner of flora and fauna that are embedded throughout Garcilaso’s narrative."®? La Florida, in spite of the narrator’s strictures against popular literature, was written overtly in the tradition of the Spanish chivalric epic, which genre saw a bolstering of its popularity at this time, as its heroic feats were reflected in real feats of the conquest in the New World; and these books were among the first and remained the second most numerous to be shipped to the New

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 37

World for the diversion of successful conquistadors.”° Clearly also, as I have already suggested, Garcilaso was strongly influenced by the courtesy book literature that defined the ideal of the courtier: the very qualities described by Castiglione in I] Cortegiano are those that Garcilaso ascribed to both Spaniard and Indian in La Florida.

The structure of La Florida has clear thematic implications. The overt structure, stated by Garcilaso explicitly, is a division into six books, each one,

after the first introductory book, devoted to one year of the expedition and

each one divided into chapters. This structure offers a combination of Oviedo’s ten long segments—with which divisions it shows striking similarities—and the short chapter structure of Burgos’s Elvas. There is, however, no apparent uniformity in the distribution of books through the chapters and a marked shrinkage in book length in the second chronological half of the narrative:

] 15

Book Number of Chapters

345, Part39 16 18

2, Part 1 30 2, Part 2 25

2 15 65, Part 2.2. Unlike Oviedo’s Ranjel, however, and much more in line with Burgos’s Elvas, the emphasis of the midpoint of the narrative falls on the lengthy description of the native temple at Talomeco, rather than at Coga, which is barely described.

Although of course Garcilaso has assured us that his major informant, Gonzalo Silvestre, was his source for the main body of the text, the only passages that must certainly be drawn from Silvestre are those in which his adventures, revealing information only he would know, are portrayed. This is especially evident in Book 2, Part 1, where Silvestre carries out a heroic ride to fetch the main exploring body to meet Soto, and in Book 2, Part 2, which recounts the uniting of the party left at the base camp on Tampa Bay with the main party at Apalache as a series of “meanwhile” passages starring Gonzalo Silvestre as a major actor in the Anasco party sent to Tampa to close out the camp and fetch men and materiel. The structure of both is very similar to the feat of Ranjel’s ride to Tampa and back from Tocaste to obtain reinforcements, and it is striking that both sequences are seen from the “outside” by Ranjel, while the ride of Ranjel is not even mentioned by Garcilaso. Durand has argued that because references to the manuscripts of Coles and

38 Patricia Galloway

Carmona appear at the ends of chapters, they must have been used as the nar-

rator says they were: rather as an afterthought, to annotate Silvestre’s account.”! Yet it is interesting to note that if chapters are tallied according to explicitly cited sources, Coles and Carmona are seen to complement Silvestre:

where Silvestre’s exploits appear, Coles and Carmona are rarely cited, and vice versa. This intensifies the suspicion that Silvestre is accountable for only those segments in which he appears as an actor. The most telling structural peculiarities come in the latter part of the narrative, for which Ranjel’s account is lacking. One of these changes probably echoes Silvestre’s insistence on his own exploits. Garcilaso offers only one major flotilla of Indians from Quigualtanqui attacking the party as it escaped down the Mississippi, while Elvas describes two parties, the second less elab-

orately described than the first. The curtailed river battles are replaced by long descriptions of the experience of Silvestre’s party at sea, which was lost from the others, sailed on past the entrance to the Panuco River, and wandered several days on the beach looking for them while Moscoso’s party went on to the town. Another difference is more puzzling. The foray to Naguatex and the desertion of Guzman to stay with an Indian woman are placed before the death of Soto, whereas in Elvas the same episodes occur after Soto’s death, under the leadership of Moscoso. Comparison with Biedma, however, in spite of the factor’s notable brevity, shows that the order of travel in Elvas echoes Biedma and that Garcilaso’s Naguatex excursion doubles a similar previous one to Tula, which takes place in all four narratives before the 15 41-42 winter camp. Because no specific informant is named by Garcilaso for the placement of this episode, it is not clear whether faulty memory or rhetorical effect is responsible for this displacement, but it does allow Garcilaso to fatten up a very slender Book 5, Part 1, to maintain the structural symmetry of the split books, and to place Soto’s death at the Book 5 split, symmetrical with the death of the fierce chief Vitachuco at the split in Book 2. An important concern of ethnohistorians and anthropologists is the degree to which coercive social mechanisms and intersocietal warfare were already in existence before the coming of Europeans, and Garcilaso’s testimony is very prized on this subject. Yet it is clear that most of the occasion for such description comes from Garcilaso’s dramatization of the admirable qualities of Indians who meet or exceed Spanish standards. His favorite vehicle for doing this is to portray the noble Indian as opposed to or opposed by an Indian of lesser value, generally in a conflict situation; and often his noble Indian is a fabrication generalizing from several individuals seen in the other narratives: the fierce and unbending chief Vitachuco, whose plans to attack the Span-

iards and whose very inner thoughts are revealed to us through the rather transparent device of a set of interpreters to whom he supposedly revealed his

| The Incestuous Soto Narratives 39 plans; the noble subchief of Anilco, maker of elaborate speeches on true nobility, who gives the Spaniards every possible aid to build their brigantines and who incidentally reveals to them full details of the regional conspiracy against them led by Quigualtanqui. Neither of these individuals appears in any other narrative. Finally, it is worth remarking that many of the extended descriptions of Indian customs are either overtly references to Inca custom that Garcilaso says he is generalizing (absolutism of chiefs in Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 28; watercraft in Book 6, Chapter 2} or bear similarities to Inca custom and are unlikely in the Southeast in view of known archaeological and ethnographic fact (exaggerated mound construction in Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 30; punishments of women for adultery in Book 3, Chapter 34). In short, Garcilaso’s Indians are not only too Spanish in the courtliness of their behavior, they are too Inca in the complexity of their social organization and even the texture of their material culture. My sense of the process involved in the construction of La Florida is that it was probably based upon the Elvas account for its main armature, perhaps even constituting a tacit commentary on that account, as the Comentarios were an overt commentary on other contemporary histories. Garcilaso used the memories of Silvestre, Coles, and Carmona, all three of them probably given somewhat to exaggeration, for specific individual episodes, mostly devoted to the exploits of the Spaniards, and he used the Portuguese Relacam as a means of eliciting data from Silvestre. As far as the portrayal of the Indians is concerned, the Elvas narrative had already established an image of courtliness throughout the region of the Southeast proper, east of and bordering the Mississippi River; Cabeza de Vaca, on the other hand, had already indicated in print the barbaric nature of the tribes met with in the eastern Texas region. To this Garcilaso brought what he thought to be his own understanding of New World natives: people who enjoyed an ordered hierarchical society, a paternalistic religion, and mild and limited warfare. Doubtless he was reinforced in his belief that these were correct assumptions by his reading of Las Casas, particularly in the priest’s harsh words against Oviedo’s first volume. The point of all this argument is brief: none of these sources for the Soto expedition—Oviedo’s Ranjel, Burgos’s Elvas, or Garcilaso—is truly primary, and

all are in need of detailed textual analysis. Furthermore, I believe it very likely that Oviedo’s work became the heart of Burgos’s Elvas, which in its turn became the aide-mémoire for Garcilaso’s alleged questioning of Gonzalo Silvestre. Which is not to say that there is nothing genuine or original in these latter two works; just that what is new has little to do with Indians and can only be discerned after careful historiographical criticism.

40 Patricia Galloway

Notes This paper was initially prepared for and presented at a meeting of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies; it has benefited from the suggestions of several scholars, including several who are included in this anthology. 1. Charles Hudson, “The Uses of Evidence in Reconstructing the Route of the Hernando de Soto Expedition,” Alabama De Soto Commission Working Paper 1 (1987), I—2.

2. Cf. John R. Swanton, Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission, 76th Cong., 1st sess., H. Rept. 71, 1939; Philip Phillips, James A. Ford, and James B. Griffin, Archaeological Survey in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, 1940-1947 Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Papers 25 (Cambridge MA: Peabody Museum, 1951); Jeffrey P. Brain, Alan Toth, and Antonio Rodriguez-Buckingham, “Ethnohistoric Archaeology and the De Soto Entrada into the Lower Mississippi Valley,” The Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers, 7 {1974}: 232-89. 3. Part 1, Book 17, Chapters 22—28. See Avalle-Arce, this volume. There is apparently only one extant sixteenth-century manuscript version of the Soto expedition’s history, in the “Marqués de los Truxillos manuscript” in the Biblioteca de Palacio in Madrid, although at least one more, probably Oviedo’s working copy, must have existed in the missing second volume of the Monserrat Manuscript. See Daymond Turner, “Forgotten Treasure from the Indies: The Illustrations and Drawings of Fernandez de Oviedo,” Huntington Library Quarterly 48 (1985): 1-46. The eighteenth-century Munoz copy of the Historia general is thought to preserve the Monserrat version. 4. Edward Gaylord Bourne (trans.}, “A Narrative of De Soto’s Expedition Based on the Diary of Rodrigo Ranjel,” in Bourne (ed.), Narratives of De Soto, 3 vols. (New York: Allerton, 1922}, 2:11-158; this passage is from pages 47—48. See also Chapter 26 in Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias. . . ,{Asunci6n del Paraguay: Editorial Guarania, 1944), 4:42—43. 5. Daymond Turner, “The Aborted First Printing of the Second Part of Oviedo’s General and Natural History of the Indies,” Huntington Library Quarterly 46 (1983): 105— 25. It is not clear whether this manuscript is extant: it could be the Truxillos manuscript. 6. Robert S. Weddle, Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery, 1500-1685 (College Station: Texas AQM University Press, 1985}, 254. 7. José Anadon, who is pursuing a detailed study of Oviedo’s extant manuscripts, has observed: “Ranjel’s version ... poses peculiar problems. The original has never been found; Oviedo used fragments of it and we do not know whether he had available the complete text; in any event, his intentions need to be clarified because of the polemical nature of his account. Oviedo’s and Ranjel’s historiographical point of view needs to be

carefully ascertained prior to determining the historical value of this version” (personal correspondence, 15 March 1991). Onat least one occasion Oviedo clearly says that Ranjel withheld information rather than admit to discord among the officers of the expedition: “This army went from there to the stream which they named Discords, and the reason therefor he desired to conceal who prepared this narrative, because as aman of worth, he did not purpose to relate the faults or weaknesses of his friends” (Bourne, Narratives of De Soto, 2:71).

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 41 8. William Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: John B. Alden, 1886}; quote is located at 2:47. 9. Prescott, History of the Conquest, 2:47. 10. Prescott, History of the Conquest, 2:46. 11. See David Bost, “The Naufragios of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca: A Case of Historical Romance,” South Eastern Latin Americanist 27, no. 3 (1982): 3-12.

12. Charles Hudson et al., “Coosa: A Chiefdom in the Sixteenth-Century Southeastern United States,” American Antiquity 50, no. 4 (1985): 723-37. 13. See Avalle-Arce, this volume.

14. Benjamin Keen, “Introduction: Approaches to Las Casas, 1535-1970,” in Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen (eds.}, Bartolomé de Las Casas in History (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971], 4. 15. See Avalle-Arce, this volume. 16. Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1949), 77-82. 17. James M. Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), 197.

18. Bourne, “Ranjel,” 86—87; Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:35—36. 19. Fidalgo de Elvas, True Relation of the Hardships Suffered by Governor Fernando de Soto & Certain Portuguese Gentlemen During the Discovery of the Province of Florida, Now Newly Set Forth by a Gentleman of Elvas, 2 vols., facsimile and translation, ed. James A. Robertson (De Land: Florida State Historical Society, 1933-34); the passage is in English 2:77—78 and in Portuguese in 1:xlvi recto and verso. 20. Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice, 33-34. 21. Eugene Lyon, “The Canete Fragment: Another Narrative of Hernando de Soto,” in The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1§ 39-1543, 3 vols. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1993}, 1:307—10. 22. Cf. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press As an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); D. W. Cruickshank, “Literature and the Book Trade in Golden-Age Spain,” Modern Language Review 73 (1978): 799-824. 23. Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 121. 24. Turner, ‘Aborted First Printing,” 121. 25. Robertson, True Relation, 2:398—405. 26. Robertson, True Relation, 2:397. 27. Eisenstein, Printing Press.

28. Henry Thomas, Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920). 29. Antonio Joaquim Anselmo, Bibliografia das obras impressas em Portugal no seculo XVI (Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional, 1926), 107. 30. Stephanie Merrim, “The Castle of Discourse: Fernandez de Oviedo’s Don Claribalte {1519} or ‘Los correos andan mas que los caballeros,’” Modern Language Notes 97 (1982): 329-46. 31. Daniel Eisenberg, “The Pseudo-Historicity of the Romances of Chivalry,” Quaderni Ibero-Americani 41 (1972): 81-102.

42 Patricia Galloway 32. David Henige, “The Context, Content, and Credibility of La Florida del Ynca,” The Americas 43 (1986): 1o—11.

33. Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 113. 34. Andres Gonzalez de Barcia Carballido y Zuniga, Barcia’s Chronological History of the Continent of Florida, trans. Anthony Kerrigan (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1951], lii. 35. Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 1983. 36. Anselmo, Bibliografia das obras impressas, 102. 37. Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 119. 38. Daymond Turner, “Gonzalo Fernando de Oviedo y Valdes: First Spanish-Ameri-

can Author,” in Studies in Language and Literature: The Proceedings of the 23rd Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference, ed. Charles L. Nelson (Richmond KY: Department of Romance Languages of Eastern Kentucky University, 1977}, 560. 39. Turner, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, An Annotated Bibliography (University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 66, 1966], §; Aurora Dominguez Guzman, E] libro sevillano durante la primera mitad del siglo XVI (Seville, 1975). 40. Avalle-Arce, this volume.

41. Turner, “Aborted First Printing”; the Soto narrative would have been included had such an edition been printed. 42. G. Mercer Adam, Spain and Portugal (The History of Nations, vol. 8) (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1932), 440.

43. Anselmo, Bibliografia das obras impressas. 44. Compare Oviedo’s Ranjel, which recounts several exploits of Ranjel, and Garcilaso’s Florida, which foregrounds the deeds of his informant Gonzalo Silvestre. Burgos’s Elvas ignores these episodes but adds nothing comparable. 45. Anselmo, Bibliografia das obras impressas, 107. 46. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:36. 47. Robertson, True Relation, 1:xlv. 48. Translation is from Bourne, “Ranjel,” 88. 49. Translation is from Robertson, True Relation, 2:76. 50. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:51. 51. Robertson, True Relation, 1:1xxi recto. 52. Translation is from Bourne, “Ranjel,” 115. 53. Translation is from Robertson, True Relation, 2:120. 54. References in the respective texts are Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:46 and Robertson, True Relation, 1:lix verso. See Ross Hassig, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy in the Valley of Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985], 28. 55. George Lankford, personal communication, 1989. 56. Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India, trans. Richard Eden (London: William Powell, 1555; Readex microprint, 1966). 57. Brain, et al., “Ethnohistoric Archaeology,” 242. 58. Cf. Ulrich Neisser, Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982), 93-159.

The Incestuous Soto Narratives 43 59. Cf. Hugo Rodriguez-Vecchini, “Don Quijote y La Florida del Inca,” Revista Iberoamericana 46 (1982): 587—620; Avalle-Arce, “Introduccion,” E] Inca Garcilaso en sus “Comentarios” (Madrid: Gredos, 1970), 20-28. 60. Julia Fitzmaurice Kelly, E/ Inca Garcilasso de la Vega (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921], 23.

61. Raul Porras Berrenechea, El Inca Garcilaso en Montilla (1561-1614) (Lima: Editorial San Marcos, 1955). 62. Donald G. Castanien, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (New York: Twayne, 1969}, 6o.

63. Guillermo Diez-Plaja, A History of Spanish Literature (New York: New York University Press, 1971], 90O—100.

64. Jose Durand, “La Biblioteca del Inca,” Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispanica 2 (1948): 239-64. 65. Margarita Zamora, Language, Authority, and Indigenous History in the Comentarios reales de los Incas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], 64-70. 66. Kelly, El Inca Garcilasso, 32-35. 67. Zamora, Language, Authority, and Indigenous History, 113-14. 68. Henige, “La Florida del Yanca,” 18. 69. Zamora, Language, Authority, and Indigenous History, 14. 70. Zamora, Language, Authority, and Indigenous History, 43. 71. Zamora, Language, Authority, and Indigenous History, 114; see especially Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, “Armonia y Disyuncion en La Florida del Inca,” Revista de la Universidad Catolica 11—12 (1982): 21-31. 72. Zamora, Language, Authority, and Indigenous History, 125-27. 73. Agustin de Zarate, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, trans. John M. Cohen (Baltimore: Penguin, 1968], ro1—3. 74. Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General His-

tory of Peru, 2 vols., trans. Harold V. Livermore (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966], 700—706, part 2.

75. Durand, “Biblioteca del Inca,” 239—64; for Garcilaso’s informants see Durand’s “Las enigmaticas fuentes de La Florida del Inca,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 168 (1963): 597-609. On the Gomara copy with Garcilaso’s and Silvestre’s marginal notes, see Porras Berrenechea, Garcilaso en Montilla, 219-35. 76. Henige, “La Florida del Ynca,” 18-21. 77. Durand, “Enigmaticas fuentes,” 608. 78. John Varner, El Inca Garcilaso (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968}, 281. 79. Henige, ‘La Florida del Ynca,” 8—12. 80. Henige, “La Florida del Ynca,” 12—16, 19.

81. Durand, “Enigmaticas fuentes,” 6or. 82. Durand, “Enigmaticas fuentes,” 604. 83. Durand, “Biblioteca del Inca,” 254. 84. Durand, “Enigmaticas fuentes,” 608. 85. Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance {Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 256—58.

86. Interestingly, when the conquistadors settled in the new lands and built elaborate palaces for themselves, they added armored conquistador caryatids to their door-

44 Patricia Galloway ways: see the illustration of such a statue on the Casa de Monlejo at Mérida, Yucatan,

Mexico, built in 1549, in Henry Kamen, A Concise History of Spain (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973}, 68. 87. Chang-Rodriguez, “Armonia y Disyuncion.” She also argues for the significance of their structural placement and the particular importance of the central placement of the meeting of the Lady of Cofitacheque and Soto as emblematic of the union of conquered and conqueror. 88. Henige, “La Florida del Ynca,” 6. 89. Henige, “La Florida del Ynca,” 21. go. Leonard, Books of the Brave (New York: Gordian Press, 1964} [reprint of 1949 ed.]. 91. Durand, “Enigmaticas fuentes.”

Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher

Current attitudes toward the Portuguese account of the Hernando de Soto expedition attributed to the so far anonymous “Gentleman of Elvas” seem at best ambivalent. On the one hand, few if any modern scholars appear ready to consider this Relacam verdadeira dos trabalhos g ho gouernador do Fernddo de Souto e certos fidalgos portugueses passarom no descobriméto da prouincia da Frolida “decidedly the best full account that has been handed down to us,” as Theodore Lewis did in 1903.! Since the 1930s, in fact, the Relacam has become something of an odd man out among the Soto narrative sources, and at present even its independence from the other major early account, in Book 17 of Part 1 of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés’s Historia general y natural de las Indias, is being challenged.2 On the other hand, the Relacam has long been ransacked for bits of ethnographic and historical evidence to fill the

needs of specific research, without much concern about source criticism. Present-day arguments used to justify the text’s historical value and primary character have in general echoed those of pre—1930s vintage, even though these early judgments for or against the Relacam had been rather idiosyncratic and less than well supported. This atmosphere of eclectic fuzziness is hardly surprising, however, given that a thorough modern critical study of the text remains to be undertaken. We do not know enough to form a solidly grounded opinion about the Relacam, and so far we have had little to build on except restricted excursions

into internal criticism, unsystematic comparisons with other Soto -narratives, and open speculation. Things might perhaps be a little better if the status of the Relacam as a primary survivor account, a claim made by the publisher of the 1557 first edition, were more persuasively established. But the question of the narrative’s authenticity is unfortunately tied to the so far un-

resolved question of the text’s authorship. :

Simple anonymity would not be a problem, of course, only an inconvenience. Impeccably authentic yet anonymous sixteenth-century Spanish relaciones from the Indies, of all possible sorts, are passably common,‘ while a

46 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

number of sixteenth-century Portuguese sources dealing with overseas mat-

ters—cronicas, relacées, decripcées, naufragios and roteiros—likewise never identify their authors or do so unsatisfactorily. Magalhaes Godinho’s bibliography of sources alone, for instance, lists about twenty-nine such accounts. But in the Relacam a suspicious semi-anonymity, maybe deliberate and maybe not, combines with clearly intrusive artificial elements in a text known to us only through a unique printed version. And although the more obvious embellishments are confined to the speeches by native chiefs, the full extent of any potential literary manipulation is not easy to establish and prove.

How these problematic features compare with the characteristics of the other Soto narratives has inevitably influenced the Relagam’s currently ambiguous popularity. Certainly no such complications bedevil the Relacion of the expedition’s Crown factor Luis Hernandez de Biedma,‘ and intrusive authorial manipulation or blending of materials have never been greatly emphasized in connection with the Book 17 chapters of Oviedo’s Historia devoted to the expedition, ostensibly a quite faithful reflection of the diary of Soto’s secretary Rodrigo Ranjel de Almendralejo and of the latter’s report to the Audiencia of Santo Domingo. There is a strong aura of unimpeachability about Book 17, not the least thanks to the fact that the attribution “Oviedo/ Ranjel” is all too easily reduced to just “Ranjel.” This tends to make the narrative look almost as pristinely authentic as that of Biedma, all the while appearing closer to the events (given the alleged “diary” component) and much

more detailed. At the very least, it earns the obligatory nod as the better source for day by day details of Soto's itinerary, a distinction marred only by the loss of the two final chapters. In Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida del Ynca, of course, the flood of literary and rhetorical devices and an eclectic cross-breeding of realities from disparate contexts have prompted repeated, if just as repeatedly downplayed, negative assessments of the work as a historical source. But this has not really diminished the magical attraction that La Florida, with its wealth of fabulous detail, even if “fabulous” in every sense of

the word, has held for ethnohistorians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. The Relacam, in contrast, has never filled any given research bill all that well, be it in the area of itinerary reconstruction or in that of ethnohistory. Coaxing firm evidence out of this indifferent and recalcitrant narrative can prove frustrating. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of valuable and even unique material in the Relacam, and when it comes to periods and areas which, like the sixteenth-century American Southeast, are almost entirely deprived of written sources, the urge to legitimate the use of every bit of that precious evidence is intense. And so, in essence, we still either favor or deprecate the Relacam on more or less impressionistic grounds, with arguments reflecting our specific

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 47

predispositions. Openly we advertise skeptical caution or adopt a plausible mixture of existing assessments, and forge ahead, using the data regardless, for convincing proofs to vindicate or damn the account are not much easier to find today than they were a hundred years or more ago. Ever since the seventeenth century the Relacam has had its fans, from Citri de la Guette through George Bancroft to W. B. Rye, J. A. Robertson, and others, as well as those who

were inclined to condemn it, preferring explicitly or implicitly for instance La Florida, even if perhaps not so emphatically as Theodore Irving did in 1835.’

The present study thus inevitably asks a number of questions that cannot be adequately answered yet. What role did André de Burgos, the Relacam’s publisher, play in its genesis? Does the fact that it was published in Evora in the late 15 50s by the printer to the Great Inquisitor of Portugal have any significance? Can the place of publication, which had so many links to Elvas, the home town of the mysterious nominal author of the Relacam, provide any clues to his identity or to the origins of the account? This study often falls short of resolving these and other important issues, but it nonetheless opens new directions for future research in the context of the reexamination of the Relacam sparked by the 45oth anniversary of the Hernando de Soto expedition. So far, this reexamination has been closely tied to the narrative’s publishing history, for the comments of some of the translators and editors, as well as the editions themselves, have toa great extent shaped the discussion. Unlike the relevant chapters of Oviedo’s Book 17, published only with the bulk of the Historia general in 1851-55, the Relacam has circulated widely in diverse translations since the early 1600s,° and this has made up for the apparent rarity of the 1557 edition.’ In 1811 a modernized Portuguese text appeared in the Colleccdo de opusculos reimpressos relativos 4 historia das navegacoes, viagens e conquistas dos portugueses, assembled by the Academia Real das Sciéncias in Lisbon and reprinted in 1844 and 1875.!° The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries then saw not only annotated reprints of the early modern translations, such as that of W. B. Rye in 1851,!! but alsoa new English rendering by Buckingham Smith.!2 This was included in the 1866 Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, reissued enlarged and with a fresh introduction and notes by Edward Gaylord Bourne in 1904, 1905, and 1922.!3 Edited

by Theodore Lewis, Smith’s translation also figured, with minor adjustments, in the 1907 collection, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528—-1543.'4

The stream of Buckingham Smith reprints finally led to a desire for better access to the rare 1557 edition. In 1924 the Massachusetts Historical Society

issued ten photographic reproductions of the British Museum exemplar, without annotations or commentary.!5 But only in 1932 did the Florida State

48 Martin Malcolm EIbl and Ivana Elbl

Historical Society produce a more widely available facsimile, with an English translation and annotations by James Alexander Robertson.!¢ The new translation was more critical,!” and Robertson’s contribution to the bibliography of the Relacam remains useful.!8§ Robertson did not embark on a detailed textual study of the Relacam, although his notes do explore comparisons with Biedma and Oviedo/Ranjel. But his crucial importance lies in the three critical points that he raised, drawing principally on E. G. Bourne, the first English translator of Oviedo’s Book 17: (1) that the publisher, André de Burgos, may

have intervened editorially in the text to an extent which cannot easily be gauged; (2) that there were surprising similarities between the Relagam and Oviedo/Ranjel, in effect a “more than general agreement,” and therefore that (3) one of the “authors” had presumably seen the other’s notes or text.!9 But instead of facing up to all the implications, Robertson downplayed point (1] and interpreted the parallels with Oviedo/Ranjel as a testimony in favor of the Portuguese text.

In thus upholding the Relacam’s trustworthiness and originality, Robertson was less cautious than T. H. Lewis before him. Lewis, although billing

up the Relacam with conviction as an eyewitness document and “best full account,” argued that it was drawn up from memory, without field notes, by someone who “did not take an active part at the front or in the advances, but was always with the main army.” He deplored the artificial and stilted speeches, somewhat vague descriptions, “localities sometimes indefinite, .,. distances sometimes confused,” and “palpable errors,” thus largely echoing Jared Sparks’s comments on the Relacam in the life of Father Marquette in American Biography.*° The more charitable Robertson held the Relacam to

have been drafted from “rough field-notes” at least, although “touched up somewhat before publication.’! But it is the misgivings of his quite ambiguous “Bibliographical Note,” not his confidence that the narrative “apparently remains much in the same condition as when it left the unknown fidalgo’s hands,” that animate the current reexaminations of the Relacam. In essence they go back to Robertson’s points (1) through (3), with a sprinkling of the Sparks and Lewis criticisms. The worst bogey is the Relagam’s suspected

derivation from Oviedo/Ranjel, possibly through the agency of the printer André de Burgos. The bogey represents, as a matter of fact, a rather winsome scenario. In re-

turn for forfeiting the Relacam as an independent source, quite a few awkward questions are answered lucidly and coherently. The main frame of the Relacam being a Spanish account augmented and done over into Portuguese explains why this is not an epic story of the Portuguese contingent, why Soto remains the main protagonist, and why allusions to Portugal or things Portuguese are largely absent. The little information that there is about the Portuguese contingent attests to a quick facelift for consumption in Portugal.

. The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 49 The florid speeches in the style of chivalric romances can be regarded as padding to gloss over defects and catch the reader’s interest. Burgos’s showy denial of responsibility for the Relacam’s artless language merely covers up a hack adaptation from the Spanish. With Burgos as agent of transmission, it also becomes clear why this “Spanish” story is printed in Portugal—the text follows the thief. The date of its publication, 1557, fits in very well—this is the year of Oviedo’s death, when it became safe to plunder him. And the attri-

bution of the work to the anonymous “Gentleman of Elvas” is natural: it would have been difficult to put anyone’s name to the product, but the public demanded at least fake authenticity, as in the fictional histories so popular at the time, and there seems after all to have been some bona fide contribution from a Portuguese survivor. At long last we know what we are dealing with: the result of a classic chain of transmission from unpublished work to unauthorized remake.?2 Yet the solution may be too tidy. The dual problem of the Relacam’s intertextual links and of its authorship is quite a convoluted mystery case, and we are still mostly at the stage of sifting through the facts. We shall have to open three main lines of inquiry here. First, as Patricia Galloway has pointed out, it . is crucial to assess whether the obvious main suspect, André de Burgos, had any opportunity for textual theft. If the answer is negative or inconclusive, it will be necessary to review the evidence of the “crime” to reassess its nature and look for additional] leads. And if, as in the Sherlock Holmes mysteries of “The Man With the Twisted Lip” and “The Crooked Man,” the evidence does

not allow us to identify a culprit, and if there is in fact “room for doubt whether any positive crime has been committed,” we shall have to look for alternative explanations of the suspicious clues. Informed speculation will be unavoidable at that point: not all the facts by any means have been gathered and we cannot pretend that, like Holmes’s admired Georges Cuvier, we “could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone.”’24

André de Burgos, Thief or Honest Man?

At first sight, Burgos should have had a good opportunity to pillage Oviedo. Both men were in the same place at about the same time, during a key phase in the publishing history of Oviedo’s Historia general, and there might have been cause for contact. Oviedo was present in Seville, off and on, from 15 46 to 1549, namely during the winter of 1547—48 and again from the fall of 1548 through the spring of 1549.75 Seville was the place of publication of the successful Part 1 of the Historia (15 35},26 and Oviedo was looking hard for someone reliable to print the revised version, incorporating the Soto narrative, as well as the subsequent parts of his voluminous work.?’ Burgos had been run-

50 Martin Malcolm EIbl and Ivana Elbl

ning a press in Seville since the early 1540s, and by the middle of the decade had emerged as a respectable runner-up to the two leading local publishers,

Cromberger and Domingo Robertis.28 He had also “handled” some of Oviedo’s earlier works. In 1545, the second edition of the chivalric romance Don Claribalte came off his press, followed on 3 August 1546, less than two months before Oviedo’s return from the Indies, by a translation of Bocaccio’s Il Corbaccio, which may or may not have been by Oviedo.?? But all things considered, it is questionable how far we can stretch these coincidences. It is doubtful whether either the Claribalte or the Corbaccio were printed with Oviedo’s consent. Oviedo had by then come to view the Claribalte as an early peccadillo, embarrassing from a moral, literary, and political standpoint, and would hardly have welcomed a new edition,>° while the Corbaccio was on the face of things attributed to the Canon Diego Lopez de Ayala. This

might lend some support to a pattern of Burgos’s printing unauthorized Oviedo,?! but not exactly to friendly relations between the two men. We could speculate, of course, that had these editions been illicit, Oviedo might have had leverage over the printer. Increasingly anxious to publish the Historia,?2 he could have pressured Burgos, and Burgos could have in turn gained access to the revised Book 17. But all this seems unlikely. If Oviedo had the printer’s back to the wall, why not let him profit from the mock “revised” Part 1, printed instead in Salamanca in May 1547233 The last thing Oviedo ought to have wanted under this assumption was for Burgos to fail. We might explain this away, true enough, by arguing that in Seville the “revised” Part 1 would soon have been detected by Brigida Maldonado, the widow of the Juan Cromberger who had printed the 15 35 version. A formidable and aggressive businesswoman, she would not have failed to retaliate against Burgos.*4 It ought to be telling, however, that the only book Oviedo did have printed in Seville at this point, the translation of the Regla de la vida espiritual y secreta theologia of Fra Pietro da Lucca, was entrusted to Burgos’s rival Domingo Robertis.** In all probability, there was no specific relationship between Burgos and Oviedo, turbulent or otherwise. Moreover, Oviedo’s stay in Seville during the winter of 1547—48 coincided with a steep plunge in Burgos’s fortunes. By early 1548 Burgos was in debt and rapidly going out of business. He had to surrender part of his typographical equipment to Juan Vazquez de Avila, his principal creditor,3° and on 3 February 1548 he let out on lease a printing press with all fittings to a relative, Diego Rendon. He might still have been able to print the Regla had Oviedo entrusted it to him, for on 26 January 1548 he turned out the Quarta y quinta parte de la chronica del inuencible don Florambel de Lucea, and on 10 March a reprint of the Coronica del noble cauallero Guarino Mesquino. No other books carrying his Seville imprint are known, however, and he must have left for Portugal by the early summer.?’”

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 51

Gambling debts may well have contributed to this downfall: when Burgos had first arrived in Seville from Granada in or before 15 40, he made a living as a naipero, and teaching card games and printing cards also landed him in trou-

ble later on in Portugal.38 But it may have been the severe economic crisis that Seville was experiencing at that time, aggravated by a plague of locusts in 1547 and marked by soaring inflation and a great dearth of liquid funds, that ultimately made the difference between scraping by and bankruptcy.??

Since Robertis completed the Regla on 18 February 1548, he must have started setting it by the middle of December 1547 at the latest, given that his next job, the Libro del inuencible cauallero Lepolemo hijo del Emperador de Alemana, came off the press on 4 May.*° Oviedo must have decided to use him no later than November or early December, and Burgos may thus have already been in trouble then. His output for 1547 indeed consisted of three mediocre items, two of them early on in the year and the third undated.*! Burgos might in fact have preferred to go ahead with the Florambel even had

he been offered the Regla. The latter turned out to be a very poor seller, whereas there was an excellent market for libros de caballerias.*? In any case, however, it is implausible that Oviedo would have considered Burgos a suitable candidate for printing the Historia. Oviedo failed dismally in his attempts to secure financial backing,“3 and Burgos would not have been in any shape to start work without an immediate advance. There was little reason for Oviedo to have even briefly shown this printer about to go out of business his cherished manuscript, about which he was so worried that before returning to the Indies he left it “in good care in a monastery . . .soas not to expose it to risks,” as he informed Bishop Gasca on 3 January 15 50.*4 It is, moreover, not quite certain whether Oviedo had completed the extant version of the expanded Book 17 before Burgos closed shop and left Seville.45 By 1548 Oviedo was once more under attack from Bartolomé de Las Casas, who according to Lopez de Gomara tried to block the necessary authorization for printing the Historia from the Consejo de Castilla.*6 Whether Las Casas succeeded or not, or even had any substantial impact, is beside the point here. Oviedo, however, must have had before his eyes the specter of the lengthy scrutiny of Juan Ginés de Septilveda’s Democrates alter by the University of

Salamanca, in which Las Casas had also played a role. This dragged on throughout the winter of 1547—48 and the following spring, finally resulting in a recommendation to deny the authorization to publish.*’ Oviedo may have been both tempted and inclined to adjust the message of some of his recent additions, despite his contempt for the relentless priest and despite his avowed commitment to telling the truth without concern for anyone’s feelings or interests.4® The Oviedo that comes through in Book 17 is above all the old man of the Quinquagenas (finished by May 1556),42 more and more concerned with faith, salvation, and morality. He is prone to ser-

52 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl!

monizing and homiletic exemplification, as well as to a farraginous quoting of the Church Fathers and the Scripture, and he is angry at those who promote the ongoing conquest that he perceives to be the ruin of the earlier colonies of settlement such as his beloved Santo Domingo.*° Book 17 certainly lent itself well to a Lascasian adjustment, all the while providing a vent for Oviedo’s old personal rancors®!: he hated Soto both as a follower of the Pizarros and as a “disciple” of Pedrarias Davila, the same Pedrarias who nearly had Oviedo

killed and in whose replacement Oviedo’s insistent pressure had certainly played a role. For all his posturing as a dispassionate and meticulous historian who would not include anything in his fair copy unless his eyes undeceived him or unless he found satisfactory corroborating evidence,52 Oviedo was definitely not above using the pen as a weapon of personal revenge.*? To what extent Oviedo would have had time to carry out any revisions is a moot point. Throughout the winter of 1547—48 and into the following spring he was busy with a number of official and literary tasks, among other things completing the revised Libro de la camara, making additions to Part 2 of the Historia, and overseeing the publication of the Regla by Robertis.54 Moreover, the Christian and moralizing rhetoric of Book 17 is to a surprising degree reminiscent of the tone of Las Casas’s Tratados of 15 52. The various Tratados were immediately shipped to the Indies, and Oviedo would certainly have

had knowledge of them.5> It would thus need to be securely established whether Oviedo did or did not work on Book 17 even after his return to Santo Domingo. But whichever way this turns out to have been, there is a chance that even had relations between Burgos and Oviedo been ideal, Burgos could only have obtained an earlier draft or outline of Oviedo’s revisions.*°

This might of course help to explain the concurrent parallels and divergences between the Relacam and Oviedo’s Book 17. On balance, however, the evidence points against the possibility of Burgos’s acquiring even a late version of the additions to Book 17 in Seville, and the question of opportunities for borrowing once he had managed to rebuild his career in Evora is even more problematic. At least for now, Burgos ought to be pronounced innocent. We cannot rule out that someone else, either the “Gentleman of Elvas” or another writer/editor, could have obtained a copy of Oviedo’s manuscript, but so far not a shred of external evidence in support of this has come to light. The only thing really weighing against the Relacam would seem to be its “suspicious” features, which are often rather vague and do not necessarily suggest Book 17 as a probable intertext. It is these features which we must now reexamine.

Is There Any Evidence of “Positive Crime”?

We have already noted the troubling virtual anonymity of the author. He is made known to us only in terms of his social rank, as a fidalgo; of his home

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 53

town, Elvas; and of his eyewitness status, asserted by the publisher. Moreover, he only figures on the title page and in the preface, both of which raise more questions than they answer. The attributory clause in the title—“[Relacam] ... Agora nouaméte feita per ha fidalgo Deluas’”—takes the form of clauses often identifying reprints of earlier editions. Not a few of Burgos’s reprints are labeled as “newly compiled,” “corrected,” or “newly made,” including the Liuro do Rosayro de nossa senora of Nicolao Diaz, published in 1576 without the author’s permission.” The front matter consists of a cryptic epigram celebrating the “author” and the work, and of the printer’s address to the “prudent reader.” The epigram reveals no secrets, and the address is a conventional humanist bookseller’s pitch about the natural attractions and virtues of novelty literature, namely that which deals with distant lands. Having invoked Aristotle as the stock classical authority,5* and pointed out how greatly the emotions aroused by such reading suit the national character of the Portuguese, the publisher stresses the mysterious author’s Portuguese origins, his writing “em ho proprio lingoajem,” his veracity, and his describing only events that he had witnessed in person. True or fabricated, similar authentication formulas are a standard feature of contemporary prologues. To make things worse, the remark that the work might interest the reader because here is a venture of discovery in which “Portuguese from the city of Elvas helped” seems thrown in as aclumsy device to appeal to the Portuguese market, and the dangling interjection “as is mentioned in the story itself” is a cheap interest-grabber typical of sensational broadsheets. The publisher’s hackneyed assurance that the author could not have strayed from the truth “as he had no stake in the matter” jars with the claim of eyewitness status. And the exhortation not to blame the publisher if the language should appear inelegant, for he “did not write it but only printed it,” can be interpreted as another stock strategy, bolstering the dubiousness of the Relacgam's authenticity. In Renaissance and early modern books, these are often the signs of outright piracy, or at least excessive borrowing.5? And if the front matter looks suspicious, some of the features of the text itself might inspire just as many doubts. Unlike Cabeza de Vaca in his Naufragios or the authors of various relaciones de jornada, the narrator never intervenes in the first person singular. True enough, many of the contemporary relaciones and survivor accounts are largely cast in the first person plural, with a varying share of impersonal narrative and first person singular interjections, the frequency of the latter being in part related to that of reported individual action or decision making. The purpose of the narrative and the circumstances of its recording also play a role. The first person singular comes into action above all with rising emphasis on personal justification or deeds, found in such purposive documents as probanzas or other papers drawn up to

54. Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elb!

apply for official posts, in personal and secret reports as opposed to generalized accounts, and in attempts to clear or protect oneself during an official inquiry. Records of oral accounts or hearings are much more often cast in the third person.©°

In the Relacam, however, even the very common first person plural, although not absent, is rare. Neither are there any overt signals of intervention by an editor as “compiler” or “historian,” and nowhere is the “Gentleman of Elvas” invoked as a source of information, unlike Oviedo’s Ranjel. With both

the direct participant and the commentator/“historiador” absent, and the collective “we” extremely subdued, the text effectively conceals the author, and much of the immediacy of a personal testimony seems to have vanished. At the same time, an intruding agency is clearly felt in the monotonously similar and artificial speeches by native chiefs. Their florid language seems to echo the libros de caballerias, and they certainly do not come anywhere close

either to what was really said or to the halting discourse that must have emerged from the frequent recourse to at least two interpreters—from a specific native language or dialect to another, and then into Spanish. They have all the appearance of literary padding, designed to give the book added popular appeal and maybe some pretense to artistic merit. Then there is the already mentioned absence of allusions to things Portuguese. Like many other overseas reports, both Oviedo and the Relacam have recourse to familiar features of European scenery as referential props for quick sketches of what was encountered in the Indies, and in the Relacam the geographical referent is often “Espanha”—Spain.*! Not that this would not have been used, on occasion, by someone whose main point of reference was Portugal: thus in the thoroughly Portugal-oriented manuscript of Valentim Fernandes “Moravus” we find, for instance, the referent: “There are in this land palm groves large like those of Spain.’ But the same manuscript also contains many instances of Portugal being used as a referent (“There are many limes, as large as citrons in Portugal’®3], whereas the Relacam offers only a few. One deals with potatoes: “These are found already in the Island of Terceira within this Kingdom of Portugal.”®4 The other likens the native pottery to that of the Portuguese localities of Estremoz and Montemor.® And although the Relacam does mention the Portuguese participants more often than Oviedo, the margin is very slim. On the other hand, the “palpable errors” for which T. H. Lewis criticized

the Relacam represent a rather peculiar “suspicious” element. On closer scrutiny, they prove to involve mainly mismatches between dates and days of the week. Such errors, however, whether due to misreading, careless editing,

mistaken “correction,” or an informant’s failing memory, are perhaps the most common in any context. And we ought to point out that the Relacam matches up its dates and days more often correctly than not, and that Oviedo

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 55

is certainly not free from this type of error.6° Many other accusations of “error” raised against the Relagam depend on which version of events has been

accepted as “correct” by this or that researcher, or, even worse, are themselves erroneous.®’

Finally, while it is certainly possible to pick out some intriguing parallels between Book 17 and the Relagcam which might suggest that the latter is indeed a derivate of the former, especially if the circumstances of the borrowing could be elucidated, more questions are thus raised than answered. Similar correlations in fact emerge from a comparison of Oviedo and Biedma®®; of the Relacam and Biedma (although to a lesser extent)®?; and even of Oviedo, the Relagam, and the quite unrelated Relacion que dio el Capitan Joan Jaramillo, de la jornada que hizo a Ja tierra nueva, de la qual fue General Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, of 15 42.”° Thus in Oviedo we read, on the subject of native cloth made of mulberry bark fiber: Hacen muy lindas mantas, y ponensse una de la cinta abaxo y otra atada por un lado y metida la cabega sobre los hombros, como aquellos bohemianos 6 egipcianos que suelen algunas veces andar vagabundos por Espana.’!

In the Relacam, in a passage referring to cloth of mulberry bark fiber or the fibers of certain nettlelike plants, this takes the form of: Cobré se as indias com estas matas, poé htia aoderredor de si da cinta per baixo e outra por cima do ombro co ho braco dereito fora a maneira e uso de ciganos.”2

And the Relacion que dio Joan Jaramillo, describing cotton mantles, offers an identical topos: Tienen mantas de algodon quadradas, unas mayores que otras como de vara i media en largo, las Indias las traen puestas por el hombro a manera de Gitanas i cenidas una buelta sobre otra por su centura.”3

The sharing by any two narratives of such an obviously commonplace topos is meaningless for establishing intertextual linkages.” It highlights the hazards of attempting to unravel the pathways of textual transmission in the absence of a detailed comparative study of all the narratives and reports from this period and area, which would provide a reasoned catalog of motifs or topoi and their eventual concordance with those current in Spanish, Portuguese, and other European sixteenth-century literatures and folklore. The added difficulty is that oral “intertextual” mixing must also have occurred before, during, and after the expedition, through informant cross-contamination. Many expeditionary forces, including that of Soto, had at least partial knowledge of previous intelligence concerning their target area. Thus Cabeza de Vaca’s oral report to the Emperor was known to Soto’s entourage through the Osorios, who had news of it from the Marquis of Astorga, and Biedma re-

56 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elb!

veals some knowledge of Ayllon’s itinerary. Soto himself had prior intelligence of the impending northbound expedition by Coronado, and was in contact with Viceroy Mendoza in Mexico.’> It was also not uncommon for the survivors of one expedition to take part in subsequent ones. And finally, after the Soto expedition, many of the 311 survivors settled, for a while at least, in various places in Mexico, sometimes in close proximity to each other; some are known to have furnished testimonials appended to the probanzas and reports of their former comrades or commanders. Reminiscences, relaciones, and gossip relating to Soto kept cropping up as late as 1560, and would soon have blurred the specific features of any individual memories.”6 To compound the problem, passages can be found in Book 17 which simultaneously echo elements found in the Relacam and in Biedma, without the

Biedma component, however, being reflected at the same time in the Relacam.’’ Although great caution is required, this might suggest that it is in fact Book 17 that constitutes an “end of the chain” composition, and that

| Oviedo’s sources were much more varied than he lets on, comprising not only Ranjel but also Biedma, an account by a Portuguese survivor—the “Gentleman of Elvas,” and possibly other sources as well. The Relacam might thus very well be an independently adjusted version of one of the intertextual building blocks of Book 17. Something like this would account quite well, on the one hand, for the isolated close correlations between the two narratives in phraseology tied to eye-catching detail and in certain motifs, as well as for the overall agreement in the chronicle of main events, while allowing, on the other hand, for the pronounced divergences. The factual discrepancies would be tedious to detail and are conveniently cataloged in the Appendix to our study, but certain telling divergences in mentality and in the handling of specific themes may be usefully discussed here. The “mental landscape” of the Relacam might not be Portuguese, as we have indicated, but it is quite narrowly Estremaduran, namely in the case of rivers: thus at Bayamo we have the “mighty river called Tato, larger than the Guadiana,” and the river at Coligoa is described as being the size of the Estremaduran Caya, the border river between Portugal and Spain.”8 Many other specific referents are likewise located in the Portuguese and Spanish Estremadura, and more particularly in the corridor running from Montemor to Estremoz (and also from Evora to Elvas} and up the Guadiana, along the old high road from Lisbon to Castile. There are some Andalusian and other Iberian points of reference, but at least one of these seems quite commonplace: the ‘“palmettos {in low palm groves) like those of Andalusia” figure both in the Relacam and in the Naufragios of Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.7? The “mental landscape” of Book 17 is quite different, reaching well beyond a narrowly regional or even Iberian context. Here it is an educated and welltraveled individual who speaks, and his points of reference are not only Estre-

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 57

maduran and maybe Andalusian, Castilian, and Galician, but reach over to the Kingdom of Naples, Italy in general, and even further on.°° Thus the winter at Chicaca is windy and cold, just as in Burgos; the strawberries of Himahi

bring to mind Galician “madronos” but also Neapolitan “fraoles”; and the “Rio Grande” is likened to the great river Danube. Personages from the Impe-

rial court occasionally populate this cosmopolitan European “landscape,” and there is even a mention of the Knights of St. John at Rhodes.*®! The Ovie-

dan nature of the pattern is unmistakable. Oviedo also perceptibly dominates Book 17 in terms of attitudes toward the conquest and conquistadors, and in particular toward Hernando de Soto. This is nothing new: Soto was one of Oviedo’s bétes noires, an upstart from Castilla del Oro, Nicaragua, and Peru, and above all a “disciple” of Pedrarias Davila—old hatreds acquired at the point of a dagger die hard. The prevailing motifs are Soto’s arrogance, greed, rashness, imprudent bravery and foolish bravado, cruelty, military incompetence, lack of concern for the safety of the men under his command, and failure to learn from the experience of those who had preceded him to Florida.82 Ignorant of the ways of the Caribbean, Soto lures poor benighted soldiers dazzled by visions of riches into unknown perils. Better men than he had already failed in Florida: Juan Ponce de Leon, Panfilo de Narvaez, even the licentiate Lucas Vazquez de Ayllén. How could he even presume to do better? In any event, noblemen of discernment, such as Antonio Osorio, should never have been so easily deceived by this Soto, not one of “so sweet a speech as to be able to deceive such people.”

Sententious comments on Soto’s military qualifications constitute another recurrent motif. Oviedo exhibits, here as elsewhere in his writings, a pronounced sense of his own superiority when it comes to knowing the art of wal, a superiority rooted in his Italian recollections. The otherwise hardnosed Oviedo is surprisingly unable to shake the habit, or reluctant to give up the rhetorical device, of measuring things military, even in the Indies, by the standards of the Italian theater of war. Generally inapplicable, these are nonetheless often portrayed as the pinnacle of correct military behavior. This is a typical Oviedan idiosyncrasy, not limited to the Soto case: thus Lucas Vaz-

quez de Ayllén is censured for lacking the military experience that his brother Perdlvarez de Ayllon had gained in Italy.8* This contrasts in curious ways with Oviedo’s penchant for poking fun at “greenhorns” fresh off the boat from Spain and lacking local experience. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that Oviedo simply uses whatever comes handily to sketch a portrait or savage a fool, for he does not suffer those lightly; on the other hand, one must

agree with Antonio Gerbi that Oviedo does not always write, as has been claimed, from the viewpoint of a practical conquistador, and that much of his military knowledge is bookish, as revealed by his fondness for quotations from Vegetius.®5

58 Martin Malcolm EIbl and Ivana Elbl

Oviedo’s picture of Soto is not all black, of course, even if no opportunity is

lost to paint the man with a tarred brush.®° His personal bravery is beyond any doubt: thus he does rescue Maldonado, for instance.®” And he still can show some humane concer, for his own men if not for the native inhabitants: he does dispatch mules with maize from Cale to the straggling main column, whose food has run out.8§ He also remains honest at least to the extent of not deciding to conceal looted treasure from the King’s officials, in spite of being tempted by Ranjel at Cofitachequi. That he is driven by cupidity, however, is always insinuated or suspected. His decision not to loot the graves in Talimeco is taken to suggest that he may have been scheming to claim the whole area for himself later on anyway, buried pearls and all, and that one should not trust his dismissing the pearls in the burial mounds with the words “Leave them alone, and whose luck God makes it to find them, may he have them with Saint Peter’s blessing.’”’8? Does he not lie as a matter of

policy? After all, he did order Gallegos to lie to the whole expedition in the reports back from Orriparacogi, so as to better lure the men inland.”° The motifs of Soto’s personal cruelty or failure to prevent cruelty by others recur steadily throughout Book 17, from the early passage on his predilection for hunting natives on horseback and with dogs”! to his cruel and pointless burning alive of captives who refuse to provide information. Above all, how-

ever, his cruelty is here openly put on trial, condemned as senseless, and linked to the theme of the natives’ goodness being rewarded with evil.92 But while it might indeed be that Soto was becoming more bloodthirsty as his dreams of great booty turned into evanescent mirages, we also witness here the unfolding of Oviedo’s narrative design. Thus the tamemes, at first casually portrayed as mere porters, become “mejor diciendo esclavos’”—“rather slaves”—and finally emerge as a conscious catalyst of native armed resistance.?3 This progression reflects the pattern of Oviedo’s incremental inter-

vention in the narrative. Starting approximately with the events of late March 1540, he begins to intrude more and more on the simple account of events, and the shift in his role is fully completed by the time the expedition sets out for Cofitachequi. The “historian” has now appointed himself judge, with the benefit of hindsight and in accordance with a clear-cut moral design. In a parallel progression, the native inhabitants become more welcoming, peaceful, and noble with each successive first contact, until the full extent of the conquistadors’ depravity is revealed.°4 Two complementary motifs intertwine here. On the one hand, we are shown the guileless natives playing innocently, among themselves and with the Christians, enjoying an idyllic swim before greed and lust for women destroy paradise—sin enters into the world with concupiscence.®> On the other hand, native noblemen and martyrs are likened to the heroes of classical Antiquity,?° and native warriors are

. The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 59 especially magnified as a formidable fighting force. Thus at Chicaga they advance in many terrifying columns, to the sound of drums, almost like tercios pressing forward on a battlefield in Italy.°” The Relagam is more modest here and perhaps more realistic: it mentions only one drum giving the signal to attack, followed by confused shouts and a swift onrush in the dark. It would

perhaps be too severe to say that Oviedo distorts reality, but it is useful to note that, in keeping with his design, Book 17 does dramatize native losses, often tending to report higher casualties than the Relagam,® while no oppor-

tunity is lost to highlight the Spanish losses as well, especially those that seem pointless. The message is clear and consistent: the expedition should never have set out, and by definition could not but become a cause of untold woes for both sides. The result has a flavor of “providential history” punctuated by bursts of comments on a variety of religious and moral issues. Oviedo works tirelessly the theme of adultery and polygamy associated with the taking of native concubines and baptizing them not for the sake of spreading Christianity but for the “sucios usos” (“filthy use”] of the soldiers.99 And he harps persistently on the dilemmas of faith, sin, and spiritual salvation. On the one hand, those of Soto’s men who die in Florida meet a just punishment for their sins (which range all the way from murder to eating meat on Maundy Thursday)! and, as Oviedo suspects, not all of them in a spirit of genuine repentance.!®! On the other hand, they are brave men who fight to defend themselves, but their exploits, however heroic, are an inevitably tainted mixture of virtue and shame. The motif that ominously underscores this ambiguity is that of the expedition’s being lost, both in a physical and a moral sense, its members blindly following a blinded leader, all of them steeped in sin and crime, although, in the end, many of them may be saved by God in his inscrutable wisdom. !&2 There is a great deal of preoccupation here with the formal proprieties of conquest!°3 and with proselytizing (above all in the multiple episodes of the raising of crosses in native villages).!°* The concern with conversion intertwines with the recurrent motif of going ceaselessly forward as a thoroughly negative act. In many places where suitable land was found, the right course of action would have been to halt, settle, and Christianize the Indians, “mejor fuera parar alli, que yr adelante”—"it had been better to halt there than to go further.”!°5 Instead, Soto continues to chase a mirage, ruining himself, his men, and the country through which he passes. Such fruitless and ephemeral

“conquest” is condemned both from the standpoint of long-term imperial policy—conquistador gold rushes imperiled the development of broadly based settlement economies—and from that of Christian doctrine.!© It is difficult to decide who speaks here, Oviedo or Ranjel, for the Ranjel we purportedly hear often bears an uncanny resemblance to Oviedo. There are at

60 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

least two men inside him: the dashing daredevil of the ride for reinforcements on the road to Ocale, and of his almost single-handed rescue of Soto at Mavilla,}°” and a carping “civilian” and amateur military theorist, always ready to emphasize the dangers of any operation or river crossing, the undue hardships, the perils. He is “hombre de bien” and, even more, an “hidalgo” whose delicacy does not let him reveal the failings of his companions and whose modesty constrains him to giving only a partial account of his exploits,!°8 but he really itches to be the hero. Yet he is more than a little sanctimonious, even for a Spaniard of his time. He keeps his diary, as every good Christian should, to remember his sins for the purposes of confession, especially those that are the corollary of soldiering.!°9 And just like Oviedo he has a penchant for Christian moralizing: Rodrigo Ranjel said that when these [Indians] were taught the doctrine, their faith was greater than that of the conquistadors, and that it would bear more fruit in them than whatever these Christians [i.e., soldiers] could accomplish."!°

Perhaps we shall eventually find that there is so much of Oviedo in this particular “Ranjel” that even had Burgos stolen a copy of Ranjel’s original report and used it to write the Relacam, he would not in fact have been emulating Book 17 at all. Very few, if any, of these motifs are encountered in the Relacam. From the

beginning, the anonymous author shows considerable respect for Soto, besides having something of a tender spot for this local Estremaduran boy who has “made good” in the Indies, rising by his own effort, “without anything else he could call his own but a sword and a buckler.”!!! The initial character sketch, true enough, is not without a touch of almost Oviedan irony. Soto is undeniably a nouveau riche and behaves like one on his return from Peru, wavering between pomp and penny-pinching.!!2 He is wholly driven by the idea of finding another “Atahualpa’s treasure” and opening up vast territories, and short on patience for limited and slowly ripening settlement schemes.!!3 But when it comes to the soldier and the leader, the Relagam’s Soto and that of Oviedo/Ranjel might as well be two separate individuals. A somber authoritarian, the Relacam’s protagonist nonetheless lends ear to everyone’s opinion, although when he has said his piece he dislikes being challenged. Strong on discipline, he nonetheless knows enough to let go when the men just will not march another step and are so exhausted that they will not put up a spit-and-polish camp. Riding just a little harder and longer than anyone else, he is often the first in a strange place or a tight spot, and seems to inspire eager emulation. There is a rash streak in this Soto, and he does make costly errors of judgment (at Chicaga above all). But his measures to secure occupied localities against enemy attack, for instance, can be textbook examples of military routine, while even the more difficult river cross-

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 61

ings are well coordinated operations, with few losses given the means at hand. In none of these operations is Soto’s positive and active role as commander ever in doubt.!"4 Most of all, however, in spite of the undeniably bitter split of opinion concerning the expedition’s overall aims—settlement or continued exploration and conquest—there is not a shadow of doubt in the Relacam that Soto is a good if stern leader and that what he says always goes, until the moment of

his death. Doubts or fears arising from controversial situations are voiced without open antagonism. There is little trace of Oviedo’s grinding acerbic criticism, and only one major case is recorded of genuine grumbling in the ranks about tactics.!!5 Disaffection and desertion do not constitute here the ominous motif that haunts Book 17. A few men do stay behind, settling down with native women, while others are presumed lost. That is all. In Oviedo,

Soto threatens to hang deserters; in the Relacam his fury turns against looters who looted in the wrong place and at the wrong time and should have known better.!!6 The absence of moralizing is equally notable. Atrocities against the native population are recorded in a matter-of-fact way, and taken in stride as something that goes with military life, while combat episodes are often glorified in an almost chivalric vein. The same approach, we should note, is typical of many Portuguese chronicles of overseas conquest.!!” Yet, all chivalry aside, the Relacam’s Soto is a hard and practical man. He might overestimate his

native opponents and strike too hastily, or underestimate their wrath and power now and then, but he also knows when to curb his demands and stop pressing the native chiefs too much. There is a time for a show of force and for plunder, and a time for pitching camp politely outside the native village and holding his followers on a short leash. Above all, Soto desires to keep his expedition moving, to wherever he might find another Peru. Moreover, unlike Oviedo, the Relagam’s narrator does not hold him responsible for atrocities due to the indiscipline of the expedition’s riffraff—after all, one always gets rotten apples in such a large bunch, liable to commit such vexations as the Christians inflicted on the Indians, for there will always be among so many a worthless fellow, who, to gain a little, will put himself and his companions at risk of losing al].!!8

This undertone of rough-and-ready practicality comes clearly through in the Relacam’s version of why caciques were being taken hostage as the expedition passed through their respective lands, and why it was necessary to exact from time to time the services of fresh porters and guides: The Governor used to put the caciques under guard, so that they would not abscond, and made them accompany him until he left their territory. In this way he could expect the villages not to be deserted, and to obtain guides and Indian porters. Before leaving

62, Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

a chief’s lands, the Governor gave him permission to return home, and likewise he sent back the porters as soon as he reached another lordship where he was given replacements.!!9

Here Soto’s harsh measures represent no more than a solution to problems of logistics and security connected with moving through a complicated patch-

work of tribal territories without large-scale centralized institutions that would guarantee a more or less predictable and uniform pattern of contact, and where hostility not infrequently prevails between adjacent groups. For Oviedo, in contrast, Soto’s actions are dictated by his blatant inhumanity and sheer greed for slaves.'2° Both faces belong to the same coin, of course, and toa very old difference of perspective: the legend is both black and white, and an uncomfortable shade of gray occupies the middle. The Relacam also exhibits a very different attitude toward soldiering and its hardships. Privations are perceived as inevitable, and the emphasis is on coping: after the disaster at Chicaca, some of the men dress up in mats made of dry grass and are laughed at, but necessity soon forces others to follow the example of their comrades.!2! We do find a similar element in Oviedo, of course, at the crossing of the river Toa, where everyone laughs at first at Nuno de Tovar’s special bridge.!22 Between the lines one almost senses a friendly nod to a Peru veteran, with only “greenhorns” laughing. And yet this isolated element does not fit the mood of Oviedo’s Book 17, whereas in the Relacam it would be commonplace. Dilemmas of Christian morality and orthodoxy seldom seem to bother the author of the Relacam. The gifts or offers to Soto of female relatives or assumed relatives of chiefs, to be his consorts, are interpreted simply as signs of “favor,” a gamble for political alliance according to local usage.'23 No taste of scandal pervades these episodes, which are much less dramatically pitched than in Oviedo. Thus at Pacaha, the Relacam mentions an offer of two of the chief's sisters to Soto, but Oviedo raises the tally to three women: one of the chief’s wives, “muy fresca y muy honesta” [very clean and demure”—one wonders how Oviedo knew], one of his sisters, and one other “india principal” [“high-born Indian lady”].!24 The daughter of Casqui, another “gift,” is referred to in the Relacam simply as “hia filha” [“a daughter”] of the cacique, but Oviedo chooses to stress her being an “hija muchacha” [“young daughter”|. Maybe she really was very young, and maybe not, but one thing is certain: Oviedo’s wish to scandalize his readers.

Religion is a rather practical matter in the Relacam, assigned about as much importance as it ever would hold in the daily life of a contemporary sol-

dier. One had better observe, if possible, the rituals of the Church, and a prayer never hurts (after all, miracles do happen], but the finer points of doctrine are remote and there is little of the Oviedan streak of Christian philoso-

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 63

phy. The symbols of faith are sacred, and quite useful things to impress the natives, but the spark of obsession with the raising of crosses in native settlements is absent.!25 Likewise, regret is expressed at the expedition’s eucharistic vestments, ornaments, and wine having been destroyed at Mavillaina fire set by the Christians themselves. But in the Relacam, the loss clearly pales before the pressing need to deny the enemy cover.!26 Even more telling is the Relacam’s ambiguous attitude toward the expedition’s clerics. Thus while Oviedo writes of those caught among the Indians inside Mavilla that they defended themselves well until rescued, the Relagam chooses to stress instead that it cost the lives of two brave men to save them.!2” And at the second battle of Chicaga, it is a friar who is blamed for raising the false “save the camp” alarm [ao real, ao real”| responsible for the confusion in which the native warriors made their escape. For the Relacam, the friar is a necessary but often irritating piece of baggage. !28 All this points against Oviedo’s Book 17 having served as the Relacam’s in-

tertext. It is true that various elements might certainly have been added or suppressed had a compiler been combining Oviedo/Ranjel with other sources to put the Relacam together. The discrepancies in the figures, for instance, could then easily have arisen from choosing to prefer one source over another, or through error. But our compiler would then also have had to undertake a thoroughgoing obliteration of all the interpretations, attitudes, idiosyncrasies, and mental reference maps characterizing the Oviedo/Ranjel version. The sheer amount of highly controlled recasting this would have called for

seems inconsistent with known instances of Renaissance plagiarism or heavy textual borrowing. This does not mean, however, that the Relacam is not in its turn a composite document. It seems that at least two layers of text can be discerned within it: (r) An unknown source close to Hernando de Soto’s inner circle, possibly a

professional soldier (it is difficult to say whether with previous conquistador experience or not, but clearly accustomed to many of the tactics used during the expedition). His mental reference map is Estremaduran, and he remains sturdily loyal to Soto, despite some differences of opinion. He is a little skeptical of Soto’s hopes of finding gold, although his own interest in the prospect is quite vivid. He does not identify with Moscoso very much: the latter is considered too soft, although he is acknowledged as a relatively capable commander. What we have here is a predominantly military mind, accepting the inevitable accidents and hardships of soldiering as they come, even if not without wry comment. (2) An attempt at “literary” beautification, apparently under the influence of Garcia de Resende’s Vida e grddissimas virtudes del rey Dom Joam II, in the form of a rather mechanical attempt to emulate selected Resendian motifs and narrative devices.!2° Thus the speeches by native chiefs echo the ad-

64 Martin Malcolm EIbl and Ivana Elbl

dress of the African Senegalese ruler Bemoim to King Jodo II during the exiled Bemoim’s visit to Portugal in 1487. Reported in flowery detail in spite of having been delivered through an interpreter, this address extols the king’s vir-

tues and qualities, expresses the intense pleasure Bemoim feels at finally meeting him in the flesh, and declares Bemoim to be his vassal, duly requesting protection and help against internal enemies. It is followed by a brief indirect summary of the king’s answer “em poucas palauras e tudo com muyto

grande prudencia” [“in few words and all with the greatest circumspection”].!39 With appropriate variations, this address-response pattern recurs throughout the Relacam and, like Joao II, Soto answers the cacique of Tascaluca “com doces palauras e muyto breues” [“with sweet words and very briefly”]!3! and the chieftain of Casqui “ao preposito e c6 breues palauras” [to

the point and briefly’”].!32 Even Soto’s death scene brings to mind that of D. Joao II. His speech partly echoes the king’s last words, and his dying, attended by officers and high-ranking followers but otherwise ignored, ill, and without homely consolations, evokes Resende’s melodramatic “falegeu el Rey sem pay, nem my, ... e ainda com muito poucos, fora de Portugal, no Reyno de Algarue em Aluor muyto pequeno lugar” [“the King died without his father or his mother (by his side} . . . surrounded by only a few, away from Portugal, in the Kingdom of Algarve, in Alvor, a very small place”].!33 Similarly, little mannerisms and topoi crop up here and there that may well have been acquired by reading the Vida: thus Soto's men, having found a way out of the wilderness beyond Patofa, feel “tornado[s| de morte a vida” [“restored from death to life”’] just like Resende’s Africans from Manicongo returning to their homeland.!44 This is not to say that such elements could not originate elsewhere. But the attempted “Resendization” appears to be systematic, extending insidiously even to the opening epigram by Fern4o da Silveira, strongly reminiscent of the redondilha stanzas of Resende’s Miscellanea e variedade de historias. . . que em seu tempo acontecerdo, down to the ponderously didactic printed marginal annotation explaining the epigram’s obscure allusions. '35 This “Resendian emulation” places the Relacam in a category of chronicle writing that was almost on its last legs in Europe at the time but continued to

show considerable vigor in Portugal. Its hallmarks—a monotony of chapter structure and an “objective” third person narrative larded with “verbatim” formal speeches by leading protagonists—characterized the official court histories of the early Portuguese Renaissance, with their emphasis on res gestae and sequential chronicling of events.'36 The works of Gomes Eanes de Azurara, Ruy de Pina, and Garcia de Resende!3’ represent the epitome of this style, but we also find it imitated in many shorter accounts of shipwrecks, sieges, and military operations.!38

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 65

In Search of the Missing Links

Situating the Relacam in the Resendian context has its price. We now face the added problem of having to explain the attempt to imitate Garcia de Resende in particular. Without some convincing external evidence the “emulation” might all too easily be dismissed as a mere coincidence. We thus need to establish some solid common denominator between Resende, the Relacam, and André de Burgos. The first such denominator is undoubtedly the town of Evora, and this must be our point of departure. We have no trace of Burgos between his disappearance from Seville and his

resurfacing as a printer in Evora. While Anselmo claimed that Burgos left Seville at the invitation of the Cardinal Infante D. Henrique,!3? Gallego Morell suggests that he established himself in Evora all on his own, once more getting by as a teacher of card games, those “famosos naipes de Andalucia” (“famous Andalusian cards”|, and that he did not open a printer’s shop until somewhat later on.!4° Gallego Morell’s version seems much more likely, for the first Evora imprint attributable to Burgos dates only to 1551 or 15 52, three to four years after his departure from Spain.'*! Moreover, in these early Evora years his typographical stock was relatively unsophisticated, with plain and modest title page borders for instance, which were replaced by more ornate ones only when Burgos’s position improved later in 1554.'42 Putting down roots in a new place, building up a new business, and making fresh contacts

took time. The key step forward for Burgos was becoming “printer by appointment” to the Cardinal Infante D. Henrique, archbishop of Evora (1540-62), apostolic legate a latere, Inquisitor General of Portugal from 1539 to 1580, and “father”

of the Portuguese Inquisition.'*3 Burgos claimed the title of “impressor do Cardéal Infante” in the colophon of his first edition of the Historia da Antiguidade da Cidade de Evora (1553) of the Evoran humanist deacon Master André de Resende (circa 15 00—1573).!44 The circumstances of Burgos’s rise are

unclear: it remains to be determined exactly what forces brought the bankrupt printer and gambler into the good graces of the Cardinal Infante and opened for him the doors of the curious circle of Church humanists, university men, and prelates of sixteenth-century Evora. But there are signs that point at least partly to a web of connections tied to the second prominent Evoran Resende after Garcia, Master André. André’s Historia was the first more distinguished work that Burgos printed in Evora and the first to include his colophon formula, and in 1576 he was to produce a second edition, incorporating revisions prepared by the author before his death. The Historia was followed in 15 54, as we have seen, by the second and revised edition of Garcia de Resende’s Livro das obras (comprising the Vida de Dom Joam II). This was prepared, it seems, with the agreement

66 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

and full cooperation of Resende’s heirs, who supplied the hitherto unpublished Miscellanea.'* That same year, Burgos was given the opportunity to print the Urbis Olisiponis Descriptio of Damiao de Géis, André de Resende’s friend and another protégé of the Cardinal Infante.!*6 After a period of low activity in the early 1560s, Burgos then issued in 1570 two short Latin pieces by Master André, the exhortation Ad Philippum and the Ad Epistolam D. Ambrosii Moralis Responsio, as well as his Sancta vida e religiosa conversac¢do de Fr. Pedro. In the late 1570s there came off Burgos’s press two works by the Church humanist and Evoran inquisitor Diogo Mendes de Vasconcelos, the

literary heir of Master André: the Discursos da Agricultura and the Oracdo do Padre Nosso, e Ave Maria em verso Latino, e Portuguez.'47 The connection outlasted Burgos’s death, for in 1591 his son and heir Martim printed Diogo Mendes’s Latin Vita Gondisalvi Pinarii Episcopi Visensis, and in 1593 André de Resende’s unfinished Libri Quatuor de Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae, brought to press by Diogo Mendes, who also added a Liber Quintus, a Vita of Resende, many learned annotations, and some Resendian fragments.!48 Too much should not be read into this without further research. Yet André de Resende was easily the most prominent local humanist in Evora, and it was he who had been dispatched in 15 33 to bring from Salamanca to Portugal Nicholas Clenardus, whose Greek classes he had attended in Paris and who had been offered the post of preceptor of the Cardinal Infante. Both Master André and his young friend and disciple Diogo Mendes enjoyed warm support from D. Henrique.!4? And it is not without significance that the “Gondisalvus Pinarius” whose biography was printed by Martim de Burgos, namely the licentiate Gongalo Pinheiro, canon of the See of Evora and later bishop of Viseu, was the maternal uncle and mentor of young Diogo. Together with Dr. Jodo de Melo, who succeeded the Cardinal Infante as archbishop of Evora, he had served on the Council for Matters of Faith, which dealt among other things with the Index of prohibited books. For a printer, it would have been of utmost importance to have good ties to men like Pinheiro in the Evora of these early Inquisition years.!*° But Burgos also seems to have been at first patronized by Joao Alvares da Silveira, the Cardinal Infante’s desembargador and Inquisitor for Evora.!5! Here again, a link appears to loop back to André de Resende: in 1530 the latter had published in Louvain the Epitome rerum gestarum in India a Lusitanis, based on the famous letter of Nuno da Cunha and celebrating the overseas exploits of three Silveiras, Antonio, Diogo, and Heitor (from different branches of the lineage).'52 And this Heitor Silveira, it is interesting to note, was related to Ferndao da Silveira, lord of Serzedas and author of the Relacam’s opening epigram.!53 This is not to say that the various Resende connections were all that Burgos had. By 1557 he had managed to secure a footing among the Cardinal Infante’s “clients,” becoming a cavaleiro da casa do Senhor Cardéal Iffante, and appar-

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 67

ently he had no competitors in the printing business in Evora.!54 Nevertheless, his fortune once more took a bad turn in 1558-65. In 1559 he was accused of teaching people how to make playing cards, and banished from Evora for one year. Although he was pardoned after only two months,!55 he may have become something of an embarrassment, for when it came to printing in 1561 the Rol dos livros defesos nestes regnos e Senhorios de Portugal, the Portuguese Index of Prohibited Books, D. Henrique gave the commission to a Lisbon printer who did not even claim Burgos’s cherished privilege of being the Cardinal's “printer by appointment.” And it was the Cardinal Infante’s second “printer by appointment,” Francisco de Correia of Lisbon, who was entrusted in the 15 60s with printing the two great chronicles of the realm, the Chronica do felicissimo Rei Dom Emmanuel by Damiao de Géois, and his

Chronica do Principe Dom Ioam, rei que foi destes regnos segundo do nome.'56 By contrast, only one Burgos book dating to 1560—64 has been identified so far, the Comedia Eufrosina (April 1561).!5” It is even possible that, to

avoid trouble and keep close to those who could shelter him, Burgos temporarily followed the Cardinal Infante’s household to Lisbon: between 1562 and 1564, D. Henrique became in rapid succession regent of Portugal during the minority of D. Sebastido, as well as archbishop of Lisbon, moved to the capital and, in 1564, resigned as archbishop of Evora. It hardly seems to be a coincidence that Burgos resumed publishing in earnest only after Diogo Mendes de Vasconcelos had been appointed Inquisitor in Evora on 11 October 15 64.!58 At the same time, Dr. Jodo de Melo, the old col-

league of Goncalo Pinheiro from the early days of the Council for Matters of Faith, had become Evora’s archbishop, and in 1566 his Principios e fundamentos da Christandade came off the Burgos press. Thereafter, Burgos kept bringing out at least one item a year until his death in 1579. Over half of these were either popular religious books, often reprints of his own earlier titles as

well as truly or supposedly updated second and later editions of works launched by other printers, or official publications of the Archbishopric. The principal exceptions to the pattern were Francisco de Morais’s rendering of the chivalric romance Palmeirim de Inglaterra, a Latin grammar by Fernando Soares Homem (1572), Ysidoro d’Almeida’s Quarto liuro das Instrugdoes militares (1§73], an almanac with astronomical tables (1573), and an anonymous translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1574).!59 About a third of the total came from the pens of André de Resende, Diogo Mendes, and Jodo de Melo, or

had been licensed or commissioned by the latter two.

Whichever way one might choose to interpret these facts, one thing is clear: Burgos was close to a powerful Resendian coterie in Evora, especially in

the early and late phases of his Portuguese career, and he printed works by Garcia de Resende, as well as by André de Resende and an influential disciple of his. There was thus ample opportunity for an emulation of Garcia de Re-

68 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

sende’s life of D. Joao II to find its way into the Relacam. But who was responsible for this? Burgos himself or someone else within or close to Evora’s literary and humanistic circles? Why would Burgos or anybody else have become interested in the topic around 1557, the year of Oviedo’s death? And why is the Relacam not more of a “Portuguese” epic, casting in a suitably heroic role the leader of the Portuguese participants, the fidalgo André de Vasconcelos of

Elvas? That, after all, is what one would expect in the climate of grandiloquent poetic patriotism common among literati such as André de Resende, the man who laid claim to being the originator of such laudatory neologisms as “lusiadas” and “tagides,” ultimately immortalized by Camoes. And if high-flown “Portugalization” was not possible for lack of suitable elements, why have bothered with the Relacam at all? To some of these questions it is possible to suggest plausible answers. Hypotheses are all that we can offer in the case of the others. Leaving first to last, we shall return to the problem of authorship in our conclusion. With regard to why the Relagam should have aroused anyone’s interest in Evora at the time it did, we may usefully consider several factors. To begin with, there is a strong possibility that the base account, which has a rather Estremaduran flavor as we have seen, had indeed surfaced or been compiled locally (perhaps really in Elvas) in the mid—15 50s. Certainly both remi-

niscences of the expedition and men who had not successfully established themselves in the Indies would have by then made their way back to the old country. This, by the way, does not preclude Oviedo’s having likewise had access to this and other possible accounts circulating among the Estremaduran/ Portuguese core contingent. Thus we do know that Juan de Anasco’s 1544 pro- banza, drawn up in New Spain, was supported by the testimonials of at least two of the Portuguese from Elvas, Antonio Martinez and Alvaro Fernandez. '6° For any local antiquarian, an André de Resende for instance, the Relacam would have possessed undoubted local appeal. From a business point of view,

publishing the account in Evora also made eminent sense. As the emphasis put on the “Portuguese from Elvas” in the publisher’s address to the “prudent reader” suggests, André de Burgos may not have been necessarily targeting a wider Portuguese market. We have already seen that his production was in general dictated by local interests, and while the number of Spanish items on his book list!*! suggests that he catered to a Spanish as well as a Portuguese readership, this only highlights the “Estremaduran” provincial idiosyncrasy of his market area. The region of Evora had close relations with adjacent parts of the Spanish Estremadura, including the area around Badajoz,!*? home of Hernando de Soto and many other members of the expedition. Between Elvas and Badajoz, the social and cultural ties were quite strong, !*3 and people on ei-

ther side of the border must have still remembered the venture and even known some of the participants or their relatives. This would have been espe-

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 69

cially true of the more prominent families. The Vasconcelos, for instance, constituted a ramified group of lineages in the Alto Alentejo, and had been established in and around Elvas and Evora since the early fifteenth century at the latest. Some of them descended or claimed to descend from the extensive illegitimate progeny of D. Mem Rodriguez, the famous Master of Santiago deceased around 1415,!64 and advertised links to the Portuguese Order of Santiago, the mantle of whose Spanish counterpart had been bestowed on Soto.!%5 And yet both author and publisher could rest assured that, despite its weak “Portuguese” elements, the narrative would still have appealed to a broader Portuguese audience in what was a boom period in the production and con-

sumption of books dealing with overseas matters. This could begin to account, to some extent, for the year of publication. The popularity of this type of literature in Portugal appears to have soared around the middle of the century, with almost every major press in the country carrying at least one such item.!6 Joao de Barreira, the most important Portuguese printer of the period, issued either alone or with Joao Alvarez twelve books in this category!’ and

in 1557, the year of the Relacam, he printed the first edition of the Comentdrios of Affonso de Albuquerque.'68 The 1550s and early 1560s also witnessed the publication of the first three Decadas da Asia of Joao de Barros, and the first eight books of Fernao Lopez de Castanheda’s massive Histéria do descobrimento & conquista da India pelos Portugueses.'*° The Relacam was in a sense just what one would expect from a provincial printer scrambling to keep up with this tidal wave. Burgos found himself a little on the margins of the whole ebullient publishing scene, and the more prestigious commissions were definitely outside his reach, monopolized as they were by the much better positioned Lisbon and Coimbra printers. The patronage of the Cardinal Infante clearly did not extend to bringing major works to print in Evora. On the contrary, by 1557 D. Henrique had acquired a second and quite prominent printer “by appointment,” Francisco de Correia, based in Lisbon.!”° Regionally available and relevant material would have thus been a godsend for Burgos. While the regional market factor might partly explain why the Relacam did not turn out to be a mainly “Portuguese” epic, it certainly fails to account for the lack of an attempt to glorify André de Vasconcelos. But more or less satisfactory answers to that, at least, may be found in the identity and profile of the man, in the reasons for his departure to the Indies, and perhaps even in the social standing of the Vasconcelos branch to which he belonged. These in turn go much further than the regional factor in helping us to account for the Relacgam’s ambiguous and hesitant “Portugality.” Attempts to identify the specific branch of the lineage from which André de Vasconcelos descended have failed so far, for the number of the bastard progeny of D. Mem Rodriguez greatly complicates the task. Nonetheless, it seems possible to identify André de Vasconcelos himself, as well as his father,

70 Martin Malcolm EIbl and Ivana Elbl

thanks to a few precious scattered leads. The Relacam tells us that he held alvards from the Marquis of Villa-Real granting him the captaincy of the Mo-

roccan city fortress of Ceuta. There were Ceuta veterans among the Elvas contingent joining Soto, and the account of the muster at San Lucar de Barrameda suggests that many of the Portuguese were trained professionals, possibly with a record of service in Morocco. One of them at least had been prisoner in Fez, the northern Moroccan capital.!”7! This would make André an old “Morocco hand,” senior enough and with enough legitimate experience to

aspire credibly to the captaincy of the oldest Portuguese military outpost in North Africa, and to attract a following of seasoned men. Little wonder then that Soto entrusted him with a ship and gave him a command rank in Florida.!72

The only good match for the profile seems to be André de Vasconcelos, the elder son of the Gomez da Silva de Vasconcelos who had been Captain of Ceuta from about 1519 to 1521, and again from 1525 until 1529. He first saw action under his father’s command in Morocco in 1520, serving together with his brothers Miguel da Silva and Pedro Mendes. As a junior officer, he had gained experience both at sea and on land, commanding in turn a small patrol vessel (a bergantin) and a detachment of cavalry. We know nothing of his subsequent career, but more evidence may emerge from research in Portuguese archives.!73

The genealogy of André’s father remains to be determined, as far as we know, although not for lack of attempts by various scholars.!74 He does not seem to belong either to the Figueir6-Pedrégao branch of the Vasconcelos,!’5 nor to that of the Condes de Penela,!’6 both of which had a good Silva component on the distaff side and a prominent tradition of military service in Morocco.!””7 Neither is he documented among the Vasconcelos of Espordo in the termo of Monsaraz, closely tied to Evora and Elvas.!78 Among the Silva lineages there also appears to be no trace of him.!”° There is one possible explanation, however, which suggests itself once we stress the following facts: (1) Gomez da Silva de Vasconcelos succeeded as Captain, on both occasions, D. Pedro de Menezes, the third Marquis of Villa-Real; and (2) it was not uncommon for such a powerful officer of the Crown as the Captain of Ceuta to appoint a criado of his as substitute. !8° There certainly existed in the Evora-Elvas area a rather obscure “Vasconcelos” branch, perhaps illegitimate, descending from or related to the descendants of Martim Vicente “de Vasconcelos” (later styled “de Vilalobos”}, an ennobled commoner and client of the Menezes, Counts of Villa-Real. This clientship had been sealed with blood, for Martim Vicente, contador in Ceuta in 1419, had rescued D. Pedro de Menezes in the heat of battle. Mem Rodrigues de Vasconcelos,!®! related to this family according to his coat of arms, enjoyed the favor of D. Pedro de Menezes, third Count and first Marquis of Villa-

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 71

Real, Captain of Ceuta in 1461—62 and 1463-—64.'82 No evidence tying Gomes da Silva de Vasconcelos to the family has yet come to light. But his genealogi-

cal obscurity and absence from the Libros de Linhagens would nicely fit in with his belonging to a minor client lineage. This impression is reinforced by the fact that each time he replaced in office, at Ceuta, a leading Menezes, and that André de Vasconcelos had his captaincy alvards again from one of the Menezes and not from the Crown, it would seem. The lives of such lineages of faithful retainers are often dictated by their patrons, of course, and this is what dashed André’s hopes for the captaincy that had twice been his father’s. When D. Nuno Alvarez Pereira de Noronha, Captain of Ceuta from 1529 to 1538, returned to Portugal to assume the office of vedor da fazenda and then of mayordomo mor to Queen D. Catalina, wife of Jodo III, the command of Ceuta was given to his younger brother, D. Affonso de Noronha, future Viceroy of India. This was not an appointment by default that would have resulted from Vasconcelos’s joining Soto and leaving for Seville on 15 January 15 38.'83 The Noronha-Menezes lineage had a hereditary hold on Ceuta,'8* and the captaincy would in the final count always go to a Noronha-Menezes not otherwise employed.!® It is more than probable that André already knew that he could not step into his father’s shoes when he sought to join Soto. But there was yet another reason why he and other veterans from the Moroccan frontier should have elected to leave for the Spanish Indies in 1538. On 8 May 1538, after negotiations that had been under way since the summer of 15 37, an eleven-year peace was signed between Joao III of Portugal and Mulay Ahmad al-Wattasi of Fez, seriously limiting the prospects of steady military employment, booty, and advancement in Morocco.!*° The fact that André de Vasconcelos and his followers sought adventure and riches in the “Western” Indies when veteran soldiers were badly needed in the Indian Ocean was of course rather unpatriotic. But there were several other reasons for not heroizing André de Vasconcelos, in the Relacam or elsewhere. Besides his possibly questionable lineage and the controversies that already once before had erupted around the appointment to the captaincy of Ceuta of a criado of the Menezes family, there was the episode of André’s less than heroic conduct in Morocco in 1520. The version that made its way even into a chronicle of the realm, namely that of D. Manuel by Damiao de Gois, implies that André put his younger brother Miguel in great danger by failing to come to his assistance during a naval encounter with Muslim corsairs off Ceuta. Throughout this and a subsequent episode, Miguel is portrayed as the hero,

and André as the less than dashing older brother who always comes too late.!87 As he does not seem to have accomplished anything notable during the Soto expedition, and died most prosaically of illness, it would have been rather hard to glorify this “ghost of Canterville.” Moreover, to emphasize the Moroccan veteran connection could have been quite inopportune while do-

72, Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

mestic opinion remained profoundly divided with regard to the evacuation of four of the Portuguese strongholds in Morocco between 15 41 and 15 50.!88

Conclusion... And Maybe a Beginning The authorship of the Relacam, or at least the responsibility for its present “Resendian” shape, must remain an open question. Robertson conjectured that Alvaro Fernandez may have been the author, but there is no solid evidence to support this.!89 Direct intervention by Burgos cannot perhaps be entirely dismissed. After a very busy year in 1555, Burgos did not print a single item before releasing the Relacam,'” and he certainly could have been polishing up the text. It is also in the Relacam that he styles himself for the first

time cavaleiro of the Cardinal Infante’s household, and while no other printer in sixteenth-century Portugal claimed such status,!9! not a few chroniclers and humanists became cavaleiros in the households of their patrons.!2 Moreover, Burgos does show some literary pretensions in his prologue to the 1557 Vida de Hernddo de Talauera, addressed to the “Cardenal infante su senor.” We are still disinclined to believe, however, that Burgos was the “Resendian” beautifier of the Relacam. His career in Seville shows no evidence of any literary activity,!93 and his Portuguese would not have been solid enough. The language of the Relagam may not be “muito limado” but it is far from bad or unidiomatic, whereas neither Burgos nor his family ever wholly adopted Portuguese. His widow and his son Crist6vao continued to print in Castilian after his death,!*4 and only his son Martim was almost completely acculturated.!95 No proof has come to light so far, moreover, that Burgos belonged to the Evora literary circles as an author, even an aspiring one. André de Resende should almost certainly be excluded. Had he had any part in shaping the Relacam, he would surely have insisted on having his contribution acknowledged, and his other writings in the vernacular, especially the Sancta vida e religiosa conversacdo de Fr. Pedro, reveal a propensity for

learned Latinist idiosyncrasies which do not mark the language of the Relacgam.

Initially, we had therefore come to suspect Diogo Mendes de Vasconcelos, who seemed an enticing candidate: an Evoran Vasconcelos with literary ambitions and the future continuator of the work of André de Resende, closely associated with the humanistic scene regardless of his untiring exertions in

the service of the Evora Inquisition. It seemed possible that the Relagam might be an early peccadillo of his, an excursion into the subject matter of discoveries, so popular in Italy where he spent the years 15 52—56.!% After all,

in keeping with his later Resendian interest in local “antiquities” and curiosities, the topic was of relevance to regional (Elvas and Evora) history, as well

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 73

as to the local Vasconcelos lineages. Emulating Garcia de Resende, so recently reprinted in Evora (1554}, would have been a natural homage to the grand old Evoran historian by a beginning writer. And the anonymity of his contribution might also be quite natural: for an up-and-coming churchman, acknowledging the work could have entailed all sorts of complications. We indeed begin to encounter works not only attributed to him but published under his name on the whole only after his retirement from active duty as inquisitor in 1573.!9”

Apart from a lack of direct proof of involvement with the Relacam, however, there is one added difficulty. Diogo Mendes had been dispatched to Italy in 1552, reached Trent in March of that year, and then went to Rome, where he remained until September 15 56. He left then for Florence, Pisa, and Genoa, continuing by the end of October by galley to Barcelona, and traveled over-

land through Spain back to Portugal. He returned to Evora only in March 1557, while the Relacam came off the press in February. If we take into account the time required for the setting and printing, it seems improbable that he would have managed to dash off the work during his winter stay in Ciudad Rodrigo, close to the Portuguese border on the road from Salamanca.!*8 If not Diogo Mendes, then who? Given the mechanical aping of Garcia de Resende, it is probable that we have here the work of an amateur or beginner, lacking the self-assurance to reshape more profoundly the base account. Any young Vasconcelos studying in Evora and dabbling in the history of his own or a related lineage could be a suspect here, for instance, and future research should consider this line of investigation. But the most important point, in the final count, is what all this means for the Relacam as a historical source. We clearly have here a composite work, consisting of at least two layers of text. The first layer appears to be an account similar to that of Ranjel, but reflecting the attitudes and values of the Estremaduran soldierly core of Soto’s followers. It diverges from Book 17 of Oviedo’s Historia in too many respects to be a mere elaboration of the latter.

The argument that Book 17 constitutes the Relacam’s intertext is open to ample objections on a number of grounds, as we have seen. The chief advantage of the Relacam over Oviedo’s Book 17 is the rather timid and mechanistic editorial intervention by the individual responsible for the published version, who attempted to imitate the style of the Portuguese chronicler Garcia de Resende. Thanks to this, the original source, whose idiosyncrasies, biases, and predilections differ dramatically from those of Oviedo/Ranjel, comes through strongly and convincingly. The only major caveat applies to the formal speeches, which represent no more than a device to enhance the “literary” value of the narrative. On balance, and until new research provides answers to the numerous remaining riddles, the Relacam thus ought to rank as a source at least as authentic as Oviedo, and infinitely more so than Garcilaso.

74 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elb!

Appendix

The Relagam and Oviedo: Concordances and Divergences In this Appendix, coding is used to reduce unwieldy and repetitive source references. R stands for the Relacam, O for Oviedo/Ranjel, B for Biedma.

A. Numerical Discrepancies 1. General First landfall: On 25 May 1539, the ships anchor one league off shore because

of shallows (R19); two leagues off shore in four fathoms of water or less (O16). On 30 May, they anchor two leagues from Ucita (R19); four leagues from Ucita (O78). Horses disembarked at first landfall: 213 (R19); 223 to 224 (O18). Sortie by Porcallo at Ucita: Encountered 6 Indians (Rr9v); ro Indians (O18). Sorties by Gallegos and Lobillo at Ucita: Lobillo’s detachment has 50 foot soldiers (R22); up to go foot (O20). Skirmish with 20 Indians by Lobillo (R22) and ro to 11 Indians (accompanying the previously marooned Juan Ortiz} by Gallegos (R23); 20 Indians encountered by Gallegos and 9 by Lobillo (Or9— 20).

Ride of Baltasar de Gallegos to Paracoxi (Orriparacogi): 50 horse and 30 or 4o foot (R29); 80 horse and roo foot (O22). Calderén’s men left to guard boats at Ucita: 30 horse and 70 foot (R31); 4o horse and 6o foot (O23). Soto advances from Tocaste towards Cale with 30 horse and 50 foot (R31); with a few horse (O24), or ro horse plus himself and Rodrigo Ranjel (O24). Ranjel brings reinforcements, increasing the party to 26 horse (O25), later 30 more horse join the vanguard (O25). Vanguard march from Cale to Apalache: so horse and 60 foot (R32v); so horse and roo foot (O26). Distance to sea from Anhayca Apalache/Iviahica: ro leguas (R4o); 8 leguas (O32). Composition of Soto’s vanguard approaching Mavilla: 15 horse and 30 foot (R75v); 40 horse (O56). River crossing at Moculixa: circa 30 men go across in a pirogue (R82v); 60 men (O59). Leaving Coga: Soto receives porters and 30 female slaves (R71); porters and 20 female slaves (O51). Detachment accompanying Soto to Saquechuma: 30 horse and 80 foot (R84); “half the army” (O61) (note that after Mavilla 102 are listed dead (R8rv), of

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 75

the 570 (O17) to 620 (B) original complement: this leaves 468 to 518 and the detachment, numbering 110, thus hardly represents “half the army”).

2. Losses and Numbers of Captives Sortie by Porcallo at Ucita: No mention of wounded horses, 2 Indians killed, 4 fled (Ri9v); 2 horses wounded, 2 Indians killed (O18). Sorties by Gallegos and Lobillo at Ucita: 4 native women captured (R22); 2 according to O (O20); Lobillo’s party has 6 wounded of whom 1 dies later (R23); 1 killed in action and 3 or 4 wounded (O20). Sortie by Afnasco at Ucita: 9 to ro Indians killed, equal or greater number of Spaniards wounded (O22). Vanguard attacked between Tocaste and Cale: No figures in R; 1 horse killed, several men wounded (O25). Crossing of Cale stream: 1 horse lost by Soto’s vanguard (R31v); by the Nuno de Tovar party following him (026).

Soto’s vanguard at Cale: 1 crossbowman killed, several soldiers wounded (O26).

Foraging around Cale: 3 men killed (R32); 6 soldiers from Soto’s guard killed, others wounded, 1 horse killed (O26). The Mala-Paz episode: 28 Indians captured, leading up to the false cacique incident (R33); 30 Indians (O27). At Aguacaleyquen (Calequen): 2 and later 17 natives captured, including the daughter of the chief (O28); no mention in R. At Ucachile: roo native men and women captured (R38v); “truxeron mucha gente” (O21). Crossing of the Ivitachuco: 3 soldiers wounded by arrows; 1 horse lost in the crossing {O32). The Capachequi ambush (12 March 1540): 5 soldiers foraging on the outskirts of the main camp are ambushed by 5 scouts belonging to a larger war party, 1

soldier killed, 3 wounded (R44); roo [sic] [’cient soldados”| men, cut off crossing a swamp, ambushed by an equal number of Indians, 1 man killed in action (O34). Crossing of the Toa River: 1 horse lost (034). Crossing of river at Piachi: 1 man lost afterwards (went off in search of a female captive and was either killed or captured], but the crossing itself was uneventful, using rafts supplied by the Indians (R75); 2 men killed by native warriors in contested crossing (O56).

Battle at stockade between Chicaca and Alimamu: R reports 3 native warriors killed, and many Spanish wounded, of whom 15 die later on the march (R9ov—91); O mentions dead and wounded among the Spanish, but “mucho

76 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

sin comparacion mayor de parte de los vencidos, é mas oviera, sino huyeran los indios” (063). Battle of Mavilla: R has circa 2,500 native dead, 18 Spanish dead and 150 wounded (700 arrow wounds}, 12 horses killed and 70 wounded (R8ov—81); O has 3,000 native dead and “many more” wounded, 22 Spanish dead and 148 wounded (688 arrow wounds}, 7 horses dead and 29 wounded (Os 8). Disaster at Chicaca: R has 11 Spanish dead, and so horses killed (R87v); O has up to 12 Spanish dead, and 59 horses killed or captured by native warriors (O62).

B. Episodes and Motifs: Divergences and Similarities 1. Missing (M) or Very Incomplete (I) in Oviedo

(I) Disembarking the horses at Ucita and bringing the ships closer to the settlement on successive tides (R19, O18). (M) Description of Ucita (R20—2o0v). (M}) Defensive measures taken by Soto at Ucita (R20v—21). (M) The story of the captivity of Juan Ortiz (R, chap. 9, 23Vv ff.). (M) Disappointing intelligence obtained at Aguacaleyquen (Calequen) about

Apalache: Narvaez had come this far but could find no way further; all advise Soto to go back and leave Florida to avoid Narvaez’s fate (R34). (M} Episode of the cacica of Cofitachequi and the fugitive slave of André de Vasconcelos (Rgo—qov).

(M} Soto and Ortiz agree not to send news back to Cuba and not to make contact with Maldonado at Ochus; with the Cofitachequi pearls having been

lost at Mavilla, there is nothing to show that could attract people to the newly explored area (R8rv). (I) Details of the crossing of the “Rio Grande” (R94—95). (M) Approach to Aquixo: Skirmish with Indian scouting party of 30; flanking detachment of Spaniards sent by canoe up the river is attacked by native warriors (R95 Vv—96).

(I) March from Aquixo to Casqui (R96—97v; O64).

(I) Most episodes from Casqui onward. Beginning with Coligua, nonetheless, O again identifies campsites and villages almost day by day (O69 ff.) while R skips some of these (R90 ff.). 2. Missing (M) or Very Incomplete (I) in Relagam (M) Reconnaissance of first landfall by Soto himself, accompanied by Anasco

and Pilot Major Alonso Martin; approach of the fleet to the anchorage (O16—-18).

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 77

(M) Sortie by Vasco Porcallo, Juan de Anasco, and Francisco Osorio at Ucita (O18).

(M} Porcallo’s raid on the natives who had returned to Ucita; burning of the village; an Indian guide hunted down by dogs (O21). (M) Raid by Juan de Anasco up the coast from Ucita; costly clash with Indians (ro or more Spaniards wounded}; Anasco finally joined by a relief column headed by Porcallo (O22). (M) Soto orders Gallegos to lie in his dispatches from Paracoxi (Orriparacogi)

(022-3). (M) Details of the march from Ucita towards Paracoxi; horses stampeded by a hare; great hardship and thirst; Soto’s despensero dies of thirst (O23—24). (M) Ranjel’s ride for help during the march from Tocaste to Cale (O24—25). (M) Soto’s rescue of Maldonado, attacked by an Indian in Itaraholata (O27). (M} Rain and enforced pause at Muchas-Aguas, before Napetuca (O28). (M) Episode of bachiller Herrera and the Indian woman (O31). (M) Crossing of Toa River (034-35). N.B.: Although O provides much detail, the sequence of events between 18 March and 22 March is confused and may include a spurious doubling. (M)} Episode of cacique Camumo of Altamaha (Soto’s gift of a feather to the chief) (O37—8). Entire Altamaha segment is fuller in O. (M} Crossing an unnamed river between Chiaha and Coste: O chooses this passage to describe the “cavalry breakwater” maneuver for helping infantrymen get safely across in strong current (O48; R65). (M) Crossing of river at Tali in native canoes (O49).

3. Substantially Identical in Both Accounts and in Same Sequence

March from Cale towards Apalache through Itara, Potano, Utinama, MalaPaz (R33 ff.; O26 ff.).

The Mala-Paz episode of the “false cacique” (with some variations in detail) (R33—33v; O27).

Settlement at Ivitachuco found abandoned and burning (O32; R39v). Lifting of the winter camp of 1539—40 and crossing of the river Capachequi (R43Vv—44; O34).

The drowning of Bento Fernandes (O35; R45v). Pacaha: Great similarities in the description, some additional details in R, and substantially identical incidents and speeches (O66—67; R103v ff.). There also are, however, subtle differences in tone and in what is being emphasized.

4. Substantially Identical but in Different Sequence Change in character of native houses past the Toa River (R44—44V).

78 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana ElblI

5. In Similar Sequence, but with Different Details or Contradictions

Disembarking of the main force at the first landfall and approach to Ucita (R19—19v; Or8—19).

Discovery of the marooned Sevillian Juan Ortiz (R23 ff.; O19—20).

Porcallo’s falling out with Soto and reasons for his return to Cuba (R29v; O22). Main body rejoins Gallegos in Paracoxi (R31); at Luca, no contact made with Paracoxi (O24). March of the vanguard under Soto from Tocaste to Cale (R31-31v; 024-5). O

names a greater number of localities. Villa Farta/Cholupaba: Locality rich in maize (R33); in chestnuts (O27). Moscoso, ordered to leave Cale and join Soto at Aguacaleyquen (Calequen], diligently obeys his commander’s orders (O28); Moscoso and his men, convinced that Apalache would be the farthest point of advance, bury iron and equipment at Cale (R34). Departure from Calequen: 9 September 15 39 (O28); 10 September 15 39 (R34).

Flute-playing Indians on the trail from Calequen: Subjects of chief of Calequen (R34v); messengers of chief of Ugachile (O28). Fight at Napetuca: Divergent accounts in R (R33v—34) and O (O29); differences in nature and amount of detail concerning the surrender of the Indian warriors, the wounding of Soto by one of the captives, and the revolt of the latter against their captors (R36—37; 030-31). Raiding at Ucachile and Agile (Axile}: R provides more details concerning the employment and treatment of Indian slaves, escape techniques, etc.; O is more anecdotal and vague (R38v—39; O31).

Crossing of the Ivitachuco: R supplies precise details and describes the tactics used to dislodge Indian archers and secure a bridgehead (R39—39v). O mentions mainly the Spanish losses (032). Anhaica Apalache (Iviahica) (1539—40 winter camp, the garrison left at the first landfall site at Espirito Santo [Ucita] is now brought up to join the main body}: There are significant differences of detail and/or timing between R and O regarding the return of Calderén and Anasco and the departure of _ Maldonado’s scouting party. Besides offering a fuller account, R dates a greater number of the events (Rgov—42; 032-33). Extracting intelligence at Aymay (Himahi): Four Indians are captured here, they refuse to talk, one is burned alive, and another one quickly reveals the way to Cutifachiqui (Cofitachequi} (R53). According to O, four or five cap-

tives are brought in later by the detachment of Alonso Romo, sent out scouting before Aymay was reached: they refuse to talk in spite of their comrade’s death, and it is implied that they are saved from sharing his fate

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 79

only by the return of two other scouting parties with another captive and news of paths and settlements (O41). Ransacking graves at Cofitachequi: The episode is more matter-of-fact in R; mention is made of a “plague” that had devastated the area: there are many abandoned gravesites and possessions. O omits this, making the episode more dramatic (Oq4; R55v). The deserters: (1) Mangano of Seville: O insinuates that he may have deserted, and that there was talk of his inciting others to desertion (O51); R affirms that he had lost his way looking for grapes (R71); (2) Alaminos of Cuba

and the slaves: R affirms that Alaminos was sick and merely fell behind, later returning to camp with some of the slaves who had fled together with

the cacica of Cofitachequi. O insinuates that Alaminos deserted, and claims that Soto threatened to hang him and his comrade Mendoga de Montanjes (O46—7; R59v—6o). The number of deserters given by O is higher, but , he omits the slave of André de Vasconcelos, who in the end stayed behind with the cacica. The Chalaque-Xuala-Guasili route: O extols the rich local resources, especially of maize; R depicts a very poor region, with meager supplies and not much maize (O45~47; Rs9v—6ov). Crossing the Rio Grande: O presents a short summary. R offers a much fuller

account, especially of the operations to secure a bridgehead (R94v-95; O64). According to R, the flotilla of native canoes came from Aquixo; according to O from Pacaha. From Aquixo to Casqui: Much more detailed in R (chap. 23). From Casqui to Tatalicoya: O omits most details, as well as summaries of distance traveled, etc. (O68—9). Battle of Mavilla: R and O differ on many points of detail. O glorifies the role of Ranjel, implying that he alone at one point retrieved the situation by sav-

ing Soto (given the Oviedo/Ranjel concentration on portraying Soto’s incompetence, this incident may not be entirely genuine) (O56—9; R75v— 79v).

First battle of Chicaca: More detailed in R; some essential divergences in the interpretation of the causes of the disaster (061-62; R86—88). Second battle of Chicaca: Diverging explanations of why the Spaniards failed to exploit their initial success and pursue the native warriors (R88v—89; O62—63).

Skirmishes at Tula (5—19 October 1541): Basic similarities, but great differences in the amount of detail and in the assessment of these and subsequent events. O is briefer and more schematic, devoting most space to specific Spanish losses, above all to Hernandarias de Saavedra and his pious Christian death. Unlike R, O mentions that the natives managed to plunder the

80 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elb!

main camp, and fails to include the numbers of killed and captured on the native side (R112v—114v; O70).

6. Differing in Details and Sequence

Flight, at Ucita, of four (or two} Indian guides captured earlier by Juan de Anasco (O19; R2I—2IVv).

Sorties of Baltasar de Gallegos and Juan Rodriguez de Lobillo at Ucita (R21Vv ff.; 019-20): Oviedo gives no numbers for the Gallegos party, offers much less tactical detail, and much less information on native battle skills,

tactics, and armament. First contact with Mocogo: The chief comes to the anchorage [of Ucita] to visit Soto (R28); Soto goes off with Juan Ortiz to Mococo’s village (O20).

C. Evaluations of Soto’s Adequacy and Character as Commander, and of the Military Organization of the Expedition 1. Negative (Or16—17}: Soto leads in person a spontaneous, small, and unarmed party to re-

connoiter the first landfall. This is overzealous and imprudent, and not the task of acommander-in-chief. A lower-ranking officer should have been dispatched instead. Soto endangers himself, the reconnaissance party, and, ina broader sense, the whole expedition. (O17): Soto has to be assisted by Gallegos when the reconnaissance bergantin experiences trouble in rejoining the main squadron. Soto is at first annoyed, but the action, undertaken to ensure his safety, was fully justified. (O18): Soto should have exercised greater care in guiding the ships into the

Ucita channel, given that the Pilot Major was aboard his bergantin. Through sheer carelessness, two ships ran aground, but luckily no damage was suStained. (O19): The land force is disorganized during the march from the first landfall to Ucita [”. .. derramados en muchas partes durmieron aquella noche bien cansados y con ninguna orden de guerra.” | (O23): At the Jaguna del Conejo, arabbit stampedes all the horses and there is

a rush to catch them, with everyone running around unarmed. Had there been an Indian attack, it would have gone ill for the Spaniards: “. . . estuvo bien aparejada una vergoncosa definicion de guerra.” (O24): Soto is driven by greed and rashly dashes off with advanced scouting detachments at every possible glimmer of riches further along the way (e.g., between Tocaste and Cale). He takes along too few men, endangers every-

. The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 81 one, and hazards lives on such unnecessarily dangerous missions as Ranjel’s heroic and solitary ride to fetch reinforcements. Ranjel complies, overcoming his misgivings, although he really should have pointed out that this was

not the best way of making sure that the message would get through. He rides on, fights off the Indians who are tracking Soto, and returns having successfully completed his mission. (O29): Soto, having marshaled his forces and prearranged a signal to attack, goes on to negotiate with seven Indian chiefs, accompanied only by his guards. As he takes his seat in a field-chair and begins the palaver, he is surrounded by armed natives. Moscoso, realizing the danger, orders the men to rush forward without waiting for the agreed upon bugle signal. (035): Having crossed the Toa River, the expedition rests in a pine grove, with many detachments in great disarray. (O56—57}: According to O, Soto rashly enters Mabila with only 40 horse. The

men have legitimate misgivings but ultimately follow him [narrative motif: men blindly follow their blind leader] (O56). R reports a disagreement between Moscoso and Soto: while Moscoso advises against entering Mavilla, Soto is tired of sleeping in the field. He goes in with 3 or 4 horse and some guards (7 to 8} (R76). According to R, Soto had marched to Mavilla with a vanguard of 15 horse and 30 foot (R75v), but according to O it was not a matter of vanguard. On the way to Mavilla all but the 40 riders had spread out, foraging and straggling behind (O56). Implied here is Soto’s failure to keep order and preserve discipline. (Rgov—91): Combat encounter on the way from Chicaca to Alimamu: Soto is the object of intense criticism from the ranks for not having had the native warriors’ escape route reconnoitered. Their certainty of escape made them resist ferociously and inflict many casualties on the expedition. This is the only major criticism of Soto’s command decisions found in R. (O61—62): O implies that Soto was directly responsible for the low state of readiness that led to the Chicaga disaster. Aware of the native warriors’ plot

and having publicly boasted “Esta noche es noche de indios; yo dormiré armado y mi caballo ensillado,” he cannot keep his word or make his men remain on the alert. He himself gives the worst example: “en saliéndose, de done él quedaba aquellos sus milites, con quien avia fecho essos apercebimientos, se echo desnudo en su cama.. .” The others follow suit and disaster ensues.

2. Positive (R20}: March from first landfall to Ucita: The expedition is arrayed in proper military formation by Moscoso.

82. Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

(R20—20Vv): Defensive measures ordered by Soto at Ucita: The undergrowth is cleared from the perimeter, sentries posted, and mounted patrols detailed to

make rounds of the sentries. Cavalry and infantry detachment commanders are appointed. (R31v}: Crossing of the Cale stream: Orderly crossing, with routine procedures. A gangway is rigged from a tree in the middle of the stream to assist the passage of infantry. The first horse launched into the stream having been lost, a pulley is rigged on the other bank to help the rest across. (O26): Soto sends mules with maize from the area of Cale back to the main column, suffering from hunger and lack of supplies; (R32) mentions only encouragement and orders to speed up the march. (R35v—36}: Soto conceals his forces in ambush at Napetuca, prearranges a sig-

nal, exposes himself to deceive the native warriors, and at an appropriate moment orders the signal sounded, securing victory through surprise. (R42): Immediate care is taken by Soto at Apalache to have a boat made and stationed off the coast as lookout for the bergantines coming up from Porto de Espirito Santo. (R63): Soto shows solicitude for his men, to the extent of satisfying even un-

reasonable demands. Thus at Xuala, he asks the cacique for women “por emportunaca dalgts q queria mais do q era reza.” (R85): Soto is a strict disciplinarian, who does not balk at punishing or even threatening to hang his men when they plunder the natives in circumstances that envenom already tense relations and endanger the expedition (Francisco Osorio at Chicaga). (R1o7v): Soto orders half the village of Aquiguate burned so that it could not

screen any covert assault against the half where the Spaniards are encamped. (R117v—118}: Show of personal leadership by Soto in laying out the winter camp 1§ 41-42 at Utianque/Autiamque. (R118v): Emphasis is laid on Soto’s habit of having false alarms sounded to keep his men on their toes whenever readiness had slacked off. His disciplining of laggards inspired eagerness and a spirit of competition.

D. Biedma, the Relacam, and Oviedo

Case 1: Juan de Anasco Brings in the Detachment Left at Ucita B4g “. . . le mando el Gobernador que fuesse el a llamar la gente que avia quedado en el puerto, i que los imbiase por tierra por donde nosotros abiamos benido, i quel se biniese por la mar en dos bergantines i un vatel que alli estaba... Juan de Anasco imbio la gente por tierra i el se vino por la mar. .. .”

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 83

O33 “...é vinose el capitan Calderén por tierra con toda la gente y Johan de Anasco vino por la mar con los vergantines y bateles hasta el puerto de Apalache.. .” While there are substantial similarities between O and B, R differs radically from both, to an extent that there is no point in reproducing the passage here. There is nothing to compare. However, it is in B and R, not O, that we find the episode of the canoe sent daily out to sea to keep lookout for Anasco’s bergantines (B49; Rq1). Neither O nor R mention the two caravels sent back to Cuba from Ucita (R4ov). In O, Anasco returns to Apalache before Calderon, in R it is the other way around; in O Anasco returns on Saturday, 19 November, in R only on Sunday, 28 December. Case 2: Site Used by Panfilo de Narvaez to Build His Ships (“Bay of Horses”)

Bag “... por que allamos el asiento de la fragua e muchos huesos de los caballos.. .” R4o “... achou hua grade aruore derribada e feita € couchos c6 suas estacas como majadoiras e vio calauernas de caualos.. .” O32 “Esto se conoscio por las calavernas de los caballos y asiento de fragua y pesebres y morteros que tenian hechos para moler el mahiz, y por cruces hechas en los arboles.. .” Case 3: Perico the Guide Bso—51: Refers to Perico, the native boy who had served as guide and interpreter since Apalache, as “el Indio,” and becomes more and more suspicious of his “lies” as the Patofa-Cofitachique episode approaches. Rso: R reports Perico’s foaming and falling fit matter-of-factly and somewhat naively: the Gospel is read to the boy and he recovers. O38: O interprets: Perico’s fit is a trick, prompted by his lack of knowledge of the road ahead; the falling fit is so convincing that all believe it (including the Gentleman of Elvas, obviously}.

Case 4: Lost in the Wilderness between Patofa and Cofitachequi B51: “... los Indios ia abian desatinado que no sabian por onde ir ni camino

que darnos.. .” Rsg1:“. .. Disse o mogo [Perico| q nam sabia déde estaua. . . Ao outro dia ouue diuersos pareceres sobre se se tomaria atras, ou q faria. .. .” O4o: “...é los indios que Ilevaban desatinaban, que no sabian camino ni los espanoles tampoco, é entre ellos avia diversos paresceres. Unos degian que

tornassen atras.. .” ,

84 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl

Case 5: Rations of Pork Meat

Bs1: “...1 alli comenzo a dar raciones de unos puercos que Ilevavamos con nosotros, a libra de puerco a cada Christiano, icomiamolos en agua sin sal ni otra cosa... .” R52: “Auia o gouernador metido na frolida treze porcas e trazia ja trezétos por-

cos, mandaua dar cada dia a cada homé mea liura de carne ... Com aquella pouca carne e com algtias eruas cozidas c6 assaz trabalho se sosten-

touagente...” O4o: “. .. y mando matar de las puercas grandes que tenian en el exército, y daban de racion una libreta 4 cada hombre de carne, y con ella las hiervas y

bledos que ellos se buscassen, y asi suplian lo mejor que podian su nescessidad, no sin grande conflicto é trabaxo.. .” Case 6: The “Pueblos Cercados”

B52: “...enesta Provincia comenzamos a allar los Pueblos cercados. . .” O48: “En tierra deste Chiaha fue donde primero hallaron estos espanoles los pueblos cercados.. .” No such phrasing in R. Case 7: The Province of Coste

B53: “... provincia que se llama Costehe, que estan los Pueblos ansi mesmo en Islas del rio. . .” O49: “. .. Coste, el qual pueblo esta en una isla de rio.. .” No such phrasing in R. Case 8: Fruit in Coca B53: “...fallamos en esta provincia ciruelas como las de aca de Castilla e mucha cantidad de parriza, donde avia mui buenas ubas. . .” Rs58v—59: “... auia pello capo muitas amexeas assi das de espanha como das da terra e vuas ribeirinhas é parras que sobia pellos aruores.. .” O53: “Avia en Coca muchas ciruelas de las tempranas de Sevilla, muy buenas, y ellas y los arboles suyos assi como los de Espana. . . .” No mention of the grapes until Ulibahali, then flashback to Coga (O51).

Case 9: The Contending Caciques of Pacaha and Casqui B6o: “. .. el Gobernador les mando asentar cada uno a su lado; fue cosa maravillosa lo que cada uno trabajo por ganar al otro la mano derecha... .”

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 85

Rrosv: “... sobre os assentos os caciqs teuera deferéca sobre qué se aui dassentar a m4o dereita ho gouernador os pos em paz: dizédolhe g antre os xpaos tato mOtaua de hua parte como da outra.. . e cada ht se assétasse no assento que primeiro acertasse.” O67—8: “... ove grand contencion sobre qual dellos se sentaria 4 la mano derecha del gobernador . . . esto quedo en determinacion del gobernador, y mando que Pacaha se sentasse 4 la mano derecha, porque era mayor senor y mas antiguo en Estado, é avia en él y en los suyos buenas costumbres y manera de gente cortesana.. .” Case 10: The Province of Guipana Bér: “.. .fuimos a una Provincia que se [lama Quipana, que esta al pie de unas sierras muy asperas, y aqui fuimos la buelta de Leste, i atrabesamos estas si-

erras y abajamos 4a unos llanos, ... avia un pueblo [Viranque/Utiangtie] junto que tenia mucha comida y estaba sobre un rio caudal... .” Rir6v: Guipana is “cinco dias por muy agras serras. . . por estar ho pouo entre

serras...” O7o:“. ..Guipana, que esta entre unas sierras, junto 4 un rio, y todo es sierras aquello desde Tula. Otro dia salieron de las sierras é entraron en Ilanos. . . .”

Notes We would like to express gratitude for the support received from the Mississippi Humanities Council through its funding of this paper’s presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Mississippi Historical Society in Meridian, 28 February—2 March, 1991. 1. Theodore H. Lewis, “The Chroniclers of De Soto’s Expedition,” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 9 (1903): 379-87; restated in idem, “Introduction,” in Frederick W. Hodge and Theodore H. Lewis, eds., Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528-1543 (New York, 1907; reprinted 1965}, 130. 2. Patricia Galloway, “Sources for the Hernando de Soto Expedition: Intertextuality and the Elusiveness of Truth,” paper presented to the 1990 meeting of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, New Orleans. For a discussion of the various editions of the Historia General y Natural de Las Indias, islas y Tierra-Firme del mar Océano... of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés (1478—1557], see, e.g., Daymond Turner, “The Aborted First Printing of the Second Part of Oviedo’s General and Natural History of the Indies,” Huntington Library Quarterly 46 (1983): 105—25. Two easily available modern versions are (1) the edition of Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, in Biblioteca de Autores Espanioles, vols. 117-21 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1959}; (2) the 14-volume edition of J. Natalicio Gonzalez (Asuncion del Paraguay, 1944-45). 3. The most extreme example of idiosyncracy and unsupported argument is perhaps contained in Theodore Irving, The Conquest of Florida by Hernando de Soto (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835}, 2:281—94.

m

86 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl 4. See, for instance, Buckingham Smith, Coleccién de varios documentos para la historia de la Florida y tierras adyacentes, vol. 1 (London: Triibner, 1857), passim. 5. Vitorino de Magalhaes Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial {Lisbon, 1981], 4:252~—66. Godinho’s list is by no means complete: a cursory inspection of Antonio’s Bibliotheca Hispana Nova (Madrid, 1788), for instance, reveals four more

such items: Naufragio que ficeram as duas ndos da India O Sacramento & Nossa Senhora da Atalaia no Cabo de Boa Esperanza (#398); Memorial das cousas que se pasardo en Africa ou anno MD VIII feito por hum natural (#402, ms}; Descobrimento e succesos das Ilhas de S. Miguel |#403, Ms); Naufragio da Nao S. Pablo que foi a India anno MDLX, Capitam Ruy de Mello (#565). Anonymous or semi-anonymous sources for the history of the Portuguese overseas expansion would clearly deserve scholarly at-

tention. 6. Luis Hernandez de Biedma, “Relacion del suceso de la jornada que hizo Hernando de Soto, y de la calidad de la tierra por donde anduvo,” in Smith, Coleccion, 47—64; also transcribed in Fernandez de Navarrete, Coleccién de documentos y manuscritos compilados por ..., Museo Naval de Madrid (reprint Nendeln, 1971) 14:242—47. See Ida Altman, this volume. 7. Citri de la Guette, Histoire de la conqueste de la Floride (Paris, 1685), cited in “Bibliographical Note” in Fidalgo de Elvas, True Relation of the Hardships Suffered by Governor Fernando de Soto & Certain Portuguese Gentlemen During the Discovery of the Province of Florida, Now Newly Set Forth by a Gentleman of Elvas, 2 vols., facsimile and translation, ed. and trans. James A. Robertson (De Land: Florida State Historical Society, 1932—33], 2:403—5 [hereafter Robertson, “Bibliographical Note”]; George Bancroft, History of the United States (1834) 1:66; William B. Rye, “Introduction,” in Rich-

ard Hakluyt, Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida by Don Ferdinando de Soto, Hakluyt Society, ser. 1, no. 9 (London, 1851); Irving, Conquest of Florida, 2:281-94. The U.S. De Soto Commission’s Final Report (Washington Dc, 1939) was heavily tributary to Garcilaso; for an attempt at a modern defense of Garcilaso as a credible source, see

Sylvia-Lyn Hilton, “Introduction” to the facsimile edition of La Florida del Ynca ({1605]; Madrid, 1982).

8. It was published in English in 1609 (by Richard Hakluyt], 1611, 1625 {as asummary

in Purchas His Pilgrimes), 1686, and 1687; in French in 1685 (the Citri de la Guette translation) and 1699; and in Dutch in two versions in 1706-1707. For details, see Robertson, “Bibliographical Note,” 2:399—405; also Rye, “Introduction,” i—vi. , 9. Only three copies survive, one in the Bibliotheca da Ajuda in Lisbon, one in the Library of the British Museum, and one in the Lenox Collection of the New York Public Library (Robertson, “Bibliographical Note,” 2:397). On the rarity of the original, see Citri de la Guette, cited in Rye, “Introduction,” v. 10. “Relacao do descobrimento da Florida,” in the Collec¢do de opusculos reimpressos (Lisbon, 1811, 1844, 1875}, vol. 1, no. 1. For full reference to the 1811 and 1875 edi-

tions, see National Union Catalog. Pre-195 6 Imprints, vol. 487, p. 493, NOS. NROI56594 and NR 0156595; for the 1844 edition, see Robertson, “Bibliographical Note,” 2:398. 11. Robertson, “Bibliographical Note,” 2:401—5; Rye, “Introduction,” iii—iv. 12. “True Relation of the Vicissitudes that Attended the Governor Don Hernando de Soto and some Nobles of Portugal in the Discovery of the Province of Florida, now just a

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 87 given by a Fidalgo of Elvas,” in Buckingham Smith, Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto (New York, 1866], 1-227. 13. Edward Gaylord Bourne, ed., Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, 2 vols. (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1904; New York: Allerton, 1922); and Edward Gaylord Bourne, ed. Narrative of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida as told by a KKnight of Elvas (London: David Nutt, 1905]. 14. See note I. 15. NUC Pre-1956, vol. 487, p. 493, NO. NR 0165597. These were deposited in the following libraries or institutions: New York Public Library, John Carter Brown Library, Massachusetts Historical Society, William L. Clements Library, Henry R. Huntington Library, The American Antiquarian Society, Newberry Library, The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Library of Congress, and Yale University Library. They formed part of the Massachussets Historical Society’s “Americana Series,” as no. 117. 16. Fidalgo de Elvas, True Relation of the Hardships Suffered by Governor Fernando de Soto & Certain Portuguese Gentlemen During the Discovery of the Province of Florida, Now Newly Set Forth by a Gentleman of Elvas, 2 vols., facsimile and translation, ed. and trans. James A. Robertson (De Land: Florida State Historical Society, 193 2—3 3}. 17. The Buckingham Smith translation tended to be more free than one could wish for. This extends even to the title of the Relagam, with the phrase “Agora nouaméte feita per hu fidalgo Delvas” [now newly made by a Fidalgo of Elvas] being rendered as “now just given by a Fidalgo of Elvas.” Unfortunately, something like this has implications for the critical study of the text. See also Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers, 133. Smith also took some liberty with the native proper names, so that in Hodge and Lewis it was felt necessary to bring these into concordance with the Lenox Library copy (idem, vi). 18. Robertson, “Bibliographical Note,” 2:397—412. See also the bibliographical note compiled by Smith, Narratives, xxvii—xxviii. 19. Robertson, “Bibliographical Note,” 2:397—98, 409. 20. Lewis, “Chroniclers,” 379-87; idem, “Introduction,” 130~—31; Sparks’ arguments are quoted in extenso by Rye, “Introduction,” xxvii—xxix. 21. Robertson, “Bibliographical Note,” 2:397. 22. Galloway, “Intertextuality.” 23. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes # The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (London, 1985], 31. 24. Holmes, “The Five Orange Pips,” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 82. 25. Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 108-15, yields the following itinerary: arrival in

Seville in late October 1546; straight to Madrid and there until late March 1547; to Aranda del Duero, possibly by way of Salamanca, in April 15 47; thereafter unknown (he may have returned to Madrid); in Aranda del Duero in October 1547; thence to Seville for the winter of 1547~48; to Valladolid in August 1548, possibly until October 1548; then departure for the Indies in February or March 1549. 26. The Cromberger edition of 30 September 1535, “well received” that year according to Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Anales del Emperador Carlos V, ed. and trans. Roger

Bigelow Merriman (Oxford, 1912). See also Aurora Dominguez Guzman, El libro sevillano durante la primera mitad del siglo XVI (Seville, 1975}, 142 (no. 401).

88 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl 27. The revised Part One was a good third larger than the 1535 printing, according to the letter of Oviedo to Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of Mexico, in Historia general, Book 33, Chap. 53 [all references to the Historia general in this paper will be to the Natalicio Gonzalez edition (Asunci6n del Paraguay: Editorial Guarania, 1944—45)}]. See

Antonello Gerbi, Nature in the New World from Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Ferndndez de Oviedo, trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: Univeristy of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), 388 n.27; Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 107. The De Soto narrative (Ranjel “diary”} added nine chapters (Chaps. 22 through 30, the last two being lost) to the original Book 17. For asummary of the other additions, see Turner, “Aborted First Printing,”

121.4. 28. The Crombergers were far ahead of the pack, but Burgos vied with Robertis for second place. Between 1542 and 1548, Robertis printed more than twice as much as Burgos (thirty-nine by Robertis as compared to eighteen by Burgos}, but in 1546 Burgos got ahead of him with six books over the latter’s four. In 15 48, the year of Burgos’s busi-

ness failure, Robertis far outprinted him, with nine books to two. These figures are compiled from Dominguez Guzman, El libro, 162-96. 29. Dominguez Guzman, El libro, 179 (no. 587); 183 (no. 609} {Laberinto de amor... agora nueuamente traduzidol. Fora brief early bibliography of the Corbaccio question, see Gerbi, Nature, 160 n.86. Also Daymond Turner, Gonzalo Ferndndez de Oviedo y Valdés, An Annotated Bibliography, University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, no. 66 (Chapel Hill Nc, 1966}, 5. 30. On Oviedo’s repudiation of the Claribalte and the entire genre of libros de caballerias, see Gerbi, Nature, 201-6, and Stephanie Merrim, ‘The Castle of Discourse: Fernandez de Oviedo’s Don Claribalte (1519) or ‘Los correos andan mas que los caballeros’,” Modern Language Notes 97 (1982): 330. Politically, the Claribalte was an embarrassment because it was dedicated and addressed to Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria and son of Frederick of Aragon, who had been treacherously deprived of the throne of Naples and ended up as a captive of the Catholic Kings and then of the same Charles V whose support for the Historia general Oviedo now desperately sought. 31. At least two later episodes document Burgos’s propensity for turning out unauthorized reprints. In 1573 he issued the second edition of the Reportorio dos Tempos by Valentim Fernandes, with an unchanged Prologue from the first edition and probably without permission. In 1576 he reprinted the popular Liuro do Rosayro by the Dominican Fr. Nicolao Diaz, against which the latter bitterly protested in the 1577 re-edition by Marcos Borges and again in the 15 83 one by Afonso Lopes. See A. Joaquim Anselmo, Bibliografia das obras impressas em Portugal no seculo XVI (Lisbon, 1926), 109—10, 102.

32. See Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 113-15. 33. By Juan de Junta, possibly while Oviedo was in that city, see Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 109—11; also Gerbi, Nature, 215, n.6. This Coronica de las Indias: La hystoria de las Indias agora nueuamente impressa, corregida and emendada is significantly and truthfully enough not labeled acrescentada |"expanded”|, which it indeed

, was not. For a discussion of whether it was printed with or without Oviedo’s consent or “on spec,” see Turner, “Aborted First Printing.”

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 89 34. On the business acumen and tenacity of Brigida Maldonado, see Dominguez Guzman, El libro, 31-32. 35. Dominguez Guzman, El libro, 192, no. 652; Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 114. 36. Dominguez Guzman, El libro, §4. 37. Dominguez Guzman, El libro, 46—47. 38. Dominguez Guzman, El libro, 45-46; Antonio Gallego Morell, Cinco impresores granadinos de los siglos XVI y XVII (Granada, 1970), 30. 39. Diego Ortiz de Zuniga, Anales eclesidsticos y seculares de Sevilla (Seville, 1893) 3:42I-55. 40. Dominguez Guzman, E] libro, 192 (no. 652}, 193 (no. 656). 41. Dominguez Guzman, El libro, 187 (no. 629 [Pedro Ciruelo, Reprouacion delas supersticiones y hechizerias ..., 25 January 1547]), 188 (no. 630 [Alfonso Martinez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talauera que habla de los vicios de las malas mugeres y complexiones delos hombres, 5 February 1547]}, 190 (no. 644 [Manuale sacramentorum. Nouiter emendatus cum quibusdam congrue in eo additis Secundum consuetudinem ecclesie Hispalensis)). 42. Gerbi, Nature, 378—79. The decade of 1541~1550 was, moreover, the richest in Sevillian editions of libros de caballerias (forty-two printings}, suggesting a buoyant market. See Dominguez Guzman, El libro, 293. 43. As Turner shows (“Aborted First Printing,” 115], in 1550 Oviedo bitterly complained to Bishop Gasca that during his three-year stay in Spain he had been unable to find the money to get the manuscript printed, in spite of having sought support from the Emperor himself (Oviedo y Valdés to Gasca, Santo Domingo, 3 January 1550, Huntington Library, Gasca Collection, PL292]. 44. Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 113 and 123 n.23, quoting Huntington Ms PL292.

45. The clues often cited to show that Parts One through Three were completed in the main by 1549 are Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, Bk. 8, Chap. 20, and especially idem, Bk. 50, Chap. 30. See Gerbi, Nature, 129 n.3. 46. Gomara, Anales, 258; Agapito Rey, “Book XX of Oviedo’s Historia general y natural de las Indias," Romanic Review 18 (1927): 56; Gerbi, Nature, 129 n.§, 358 n.234; Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 111. 47. Manuel Giménez Fernandez, “Bartolomé de Las Casas en 15 52,” in Bartolomé de Las Casas, Tratados, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso et al. (Mexico—Buenos Aires, 1965] I:XXV1ll.

48. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, Bk. 33, Chap. 54 (15 44). 49. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Las Quinquagenas de la nobleza de Espana, ed. Vicente de la Fuente (Madrid, 1880), contains the first Quinquagena; selected portions from all three parts are available in Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Las memorias de Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974). 50. For Oviedo’s feelings concerning Santo Domingo, see Gerbi, Nature, 250—54, with an ample selection of examples; for the the flood of religious quotations in the

90 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elb! Quinquagenas, see Gerbi, Nature, 378—82; for the predominance of sermonizing and moral lessons in the later books of the Historia general, idem, 378. A good example of the sermonizing streak is found in Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 52—54 (note the quotation from St Augustine, and an address no longer to the “Prudent Reader” but to the “Catholic Reader”). 51. On Las Casas’s campaign against Oviedo, see, e.g., Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepulveda in 15 500n the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974], 34 ff. and 105-7. It is well known to what an extent Oviedo, the author of the “falsisima y nefanda Historia que llamo general” (Tratados (Mexico—Buenos Aires, 1965], 1:377—79} was the béte noire of Las Casas. The diatribes of the latter against Soto can be found in the Breuissima relacion of 1552, in Tratados, 1:152—55. 52. As he himself advertises (quoted in Gerbi, Nature, 229].

53. Oviedo bore the same hatred to Pedrarias’s friend Peter Martyr d’Anghiera (Nature, 234). For his animosity against the Pizarros, see Quinquagenas (1880]}, 41, 431; for Oviedo’s personal vengefulness, Nature, 222. Note, however, that Pedrarias’s son-inlaw Rodrigo de Contreras of Segovia was a good friend of Oviedo’s (idem, 356]. 54. For the Libro de la camara, see Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 114; Oviedo may have been working on its second part during the summer of 15 48 (Turner, “Aborted First Printing,” 109}. For the Regla, idem, 122—23 n.15. On the Second Part of the Historia general still being augmented in 15 48, Gerbi, Nature, 215 and n.7. 55. Hanke, All Mankind, 115. 56. Gerbi supplies adequate proof, from the pen of Oviedo himself, for the existence of many such outlines, drafts, and notes (Nature, 229). 57. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 112, no. 416. 58. The allusion is to the stock Aristotelian quote “omnes homines natura appetunt scire...” (e.g., Aristotle, Metaphysica libri XII, trans. Joh. Argyropulos [Venice, 1496]}

or “omnes homines naturaliter scire desiderant ut scribit Aristoteles philosophorum princeps” (in any of the many editions of Problemata ab Aristotele et aliis). 59. See David Henige’s examination of this point with reference to Garcilaso in “The Context, Content, and Credibility of La Florida de Ynca,” The Americas 43 (1986/87):

I-23. 60. For various examples of these styles see Smith, Coleccién, 88 ff.; 94 ff.; 116 ff.; 147 ff.; 154 ff.; 163 ff.; 173 ff.; 190 ff. The Ranjel account used by Oviedo probably fell into either the category of probanza or relacioén: its heavily self-centered tone certainly carries through Oviedo’s rewrite. 61. E.g., at Santiago de Cuba “aruores deferentes das despanha” (Relacam, 11); “das frutas dEspanha ha figos e laranjas” (idem, 11v); “feijoes mayores e milhores g os de espanha” (idem, 110); fish at Pacaha “diferente do dagoa doce despanha” (idem, 102); at Casqui “as nogueiras nam deferia em outra cousa das despanha” (idem, 97); “amexeas vermelhas como as despanha” (idem, 97). For additional comments on such “frames of reference,” see Gerbi, Nature, 286 and n.173. 62. O Manuscrito “Valentim Fernandes,” ed. Anténio Baiao (Lisbon, 1940}, 69: “Outras palmeyras ha nesta terra grandes como as dEspanha.”

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 91 63. O Manuscrito “Valentim Fernandes,” 124: “Limoes ha muytos e ta grades como cidrées em Portugal.” 64. Relacam, 12: “Estas se dam ja na ylha Terceyra deste Reyno de Portugal.” 65. Relacam, 149. 66.E.g., Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 23 (19 November 15 39 was not a Saturday but a Friday], 45 (13 May 1540 was a Thursday, not Wednesday). 67.E.g., Hodge and Lewis, “Narrative,” 186 n.2 (accusing the Relacam of misspelling Tascaluca when in fact it does not; cf. Relacam, 72). 68. Appendix, Section D, all cases but Case 9. 69. Appendix, Section D, Case 8. 70. Smith, Coleccion, 154-63. 71. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 36: ‘They make very pretty mantles, and wear one from the waist down, and the other tied on one side and the upper end thrown over the shoulders, like those Bohemians or Egyptians [Gypsies] who sometimes wander through Spain.” 72. Relacam, 45: “The Indian women cover themselves with these mantles, wrapping one around themselves from the waist down and another over the shoulder, with the right arm free in the manner and fashion of the Gypsies.” 73. Smith, Coleccion, 157: “They have square mantles made of cotton, one larger than the other by a vara and a half, [and] the Indian women wear them thrown over the shoulder in the manner of Gypsies, and [the other] wrapped around twice and fastened by a belt.” 74. Already Pinzon had described the nomadic tribesmen as similar to “gypsies, or rather like Tartars,” in Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, 1429-1616 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974}, 213. 75. For Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, see Relacam, 6, t16v, 147; Biedma, ‘Relacion,” in Smith, Colecci6n, 51-52; for Mendoza, see Robert S. Weddle, Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery, 1500-1685 (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1985), 213. 76. Weddle, Spanish Sea, 227—29; particularly illuminating here are the flows of information revealed by Juan de Moscoso’s testimonial regarding Diego Méndez de Sotomayor, 228. 77. Appendix, Section D, Cases 2, 4, 10, potentially even 5. 78. Relacam, 14v (“rio caudaloso que Tato se chama, mayor que Guadiana”}, 110. For the Caya, see Garcia de Resende, Crénica de Dom Jodo II e Misceldnea, ed. Joaquim Verissimo Serrao (Lisbon, 1973; reprint of the Coimbra edition of 1798), 166: “E assi vieram ate a ribeira de Caya, que he o marco do Reyno {de Portugal],” in a passage referring to the road from Spain to Portugal, from Badajoz through Elvas to Estremoz.

79. Relacam, 32 (“palmitos em palmeiras baixas como as dandaluzia”), Alvaro Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios (Barcelona, 1982], Chaps. 5, 37 (“palmitos de la manera de los del Andalucia”). 80. The simultaneous role of Spain and Italy in Oviedo’s terms of reference is also stressed by Gerbi, Nature, 185 ff. 81. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 41 (“fraoles”), 50, §5, 61, 64 (“Danube”); one of the branches of the river at Pacaha is “tan grande como Guadalquivir,” idem, 68.

92 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl 82. See Appendix, Section C-1, Negative. 83. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 39, 60 (“tan dulce habla que 4 personas semejantes pudiesse él enganar’”’}. 84. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, Chap. 37, Prohemio. 85. Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Epitoma rei militaris. On Oviedo’s “viewpoint,” see Gerbi, Nature, 246, who argues against Fueter, Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (Munich and Berlin, 1936), 293. Further, Gerbi, Nature, 194—95 n.326, 318—21; and

Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, Bk. 37, Chap. 3; Bk. 24, Chap. 4. Nonetheless, Oviedo can also lambaste the vanity of the “Italian” military experience: see Gerbi, Nature, 322-23. For the “anti-greenhorn” attitude, idem, 400; Oviedo metes out the same scathing treatment for incompetence and ignorance of American realities to Las Casas (Bk. 19, Chap. 5). 86. See Appendix, Section B-6, “First contact with Mococo.” 87. Relacam, 27. 88. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 41. 89. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 44 |“Déxenlas estar, é 4 quien Dios se la diere en suerte, Sanct Pedro se la bendiga”).

90. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 22-3. 91. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 21 ff. 92. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 52; 46, §4; for the burning of captives see 41. 93. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 55; for the tamemes as simple indios de carga, idem, 38; contrast with: “Ved de qué voluntad andarian aquellos tamemes” (idem, 58). 94. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 43—44; for exceptions see, €.g., 56. 95. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 47-48. 96. E.g., Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 41. 97. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 61-62: “en muchos escadrones tocando atambores.” 98. See Appendix, Section A, Numerical Discrepancies. Concerning the cacique of Mavilla, Oviedo says dramatically that it was never ascertained whether he was dead or alive, and that his son was found dead from a lance wound (Historia general, 59); the Relacam offers, on the contrary, details of the cacique’s escape, with fifteen or twenty other Indians, before the battle even started (Relacam, 79Vv). 99. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 53. 100. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 35 (E puesto que era Jueves Sancto, no ovo ninguno tan chripstiano que tuviesse escriipulo de comer la carne”); further, idem, 41, 43.

to1. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 54, 57, 59. 102. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 40, 53. The Relacgam, 111, portrays, for instance, a mere misunderstanding with the cacique of Tatalicoya, who guides Soto, as to

the characteristics of the country and its population; Oviedo magnifies the motif of “being lost” and the inability of the conquistadors to find their way (Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 69). 103. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 36, to the extent of reproducing here quite seriously the requerimiento formula which Oviedo himself had ridiculed in his younger days.

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 93 104. Note, for instance, how the incident of the blind Indians at Casqui, which in the Relacam Soto uses to put himself into a better and more exalted bargaining position (he himself is a Son of the Sun; God, the one who can heal them, dwells in the sky, etc.), is

bathed in a glow of orthodox faith and divine intervention in Oviedo y Valdés (Relacgam, 98v—99; Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 64-65}. 105. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 68. 106. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 53; Gerbi, Nature, 290 and n.195. 107. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 25, 57. 108. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 27, 28. 109. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 42. 110. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 65: “La fé destos [Indios], degia Rodrigo Ranjel, que era mayor que la de los conquistadores, si fueran doctrinados, é que higiera mas

fructo en ellos que no les hicieron essos chripstianos.” The sexual pun is delightful, though it does not really come through in English translation. 111. Relagam, 3—3v: “sem mais outra cousa algita de seu q hia espada e rodela.” 112. Relagam, Chaps. 1 and 2. 113. “Ho gouernador como seu intéto era buscar outro tesouro como ho de Tabalipa snor no Peru, na se quis cotétar c6 boa terra né co perlas. .. ,” Relacam, 5 6v. 114. See also the Appendix for contrasting evaluations of Soto’s abilities.

115. See Appendix, Section C-1, “Combat encounter on the way between Chicaca and Alimamu.” 116. Relacam, 85. 117. See, for instance, Garcia de Resende, Jodo II, 146—47, “Da tomada de Targua, e Camice.” An endless number of other examples could be cited. 118. Relacam, 58: “agrauos q os christaos auia feito aos indios, q nunca falta antre muitos alg de pouca sorte q por muy pouco interesse a si e aos outros poe é risco de se perder.” 119. Relacam, 69: “Ho gouernador custumaua poer guarda sobre os Caciques porq nase ausétassem, e leuaua os cOsigo te sahir da sua terra: porg leuado os esperaua gente pellos pouos e daua guia e indios pera cargas e antes de sahir de suas terras lhes daua li-

céca pera se tomaré pera suas casas e tabem aos tamenes tato q se chegaua a outro senhorio déde lhe daua outros.” 120. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 52-53. 121. Relacam, 88. 122. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 35. 123. E.g., Relacam 106v—107. As to the cacique of Casqui, “ho more desejo q tinha era ajultar seu sangue co ho de hii tam gram senhor” (idem, 1o4v). 124. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 68. 125. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 38, cross raised at Altamaha, while the Relacam, 47, omits the event; Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 38, cross at Ocute, likewise omitted in the Relacam. In the entire passage concerning Casqui and Pacaha, the planting of crosses and associated events constitute the focal point of Oviedo’s narrative, but do not play any such dominant role in the Relagam (Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 64-65}. 126. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 58; Relacam, 80-81.

94 Martin Malcolm Elbl! and Ivana Elbl 127. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 58; Relacam, 80. 128. Relacam, 88v—89. Note, however, that Oviedo does show a measure of anticlericalism, as Gerbi remarks (Nature, 333-35], bordering on a strong aversion towards friars. 129. Later known as the Chronica dos valerosos e insignes feitos del rey Dom Joam II. It was completed in Evora in 15 30—33 (to protect it, the author applied for a privilégio in 1534, which was granted shortly before his death in 15 36}, and published for the first time in Lisbon in 1545. See Braamcamp Freire, Critica e hist6ria (Lisbon, 1910}, 1:50— 54. It is quoted in this paper as Garcia de Resende, Jodo II. 130. Garcia de Resende, Jodo IT, 113-15; Relacam, 52Vv.

131. Relacam, 74. 132. Relacam, 98v. 133. Garcia de Resende, Jodo IJ, 289; Relacam, 131Vv. 134. Relacam, §2v; Garcia de Resende, jJodo IT, 223. 135. In Garcia de Resende, Jodo IT, 335 ft. 136. For an excellent discussion of the emergence of this trend in Portuguese historiography see Luis Filipe Barreto, “Gomes Eanes de Zurara e 0 nascimento do discurso historiografico de transigao,” in Luis Filipe Barreto, Descobrimentos e renascimento. Formas de ser e pensar nos séculos XV e XVI (Lisbon, 1983}, 63—126. Also Oliveira Marques, History, 198; and Oliveira Marques, Portugal na Crise dos Séculos XIVe XV |Lisbon, 1987}, 423-24.

137. See, for example, Gomes Eanes de Azurara’s Crénica da Tomada de Ceuta, Chronica do Conde Dom Pedro de Menezes, Chronica do Conde Dom Duarte de Menezes, Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guiné; Ruy De Pina’s chronicles of D. Duarte, D. Affonso V, and D. Joao IJ; Garcia de Resende’s chronicle of D. Joao II; Fr. Joao Alvares’s Chronica do Infante Santo D. Fernando, etc. 138. For a bibliography, see Magalhaes Godinho, Descobrimentos, 252-56. 139. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 102. No source or authority is given. 140. Antonio Gallego Morell, Cinco impresores granadinos de los siglos XVI y XVII (Granada, 1970}, 30.

, 141. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 103, no. 379. 142. In the 15 53 edition of André de Resende’s Historia das Antiguidades da Cidade de Evora and in the 1554 Omelia do Sanctissimo Sacramento, Burgos used very plain stock-in-trade front page borderframes. Later on in 1554, in Nicolao Eschio’s Exercicios spuais & diuinos, a much more elaborate four-piece frame with pediment and two caryatid pillars makes appearance, parts of which he often reused thereafter. The same frame is used in the Relacam, with the caryatids reversed. See Livros do séc. XVI impressos em Evora (Evora, 1941], figs. 3, 4, 5, 8. 143. Joaquim Vérissimo Serrao, “Henrique, Cardeal D,” in Joel Serrao, ed., Diciondrio de Historia de Portugal (Lisbon, 1965], 2:414—15; Ant6nio Borges Coelho, Inquisi¢do de Evora dos primordios a 1668 (Lisbon, 1987}, 1:56 and passim. 144. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 103, no. 380. 145. Joaquim Verissimo Serrdao, “Prefacio,” in Garcia de Resende, jodo I], xlii.

146. On the patronage extended to Damiao de Gois by the Cardinal Infante, see, for

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 95 instance, the “Prefacio” of David Lopes to the Crénica do felicissimo Rei D. Manuel (Coimbra, 1926) 1:xi ff., Xxxv, XxXxix.

147. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 113, nos. 420 and 421. 148. And a Vita of his own, together with a slew of Latin poetry. For basic data on these two works, see Anselmo, Bibliographia, 115-16, nos. 430 and 431; and for a detailed description of the contents, Livros do séc. XVI impressos em Evora, 115—23 and 127-34. Further, also R. M. Rosado Fernandes, “Méthodologie et histoire dans De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae,” in L’yhumanisme portugais et l’Europe, Actes du XIIe colloque international d’études humanistes (Tours 1978) (Paris, 1984), 487—89. 149. Rosado Fernandes, “Méthodologie,” 488-89 and especially notes 3—10. Diogo Mendes was about twenty-three years Resende’s junior. 150. Even such a prominent official chronicler and protégé of the Cardinal Infante as Damiao de GOis was not safe: in 1571 he was arrested and spent twenty months in the dungeons of the Inquisition, David Lopes, “Prefacio,” xxxix—x]. 151. Appointed inquisitor on 3 March 1345, Borges Coelho, Inquisicdo, 56. 152. André de Resende, Narratio rerum gestarum in India a Lusitanis anno MDXXX

iuxta exemplum epistolae quam Nonius Cugna Dux Indiae max. designatus ad Regem missit ex urbe Cananorio IIIT. Idus Octobris Anno MDXXX (Louvain, 1531); reprinted in Antiquitatum Lusitaniae (Cologne, 1600). 153. Livro de Linhagens do século XVI, ed. Antonio Machado de Faria (Lisbon, 1956), 304-5. 154. Neither Anselmo in his Bibliografia nor the Livros do séc. XVI impressos em Evora reveal the presence of any printer other than André de Burgos and his heirs. 155. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 102. 156. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 134-35. 157. For the Rol dos livros, see Anselmo, Bibliografia, 93, no. 344; for the Eufrosina, idem, 106, no. 393. 158. Borges Coelho, Inquisicdo, 56. 159. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 107 (no. 397}, 109 (nos. 404, 408], 110 (no. 411}. 160. Weddle, Spanish Sea, 227. 161. See Anselmo, Bibliografia, 102—13. 162. The city of Badajoz lies only 30 kilometers from Elvas, and Jérez, de Soto’s birthplace, less than 60 kilometers.

163. As one document puts it, there was “much friendship and neighborliness” (“muita amizade e vezinhanga”) punctuated by squabbles (Estevao Gama, Catdlogo dos Pergaminhos do Arquivo Municipal de Elvas |Coimbra, 1963], 66). There was also a steady stream of Portuguese workers seeking employment in Badajoz (idem, docs. 11 and 17).

164. Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, Livro primeiro dos Brasées da Sala de Sintra (Coimbra, 1921}, 347. We know of eight legitimated sons and daughters of the Master, and there seem to have been many more. The great proclivity of Mem Rodriguez, who never married, for siring illegitimate children has given rise to a welter of messy genealogical assertions (see Freire, Brass, 383}. 165. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 15.

96 Martin Malcolm Elbl and Ivana Elbl 166. According to Anselmo’s Bibliografia, Joao de Barreira published nine works dealing with overseas material (nos. 130, 131, 132, 142, 159, 176, 177, 184, 189]; Joao de Barreira and Jodo Alvarez in partnership published three (nos. 254, 281, 300}; Joao Alvarez alone published one (no. ro1); Antonio Gongalves, four (nos. 697, 698, 703, 708); and Antonio Aluarez, Antonio Barreira, Francisco Correia, Valentim Fernandes, Gallarde the German, and Louis Rodriguez, one each {nos. 7, 111, 476, 55, 648, 1015}. 167. Anselmo, Bibliografia, nos. 130, 131, 142, 159, 176, 177, 184, 189, 254, 281, 300. 168. Affonso de Albuquerque, Commentarios de [. . ./, capitdo geral & gouernador da India, collegidos por seu filho Afonso Dalboquerque das proprias cartas que elle escreveria ao muyto poderoso Rey D6 Manuel o primeyro deste nome, em cujo tempo gouernou a India (Lisbon: Joao de Barreira, 19 January 1557}; Anselmo, Bibliografia, 38, no. 142.

169. Anselmo, Bibliografia, nos. 648 and 176 (Barros); and 289, 290, 291, 297, 159

(Lopez de Castanheda}. 170. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 127, no. 468. 171. Relagam, 152. 172. Relacam, 9v, 21.

173. Damiao de Géis, Crénica do felicissimo Rei D. Manuel, ed. Joaquim Martins Teixeira de Carvalho and David Lopes ([Lisbon, 1566—1567]; Coimbra, 1926}, Part IV,

Chap. 46, 114 ff.; the information is repeated, without attribution to Gois, in D. Jer6nimo de Mascarenhas, Historia de la ciudad de Ceuta, ed. André de Dornelas (LisbonCoimbra, 1918), Chap. 69, 267 ff. 174. The matter had already fascinated Mascarenhas, the author of the Historia de Ceuta. 175. Linhagens, 180-81; Freire, Bras6es, 369—71; Mascarenhas, Historia, 253 ff. 176. Freire, Brasdes, 361; Linhagens, 240-41. 177. Thus Joao Rodrigues de Vasconcelos Ribeiro, of Figueiré and Pedrégao, served as Captain of Ceuta from 1446 to 1479 (Mascarenhas, Historia, 260 n.1}, and was succeeded in office by his eldest son and heir Rui Mendes de Vasconcelos e Ribeiro, Captain from 1479 to 1481 (idem). Later on, another Rui Mendes de Vasconcelos, who died in 1618, was to be Captain of Tangier (Freire, Brasdes, 372). D. Afonso de Cascais de Vasconcelos, the first Conde de Penela, served with distinction in Morocco on diverse occasions from 1459 to 1464. One of his grandsons, D. Ambrosio de Vasconcelos, was among the representatives of Joao III who signed the 15 38 treaty between Portugal and the Wattasids of Fez (Les sources inédites de Il’histoire du Maroc, Premiére série— Dynastie Sa’dienne, Archives et bibliothéques du Portugal, ed. Robert Ricard [Paris, 1948] 5/3:164). For the Silva element among the Vasconcelos de Riberio, see Linhagens, 119, 180. D. Afonso de Cascais was married to Isabel da Silva (Freire, Bras6es, 361). 178. Freire, Brasoes, 383-91. 179. No link to Joao da Silva, Count of Portalegre, Captain of Ceuta in 1518, just before Gomez da Silva de Vasconcelos assumed office (e.g., Linhagens, 118 ff.]. 180. A prime example of this was the administration of Ceuta by Pedro Barba Alardo, a criado of D. Fernando de Menezes, second Marquis of Villa-Real, during the latter’s absence in Portugal, then during the minority of D. Pedro de Menezes, and even there-

The Gentleman of Elvas and His Publisher 97

after, until 1512, despite pressure from the Crown and rumblings of scandal (Mascarenhas, Historia, 261). 181. Claimed by some genealogists to have been a bastard of Mem Rodriguez, the Master of Santiago. Braamcamp Freire argued against this, identifying him by the coat of arms on his tomb in S. Francisco de Evora as a relative of Rui Martins de Vilalobos, descendant of Martim Vicente {Bras6des, 399). 182. Freire, Brasdes, 395—99. This Mem Rodrigues de Vasconcelos married Isabel Fernandes of Elvas, widow of Jodo Rodrigues Pessanha of Elvas. 183. Relacam, 8. 184. D. Pedro de Menezes, first Marquis of Villa-Real, Captain of Ceuta in 1461-62 and 1463—64, was the son of D. Fernando de Noronha, second Captain of Ceuta and Isabel de Menezes, daughter of the Count of Villa-Real and first Captain of Ceuta. The Noronhas who were Captains of Ceuta, down to D. Nuno Alvarez Pereira de Noronha, descended from this line, and so did the Menezes marquises of Villa-Real (see, e.g., Linhagens, 226—27; the literature on this family is vast). 185. As is clear from the lists of Captains of Ceuta compiled in the annotations to Mascarenhas, Historia. 186. Ricard, ed., Sources inédites, 158-65. 187. Géis, D. Manuel, Part IV, Chap. 46, 114 ff. 188. Robert Ricard, “L’évacuation des places portugaises du Maroc sous Jean III,” in Etudes sur I’histoire des portugais au Maroc (Coimbra, 1955}, 357—81. 189. Robertson, “Bibliographical Note,” 2:397. 190. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 105, no. 389. 191. See Anselmo, Bibliografia, passim. 192. Rui de Pina, for example, was “cavalleiro da casa d’elrey [D. Manuel]” (see the prologue to the Croniqua do muy eycellente rey Dom Joham. . . desde nome o segundo |Coimbra, 1950], 1); Duarte Pacheco Pereira, author of the Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis was likewise “cavaleiro” of the royal household, etc. 193. There are at least two suspicious, anonymous, newly translated (“agora nuevamente traduzido”) editions of Boccaccio and Erasmus among his Sevillan imprints. But since they came off the press when Burgos was at his busiest, in 1546, following the

similarly busy year of 1545, it is rather unlikely that Burgos would have been the “translator.” 194. Anselmo, Bibliografia, 113 ff. 195. Martim de Burgos printed in Portuguese and Latin and often functioned as “impressor da Universidade [de Evora|,” printer by appointment to the University. See Anselmo, Bibliografia, 114-15. 196. Diogo Mendes de Vasconcelos, “Vita Iacobi Menoetii Vasconcelli ab ipso conscripta,” in Libri Quatuor de Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae (Evora, 1593}. 197. Mendes de Vasconcelos, “Vita.” 198. Mendes de Vasconcelos, “Vita.”

Lee Dowling

La Florida del Inca: Garcilaso’s Literary Sources

“_,, the oldest chairs of history in Europe were created in the sixteenth century when the chairs of letters at the universities of Gottingen and Leiden were split into two different chairs, reflecting and instituting the perceived differences between letters and history.” Arnoldo Momigliano, quoted in José Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque “Literature is a function of intellectual preservation and tradition and therefore brings its hidden history into every age.” Hans Georg Gadamer, quoted in William J. Kennedy, Rhetorical Norms of Renaissance Literature “To make literature out of the brief accounts left by de Soto’s followers was no mean achievement.” D. A. Brading, in “The Incas and the Renaissance: The Royal Commentaries of Inca Garcilaso,” Journal of Latin American Studies

La Florida del Inca (1605) has for many years been an accepted classic of early Latin American literature—the very first such classic according to its translators the Varners.! The reasons why it is thus regarded go well beyond its recognition as the best written, and certainly the most beguiling, of all of the Inca Garcilaso’s works.2 They extend, in fact, to extremely complex issues like the still vexing question of the truth value of history as opposed to fiction, and to possibly more vital ones like the foundations of Latin American cultural discourse and Latin American identity.3 It is natural but probably mistaken to assume that La Florida is more than superficially about the Soto expedition of 15 38—43.

Garcilaso employs in La Florida several literary models that were seen as archaic even in his own lifetime, and he also uses literary rhetoric, in part asa cover to allow him to encode unorthodox ideas about Amerindians that he

could not state outright.4 Thus it is easy for even the well-educated twentieth-century reader, in vain pursuit of the kind of data a Fray Bernardino de Sahagitin or even a Bernal Diaz del Castillo might have left us, to overlook

La FloridadelInca 99

some of the truly remarkable aspects of Garcilaso’s work.5 This essay will provide insight into what might be termed “an annoyance of riches” in the work. It is aimed at the modern reader who lacks a real grounding in Renaissance letters or Latin American culture, and it attempts to respond to the need, recently pointed up by David Henige, for historians to study a work like La Florida not only as it appears but also with respect to “how it came to be.”6

History and Literature in Garcilaso’s Times Though born in Peru (1539) and most famous for his work on Incan civilization and culture (Comentarios reales de los Incas, 1609}, Garcilaso’s rhetorical, ethical, and historiographical context lies clearly within the European

tradition, though this is not in any sense to suggest that he is not first and foremost a Latin American writer. His formal education in Cuzco was carefully arranged for him by his far from illiterate Spanish father at the hands of other Spaniards—mainly priests—and naturally included the study of Latin.’ Garcilaso sometimes served as scribe, or secretary, to his father, until the latter’s death in 1559. The following year, at the tender age of 20, he arrived in Spain, where he spent the remainder of his life, often in the company of humanist scholars and writers who were his friends, patrons, and critics. In his works Garcilaso cites a variety of authors whose works are considered to be ancient or contemporary classics, and the inventory of his library suggests his familiarity with many more.’ Garcilaso’s first published work (15 90] is, remarkably, a translation into Spanish from the Tuscan dialect of Leén Hebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore, a sophisticated Renaissance treatise proposing a novel version of the continuously evolving syncretisms of Humanism.? The fifty-six years of Garcilaso’s residence in Spain (he died in Cordoba in 1616) correspond to the mid-portion of the country’s most flourishing period of literary production, the Golden Age. It is during this era, around 1600, that literary historians have recognized an important ideological and stylistic shift from the Renaissance phase into the baroque, the latter identified par-

ticularly with the Counter-Reformation and Spain’s decline. Under the rubric of the baroque, they usually place two of the country’s most illustrious literary authors, whose paths in life directly or indirectly crossed that of the Inca. These are Garcilaso’s in-law and neighbor, the Cordoban poet Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561-1627) and, more importantly, the first modern novelist Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra (15 47-1616}, who actually passed through Garcilaso's small Andalusian village of Montilla in 1591, just a few months after the latter had moved to nearby Cordoba. Neither of these figures seems to have exercised a direct influence on the Peruvian, or vice-versa, though Varner speculates that Cervantes employed thematic material contained in both the Dialoghi and La Florida del Inca and

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was well aware of the literary dimensions of some of the questions dealt with in these two works.!° Scholars have traditionally held that Garcilaso himself

remained, until the end of his life, a man clearly attuned to Renaissance rather than baroque poetics.!! By this they mean that he strove for harmony and balance in all aspects of his writing, choosing not to foreground form by incorporating highly ornamental Latinate syntax and a deliberately arcane system of classical allusions, as did the poet Géngora. It also suggests that he was not obsessed with the archbaroque theme of desengano (the deceptiveness of the phenomenal},!? and that his writing does not carry philosophical speculation about literature itself to the level of metatheme, as Cervantes’s does, even though La Florida may be seen to represent the extended exploration of a strategy or strategies for imparting moral and historical truth that is distinguished above all else by its conversance with a number of contemporary literary conventions and devices.!9 Garcilaso’s temporal overlap with the Peninsular baroque writers, and especially with Cervantes, is nevertheless of enormous significance, in part because they have been the subject of particularly intense, high-level research throughout the present century. The resulting studies have vastly improved our understanding of Spain’s intellectual life in the sixteenth century, while also shedding invaluable light on the Inca’s concept of historiography and on his particular use of form in each of the three later works (La Florida, Comentarios reales, and the Historia General del Peri {1617]). Some of the developments in the field of literary theory during the last several decades have also been valuable. Hayden White’s attacks on purely positivistic approaches to history have had a significant effect on recent studies of Garcilaso, for example, as have aspects of semiotics and at least some of the poststructuralist input, especially when used as methodological tools in a historical/ideological approach. Garcilaso’s general notion of historiography may be seen as largely congruent with that of the best-known historians of antiquity (Livy, Sallust, Plutarch, etc.] as well as with that of most Spanish historians of his own time. In general terms, to say this is to stress that Garcilaso enthusiastically endorsed the “rehabilitation” of rhetoric (i.e., the development of the historical subject within a fully discursive narrative format) in historiography that is arguably the key contribution to this field of Renaissance Humanism.!4 This can be perceived by comparing Renaissance histories with the more narrowly philosophical aims of the relatively antidiscursive historiography of the medieval period. The difference is highly significant because on the continuum between a drier, factually oriented type of discourse (such as that preferred by Biedma and Oviedo, for example} and a fully elaborated and artistically conceived form of writing, a rhetorical historiography gravitates toward the second pole and is contiguous with creative forms like the traditional novel, and

. La FloridadelInca tor on the extreme end even with poetry.'5 This style characterizes the anthropocentric mode employed by several Italian historians who are thought to have

influenced Garcilaso profoundly, among them Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Francesco Guicciardini, and Pandolfo Collenuccio.'6 Their classical approach (and Garcilaso’s) recognized (1) the obligation of the historian to save heroic deeds from oblivion; (2) the importance of the imaginative and relatively free invention of speeches to express the probable reasoning of the protagonists; (3) history’s primarily didactic aim (a notion reinforced by Christianity); and (4) the importance of employing all sorts of topoi within the narrative in order to establish and sustain common points of reference between the historian and the reader.!’ We should note that some features associated with Spanish medieval historiography are also found in

most sixteenth-century treatises, including those composed by Garcilaso, who was acquainted with the tradition of chronicles initiated in the vernacular during the thirteenth century (though these, in turn, may have been a response to early Renaissance currents of the twelfth century).!8 The psychological portrait in particular that is used so effectively by Garcilaso in La Florida derives from this tradition, and Spanish chronicles are also rich repositories of myth, legend, and archetype.

Another somewhat different aspect of medieval practice, however, involves Neoplatonic currents, developing from about the second century on, that proposed the literature of classical antiquity as prefiguring the coming of Christianity—a type of Neoplatonic syncretism. According to its developers, symbolic identity between key figures and events not only of the Old and New Testaments, but also of the Classical pagan and Christian worlds could be proven through a process of decipherment known as figural typology. This practice of Biblical exegesis produced the cultural syncretism that allowed the Christian world to maintain rather than abandon most of the Classical tradition of Greek and Roman letters. The process was continued and stepped

up during the Renaissance, as more and more ancient texts were rediscovered. Leén Hebreo, whom the Inca translated, was an important advocate of Biblical exegesis, as were Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus, in another vein.

Garcilaso put his own notion of exegesis to work in the Comentarios reales. His use of the word “comentarios” signifies his stated intention to interpret and gloss the oral text of his Quechua-speaking maternal uncle and also to reinterpret statements found in some of the histories of Peru written by Europeans. Nevertheless, Margarita Zamora!? and others have shown that what Garcilaso is propounding in this work is that the Incas participated fully in their world’s preparation for the preaching of the gospel by the Spanish (praeparatio evangelica}, in much the same way that Greece and Rome were officially recognized as having prepared Europe for the advent of Christianity.2° In fact, he announces his program in the very first sentence of the Proemio, or

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prologue, to his most famous work by proclaiming his native Cuzco as “another Rome” in its own empire. There is a conflict implied here that is vitally important with respect to Garcilaso’s historiographical models, one easily glossed over and misunderstood. In alleging him to be a Renaissance humanist, we suggest that he relied on a highly creative form of discursive rhetoric to explore human events and character—“the truth of events, the manifest”—and that he thereby implicitly accepted that form and meaning cannot exist apart from the particular event or person. This view of history suggests that rhetorical concepts “emphasize change, not permanence, the many, not the one, the particular, not the universal—emphases which are essential in a serious commitment

to historical understanding, i.e., historicism.”2! On the other hand, Garcilaso’s concern with figural typology (e.g., symbolically relating the Incas to the Romans} exerts a counterpoint to these particular Renaissance notions and has close ties to such antirhetorical disciplines as scholastic theology, whose transcendent aim is to “find the truth beyond events, to discover occult relations between the visible happening and an invisible purpose.’”22 While this conflict is to some extent present in most Renaissance works, it is of fundamental importance in the Inca’s writings. Garcilaso, whose writerly instincts so distinguish him, fairly revels in the rhetorical creativity per-

mitted the Renaissance historiographer within narrative discourse (along with the responsibility to allege and regularly cite the sources of his information) in order to define and historicize the singularity of American culture, as we shall see. Yet, at the same time, his own mission as a Mestizo deeply committed to both sides of his heritage entails a deep commitment to a theological ahistoricism with messianic overtones that symbolically merges past and future and is responsible for the utopian dimension long noted in his works.23 It is this sense of mission that impels him to radically disregard cultural differences among groups of Amerindians and to depict virtually all of them as possessing something of Garcilaso’s own remarkable grasp of the Western cultural tradition. Certain developments in historiography arising from Columbus's discov-

ery only complicate the matter further. It is clear that such classical historians as Herodotus and Pliny preferred eyewitness testimony whenever it was available, although they did not categorically reject hearsay. This practice had been reinforced within the Judeo-Christian tradition.2* After 1492, however, as officials sought to deal with the prodigious volume of reports be-

ing written about America, eyewitness testimony assumed an even higher value in some quarters, whether such testimony appeared in a simple relacin (or legal statement of its writer’s services to the Crown], or in more ambitious undertakings like the works of the Fidalgo de Elvas, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, and the Inca. The establishment of a precise version of events often

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became vital in the ongoing debates over the legality of conquest and the equitable apportioning of encomiendas according to each conquistador’s performance. That Garcilaso was well aware of these requirements certainly accounts in part for his repeated insistence in La Florida on the authority not only of his primary informant |”mi autor”] but of two corroborating sources who had likewise been present. In spite of such emphasis, many Garcilaso scholars are nevertheless convinced that even while he narrated the events of the Soto campaign year by year, heeding each one of his authorities and carefully listing as many names and details as he could discover (as José Durand has laboriously endeavored to demonstrate?5), his primary point of reference was always Peru.?6 In other words, in one sense, the Florida expedition of Hernando de Soto was only an incidental part of what Garcilaso wished to address through his writing. Leaving La Florida aside for a moment, however, the contradictions generally implicit in sixteenth-century historiographical practices are worth pursuing a bit more here, both because they have become increasingly difficult for a positivistically oriented public to grasp, and because discussion of them helps to elucidate some of the difficulties facing the Inca as he undertook his project. As we have noted, in spite of the growing recognition of the importance of eyewitness testimony, which Garcilaso acknowledges almost monotonously, theoreticians of his day also believed that even firsthand ac-

counts did not guarantee access to the truth unless and until they were inscribed by a learned (and often officially authorized) historian whose ethical motives were beyond question. Ethical probity was paramount because it constituted a safeguard against deliberate falsification and also against the use of reported “facts” that would contradict the body of traditional wisdom that historians regarded as truth (which was, of course, identical to that invested in by the power structure under whose auspices the historian was empowered to write).2’

In such an atmosphere, where authority could dictate that facts apprehended by human intelligence were false (a tendency that increased in seventeenth-century Spanish historiography and is at the heart of the baroque preoccupation with desengano?8), genuine confusion reigned as to whether the word “history” itself referred primarily to the acts and things of the past that the historian undertook to disclose (res gestae) or whether it referred to the narration of those acts and events in textual form (rerum gestarum). If acts and events—even reliably reported ones—could be rejected when they contradicted traditional wisdom, it was also conceivable that the authorized historiographer might in good faith include data that were spurious. In this case, as the reasoning went, the result would be a “true” {i.e., ethically unimpeachable) report of untrue information. Many if not most opined that even if the

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inscribed facts were later proven to be false, the historian might retain his integrity provided his textual formulation remained ethically correct, because in this case he would be producing truth de dicto if not de re. Yet another notorious insufficiency of this sixteenth-century Spanish formulation of what constituted true history was that it happened to match almost word for word the conventional definition of poetry, that is, fiction—a circumstance shamelessly exploited by hordes of hack writers of fictional “pseudohistories.”2? Of the Spanish authors who were not ethically above board during the sixteenth century, the worst group by far was perceived by moralistic Humanist critics to be those who penned the hugely popular libros de caballerias—fictional protonovels about heroic knights errant, derived originally from the French Arthurian literature that was widely circulated among the nobility, and one of the few forms of fiction available in the Middle Ages.°° The hero of such a work—Amadis de Gaula being the prototype—was usually of royal descent but remained, like Luke Skywalker (whom Amadis resembled in a number of other ways as well), unaware of his true identity until precisely the

most dramatically opportune moment for its revelation presented itself. Their complicated plot structure obligatorily involved a love affair with a noble lady, as well as characters both friendly and hostile who were capable of deploying magical powers. Moralists objected to works of this type for a number of reasons. In the first place, their authors claimed they were true histories (or stories) when they

were not. Also, they were devised so as to arouse the readers’ passions by dwelling on the arts of seduction. Contemporary followers of Erasmus such as Juan Valdés found the most annoying trait of the chivalresque genre to be its lack of psychological verisimilitude. The Italian critic Giovanni Battista Pigna, writing in 15 54, criticized the Spanish romances because their authors displayed a lamentable ignorance of geography and were prone to “empty reasoning.’”3! The Erasmist Juan Luis Vives in his De disciplinis (circa 15 30} bitterly criticized not only the libros de caballerias but all other fiction as well,

excepting only purely inspirational works dedicated to exalting the noblest actions.?2 Such objections to “lying fictions” that did not qualify as magistra vitae were hardly new in the Renaissance. The period did see, however, the initiation of a great deal of serious discussion on the proper status of imaginative literature.33 A sincere effort was launched to arrive at a clearer formulation of the basic differences between fiction and history. In Spanish and other European languages, this attempt was substantially hindered by the fact that the same word (historia) was used to denote both a narration of true events and most sorts of stories, whether true or not.*4 An important catalyst for all of this was the rediscovery a short time earlier of Aristotle’s Poetics, which reappeared in Latin in 1478. Renaissance poeticians focused particularly on Aristotle’s stated preference for the probable

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though it were untrue over the true that was improbable, as well as his admitting of the historical event only when it was probable. They also emphasized his treatise’s references to two key concepts: mimesis (or creative imitation of reality) and verisimilitude (plausibility or “truthlikeness”}, coming to favor a narrowly literal interpretation of both, not only in historical narrative but in fiction as well. The acceptance of these criteria not only effectively condemned the romances of chivalry. They also projected disapproval upon most other forms of imaginative fiction as well (though, as we will see, there were exceptions}. Thus Poetry (i.e., fiction}, which Aristotle had praised for having the singular merit of presenting ideal types (things as they should be rather than as they are}, was required by the Neoaristotelians to be plausible. These requirements placed special emphasis on the matter of plot, which now had to conform absolutely to the possibilities of empirical reality, “not contradict(ing] the historical facts insofar as they are known by [the] audience.’””35

The message was thus sent that fiction was acceptable only if it was like true history, exhibiting verisimilitude through the realistic reproduction of external reality. The net effect was to confuse even more radically the issue of how to distinguish fiction from history since, as we have seen, the period’s theorists also favored and prescribed a historiography that exploited most of the conventional techniques of literary narrative. Fortunately for posterity, one of those perceiving the irony inherent in such muddled pronouncements was Miguel de Cervantes, the genius who managed to shape it into the overarching theme of the “true history” of Don Quixote de la Mancha. The era’s confusion is also significantly reflected in the strategies adopted by Garcilaso in the inscription of La Florida del Inca. To recapitulate by paraphrasing one critic’s assessment, it was amoment in which the distinction between history and the novel was notably unclear.

The most “scientific,” surest, and best equipped writers of history shaded their writings in delicately novelesque colors, balanced the plot by dividing it

logically into chapter and part, attended conscientiously to narrative dynamics and dialogue while arranging them in nicely paced scenes and episodes, portrayed the protagonists and minor characters so as to make them appear as lifelike as possible, and concerned themselves with finding just the right style. The betrayal, in other words, of the principles of the Aristotelian distinction between Poetry and History was effected, with great subtlety, on two fronts: on the literary side, by drastically condemning works of fiction that lacked verisimilitude (while mounting the fiercest defense of the “good poetry” that displayed it); and on the side of historical discourse, by magnify-

ing the role within it of creative narrative strategies (i.e., fictional techniques).°° It was in the midst of such widespread confusion that the Inca found himself attempting to discern the form most effective for the transmission of his urgent message of racial and moral equality.

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Yet it is also important to recognize that the dilemma confronted by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega extended well beyond these modest dimensions. In the first place, he was not an authorized historian in the conventional sense. He was hardly a recognized scholar either, though his intellectual abilities did win him the honest admiration and respect of the group of intellectuals who knew and interacted with him. Secondly, he was clearly in a position to be racially stigmatized, his status in society being not too different from that of disenfranchised Moriscos and Jews. And finally, though he used his extraordinary literary talents skillfully in order to palliate its possible adverse effects, his urgent mission was to impart a moral truth concerning Amerindians and Mestizos that was subversive in that it clearly did not lie within the conceptual matrix formed by the tradition of his time.3” The next two sections explore how Garcilaso dealt with some of these problems by adapting

sixteenth-century literary and historiographical practices to his ends— sometimes using the state of confusion we have just characterized to his distinct advantage, and at other times just failing, perhaps, to do so. The “Good Poetry” and the Bad: Garcilaso’s Literary Models In Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 27 of La Florida, Garcilaso incorporates a revealing discussion of his poetics into the main body of the work, thereby informing his readers of his own familiarity with the general lines of the debate we have just outlined. After avowing that his informant has ratified all aspects of his (the narrator’s) transcription of an eloquent formal discourse ascribed to four Indian “captains,” the speaker, who here comes across as virtually identical

with Garcilaso himself, protests: “I... can truthfully declare that this account is not a fabric of my imagination. In fact, all of my life I have been an enemy of such fiction as one finds in books of knighthood,?8 good poetry excepted” (italics mine}. Despite such an explicit disclaimer, La Florida invites comparison with the romances of chivalry at various levels of inscription, and in fact probably owes more to the “rejected” chivalresque romances than to any other literary genre.3° Garcilaso goes on to account for his own familiarity with the romances in his next statement, even while incurring a slight contradiction of the one just quoted. “For this attitude,” he continues, “I am indebted to the illustrious cavalier Pedro Mexia de Sevilla, since with the censure that he applies in his heroic treatise on the Caesars to those who occupy themselves with reading and composing such books, he took from me the love that I had for them as a boy and thus made me abhor them forever” (Varner translation; italics mine}.4°

Garcilaso’s confession constitutes one more piece of evidence that the Spanish Crown’s attempt to prohibit the importation of the romances (and other works of fiction) into the New World was a failure, at the same time

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that it echoes well-known references to them by such other chroniclers as Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés and Bernal Diaz del Castillo. It is probably impossible to exaggerate the popularity of such fiction among all Spaniards exposed to any degree of literacy during the early sixteenth century, and in a classic essay on the subject Stephen Gilman has characterized as a sort of “Iiterary shorthand” Diaz del Castillo’s famous exclamation that upon first beholding the wonders of Tenochtitlan both he and his companions could think of themselves only in terms of the characters from Amadis de Gaula.*! Why were these works so entrenched during the period in question that almost any thorough consideration of the chronicles of the Indies must touch on them? One likely reason is that these “books of knighthood” embrace Christian ideology reaching all the way back to the First Crusade and abounding in the

epic poems of that and slightly later eras, as well as in the romanceros, or compilations of ballads, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.*2 The hero of the tales retains all the qualities of the ideal vassal of feudal society. Nevertheless, the prose works picking up the theme after about 1508 assume a modern format—nothing less than that of historiography itself. After the final rout of the Moors from Granada and the expulsion of Spain’s Jews at the end of the fifteenth century, the concept of true nobility tended to become equated with the “uncontaminated” bloodlines of the victorious faction, and therefore with the Christian warrior and servant of the Catholic Monarchs.

Thus, echoes of the medieval chivalresque integrated themselves into Spain’s emerging national consciousness. The continuing appeal of the old archetypes was easily transferred (both by themselves and others} to the bold and hardy conquistadors of the Indies, who perceived themselves as providentially selected to carry out the next stage of their country’s “sacred mission’”’—this time in America.*3

At the most basic level of La Florida de] Inca—that of texture—aspects of the chivalresque model underlie much of the linguistic register in which narrator and characters address, respectively, the reader and one another, as well as the congeries of images appearing in descriptive and narrative passages.“*4 A good example of such permeation (one of many) appears in the recounting of the long ride back to camp of Silvestre and Juan Lopez in Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 14—one of the episodes through which, in the narrator’s words, “one will be able to note something of the valor of the Spanish race.”*5 As Nufio de Tovar springs to his steed to rescue the two brave youths from pursuit by Indians, the narrator provides a succinct portrait of the young man and evaluates the motives governing his act in the following terms, which could almost have been taken verbatim from a romance text: The great ferocity and vigor of the animal and the boldness and cavalier mien of the rider, a handsome horseman, were such that with just the gallantry and nobility of his

108 Lee Dowling person this good cavalier was able to offer assurance to the two men in such danger. For even though Nuno Tovar now suffered the disfavor of his Captain General, he never

failed to display on all occasions the force of his personality and the strength of his spirit, always doing his duty to fulfill his obligation to his own nobility; at no time could the full force of the disdain he suffered make him do otherwise, for those who truly possess a noble spirit will not stoop to depravity.*6

The passage emphasizes a notion of individual nobility centered in Christian ideology at the same time that it reflects history’s didactic purpose (the magistra vitae) by offering a positive example. Tovar, the man who embodies all of the above, is explicitly depicted as a knight (as is Soto, throughout the work). In La Florida the pervasiveness of the chivalresque code clearly underlies Garcilaso’s critical decision to characterize as knights not only the Spaniards but also their Amerindian foes, seen to fight because they too are seek-

ing honor. On the formal level, this decision determines the linguistic register in which to model the Florida Indians’ alleged communications to the Spaniards. On the ideological level, it provides a familiar cultural code through which to interpret their motives,‘’ at the same time responding to what has been described as Humanism’s wide-ranging desire to substantiate the events of present history in terms of the past.*8 Echoes of the chivalresque genres are heard as well in Garcilaso’s renderings of messages from “ladies” to “gentlemen,” types of pledges extended by the former to the latter, the wording of challenges, ceremonial exchanging of gifts, the terms of expression in portraits of gallant and enduring youth, and descriptions of temples and palaces as places of enchantment (for example, the temple in Tolomeco in Book 3, Chapter 15).49 The dramatic intensity of the story of Juan Ortiz’s captivity and rescue is also reminiscent at times of scenes from the romances, and the detail of a dead child’s body said to have been carried off by a lion may be found in both Amadis and El caballero Cifar.

The frequently invoked rites of combat constitute another echo, epitomized in the account of Silvestre’s duel with an Indian warrior that ends with the latter “severed in twain” but somehow still able to murmur a polite “Peace be with you” before falling dead.5° Certainly this particular incident strains the reader’s credulity quite as much as some of the marvelous feats performed by the heroic knights of fiction (and in fact both Amadis de Grecia and the knight Febo managed to vivisect giants in the same efficient way).*! Garcilaso’s recourse to elements of the chivalresque model—virtually impossible to ignore in the pages of La Florida, despite the fact that the story he inscribes lacks the dragons, dwarves, and magicians that were sine qua nonin the romances themselves—responds to the notion of an imaginative poetics that was favored, as we have seen, by Renaissance historiographers’ rehabilitation of Classical rhetoric, an attitude that in effect favored the sort of narrative structuring that we now identify with the novel.52 We have also

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noted that Garcilaso made no secret of his admiration for several Italian histories employing such techniques.*? Before beginning to examine his reliance on genres other than the chivalresque, however, let us note briefly some of the formal characteristics responding to this novelizing impulse that particularly distinguish La Florida del Inca.™ Hayden White has observed that a historical interpretation, like a poetic fiction, will be taken as a plausible representation of the world by its readers by virtue of its implicit appeal to those “pre-generic plot structures” or archetypal story-forms that define the modalities of a given culture’s literary endowment.°> Garcilaso is always aware of the importance of providing his readers with these, obviously electing an “ideographic” model of discourse as opposed to the monotonous sets of sequential generalizations that characterize the dry, factually oriented reports of Biedma and Oviedo.** Wherever possible, the Inca assimilates both plot and characters into archetypal patterns that the reader is likely to recognize from having encountered them elsewhere in literature and history. In other words, Garcilaso supplies numerous functional analogies in order to assure verisimilitude. Such analogies acquire even greater Significance in a narrative that assigns many of the principal traditional roles to Amerindians.

| The central narrative thread of La Florida follows a linear progression organized around the six years the expedition lasted, one Book for each year; but the events within each book are emplotted to form intricately conjoined episodes, so that one event is seen to be the cause or effect of another, or at one and the same time the cause of some and the effect of others. This is a good example of Garcilaso’s conscientious attention to the process termed dispo-

sitio by Aristotle. For the reader who has missed it, a comparison of Garcilaso’s narrative with those rendered by the other three sources almost instantly reveals his precision in formulating an integrative and unifying plot structure out of the mass of data he had gathered.°’ A key criterion for the inclusion by Garcilaso of any piece of information, as is obvious from even a cursory examination of La Florida’s title and chapter headings, is that of exceptionality, with the purpose of inspiring the desired degree of admiratio in the reader. The narrator created by the Inca maintains an engaging series of tutelary comments intended to throw light on his own editorial decisions and to assist the reader in arriving at appropriate interpretations.°? Throughout the work, in fact, the author’s mindfulness of the needs, expectations, and emotions of the reader is patent. Garcilaso foregrounds this concern maximally in Book 6 by including a dramatic scene focusing on the affective responses of the Viceroy of New Spain to news of each of the major events of the expedition as these are related to him by the expedi-

tion’s survivors during the audiencia that is convened to receive their accounts.*? All of these are devices recommended by Aristotle under the rubric

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of inventio, and they are also basic techniques for the crafting of any traditional novel. The Inca artfully marshals each one to aid in the basic task of persuading the reader in virtually every way that decorum allows to accept what the text affirms. Finally, it may seem ironic that Garcilaso, the only author of a Soto account who had never set foot north of Peru in the Americas, offers the most visually oriented and highly detailed descriptions of what is said to have occurred there. The verisimilitude gained as a result may be seen to constitute one of the main reasons why his account continues to be treated as factual to a greater extent than has actually proven to be the case. But by turning once again to Aristotelian principles, we are reminded that the production of such “realism” had little or nothing to do with the direct imitation of reality but rather everything to do, as the manuals emphasized, with the writer’s faithful adherence to rhetorical models and use of his or her imagination.®®

La Florida had been labeled a novel {novela} by early critics well before 1916, the year Peruvian historians initiated their exhaustive reevaluation of the status of the Inca and his writings.*! Most of the scholars bent on reassessing the historicity of Garcilaso’s production did not try to deny the work's af-

finity with the novel, but they correctly recognized it to be much more than this. Furthermore, the designation “novela,” as they saw, was not only misleading but also anachronistic since the term was used in the sixteenth century only to refer to a type of short story of Italian origin.62 The best of the modern critics, starting with Mir6 Quesada, have undertaken to x-ray the work’s makeup within a sixteenth-century context.®? Their efforts have revealed sufficient traces in it of a variety of contemporary genres to qualify La Florida as virtually a literary mosaic—a significant finding in and of itself. Following a brief survey of the principal remaining literary types upon which it draws, we will return to the question of the implications of its multigeneric identity. The poetic genre most exalted by the Neoaristotelians who pronounced the prose romances of chivalry to be unrealistic and prurient was the classical epic poem.® A main reason for this was that epics were based on true events, even though all of them featured a creative elaboration, or dispositio, within the plot structure, as well as the virtually obligatory intercalation of mythological, supernatural, and other fantastic elements. The Italian epics of the early Renaissance, as opposed to those of classical antiquity, had shown a ten-

dency to incorporate more and more overtly fictional techniques, including amorous intrigues of a decidedly novelesque cast. Chief among these Renaissance epics were the enormously popular Orlando innamorato (1498) of Matteo Boyardo, and the Orlando furioso (1516, 1532) of Ludovico Ariosto. It is therefore hardly surprising that during the second half of the sixteenth cen-

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tury both of these poets had run afoul of the Neoaristotelians and the Erasmian moralists who so disapproved of the prose romances. Garcilaso makes reference to both Boyardo and Ariosto in La Florida, the context being—once again—that of an eloquent harangue about to be attributed to Chief Vitachuco: Vitachuco responded very strangely and with a boldness never heard of or even imagined in an Indian; for it is a fact that if such violent and fierce threats as he made and such arrogant remarks as he uttered could be written as the messengers related them, none of the words of the bravest cavaliers introduced into the works of the divine Ariosto and his predecessor, the very illustrious and enamored Count Matheo Maria Boiardo or of other sagacious poets would equal the words of this Indian. Because of the long time that has elapsed since they were spoken, many of his remarks have been forgotten, and the order in which they were uttered has been lost. But those that can be recalled and that we can guarantee to be the actual ones which he sent his brothers in answer to their message will be told in the following chapter.®5

The explicit intertextual space created through Garcilaso’s allusion functions cleverly to link Vitachuco and the other Amerindians who populate La Florida to Europe’s oldest and most highly venerated literary tradition. The same allusion may also reflexively highlight the fact that Garcilaso himself is complying with the Aristotelians’ guidelines by observing the rules of unity, eschewing erotic scenes, and—-most importantly—by dealing with an undeniably historical event for which, unlike most epic poets, he can count on more than one flesh-and-blood witness, as he insists again and again. A third function of Garcilaso’s allusion to the epic is that it acts to create a relatively safe intertextual space for the inclusion of several quite vitriolic diatribes against Spanish policies that the Inca places in the mouths of native chiefs. The Inca could consider himself largely on safe ground here, for such harangues were entirely traditional within the epic genre (as well as in classical histories in prose}, and it was in the epic poem that they were found in their most highly elaborated and formal configurations. In fact, speeches attributed to most if not all of the principal characters were de rigueur, and none but the most hard-nosed critics recommended their exclusion from the epic on grounds of implausibility (though Garcilaso’s apologias and those of some other sixteenth-century historians do seem to suggest some slight unease with them; see note 18}. An epic poem more closely related in time to Garcilaso’s enterprise than the Orlando ones was that of his contemporary Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga, the highly acclaimed La araucana (1569, 1578, 1590}, considered to be the best of the poems of this genre dealing with the New World. Ercilla (15 33-94) had journeyed to America in 1555 as a young man to take part in the pacifica-

tion of Chile, becoming the first eyewitness to write on this campaign,

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though the poem deals with many more battles and other events than he could actually have seen and includes, as well, its share of the prescribed supernatural elements. Nevertheless, Ercilla’s own claim to eyewitness status, plus the fact that his subject was contemporary rather than set in the distant past, lent weight to La araucana’s claim to be history and not fiction (i.e., good poetry and not bad). One of this Spaniard’s stated purposes was to write , an epic that would correct the by then notorious excesses of the Italians by playing down the erotic and emphasizing the heroic in the traditional sense of the term.°®’ In other words, Ercilla claimed to aspire to greater “realism,” as the term is understood within the context of the extremely stylized epic tradition. Despite his alleged intentions, Ercilla did include much materia amorosa,

though with one significant change, this being that the protagonists of a number of his scenes are indigenes, particularly women—albeit stylized ones who tend to behave much like any other traditional heroine. He also created unforgettable heroes in the Araucanian warriors Caupolican, Lautaro, Lincoya, and others. The manner in which Ercilla introduced Amerindians into a classic literary form must have impressed the Inca profoundly when he read the poem, perhaps between 1590 and 1595. While Ercilla, like Garcilaso,

never ceases to ringingly endorse providential imperialism (and a recent study has shown him to have been politically correct to a fault®§), it is a fact that his indigenous characters clearly outshine the ones of his own race, at times even assuming an unmistakable moral superiority, for all that they remain literary figures drawn completely in the European tradition, like Garcilaso’s in La Florida.®

Critics have observed a tension between Ercilla’s romantic view of the Amerindians and his moral imperative,”° and some have even championed him as the first anti-imperialist voice. Others have insisted convincingly that an epic stands or falls on the qualities and appeal of the enemies whom the hero must defeat (very much as a work of science fiction may depend upon the particular endowments of its aliens). The controversy over the poet’s true position is likely to continue, but it is important to remember that as all reports from and about the Indies, and especially those concerning its inhabitants, were subjected to ever more stringent review by Spanish authorities, Ercilla y Zuniga did not freely dispose of the choice of either fictionalizing Amerindians in some time-honored literary frame, or on the other hand, of supplying the public with a rigorously accurate ethnographic account of their culture and beliefs, any more than did Garcilaso.”! Probably Ercilla did experience some degree of admiration for his own side’s enemies. It is not unlikely that, partly as a result of Ercilla’s vision, Garcilaso began to perceive the lit-

message.’ ,

erary format as the one best suited to the dissemination of his own urgent

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When Garcilaso expresses his admiration of La araucana in the Historia general del Perti (Book 2 Part 8, Chapter 13), he emphasizes once again the extent to which the Neoaristotelians’ critique of poetry had influenced his own sensibilities by appending the observation that it would have been better had Ercilla written the work in prose because, that way, readers would have put more stock in it. Garcilaso’s statement is revealing, I think, because it affirms that the Inca does see La araucana’s idealized natives as worthy of belief, and implies that he himself holds the work to be true.”3 Garcilaso also possessed another epic poem of America, the Elegias de varones ilustres de Indias (1589) of Juan de Castellanos (1522—1607], who was said to have converted his vast prose manuscript into poetry after reading La

araucana. Castellanos offers in his poem a brief description of the Florida landscape.’* While this poet is concerned mainly with his fellow Spaniards, he does create an interesting indigenous heroine in the sensuous Diana. As its title announces, Castellanos’s work is conceived to carry on the tradition of Fernando del Pulgar’s medieval classic Claros varones de Castilla (1486}, known for its literary portraits of famous men, just as the more contemporary chronicler of the Indies, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, had done in his last work, the Quinquagenas de la nobleza de Esparia (15 51—§6).’5 A link between these works and La Florida may perhaps be seen in Garcilaso’s own pithy character sketches, including several of Hernando de Soto and the unforgettable one of Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa (Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 11} which have long been recognized as one of the work’s strong points.”6 In addition to the influence of the romance of chivalry and the epic poem,

both of which had developed from the ancients’ urge to immortalize the prowess of their cultural heroes, a variety of critics have noted several passages in La Florida del Inca that are reminiscent of another genre, a form of pure fiction known as the Byzantine, or Greek, romance. This ancestor of the modern novel had also originated in ancient times, but for several reasons became highly topical once again during Garcilaso’s era. One of the most important reasons for this had to do with another rediscovery, made in 1534, of a Byzantine work written in the fourth century by one Heliodorus, and known as the Ethiopic History (Historia etiédpica)—a “novel” despite its title. Garcilaso owned a copy of one of the several Spanish translations of the work,

which was shortly to inspire imitations by no less important authors than Lope de Vega (El peregrino en su patria, |1604]) and Cervantes (Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, {1617]).’’

The best explanation of why this particular work attracted enthusiastic critical praise had to do once again with the question of verisimilitude, specifically with how to maintain it without excluding elements of the “marvelous,” which Aristotle had recognized as a legitimate source of pleasure in both tragedy and poetry. As we have seen, one of the main reasons for the con-

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temporary excoriation of virtually all of the romances of chivalry was their notorious incorporation of marvelous lore that violated “the most fundamental laws of human experience ... the empirical laws of nature, specifically those of time and space.”’8 Such excesses were regarded by the Neoaristotelians as examples of the “illegitimate marvelous,” to which they opposed a legitimate variety that could be reconciled with the verisimilar by locating it within the plot structure itself. Such devices as unexpected turns of events (peripeteia), the surprise recognition of one character by another, suspense, and a final ingenious resolution of the plot would, they insisted, not fail to create the desired degree of admiratio in the reader. The typical argument of the Byzantine novel offered ideal opportunities for introducing such machinations, always involving as it did at least one pair of lovers forced to make long and hazardous journeys by sea, during the course of which they and a large cast of other characters were inevitably beset by shipwrecks, pirates, kidnappings, captivity, long separations, reunions with or without mutual recognition, and the like. The Byzantine plot typically began in medias res, only later disclosing the essential missing information through flashbacks. There was always a happy ending, of course, with ample compensation to all worthy individuals who had been made to suffer.79 Heliodorus’s “history” was regarded as a great work (he became known as the “Homer of the roman” for a number of reasons. First, it did not violate in even the smallest detail the laws of verisimilitude. The plot was admirably worked out and displayed an ingenious but plausible dénouement. The author’s skillful handling of this aspect was observed to stir the requisite feelings of horror, compassion, amazement, delectation, and so on, in the reader. Morally, the work was above reproach. Also to the critics’ liking was the fact that its narrator provided a steady flow of maxims and other useful words of wisdom to live by. The Ethiopic History qualified, in short, as the sort of “good poetry” that Garcilaso specifically excepts from condemnation while ostensibly denouncing the romances of chivalry.8° In spite of Heliodorus’s much vaunted virtuosity as a “poet,” however, most Neoaristotelians continued to maintain that the best plot material was

actually provided by history itself—except in cases where truth actually should turn out to be stranger than fiction. When this occurred, as we have noted, Aristotle thought that the probable even if untrue was to be preferred over the true that was improbable. But to take this tortuous reasoning even further, Renaissance theoreticians declared that the poet could legitimately resort to fabrication “if the historical knowledge of his audience was not sufficient to prove that the fabricated events do not conform to history, and if the fabricated events conform to the laws of probability.’”*! A chief concern of po-

ets seeking to be creative within such a rationale became that of protecting

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themselves from contradiction by some pedantic historian privy to the true facts who might appear to successfully accuse them of “lying implausibly.” It is not difficult to comprehend Garcilaso’s stake in all of this if we remember that one of the goals he most sought through the writing of La Florida was

to historicize Amerindians by “inserting” them into cultural slots—or roles—already carved out within European literary forms, making them the worthy foe saluted in the epic adventure, for example, or casting them among the accessory but indispensable players on which the Byzantine plot turned. As his vision matured, he would later reserve for the Incas, as we have noted, the civilizing, prefiguring role that Neoplatonic thought traditionally assigned to the Greeks and Romans. Such a labor would be an important step toward the cultural legitimation of a group of people still unknown in Europe when the roots of the Western tradition began to grow. By restricting himself to history, Garcilaso was following the Neoaristotelians’ advice. Since he was careful to cite the eyewitness testimony of Spaniards where facts were available, he was unlikely to be contradicted; and, as he repeatedly asserts in the text, the authority he could bring to the subject of Amerindian culture was privileged because of his own heritage. His topic, moreover, lent itself to manipulation in just the way recommended by the critics who so admired Heliodorus, since it was basically the story of a long voyage by sea with a perilous sojourn in a foreign land, of which almost no one else possessed any knowledge at all. Garcilaso’s familiarity with the Ethiopic History and possibly with other Byzantine works is patent in La Florida. Critics have observed that the tone employed by the authorial voice to comment upon the hazards of travel, the unfavorable climate, the expeditionaries’ constant attempts to combat fatigue and endure other kinds of suffering, and everyone’s suspense at what might lie ahead are reminiscent of the way in which Byzantine-style narrators typically address such concerns. They point also to Garcilaso’s vivid depictions of horses and dogs as noble and intelligent friends of man, of native revelries (specifically the feast described in Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 14), and of the Indians in hot pursuit of their Spanish enemies. In other words, the narrator who appears so typical of the romance of chivalry at some moments may at others be seen to resemble much more closely Heliodorus, especially in his eagerness to provide the reader with a continual flow of moral and practical advice.®2

Another type of “poetry” woven into La Florida’s patchwork texture is seen in the series of short stories patterned after the Italian novella (so designated because writers of this nationality had done the most to improve the aesthetics of the traditional tale]. Giovanni Boccaccio, among others, was well known and much admired in Spain for his excellence in both inventio

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and dispositio—the former term referring to the finding of suitable materials and the latter to the shaping of them. Garcilaso owned several of Boccaccio’s works, including what is believed to have been the Decameron, and it is not unlikely that he also knew such diverse and less polished examples of the genre as those found in the Spaniard Juan de Timoneda’s popular collections Patranuelo (1567) and Sobremesa y alivio de caminantes (1569}.®?

Anecdotes and stories of all kinds were evidently of great interest to the Inca, who remembered and reworked many of those passed on to him during his youth by relatives and acquaintances on both his mother’s and later his father’s side,84 not to mention the ones probably contributed by Gonzalo Silvestre, his chief source concerning the Soto expedition. In intercalating a number of them so as to add interest and variety to La Florida's narrative design, he is duplicating a favorite device of his time—one commonly employed in

several of the most popular contemporary genres, and one that he himself turns to later with the engrossing story of Pedro Serrano in the Comentarios reales.®5 In both works the stories clearly help reinforce the main theme. For La Florida, Garcilaso discovers in the voyage of Hernando de Soto’s armada from San Licar to Cuba, accompanied partway by another bound for Mexico (Book 1, Chapters 7—15], an ideal narrative frame, one in fact identical

to the literary setting particularly favored by Byzantine novelists. He then proceeds to insert a whole series of short narratives, recounting them in such a way that their debt to the Italian novella is unmistakable. The first story elaborates the near collision of two of the ships brought about by a combination of carelessness (or inexperience) and Gonzalo Silvestre’s overzealous performance as sentinel. Garcilaso’s omniscient narrator almost outdoes himself in the meticulous, step-by-step recounting of this near disaster that is replete with visual detail, sound effects, and a dramatic providential rescue, deploying all of the techniques typically employed in the novella to relate set

pieces of this type. Taking up another favorite theme—the romantic intrigues played out among lighthearted and attractive persons of high society—the narrator “titillates” the reader by revealing how a beautiful seventeen-year-old noblewoman is induced to join the party in Gomera at the request of none other than Soto himself.8° While Garcilaso stops short of foregrounding this incident in the way a true novelist would doubtless have done, he does use the ploy to build suspense before revealing several chapters later that Nuno de Tovar, the “knight” who will later attempt to regain the Governor’s favor through a feat of bravery, has managed to woo and win the fair lady in question and in fact is already married to her! After narrating several more

brief but structurally complete stories featuring sea battles and near-calamities, Garcilaso in Book 1, Chapter 11 goes on to describe in some detail the “festivity and rejoicing” with which the city of Santiago de Cuba celebrated the arrival of the governor’s party. Once again, allusions to the dances, mas-

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querades, and bullfights enjoyed by gaily resplendent lords and ladies strongly echo the novella. Garcilaso then gracefully rounds out this first section with a final exemplary tale of how Soto’s knightlike (and Christlike] nobility in the end humiliates a rapacious rival bent on cheating him of what is rightfully his. More closely related to the work’s primary subject matter is the engaging story of Juan Ortiz that consumes most of Chapters 2—8 of Book 2, Part 1. The tale, novelesque by its nature, becomes infinitely more so as a result of the Inca’s narrative virtuosity. Here Garcilaso is at his best, portraying, dramatizing, even throwing in a bit of romance to season Ortiz’s repeated bouts of mis-

ery at the hands of the villainous Hirrihigua. The characters are made to plead, command, scold, rue, comfort, torment, pray, confess, connive, communicate in secret, sympathize, argue, rebuke, defend, regale, weep, invoke Providence, and deliver several formal addresses in appropriately ponderous tones. After Ortiz is rescued and his savior Chief Mucozo duly féted, Garcilaso caps the tale with a final (universally?) appealing touch—a visit to the Spanish camp by the gallant chief’s mother, a clearly archetypal figure who provokes affectionate amusement among the Spanish by expressing her outlandish fear that the latter with their imposing guns and horses might actually have harmed her son. Regardless of its discrepancies, the Juan Ortiz incident is the one best illustrating what I see as Garcilaso’s primary intention in La Florida. The captivity of the Spaniard Ortiz offers the pretext, but all of the other characters in the absorbing tale are Floridians (Florindians?) who interact to cause Good ultimately to prevail in exactly the same way that all-European casts were wont to do. By conspicuously writing Amerindians into familiar literary formats, Garcilaso clearly intends to reduce their strangeness or otherness in the minds of his European readers. Unlike the other genres we have examined thus far, the developing novella constituted one literary format in which the writer wishing to do so might present more or less realistic material.8’ Proof of growing interest in realistic modalities in the sixteenth century is the evolution of the Spanish picaresque genre (to which we return later in this essay}, as well as Cervantes’s portrayal of Sancho Panza in the Quixote, the first part of which saw publication in exactly the same year as La Florida del Inca (1605). While it is the idealizing genres that overwhelmingly predominate in La Florida, literary realism does appear in several guises. For example, Soto’s character undergoes convincing evolution when discouragement over the threat of mutiny begins to replace

his earlier high hopes. Garcilaso provides a penetrating analysis of the leader’s worsening depression in Book 3, Chapter 33.88 The interior monologue created for Porcallo, depicted in the process of making up his mind to return home to Cuba and to leave la Florida’s swamps, mosquitoes, and other discomforts to his younger colleagues, is also psychologically realistic even

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while epistemologically problematic. Following the scene in the swamp, Porcallo is pictured humorously (and perhaps with picaresque echoes) as he intentionally muddles syllables in the names of several Indian chiefs so as to form a mildly scatological refrain (Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 11). Juan Terrén’s petulant casting away of his bag of pearls (Book 3, Chapter 20) and Silvestre’s

humorous parceling out of twelve of his “eighteen grains of corn” while drolly pretending they are actually marchpanes from Seville and buns from Utrera (Book 3, Chapter 8} have been cited as well as examples of picaresque-

style interchanges.8° The connection here would appear more coincidental than intentional, however, since these incidents, albeit humorously, do reflect the reality of hardships suffered by Soto’s men during the long wilderness trek. Still, it is worth noting that Mateo Alemdn, author of the picaresque novel Guzmdn de Alfarache (1599) was praised by contemporary critics for maintaining verisimilitude, and even said to honor the title of historian!” With respect to other genres, Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) has long been cited as a probable primary source of the Comentarios reales, and Erasmus is believed to have influenced both More and the Inca. Particularly telling in the Comentarios is Garcilaso’s portrayal of the Incas as the benevolent and enlightened torchbearers of civilization, with Manco Capac pointedly depicted as the antithesis of the Spanish conquistador. An important recent study has emphasized that Garcilaso’s use of the Utopia in this later work was both “intentional and essential,” as the Utopian sociopolitical model was the only one available at the end of the sixteenth century that presented a contemporary pagan civilization in a favorable light.®! “The Utopian model set an important precedent by rendering a pagan New World culture both intelligible to a European readership and acceptable, even praiseworthy, within the context of Christian humanist ideology.’”’>2 La Florida is not so ambitious a work as the Comentarios in this regard and does not show direct influence from More’s novel to the same notable degree. Another text that does help to shape it ideologically, however, is the one Gar-

cilaso had chosen earlier to translate, Leon Hebreo’s Didlogos de amor. The Didlogos were a vast philosophical treatise on the nature of analogical relationships between pairs at multiple levels of the universe (heaven and earth, God and the creation, spirit and body, etc.}. In a series of intense conversations a man, Fil6n (or Philo—Love}, and a woman, Sofia (Sophia—Wisdom], discuss the nature of such relationships, emphasizing in all cases that unification of each set of halves is made possible through love. Erotic love is not excluded from consideration, as demonstrated in Philo’s insistence on returning again and again to the subject of his physical attraction to Sophia. Leén Hebreo was the pseudonym of Judah Abrabanal, a learned Portuguese Jew and renowned Humanist whose philosophy is a subtle (and esoterically beautiful) blending of several traditions into a syncretism that may be termed

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“Judeo-Platonism.”*4 His decision to call himself by the name of Leo the Hebrew is seen by Varner and others as having directly influenced Garcilaso to begin to acknowledge and emphasize his own dual lineage by taking the step of changing his baptismal name, Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, to the hybrid one that would directly reflect his own two “halves”—his Spanish father (also called Garcilaso de la Vega), and his Peruvian mother through the title of

indigenous nobility.” The significance of this move is suggested by the fact that Leén Hebreo,

probably influenced by his readings in the Cabalistic texts, has his two spokesmen reiterate pointedly the central feature of his philosophy—that of the radical polarization of the entire universe into male and female symbols. Love is then defined as “the lover’s desire to reproduce the image of beauty and also the desire to be joined with that beauty.”%° The key point lies in the notion that wholeness is effected only through joining or, as Hebreo expresses it, through copulation. The human and the divine intellects both reflect the pull of this force, as do all other pairs. Garcilaso found this notion, expressed in the writings of Hebreo with all of the eloquence that Renaissance aesthetics demanded, to be, in his own words “soft and sweet.”9” More importantly, however, it offered Garcilaso a positive way in which to deal with his Mestizaje, which he seems to have begun to construe in terms of the wholly natural and desirable result of the awesome effects of love as a natural force. With the reassurance gained from Hebreo’s impressive reasoning, he could proceed to declare, as he does in the Comentarios, that whereas many might regard the epithet “Mestizo” as an insult, he himself did not choose to see it as such, instead assuming it and wearing it publicly and with pride (Book 9, Chapter 31).

On this basis, it becomes somewhat easier to understand why Garcilaso, even while calling himself an indio, so idealizes and exalts the figure of Soto and other conquistadors, whose commission in far-flung parts of the New World seems to place them in opposition to Indian culture. With what appear to be echoes of Hebreo’s thought, Garcilaso prefers to emphasize instead the conquistadors’ active part in effecting the unification between Old and New Worlds that is dictated and authorized by Love.’ He is not using the elements of Neoplatonism in order to justify cruelty, which he abhors. Perceiving unification, or joining, as a force created by love, Garcilaso is instead advocating peaceful “appropriation” in the name of civilization and the higher good. He portrays Soto as striving to carry out such appropriation in La Florida, as in the Comentarios reales he will picture the Incas going about the task in an even more ideal manner. Recognition of the Inca’s use of the Didlogos provides a way of understanding his problematic failure to deal with the wide range of divergencies among indigenous peoples of the New World. Within his Neoplatonic frame of reference, these differences become virtually moot,

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since all Amerindians—regardless of their cultural differences—are seen as destined to play a part in the cultural and physical joining of two worlds. The legitimate fruit of this process is Mestizaje.?° The incident in La Florida best reflecting these notions is the meeting between Soto and the “Lady of Cofachiqui” just after this impressive personage and eight of her handmaidens make their way downriver in canoes “covered with a great canopy and adorned with ornaments” (Book 3, Chapter to). Even without the narrator’s explicit invocation at this point of an intertext—that of Trajan’s description of Cleopatra sailing out to receive Marc Antony—the scene is memorable. The Lady, “a woman of discretion and of queenly heart,” embodies the medieval ideal of decorous hospitality, while the conquerors make a conspicuous display of their own chivalrous intentions in return. Interestingly, however, Garcilaso also sounds a rare erotic note in the scene—

one of the very few ever heard in his writings—by picturing the Lady throughout her initial conversation with Soto in the process of “disengaging little by little a large strand of pearls as thick as hazelnuts, which encircled her neck three times and fell to her thighs” (Book 3, Chapter 11). Her intention is to present these gems to the Governor, an act she is too modest to carry out. Soto, however, overhearing the translation of her statement to this effect, accepts the pearls and in return presents the Lady with his own “gold ring set with a ruby” (Book 3, Chapter 11], declaring both gifts to be symbolic of peace and friendship. Though Platonic decorum between the two is never breached, there is a deliberate suggestion of attraction between the noble woman repre-

senting the New World and the virtuous conquistador from the Old; the pearls may represent the Lady’s dowry, and the bestowing of the ring suggests

a betrothal or perhaps even a symbolic wedding. Raquel Chang-Rodriguez points out that the encounter is made to occur at the exact center of the text of La Florida. She sees it as an implicit reference to the symbolic re-establish-

ment of an “original union” intended to result in a more perfect Mestizo world, !00

Following the encounter of Soto and this almost mythic “Senora,” the text records the story of a young man said to have been dispatched as a messenger by the Lady to her mother, a “retired widow,” to request that the latter return to their village in the company of the Spanish. Finding himself in the throes of what he fears will turn out to be a conflict between the younger woman and the older one, the youthful “cavalier . . . from twenty to twenty-one years of age, with a handsome face and the figure of a gentleman” (Book 3, Chapter 11} unexpectedly commits suicide in full view of the Spanish by stabbing himself in the gullet with the flint head of an arrow. Chang-Rodriguez sees the young man as symbolizing the inevitable tragedy of conquest in the form of the con-

flicting loyalties that some will find impossible to resolve. Notwithstanding the possible negative consequences, other figures in La Florida act positively

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to facilitate the desired “union.” Among these is the helpful Anilco, who aids in the building of brigantines to enable the Spanish to escape (Book 5, Part 2). The Spaniards in return strive to help Anilco avoid war with the rival chief Guachoya. Garcilaso’s perspective on the significance of his dual heritage, undoubtedly molded in part by the idealism of Le6n Hebreo, provided him with abundant motivation for seeking to offer, through the act of writing, a reasoned view of the path Spain should follow in completing the project of cultural unification with the New World. In order to present his vision as appealingly as possible, Garcilaso makes good use of literary modes of expression familiar to the readers of his time. He assigns principal parts to both Spaniards and Amerindians, dignifying the latter by presenting them as essential characters in the future resolution of the comprehensive providential “plot.” Our attempt here to specify aspects of Garcilaso’s historiographical practice, to identify his principal literary models, and to illuminate some of the philosophical convictions that guided his hand is intended to assist in allaying the unease that an uninformed reading of La Florida is likely to produce in the modern reader, given today’s expectations for a text conventionally regarded as a primary historical source. Even with guidance, however, today’s reader is almost certain to experience puzzlement over a certain erraticism projected in various statements of La Florida’s authorial voice. Since there is no single strategy (a comprehensively ironic interpretation, for example} that the reader can adopt in order to deal with such erraticism, we will examine some of its principal manifestations separately in the following section. The Question of La Florida’s Authorial Voice

The semiotic richness of La Florida del Inca derives partly, as we have seen, from its reflection of the contradictory sixteenth-century norms that led on many levels to the virtual conflation of history and fiction. To ignore the ways in which these norms literally play off one another—often producing irony in the mind of today’s reader—is to fail to recognize the work’s own historical context. Attempts to use it exclusively as a source for empirical fact, erroneously converting the figure of Garcilaso into merely a misunderstood positivist, is to impoverish the work, which offers much more than this. La Florida also bears witness significantly to Garcilaso’s struggle to define a claim to historical authority that would be enhanced rather than devalued by his status (or nonstatus) as a Mestizo and an outsider. Even after working out the basis for his claim to authority, however, Garcilaso faced the task of forging an authorial voice capable of convincing the reader of its validity. It is to an examination of these aspects of the work that we now turn. Because the configuration of the authorial voice in any narrative text deter-

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mines the way in which its message is directed or addressed to the reader, it is of strategic importance. If the speaker, within the conventions of the genre in question, performs as expected in relaying that message to the reader, the “relationship” developing between speaker and reader is likely to be relatively unproblematic. But if he does not, the reader experiences puzzlement, unease, doubts, and so on, and the possibility of an ironic reading may arise as a way of resolving the resulting tension. At times, such an ironic interpretation may prove to be precisely what was intended. If this does not seem to be the case, however, tension is not resolved but, on the contrary, exacerbated. In what follows we will use reader tension as a point of departure, seeking to identify some of the instances in which the production of an ironic reading seems to be intentional on Garcilaso’s part, as well as some in which it does not, with a final speculation as to the significance of the tension that is virtually impossible to resolve through conventional means. The first step involves a look at the evolution of the conventional structuring of the authorial presence in historical works and its function vis-a-vis the

reader up to the time Garcilaso began to write. In the case of Herodotus, Thucydides, and other ancients leaving written accounts, authority was conferred through the historian’s act of successfully exercising critical intelligence to separate real events from the merely mythical, as well as through his assessment and judgment of their moral aspects.!©! In order to permit the historian to carry out his critical task as wisely as possible, eyewitness testimony {lo visto y vivido”], when available, was recognized as superior to all other kinds.!©2 The authorial voice within such discourse tended to be active and relatively intrusive. During the Middle Ages the dynamic role of critic gave way to a more passive one—that of mere compiler of facts—only to be enthusiastically taken up once again by Renaissance historians, but this time with a significant new emphasis on the discursive eloquence that was seen as crucial in achieving the desired level of mimesis in the depiction of past events. It was now eloquence in language and not knowledge alone, or even astuteness of judgment,

that was seen to constitute the real authority or power of the historian, though it was believed that only when accompanied by wisdom could the writing of history reach the level of a truly moral act. Rhetoric in the Renaissance became vitally important for two reasons. It provided concrete guidelines as to how eloquence might be achieved, and at the same time offered an “objective” analytic framework with which to perform the critical act.!% But Renaissance theory went even further in this direction, positing that

the Humanists’ critical point of view was actually sharpened by their involvement with the mimetic aspect of the narrative. Reality was to be reached by way of the illusion the historian constructed of it rather than through logic alone—a paradoxical formulation because, in Struever’s words,

| La FloridadelInca 123 “while the efficacy of logic and poetry as disciplines rests on their exclusiveness, rhetoric deliberately mixes and confuses their techniques in utilizing both.’”"°4 The result is the instantiation of a dual dependence on “the rational

and the irrational, the demonstrable and the enchanting... ,” a phrase that might have been composed with the Inca himself in mind. Within Renaissance Humanism the “creative role,” though constrained by the rhetorical critique, thus rivals that of the histor, or investigator.!© In the idea of the blending of these roles inherited by Garcilaso, the value of eyewitness authority had once again been given a boost through the realities

of the monumental attempt to chronicle the New World, with numerous conquistadors and other men of little or no formal learning seizing the pen almost breathlessly to record the wonders their eyes had beheld. Their eagerness to do this became understandably greater when the need arose to correct or prevent errors by historians who, like Francisco Lopez de Gomara, had

never been to America but were still capable of sabotaging the hopes for honor and material rewards of some of those who had.!° The first person reports of these men of action were for the most part private and pragmatically motivated legal documents. The writing of history, on the other hand, as the term was understood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was a much more comprehensive undertaking than most of them were capable of, requiring a range of formal education that included Latin as well as a sound background in philosophy to provide the necessary criteria for judgment.!° In the ideal case, of course, the historian compiled the eyewitness accounts or relaciones of nonprofessional others, relying on them as the basis for his own much more elaborate composition aspiring to the status of literature. But whether he was truly disinterested in his performance of this task or not, it

was what the historian proper produced, rather than the raw material he started with, that was likely to be regarded as the more authoritative version.

It is interesting to note that Gémara’s account of the Mexican conquest, though officially withdrawn from circulation within the Spanish empire in 15 53, was the preferred version of that event well into the nineteenth century, when those of Hernan Cortés and Bernal Diaz del Castillo, under the auspices of positivism, finally displaced it.!°

Garcilaso demonstrates his own awareness of the relevance of firsthand testimony when he claims, in the prologue to La Florida, to base his account upon that of three eyewitnesses. We will explore this claim below. But even though some such set of firsthand accounts was obviously a prerequisite, and despite Garcilaso’s effusions over the “great and noble friend of mine who ac-

companied this expedition to Florida,” the one truly essential “eyewitness” for producing this particular history is Garcilaso himself. I am aware that in view of the mimetic requirement, Renaissance historians obligatorily pretended to witness events in order to recreate them realistically and thus in-

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volve the reader. But in addition to rhetoric, which we have already seen to be of central importance in La Florida, Garcilaso counted on something else he saw as capable of bringing him much closer than other historians to the center of truth; this “something else” was neither more nor less than his unique perception of events that derived from his own identity as a Mestizo.'©? La Florida is the first text to propose the heretofore unheard of possibility of a kind of authority that the status of “Mestizaje” might confer on a historian. Garcilaso is the first, moreover, to give conscious attention to the question of the formulation of a “Mestizo” discourse.!!© Garcilaso does not venture to assert this authority directly because at the time from which his writings issue such an assertion would certainly have been judged as without precedent in tradition and therefore illegitimate, like Garcilaso himself. Nevertheless, a careful reading of La Florida's prologue reveals that the premises of a Mestizo authority are set forth at the very beginning: “I am the son of a Spanish father and an Indian mother. . . [f]leeling myself... under obligation to two races... .”!!! The purpose of the history is to preserve the brave deeds of both Spaniards and Indians, and the author vows to treat the brave men of both sides as knights. The author then declares his fear of God and his sincere desire to see “the augmentation of Our Holy Catholic Faith.”!!2 Put plainly, as a Christian he accepts the necessity of conquest

while offering something like a personal guarantee that the two races are equal on the basis of his own (dual) identity and consequently advocating their equal treatment.!!3 On this basis we may say that Garcilaso effectively claims the prestigious authority of the rhetor/histor by virtue of the rich rhetorical elaboration and the evident literary quality with which he invests La Florida. He also responds to a perceived need for factual precision by repeatedly citing the reports of one primary and two ancillary eyewitnesses. At the same time, however, albeit obliquely, he offers a novel and different sort of authority to enable him to guarantee a more integral truth to his readers—one deriving from his. own Mestizo vision of the essential nobility (a chivalresque concept that includes the notion of honor) of both Indian and Spaniard that is based on his ethnic identity, or Mestizaje. A third, intermediate basis of historical authority is thus added to the formulation we have already described as paradoxical in its conflation of logic and poetry, history and fiction. The fact that the au-

thor must assert his Mestizo authority obliquely rather than directly, which he does in several instances through the deliberate use of irony, may be seen to produce considerable tension from the start. Garcilaso’s repeated insistence that his role in the authorship of La Florida has been that of mere amanuensis (escribiente) is probably motivated at least in part by his fear of appearing overly pretentious. The claim does not, of course, stand up at all, and in fact it is contradicted by pragmatic data that are

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perfectly in evidence from the outset. The title, for one, makes it clear that the work is the Inca’s and no one else's. In the dedication Garcilaso claims to commit “the audacity of offering and dedicating my history to Your ExcelJency.”!!4 The Inca’s Preface, moreover, provides abundant detail concerning Garcilaso’s dominant role in conceiving and getting started on the projected work, as well as in making vital decisions about its organization. Garcilaso himself also takes responsibility for any errors that may be found in the history and even asks that “all of the Mestizo Indians and the creoles of Peru” be honored through his authorship of it. Probably stemming at least in part from the same motive are the author’s successive contradictory references to himself in the title, dedication, and prologue, respectively, as “Inca,” as a lowly Indian for whom it is “a presumption” to offer his work to the august Duke of Braganza, and (the actual case) as

a Mestizo—and thus half-European.'5 Other information reveals him to be also an intellectual making his home in Spain who is in fact the translator of a major philosophical treatise, and currently in the process as well of “fabricating, forging and polishing a history of Peru.’”!6 In the final paragraph of the prologue, nevertheless, the author asks that the errors that may be found in the present history “be pardoned. . . because I am an Indian,” adding that “we Indians are a people who are ignorant and uninstructed in the arts and sciences.”!!7 The last statement may be recognized as a rhetorical formula (argumentum ad misericordium) no longer in use and probably distasteful to most modern readers. Nevertheless, in Garcilaso’s hands it becomes part of a ploy rich in poten-

tial irony—a fact that should mitigate if not neutralize any aversion produced in the reader by its ostensibly obsequious tone.!!8 In effect, in this series of statements Garcilaso flexes a muscle belonging exclusively to the Mestizo, one that allows him to affirm truthfully his identity either as a hum-

ble Indian or a cultured European, according to the designation that best serves his purposes at the time. In addition, he is able to play pointedly upon the stereotype most Europeans hold of Indians in general (i.e., that they are all the same) by at times grouping himself with those of the highest strata and at

other times with those of the most humble. Garcilaso’s self-description as “an Indian... ignorant and uninstructed in the arts and sciences” becomes all the more effectively ludicrous as the reader increasingly realizes the scope of his role in creating the history as compared to Silvestre's—even though he is a Spaniard and an hidalgo—and to Coles’s and Carmona’s, since both of these men appear to be barely literate.

It is extremely difficult if not impossible to view the irony produced by these initial statements as unintended. In playing the chameleon as he does here, Garcilaso seems to be lucidly aware of some of the rhetorical possibilities of the duality inherent in Mestizaje, and he clearly does not hesitate

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to employ the prerogative these offer him to his own full advantage. Other tensions produced by aspects of Garcilaso’s authorial voice are considerably more problematic, nevertheless, because they arise in response both to the experimental nature of La Florida and to the reader’s awareness of the complex revisions of the discursive conventions of history versus literature that occurred later. One set of these, which we will now examine in some detail,

relates to the particular manner in which Garcilaso elects to speak of his sources. Garcilaso begins to address the issue in the prologue by disclosing that he himself was never in La Florida and consequently was not a firsthand witness to what occurred there. He then explains that his primary informant did accompany Soto but apparently made no notes during the expedition and therefore relied on his memories of the six-year period in order to convey “complete details” to the historian much later.!!9 The latter seems to be aware that the reader may lack full confidence in the primary source’s ability to do this,

especially since it has already been stated that more than twenty years elapsed between the expedition’s conclusion and the first opportunity of the two men to get together for discussion.!2° The historian attempts to assuage any nascent mistrust by proceeding to cast aspersions on skeptics as a category—“people who would brand as cowards and liars those men who give a good description of specific deeds that have occurred in battles in which they themselves have participated.”!2! But this statement, in turn, is also disturbing, first because it is certainly normal to question the motives of an individual designated as the primary source of a history; and second because it is the historian, Garcilaso, who here introduces the terms “cowards and liars” in more or less direct connection with the primary informant. Garcilaso’s additional statements regarding the reports allegedly made by his informant to “the general and the other officer” in the field after battles are unlikely to dissipate all uncertainties, since such reporting was apparently conducted orally, and there is no reference to the historian’s ever having actually contacted the particular officers involved to determine what information they received. Garcilaso then goes on to describe two other eyewitness reports that did come to him in written form. The first one, the work of Alonso de Carmona, seems rather questionable for several reasons: Carmona “wandered through Florida during the six years of the expedition” and later through Peru in what he referred to as “peregrinations.”!22 Afterwards he wrote “accounts of his travels” and still later sent them to the historian, but these were brief, not in chronological order, and lacking as to the names of the provinces visited— hardly sufficient to allow any sort of rigorous cross-checking.!23 The second report was also “brief and disorganized” and was found among “a... collection of reports” (relaciones} written by Juan Coles at the request of a friar, Pedro de Aguado. These reports were in extremely poor condition,

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“half-consumed by moths and rats.” The historian states that he just happened to “find them” at a printer’s shop in Cordoba, where they were not intended to be published in Coles’s own name. He did not meet personally either Coles or the friar, who was or had been “a Provincial of a district in the Indies called Santa Fe.’’!24 The historian’s next paragraph, a lengthy one, is a declaration of his regret over the number of lacunae and other inadequacies of both of the two manuscripts, yet he concludes somewhat blithely by affirming that he is “happy to refer to them in their proper places so as to be able to claim that I have based my history upon the statements of three authorities whose facts are in agreement.””!25

Readers may well recognize that many of the statements on source reliability we have just examined from Garcilaso’s prologue happen to coincide virtually word for word with those conventionally included in the prologues to works of various fictional genres whose production extends from the early Christian era through Garcilaso’s times and even beyond.!”6 This is not to say that all of Garcilaso’s claims are false, as were those alleged by fictional storytellers, or to imply that other historians besides Garcilaso did not sometimes actually receive their information from eyewitnesses who had failed to write any of it down, or from old manuscripts happened upon under more or

less quaint circumstances and even found in some instances to be “halfconsumed by moths and rats.” On the contrary, in many cases in the past oral reports were unquestionably the rule and written ones the exception. Almost forgotten but authentic manuscripts were constantly turning up as well after long periods in oblivion, with Aristotle’s Poetics and Heliodorus’ Ethiopic History being two notable cases in point. It is nevertheless true that even as early as the second half of the sixteenth century it was impossible for really discriminating readers to come upon claims such as these in the prologue to any historia without beginning to suspect that instead of the factual report promised, they were really about to partake of the fruit of some storyteller’s fertile imagination.!2’ The typical medieval tale, regardless of its provenance, was usually announced as a historical report “discovered” by the writer while it was still buried, lost, or being kept secret by someone. Often this document was said to have been penned in some exotic script and to be of such great age that it was barely decipherable.

Sometimes its total disintegration was reported to have occurred immediately after the writer had completed his copy or transcription, which as a result remained the only one now extant. The fact that the alleged “original” sources almost never turned up in any case could hardly be construed as abso-

lute proof that they had never existed—something the fictional storyteller understood very well. “The accepted decencies” of the medieval period, according to Nelson, kept writers from admitting they actually made up stories, though never or rarely from continuing to make them up.!28 By the six-

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teenth century this sort of fraudulence had become a scandal, with the authors of the romances of chivalry, as we have seen, targeted as the worst offenders, though by no means the only ones.!29 Garcilaso’s procedure in La Florida bears other striking similarities to that of fictional storytellers who were forced as he was, though for other reasons, to veil their true intentions. The two manuscripts he describes and later cites

were not preserved and are mentioned only in the Inca’s own text.!3° The fourth and final probatory reference by Garcilaso, this one to a “chronicler of the Catholic Majesty” who after reading one-fourth of the Inca’s history and comparing it to “another account in his possession,” is said to have declared in a letter to the Inca that he found “your history to be true,” is clearly problematic as well since the Inca fails to name this authority. The letter of certi-

fication he allegedly addressed to Garcilaso, like the two manuscripts of Coles and Carmona, has not survived.!3!

The most remarkable omission, however, lies in Garcilaso’s failure to name his primary informant, even while proceeding to praise this individual at every opportunity as a “noble hidalgo” who “prided himself on speaking the truth in all matters,” a fine soldier, a leader, and so on.!32 In Book 2, Part 1,

Chapter 27, to which we have referred several times (since it is here that the historian includes his repudiation of the romances of chivalry}, Garcilaso compounds the problem by departing from the chronological sequence of the Soto story to record a “conversation” between himself and the unidentified chief informant that is alleged to have taken place during the process of La Florida’s actual composition and thus long after the events of Soto’s voyage. This discussion revolves around the contents of a compact and eloquently crafted defense said to have been offered to Soto by four Indian captains in order to explain their failure to surrender to his forces even when obliged to retreat with three of their men into a lagoon, where they had stubbornly remained for some thirty hours without food or drink. After recording what ‘was understood” to be “the sum of their discourse,” the historian declares himself to have been struck by the notion that the “universal reputation of Indians” will likely provoke the reader’s disbelief in the level of sophistication of the reasoning revealed in the speech, since this is clearly “superior to that of barbarians.”!33 Next, in a fine display of Socratic irony, Garcilaso quotes himself directly as expressing his concern on this score to the informant, whose answer is then quoted in full, as follows: “You well know ... that the opinion is false [i.e., that all Indians are barbarians and thus unable to reason logically], and one must disregard it; moreover it will be only right to destroy it by showing just what truth there is in it. As you yourself have seen and known, there are Indians of very fine understanding who in peace and war, and in adverse and prosperous times, are able to speak like the people of any nation of much wisdom. These Indians did answer in substance what I have told you, and furthermore

La FloridadelInca 129 they made many other magnificent speeches which I do not recall, but which I would not be able to repeat as they were said even if I should remember them. Nevertheless these speeches were so eloquent that the Governor and those who accompanied him were more surprised by the utterances of the Indians than they were by their having permitted themselves to swim almost thirty hours in the water. And when many Spaniards well read in history heard them, they asserted that the captains appeared to have been influenced by the most famous officers of Rome when that city dominated the world with its arms, and that the youths, who were lords of vassals, appeared to have been trained in Athens when it was flourishing in moral letters. Consequently, as soon as they responded and the Governor had embraced them, there was not a captain or a soldier of any importance who did not embrace them likewise with very great rejoicing and enthusiasm at having heard them. “Write what I have told you, therefore, with all the exaggeration that you can, for I promise that regardless of how much you may sharpen your pen in praise of the generosities and excellencies of Mucozo, and of the strength, constancy, and wisdom of these seven Indians, both captains and lords of vassals, and no matter if you enlarge more and more upon the savagery and ferocities of Vitachuco and other chieftains to be encountered later, you will not reach the height they attained in their greatness and heroic deeds. So write what I tell you without scruple, regardless of whether it is believed or not, for with having told the truth of what happened, we shall have fulfilled our obligation, and to do otherwise would be to wrong the parties concerned.’/!34

The historian ends the chapter by affirming that he has recorded the conversation “in order that one may understand and believe that we were boldly attempting to write the truth, not with an excess of hyperbole but rather with a lack of the eloquence and rhetoric necessary to give the deeds their proper place of honor, for that place was not reached.’"!35

One disconcerting element in all of this is, of course, that the informant here quoted directly is known to the reader only through what the historian has chosen to divulge about him, which does not include name, place of origin, number of languages spoken, and so on. Yet the historian seeks to dispel the reader’s possible misgivings regarding the Indians in question by quoting statements of support allegedly uttered in a conversation with this same unnamed individual to which only the historian was privy. The result is a spiral of “testimony” that retreats ever more deeply into the text, always just out of empirical reach—a dead end, a mise-en-abyme. This same kind of circular endorsement should be familiar to the reader of the Quixote (and countless other works of pure fiction).!36 Its alleged source Cide Hamete, it will be remembered, is praised at times by the work’s narrator or “second teller,” who remains anonymous just as Silvestre does. At one point this narrator, who claims to have “discovered” Cide Hamete’s manuscript among papers being sold by a young boy in a Toledo market and to have had it subsequently translated into its present form from the original Arabic, interrupts the Moor’s narrative to declare fulsomely:

130 Lee Dowling Really and truly, all those who enjoy such histories as this ought to show their gratitude to Cide Hamete, its first author, for the pains he has taken in recounting every detail to us, without failing to bring everything to light, however small it might be. He depicts thoughts, reveals fancies, answers every tacit question, clears up doubts, settles arguments, and finally elucidates the minutest points the most curious could desire. !3”

The reader’s sole access to Cide Hamete, who exactly like La Florida's anonymous informant is referred to as a “fidedigno autor” (trustworthy or re-

liable author}, is through the testimony of this anonymous second teller. Thus in both texts the reader is assured of an author’s truthfulness through the device of having an anonymous character affirm it.

Tensions arising from these aspects of La Florida are hardly soothed by scholars’ assurances to the effect that there now remains not a shadow of doubt that the chief informant did exist, being none other than Gonzalo Silvestre. Within La Florida's text, of course, Silvestre figures repeatedly, performing relatively minor but always highly visible feats. The three named participants (i.e., Biedma, “Elvas,” and Ranjel) whose reports of the expedition have actually been more or less completely preserved, however, apparently did not find Silvestre’s actions or his character of sufficient significance even to be mentioned. In his biography of the Inca, Varner connects Silvestre particularly to the novella-like Book 1 of La Florida, noting that he is usually

perceived as “dashing in and out of the picture, always shining . .. swordflashing, hard-riding.’”!38 Silvestre’s character in real life, which did not treat him kindly in all respects, would seem in retrospect more appropriately commemorated in picaresque scenes than in the heroic roles Garcilaso usually assigns to him.'39 The point remains, nevertheless, that Garcilaso failed to identify Silvestre as his source, either in the text of La Florida or anywhere else. During the present century, in addition, a growing nucleus of scholars has begun to advance the notion that Garcilaso seems to have known the work of the Fidalgo of Elvas, using it to corroborate the sources he cites but failing for some reason to acknowledge that he did so.!4° It is interesting to consider that if this is true, the Elvas account is the only one of the four sources in question here (i.e., Silvestre, Coles, Carmona, Elvas) to have actually survived independently. Of the three that Garcilaso acknowledges, even the possibility for survival can be discussed only in reference to the elliptical and disorganized manuscripts of Coles and Carmona, since in the absence of any writings by Silvestre his death in 1592, some thirteen years before La Florida was pub-

lished, precludes the possibility of checking what he actually said against what Garcilaso alleges that he said, or against Garcilaso’s interpretation of what he meant. The tendency of most postpositivistic critics, nevertheless, has been to downplay the irony inherent in these facts, preferring to assume that Silvestre’s memory could well have been prodigious and that neither he nor

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Garcilaso would have lied—particularly Garcilaso, in the light of his humane and prophetic vision. Moreover, Garcilaso does offer repeated assurances to the effect that he would not “write fictions” because “the entire Spanish republic... would have reason to be provoked with me should I give a dishonest and false report”; and “(neither] would I fail to displease gravely the eternal Majesty... .if. .. 1should deceive with fictions and falsehoods. . . .”!4! Yet we have seen repeatedly here that truth was not perceived in Garcilaso’s time to consist solely of empirically verifiable fact. Many kinds of truth were understood to be transcendent. Biblical exegesis was constantly “prov-

ing” the existence of veiled truths only decipherable by those who sought them in true faith.!42 Le6n Hebreo’s Dialoghi were directly concerned with just these sorts of hidden truths as well. The characters in the Quixote avidly discussed the topical question of truth as expressed in fiction or by fictional characters. The approval granted in Lisbon in 1604 for La Florida’s publication by Fray Luys dos Anjos certifies the work’s truth by merely stating that it “contains nothing against our holy faith and good customs” (e ndo ha nétes cousa contra nossa sancta fe e bons custumes) and goes on to affirm that it is worthy of reading because it contains many curious things about various un-

known peoples and nations, warfare, and the like. Even as late as the eighteenth century, as the critic Hayden White has affirmed, the crucial opposition in history was between truth and error rather than fact and fancy: “(t}ruth was not equated with fact, but with a combination of fact and the conceptual matrix within which it was appropriately located in the discourse.”!43 If Garcilaso’s notion of truth was the one held by his contemporaries rather

than the one subscribed to by most of our own, it would not seem overwhelmingly detrimental to his reputation to suggest that the attention he devotes to the question of sources is at least in part simply a matter of convention. As already stated, I do not maintain that Garcilaso necessarily invented

or even falsified the sources he refers to, though it is tempting to see his words, as I have cited them above, as sounding at times almost parodic. I do claim that the one irreplaceable source of Garcilaso’s most central “truth” is himself—by virtue of his racial and cultural experience and by virtue of his humanism. Even if this were not the case, however, it is arguable that treatment of the entire question of sources during the sixteenth century, whether occurring in fictional texts where they were pure invention, or in histories where they usually were not, was largely simply conventional (as is no longer the case today) because sources were not always questioned before positivism with the same criteria in mind. It is notable that in La Florida Garcilaso becomes really passionate on the matter of authenticity only when he senses that Silvestre’s alleged report on certain Indians’ superior ability to reason

may be questioned as implausible, this being, as we have seen, a serious charge. He counters at once in order to defuse such a potentially damaging

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charge by setting up the elaborate series of mutual endorsements we have just examined, which of course make empirical verification no less impossible than before. Yet the irony a modern reader cannot escape in this scene is not likely to have occurred to Garcilaso, as it might have done to Cervantes, or to some other theorist also sharply aware of purely metafictional issues. The Inca was clearly obsessed, on the other hand, with the real and serious matter of the rationality of Amerindians. This was a crucial issue that had inspired intense debates in Spain at the highest levels throughout most of the sixteenth century.'44 Early gains acquired through the efforts of Vitoria, Las Casas, and others had been steadily eroded under Philip II, a fact of which Garcilaso was well aware. It was therefore urgent for him to add his deeper-than-firsthand testimony to the polemical chorus in a desperate attempt to change the political direction of imperialist policies—if he could find a viable way to do so. It

would have been far less problematic for historians and other Garcilaso scholars if he had simply proceeded to base his claim of authority on his own

ethos rather than on the often dubious accounts of three problematic witnesses. Ironically, however, it was his Mestizaje—the very basis on which he believed himself to possess transcendent knowledge of the “true” nature of the occurrences in La Florida—that made a simple appeal on this basis unfeasible, since the ethos of a Mestizo was hardly likely to inspire great faith.

On the contrary, it would have been almost sure to produce the opposite effect.!45

The scene in Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 27—to return to it for a moment— does indeed contain intentional irony, though this has little or nothing to do with the matter of objectively proving what Garcilaso claims that Silvestre said. This irony consists in the fact that the individual made to utter the onerous term “barbarian” with reference to Amerindian rationality is himself not only an Amerindian but also the author of the history in question. This same irony may be seen to inhere in the fact that the hidalgo Silvestre or any other Spaniard should ever have required an Indian “amanuensis” in the first place. The unsettling equivocations that permeate all of Garcilaso’s commentary regarding his sources act to create a web of tension impossible to resolve com-

pletely. Observing this, the Peruvian critic Julio Ortega has argued persuasively that a text offering integrative mediation between the two distinct races who confront one another in the pages of La Florida is so novel as to be devoid of any significant discursive precedent and thus autoreferential by necessity.'46 As a result, one of its primary subjects necessarily becomes, as we have just seen, the problematics of its own inscription, one aspect of which Garcilaso has recorded in significantly dramatized form in the passages we have just examined. These passages thus acquire a singular importance quite

| La FloridadelInca 133 apart from the specifics of Soto’s expedition or of the particular Indian tribes encountered. Of equal interest, in addition, are all of those passages specifically relating to the process of Garcilaso’s shaping of the authorial voice, since the text of La Florida is also, as we have noted, the scene of his initial attempt to project his Mestizaje discursively in a suitable guise—or, to put it another way, to devise for himself an effective (i.e., authoritative} persona.!4” Each of the remaining axes of tension we will consider, therefore, centers on the problematics of Garcilaso’s autorepresentation in the text. We have already noted some of the self-designations in the prologue that deliberately play on the subject of Garcilaso’s cultural plurality; he is simultaneously, and ironically, “Inca,” “Indian,” and “Mestizo.” These roles only partially define the author’s complex identity, however. Additional allusions to his intriguingly diverse experiences scattered through the text cannot fail to incite the reader’s interest as each is encountered.!48 Among others, these include his relationship with a Portuguese subject who “eventually was to save me from death” (Inca’s Preface xxxv}, his alleged ill treatment at the hands of Fortune (Inca’s Preface xliii}, his past and projected writings (Inca’s Preface xliv; Book 6, Part 1, Chapter 15], the high social status of his Indian mother (an Inca princess; Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 6], his memories of his uncle don Alonso de Vargas (the sergeant major of a regiment of Spanish infantry in Austria; Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 25], his own frightening adventure while traveling by raft on the rivers of Peru as a boy (Book 6, Chapter 2), and many others. Such references point compellingly to a range of experience that only a Mestizo could have known. The figure rather dramatically profiled by their inclusion in the text, however, remains an enigmatic one, notwithstanding the fact that the rhetorical procedure dictated by the historiographical model in use projects him into a central role in other respects.'49 For example, that model encourages him at times to assume the mantle of omniscience in order to allow the reader access to the intimate thoughts and feelings of Indians as well as Spaniards. '5° The result is another set of sometimes disturbingly contradictory indications. I would suggest, given these facts, that it is the author who ends up becoming for many readers the most intriguing character by far in a book full of intriguing characters (Mucozo, Vitachuco, the Lady, Silvestre, and others). While ironically claiming to be merely an amanuensis to the heroic Spanish participant who became his source, the authorial persona—both because of what he allows the reader to learn about him and because of what he with-

holds—ultimately comes to overshadow not only the individuals whose deeds his history is supposedly meant to immortalize, but to some extent the very deeds in question as well.15! An unintended repercussion of Garcilaso’s permitting himself to become a

134 Lee Dowling

character in his own history is a concurrent loss of distance that acts to under-

mine still further his claim to objectivity as an historian.'5? This is not the only obstacle, of course. We have already seen that the attempts he makes to affirm the adequacy of his sources lead to a number of perplexing doubts. But it is his appearance not only as a character but as a Mestizo character—and historian as well, of course—that presents the greatest difficulty in this regard, because its effect is to project upon him a semblance that many readers will perceive as Janus-faced (i.e., ambivalent}, thereby introducing the likeli-

hood that an ironic reading of at least some of his judgments is ultimately what will be required. The resulting configuration of the authorial persona in La Florida may be said on these bases to bear at least some similarity to that of the untrustworthy narrator who has through the novel now become familiar to virtually all modern readers. Fictional storytellers, as we know, are continually setting up this figure for the purpose of evoking irony (to provide a source of amusement, enlightenment, etc.} as soon as the reader perceives that there is a significant disparity between what he says about himself and

what all the other evidence available about him actually reveals to be the case. !>4

The untrustworthy narrator is the basic structural device exploited in the picaresque genre of fiction first appearing in Spain some fifty years prior to the publication of La Florida del Inca and continuing into the seventeenth century. In the slim masterpiece entitled Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), for example, the picaro (rogue) Lazarillo claims to be writing an account of his life in a letter to “Vuestra merced” (Your Honor}, a high-ranking ecclesiastical authority, in response to the latter’s official inquiry into his morals. This potentate has the authority to take away the conveniences Lazarillo is enjoying af-

ter having finally reached what he describes as “the pinnacle of all good fortune,” should charges of his moral turpitude be proven. But, unperceived by Lazarillo himself, his own letter clearly reveals to the official as well as to the reader (whom “Vuestra merced,” in effect, doubles within the text) that Lazarillo is indeed guilty. The disparity evident in Lazarillo’s duplicity gives rise to the irony that produces the text’s meaning.'54 Cervantes employs the same sort of irony in the Quixote through his use of the unreliable Cide Hamete, the work’s alleged author, primarily in order to satirize the ploys of the fictional storytellers who constantly made fraudulent claims to being historians as a way of disguising their contributions to imaginative literature.!55 One obvious objection to this sort of analogy is that Lazarillo de Tormes and the Quixote are novels, while La Florida del Inca is a history recounted not by a fictional narrator at all, but by its historical author, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Yet we also remember that the term “novel” is anachronistic in this context. Cervantes, as we have seen, uses the ambiguous term “historia” to refer to his work, and the epistolary format in which the Lazarillo ap-

La FloridadelInca 135

pears was not recognized as a kind of novel until well after this work had circulated for some time. The deliberate intertextuality pointed out earlier be-

tween La Florida and various genres of fiction, as well as the nucleus of eccentric-sounding characteristics of the authorial persona just brought out, moreover, may arguably be seen as valid inducements for reading the work as a novel, in which case the novelistic convention allowing the production of irony through the use of an untrustworthy narrator might be legitimately applied. It is doubtful, however, that many readers would feel comfortable in doing this, and Hayden White suggests a reason for it in his statement that

historians and literary critics, if they see eye to eye on little else, conventionally agree that history and fiction deal with distinct orders of experience and therefore represent distinct, if not opposed, forms of discourse.!5° Moreover, if we carefully contextualize our inquiry into the subject of the untrustworthy narrator’s emergence in the sixteenth century, and the possible relationship to Garcilaso of such a phenomenon (requesting the reader to bear with us as we do so}, aclose look at the way Cervantes uses Cide Hamete, as against the ways in which authors of the picaresque novel employ the picaro, reveals a significant difference between them. Cervantes, as many critics have sought to demonstrate, was especially concerned not only in the Quixote but in others of his works as well with the question of establishing a legitimate status for fiction. Cide Hamete, notwithstanding the other purposes he serves, was apparently conceived primarily to satirize the hackneyed device of false attribution. The picaresque novels, on the other hand, aim primarily at providing realistic social criticism of contemporary Spain. Although the three prototypical picaresque novels differ so greatly from one another that an attempt at even the briefest synopsis of each one would exceed our scope here, it is possible to affirm that the picaro in each case—just like the Mestizo—is in some way an outsider. The picaro not only recognizes the decay from within of a repressive and hypocritical society, but may also be seen to

represent it, since in order to survive he too must either assume society’s values or give a convincing appearance of doing so.'5’ It is also a fact that in every case the picaro is personally and adversely affected by widespread racial prejudice or the issue of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood}, with authors of

two of the works believed to have been members of converso families, and the third to have entertained a clearly antisemitic bias himself. We have already had occasion to mention that the second half of the sixteenth century saw a marked tightening of restrictive control over Amerindians and Mestizos in the New World. During the same period conditions worsened appreciably in Spain as well, both for Jewish conversos (persons who had opted to convert to the Christian religion rather than take the alternative of fleeing the country in which many of them had thrived for centuries

prior to 1492, but who were subsequently stigmatized for not being “old

136 Lee Dowling

Christians”) and their descendants, and for Moriscos, or Moors, and their descendants in southern Spain, on whom strong pressure to convert or to complete conversion to Christianity was being applied. The role of the Inquisition had already been expanded for the purpose of seeking out and punishing suspected heretics more efficiently.

While Cervantes’s decision to adopt an untrustworthy “author” in the Quixote responds to motives that were different from those of the authors re-

sponsible for giving birth to the untrustworthy narrator of the picaresque genre, it is of interest that Cervantes should have conferred an Arab identity on this character, having a narrator remark specifically at one point that Arabs were known for a tendency to lie.!58 Later in the same work another of Cervantes’s narrators alludes to the discovery of some manuscripts recording further accounts of the protagonist’s deeds that were found “in a lead box” hidden in the walls of an old hermitage.'5? Both of these allusions bring to mind the activities—carried out in exactly the time frame in which both the Quixote and La Florida del Inca were written, of an ostensibly Catholic Morisco intellectual by the name of Miguel de Luna (15 ??-162?},16°

Concerned about recriminations against the Moriscos after the bloody Alpujarras uprising (15 68—70}, Luna attempted to mediate ill feeling by writing and publishing a radical revision of the semi-official legend, long popular in epic and other literary forms, of King Rodrigo, the last Gothic {i.e., European) Spanish king prior to the first Islamic invasions of 711.!°! In the version of this

much manipulated legend preferred by the pro-Gothic court of Philip II, Rodrigo had been converted into the tragic symbol of Christian Spain’s loss to , the African infidels. Luna, a translator of Arabic for the royal court, aimed at changing the historical image of the Arab conquerors by offering a depiction of them as benign and tolerant rulers while in turn converting Rodrigo into a tyrant bent on corrupting his own subjects and thus not averse to betraying them as well. Luna’s Verdadera historia del rey don Rodrigo (1592—1600) spuriously alleged as its source an eyewitness, one Abulcacim Tarif Abentarique, whose manuscript, written in Arabic and ostensibly translated by Luna, was alleged to have been found in the Escorial. The center of his activity was said to be the city of Cordoba. Luna’s modification of the popular myth was greeted with universal skepticism and its author heatedly denounced as a liar. Luna is also believed to have been involved with another Morisco, Alonso

del Castillo, in the scandalous episode of the libros plumbeos, or leaden books.'®2 The Arabic text of these “books,” or lead tablets, was composed by the two men, who then had them inscribed and made to look like antiquities.

The tablets were planted among the ruins at the Sacromonte of Granada, where they were “discovered” between 1588 and 1607. Upon translation into Spanish, they were found to contain nothing less than a “new gospel” promulgating a version of Christian doctrine designed to appeal to the most or-

, La Florida delInca 137 thodox Roman Catholics at the same time that it legitimated a more favorable status for Islam and the Arabic language. The tablets also established an Arabic origin for the city of Granada. The purpose was to provide sources for

an interpretation of Christian teachings that would allow Moriscos and Christians to coexist in peace. The forged documents were accepted by most Spanish officials as authentic, this hoax not being recognized as such until almost the middle of the seventeenth century.

It is interesting to remember that Garcilaso, living in Montilla and later Cérdoba at the time, and thus close to the scene of Luna’s activities, actually : took part briefly in the suppression of the Morisco Alpujarras rebels in 1570. What he thought about this event and about his own required participation in it is unknown. Varner notes that he “remained conspicuously silent concerning the details of his activities throughout the entire campaign,”!® speculating that the Inca must have been robbed of much pious sentiment [i.e., in his own experience of Christianity] by a realization that this crusade was not an altogether holy one since in the

main it was directed, not against the disciples of Islam, but against a people who, though tainted with ancestral theologies [sic], had accepted, like his own people, the outward semblances of Christianity and Christian culture. And his own dark blood and similar background might have lessened some of his pious idealism and awakened within him at least a modicum of sympathy for the victims when he witnessed their

terrible punishment.!

When the historical context of La Florida's production is examined carefully, I believe it is impossible to avoid making a connection among the conversos and other outsiders as represented through and within the picaresque novels, the Moriscos whom Luna attempted to aid by rewriting history, and Garcilaso. The element of the narrator’s “unreliability” identifiable in the totally dissimilar genres of literary works through which the problems caused by intolerance found expression in the Spain of the last half of the sixteenth century may be perceived as an almost inescapable reaction to the political and cultural policies that imposed, under threat of severest punishment, a degree of conformity both repressive and impossible for outsider groups ever to achieve. Under such circumstances as these, direct criticism of the system by the outsiders themselves was of course prohibited. All of those desiring to exert an influence away from fanaticism and toward tolerance, whether primarily concerned with conversos, Moriscos, or Amerindians and Mestizos, were forced to conceal their efforts by means of one guise or another. It is the perceived need to resort to some degree of deviousness or stealth in order to be safely heard that links them together as authors. An ideological parallel may also be noted among Garcilaso, Luna, and the authors of the so-called “Moorish novel” that was a concurrent literary prod-

138 Lee Dowling

uct of the second half of the sixteenth century. In the works produced by each

of them, one of the strategies adopted to promote tolerance toward a marginalized group of people is idealization, which by definition also involves resorting to some degree of “unreliability.” Scholars see the Moorish novel as continuing the tradition of earlier poetic forms mythifying certain aspects of medieval Spain’s flourishing offshoot of Arab culture, including architecture and clothing.!®> One of these is E] Abencerraje (found in three different versions, two from 1561, one from 1565). Its author is unknown but may have been a Jewish converso. A second famous example of the Moorish genre is the Guerras civiles de Granada (1595, 1619}, written by Ginés Pérez de Hita, who may have been a Morisco himself, though little is known about his life. As does La Florida del Inca, these works demonstrate intertextuality with various contemporary fictional genres, though the stories they tell were probably regarded by most readers in the sixteenth century as true. Like Garcilaso, the authors of both of these “novels” make use of chivalresque codes and concepts in their production of clearly literary prose.

Conclusion

Placing the Inca in the wider context of other marginalized intellectuals, though we have barely scratched the surface here, is an endeavor likely to yield better insight into Garcilaso’s own cultural predicament and the literary strategies he devised in response to its exigencies. One promising line of inquiry is suggested by the Chicano critic Juan Bruce-Novoa’s recent prizewinning essay on Soto’s predecessor in La Florida, the Spaniard Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.!6° Addressing the question of what is to be properly considered as the inaugural text of Chicano literature, following up on an insight he credits to Luis Leal, Bruce-Novoa proposes that it is in fact none other than Niunez’s Naufragios.'*’ In order to justify the proposal, he takes his argument all the way from the question of confusion regarding the chronicler’s “correct” name to his rather ambiguous connection to the Narvaez expedition. From there, the critic proceeds to other ambiguities and ambivalences revolving around Nunez’s identification of himself most of the time with the Spanish, but some of the time with the Amerindians and consequently against those of his own race, whom he comes to see as in fact betraying their ideals as alleged Christians. Bruce-Novoa perceives “inconsistency” ultimately as the sign of the Naufragios text with a certain tendency toward polarity also present, since “occupying any of the space lying between the poles is prohib-

ited ... at least from the logical perspective of the European side .. .”!68 (translation mine}. After his experience living for some nine years among various groups of Amerindians, Nunez himself becomes, according to the critic, “the one thing

La FloridadelInca 139

that the Spaniards and Indians have in common,” and he is obliged to assume the role of “interpreter between two mutually exclusive codes”!%? that are cultural as well as linguistic, just as the Chicano of today must continue to do. Another of Nunez’s roles is, significantly, that of healer, through a certain “syncretism” of religious rites. Like Garcilaso, Nunez hoped (in vain) that the Indians would be able to live in security as friends of the Christians under the sign of the cross. His ambivalence caused difficulties later when he was given

an important post in Paraguay, giving him good reason to fear the consequences of imperial wrath. Despite his failure in life, Nunez was able to become a successful narrator, one whose identifying trope is—like narrative itself—metonymy, because he is seen as eternally slipping laterally from point

to point, emigrant and immigrant, belonging nowhere completely, ultimately finding himself shipwrecked irrevocably on the seas of signification itself.!”0 He ends up being viewed by some of the people on both sides as at best hybrid and at worst schizophrenic. Clearly, an excellent case could be made that despite the enormous differences between the two works in question, La Florida too qualifies superbly as an early work of Chicano literature, with Garcilaso suffering from many of the same ills as Nufiez.

The work also merits, as we have seen, many other labels as well, and Bruce-Novoa’s phrase “shipwrecked on the seas of signification itself” is an apt one for describing the reader’s sensations as he or she begins to grasp something of La Florida's remarkable semiotic (or intersemiotic) complexity. It is a work that needs to be considered not only in the light of what we derive today from reading it, but also as critical commentary has sought to illuminate it. This last statement, while written in a past tense as are Garcilaso’s histories, should be read as also possessing a transcendent future or utopian dimension, because some of the most recent critical studies by Garcilasistas

are among the best yet attempted. There is every reason to believe that equally distinguished ones are yet to be written. In attempting to frame his history within the strictures imposed upon him by the age in which he lived, and yet remain true to himself, Garcilaso, like other intellectuals who attempted to mediate cultural differences through writing, was obliged to avail himself of any opening provided by literature and by his own imagination that would allow him to express his vision of a world where equality within racial diversity would prevail. His first work, in its very unevenness, testifies as to these acts of bricolage.!”! The authorial

persona as it is ultimately configured in La Florida continues to disturb readers in the puzzling but at the same time remarkable ways in which it reflects the Mestizo historian’s cultural dilemma. While at certain moments Garcilaso effectively deploys the subtlest shades of irony in order to drive a

point home successfully, at others his techniques create unease in historians and literary scholars alike. That the reader should come away from a

140 Lee Dowling

reading of this work feeling unsettled is in a way fitting, because repression, exclusivity, and one-sidedness continue to receive hegemonic endorsement

in many quarters and must still be combated today just as in Garcilaso’s times. Cultural mediation remains, as Bruce-Novoa tells us, tricky business. Notes The author is grateful to the American Association of University Women for awarding her its Enda Rowe Scholarship to begin the research on Garcilaso in Peru in 1979-80, and to the University of Houston for a semester’s Faculty Development Leave in order to write this essay. 1. John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner, trans., The Florida of the Inca: A history of the Adelantado, Hernando de Soto, Governor and Captain General of the kingdom of Florida, and of other heroic Spanish and Indian cavaliers, written by the Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega .. . (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980}. References to Garcilaso’s text throughout will be to this accessible translation. 2. Aurelio Miré Quesada, “Creaci6én y elaboraci6én de La Florida del Inca,” in Centro de Estudios Historico-Militares del Peru, Nuevos estudios sobre el Inca Garcilaso dela Vega (Lima, 1956}, 87—122.

3. Two studies that superbly address these questions are Enrique Pupo-Walker’s Historia, creaciOn y profecia en los textos del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Madrid: José Porrua Turanzas, 1982); and Margarita Zamora’s Language, Authority and Indigenous History in the Comentarios reales de los Incas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

4. See Rolena Adorno, “Literary Production and Suppression: Reading and Writing about Amerindians in Colonial Spanish America,” Dispositio 11, Numbers 28—29 (1985): 1-25; see also Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, “Sobre la vertiente filoséfica de La Florida del Inca,” in her Violencia y subversion en la prosa colonial hispanoamericana, — siglos XVI y XVII, Studia Humanitatis (Madrid: José Porria Turanzas, 1982), 21—40; and see John Grier Varner, El Inca, The Life and Times of Garcilaso de la Vega (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968], 312-15.

5. On the mixed signals La Florida emits to the modern reader, see my dissertation, “Reading the Chronicle of Indies: Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida del Inca," Arizona State University, 1982. 6. David Henige, “The Context, Content, and Credibility of La Florida del Ynca,”’ The Americas 43 (1986/87): I-12. 7. All biographical information, unless otherwise noted, comes from Varner’s biography (note 7 above}, which is still considered the best source. 8. See José Durand, “La biblioteca del Inca,” Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica 2 (1948): 239—64; and Bruno Migliorini, C. Olschki, and José Durand, “Sobre la biblioteca del Inca,” Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispénica 3 {1949}: 166-70. 9. Riccardo Scrivano, “Platonic and Cabalistic Elements in the Hebrew Culture of Renaissance Italy: Leone Ebreo and his Dialoghi d’amore,” in Konrad Eisenbichler and Olga Zorzi Pugliese, Ficino and Renaissance Platonism, University of Toronto Italian Studies I (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1986), 136; for the significance of syncretism in

La FloridadelInca 141 Garcilaso’s thought, see below. Garcilaso’s translation of the Dialoghi is in volume 1 of his Obras completas, Edicion y Estudio Preliminar del P. Carmelo Saenz y Santa Maria (Madrid: BAE, 1960}, 1-227. 10. Varner, Life and Times, 306-7. 11. E.g., Durand, “Biblioteca,” 241. 12. See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage Books, 1973}, 46— 77, for a description of how the concept of representation evolved between Renaissance and baroque. 13. It is of interest that a reevaluation of the enduring Latin American (as opposed to

European} baroque phenomenon is now underway, with emphasis on the degree to which New World manifestations in art, architecture, and literature seem to signify the unmistakable phenomenon of Mestizaje—the mixing of the European and the indigenous—almost from the moment of the “discovery” onwards (and if this is indeed the case, then the Latin American baroque precedes the Spanish by a century or more). Within such a revised frame of reference, as Julio Ortega argues, the Inca most certainly does qualify as a baroque writer, at least in this regard. See Julio Ortega, “Para una teoria del texto Latinoamericano: Colon, Garcilaso y el discurso de la abundancia,” Cuadernos Americanos 3 (1989): 178—89; see also Julio Ortega, “El Inca Garcilaso y el discurso de la abundancia,” Revista Chilena de Literatura 32 (1988): 31-43.

14. See Nancy Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). See also William J. Kennedy, Rhetorical Norms in Renaissance Literature (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978). On p. 81 Kennedy notes that “the embellishment of humanist style is less ornament than an expression of faith in the attainability of perfection that the system has made available.” 15. J. R. Morgan states that the blurring of the difference between historiography and fiction occurred in ancient times when the study of the past was made an element of the orator’s education. The latter, practicing in the courthouse, consciously distorted facts to heighten drama and produce pathos. “A stress on arguments from likelihood rather than hard evidence led to a blurring of the distinction between what was true and what was merely veri simile” |p. 224). Once a historian became familiar with such techniques, he tended “to modify facts so as to produce striking effects at moments of climax and [made] a conscious effort to point up the moral lessons that history had to offer” (p. 225}. See his “History, Romance, and Realism in the Aithiopika of Heliodorus,” Classical Antiquity 1 (1982): 221-65. 16. Pupo-Walker, Historia, creacion y profecia, passim. 17. Saenz y Santa Maria, Estudio Preliminar xxxv. Note that one of the items in Garcilaso’s library (No. 52) was listed as “Lugares comunes d- Escritura” [sic], thought to be Juan de Aranda’s Lugares comunes de conceptos, dichos y sentencias {1595}. 18. See John O. Ward, “Rhetoric, Truth, and Literacy in the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century,” in Oral and Written Communication: Historical Approaches ed. Richard L. Enos (Newbury Park: Sage Publishers, 1990}, 126~57. 19. Ward, “Rhetoric, Truth, and Literacy,” 54-55. 20. See also Chang-Rodriguez, “Vertiente filoséfica”; and see William D. Ilgen, “La configuraci6n mitica de la historia en los Comentarios reales del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,” in Estudios de literatura hispanoamericana en honor a José |. Arrom, ed. An-

142 Lee Dowling drew P. Debicki and Enrique Pupo-Walker (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1974], 37— 46; Zamora, Language, 114 ff. 21. Struever, Language of History, 37. 22. Struever, Language of History, 37. 23. See Pupo-Walker, Historia, creacion y profecia, 60. The utopian dimension was specifically noted by the Spanish critic Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo in his Origenes de la novela |Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, (1905; reprint 1961}, 2:150-54; Zamora, in Language, takes up the theme and significantly reelabo-

rates (pp. 129—68). , 24. See William Nelson, Fact or Fiction, The Dilemma of the Renaissance Story-

teller (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973], 28. On p. 41, Nelson refers to a “his-

torical revolution” or reaction against Humanism taking place at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth that proscribed the convention of invented speeches. 25. See particularly, “Las enigmaticas fuentes de La Florida del Inca,”’ Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 168 (1963), §97—609. 26. See Pupo-Walker, Historia, creacién y profecia, 38. This is borne out in Garcilaso’s scrupulous attention to the matter of which of the Florida participants had also | taken part in Peru’s settlement some years before. Moreover, La Florida abounds in the analogies its narrator draws between many aspects of the Floridian and Peruvian Indians, some appearing relatively unmotivated within the framework of a history putatively dedicated to only the former. In important ways, then, as archeological research on Amerindian cultures has demonstrated through the gradual refutation of many of his allegations, Florida and Peru became for Garcilaso virtually equivalent contexts in spite of the disparities between them that were certainly reported to him in the eyewitness accounts he received. 27. I largely follow in this paragraph information adduced by Walter Mignolo in his “El metatexto historiografico y la historiografia indiana,” Modern Language Notes (hereafter MLN) 96 {1981}: 358—402.

28. See Victor Frankl, El] Antijovio de Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1963}, 237-95. 29. Attempts to resolve this dilemma led to tautologies such as the enunciation in 1604 by the Spanish historian Father Jer6nimo de San José of the principle that “true history is the true telling of true facts,” which aims at encompassing both the res gestae and the rerum gestarum (Mignolo, “El metatexto. .. ,” 371). 30. Daniel Eisenberg defines them as “a long prose narration which deals with the deeds of a ‘caballero aventurero o andante’—that is, a fictitious biography,” in his Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age (Newark DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 1982}, 7. 31. See Alban K. Forcione, Cervantes, Aristotle, and the Persiles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970], 26. 32. In this I follow Forcione, Cervantes, 21; and Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y Espana (México: Fondo de Cultura Econémica, 1950; original edition 1937), 616. 33. Nelson, Fact or Fiction, 37.

. La FloridadelInca 143 34. See Bruce Wardropper, “Don Quixote: Story or History?” Modern Philology 63 (1965): I-11. 35. Forcione, Cervantes, 32. 36. This superb summation by Dario Puccini (26—28; translation mine} is found in his “Elementos de narraci6n novelesca en La Florida del Inca Garcilaso,” Revista Nacional de Cultura 240 (1979}: 26—46. 37. Garcilaso was particularly concerned with defending those of his mother’s race against the charge, leveled by Oviedo, Gomara, and others, that Indians had no honor.

See p. 36 of José Durand, “Un rasgo humanistico del Inca Garcilaso,” Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura 64 (1962), 36—42. 38. The Spanish is libros de caballerias. Note that all quotations are from the Varner

translation. 39. It should be noted that while romances of chivalry were written in prose, they were considered poetry (or Poetry} in the Aristotelian distinction from History. With respect to Garcilaso’s denunciation of the romances, Puccini notes that in Garcilaso as in Cervantes, the chivalresque spirit of adventure is first rejected and then readmitted in another guise, under a more idealized rationale (“Narracion novelesca,” 30; translation mine). In other words, the rejection becomes in itself a topos. 40. Pedro (or Pero) Mexia of Seville is the author of the Historia imperial y cesdrea, which formed part of Garcilaso’s library (item No. 82). Despite Mexia’s disapproval of the fictions found in the romances, he does not eschew the use of legend to characterize

a long line of Roman emperors, or of other techniques now associated with fiction, though he is noted among sixteenth-century historians for his diligent research. Mexia’s works were among the most popular of the century. See Antonio Castro Diaz, “Prosa y pensamiento,” in Francisco Rico, Historia y critica de la literatura espanola, vol. 2: Siglos de Oro: Renacimiento, ed. Francisco Lopez Estrada (Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 1980), 157-72. 41. “Bernal Diaz del Castillo y Amadis de Gaula,” in Studia Philologica: Homenaje ofrecido a Damaso Alonso por sus amigos y discipulos con ocasi6n de su 60 aniversario (Madrid: Gredos, 1961), 1:99—114. On just who constituted the era’s readers, see Maxime Chevalier, Lectura y lectores en la Espana de los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1976). 42. Puccini, Saenz y Santa Maria, John Varner, and Mir6 Quesada have all perceived echoes of the old ballads in La Florida; Varner notes Garcilaso’s use in prose of the familiar octosyllabic line “con la espada y con la pluma” and Miro cites his use of another, “De oidas que no de vista.” Garcilaso, while professing admiration of his relative, the poet Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, laments that he himself has “not a bit of poetry.” See his Relacion de la descendencia de Garci Pérez de Vargas (Lima: Ediciones del Instituto de Historia, 1951; original edition 1596), 37. Note that the word romance in Spanish means “ballad,” a type of poem. “Romance of chivalry,” on the other hand, refers to a protonovelesque prose genre. 43. See Ida Rodriguez Prampolini, Amadises de América (Mexico: Academia Mexicana de la Historia, 1990; original edition 1948), 73—75 and passim. Prampolini herself

notes that this was an absolutely idealized vision out of key with reality at the time

144 Lee Dowling when the notable feats of conquest were undertaken. Rolena Adorno returns briefly to the same subject as she discusses some of Diaz’s less than chivalrous motives in her

“Discourses on Colonialism: Bernal Diaz, Las Casas, and the Twentieth Century Reader,” MLN 103 (1988): 239-58. Eisenberg observes that the years of the reign of Charles V (1517—55}] were those of the romances’ greatest popularity in Castile (p. 40).

44. In his Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria comments that according to the chronicler Gomara, the historiography of the Indies {i.e., erudite writings incorporating the traditional lofty style, as did Gomara’s own} is “related to poetics, to the chivalric romances, to the most elevated models of Renaissance prose” (pp. 89—90]. The humbler relaci6n, meanwhile, demonstrates ties to the picaresque. 45. Varner and Varner, Florida of the Inca, 113. 46. Varner and Varner, Florida of the Inca, 113. 47. A significant point to be made here concerns the probability that Silvestre was at

| least as familiar with the romances as was Garcilaso, suggesting that Garcilaso was not the only one of the two responsible for the idealization of the Floridians, exactly as he stipulates in Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 27. Silvestre probably knew about the idealization of Ercilla’s Indians in La araucana as well (see below}, even if he had not actually read it. 48. See Michael Gerli, “Elysium and the Cannibals: History and Humanism in Ercilla’s La araucana,” in Renaissance and Golden Age Essays in Honor of D.W. McPheeters, ed. Bruno M. Damiani (Potomac mp: Scripta Humanistica, 1986), 82-93. 49. In this listing I follow Quesada, “Creacién y elaboracién,” 98 ff. 50. Part 4, Chapter 14. 51. Sylvia-Lyn Hilton points this out in her Introduccién to her edition of La Florida, part of the series Crénicas de América (Madrid: Informacion y Revistas, 1986), 32. The Aristotelians had much to say about the decorous incorporation of the marvelous; see my discussion of the Byzantine novel below. 52. Garcilaso possessed several rhetorical manuals, listed in his library as items 12, 26, 27, and 41 by Durand. 53. Pupo-Walker, Historia, creaci6n y profecia, 144. 54. Pupo-Walker observes that “in general, the narrative structure of La Florida is similar to the novel of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; that is, it consists of a narration configured around several main events that are accompanied by a full range of parallel occurrences” (Historia, creacion y profecia, 34; my translation}. 55. See his Tropics of Discourse, Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1978), 58. 56. This is a procedure recommended by Cicero as the figure evidentia; the Greeks termed it hypotiposis. Its deployment consisted of depicting an object as clearly as a painting, by enumerating and minutely describing its various parts, or through use of the simile. See Luisa Lopez Grigera, “Sobre el realismo literario del Siglo de Oro,” in Actas del VIII Congreso de la Asociaci6n Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. A. David Kossoff, José Amor y Vazquez, Ruth H. Kossoff, Geoffrey W. Ribbans (Madrid: Ediciones Istmo, 1986), 201-9. 57. For an extended discussion of emplotment in La Florida, see my dissertation, “Reading the Chronicle of Indies,” pp. 124 ff. That Elvas has given some consideration

La FloridadelInca 145 to inventio is apparent in his presentation of the Juan Ortiz story as a flashback; that Biedma and Oviedo have not is equally obvious. 58. This is an example of fictio personae (the introduction of the author in the work to present the evidentia); see Lopez Grigera, “Sobre el realismo literario,” 204. Note that a contemporary rhetorician especially privileging this figure was Francisco de Castro, author of De arte Rhetoérica (Cérdoba, 1611), who dedicated his work to the Inca Garcilaso. This dedication is reprinted in Raul Porras Barrenechea, El Inca Garcilaso en Montilla (Lima: Editorial San Marcos, 1955}, 260-63. 59. We deal below with the configuration of the narrative voice and its implications. For an informative discussion of other narrative techniques of this kind in La Florida, see Donald G. Castanien, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (New York: Twayne, 1969}, 57— 82.

60. Lopez Grigera, “Sobre el realismo,” 209. 61. For a list of such allegations, see Hilton’s introduction to her edition of La Florida, 26 ff. 62. Wardropper, “Don Quixote,” 1. 63. Quesada, “Creaci6én y elaboraci6n”; others who have realized valuable contributions in this regard are Dario Puccini, Enrique Pupo-Walker, Margarita Zamora; and Amalia Iniesta Camara, ‘‘Novelas de caballerias, bizantina e italiana en La Florida del Inca,” Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 11 (1982): 39-50. 64. Garcilaso possessed an “Ystoria de Lucano” (No. 67 in his library) that was probably the epic poem La Farsalia,; Virgil's Aeneid was No. 186. 65. Varner and Varner, Florida of the Inca, 133-34. 66. A highly informative article on the Spanish American epic is Pedro Pinero’s wellorganized structural study entitled “La épica hispoanoamericana colonial,” in Luis Inigo Madrigal, Coordinator, Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana, vol. 1: Epoca Colonial (Madrid: Catedra, 1982), 161-88. In the same volume, see Inigo Madrigal’s own article, “Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga,” 189-203.

67. In the poem’s introductory canto the poetic voice, through its initial string of negatives, specifically rejects the Italian model by proclaiming, “No las damas, amor, no gentilezas / de caballeros canto enamorados, / ni las muestras, regalos y ternezas / de amorosos afectos y cuidados; / mas el valor, los hechos, las proezas / de aquellos espanoles esforzados, / que a la cerviz de Arauco no domada / pusieron duro yugo por la espada.” 68. See Francisco Javier Cevallos, “Don Alonso de Ercilla and the American Indian:

History and Myth,” Revista de Estudios Hispdnicos 23 (1989): 1-20; see also Rolena Adorno, “Literary Production and Suppression: Reading and Writing about Amerindians in Colonial Spanish America,” Dispositio 11 (1985}: 1-25. 69. In addition to Cevallos, see Julie Greer Johnson, Women in Colonial Spanish American Literature (Westport cT and London: Greenwood Press, 1983), 34—4I. 70. See William Melczer, “Ercilla’s Divided Heroic Vision: A Re-evaluation of the Epic Hero in La araucana,” Hispania §6 (1973): 216—21. 71. For an examination of official action and reaction vis-a-vis ethnographically oriented treatises, see Adorno, “Literary Production and Suppression.” 72. David Brading believes that Garcilaso followed the route “blazed by Ercilla,” ex-

146 Lee Dowling cept that he took a more conservative position by choosing to narrate the story from the perspective of the Spanish invaders (“The Incas and the Renaissance,” 5}. One of the most widely quoted descriptions of La Florida emphasizes the interrelationship between the two works by designating La Florida as an “Araucana in prose” (Ventura Garcia Calderon, La literatura peruana [New York and Paris, 1914]}; Saenz, perhaps with this intertextual connection in mind, refers to Garcilaso as a “poet in prose” (Estudio Preliminar, xxxvi). 73. The statement reveals, as do the other aspects of his poetics examined here, that Garcilaso sees truth as apprehensible within a verisimilar, ethically “guaranteed” discursive narrative (i.e., story) format, which transmits facts accurately insofar as they can be ascertained, but at the same time attends painstakingly to their aesthetic elaboration. It should be noted that recent research has made a convincing case that the Inca used the first three cantos of La araucana as a source for the Historia general; see Alfredo Alejandro Bernal, “La araucana de Ercilla y Ziniga y Comentarios reales de los Incas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,” Revista Iberoamericana Nos. 120—21 (1982), 549— 62.

74. Only the “first part” of this work is listed in the inventory of Garcilaso’s library, as No. 78. 75. A work listed as Barones ilustres d- Espana [sic] was No. 65 in the Inca’s library; this could have been Fernando del Pulgar’s work or any of several others with similar titles. We have already noted that the portrait tradition has its roots in the Spanish medieval chronicle. For Oviedo y Valdés’s Quinquagenas, see Avalle-Arce, this volume.

76. On Castellanos, see Giovanni Meo-Zitio, “Juan de Castellanos,” in Luis Inigo Madrigal, Coordinator, Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana, vol. 1, Epoca Colonial (Madrid: Catedra, 1982), 205-14. 77. Garcilaso’s copy of Heliodorus was No. 92 in the inventory of his library: Durand, “La biblioteca del Inca.” After the rediscovery of Heliodorus, the Historia de los amores de Clareo y Florisea by Alonso Nunez de Reinoso (15 52}, in part an adaptation of the Leucipo y Clitofonte of the Roman Achiles Tatius, was the first Spanish Byzantine novel of the sixteenth century and also the most popular work of its type. See Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y Espana; and see Antonio Vilanova, “Teoria y sentido de un género: La Historia etidpica y los libros de aventuras peregrinas,” in Francisco Rico, Historia y critica de la literatura espanola, vol. 2: Siglos de Oro: Renacimiento, ed. Francisco Lopez Estrada (Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 1980], 318—25. The authors of the

article point out that it was the “exclusive intention” of this work to substitute for the fantastic and secular world of the romances of chivalry a moral allegory of a symbolic character. The characters’ travels reflect human life ruled by fortune, to which the seventeenth century would add the topos of free will. The novel exhibits elements of both the bucolic and chivalresque genres. 78. Forcione, Cervantes, 27. 79. See Emilio Carilla, “La novela bizantina en Espana,” Revista de Filologia Espanola 49 (1966): 275-87. 80. On other notable aspects of the work, see the in-depth structural analysis by J. R. Morgan, “History, Romance, and Realism in the Aithiopika of Heliodorus,” Classical Antiquity I (1982): 221-65.

La FloridadelInca 147 81. Forcione, Cervantes, 27. 82. See Iniesta Camara, “Novelas de cabellerias,” 44—46. 83. These works are Nos. 72, 117, 121, 162, and 166 in the inventory of the Inca’s library. 84. Varner, Life and Times, 99-101, 61-75.

85. Possible motives for the insertion of this particular tale—one of the Inca’s finest—at an early point (Book 1, Chapter 7) in the narrative have been of some interest to critics. See José J. Arrom, “Hombre y mundo en dos cuentos del Inca Garcilaso,” in his Certidumbre de América (La Habana, 1959; also Madrid: Gredos, 1971), 51—60; see also Pupo-Walker’s chapter, “La ficcion intercalada: su relevancia en el curso de 1a historia,” in his Historia, creaciOn y profecia, 149—93, in which he argues that Garcilaso’s interpolated stories are not gratuitous but function as an additional dimension of the Jogos that has the purpose of pulling things together and of bringing them closer to the reader. 86. The Varners read this reference as suggestive, noting other “Leonors” in the Governor’s life; see their translation of La Florida, p. 29.

87. Cervantes was one of whose who did so in several of his Novelas ejemplares (1613], including “Rinconete y Cortadillo” and “El coloquio de los perros.” Garcilaso owned a copy of the classic La Celestina (No. 96) of Fernando de Rojas (1519), which is usually cited as a model for all realistic Spanish literature. 88. Puccini observes (“Narracién novelesca,” 55} that Garcilaso has Soto criticize the excesses of his predecessor Panfilo de Narvaez in order to mark the differences between them. The Inca thus projects Soto as his [Garcilaso’s] own ideal of the “new conquistador,” just as Machiavelli had projected and idealized Cesare Borgia as the perfect prince. 89. Puccini, “Narracion novelesca,” 33—34. go. Alonso de Barros, cited by Pupo-Walker, Historia, creacién y profecia, 140. Garcilaso owned a first edition of Part 1 of this work (No. 83). 91. See Margarita Zamora’s final chapter, “‘Nowhere’ is Somewhere: The Comentarios reales and the Utopian Model,” in Language, 129-68. 92. Zamora, Language, 131. 93. See T. Anthony Perry, Erotic Spirituality, The Integrative Tradition from Leone Ebreo to John Donne (University: Alabama University Press, 1980}, especially chapters 1 and 2. Note that if Philo and Sophia do join together, what will be produced is “Philosophia”—literally the “love of wisdom.” 94. Perry, Erotic Spirituality, xx. 95. Garcilaso rightfully claimed the title of Inca, he tells us (Comentarios reales,

Book 1, Part 3, Chapter 40), not because of his royal blood, since his descent was through a female of the line, but because of his having been sired by a European whom the Indians regarded as a “viracocha,” and thus a legitimate descendent through the male lineage of the Moon and Sun. 96. Perry, Erotic Spirituality, 22. 97. Varner, Life and Times, 278. 98. Garcilaso’s devotion to his own father is evident through his portrayal of him in

the Historia general, where he explicitly eulogizes the conquistador’s virtues; evidence in the form of the latter’s will, in which Sebastian Garcilaso de la Vega not only

148 Lee Dowling recognizes his Mestizo son but explicitly declares his love for him, suggests that such devotion was mutual. Hebreo’s philosophy would have provided Garcilaso with a

philosophical basis on which to reconcile such love with the consternation he felt upon seeing at first hand the suffering of those related to him on his mother’s side that was a direct result of the conquest. See Varner, Life and Times, 176. 99. See Susana Jakfalvi-Leiva, Traducci6n, escritura y violencia colonizadora: un estudio de la obra del Inca Garcilaso (Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, 1984), 34. 100. Following Ilgen’s lead, Chang-Rodriguez’s essay ‘/Vertiente filosofica” is the one

that makes the important connection between the Didlogos and Garcilaso’s portrayal of the “Lady” and her meeting with Soto. tor. See Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966}, especially chapter 7, “Point of View in Narrative,” 240-82. 102. Victor Frankl, E] Antijovio de Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1963), 82-101. 103. In this paragraph and the next, I follow Struever, The Language of History, 82 ff. 104. Postpositivistic expectations have led us to view this entire formulation of historiography as ironic in itself; Struever, The Language of History, 87. 105. Scholes and Kellogg put it more simply: “As narrative art becomes sophisticated

the artists continually strive to achieve the impossible—to have their empirical bread and eat their fictional cake too” (The Nature of Narrative, 246). It should be noted that the word “creativity” is not used here with the connotation of originality that it was to acquire later with the coming of Romanticism; during the Renaissance, as noted, rhetoric stipulated the precise limits of the writer’s creativity. 106. GOmara was well known by Garcilaso, who detested him for using uninformed sources of information about the Indians of Peru and about the Inca’s father’s alleged support of the rebel Gonzalo Pizarro at the Battle of Huarina (see Varner, Life and Times, 131; 282; 305; 357). Garcilaso’s copy of Gémara’s history, containing annotations both in the Inca’s hand and in that of Silvestre, is still extant; see Porras Barrenechea, Garcilaso en Montilla, 219-35. 107. See pp. 75-78 of Walter Mignolo’s, “Cartas, cronicas y relaciones del descubrimiento y la conquista,” in Luis Inigo Madrigal, Coordinator, Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana, vol. 1: Epoca Colonial (Madrid: Catedra, 1982), 57-116. 108. See Jonathan Loesberg, “Narratives of Authority: Cortés, Gdmara, Diaz, Prose Studies, 6 (1983): 239-63. GOmara’s history saw editions in Italian in 15 56, 1557, 1560, and 1564, followed by editions in English and French. It was reprinted in Spanish in 1749, 1855, and 1877. See the Prélogo of Jorge Gurria Lacroix to Francisco Lopez de Goémara, Historia general de las Indias y Vida de Hernan Cortés (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1979), xiii—xiv.

10g. Durand particularly emphasizes the autobiographical element as a factor in “Un rasgo humanistico”; Pupo-Walker takes this dimension as a primary point of departure in his study of the Inca (Historia, creacién y profecia, esp. 38—39). 110. In using the term “Mestizo discourse,” I mean to refer to the identifying characteristics of the cultural point of view first formulated by Garcilaso that has gradually come to be representative of the view of most of the writers and other intellectuals be-

La FloridadelInca 149 longing to or identifying with the Mestizo “race” originating with the intervention of the Spanish and other Europeans in America. This point of view includes the acceptance of Christianity, though not necessarily of the idea of Spain’s divine right to possession as formulated within the providentialist view (although the Inca himself did accept this justification of Spain’s right to possession]. Mestizos also claim as their own and continue to esteem highly the classical Western heritage, while valuing their own unique indigenous one as well. 111. Varner and Varner, “The Inca’s Preface,” in Florida of the Inca, xxxviii. 112. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xliii. 113. See Garcilaso’s words in the Prologue aimed at guaranteeing the truth of his his-

tory, within which he clearly means to include the parts for which he had no direct testimony. His appeal here is to proof through his own ethos, or character. Persuasion through the speaker’s character was a common rhetorical strategy recommended by Aristotle. See Kennedy, Rhetorical Norms, 9. 114. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xxxvi; italics mine. 115. Brading comments on the irony here in “The Incas and the Renaissance,” 23. 116. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xliv. 117. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xiv.

118. See Hugo Rodriguez Vecchini, “Don Quixote y La Florida del Inca,” Revista Iberoamericana Nos. 120—21, 587—620; see especially, p. 608. 119. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xxxix. 120. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xxxvili. 121. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xxxix. 122. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xxxix. 123. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xxxix—xl. 124. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xl—xli. 125. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xliii.

126. For details of many found manuscripts of the period in question that were not authentic (though Coles’s and Carmona’s do seem to have been], see José Godoy Alcantara, Historia critica de los Falsos Cronicones (Madrid: Coleccion Alatar, 1981;-original edition 1868}, chapter 1, 1-43. Godoy maintains that falsification for a good cause was not looked upon as despicable. 127. Undoubtedly, more readers caught on after Cervantes thoroughly dissected the device in the Quixote. Cervantes’s purpose in this was not merely to amuse the public by twitting the overly credulous readers who constituted the majority, or even to demonstrate (at virtuoso level) the kinds of advantages an author of fiction might gain by placing the responsibility for the truth of a tale in the hands of an untruthful character. He also aimed to strike a serious blow for solution of one of the problems underlying the proliferation of such hoaxes, which was that contemporary culture simply offered no legitimate or even respectable category at all for verisimilar fiction (see Nelson, Fact or Fiction, 28}. 128. Nelson, Fact or Fiction, 27. 129. Their notoriety happened to be the greatest at the time because the works they produced were in such urgent demand that these were being printed and consumed in huge numbers by a public with more leisure time for reading than ever before. Garci

150 Lee Dowling Rodriguez de Montalvo had presented himself in the first such bestseller, Amadis de Gaula {1508}, as merely the editor of an earlier work, which he refers to in such phrases as “dize la historia,” and “como la historia os ha contado,” taking full advantage of the ambiguity of the term “historia.” While Montalvo is indeed known to have used an earlier source for Books 1-3, he is believed to have made up the remainder of the story, though in the work he asserts that the manuscript bearing this part had appeared inside a tomb built at a shrine near Constantinople where, in very poor condition, it was picked up by a Hungarian merchant who brought it to Spain. Virtually every major romance writer of the sixteenth century followed Montalvo’s example, changing only the details. In each case the author claimed never to be more than translator or editor, and a full account of how the story had reached him constituted one of two prologues usually included in the work, the other being attributed to the alleged “real” author. See Eisenberg’s chapter on “The Pseudo-Historicity of the Romances of Chivalry” in his Romances of Chivalry, 119-29. 130. José Durand manages to prove the probability of the existence of these documents through a process of tortuous crosschecking; see his “Las enigmaticas fuentes.” Sylvia-Lyn Hilton accepts Durand’s conclusions, citing them in her Introduction to La Florida del Ynca, 50-53. An interesting question is why these documents did not survive, and why there are not additional references to them by those who knew or corresponded with Garcilaso, given the fact that many other records pertinent to Garcilaso’s life and works were preserved. 131. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xliii. Most scholars, but not all, assume him

to have been Ambrosio de Morales; see Pupo-Walker, Historia, creacion y profecia, 32N.

132. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xxxviii-xxxix; among other contemporary chroniclers who also declined to be identified directly are the Mexican criollo Juan SuArez de Peralta | Tratado del descubrimiento de las Indias, 1589) and Pedro Gutiérrez de Santa Clara (Quinquenarios, circa 1595}, both of Mexican origin. While such a decision might have responded to modesty in a few cases, it is more likely the result of fear of rebuttal or even of prosecution. 133. Book 2, Part 1, Chapters 26—27. While enclosing this discourse in quotation marks, the historian explains that the four captains “talked in turns, first one and then the other, this one taking up the account where that one, because of being nervous or not happening to relate it well, had left off.” He adds that “[a]t other times one who had been silent would supply a word that the speaker had happened to omit, it being their

custom to assist each other in discourse before serious persons before whom they feared they would be ill at ease” (Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 26). While this explanation answers some questions, it begs others. The speech itself is directed against Spanish imperialist policies in no uncertain terms, citing many of the most frequently voiced criticisms. 134. Varner and Varner, Florida of the Inca, 160-61. 135. Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 27. 136. See Nelson, Fact or Fiction, esp. I-37. 137. Quixote, Part 2, Chapter qo.

La FloridadelInca 1951 138. See also the introduction to the Varner translation, “Inca’s Preface,” xxiii, and see p. 280. 139. Even Durand, one of the most committed apologists for Garcilaso’s reliability as a historian, regards the Inca’s depiction of Silvestre as “questionable,” given the known biographical facts about him, declaring that the Inca paid tribute to his old friend in “an

affectionate panegyric” which, he notes, is not really suitable to “objective histories.” See “Enigmaticas fuentes,” 606; see Varner, Life and Times, 157, 281. 140. See references in Galloway, “The Incestuous Soto Narratives,” this volume. 141. Varner and Varner, “Inca’s Preface,” xliii.

142. Margarita Zamora has explored the historical context of Garcilaso’s own assumption of the role of exegete in the Comentarios in her Language. It is relevant that Garcilaso’s principal source for this history was also an oral text. 143. White, Tropics of Discourse, 125; italics mine. 144. See Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 145. On the status of the Mestizo, see Georges Baudot, La vida cotidiana en la América Espanola en tiempos de Felipe II, siglo XVI, trans. Stella Mastrangelo (México: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1983; original edition 1981], esp. 98-109.

146. See Julio Ortega’s “El Inca Garcilaso y el discurso de la cultura,” Revista Iberoamericana 104-5 (1978}: 507-14. In Ortega’s terms, “the American discourse is generated in the construction of a deliberative form that acts out the drama of its own construction. . . the discursive persona incorporates into the writing the signficance of his own cultural enigma |i.e., Mestizaje| and construes that enigma as an already realized discourse” (p. 510). To describe the work in this way is not an attempt to escape into some formalistic paradox, since La Florida constitutes material evidence of a historical process—the founding of a Mestizo (or American) discourse—occurring in a particular place at a particular moment in time. 147. It is interesting to note that the original meaning of the Latin word persona is in fact “mask.” 148. Appearance of the author in the history to present the evidence (fictio personae} was a sanctioned device. It was also an accepted practice for him to double into various personas (Kennedy, Rhetorical Norms, 5). Garcilaso, however, clearly exceeds the recommended boundaries. 149. Pupo-Walker discusses this aspect in detail, suggesting that the Inca may be seen to vacillate between history and his own delight in literary creation. He also notes that the fact that Garcilaso lacked a precise cultural identity increases the ambiguity that is noticeable in a number of instances (Historia, creaci6n y profecia, 51—60, esp. 60).

150. Castanien points out that at times Garcilaso approaches the interior monologue in the minute attention dedicated to his characters’ psychological dimensions {Inca Garcilaso, 78). A noteworthy example of such attention is his depiction of a megalomaniacal Vitachuco musing upon the expected rewards of victory: “Even now he could picture himself adored by the surrounding nations and indeed by the whole of that great kingdom. . . . Already he fancied that he heard the plaudits his people would

152 Lee Dowling bestow upon him... ; and he even dreamed of the songs that the women and children would sing in their groups as they danced before him” (Varner and Varner, Florida of the Inca, 142).

151. While it is not my intention to belittle the accomplishments of Hernando de Soto, the expedition can hardly be called a great success. In fact, it is even possible to argue that this is one series of encounters that the Amerindians actually won, even though they were allowed but a short time in which to savor their “victory.” 152. 1am aware that for readers concerned only or principally with data on the Soto expedition, Garcilaso’s singular depiction of Amerindians (and probably Spaniards, too} will produce immediate skepticism, as it clearly did in the case of those filing the Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission (76th Cong., rst sess., H. Rept. 71, 1939] and subsequent inquiries. (The 1939 report notes, evidently not without its own biases, that “The Indian speeches in Elvas are less un-Indian than the entire atmosphere of Garcilaso’s Indians, Indian though he himself was” [p. 9|.) My concern here, as stated, is with a question of literary form that reflects, as I will attempt to show, historical reality in a sense no less real than Soto’s presence in Florida in the sixteenth century. The subject I am pursuing specifically involves the terms in which the authorial persona relates to the reader. These terms have been usefully broken down by Susan S. Lanser into the elements of status, contact, and stance; see her The Narrative Act (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). 153. Scholes and Kellogg explain this effect with exemplary clarity in The Nature of Narrative, 240—41.

154. Some excellent studies of the work are: George A. Shipley, ‘The Critic as Witness for the Prosecution: Making the Case against Lazaro de Tormes,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 97 (1982): 179—94; Audrey Bell, “The Rhetoric of Self-Defense of Lazaro de Tormes: A Study in Psychological Realism,” Studies in Philology 66 (1969): 119-34; and Frank Durand, “The Author and Lazaro: Levels of Comic Meaning,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 45 (1968): 89—101. 155. See E. C. Riley, Cervantes’s Theory of the Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); see also Forcione, who provides a useful bibliography of studies of the Cide Hamete device in Cervantes, 155; see also Ruth El Saffar, Distance and Control in Don Quixote {Chapel Hill Nc: University of North Carolina, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures No. 147, 1975], 32—44, 114-39. 156. White, Tropics of Discourse, 122. It is significant that one of the most troubling aspects of La Florida is that the work forces us constantly to reexamine this assumption. 157. Bibliography on the picaresque genre is vast. For completely up-to-date information, the best source is the mia International Bibliography, which is now online in many libraries. The series Historia y Critica de la Literatura Espanola, prepared under the direction of Francisco Rico, offers excellent synopses in vols. 2 and 3 (edited, respectively, by Francisco Lopez Estrada and Bruce W. Wardropper). Peter Dunn’s The Spanish Picaresque Novel (Boston: Twayne, 1979) provides a useful comparison/contrast of the three best-known works of the picaresque genre; they are, in addition to Lazarillo de Tormes, Mateo Aleman’s Guzman de Alfarache, in two parts (1599, 1604); and Francisco de Quevedo’s La vida del Buscon (1626}.

La FloridadelInca 153 158. Cervantes, Quixote, 1:9. 159. Cervantes, Quixote, 1:52. 160. For information on Luna and both of the hoaxes referred to here, see Godoy Alcantara, Historia critica. For many years virtually all Spanish critics regarded Luna in overwhelmingly negative terms, both because of what they saw as his unmitigated dishonesty and in reaction to his scant literary talents. It is only recently that ideological

revisionists have begun to give him credit for what he was attempting to do. In the words of James Monroe, “Luna’s book is something more than just a blatant attempt to foist a falsified Arab history on the public; it is a defense of tolerance and as such it belongs in the class of novels of the sort of the Abencerraje which also attempts to show how on the level of virtue and tolerance, both Muslims and Christians could coexist in perfect harmony”; see his slam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship (Leiden: Brill, 1970], 11. The best revisionist study is Francisco Marquez Villanueva’s “La voluntad de leyenda en Miguel de Luna,” Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica 30 (1981): 359—95.

An interesting conclusion reached by Marquez is that very possibly both Cervantes and Luna drew inspiration from a slightly earlier writer, Fray Antonio de Guevara (1480?—1545}], a bishop who authored several works now recognized as important pre-

cursors of the modern novel. Guevara employed pseudo-historical devices in most of them, including one originally entitled Marco Aurelio (later published as Relox de principes, 1529), which purported to be an autobiography but was filled with trivia and homely details entirely made up by Guevara, as well as a collection of scandalous love letters allegedly written by the Emperor to his mistresses. It is interesting that two of Guevara's books, both of this same type, constituted part of the Inca’s library (Nos. 85 and 87}. See Joseph R. Jones, Antonio de Guevara (Boston: Twayne, 1975). Marquez Vil-

lanueva has several outstanding studies on Guevara; see, for example, “Fray Antonio de Guevara y Cide Hamete,” in his Fuentes literarias cervantinas (Madrid: Gredos, 1973}, 183-257.

161. For a complete history of the Rodrigo legend, see Ramon Menéndez Pidal, Rodrigo, el Ultimo, 2 vols. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1944], esp. 2:84—100. 162. On Castillo, see Dario Cabanelas Rodriguez, E] morisco granadino Alonso del Castillo (Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra, 1965). 163. Varner, Life and Times, 248. 164. Varner, Life and Times, 249.

165. See Maria Soledad Carrasco-Urgoiti, The Moorish Novel (Boston: Twayne, 1976).

166. “Naufragios en los mares de la significacién,” Plural: Revista cultural de Excelsior 221 (Feb. 1990): 12—21.

167. The work was initially published with the nontitle Relacidn, acquiring the more descriptive one (i.e., Shipwrecked) on the initiative of a later publisher (Andrés Gonzalez Barcia, 1749), possibly with increased sales in mind. Bruce-Novoa prefers the later title because he considers it semantically appropriate, as he explains in his essay “Naufragios en los mares,” 13 ff.

168. “Naufragios en los mares,” 16. | 169. “Naufragios en los mares,” 17. | 170. “Naufragios en los mares,” 18.

154 Lee Dowling 171. The term, coined from the French, means to make do by using whatever materials are at hand. My expression of Garcilaso’s activity as being that of seeking any viable means through which to express himself owes something to Jean Franco’s perceptive essay on another notable Latin American outsider, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; see “Sor Juana Explores Space,” in Franco’s Plotting Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989], 23-54. (Franco’s chapter title of course refers to discursive space. |

David Henige “So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” Inca Garcilaso in Two Worlds

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative—Corroborative detail indeed! Corroborative fiddlestick. Exchange between Nanky-Poo and Pitti-Sing, The Mikado

Nearly a century ago Theodore Lewis undertook a brief evaluation of the various sources for the Soto expedition.! He found Rodrigo Ranjel’s account to be the most useful for details of the route itself, as do most scholars today. Lewis also found Biedma’s narrative, although brief, still helpful, particularly for trans-Mississippi activities, a view less in favor for the moment. Lewis went on to observe that the Relacam of the Fidalgo of Elvas, “despite its palpable errors,” was “decidedly the best full account that has been handed down to us,” an opinion that to all appearances (unless one emphasizes “full”) is no longer widely shared. Turning to La Florida del Ynca by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Lewis admitted that Garcilaso was “(plerhaps the most interesting character whose name is linked” with the expedition, but otherwise he was unimpressed: Comparatively speaking, it contains little information that is helpful to the ethnologist or to one who is interested in historical research, and the geographer and topographer fare only a little better. But as an historical romance it is par excellence, and easily outranks in interest, vividness, flowery language and in general detail all such works. Unfortunately, what there is of value is marred by the duplications of descriptions and the misplacing of towns, provinces, and events.

In short, as Lewis saw it, La Florida was “a typical work, representing that class of romances which are based upon historical facts, and it should be so classified.’” Since Lewis wrote, and as students of Hernando de Soto’s activities have raised both their sights and their hopes, a marked ambivalence, amounting to a kind of creeping rehabilitation, has replaced Lewis’s unequivocal opinion of La Florida. It is impossible to look very long at this recent historiography

156 David Henige

without noticing a peculiar state of affairs. La Florida has the singular, if paradoxical, distinction of being the source at once most deprecated and most es-

teemed by modern students. The other sources for the expedition, particularly Ranjel, are duly praised, duly consulted, and duly cited. Usually, in fact, Ranjel is cited more often than Garcilaso. But Ranjel is not used more often, nor has his account been nearly as influential in setting the tone of mod-

ern investigations, which often mimic Garcilaso in their determination to show how much of Soto’s activity can be recovered, one way or another. Of course, modern choices in this regard are influenced by a different set of conventions, which are ostensibly more pragmatic than rhetorical, but this recent study is infused with the same insouciant certainty that La Florida exhibits on virtually its every page.? As a result, readers are left with the notion that we know a great deal about Soto’s activities, their exact loci, and their effects. Although more frenzied these days than at any particular moment in

the past, this predilection for expressing credulity and incredulity in the same breath has a long history, and is likely to have a long future as well. The

reasons for this “willing suspension of disbelief,” as well as arguments against it, are the focus of this paper. Any literary product, whether written or oral, prose or poetry, “truth” or “fiction,” must be judged from a contextual as well as a textual point of view. In this respect, Inca Garcilaso presents special problems since he was of two, very different, worlds. Born and raised in Peru of Inca-Spanish parentage, he emigrated to Spain in 1560 at the age of 21, there to spend his life in literary and equestrian pursuits until his death in 1616.5 Influenced by predisposition, training, and ambiance, Garcilaso came to regard himself as an exemplary Humanist. Among other things, this implies that he gave a central place in his thinking and writing to the notion of rhetoric, or persuasive communication, which happened to be one of the principal ways in which the Renaissance had exhumed, and then emulated, the literature of Classical Antiquity. For the ancients, and therefore for Humanists, rhetoric was the most prized

of the expository virtues.° The use of rhetoric was seen not so muchasthe _ means to an end but as the end itself. Its essence was the notion that the art of

persuasion—preferably by the spoken word, but in writing as well—was paramount. The ways by which this art was achieved, that is, the care with which any narrative argument was constructed, were held to be superior to the “truth” of the matter. Indeed, among Humanists an ingenious argument made against the weight of the evidence in any particular case might be considered even more successful than a more labored argument that depended merely on corroborative evidence. This aspect of the life and writings of Garcilaso has scarcely been ignored. Recently, for instance, Margarita Zamora has discussed “the authority of lan-

“So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 157

guage” in Garcilaso’s work, showing how he relied on language rather than evidence to convince his readers (then and now) of the existence of an extraordinary Inca empire.’ In this he was imitating the ancient rhetoricians, who had fashioned an entire body of canonical precepts to underpin their art and gain the confidence of their readers. The clever and integral use of the rhetorical canon ensured that connoisseurs would admire its practitioners while those less knowledgeable were merely left to believe.® It would not be unfair to describe the rhetorical exercise as the art of appearing to be artless. For rhetoric to convince, it was important that it appear not to be trying to do so. In aid of this, a panoply of literary devices was developed.? One of the most important of these was the obligatory expression of self-doubt and unworthiness, a form of false modesty in which the author himself would scrupulously draw attention to the modesty. As Quintilian,

who along with Aristotle and Cicero was an ancient hero of Humanist rhetors, put it, “Hesitation may lend an impression of truth to our statements, when, for example, we pretend to be at a loss, where to begin or end, or to decide what especially requires to be said or not to be said at all.”!° Quintilian also preached the virtues of tactical self-effacement, suggesting that a useful line in this regard might be, “I beg you to pardon me, if I have been car-

ried too far.” Another favorite tactic of Humanist rhetoric was the notion of inexpressibility, where a writer would proclaim a circumstance to be so wonderful that it was beyond his power to evoke it, and follow that declamation by a very splendiferous evocation indeed.!2 Yet another device—and this too will certainly seem familiar—is the reiterated assurance that, in his own necessarily unpretentious way, the rhetorician is speaking no less than the truth, and no more. Thus, in the effort to provide a pedigree that would prove their own authenticity, works of rhetoric took great pains to cite various authori-

ties, although these were often authorities on the art of persuasion rather than on the particulars of the argument being advanced. There were several other weapons in the Humanist’s arsenal, but perhaps enough has been said to suggest how faithfully Garcilaso sought to express the norms of contemporary rhetorical discourse. Most of all, perhaps, he subscribed to the notion that verisimilitude rather than objective truth was the goal of successful exposition.!3 To convince with the barely possible was held to be a greater achievement than to convince with incontrovertible evidence because it removed the center of gravity from the thing itself to the thing being said. While many modern students of Garcilaso’s work situate him in his appro-

priate rhetorical context, they fail to appreciate its implications for the historical value of both La Florida and Garcilaso’s longer study of Incaic Peru. Scholars, such as José Durand and Aurelio Miré Quesada, have discussed the

158 David Henige

novelistic propensities of Garcilaso, but have subsequently concluded that he merely “inserted” or “intercalated” the rhetorical devices into his work, thus adding literary distinction but not undermining its historical accuracy.'4 They concede that Garcilaso embroidered his tales but argue that only a few unlikely threads have been woven in. Miré Quesada elegantly summed up this approach when he wrote that La Florida combined the virtues of history and literature “in a happy manner [by] interspers|ing] with the general [veracity]... expressive novelistic concepts.”!5 Several scholars have even professed to see in Garcilaso’s protestations as to the accuracy of his work, so frequent as to be cloying, an anticipation of modern conventions in this regard.!° They have been convinced that Garcilaso was certain in his own mind as to the veracity of his informants simply because he so often said so.!? When Garcilaso couples such statements witha becoming, even simpering, modesty, as he so often does (the prologue is full of just such posturing}, he becomes a very congenial spirit. It will come as no surprise to learn that neither of these traits was unique to Garcilaso. Elsewhere I have noted how the appeal to authority, especially the recourse to otherwise unavailable authority, is the very hallmark of the pseu-

dohistorical output in the period immediately preceding the publication of La Florida.'® Garcilaso’s habit, at least in this respect, reflects far more his own times than ours. As to his self-deprecating style, Ife has noted that this too was the standard rhetorical fare of the time: No-one boasts in their Prologues about the magnificence of their style, or their grandiloquence; no-one ever asserts that what they write is a pack of lies; they are all humble, tongue-tied stumblers-out of truth, if we ever believed what they said in their prologues.!9

In a slightly different vein, Julio Ortega speaks of the “discourse of abundance” as practiced by Garcilaso.2° This discursive style derives less from the ancient world than from the breathlessness that often characterized early accounts of the Columbian encounter. As always, the objective was to establish verisimilitude, partly by alleging eyewitness testimony (thus Garcilaso’s informants), partly to show that America was “the plenitude of Spain.’”?! As Ortega points out, this strategy required no particular form of verification beyond the occasional claim of personal experience.22 Again, the aim is to persuade by advancing unlikely claims and then protesting that, however unimaginable, these were literally true. This strategy mirrors very closely that of Columbus himself, whose incessant superlatives festoon his every writing about America. In this regard, it was probably no accident that among the items listed in the inventory for Garcilaso’s library was something (probably a manuscript) entitled “Nabegazion

“So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 159

de Cristé6bal Colon,” which Durand, almost certainly correctly, identified as “El Diario de navegacion,” that is, the journal of Columbus’s first voyage.?°

In addition to the constraints imposed by the rhetorical conventions of the times on any attempt to record events accurately, Garcilaso labored under at least one other important incubus. As he tells us in the second part of his Comentarios reales, published posthumously in 1617: For this reason [introducing Christianity] I wrote the chronicle of Florida, of true flowering, not with my barren style[!], but with the blossom of Spain, that transplanted to that high barren plain of uncultivated regions might bear fruit of benediction, uproot-

ing by force of arms the thicket of cruel paganism and planting with the waters of Heaven the Tree of the Cross and the emblem of our faith, the flowering rod of Aaron and Jesse.24

Thus, with his usual flourish, but also with a disingenuous dose of counterhyperbole (in describing Florida as Cabeza de Vaca had, but he himself most certainly had not}, Garcilaso announced one of the major purposes of La Florida, its contribution to providential history, which ordained that the experience of every society was merely prelude to receiving the word of God and which in Garcilaso’s eyes cast the Spanish in the role of God’s new Chosen People.25 The picture of Indian societies that Garcilaso presented was in aid of this end, as was the image of pseudo-Christian Incas that he painted so insistently in his Comentarios reales, which he largely wrote during the time that the manuscript of La Florida lay waiting to be published.”¢ In fact, it took a dozen years before Garcilaso was able to secure the permission of the Inquisition to publish, and not coincidentally it turned out to be the Portuguese rather than the Spanish Inquisition. While there is direct evidence of only a few changes that Garcilaso made in this draft, it is reasonable to assume that he spent much of the period tinkering with the manuscript in order to secure the coveted imprimatur.2’

Garcilaso’s intention to write providential history is most clearly evidenced in his frequent comments on the receptivity of the Indians to the benefits of Christianity.28 True, the Indians of Florida were not as docile as those who encountered Columbus on Hispaniola; still, Garcilaso remarks time and

again on their estimable qualities. Take the case of the cacique Mucozo, whose behavior, Garcilaso assures his readers, “was much better than that of other [sic] Christian princes.”2? Or his statement that, since there was “nobility among the Indians,” it was appropriate to refer to them as “caballeros”;

even though they had no horses, their social and moral qualities fully matched those of the equestrian Spaniards.*°

Or we might note his observations that the cacica of Cofachiqui pos-

160 David Henige

sessed so many of the traditional Christian virtues that she was “unworthy of being left in her infidelity,” so that only Soto’s unwillingness to baptize her prevented her from receiving the faith formally.3! Or the fact that, as though

the Indians of the Southeast were fully-fledged members of the Body of Christ, adultery was “punished ... with much rigor” among them. In La Florida Garcilaso had no opportunity, as he did for the Incas in his Comentarios reales, to build a substantial case for evangelization. Notwithstanding, he took whatever pains he could to argue that the Indians of Florida were

at least intuitively Christian, pending their being taken formally into the fold. He apparently intended to demonstrate this even further by drawing upon his own version of Inca religion, which included a high god, resurrection of the dead, and other suspiciously familiar tenets. But he was advised by Jesuit friends to omit this uncongenial notion in aid of securing a license to publish.33 Garcilaso did manage, just the same, to insinuate a final chapter in which he drew on anecdotal evidence from the 1560s and later to argue retrospectively the merits of his case.34 Finally, Garcilaso had also to satisfy a particular secular authority, his patron the Duque de Braganca. As Dowling points out, he did this by praising the Indians, on the one hand, only to surpass it with his praise of the Spanish (and Portuguese).35 In this sense, there are no losers in La Florida; even Soto gained a posthumous reputation designed to offset his failure to gain Florida and its purported riches. Garcilaso relied on two sets of sources. For discursive style he found inspiration in the ancient rhetoricians and their Humanist epigones. For the details of Soto’s expedition he claimed to rely on three accounts, two short written ones by named participants and, far more heavily, on the oral testimony of an unnamed expeditionary. These sources have been discussed widely and the issue need not be raised here again.*® An issue of rather more importance is the relationship, if any, between La Florida and the other three surviving accounts, those of Biedma, Ranjel, and Elvas. All three accounts existed long before Garcilaso decided to offer his own version, but none of them is mentioned anywhere in La Florida.3” On the contrary, one of Garcilaso’s professed reasons for writing La Florida was to rescue the deeds of the Spanish from “oblivion.”38 This of course suggests, without going so far as to say it, that he had no knowledge of the three other

accounts. |

The generality of modern scholarship has been remarkably eager to embrace Garcilaso at his word here. His silence has been regarded as decisive, in fact even more than Garcilaso himself made it, for modern scholars in effect credit Garcilaso with a stronger negative case than he provided.39 The standard line of argument is that Garcilaso, as a responsible historian, would not

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have failed to indicate all his sources; by extension, then, the sources he did cite were all he used. Q.E.D.*° This approach has the great disadvantage of being anachronistic, implying as it does that Garcilaso was able and willing to do more in this respect than many modern historians actually manage to achieve. A correlative argument is that Garcilaso could have had no access to any of these previous accounts, since at the time only Elvas’s had actually been published.*! The notion that information is disseminated only by way of published materials, as well as that obligations in that regard are meticulously discharged, is extraordinarily naive even today. To transfer it to late sixteenth-century conditions is little short of surreal, even if the so-called historias fingidas had not been enjoying such popularity at that very time.*? Ironically, and rather poignantly, we need not look far for an example of such unacknowledged borrowing. Antonio de Herrera includes a fairly extensive account of Soto’s expedition in his encyclopedic Historia general and in it are numerous, unacknowledged, indications that he had access to Garcilaso’s work, probably even before it was published.*3 The relationship of Herrera’s account to La Florida has long been an issue, but of a substantial dependence there can be no doubt.*4 Herrera, following Garcilaso and none of the other chroniclers, mentions the town of “Capaha” instead of “Pacaha.” As well, he uses the same numbers for certain aggregations of Indians, and for the number of Spanish killed at Mabila. To clinch the matter, Herrera even mentions Gonzalo Silvestre several times.*5 In theory it is not completely impossible that Herrera and Garcilaso used a common third source, or even that Garcilaso used Herrera in manuscript, but the most likely scenario is that Herrera borrowed Garcilaso’s manuscript before it was published, helped himself to those parts of it he liked (though to very little of the hyperbole that went with it], and then returned the manuscript.4¢ In the circumstances, the popular notion that Garcilaso either could not have, or would not have, done the same with Elvas’s published Relagam falls a bit flat.4” Other things help deflate the hypothesis even more. Before La Florida was

published Elvas’s work was known to cartographers, who employed his toponymy on their maps.*® Moreover, there is a suspicious parallel between Elvas’s account of the captivity of Juan Ortiz and the same account in La Florida. The ten-year via dolorosa of Ortiz is undoubtedly compelling but also irrelevant to both accounts, yet it appears in each and in virtually the same form. Oddly, each tells only of Ortiz's early captivity, his travails under a cruel cacique, his escape to the compassionate Mucozo, and nothing more.*® That both Elvas and Garcilaso’s informant would have remembered precisely the same details of Ortiz’s captivity and then have introduced them into their accounts of Soto’s expedition is prima facie unlikely. Ranjel’s approach, that

162 David Henige

is, Mentioning in passing only the circumstances under which Ortiz contacted the expedition, is more reasonable. Garcilaso saturated La Florida with many details, making it difficult, and even somewhat pointless, to attempt to use any of it for diagnostic purposes, not least because it is virtually impossible to put it to any test other than that of plausibility.5° We cannot say that events could not possibly have happened as Garcilaso described them, but we cannot help feeling wary either. For instance, his extensive description of the “temple” at Talomeco, an outlier of Cofachiqui, reminds us more of a museum catalog in its engorged detail than

of any possible product of memory, even of the purportedly elephantine memory of Gonzalo Silvestre.5! But while this passage inevitably rouses the

critical instincts, not even the most skeptical observer can deny with certainty the possibility that such a temple existed, and very much as Garcilaso described it, even though only the most desperate would attempt to make any serious use of it.

On at least one occasion, though, Garcilaso over-reached himself. Typically, he was not content to offer a vague (but apparently carefully reasoned) estimate of the distance the remnants of the expedition traveled from Aminoya down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexicoin 1543. After retailing how some members of the expedition opined that the tiny fleet had averaged twenty leagues a day, others thirty, some forty, and yet others intermediate distances, Garcilaso added as a kind of codicil the observation that the fleet “never encountered any bends in the river that might have detained” it.52 Virtually all scholars today believe that the river in question is the Mississippi, whose lower course above Donaldsonville, Louisiana—between Baton Rouge and New Orleans—is one of the most meandering of all major rivers. A recent study of Soto’s route identifies Aminoya as slightly north of the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers.53 Between this point and Donaldsonville there are a great many bends, some so sharp as to form ox-bow lakes several times per century.*4 Geological evidence indicates that the present meander belt of the Mississippi has existed for more than two thousand years, with a great deal of variation within it, but always with much meandering.*> This means that Garcilaso’s tidbit is as wrong as his estimate that the fleet traveled 500 leagues (some 1,500 miles) downriver, whereas the distance from (for the sake of argument) the Arkansas—Mississippi confluence to the Gulf of Mexico is only 5 82 miles by river.5° Naturally, no one intent on identifying Soto’s route west of the Mississippi has relied on, or even referred to, Garcilaso’s interesting but impossible claims.‘’ Such silence is no surprise; indeed, ignoring such claims is incumbent on those who are most willing to recruit Garcilaso whenever he cannot be proved wrong.°*8

“So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 163

In seeking to explain Garcilaso’s gratuitous aside, three possibilities come

to mind. It might be that he was not referring to the Mississippi, but this seems to be only a technical possibility. Orit might be that Aminoya is much farther south than is usually believed, even south of Donaldsonville, so that Garcilaso’s statement about bends is correct, although his calculation of the

number of leagues would then be that much more exaggerated. The most likely possibility is that we have here yet another case where Garcilaso, taking off from information in Elvas (who employed a very similar, if less elabo-

rated, arithmetical approach}, decided to take a few twists and turns of his own, but guessed wrong.°?

If the details in La Florida are often fragmented and unrelated, they are never quite irrelevant. All were designed to enhance the verisimilitude of the work by allowing the imaginative to order the factual and the factual to sustain the imaginative. Garcilaso further encouraged belief in his tale by claiming to derive his information from a source so distant as to discourage checking yet so germane as to compel belief. His readers at the time, of course, would have had no special reasons to disbelieve him and no opportunity to test his details in situ. What is considerably more surprising is how much modern scholarship has contributed to Garcilaso’s success in this enterprise. Typically, scholars bent on validating Garcilaso’s text analyze it with surgical precision, as though cutting away dead tissue from an otherwise healthy body. Thus, it might be the case that La Florida describes a certain town on a certain bank of a certain river as equipped with a certain number of houses, a mound, and a chief who delivers a magniloquent speech welcoming the Spanish. But all agree that Garcilaso’s claim that he is presenting the text of the speech verbatim cannot possibly be true. So the speech is neatly excised, yet all the rest—the site and the size of the town, the mound—is accepted as factual and therefore quite

suitable for being identified with a particular modern site. Once the cancerous implausibility is amputated, all that remains is a sound body of plausible (read historical) data. A case in point is discussed below. Oddly, and almost as if to provide some sort of counterpoint to the baroque proliferation of detail, Garcilaso was extremely niggardly with just those elements of the story that modern seekers of Soto’s route so badly require. For example, amid the torrent of verbiage in La Florida, Garcilaso found room for only thirty-seven dates, some of which disagree with the dates for the same events provided in other sources. Likewise, Garcilaso (or Gonzalo Silvestre} did not seem inclined to provide much information about distances and directions, and when he/they did, it tended to be both aggregative and demonstrably wrong, as is the case with the distance traveled down the Mississippi,

as previously discussed. Some interpret this lapse as a resounding vindication of the independence

164 David Henige

of Garcilaso’s information, if not of the otherwise prodigious memory of his informant. This might be the case, but more likely these bits of information, so valuable to modern historians, were regarded by Garcilaso as tending to reduce his account from an epic to a chronicle. In its partial grounding in real events, La Florida tollows the conventions set by the historias fingidas of the period, as well as such ancient novel-histories as Heliodorus’ Aethiopica.®! The representation of actual events in this literature might be compared to that of actual vistas in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch or Giovanni Pannini.®2 In both instances, the dictates of style enjoin what may be included and how it is to be depicted, so I would argue that these discrepancies in Garcilaso’s work do not have the effect of rehabilitating his account.

The earliest interpreters of Soto’s route were cartographers, who placed on their maps the toponyms mentioned by Elvas and Garcilaso and who, in at least one case (that of Delisle in 1718), partially plotted Soto’s route.64 Modern attempts to plot the route using Garcilaso’s La Florida began, however, with the publication of several local and regional histories of the South in the gen-

eration or so preceding the Civil War. On the whole, their authors were inclined to take a charitable view of both the work and its author, for two principal reasons. First, of course, they had few other sources at their disposal: neither Ranjel’s account nor Biedma’s would become available until the 1850s, leaving only Elvas’s account and that of Garcilaso to draw on. The other reason why Garcilaso fared well in these antebellum studies was

cultural. Theodore Irving, whose study of the expedition long remained the most thorough and the most influential, set the tone. Irving wrote that, to his surprise, it had been “the fashion. . . to distrust the narrative of the Inca, and to put more faith in that of the Portuguese [Elvas].” How could this be, he wondered, when Garcilaso was “a man of rank and honor,” whose account moreover was founded on the testimony of “a cavalier of worth and respectability.” Conversely, while Elvas “gives himself out as a cavalier, or gentleman; ... we have merely his own word.” Finally, and astonishingly, Elvas’s account must be suspect because he insisted on remaining “anonymous!” In the twenty years or so after Irving wrote, other studies appeared, and most of them also relied heavily and admittedly on Garcilaso.© The most influential fan of Garcilaso during this period was William H. Prescott, whose enormously popular history of Peru resonates still. Prescott devoted a special excursus to justifying his reliance on the Comentarios reales, in which he confessed he was grateful to Garcilaso for “fill[ing] up gaps that have been left by his fellow-laborers.”°” As well he might be. The reasons set forth in the nineteenth century for finding La Florida trustworthy (Garcilaso’s lineage, his special sources, his propensity for helpful de-

. “So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 165 tails) have changed less in the intervening century than have the ways in which this belief is now generally expressed.

I will not belabor the modern-day manifestations of this lambent belief here, for they are far too numerous.* Suffice to say that the extravagant, and therefore slightly innocuous, praise of Garcilaso that characterized nineteenthcentury studies is now gone. Absent too from recent historical studies is the schizoid attitude of contemporary Peruvian literary critics, who have managed to create a Garcilaso that defies reason. In their place, however, we find a dichotomy no less peculiar. It has now become de rigueur to criticize La Florida for its embellishments, implausibilities, and inaccuracies, thereby appearing to drive its testimony offstage. But not really. Although Garcilaso has been driven undercover, his influence is actually greater than it has ever been. This state of affairs, virtually inevitable in the circumstances, derives entirely from the fact that many historians of Soto’s expedition have convinced themselves that the details and loci of its activities are retrievable, while at

the same time recognizing the value of appearing to be critical of their sOUICcES.

Much of the work on Soto’s itinerary during the past ten years or so exhibits

just this Manichaean attitude, evidenced as a species of enabling rhetoric. Two essays in a recent volume, which boasts the appropriately Garcilasan title of Towns and Temples along the Mississippi, are germane here.*®? I have al-

ready discussed one of these essays in a separate publication, so I will only consider the second one here.”° In her essay, Phyllis Morse attempts to identify Casqui and Pacaha (Garcilaso’s Capaha}, two Indian towns along the west bank of the Mississippi, with existing archeological sites.”! Morse has little to say about Garcilaso directly beyond noting that La Florida is “colorful and adventurous” in style, and in her ensuing discussion she cites La Florida only in the few instances when she quotes directly from the work. But we might

look a little more closely at how often she actually uses Garcilaso’s testimony.’2 Morse presents some thirty pieces of specific information in her recapitulation of Soto’s activities at these two towns—we can call them “data bytes”—and these are detailed in Table 1. The table also indicates whether and in what context each of these data items was mentioned by the other chroniclers.”3 Besides an aggregate score that overwhelmingly favors the Garcilaso text, several other observations deserve our attention. It is clear, for instance, that there is considerable disparity, and not a little contradiction, among the four

accounts as to the timing of certain events, who initiated certain activities, what precipitated certain incidents (e.g., the erection of the cross at Casquii, and even which women were offered by whom to Soto (as well as which ones

166 David Henige Table 1

Word Bytes from the Chroniclers on Casqui and Pacaha

RBEG First town in Casqui had 400 houses Xx Casqui 7 leagues further upriver X Terrain level and high Xx Chief’s house on high hill (mound} X 10-12 retainers’ houses nearby X Spanish camped in orchard x

Spanish given food and clothing X X There had been a drought in the area x x

Spanish built a large cross X x X x and putoverlooked it ona hillaXriver x xX x which 15,000 to 20,000 Indians watched x Priests conducted a ceremony x x

It rained the next day X

Indians put a cane fence around the cross xX

5,000 warriors/3,000 bearers invaded Pacaha X Army spent night in Casqui village en route X x X Indians build(t) bridge across swampy land X x a

Pacaha chief fled to island retreat X X Town and mausoleum looted X Casqui heads found on temple doors X Many Casqui captives released x Casquis exhibited cowardice x Spanish stayed at Pacaha almost a month 31 27/28 40

Casqui and Pacaha chiefs argue over precedence x X x x

Pacaha chief's ancestor deemed greater X X

but Casqui chief was older x X

Soto chose Pacaha chief to sit at his right Xx x

Soto given daughter by Casqui chief X x

Soto offered wife and sister by Pacaha chief b C d

Soto sent expedition to find gold e x f NOTE: R=Ranjel, B=Biedma, E=Elvas, G=Garcilaso a=Garcilaso reported Spanish used an old bridge, already in place b=one wife, one sister, one other woman C=two sisters d=two wives, no daughters e= Soto was searching for route to Mexico f=Soto was looking primarily for salt

“So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 167

he accepted). In the circumstances, it would only be possible to reconstruct Soto’s sojourn at these two places by confronting these variants: comparing them with each other, ranking them by probability, and then rejecting certain interpretations in favor of others. Such a reconstruction would perforce be selective rather than conspective since it could be developed only by dispensing with a great deal of the evidence in the sources. Morse’s strategy, however, has been to do little more than paraphrase Garcilaso’s testimony, with a bit of the other sources thrown in. Moreover, she cites sources only for direct quotations, which leaves the impression that her account represents a considered and judicious amalgam of the testimony of all four chroniclers when, in fact, it is Garcilaso réchauffé, minus some— though hardly all—of his more outlandish assertions. To be fair, Morse’s methodology merely duplicates, albeit in a slightly compressed fashion, the approach of several modern students. All of them seek to mitigate the shortcomings of individual texts by paraphrasing and combining them to produce a composite “supertext” that they hope can be used to document Soto’s activities, be they his itinerary or his putative impact on the societies through which he passed.”4 This way of handling evidence implies hyperkinetic initiative on historians’ part, as they approach their materials with very definite answers in mind and then torture those answers from the texts they are examining. Such a demand-driven and selective search for appropriate evidence belies their own stated philosophy and demonstrates the extent to which historians who have agendas will privilege Garcilaso’s account simply because they so badly need to. While ostensibly disparaging La Florida’s evidence, they in fact milk it dry. In this sense, the ambivalence they express is really an ambivalence about their own modus operandi. For historians of Soto’s activities who are not also historians of ideas, the arguments | have offered here are unlikely to be welcome. But since modern standards are, to all appearances, more rigorous than those of Garcilaso’s times, we can only hope that the Garcilaso text will eventually cease to be the preferred source for Soto’s activities. Should this happen to occur, it can only mean that attempts at itinerary-building will have ceased, perhaps with the result that attention will be turned to less trivial matters. In this regard, it is worth noting that each generation of historians for the past 150 years has been equally certain of its success in this historical follow-the-dot exercise. To some, such a change of focus will surely seem a retreat, from a quest for detailed knowledge to a state of uncertain vagueness. If we were to change “detailed knowledge” to “unsubstantiable belief,” I could only agree.’5 In the midst of this camouflaged credulity, however, few seem to have noticed that, whether attributable to his abashed modesty or not, Garcilaso himself several times expressed doubt as to the accuracy of his information.

168 David Henige

While writing about the Florida peninsula, for instance, he warned his readers: “In this direction (rumbo) and in all the rest that are to be found in this story, this is to warn that they are not to be taken precisely, lest you blame me should something [different] appear when the land is conquered. . . .” He went on to add that, while he had taken “the necessary care to write about

these things with certainty,” the expeditionaries were more interested in seeking gold and silver and so did not collect or record [or remember] the required data.” Under the circumstances, he concluded, this sufficed to “exon-

erate” him from having written “with the certainty that is desirable and essential.”7”

Later in the narrative, Garcilaso felt obliged to reiterate these strictures, this time when the expedition was wandering somewhere west of the Mississippi. After writing a particularly confusing passage, and apparently recognizing it as such, he hastened to add that he would not try to specify “the lati-

tudes of each province,” nor even “the course that our [men] took.” He explained why: his informant was neither a “cosmographer” nor a “mariner.” Moreover, “the army took no instruments to take the elevation.”’8 Finally, in his discussion of the distance traveled down the Mississippi, Garcilaso wryly noted that “[iJn this calculation each one can, according to his own opinion, give whatever leagues he wishes.””? Since this was an observation so astute that Garcilaso himself gave warrant to it time and again, it does serve to indicate that he possessed a certain prescient perplexity by anticipating the future reader’s response to his own testi-

mony.®° If Garcilaso had any sense of humor at all, it would surely have amused him to observe the slightly febrile modern autopsies of his work.®!

By framing their analysis in simplistic terms—novelistic elements impinging ever so lightly on true history—Durand, Miré Quesada, and other literary critics help to focus on the fundamental methodological question that arises in dealing with problematic sources such as La Florida: how do we distinguish what is likely to be true from what is likely not to be? The literary critics do not seek to answer this question since they are not concerned with historical truth, while, oddly, those who are asking historical questions seldom consider the matter quite so explicitly.

When they do, the most likely criterion is that of plausibility. But plausibility is simply another way of defining verisimilitude, and we are not likely to be taken very far by such an approach since it essentially duplicates the rules established by the authors of the very texts we would place in doubt. In fact, it is fair to suggest that too high a degree of plausibility—for instance, Garcilaso’s obsessive attempts to over-explain everything—should serve as a tocsin in dealing with such texts. Much of La Florida is entirely plausible; what is implausible are the circumstances of its very publication.

“So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 169

In this light, it is only possible to believe that Garcilaso wrote La Florida as history if one also believes he was working from film footage and had at hand the taped memoirs of several participants from both sides. He knows the dimensions of buildings and their parts, of fields, and of rivers; he is able to

reproduce lengthy and florid speeches verbatim; he records the intimate thoughts of Indian and Spaniard alike; he knows the birthplace of practically every Spaniard he mentions by name; the ability of his informant to recollect sartorial details would humble a Savile Row tailor. For the moment, the logic of Garcilaso’s argument has not been disinterred from the chaos of his prose. Future studies of the possible historical value of

La Florida must try to distinguish between whether Garcilaso was honest and whether he was, or was likely to be, correct. They must also acknowledge that the standards of acceptable scholarly honesty are far different by today’s canons than they were in late sixteenth-century Spain, when the fiction-asfact school of writing was enjoying such a tremendous vogue. Future studies

must try to ascertain when Garcilaso is trying to convince his readers and when he is merely trying to impress them—whether he is describing Soto’s leadership qualities, the nobility of the Indians, or the superior quality of his own discourse. Another difficulty is imposed by the isolation of twentieth-century historiography from sixteenth-century rhetorical and epistemological conventions. Garcilaso could have realized, perhaps even did, that many of his first readers would penetrate the facade of the various literary devices he employed, since they shared with him a common literary and cultural heritage. Modern historiography encompasses an entirely different set of discursive and critical norms, which bear only superficial resemblance to those employed by Garcilaso. Unless and until all these distinctions are clearly understood, it is all too likely that modern scholarship will continue to confuse the two strategies. It is surely a fatal mistake to project intuitively onto an un-

suspecting past today’s notion that creative works unmistakably proclaim both their authorship and their originality. It was only after countless reassurances to his readers that he had merely, even mindlessly, transcribed the information provided to him by the three participant observers that Garcilaso turned to providing a title for his work. Here, at last, he proclaimed, and without disguise, his own perceived central role in the composition of La Florida. Here, Hernando de Soto is banished to the periphery. Here, his anonymous informant is cast into oblivion. Here, Garcilaso finally concedes what modern historiography is so reluctant to accept: La Florida had been processed through Garcilaso’s rhetorical filter so thoroughly that it had truly become “of the Inca.’”82

170 David Henige

Notes The title for this article is borrowed from a promotional blurb for a television movie that was broadcast in February 1991. 1. Theodore H. Lewis, “The Chroniclers of De Soto’s Expedition,” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 9 (1903): 379—87. 2. Lewis, “Chroniclers,” 383.

3. I say “ostensibly” because, of course, the use of rhetoric continues to compete with the use of evidence in modern scholarly argumentation. For an excellent case study of this state of affairs, see Jeanne Fahnestock, “Arguing in Different Forms: The Bering Crossover Controversy,” Science, Technology and Human Values 14 (1989): 26— 42.

4. David Henige, “The Context, Content, and Credibility of La Florida del Ynca,” The Americas 43 (1986/87): 1-23. 5. The best biography of Inca Garcilaso is John G. Varner, El Inca: The Life and Times of Garcilaso de la Vega (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968). 6. For a brief overview of rhetoric in Classical Antiquity see Ernst R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953), 64-76. Arecent study of the historical books of the Old Testament (1 and 2 Chronicles), which employs just this approach to the text, is Rodney K. Duke, The Persuasive Appeal of the Chronicler: A Rhetorical Analysis (Sheffield: so Press, 1990).

7. Margarita Zamora, Language, Authority and Indigenous History in the Comentarios reales de los Incas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 8. Some studies of ancient and medieval rhetoric are: Renato Barilli, Rhetoric (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972}, Aldo Scaglioni, The Classical Theory of Composition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953); W. Rhys Roberts, Greek Rhetoric and Literary Criticism (New York: Longman, 1963); Dorothy G. Coleman, The Gallo-Roman Muse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979], 3—52.

9. Some of these literary devices are discussed in Sol Cheneles and Jerome Snyder, “That Pestilent Cosmetic, Rhetoric” (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972). 10. Marcus Flavius Quintilianus, The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, 4 vols., ed. and trans. H. E. Butler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920—22), 3:385 (Book 9, Part 2, Chapter 19). In this regard, see James J. Murphy, “Quintilian’s Influence on the Teaching and Speaking of Writing in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,” in Oral and Written Communication: Historical Approaches, ed. Richard L. Enos (Newbury Park: Sage Publishers, 1990], 158—83. 11. Quintilian, Jnstitutio Oratoria, 3:385 (Book 9, Part 2, Chapter 17). 12. For a listing of rhetorical topoi in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, see Curtius,

European Literature, 79-105, 159-63. 13. For an interesting and relevant example of the verisimilar in another context, see Roger Ray, “Rhetorical Scepticism and Verisimilar Narrative in John of Salisbury’s Historia Pontificalis,” in Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. Ernst Breisach (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985}, 61-102. 14. In addition to the literature cited in Henige, “Context,” see Enrique Pupo-Walker,

“So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 171 | “La Florida del Inca Garcilaso: notas sobre la problematizacion del discurso historiografico en los siglos XVI y XVII,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 417 (March 1985}, g1—111; Aurelio Mir6 Quesada, “E] Inca Garcilaso y su concepcion del arte hist6érico,” Mar del Sur 3, no. 18 (July-August 1951}, 55-71; Aurelio Mird Quesada, El Inca Garcilaso y otros estudios garcilasistas |Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1971}, 328—

30, 333; Aurelio Miré Quesada, “Creacion y elaboracién de La Florida del Inca,” Cuadernos Americanos 18, no. 6 |November—December 1989}, 152—71; Dario Puccini, “Elementos de narracion novelesca en La Florida del Inca Garcilaso,” Revista Nacional de Cultura 240 (1979), 26-46; Amalia Iniesta Camara, “Novelas de caballerias, bizantina e italiana en La Florida del Inca,” Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 11 (1982): 39-50. Especially trenchant is Lee H. Dowling, “Reading the Chronicle of Indies: Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida del Inca," (Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, 1982), 143-80. For a bibliography of over three hundred contributions to Garcilaso studies, most of them published in Peru, written by Peruvians, and dedicated to the Comentarios reales de los Incas, see David W. Foster, Peruvian Literature: A Bibliogra-

phy of Secondary Sources (Westport cT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 120—40. } 15. Mir6 Quesada, “Concepci6én,” 65. 16, José Durand has even written a piece charmingly entitled “Garcilaso Inca jura decir verdad (Garcilaso Inca swears to tell the truth],” Critica Hispdnica 10 (1988): 21-40. An excellent discussion of the epistemological pratfalls involved in treating Garcilaso

as history in the face of his own conflicting signals is Dowling, ‘Reading the Chronicle,” 27—70 passim. 17. Garcilaso’s efforts culminated in Chapter 27 of Book 2, Part 2, entitled “Donde re-

sponde a una objecién.” There, he sought to disarm criticism by anticipating it with a torrent of assurances regarding the bonae fides of his informant, which alone had allowed him to write “so much truth” that the informant “certifies as such.” He concluded this excursus by putting the most grandiloquent—and completely nonsensical— speech into the mouth of his source, who purportedly declaimed on the eloquence of the Indians. The edition used here is Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, La Florida del Inca, ed. Sylvia-Lyn Hilton (Madrid: Historia 16, 1986); translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 18. Henige, “Context,” 7—12. See as well Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics: Cre-

ativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990}, 60-64. 19. B. W. Ife, “Alexander in the New World: Fictional Archetype and Narrative History,” Renaissance and Modern Studies 39 (1986): 38. A work redolent of La Florida in several suggestive ways (including its publication date of 1603} is studied in William K. Hall, “A Topography of Time: Historical Narration in John Stow’s Survey of London,” Studies in Philology 88 (1991): 1-15. 20. Julio Ortega, “Para una teoria del texto latinoamericano: Col6én, Garcilaso y el discurso de la abundancia,” Revista de Critica Literaria Latinoamericana 14 (1988): 101-15. 21. Ortega, ‘Teoria del texto,” 114-15. 22. For the study of the principle in another context see Richard C. Lounsbury, “The

Case of the Erudite Eyewitness: Cicero, Lucan, and John of Salisbury,” Allegorica 11 (1990): 14-35.

172 David Henige 23. José Durand, “La biblioteca del Inca,” Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica 2 (1948): 255. If so, it is the latest known public notice of this document before its eventual discovery in the archives of the Duque del Infantado in 1790. For more on the diario, and implicitly on its similarities to La Florida, see David Henige, In Search of Columbus: The Sources for the First Voyage (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991). 24. Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, Historia general del Peru: Segunda parte de los Comentarios de los Incas, 3 vols., ed. Angel Rosenblat (Buenos Aires: Amecé Editores, [1944]}, 1:12 (Prdlogo).

25. The concept derives in part from Eusebius’s Praeparatio Evangelica, which was first published in 1544. The opening up of whole new worlds of unbelievers naturally gave great impetus to the notion, which had been somewhat dormant. 26. For Garcilaso’s syncretic views of Inca religion see, among others, Pierre Duviols, “El Inca Garcilaso interprete humanista de la religidn Incaica,” Didgenes [Buenos Aires| 43 (September 1964], 31-43; Albert Garcia, “Quelques aspects de la religion incaique selon les Commentaires royaux de |’Inca Garcilaso de la Vega et certaines chroniques Espagnoles du XVle siécle,” Bulletin Hispanique 66 (1964): 294-310. Ina more general vein, see Geoffrey W. Conrad and Arthur A. Demarest, Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984}, 84—139. The present reliance on La Florida for Soto’s activities can be seen to mirror the long-standing and similar tendency of historians of the Incas to regurgitate Garcilaso’s Comentarios reales. As noted above, the habit began as early as Prescott and peaked with Philip A. Means’s Ancient Civilizations of the Andes (New York: Scribners, 1931), which was largely Garcilaso revested for modern consumption. The situation has changed dramatically, however; for the degree of estrangement between Garcilaso and modern studies of Inca society, see, among others, Gary Urton, The History of a Myth: Pacarigtambo and the Origin of the Inkas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990}, and R. Tom Zuidema, Inca Civilization in Cuzco (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990). 27. For Garcilaso’s travails in securing official license to publish La Florida, see Var-

ner, Life and Times, 274-75, 297, 330—37; Emilio Choy, “Garcilaso y la Inquisicién,” Tareas del pensamiento peruano t (Jan.—Feb. 1960): 6—11. In part, Garcilaso’s troubles stemmed from his translation of the Dialoghi di Amore of Leon Hebreo (a.k.a. Judah Abrabanal), which some regarded as both subversive and salacious. José Durand, “El proceso de redaccion de las obras del Inca Garcilaso,” Langues Néo-Latines 164 (March 1963}, 19-20, 23—26, 28—31, provides a succinct discussion of the ways in which Garcilaso tinkered with his manuscript after the death of Gonzalo Silvestre. See, as well, José Durand, “Dos notas sobre de Inca Garcilaso,” Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica 3 (1949): 282-83. 28. On the notion of praeparatio evangelica in the work of Garcilaso see Mir6é Quesada, Inca Garcilaso, 328-30; Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, Violencia y subversion en la prosa colonial hispanoamericana, siglos XVI y XVI, Studia Humanitatis (Madrid: Porrua Turanzas, 1982}, 27—30; William D. Ilgen, “La configuraci6n mitica de la historia en los Comentarios reales del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,” in Estudios de literatura hispanoamericana en honor a José ]. Arrom, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literature, ed. Andrew P. Debicki and Enrique Pupo- Walker (Chapel Hill:

“So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 173 University of North Carolina Press, 1974), 37-46; Francisco J. Cevallos, “La vision del indio Americano en los Comentarios reales de Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,” Symposium 39 (1985): 83-92. 29. Inca Garcilaso, La Florida, 124 (Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 4). Later Garcilaso wrote that he regarded it as “a great pity” that Mucozo was not offered “the water of baptism” since it would have been “an elegant beginning” to the task of proselytization. Idem, 249 (Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 16). 30. Garcilaso, La Florida, 115—16 (Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 1]. 31. Garcilaso, La Florida, 335 (Book 3, Chapter 19). 32. Garcilaso, La Florida, 383 (Book 3, Chapter 34]. 33. Garcilaso, Comentarios reales de los Incas, ed. Angel Rosenblat, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Amecé Editores, [1945]], 1:81 (Book 2, Chapter 7). 34. Garcilaso, La Florida, 581-86 (Book 6, Chapter 22). 35. Dowling, “Reading the Chronicle,” 162-68.

36. For details see Garcilaso, La Florida, 21-24; José Durand, “Las enigmaticas fuentes de La Florida del Inca,’’ Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 168 {1963): 597-609; Henige, “Context,” 18-22; José Durand, “La memoria de Gonzalo Silvestre,” Caravelle 7 (1966): 43—SI.

37. Unless Francis B. Speck, “Neglected Aspects of the de Soto Expedition,” MidAmerica 15 (1932/33): 5n., was correct in believing that Garcilaso’s “mi autor” was Elvas rather than his presumed anonymous informant. Considering how many expeditionaries Garcilaso did mention by name, it is extraordinary that among them there is no mention whatever of either Ranjel or Biedma, whose roles were far more recurringly central than most of those mentioned in La Florida—extraordinary enough perhaps to make one suspicious. 38. Garcilaso, La Florida, “Prélogo.” Of course, at that very time numerous parts of a completely nonexistent past were being rescued from oblivion in the historias fingidas. 39. For examples, see Enrique Pupo-Walker, Historia, creaciédn y profecia en los textos del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Madrid: José Porrua Turanzas, 1982], 38n., 77-78; Miro Quesada, Inca Garcilaso, 146, 150, 345—46, 351-52; José Durand, “El proceso de redaccion de las obras del Inca Garcilaso,” Langues Néo-Latines 164 (March 1963), 18— 36. Strangely, these arguments usually take the line that there is so much material in La Florida that is not in Elvas’s Relagam that Garcilaso could not have relied on the latter! 40. Although not as slavishly admiring of Garcilaso as some others, Luis Loayza, “La Florida del Inca,” 61, summed up this view well enough. After noting that “Garcilaso does not mention. . . nordoes he appear to have used the other chronicles of the expedition,” Loayza concluded that “{i]t is no exaggeration to say that Gonzalo Silvestre was not only the principal source of Garcilaso, but practically the only one.” 41. Mir6 Quesada, Inca Garcilaso. 42. Henige, “Context,” 7-12. 43. Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierrafirme del mar Océano, 17 vols. (Madrid: A. BallesterosBeretta, 1934-57}, 13:129—55, 14:61—126, 15:9—56.

174 David Henige 44. For observations, see especially Miguel Maticorena Estrada, “Sobre las ‘Décadas’ de Antonio de Herrera: La Florida,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 24 (1967): 1873— 1905. Maticorena Estrada, “Sobre las ‘Décadas’,” 1887—1891, recapitulates the evidence that Herrera wrote his account of Soto’s activities no later than 1603, or two years before La Florida was published. 45. Maticorena Estrada, “Sobre las ‘Décadas’,” makes his case by comparing several passages, which certainly add to the certainty, but are unnecessary to demonstrate the relationship.

46. In his Comentarios reales Garcilaso made that very complaint, slightly disguised—Herrera was still alive and still the official Chronicler of the Indies. Garcilaso, Comentarios reales, 1:25 (Book 1, Chapter 7). 47. Henige, “Context,” 4-7. 48. Barbara Boston, “The Route of De Soto: Delisle’s Interpretations,” Mid-America, n.s. 10 (1939), 278. For the Delisle map see Charles O. Paullin, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States (Washington pc: Carnegie Institution, 1932}, plate 24. 49. Cf. Fidalgo de Elvas, Relagam verdadeira dos trabalhos gq ho gouernador dé Fernado de Souto e certos fidalgos portugueses passarom no descubriméto da prouincia da Frolida {Evora: Andre de Burgos, 1557}, xxiiii'—xxviiv (Chapter 9), and Garcilaso, La Florida, 125—31 (Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 5—6).

50. For Garcilaso and the “wayward detail” see Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria, Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 49—92 passim, esp. 82—87. 51. Garcilaso, La Florida, 320—26 (Book 3, Chapters 15—16). Or it might remind us of

such ancient accounts as those of Heliodorus, who in his Aethiopica offered similar, if less rococo, descriptions. Two editions of the Aethiopica were in Garcilaso’s library; Durand, “Biblioteca,” 253, 255. 52. Garcilaso, La Florida, 544 (Book 6, Chapter 8}: “y nunca les falté viento, ni el rio tenia vueltas en que pudiesen haberse detenido.” 53. Charles Hudson, “De Soto in Arkansas: A Brief Synopsis,” Field Notes 205 (July— August 1985}, 10, followed by Dan F. Morse and Phyllis A. Morse, “The Spanish Exploration of Arkansas” in Columbian Consequences, vol. 2: Archaeological and Historical Per-

spectives on the Spanish Borderlands East, ed. David Hurst Thomas (Washington Dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1990], 197-210. The report of the de Soto Commission fixed Aminoya at “a short distance above Natchez,” or about 215 to 220 river miles—and several bends—nearer Donaldsonville; better, but not enough to rehabilitate Garcilaso’s obiter dictum. Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission, 76th Cong., rst sess. H. Rept. 71, 1939, 272. 54. For descriptions of the meander belt of the lower Mississippi see, among others, Dan F. Morse and Phyllis A. Morse, Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley (New York: Academic Press, 1958}, 4-9; Harold N. Fisk, Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission 1944), 41-44; Roger T. Saucier, Quaternary Geology of the Lower Mississippi Valley (Little Rock: Arkansas Archeological Survey, 1974}, 22—23 and passim; and Sher-

wood M. Gagliano and Perry C. Howard, “The Neck Cutoff Oxbow Lake Cycle along

. “So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 175 the Lower Mississippi River,” in River Meanderings, ed. Charles M. Elliott (New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1986], 147-51.

55. Morse and Morse, Archaeology, 9; Fisk, Geological Investigation, 42—44; Saucier, Quaternary Geology, 22-23. 56. For river distances along the lower Mississippi see: Mississippi River Commission. Army Engineers District. Flood Control and Navigation Maps of the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, 57th ed. (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission, 1989). Garcilaso, La Florida, 544 (Book 6, Chapter 8) adds that one of his sources, Juan Coles, estimated the distance to have been 700 leagues, apparently showing how moderate Garcilaso himself tended to be when offered choices. 57. Certainly none of the sources mentioned in note 53. 58. For this, see the discussion of Morse, “Parkin Site,” below. 59. For similar conclusions regarding the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio compared to other sources for the same event (the battle of Hastings) see R. H. C. Davis, ‘The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio” (253), English Historical Review 93 (1978): 241-61. As Davis so aptly put it: “Whenever [the Carmen| provides information which is not to be found in the other sources, that information looks implausible and has the appearance of literary (or legendary) embellishment.” Elvas, Relacam, clxiiiv. (Chapter 38], estimated that 250 leagues had been covered in 17 days, or less than 15 leagues a day, in contrast with Garcilaso’s calculated average of some 25 leagués a day.

6o. E.g., Antonio del Busto Duthurburu, “La navegacién atlantica de Hernando de Soto la vez que fue a la conquista de Florida,” Cuadernos del Seminario de Historia, Instituto Riva-Aguéro [Lima], 8 (1970/72), 15—20. 61. For this aspect of the ancient novel see Graham Anderson, Ancient Fiction: The Novel in the Graeco-Roman World (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 88—102 and passim; Tomas Hagg, The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983}, 54—73, 143—47. 62. Rabelais and Ariosto, writing in the early sixteenth century, applied the same blend of excessive detail and temporal-spatial reticence to their work. See Elizabeth A. Chesney, The Countervoyage of Rabelais and Ariosto: A Comparative Reading of Two Renaissance Mock Epics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1982], esp. 18—23. 63. The vagueness of La Florida, in contrast to Comentarios reales, is discussed in Loayza, “La Florida del Inca,” 62-63. 64. Boston, “Route of De Soto.” 65. Theodore Irving, The Conquest of Florida by Hernando de Soto, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835), 2:281—94. 66. E.g., Albert J. Pickett, History of Alabama and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Charleston: Walker and James, 1851), 1:xi—xii, 3-53; John W. Monette, History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mississippi, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1846], 1:16—64; J. H. McCulloh, Researches, Philosophical and Antiquarian, Concerning the Aboriginal History of America (Baltimore: Fielding Lucas Jr., 1829], 523—31. Contrary opinion was not unrepresented, e.g., Lambert A. Wilmer, The Life, Travels, and Adventures of Ferdinand de Soto, Discoverer of the Mississippi (Philadelphia: J. T. Lloyd, 1859}; Albert Gallatin, “A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes of North America,” Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society 2 (1836): 106—7. For a survey of this and other work, see David Sloan,

176 David Henige “The Expedition of Hernando de Soto: A Post-Mortem Report,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 51 (1992): I-29, 297-327. 67. William Hickling Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847), 1:42n., 293-98. 68. For other examples see David Henige, “Proxy Data, Historical Method, and the de Soto Expedition,” in The Expedition of Hernando de Soto West of the Mississippi, 1541-1543, ed. Gloria A. Young and Michael P. Hoffman (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993], 15 5—72. 69. David H. Dye and Chery! Anne Cox, eds., Towns and Temples along the Mississippi (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990). 70. Charles Hudson, Marvin T. Smith, and Chester B. DePratter, “The Hernando de Soto Expedition: From Mabila to the Mississippi River,” in Dye and Cox, Towns and Temples, 181-207, discussed in Henige, “Proxy Data.” 71. Morse, “Parkin Site.” 72. Morse, “Parkin Site,” 126, 130—31.

73. The sources from which the data in this chart were drawn are: Rodrigo Ranjel, “Relacion,” in Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias: Islas y Tierra-Firme del mar océano, 4 vols., ed. José Amador de los Rios (Madrid: Impr. de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1851-55), 1:572—75 (Part 1, Book 17, Chapter 28}; Luis Hernandez de Biedma, “Relaci6n del sucesos de la jornada que hizo Hernando de Soto, y de la calidad de la tierra por dondo anduvo,” Coleccién de documentos y manuscritos compilados por Ferndndez de Navarrete, 32 vols. (Madrid: Museo Naval; reprint, Nendeln: ktTo-Kraus, 1971), 14:242—47; Elvas, Relagam, xcv’— cvi' (23—24).

74. Actually, Morse’s account differs from that in the 1939 Final Report of the United States De Soto Commission (76th Cong., rst sess. H. Rept. 71), pp. 249-52, largely by failing to specify her systematic dependence on Garcilaso. 75. In the meantime, those who prefer to take Garcilaso at his word, whether overtly or covertly, are certain to appreciate the spirited, if threadbare and unconvincing, defense of La Florida by the editor of the latest modernized edition. There, Sylvia-Lyn Hilton manages to exonerate Garcilaso and Gonzalo Silvestre from lying, erring, borrowing, even from exaggerating, and concludes resoundingly that La Florida is “a his-

torical work of the most beautiful execution, essentially truthful, ... which redeems the profound human and historical complexity” of the Soto expedition. Garcilaso, La Florida, 52-53. Elsewhere (p. 45}, she credits the two with “a prodigious capacity and will to inform correctly.” 76. Does this not suggest that Gonzalo Silvestre was unwontedly unaware of Ranjel’s responsibilities and activities in just this regard? 77. Garcilaso, La Florida, 148 {Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 12). 78.Garcilaso, La Florida, 457 (Book 5, Part 1, Chapter 3}. 79. Garcilaso, La Florida, 544 (Book 6, Chapter 9).

80. La Florida is not the only account of Soto’s expedition in which the romantic competes with the real for center stage. In some ways, in fact, La Florida compares most closely to Vasconselos, William Gilmore Simms’s unabashedly fictional treatment of the expedition (New York: Redfield, 1853). Simms even matched Garcilaso by

“So Unbelievable It Has to Be True” 177

having at his disposal an otherwise unavailable source, nothing less than “the celebrated MSS. of the Great Iawa, or High Priest of Chikasah, Oolena Ithiopoholla,” composed in 1619 “on the barks of trees, in the Choctaw character” (p. 487}. Moreover, Simms’s source, like those of Garcilaso, was able to hunt with the hounds while still coursing with the hares. 81. That Garcilaso did not lack a sense of humor is suggested by his wry comments,

when relating this history of Juan Ortiz’s captivity, that despite some rumors to the contrary, those who had confronted live lions insisted that they are “so much more ferocious” than painted ones, even when the painting is lifelike. 82. It seems that, up to the last moment, Garcilaso’s manuscript was scheduled to be entitled “Descubrimento da Florida” (was the text to be in Portuguese?]}, but at some point very near the printing stage this was changed. See Varner, Life and Times, 333— 34.

Part 2

The Expedition

Curt Lamar Hernando de Soto before Florida: A Narrative

In early 1514 a young Spanish adventurer sailed from his homeland to that region of the Spanish New World referred to as Tierra Firme, or Darién (modern Panama). He was a member of a large expedition organized in 1513 by Pedro Arias de Avila, better known as Pedrarias Davila, or simply Pedrarias. Sup-

ported by the Spanish monarch Ferdinand, also an investor in the expedition, Pedrarias intended to go to the New World to remove Vasco Nunez de Balboa as governor of Darién. To this end, Pedrarias had worked vigorously to attract and recruit a large number of participants, so that by the end of 1513 nearly fifteen hundred men had volunteered to join his expedition. Among them was the above-mentioned young man, still in his teens. His name was Hernando de Soto.!

Following Col6n’s explorations of the Greater Antilles and much of the coast of Middle America, and after initial settlement of the island of Hispaniola had been accomplished, the next area of intensive Spanish exploration was the region of modern-day Panama and the northern coast of South America. Due to the efforts of Martin Fernandez de Enciso, a lawyer from Hispaniola, and Balboa, the first permanent Spanish settlement on the American mainland was founded in 1509: Santa Maria la Antigua del Darién.? Soon after the founding of Santa Maria, Balboa eclipsed Enciso and gained administrative control of the community and region. An embittered Enciso thus returned to Spain and began to work to undermine Balboa, whose ability he questioned and disparaged throughout the peninsula. Nevertheless, Balboa was an effective administrator, “the first caudillo in the New World who made himself a leader by his ability to win and hold followers.”3 First exploring the region of Darién washed by the Caribbean, Balboa finally led an expedition to the southeast, through extremely difficult terrain, to a high point from which he became the first European to observe the Pacific Ocean on 27 September 1513.4 Spanish interest in Darién began to shift to this southern coastal area following Balboa’s sighting of the Pacific; obviously the territorial expanse of Darién was greater than anyone had at first believed. Mean-

182 Curt Lamar

while, Balboa continued to send numerous dispatches regarding his activities to Crown officials in Spain. These accounts of the exotic places Balboa had seen and explored, and of the great potential he believed the region held, led

to increased interest in the Darién area. It was under these circumstances that Pedrarias planned and implemented preparations for his expedition, which developed into a major undertaking.5 Significantly, among those who encouraged Pedrarias to act was Enciso, and he played a primary role in the organization of this massive, highly publicized expedition.* Such individuals as Soto therefore joined the expedition in the hope of achieving fame and possibly fortune as well. After their arrival in Darién, many of the members of the Pedrarias organization, convinced by Balboa’s dispatches and by Pedrarias’s persuasiveness that this was a land of promise, were sobered by the harsh reality of their situation. Not long after their arrival, more than a third of them died.” Those who

survived, however, were determined to succeed in their undertaking. Certainly Pedrarias played a major role in nurturing their determination. An individual who could inspire as well as terrify, Pedrarias was described as a man of “malignant temper.”® Among those who did not die was the young Soto. These early years of Soto’s New World experience are understandably enveloped in mystery. What is known overall about his early life is skimpy at best. Soto was born in Jerez de Badajoz, in western Estremadura, probably around 1497. His parents, Francisco Méndez de Soto and Leonor Arias Tinoco, were legally married and were apparently hidalgos of the upper class. The fact that Soto was literate, unlike so many of the early Spanish adventurers in the New World, is noteworthy relative to his social position. He was able to gain access to educational opportunities, although to what extent remains unclear. Still,

even if he was a true hidalgo, in Spain Soto would have been considered a “marginal hidalgo.” In the Indies, on the other hand, Soto came to be considered “an hidalgo of good standing.’? Such was the advantage for a Spaniard in the New World: a chance for the attainment of higher social status. Perhaps this was the motivation that led young Soto to join the Pedrarias expedition. From 1514 to 1517 there is no mention of Soto in the contemporary records. These three unknown years of his early New World life were probably an exhilarating time for young Soto, as well as an intimidating one, but this is mere speculation. In 1517 Soto’s name first appears in the records, relative to his partnership with two fairly prominent men. He was mentioned as the partner of Francisco Campanon and Hernan Ponce de Leon, though the nature of this

partnership remains vague.!° Whatever the case, by 1519 activity in Darién was gaining sudden momentum, and Soto soon was drawn into this whirlwind of action. Upon his arrival in Darién, Pedrarias had not acted immediately to remove

Hernando de Soto before Florida 183

Balboa from his post as governor, choosing instead to bide his time until the moment was right. In 1519, due to his reputation and prestige, he took it upon himself to move his base of operations in Darién from Santa Marta to Panama and began to refer to the latter as the district capital. Having concluded that support for Balboa had waned and that the noted explorer was vulnerable, Pedrarias in 1519 had him arrested on a trumped-up charge of treason and, after a trial of sorts, ordered his execution by beheading."! With Balboa elimi-

nated, Pedrarias turned his attention to a new, exciting enterprise, which would conceivably increase his reputation, fame, and power. The area of his interest was territory to the west—northwest of Panama, and the effort to subdue and acquire that territory in the name of the Spanish Crown would soon involve young Soto. By 1520, Soto was mentioned in contemporary chronicles as a man “witha reputation for swiftness,” and he was referred to as “captain.’”!2 What Soto had accomplished to gain such recognition, however, is not specifically mentioned. Then, in 1520 Soto joined an expedition commanded by Licenciado Gaspar de Espinosa, who had been ordered by Pedrarias to secure Caribbean

coastal areas to the west-northwest of Panama. Interestingly, the commander of the small force to which Soto was attached was Francisco Pizarro. Pizarro’s infantry were to make their way on land up the coast and link up with Espinosa’s main force, which was to sail its way up the coast before coming ashore. Soto was sent ahead of Pizarro’s troop with thirty men to scout the territory. When Soto’s party came upon Espinosa’s force, which was under

sharp attack by Amerindians, Soto and his men came to their defense and thus rescued Espinosa’s terrified soldiers before Pizarro’s arrival. Soto and Pizarro had participated in a tactical exercise which would become, for them, a common military procedure in the near future.'3 Interest in the area to the west—northwest intensified. With the successful expedition of Gil Gonzalez Davila to Honduras in 1522 and his promising reports of the opportunities south of that territory, Pedrarias concluded that it was time for him to make his move. In 1524 he appointed Francisco Hernandez de Cérdoba to lead an expedition into the region that would later become Nicaragua, and this adventurer secured the area “with swift and brutal efficiency.” Soto, Campanon, and Hernan Ponce were all members of the Cordoba incursion, and the chronicler Oviedo referred to Soto as one of its outstanding participants.!4 Soto did not lose the opportunity to advance once he was in Nicaragua. Having seized the area, Cordoba and his men were genuinely impressed by its potential. With the establishment of the cities of Le6n and Granada, Cérdoba maneuvered to have himself appointed governor. He compelled the citizens of the two municipalities to write on his behalf to the new Spanish monarch,

184 Curt Lamar Carlos I. This act was an open challenge to and defiance of Pedrarias, but Cér-

doba was secure in what he believed was his position of strength. He held Nicaragua.!°

But Captains Soto and Campanon refused to comply with Cérdoba’s demand. Fearing the young captain’s growing influence, Cordoba ordered Soto arrested and had him imprisoned in Granada. But then Campanon and his followers freed Soto, and the two captains openly confronted Cérdoba.'¢ The next move was Cérdoba’s. He raised a force of sixty men and apparently intended to attack Soto and Campanon, yet he hesitated and did not make a direct assault on them. Soto and Campanon took advantage of their opponent’s vacillation. They made their way with some supporters to Darién, where Soto reported to Pedrarias what had transpired. Pedrarias reacted quickly, organizing a troop of men who marched into Nicaragua, captured, and executed Cordoba in short order.'!? Now in the good graces of Pedrarias, Soto’s position in Nicaragua was assured. In 1527 Soto was named Captain of the Guards for the new governor appointed by Pedrarias, Diego Lopez de Salcedo. Perhaps surmising that Pedrarias might soon assume that governorship himself, Soto then used his position to lead an uprising against Governor Salcedo. In the event, Soto’s action gave Pedrarias the rationale he needed to move to Nicaragua, where he indeed became the territory’s new governor. Soto’s prestige grew, and he was granted some of the “best encomiendas” in Nicaragua. Campanon had died in 1527, but by 15 30 Soto and Hernan Ponce, the remaining partners of that earlier alli-

ance, were locally famous, often referred to simply as “the captains.” Soto subsequently became alcalde mayor of Leon, Nicaragua’s major town, but he disliked such a passive, restrictive office. Now a man of prestige and with seniority, yet still comparatively young at 35, Soto had a considerable personal following. His tendency toward independence, coupled with a growing restlessness, caused friction between him and Pedrarias. Moreover, Soto was beginning to consider the possibility of acquiring his own governorship.!8 The chain of events that changed the direction of Soto’s career had actually begun with the 1522 expedition of Pascual de Andagoya. In that year, Andagoya had sailed from Panama down the west coast of modern Colombia, eventually reaching the Rio San Juan some two hundred miles to the south. During their journey, Andagoya and his men encountered numerous Amerindians whom they began to refer to as the Virt (or Birt). Within a short time, the word became “Peru,” and eventually this was the name used to describe the entire region south of Panama.!9 Andagoya returned from his journey con-

vinced that further investigation of the region was warranted. He did not have the resources, however, to fit out another expedition. The solution was to sell his vessels to someone who might be interested in such an adventure. Two years later, Andagoya found three buyers in Panama for his ships. The

Hernando de Soto before Florida 185

three men, informal partners, were Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, and the priest Hernando de Luque, acting on behalf of one Gaspar de Espinosa, who would become the primary financial supporter of a projected expedition.2° Following the acquisition of Andagoya’s ships, Pizarro became the leading advocate for a new exploration. Born around 1475 in Trujillo, Estremadura, illegitimate and illiterate, the enterprising Pizarro had arrived in the newly discovered Spanish Indies in 1502. Until 1509 he had participated in a variety of adventures on the island of Hispaniola. Then he had moved to Darién, the “new frontier” of Spain’s fledgling American empire, where he joined Balboa in his explorations and became a member of the expedition that in 1513 discovered the Pacific. Pizarro honed his leadership skills in Panama and Nicaragua, then in 1522 learned from Andagoya of the probable native empire to the south. News of Hernan Cortés’s recent astounding conquest of the Aztec Tribute State had already reached Darién, and Pizarro was determined to emulate Cortés. If there was an Indian empire to the south, he was determined to conquer it. He joined with Almagro and Father Luque in the loose partnership to acquire Andagoya’s vessels.?!

Pizarro’s first exploratory probe to the south was initiated in November 1524. This expedition reached the Pacific coast of modern Colombia, where it experienced numerous hardships, compelling Pizarro to return to Panama in 1525. Since there had been no measurable gain from the expedition, Espinosa

withdrew his considerable financial support. Disappointed, Pizarro nevertheless persuaded Almagro and Father Luque to join him in a formal partnership, which was legally organized on ro March 1526. Pizarro then prepared to outfit yet another expedition, which departed eight months later. This second undertaking lasted from late 1526 to 1528. Pizarro’s progress far to the south on this second journey convinced him that a great native empire un-

questionably existed. Also on this second voyage, Pizarro captured and brought back several Amerindians; they would be taught Spanish so that they could be trained to act as interpreters on subsequent expeditions. ?2 Pizarro returned to Panama in 1528 with tales of the wealth and complexity of the native state he was now sure he would reach on his next try. Yet the second expedition was deemed a failure, and Pedrarias, having personally invested in the effort, as governor refused to sanction any further explorations by the group. Consequently, his two partners sent Pizarro to Spain to present their case to Carlos I. Pizarro departed in mid-15 28, received an audience with

the monarch, and was given important support and encouragement by Cortés, now also in Spain. On 26 July 1529 Pizarro received the Crown’s permission to conquer “Peru,” along with a statement of the conditions under

which the conquest was to proceed. After a successful recruiting mission through his native Estremadura, Pizarro left for Darién in January 1530, with his younger half brothers, Hernando, Juan, and Gonzalo Pizarro, and Fran-

186 Curt Lamar

cisco Martin de Alcantara among his recruits.23 Unfortunately for Pizarro, the cordial relationship among the partners now quickly deteriorated. When he received news of the Crown’s conditions for the conquest of Peru, Almagro was incensed. He sincerely believed that Pizarro had taken advantage of his presence at the audience with Carlos I to gain personal advantages for himself and his relatives.”4 It was only after he had been guaranteed the ti-

tle of adelantado and a governorship that Almagro agreed to continue his support of the effort and to participate in the upcoming adventure. The third expedition of Francisco Pizarro departed Panama on 27 December 1530. From the beginning, much difficulty beset the explorers. Disease was rampant and skirmishes with Amerindians were frequent. After struggling along the Pacific coastlines of modern Colombia and Ecuador, Pizarro’s force at last reached Isla Puna in May 15 31.25

The empire which the small group of Spanish conquistadors approached was a complex, sophisticated, extensive state. Actually relatively recent in its emergence, the Inca empire had its genesis in the Valle de Cuzco under the leadership of the extraordinary Pachacuti Inca (ruled 1438-71}, who upon his

accession to the throne had quickly inaugurated the military conquest of neighboring territories. Aided by his son and eventual successor, Tupa Inca,

Pachacuti had created a genuine imperial system by expanding his state northward to encompass all of modern Ecuador and a part of southern Colombia. Tupa succeeded his father as Inca in 1471 and continued to expand the boundaries of the empire, now to the south. By the time of Pizarro’s arrival in late 1531, the empire stretched over a vast geographic area.°

Purely by chance, Pizarro’s appearance on the fringe of the empire coincided with the culmination of a savage civil war which had raged in the state since 1527. In that year, the Inca Huayna Capac died (probably from smallpox brought into the northern part of the empire during Pizarro’s second journey), and soon afterward his eldest son and presumed heir, Ninan Cuyuchi, also succumbed. However, Huayna Capac had not specifically designated Ninan

as his successor because “the customary divination ceremonies were not clearly favorable to any of the main candidates.”2” Consequently, in Cuzco, the imperial capital, the next in line to the throne, Huascar, had himself declared the new Inca. But in the north, at Quito, where Huayna Capac had died, his favorite illegitimate son Atahualpa (indeed his favorite son overall) had

himself named governor of that northern territory, from which position he could effectively dominate the entire northern half of the empire.28 Civil war soon erupted between the two half brothers , bringing with it confusion, chaos, and demoralization. From the start, Atahualpa enjoyed the advantage, for he was supported by the leading military commanders of the for-

midable Inca army, the bulk of which was congregated in Quito when war broke out. Under the capable guidance of Generals Chalcuchima, Quisquis,

Hernando de Soto before Florida 187

and Raminavi, the well-trained, battle-experienced troops in Quito readily supported Atahualpa’s attempt to seize the imperial throne. Huascar, viewed as the legitimate Inca in the south, had the loyalty of the majority of the native Inca citizenry and was supported by the smaller military force in the capital at Cuzco. Worth noting is that by 15 32 the Inca army numbered approximately two hundred thousand men.?° At the same time Pizarro’s ships were inching their way down the Pacific coast to Isla Puna, the forces of Atahualpa and Huascar were massing to do battle. Huascar opted to strike first, in the north, hoping to catch Atahualpa’s larger, better-led army by surprise. When the two armies clashed, however, Atahualpa’s troops quickly prevailed. More important, Huascar was captured

during one of the skirmishes and was imprisoned in Cuzco by his half brother’s supporters.2° The victorious Atahualpa then left Quito and prepared to make his triumphal entry into Cuzco. He was in the mountain city of Cajamarca when word reached him that strangers were now in that empire, making their way slowly down the coastal plain. While this intense drama was unfolding in Peru, Soto remained an administrator in Leon, frustrated with inactivity. Territorial expansion to the northwest seemed no longer likely, as Spaniards moving southeast out of Mexico had confronted their comrades pushing up from Honduras and Nicaragua, with numerous clashes the result. And so a stalemate occurred. Then, in 1529 Bartolomé Ruiz, Pizarro’s respected navigator, had arrived in Nicaragua to recruit participants for Pizarro’s upcoming third expedition. In the following two years an increasingly large number of conquistadors responded to Pizarro’s call to adventure and promise of personal enrichment. Soto, whose reputation for bravery and daring was widespread, was among those particularly targeted by Ruiz. Indeed, Soto and Hernan Ponce both expressed interest in his proposal and decided to investigate the situation. Soto then conferred with Pedrarias and with Sebastian de Benalcazar. But Soto was notably wary of being subordinate to anyone else, especially Benalcazar.?! After mulling over Pizarro’s offer, Soto decided to organize a force of supporters | that would join Pizarro, who had already departed, in Peru. Soto’s decision was based on his conclusion that he had negotiated favorable terms for his participation in the adventure. Soto believed that he was to supply men and horses to the expedition, and he assumed that he would be named second in command to Pizarro, although his reason for making this assumption remains a mystery. Without question, the Pizarros did not wish to share power with anyone, in particular someone with the skills, ability, and charisma possessed by Soto. From the beginning, the Pizarros viewed Soto merely as a supplier and shipper. Thus Soto’s position in Peru was ambivalent. Although he did not have an independent command, neither was he totally subordinate to Pizarro.?2

188 Curt Lamar

Having decided to go to Peru, Soto was forced to delay preparations for his group’s departure until March 1531 because of the death of his long-time supporter, Pedrarias. Details concerning Soto’s actual preparations are hazy, but

Lockhart has concluded that most of the decisions were made by Hernan Ponce.33 In any case, preparations were effectively completed and the group finally departed in the fall of 1531. Benalcazar had also raised a force, which departed shortly before Soto’s. Both Soto and Benalcazar had briefly considered combining their respective groups, but their competitive natures ultimately prevailed. Sailing from Nicaragua, Soto made for Panama, where he enlarged his company, then continued the journey to Peru. His two ships arrived off Isla Puna on 1 December 15 31 with a total of one hundred men and an equal number of horses.*4

When Pizarro and his beleaguered companions witnessed the arrival of Soto’s force, they were overjoyed and relieved. Soto’s presence gave Pizarro confidence that he had sufficient strength to cross to the mainland and initiate his conquest of the Inca state. Pizarro had learned by this time of the civil conflict within the empire.35 In Soto, Pizarro knew he had without question one of the ablest horsemen among the conquistadors, for Soto’s equestrian feats were widely known throughout Darién and Nicaragua. Pizarro envisioned Soto as the leader of his mounted vanguard. Of equal importance was the fact that Soto “had brought fresh horses and a group of men personally loyal to him... who constituted a natural unit.’”3° Soto’s role, therefore, was defined as soon as he arrived in Peru. Pizarro had apparently considered another, more sinister use of Soto. He knew that Soto expected to acquire territory to govern as a result of his participation in the Pizarro expedition. Likewise, Soto had already conveyed to Pizarro his expectations that he would be named second in command, although he had subsequently accepted the relative freedom of his position as supplier and shipper. Given these circumstances, Pizarro and his half brothers had concluded that “Soto’s vanguard role [would get] him away from the center of power and out of the councils, they were willing to grant Soto the glory of going first, in the transparent hope that he would get killed.”3” Thus, from the very beginning, Soto became a stalking horse for the Pizarros, an

admittedly valuable stalking horse, but one that was initially considered expendable. Pizarro and his men, augmented by those of Soto and Benalcazar, crossed from Isla Puna to Tumbes on the mainland. Immediately Pizarro sent Soto and his cavalry troop ahead of the main body to reconnoiter the area. Leaving those who were ill or disabled at Tumbes, in early May 1532 Pizarro led the remainder of his group inland.38 Constantly alert, and with Soto’s cavalry in

the vanguard, Pizarro’s band made its way south along the coast. In midSeptember 1532 Pizarro founded San Miguel de Piura, the first permanent

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Spanish settlement in the Inca empire. Here he left behind sixty Spaniards as residents. Then Pizarro revealed his intention to push inland toward the

heart of the empire with only his remaining 62 horsemen and 106 foot soldiers.°?

Moving cautiously and deliberately, Pizarro and his troops marched from San Miguel to Zaran. Once again Pizarro dispatched Soto and his horsemen as a reconnaissance force, and they rode to nearby Caxas to ascertain if an Inca army was in the vicinity. One soldier with Soto, Crist6bal de Mena, later re-

called that everywhere there was evidence of the savagery of the civil war, and especially around Caxas.*° At this juncture, Atahualpa was in Cajamarca,

preparing to proceed to Cuzco to assume undisputed control of the empire. Here he learned that Pizarro and his men had landed on the coast. At that time, Atahualpa’s generals Chalcuchima and Quisquis had been engaged in the systematic killing of as many males of Huascar’s faction as possible, and in particular those with a stronger legitimate claim to the throne than that of Atahualpa.*! For this reason, Atahualpa did not immediately marshal his military might to move against these strangers. Instead, Atahualpa sent a subordinate to see these interlopers and to make an analysis of the threat, if any, they might pose. Coincidentally, Soto was in Caxas when Atahualpa’s emissary arrived there, and so he encouraged this diplomat to return with him to meet with Pizarro in Zaran. At Zaran the emissary revealed that Atahualpa was at that time in Cajamarca to the southeast, that he had a large and well-equipped army, and that Atahualpa was the supreme ruler of the Incas. Communication with the Incas was made possible because of the presence as interpreters of the young Amerindians that Pizarro had secured on his second journey. These young men had indeed

learned the Spanish language, and they served as valuable members of Pizarro’s company.* The Inca envoy impressed the Spaniards with his bearing and self-assurance. He seemed sincere when he invited Pizarro and his followers to travel to Cajamarca, where Atahualpa would receive his guests. Eager to meet this powerful ruler, Pizarro accepted the invitation and prepared to move his force to Cajamarca. Leaving Zaran, the Spaniards journeyed southeastward toward Motupe and then Sana. The countryside through which they passed was impressive, consisting of “plantations of sugar and cotton.” The group made its

way into the Andean foothills, where they observed the unique terraced fields on the hillsides. Soon they reached an altitude of 13,500 feet, which affected their respiration and perception.*? Departing from Sana, the Spaniards turned due east to begin their approach to Cajamarca. Along the route they

noticed numerous forts and watchtowers, which unnerved them. In fact, they had nothing to fear, for Atahualpa had already decided to permit these strange men to enter his domain. He therefore kept his powerful army at bay.

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On Friday, 15 November 1532, Pizarro and his entourage entered the lush, beautiful Valle de Cajamarca and approached the impressive city.“4 Long a favorite resort of the Inca nobility due to the hot springs nearby, Cajamarca was also the residence of many holy women (the acllas and mamaconas) who served the Inca hierarchy. When the Spaniards entered Cajamarca late that afternoon, it was nearly deserted. The main square of Cajamarca was surrounded by long buildings on three sides, each with a series of doors that

opened onto the square. Just as the troop entered the square, the weather became stormy, and there was a downpour of rain mixed with hailstones. Pizarro quickly dispatched Soto to represent him and the Spanish monarch in a meeting with Atahualpa, who was encamped with his huge army about four miles east of the town, at the hot springs. Soto selected fifteen cavalry and an interpreter and began his march to the Inca’s camp. The interpreter was Martin, considered the most dependable of the young men who performed in that role.45

Soon after the departure of Soto’s small troop of cavalry, Hernando Pizarro convinced his older half brother to allow him to take twenty more horse to reinforce Soto. After his group had overtaken Soto, Hernando rode with him along a causeway toward Atahualpa’s quarters. Crossing two shallow streams, the Spaniards now found themselves riding “with trepidation” through the midst of the assembled Inca warriors. Although heavily armed, the Inca soldiers gave no hint of hostility, and only watched these strangers with obvious curiosity. Having crossed the second stream, the thirty-seven Spaniards and Martin reached the outskirts of the camp. Then Soto, Martin, and Hernando Pizarro rode on without the others to find Atahualpa. Martin was mounted behind Soto. As the three approached Atahualpa’s pleasure house, Soto signaled to Hernando that he would go in alone. Glancing carefully around as he

entered the courtyard, Soto looked for Atahualpa among the assembled Incas.* In spite of the potential danger of the situation, Soto reportedly showed no fear or nervousness. He observed a courtyard filled with nobles, obviously Atahualpa’s attendants, and royal household women. Then he saw Atahualpa seated on a low stool. The supreme Inca wore a crimson borla, or fringe, on his forehead, between the eyes. Atahualpa seemingly failed to notice Soto,

keeping his eyes downcast. Nevertheless, through the interpreter Martin, Soto delivered his prepared speech, in which he assured the Inca of the friendly intentions of his leader and invited Atahualpa to visit Pizarro in Cajamarca the following day. Atahualpa made no response, but Soto persevered, handing a ring to the Inca as a gift. Throughout these proceedings Soto remained mounted, and Atahualpa remained seated on his stool. Hernando Pizarro now rode forward and, through the interpreter Martin, delivered essentially the same message given by Soto. Then Atahualpa spoke for the first

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time, informing the two men that he had been aware of the presence of the Spanish strangers from the moment of their arrival, after which Hernando repeated his half brother’s pledge of friendship and support. Although Atahualpa was undoubtedly curious about these strange men, he clearly did not fear them, as he had not launched his impressive army against the strangers. Speaking again, Atahualpa agreed to meet the Spanish leader in Cajamarca the next day. He then invited Soto and Hernando to dismount, but they declined. Since it was nearly sunset, the two men then requested the Inca’s permission to leave the camp.*’ Atahualpa indicated to the Spaniards that they could depart. But Soto, possibly playing on Atahualpa’s intense curiosity about his horse, proceeded to perform a feat of horsemanship that would become the stuff from which legends evolve. Martin was told to dismount, and Soto then spurred his horse into a full gallop around the small square. Next, he wheeled the steed around and rushed it toward Atahualpa, so as to demonstrate “all the beautiful movements of his charger, and his own excellent horsemanship.” When it seemed that Soto might actually trample the Inca with his mount, he reined in the horse, causing it to rear back on its haunches “so near the Inca that some of the foam that flecked [the] horse’s side was thrown on the royal garments.” The Inca appeared neither frightened nor shaken by this display, but several soldiers near him were seen to flinch. It was later reported that these men were put to death that night for showing fear in the presence of the strangers.48 After this performance by Soto, the Spaniards left Atahualpa’s camp and returned to Cajamarca to make their report to Pizarro. Their safe return relieved the Spaniards waiting in Cajamarca. Neverthe-

less, the situation in which they found themselves was serious. Pizarro learned from Soto and his half brother that the Inca army was fully armed and numbered about forty thousand men. A more realistic estimate might have placed Atahualpa’s army at eighty thousand experienced soldiers. As night came, the Spaniards could see the Inca campfires “as thick . . . as the stars of heaven.” Yet most of the men under Pizarro’s command were themselves experienced, trained soldiers who had either participated in the Reconquista or had fought throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. More-

over, in the early sixteenth century Spaniards in the western hemisphere were among the world’s best soldiers, “many with the conviction that they were on a crusade.’”*9 Still, Pizarro’s forces were woefully outnumbered and their fears were certainly justified. Guards were posted around the town for the duration of the night. That night, before he retired, Pizarro discussed with his lieutenants Atahualpa’s impending visit. There was talk of capturing Atahualpa, for tactical reasons. Obviously, the advantage gained by Cortés’s seizure and imprisonment of the Aztec ruler was fresh in the minds of these men. It was then deter-

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mined that Pizarro should take whatever action he saw fit, and the discussion was Closed when Pizarro exhorted his followers to be brave and have faith.°° The Spaniards then slept. Before dawn on 16 November 15 32 the Spaniards arose and made their final preparations for the visit of Atahualpa. Pizarro divided his forces, taking particular care to place his sixty cavalrymen in three groups in two of the buildings around the square. Soto, Hernando Pizarro, and Benalcazar commanded these respective mounted troops. Foot soldiers were placed in the other buildings, and each man, on foot or on horse, was ordered to remain hidden until a cannon was fired as the signal to emerge. Pedro Pizarro, a young cousin of the leader, remembered that he “saw many Spaniards urinate without noticing it out of pure terror.’’5!

After waiting for hours in this state of high tension and stress, the Spaniards learned around noon that Atahualpa was making his way toward Cajamarca. Atahualpa’s army lined the causeway and spread out across the meadows adjacent to the town. The Inca’s progress was slow and deliberate, and attendants swept the road before him. Late that afternoon, to the consternation of Pizarro and his men, it seemed that the Inca would pitch his tent for the night about one mile from the town. Pizarro quickly sent a messenger to urge Atahualpa to continue his processional into Cajamarca. Wavering momentarily, the Inca agreed to resume his short journey. As the sun was setting, Atahualpa ordered his troops to remain outside the city, and he entered the town square majestically attired and seated on a litter carried by eighty of his lords and accompanied by five or six thousand unarmed men who carried only ceremonial axes, slings, and some stones in pouches.*? He saw no Spaniards. Suddenly Father Vicente de Valverde walked from one of the doorways of a building facing the square and approached Atahualpa. Holding his missal in

one hand and a crucifix in the other, Father Valverde spoke to Atahualpa through an interpreter about the “true faith,” about the Spaniards’ God, and about the power of Spain’s king, in effect presenting the requerimiento to the Inca. When Father Valverde handed the Inca the missal, Atahualpa looked at it for a moment, then hurled it to the ground.53 Father Valverde then rushed from the square into one of the buildings and exhorted the Spanish Christians to right this grievous wrong. Upon Pizarro’s signal, a cannon was fired, and the Spanish troops poured from their hiding places to the sound of trumpets and shouts of “Santiago!” Caught completely by surprise, the Incas panicked. Nevertheless, Atahualpa’s litter was quickly surrounded by his loyal subjects, but in the end all were cut down. Ina frenzy, the Spaniards hacked and slashed at the fleeing Incas, even pursuing them from the square into the adjacent meadows. The bulk of the killing was done by the mounted force, led by Soto, Hernando Pizarro, and Benalcazar, for the

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Incas were terrified by the horses. Approximately six to seven thousand Incas

were slaughtered in this brief but bloody encounter, including numerous high-ranking officials. Among the Spaniards, only Pizarro was slightly wounded. He had received a gash on his hand in his effort to shield Atahualpa from harm.5* Most significantly, Atahualpa Inca was now Pizarro’s prisoner. Only a short distance away, the huge Inca force made no attempt to attack the Spaniards after the pandemonium erupted on the square. In fact, when the massed troops saw their comrades fleeing into the meadows, they also took flight.55

As night approached, Pizarro ordered round-the-clock cavalry patrols, for he was expecting a counterattack at any moment. Since he was the Spaniards’ most skilled horseman, Soto may have commanded these mounted patrols. Pizarro then met with Atahualpa, and was careful to show the Inca respect and consideration. He attempted to justify his actions to Atahualpa, then counseled his exhausted men, before ordering everyone to rest.°° In the morning Pizarro asked Soto to take thirty horse and inspect Atahualpa’s campsite. To his astonishment, Soto found the Inca army still assembled in the meadow and was puzzled as to why it had not yet counterattacked. Even more puzzling, many of the Inca troops now surrendered to Soto and his men. Many others disappeared into the surrounding hills. Soto returned to Cajamarca with his “prisoners,” as well as with some women,

llamas, gold, silver, and clothing from the camp, the first spoils of the conquest.°’ The excitement of the Spaniards when Soto returned with gold and silver was not lost on Atahualpa. To Pizarro he made an offer, the famous ransom arrangement. He would order his subjects to bring gold and silver from all parts of the empire, enough so that a large room in a building at Cajamarca would be filled with gold to a height he indicated with his outstretched hand. A smaller hut would be filled with silver. Moreover, Atahualpa guaranteed that his subjects would fulfill the terms of this agreement within two months.*® Pizarro readily accepted his offer. In his effort to bait the Spaniards, however, Atahualpa was himself ensnared. He had seriously underestimated their long-range objective. Not only were they eager to acquire the metals which for him had only minor value, but they intended also to subdue his land and impose their religion on his people. Yet Atahualpa must have believed he now only had to wait. Treated with deference and politeness, allowed to communicate with his subjects at will and openly, fascinated by his conversations with Pizarro and Soto, Atahualpa was content to bide his time and watch the promised treasure accumulate. Then he made another, ultimately fatal, blunder. Shortly after his capture, Atahualpa had been told by Pizarro that the Spaniards might bring Huascar from Cuzco to Cajamarca. Rather than reconcile

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with Huascar and join with him in a common effort against the invaders, Atahualpa ordered his half brother’s execution. By doing so, the Inca ensured that his empire would remain fragmented and thus more vulnerable to the Spanish threat.5? With Atahualpa a captive of the Spaniards and Huascar the victim of assassination, the collapse of the Inca empire seemed imminent. But the immediate priority of the Spaniards in Cajamarca was the acquisition of treasure, not the destruction of the Inca military machine. Atahualpa was urged to speed

up collection of the treasure, with hints that he could expect his freedom when the ransom was met. Yet there was still no evidence of increased collection activity throughout the empire by the end of 15 32. Furthermore, rumors

suggested that General Chalcuchima and his army were in the vicinity. Pizarro decided to act. In January 1533 he dispatched Hernando Pizarro and twenty cavalry south to investigate the rumor of Chalcuchima’s presence. In addition, Hernando was to journey to Pachacamac on the coastal desert in the far south to ascertain the wealth of that holy place. Next, at Atahualpa’s urging, Pizarro agreed

to send three men to Cuzco to evaluate the wealth of the imperial capital. Soto apparently participated in none of these journeys.© Guaranteed safe conduct by the Inca, these three agents made their way to Cuzco, surveyed the city, and returned to report that gold was everywhere. Meanwhile, as he was returning from Pachacamac, Hernando Pizarro learned that General Chalcuchima was at Jauja, some one hundred miles east in the highlands. Hernando turned inland, made contact with Chalcuchima, and confronted the general in Jauja.' In another remarkable stroke of luck for the Spaniards, after first refusing Hernando’s invitation to accompany him to Cajamarca, Chalcuchima reconsidered and agreed to do so. As Hemming has stressed, “Chalcuchima’s decision was a tragic mistake—one of the turning points in the collapse of resistance to the Spanish invaders. Here was the most formidable [Inca] commander ... handing himself over voluntarily into what proved to be captivity.”©2 Why did this happen?

In early 1533 Atahualpa’s military commanders found themselves on the horns of a wrenching dilemma. To protect the Inca from harm, they had to co-

operate with the strangers who had seized him. Furthermore, since Cuzco was their recent prize, the jewel of the civil war, they did not dare leave that area to attempt Atahualpa’s rescue. General Quisquis had thirty thousand Quitan troops at Cuzco; General Ruminavi was north of Cajamarca with a large force in friendly territory; and until his capitulation to Hernando Pizarro, General Chalcuchima commanded thirty-five thousand troops at Jauja.© Yet these experienced tacticians did nothing. They did not act because the Inca was revered as a divine being, and his safety was seen as paramount to the survival of the state.

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With Chalcuchima’s capture, the possibility of a Spanish defeat was made more remote. He was almost as valuable a captive as Atahualpa, but unlike the Inca, Chalcuchima was subjected immediately to mistreatment, abuse, and torture as the Spaniards intensified their search for the empire’s wealth. Soto was one of the Inca general’s chief torturers, since he was convinced that Chalcuchima had salvaged gold from Cuzco.“ Indeed, Hemming pressed the point that Soto was “as brutal as any other conquistador” and further argued that Soto’s “reputation among some modern writers of being more humane than his companions is undeserved.” Soto was in fact the prototypical conquistador and a man of his times. His ill-treatment of Chalcuchima reflected this reality. Like other men of his time, Soto hoped to achieve wealth and fame. Although his fame would come later, in Peru he felt his dreams of untold wealth were about to come true. By the spring of 1533 Pizarro was ready to begin the distribution of the Inca treasure that had accumulated in Cajamarca. But, in April, Almagro had arrived with an additional fifty infantry and one hundred fifty cavalry. These represented a welcome augmentation of the Spanish force, and the new arrivals were eager to gain their share of the wealth to come. Pressure mounted, therefore, for the distribution of the available wealth to the men of Cajamarca so that the march to Cuzco could begin. By July 15 33 nine forges were roaring furiously, melting away the wealth of the Incas to “lumps of gleaming metal.” Pizarro prepared to distribute the treasure among the men who had marched inland with him from San Miguel de Piura. After the royal fifth was set aside, each soldier’s share consisted of 45

pounds of gold and go of silver. The rank-and-file cavalrymen received two shares of each metal. For his services and rank, Soto received 180 pounds of gold and 360 pounds of silver, the third largest portion of the allocation. With this distribution completed, Pizarro contemplated Atahualpa’s fate. Since the Inca military had made no move to rescue Atahualpa, Pizarro asked himself whether the Inca’s presence was really a deterrent. Almagro and his men argued that Atahualpa’s presence was actually a liability since it invited an Inca attack. It was said that General Rumifavi and his men were coming to rescue the Inca. A council met to discuss the situation. Atahualpa vigorously denied that he had sent for Ruminavi, but Pizarro sent Soto and a fourman detail to scout the area where the Inca army was rumored to be. While Soto was away, a hurried decision was made to execute Atahualpa, who was garroted on 26 July 15 33, after complying with a request that he formally convert to Christianity.°’ Soto returned from his scouting mission to report that

there was no sign of Ruminavi’s army and was shocked to learn of Atahualpa’s demise. His anger was not so much humanitarian as it was utilitarian: Soto saw no value or benefit from the death of Atahualpa.* Pizarro then prepared for the march to Cuzco. Before departing Cajamarca,

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he approved the elevation of Huayna Capac’s eldest remaining legitimate son to Inca, and a coronation and ceremony of submission to the Spanish monarch was held over a two-day period on 28—29 July 1533. The young man in question was Tupac Huallpa, who for a brief period became a puppet ruler for the Spaniards.® With this puppet in tow, and with Chalcuchima under heavy guard, Pizarro’s forces began their march south. In leaving Cajamarca for Cuzco, “this tiny contingent was going to try to force its way into the heart of an enormous hostile empire, to seize its capital city.””9 Breaking camp on 11 August 1533, Pizarro’s force traveled through some of Peru’s most spectacular country as it marched toward Jauja by way of Cajabamba, Huamachuco, Andamarca, and the Huaylas Valley. Approaching Jauja, Pizarro learned that Chalcuchima’s army was encamped outside the town. To reassure his men, Pizarro had Chalcuchima placed in chains, and at Bomb6on in early October 15 33 he divided his force into two parts. The slower moving elements—infantry, artillery, tents, and treasure—would follow behind the seventy-five mounted troops led by Pizarro, Soto, Almagro, and Juan Pizarro.”! By 11 October the cavalry force had reached the heights above Jauja. There was indeed a large army present. A few soldiers of this Quitan army of some 35,000 men were in the process of torching Jauja when the Spaniards appeared. The Spanish cavalry charged boldly into the town, routed the Quitans, and drove them across a small river to join the bulk of the army. When the main body of the enemy force hesitated, the Spaniards pressed forward, slaughtering a considerable number of troops.”2 As the battered natives fled, Pizarro’s men secured Jauja.

The Spaniards paused in Jauja for only a short time. Then Soto was appointed to lead a small, mobile troop of cavalry ahead of the main body to secure or repair the critically important fiber-rope suspension bridges that had been built by the Incas to cross the deep river chasms that marked the landscape. It was these bridges, along with the superb Inca roads, that enabled the Spaniards to travel through terrain that would have otherwise been virtually impassable.’3 Pressing forward, Soto’s contingent noted signs of a large enemy concentration as it approached Vilcashuaman. Often the road was blocked by boulders and felled trees, and some bridges were destroyed. Fortunately, the numerous rivers in this region were shallow and could be forded. Soto kept up a furious pace.”4 He and his men reached Vilcashuaman on 29 October 1533. The large Quitan army had been completely unaware of Soto’s presence, and the Spaniards enjoyed total surprise as they charged into Vilcashuaman. Many of the native soldiers were hunting nearby, but alerted to the sudden threat they rushed back to the town. On the town’s outskirts, Soto’s group joined battle with the Quitans as he ordered his horsemen to attack the enemy warriors on the hillsides. Soto’s battle plan reflected his own military

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skill and insight. As one authority has observed, Soto was “one of the best lances” among the Spaniards and was “particularly good at the mobile tactics of Indian fighting. His whole tendency was to rush ahead, to be first to do battle.””5 This tendency was again demonstrated at Vilcashuaman, and the enemy was routed with significant losses. Having forced the Quitan army to continue its retreat toward Cuzco, Soto now disobeyed Pizarro. Ordered to hold at Vilcashuamén until the main force could join up with the cavalry, Soto opted to push forward instead. He and his cavalry crossed the Abancay and Apurimac Rivers and moved into the Vilcaconga area, about fifteen miles from Cuzco. Apparently Soto wished to be the first of Pizarro’s lieutenants to enter Cuzco. As he and his horsemen approached Vilcaconga, Soto determined that a large force of the enemy lay in

wait for him. Nevertheless, he urged his men into a strategic pass before nightfall.’ Pushing through the pass, the Spaniards began to ascend the steep hillside of Vilcaconga. The heat was intense, the high elevation caused shortness of breath, and the steep climb was exhausting. The horses were panting heavily, so their riders dismounted.’”” Suddenly shrill, terrifying screams shattered the silence. Everywhere they looked, the Spaniards saw enemy soldiers rushing toward them. On this day, Saturday, 8 November 15 33, a Spanish force in Peru teetered for the first time on the razor’s edge of disaster. Three to four thousand Amerindians swarmed over the fatigued Spaniards and their exhausted mounts, rain-

ing slingstones on them with aggravating accuracy. Native soldiers grabbed the tails and legs of the horses. Five Spaniards went down, victims of the superb Inca weaponry used for close combat: clubs, star-headed maces, and battle axes. Soto struggled to restore order and finally effected a retreat to level ground below. When some warriors followed, Soto ordered a charge but the horses were too tired. Twenty of the natives nevertheless were cut down by the hard-pressed Spaniards.’ It was nearly dark, and the combatants disengaged for the night. Each group pitched camp, close to one another, and tried to rest before the dawn. The Spaniards were fearful and apprehensive: Soto walked among his men, urging them to have courage and faith. The Amerindians were aggressive and confident: the native troops shouted a constant stream of insults at the Spaniards. Few slept and all kept weapons close at hand.7?

Shortly after midnight “the call of a European trumpet” suddenly pierced the darkness. Sent to follow Soto by a concerned Pizarro, Almagro and thirty horsemen alerted their countrymen to their approach. Soto’s men returned the signal, and the two groups of Spaniards joyfully embraced. Several hours later, when the sun rose, Soto’s rejuvenated band and the Almagro troop prepared for battle. The Amerindians now realized, to their dismay, that the en-

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emy had received reinforcements, and in the heavy morning mist the native army seemed to melt away.®° Shocked but ecstatic, the Spaniards knew that the way to Cuzco now lay open to them. Although his troops were overcome with relief and joy, Soto must have been deeply embarrassed by this narrowly averted disaster. Indeed, had the Inca army pressed its early advantage, it probably could have gained the vic-

tory. Nevertheless, thanks to Almagro’s timely arrival, the battle at Vilcaconga did little to tarnish Soto’s reputation. When Pizarro arrived at Vilcaconga on 13 November 15 33, he was informed

by Soto and Almagro that they were certain Chalcuchima was the direct cause of the continued Inca resistance. Pizarro concurred with his lieutenants, and at nearby Xaquixaguana, a defiant Chalcuchima was burned at the stake. By coincidence, on the same day a son of Huayna Capac, Manco, walked into the Spanish camp. Manco hoped the Spaniards would help him rid Cuzco of the Quitans. Since Tupac Huallpa had died at Jauja, his appearance seemed almost providential to the Spaniards. Pizarro realized that he could use Manco as a puppet ruler to replace Tupac Huallpa.®! The Spaniards now prepared for the long-anticipated final march into Cuzco. Approaching the capital, they could see that the Quitan army under General

Quisquis was stationed in the area. Consequently, Pizarro decided to move directly against Quisquis’s assembly. Once again Spaniard and Amerindian joined in battle, with the former considerably outnumbered but on horseback. Once again the Spaniards prevailed, and the native army retreated.®2 On 15 November 15 33 Pizarro led his men into the imperial capital city of the Incas. Initially the Spaniards feared an attack or resistance, but they were faced with neither. Nevertheless, Pizarro set up camp right in the city square and ordered his men to remain alert and on guard, a status that was maintained for a month.®3 Soto and the other commanders were given more comfortable quarters. Soto, for example, received Huayna Capac’s palace, Amaru Cancha, on the main square.®* Significantly, on 16 November Pizarro proclaimed Manco the new Inca. With Manco in Pizarro’s camp, it was clear that the Spanish leader was openly supporting the Cuzco (Huascar} faction in the

still-simmering civil war. When he learned that Quisquis had moved his army to the upper Apurimac River southwest of Cuzco, Pizarro suggested toa compliant Manco that he lead an army against the Quitans. Soto, with fifty cavalry, agreed to accompany Manco and his five thousand men on this mission. In an indecisive campaign that lasted ten days, Soto and Manco forced Quisquis to move down the river, that is, north. Then Soto returned to Cuzco,

anticipating another distribution of wealth.85 The melting of the treasure gathered in Cuzco began in December 1533 and ended in March 1534, when the allocations were made. In early 1534, before the melting process was completed, Soto was sent on

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another mission. Pizarro considered Quisquis’s move down the Apurimac a threat to Jauja; consequently, he sent Soto and Almagro, with fifty cavalry plus an allied Inca army of twenty thousand, to protect the Spaniards at Jauja.

, Due to numerous delays, this combined Spanish—Inca force did not reach Jauja until March. When Soto and Almagro arrived, they learned that the small Spanish garrison at Jauja had managed to repulse Quisquis’s assault. The Quitan army was now near Bombon. Soto pursued Quisquis for a short time, but returned to Jauja when Quisquis decided to stand and hold a strategic pass.86 Soon afterward, Pizarro and Manco arrived in Jauja. Quisquis’s presence sixty miles from Jauja bothered Pizarro. He therefore sent Soto on what would be his last military assignment in Peru. Soto and Gonzalo Pizarro, with fifty horsemen, along with Manco’s five-thousandman army, marched to Bombén to engage Quisquis’s Quitans. In mid—May 1534 this Spanish—Inca ensemble reached Bombon, only to discover that Quisquis was making his way north. Soto pursued Quisquis to a place just north of Huanuco, but when it became apparent that Quisquis was abandoning central Peru, Soto returned with his men to Jauja early in June,®’ then went on to Cuzco. In July 15 34 Pizarro named Soto his lieutenant governor in Cuzco and made him responsible for the well-being of all in the city, Incas and Spaniards alike. Soto now took as his mistress an Inca woman, one Leonor Coya, or Chumbe y

Llaya, who was the daughter of Huayna Capac and had been one of Atahualpa’s “wives.” Soto referred to her as dona Leonor, and when a daughter was born she too was named Leonor. Soto would soon depart, but his daughter would remain in Peru, eventually marrying a Spanish notary named Garcia Garrillo.88 During his brief tenure as acting governor of Cuzco, between July 1534 and August 1535, Soto increasingly had to deal with the problem of mounting ani-

mosity between the Pizarro and Almagro factions in the city. Ever since Pizarro’s journey to Spain in 1528 to gain Crown support for the southern expedition, Almagro had harbored a deep resentment against him. Then in 1535, word reached Cuzco that Carlos I had awarded “northern Peru” to Pizarro and “southern Peru” to Almagro. Immediately, the Almagro element asserted that Cuzco was part of this southern grant, to the consternation of the Pizarro group.®? As the dispute intensified, Soto began to lean toward Almagro’s faction. Probably still grateful for Almagro’s appearance at Vilcaconga, Soto was also interested in Almagro’s planned expedition to the south, into modern Chile. He clearly wished to participate, either as a partner or as leader, or both.% But when Almagro selected another man to lead the southern expedition, Soto decided that there was no future for him in Peru. After another melting of the Inca treasure, from which he received a substantial portion, Soto pre-

200 Curt Lamar pared to return to Spain. In August 1535 he departed from Lima, the new capital city founded by Pizarro on § January of that year, and by the spring of 15 36 he had reached Spain.?! Once in the homeland, Soto asked the Crown to grant him either the governorship of Quito or that of Guatemala. Neither of these was forthcoming. He also requested the title of adelantado and sought membership in the Order of Santiago. Actually, it made no difference to Soto what area might be given to

him to govern. He simply hungered for further adventure in the Indies; he missed the excitement of exploration and conquest.®2 While waiting for the Crown’s decision concerning his requests, Soto in 1536 married Pedrarias’s daughter, dona Isabel de Bobadilla, in Valladolid. Because he was quite wealthy, possessing over 100,000 pesos from his adventure in Peru alone, and due to his unquestioned bravery and credentials, Soto in April 1537 at last was named governor of Cuba, received the title of adelantado, and was made a member of the Order of Santiago. Significantly, he was also granted permission to conquer “Florida.”93 Accompanied by his new wife, Soto returned to the New World to prepare for his next expedition. The supreme irony of Hernando de Soto’s life and career was about to be fulfilled. In his early forties, Soto had already achieved an enviable record. An adventurous, ambitious, volatile, and, in many ways, cruel man, Soto lived in a world where many viewed such qualities as assets. In Panama and Nicaragua as a youth and young man, he proved to be a survivor and an opportunist.

In Peru he participated in the most important stages of a conquest that remains “the most astonishing military feat in history.”°4 He was indispensable to Pizarro’s undertaking, indeed was the dominant player to a large extent. Yet ultimately he would be remembered not for these deeds but for a failed expedition which led to his death near the Mississippi River.

Notes 1. James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), 192; John H. Parry and Robert G. Keith, eds., New Iberian World: A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early Seventeenth Century, 5 vols. (New York: Times Books, 1984}, 3:49. This massive work is a valuable, indispensable source of reference for any investigator of Latin American history from discovery until the early 1600s. 2. Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 3:5. 3. Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 3:5—6. 4. Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 3:5—6; many other specialists give the date of discovery as 25 September 1513. See, for example, John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970}, 23. Parry and Keith based their date

Hernando de Soto before Florida 201

of discovery on information from the chronicler Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés.

5. For an excellent description of the organization of the Pedrarias expedition to the New World in 1513, with reference to participants who would later become famous there, see Justin Winsor, ed., Narrative and Critical History of America, 8 vols. (Boston: Sampson, Low, 1884-89}, 2:196—-97, 211. Arthur Helps, in his masterful study The

Spanish Conquest in America and Its Relation to the History of Slavery and to the Government of the Colonies, ed. M. Oppenheimer, 4 vols. (London, 1900~—1904), re-

ferred to the Pedrarias expedition’s participants as the “most brilliant company that ever left Spain” (1:261).

6. Due to growing concern about Spanish colonists’ alleged mistreatment of the Amerindians, in late 1513 pressure by anumber of influential Spaniards was brought to bear on Ferdinand to halt the preparations of Pedrarias’s expedition. Aware that the king had invested in the expedition, this group of concerned citizens sought from him guarantees that the natives would not be subjected to unjust mistreatment or warfare. Ferdinand appointed a committee of theologians to study the issue of mistreatment of

Amerindians, temporarily suspending final preparations for the departure of Pedrarias’s fleet until the issue was settled. Martin Fernandez de Enciso received royal permission to address the theologians meeting at Valladolid. On the basis of his experience in the New World, Enciso argued in favor of the subjugation of the Amerindians by the Spaniards, citing the Bible to justify his position. Enciso further argued that the Church would have the opportunity to join the Crown in carrying the “true faith” to the Amerindian pagans. Out of this argument came that unique document known as the requerimiento. In the end, Pedrarias’s expedition was allowed to depart. See Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (1949; reprint, Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), 30-32. 7. Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 3:49. 8. William Hickling Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru (1847; reprint, New York: Book League of America, 1934), 68. 9. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 190-91. 10. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 192. As Lockhart notes, Campanon was killed in 1527 in Nicaragua but his memory remained dear to Soto; Hernan Ponce, more a manager than an adventurer, complemented Soto, and the two were associated until after Peru. 11. Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 3:49—50; the officer charged with the arrest of Balboa was Francisco Pizarro, who had accompanied him on the expedition that resulted in the discovery of the Pacific Ocean (“the Other Sea’); see 3:62. 12. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 192. 13. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 192. 14. Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 3:86; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 192; for a vivid contemporary description of the conquest of Nicaragua by the Cordoba expedition in 1524, see Pascual de Andagoya, Narrative of the Proceedings of Pedrarias Davila in the Provinces of Tierra Firme or Castilla de Oro. .. , trans. Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society Series 1, 34 (London, 1865], 31-39 passim.

202 Curt Lamar 15. Andagoya, Narrative, 36. 16. Andagoya, Narrative, 36. 17. Andagoya, Narrative, 36—37. A contemporary of Soto, Alonso Martin de Don Benito, in a petition written after the conquest of Peru, recalled that he witnessed the return of Soto to Darién after the clash with the defiant Cérdoba, and he recounted that Soto personally informed Pedrarias of Cérdoba’s treachery in Nicaragua; see Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 3:96. Another contemporary account of Soto’s role in the Cordoba affair in Nicaragua is given in Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés’s Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y Tierra-Firme del mar Océano. .. , vol. 4, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, in Biblioteca de Autores Espanioles, vols. 117—21 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1959], 3:302—7, 365—68 passim. Oviedo noted that prior to Cérdoba’s defiance of Pedrarias, Soto had assisted him in a territorial conflict with Davila, resisting Davila’s attempt to enter Nicaragua from Honduras. In the process Soto was captured, but Davila released him and allowed him to return to Cérdoba’s service. It goes without saying that Soto was an opportunist of the first rank and watched for a chance to advance or gain an advantage whenever possible. 18. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 193. It was during his period of prominence in Nicaragua that Soto had his first recorded sexual liaison with an Amerindian woman. From this union was born an illegitimate daughter, dona Maria de Soto, a casta about whom little is known. See idem, 199. It would not be his last liaison or his last mestizo daughter: see Goodman and Wunder, this volume. 19. Hemming, Incas, 24. 20. Hemming, Incas, 24. 21. Michael H. Hart, The roo: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History (New York, 1978), 343-44; Prescott, in his monumental study of the conquest of the Inca empire, Conquest of Peru, describes Pizarro’s early life and career in what remains the standard account (pp. 69—72). John A. Crow, in his The Epic of Latin America, rev. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1971), perpetuated some of the mythology about Pizarro that is often accepted as fact; for example, he suggested that the reason the exact date of Pizarro’s birth is not known is because “neither parent was anxious to commemorate the event” (p. 92}; again, Pizarro’s mother “abandoned him on the streets where a sow wet-nursed him. Later he became a swineherd, one of the most despised of all occupations” {idem}; still further, “when he was sixteen or seventeen years old one of the pigs he was watching got away, and [Pizarro] was so afraid to face his employer that he fled the country and next showed up fighting in the wars in Italy” (idem). Lockhart has almost single-handedly refuted this kind of exaggeration in his Men of Cajamarca.

22. Hemming, Incas, 24-25. Hemming’s account is the modern complement to Prescott’s achievement. Hemming had access to many archival sources that were unavailable to Prescott, and he made admirable use of these. Also, Hemming in his account deals with a much broader canvas than did Prescott. 23. Hemming, Incas, 26—27; A. Hyatt Verrill, Great Conquerors of South and Central America (New York: New Home Library, 1943), 217; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 106-8, I1IO-—II.

24. Hemming, Incas, 27. 25. Hemming, Incas, 27. Prescott gave the date of departure as January 1531 (p. 113}.

Hernando de Soto before Florida 203 26. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 1-65, gives an almost poetic description of the Inca empire before the coming of the Spaniards. He covers geography, political organization, social stratification, economic development, flora, and fauna in his inimitable style. A

recent popular account of the sophistication and complexity of the Inca empire is Loren MclIntyre’s The Incredible Incas and Their Timeless Land (Washington Dc: National Geographic Society, 1975). 27. Ann Kendall, Everyday Life of the Incas (New York: Dorset Press, 1973}, 202. 28. Hemming, Incas, 28—29; Kendall, Everyday Life, 202. 29. Kendall, Everyday Life, 203; Hemming, Incas, 29; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 24.

30. Kendall, Everyday Life, 203. Hemming makes the important point that “the Incas did not stress primogeniture. They were concerned only that the new Inca should be of royal blood and fit to rule. .. . Most of the eleven Incas who had ruled up to this time had succeeded only after [a] struggle [for the throne], and the result was a line of remarkable rulers” (p. 29}. The civil war between Atahualpa and Huascar, then, was not the political aberration within the Inca empire that some writers have suggested. 31. Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 3:110; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 190. 32. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 194. 33. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 194. 34. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 194; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 118. 35. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 118. 36. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 191, 194, 195. 37. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 195. 38. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 128; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 195. 39. Hemming, Incas, 27; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 129. Hemming contends that San Miguel de Piura was founded in September 1532, although Prescott maintained that the town was established in the late spring or early summer of that year. 40. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 113; Hemming, Incas, 30. 41. Kendall, Everyday Life, 203. 42. Hemming, Incas, 30; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 134. Their ability to render ab-

stract concepts in translation, however, would be called into question on more than one occasion. 43. Hemming, Incas, 31. Parry and Keith make the interesting observation that “the savagery that marked the invasion from the start. ..may. .. be attributed partly to the terrain: its harsh intractability, its terrifying scale, its dizzying attitudes, its swooping baffling contrasts, and the bleak, barren distances that lay between its inhabited areas” (New Iberian World, 4:xv). Certainly the Spaniards in Pizarro’s party had never experienced anything comparable to this formidable landscape. 44. Hemming, Incas, 31; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 137—42. 45. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 143; Hemming, Incas, 32—33. 46. Hernando Pizarro, ‘Letter from Hernando Pizarro to the Royal Audience of Santo | Domingo,” in Reports on the Discovery of Peru, trans. Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society Series 1, 47 (London, 1872), 113-27 passim; Hemming, Incas, 33—34; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 143; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 144. 47. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 143—44; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 144; Hemming, Incas, 34—35; Kendall, Everyday Life, 203; Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, Royal Commen-

204 Curt Lamar taries of the Incas, and General History of Peru, 2 vols., trans. with intro. Harold V. Livermore (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966], 2:673; for a contemporary eyewitness account of this meeting between Soto and Atahualpa, and of other major events of the conquest, see report of Francisco de Jérez, in Reports on the Discovery of Peru, trans. Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society Series, 1, 47 (London, 1872), 1-109 passim. 48. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 144-45, Hemming, Incas, 35; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 144. Lockhart suggests that Soto intended not only to impress the Inca but also to frighten him (p. 195); interestingly, in spite of the numerous eyewitness accounts of this equestrian display, of the soldiers flinching, and of their execution, Garcilaso asserted that the story was not true (2:699-70); the evidence strongly indicates that Garcilaso was in error. 49. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 145; Hemming, Incas, 36. 50. Hemming, Incas, 37; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 145-47. 51. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 10; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 147—48; Hemming,

Incas, 37; Pedro Pizarro, Relacién del descubrimiento y conquista de los reinos del Peru, in Cronicas del Peru, ed. Juan Peréz de Tudela, vol. 5 (Madrid, 1963-65], 227. 52. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 149; Hemming, Incas, 38, 39.

| 53. Hemming, Incas, 39—40, 41; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 150-51; for the English text of the requerimiento see Helps, Spanish Conquest, 1:264—67. 54. Hemming, Incas, 41-43; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 152-53. 55. Hemming, Incas, 43. 56. Hemming, Incas, 44; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 154-55. 57. Hemming, Incas, 44-46. 58. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 156-57; Hemming, Incas, 47-48. 59. Hemming, Incas, 53—54; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 158-59. 60. Hemming, Incas, 55-57, 62, 63; George Bankes, Peru before Pizarro (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1977], 10, 12; Soto was not a member of Hernando Pizarro’s expedition to Pachacamac or one of the three agents sent to Cuzco, although several writers placed him in both groups. As to his participating in Hernando’s journey, none of the contemporary chroniclers mention his name in conjunction with it. Given Soto’s prominence, these observers certainly would have made note of his presence. Parry and Keith simply

are mistaken in their contention that Soto was sent to Pachacamac (New Iberian World, 4:82n.}). Also, Garcilaso’s account (History of Peru, 2:694—95) of Soto’s journey

to Cuzco as one of the three agents, upon which later authors obviously depended, is completely erroneous, as Lockhart has clearly noted (Men of Cajamarca, 12). 61. Hemming, Incas, 64—66. 62. Hemming, Incas, 66—67. 63. Hemming, [ncas, 65. 64. Hemming, /ncas, 70. 65. Hemming, /ncas, 555n.

66. Hemming, Incas, 73; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 154; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 195; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 171. 67. Hemming, Incas, 74-78; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 174-75. 68. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 195. What still remains unknown, as Hemming points out (Incas, 84}, is whether Ruminavi’s army was in fact near Cajamarca. Cer-

Hernando de Soto before Florida 205

tainly some Spaniards believed it was approaching and panicked. More than likely these were the recent Almagro arrivals. Soto, reconnoitering from Cajamarca to Caxas and back, would have discovered this large force, and he had seen no signs of it. 69. Hemming, /ncas, 86—90. 70. Hemming, Incas, 90. 71. Hemming, Incas, 90-94; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 155; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 181-84. 72. Hemming, Incas, 94—95; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 155. 73. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 184; Hemming, Incas, 1o1-2. 74. McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 155; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 184. Pedro Sancho gives an engrossing, firsthand account of Soto’s reconnaissance out of Jauja and on to Vilcashuaman in Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 4:101-5. Hemming (Incas, 102-— 3) and Kendall (Everyday Life, 203) respectively offer complementary explanations as to why the large Quitan army did not, as logic would suggest, destroy as many bridges as possible and move back to the north where General Ruminavi’s army could be joined, and why the Spaniards were not denied food and supplies along the route from Jauja to Vilcashuaman. As Hemming notes, the Quitan force was determined to maintain the Atahualpa faction’s hold on Cuzco, hence its move south from Jauja. Moreover, if it destroyed the bridges it would eliminate its only means of escape to the north, if that need arose. Kendall points out that the people in this region had supported Huascar during the civil conflict and viewed the Spaniards, momentarily, as liberators and allies. 75. Hemming, Incas, 103—4; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 191. 76. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 184. 77. Hemming, Incas, 106; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 155. 78. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 184—85; Hemming, Incas, 106-7; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 155, 158. 79. Hemming, Incas, 108; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 185. 80. Hemming, Incas, 108; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 185-87; McIntyre, Incredible Incas, 158. 81. Hemming, Incas, 109, 118; Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 4:87. 82. Hemming, [ncas, 110, 116. 83. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 189; Hemming, Incas, 117, 120-21. 84. Hemming, Incas, 122; in his minutes of the cabildo meeting of 26 March 1534 in Cuzco, Pizarro recorded that Soto was formally granted two solares (lots) in “Amaru Cancha where he is now living with the frontage on the plaza that he has.” See Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 4:120. 85. Parry and Keith, New Iberian World, 4:87; Hemming, Incas, 126. 86. Hemming, Incas, 138—40. 87. Hemming, Incas, 140-41. 88. Hemming, Incas, 144; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 199; Clements R. Markham, A History of Peru (1892; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1968}, 60. See also Goodman and Wunder, this volume. 89. Hemming, Incas, 174. 90. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 196—97; as Lockhart has indicated, “Soto was ex-

206 Curt Lamar ceedingly anxious to get some control of the Chile expedition. He is said to have offered Almagro 200,000 pesos if he would name him general; apparently Soto. . . hoped that Almagro would stay in Cuzco and leave the entire undertaking to him. Almagro seems to have sensed that Soto was too eager for, and capable of, independence. In the end, he chose another man as his chief lieutenant and accompanied the expedition himself.” 91. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 197; Hemming, Incas, 175-77. 92. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 197-98. 93. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 198-99. 94. Hart, The 100, 347.

Ignacio Avellaneda Hernando de Soto and His Florida Fantasy

No Spanish expedition has received so much attention from government agencies and anthropologists alike as Hernando de Soto’s Florida venture. Its purposes, organization, and financing, however, have yet to be studied in the same detail as have other expeditions of that time. This paper attempts to fill

that void and to clarify certain previously distorted or ignored aspects of Soto’s expedition. The Spanish conquest, having won the main Caribbean Islands by the be-

ginning of the sixteenth century, thrust toward the continent in two main drives, one to Panama and a second to Mexico. The thrust into Mexico vanquished the Aztec empire and then continued south into Central America, later moving north to California and beyond. The drive into Panama expanded into other areas of Central America and south to the South Sea, culminating in the subjugation of the Inca empire in 15 32. The immensely profitable Peruvian conquest led to the explorations of Chile, Quito, and Popayan, and indirectly to the exploration, but not to the conquest, of Florida. Other private ventures organized in Spain in the 1520s and 1530s were intended to control the northern coast of South America, arching from northwest of the Amazon to the Gulf of Darién. Most of the expeditions launched after the conquests of Peru and Mexico

had common purposes. Aside from the obvious temptation to explore the areas adjacent to already vanquished territories, the men leading those explorations hoped to find a water passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a short land route from the Atlantic coast of South America to Peru, and, most

importantly, an expedient means of reaching the gold veins which supposedly grew under the earth in profusion around the equator, just as silver veins were thought to proliferate close to the two tropics.! The conquest of the various provinces of Venezuela and the New Kingdom of Granada, parts of Central America, and even Tucuman and Paraguay, resulted from those aims. In contrast, the purposes of the Florida exploration are not so apparent. Hernando de Soto, future leader of the most thorough Florida exploration

208 Ignacio Avellaneda

without conquest, was able to support his social and political ambitions with the spoils he had collected in Peru. Like other leaders who served under the great captains of the Spanish conquest and later attained renown, Soto concluded that a better future awaited him directing his own conquests outside Peru than in continuing as a secondary figure under Francisco Pizarro. However, when he decided to lead his own venture, the supposedly prime areas of the Indies had already been assigned to others. For that reason, in 15 36 he peti-

tioned the Crown for either the second-rate conquest of an undefined Pacific coastal area north of Ecuador, or for the governorship of Guatemala. When both of these options proved unavailable, Soto had to content himself with his third choice, the conquest of Florida.” A royal grant gave Soto the exclusive right to conquer, pacify, and populate the huge Florida territory that extended from the Rio de las Palmas on the Gulf of Mexico to Terra Nova, or New Foundland. He was empowered to es-

tablish cities and forts there, and to distribute among the conquerors any booty obtained, as well as town lots, farmlands, and Indian work and tribute. He was to be, during his lifetime, the salaried adelantado, governor, and captain-general of a territory bordering a shoreline of his choice that was to be about five hundred miles long, and he was to enjoy other economic benefits. In addition, he was named governor of the island of Cuba.

Parts of the Florida coast had been visited previously by Juan Ponce de Leén, Diego de Miruelo, Francisco de Garay, Lucas Vazquez de Ayll6n—who established the short-lived town of San Miguel de Gualdape—Estéban Gomez, and Panfilo de Narvaez, among others. These explorations led to the belief that Florida concealed a water route to the Pacific, fertile lands, waters teeming with fish, exceedingly large populations of Indians who could be enslaved for profit, and pearls, but only moderate amounts of silver and only possibly a very little gold. Nothing compared with the riches of a Silver Sierra, the domains of the White King, an Eldorado, or large lodes of precious metals were at the time thought to exist in Florida.2 What is more, the legends of Quivira and the Seven Cities of Cibola postdated Soto’s choice of Florida, as did any account of riches that might have been told by the survivors of the Narvaez expedition.4 Not that these survivors did not influence Soto’s enterprise; they did, but only after he had been granted Florida. Conquests were based in varying degrees on dreams and hopes—in other words, fantasies. Thus despite the limited possibilities that Soto’s third choice seemed to offer, he began to organize his expedition to Florida. According to three of the Florida chroniclers, Soto had about 100,000 gold pesos which he had collected in Peru to back his venture.® The actual sum he spent in Spain and Cuba readying the Florida expedition was certainly not that high, perhaps not more than 50,000 gold pesos.® This was a sum large enough, however, to cover all expenses without the assistance of merchants

Hernando de Soto and His Florida Fantasy 209

or any of the other sorts of external financing available at that time.’ Although Soto did not have to depend on external financing, “internal financing” provided by his companions on the expedition was an important source of funds. Spanish conquests of the New World after Columbus were, as a rule, private enterprises effected by groups of individuals. Everyone involved, except for the priests, was to pay for his own passage from Spain to the Indies and his

maintenance during any stopovers, and was to contribute his own arms, horses, slaves, and other equipment and provisions that might be needed on the way. Save for a few exceptions, no one received a salary, but each was promised a share of the collected booty according to his rank, which at times was defined by the size of his initial investment.’ The same rules seem to have applied to Soto’s expedition, except in certain aspects that will be noted. Two Florida chroniclers indicate that a significant number of men, several

of whom are mentioned by name, risked their fortunes to go to Florida.’ These writers’ accounts are confirmed by contemporary historical sources that contain other examples of persons financing their own participation in this conquest, regardless of rank, and even assisting others to the same end. The brothers Francisco and Garcia Osorio sold their properties in Valladolid to pay their way. Baltasar de Gallegos spent more than 4,000 ducats in slaves, arms, and horses, as well as in equipping and maintaining several servants he took along. Gonzalo Méndez paid his way, and so did Alonso Vazquez, who added that he maintained himself while in Cuba also. Juan Cordero affirmed that he had gone to Florida with his arms and a double set of horses. Sebastian de Villegas Prieto said he had purchased his arms and horses, and two witnesses he called to substantiate his assertion, Juan de San Vicente and Alvaro Zambrano, added that they covered their own expenses also, the latter noting that at that time no salaries were paid to his kind of soldier. Rodrigo Vazquez

said he covered all expedition costs incurred by him, and so did Juan de Anasco, who took five horses, one female and two male slaves, three sets of arms, many live pigs, and sufficient provisions to Florida.!° The above citations confirm that Soto's expedition followed the custom that each man was to pay his own costs. Yet Soto deviated from the usual practice when he paid for the arms and horses used by his relatives Alonso Gutiérrez de Cordoba and Pedro Calderon. According to the Florida chronicler, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, “many out of necessity had accepted [Soto’s] aid, whereas others out of respect and courtesy had not been willing todoso...and they felt it more appropriate to assist him than to receive his aid.”!! Another exception to the rules regarded payments for passage and food from Spain to the Indies, items that were usually covered by each member of the expedition, save priests. Not one of the Florida chroniclers mentions who paid for the transportation of Soto’s companions, but Crist6bal Gallego de-

210 Ignacio Avellaneda

clared that Soto purchased three ships in Seville and one in Gomera Island, in which he transported to Cuba the seven hundred men he assembled in Spain, without charging them for the passage or the food served on board.!2 There is

no evidence one way or the other indicating whether Soto, following the usual custom or deviating from it again, intended to recover from his men whatever monies he had advanced them for equipment, transportation, and lodging once the anticipated booty had been collected. The number of ships purchased by Soto to transport his people and supplies to Cuba is also uncertain. As previously mentioned, one witness stated that Soto acquired three ships in Seville and one on Gomera Island. Other witnesses made conflicting statements in their depositions: two said four ships were purchased in Seville; another mentioned four or five large ships; two more indicated that the group sailed off in five or six ships. The cabildo, or

city council, of Santiago de Cuba wrote the King that Soto arrived in five ships, while other royal officials indicated that the ships numbered six.!3 The Florida chroniclers who described the ships do not agree on the number used to reach Cuba either: the Gentleman of Elvas wrote that there were seven, whereas Garcilaso described and identified by name seven ships, but added two brigantines and one caravel that he did not name. Those two chroniclers may actually be in agreement, since Garcilaso did not refer to the caravel and

two brigantines by name. It is likely that these last three did not make the passage from Spain to the Indies but were used for the passage from Cuba to Florida. As Garcilaso wrote, the armada to Cuba was accompanied by twenty heavy ships destined for Mexico, a fact that would preclude the need for the

two brigantines and the caravel. The ships, then, that sailed from Spain to Cuba may have been as many as seven and, if Garcilaso is right, they were called San Cristdbal, Madalena, Concepcién, Buena Fortuna, San Juan, Santa Barbara, and San Anton. If they were fewer than seven and not more than five, as the most reliable source—the Santiago cabildo—indicated, the first ones to be omitted from the list should be the Buena Fortuna and the Santa Barbara, for no ships with those names are included in Spanish official records of 15 38 sailings to the Indies.'4 Five of the ships considered here were more than capable of transporting the seven hundred members of the expedition along with their supplies.

_ Soto had purchased in Spain all the arms, ammunition, and much other equipment and supplies he would require for the Florida conquest, including items he knew would be scarce in Cuba, such as ship’s stores, crude iron, and some foods of Spanish origin like olive oil and wine. In addition he purchased all he needed for the passage to Cuba, leaving for his arrival there the acquisition of horses and the large quantities of food he would need to feed his men in Florida. After all those provisions were in the cargo holds Soto invited all his companions on board. A clear distinction should be made, however, be-

Hernando de Soto and His Florida Fantasy 211

tween those who were accompanying Soto only as far as Cuba, where he was going to assume his governorship, and those who were destined to continue with him to Florida. The first group consisted of his wife and the wives of his friends and companions plus their retinues of relatives, servants, and white and black slaves of both genders. This group would take up residence in Cuba, where they were meant to shine in the salons of Havana, however primitive they might be. The second, and much larger, group consisted of men of arms, who hoped to conquer Florida for the Spanish King.

The register of passengers from Seville to Cuba yields the names of six women: Isabel de Herrera and her daughter Inés de Herrera; Leonor de Volanos and her daughter Isabel de Mejia; Inés Rodriguez; and Isabel Sayaga. Soto’s chroniclers have named five additional women: Maria de Guzman, wife of Baltasar de Gallegos; Leonor de Bobadilla, wife of Nuno de Tovar; a niece of Soto married to Carlos Enriquez; Francisca de Hinestrosa, who later died in the Chicaga fire set by the Chickasaw Indians; and, of course, Soto’s wife, Isabel de Bobadilla. Finally, Ana Méndez, a servant, is known to have survived the Florida venture. Altogether, then, we can identify twelve free women who accompanied Soto to Cuba.!5 Most of these women remained in Havana and did not accompany him to Florida. There were also five men of color loro, meaning they were a shade darker than the Spaniards and probably of Moorish origin, listed in the passengers’ register: Bernaldo Loro, Juan Martin, Luis Moreno, Alonso de Pereda, and Pedro de la Torre. All five were classed as free men and some were listed as servants. In addition, we know that Isabel de Bobadilla took to Cuba at least one white female slave, who could have been from North Africa also, and Juan de Anasco took to Florida one female and two male slaves of unknown origin. Chronicler Garcilaso has written that on the same day that the army departed from Xuala, in Florida, they missed three slaves who had fled. Two of these were identified as black servants of André de Vasconcelos, and the third was a Moor who served Don Carlos Enriquez. One of Vasconcelos’s slaves and the famous native lady of Cofitachequi were said to have lived as man and wife.'* The total number of “dark” persons, plus white and black slaves, who traveled to Cuba may have been at least twelve, of whom at least two were women. Most of these passengers made the trip to Florida. The identities of the great majority of the persons (mostly men} who traveled to Cuba with Soto are known, since most registered in Seville before embarking. According to that roster a total of 657 persons made the crossing, including the 6 women and the 5 people of color mentioned above.!” But we know that the roster is not complete, for it does not include the names of Hernando de Soto and his wife, nor several of his closest friends, their wives, and their retinues. Fortunately, we also have the testimony of the Florida chroniclers and of witnesses to the events to help us refine our estimates of the to-

212 Ignacio Avellaneda

tal number of passengers. Elvas claimed that 600 men followed Soto to Florida, and Garcilaso stated that the ship carried 950 soldiers, sailors, and the necessary crew members, 12 priests, and the members of Soto’s household including his wife and family. Garcilaso’s estimates may have been inflated by a strained memory, given that his chief informant was recalling events several decades after the fact, but it is also clear that Elvas’s figures are low. The correct figure may be closer to that given in legal testimony by two of Soto’s companions. One testified that 700 men left Spain for that venture and the other said that nearly 700 men accompanied him to Cuba.!8 We may suppose that the correct figure, then, is probably not much larger than 7o0. All of the enlistees signed up between 20 January and 15 March 1538 at the port of Sanlucar, where on 7 April of that year they set sail for Santiago, Cuba, via the Canary Islands. A note of caution: the person of Hernando de Soto and his deeds in the conquests of Peru and Florida have been unduly praised.!» However impressive Soto’s tall-masted ships and their illustrious passengers were, it is an exaggeration to state that “never previously had there been assembled such an impressive array of ships, men, dogs, and horses for any expedition to the Indies.”2° Pedro de Mendoza, for example, commanded twelve ships with up to I,500 persons in his conquest of the River Plate in 1535, and the following year Pedro Fernandez de Lugo set sail with fifteen ships and up to 1,200 persons to assume his governorship of Santa Marta. And of course there were also the expeditions of Pedrarias Davila to Panama, or the combined forces of the Welsers to Venezuela, and Garcia Lerma’s voyage to Santa Marta. Nevertheless, Soto’s was a large and impressive venture.

The new governor of Cuba arrived in Santiago in June 1538 and spent eleven months there before departing for Florida. While administering the island, he planned for and purchased the provisions, horses, and other animals he would later take to Florida. He also fed and lodged most of his entourage at his own expense, although some of the burden for this fell upon the local Spanish residents and the Indians. He also used his time in Cuba to organize his men militarily, naming captains and officers and creating an army composed of properly armed soldiers. According to the colonial historians, the natives of the island presented

Soto with many horses. He and his companions bought many more, and Vasco Porcallo of Cuba contributed close to ninety of those animals to the expedition. All told, they gathered in the island from 223 to 250 horses, depending on the source consulted. Porcallo also helped with great amounts of salted meat and fish, swine, corn, and cassava. Altogether Soto carried to Florida 3,000 loads of cassava, 2,500 shoulders of bacon, 7,500 bushels of corn,?! and hundreds of swine, among other provisions. Governor Soto also purchased farms in Cuba to yield foods which would then be sent to Florida whenever

Hernando de Soto and His Florida Fantasy 213

they were requested. Archival documents do not mention the great strain these preparations must have placed upon the limited resources of the island, which at that time had only six towns and not more than 320 householders, according to Elvas. Both of the firsthand informants, the Gentleman of Elvas and Rodrigo Ranjel, reported that Soto sailed from Havana with five ships, two caravels, and two brigantines, for a total of nine. This figure is supported by royal officials, who wrote to the King that Soto left Cuba with exactly the same number of ships, caravels, and brigantines, adding that Soto had lost two ships since his

arrival. Another witness testified that Soto had an unspecified number of brigantines made in Havana, and that these, Soto’s ships (including another which he bought locally from one Pedro Agustin], and his two caravels had comprised the fleet that sailed out of Havana to Florida. One final witness also swore that Soto’s ships numbered nine.2? Garcilaso, however, claimed there were eleven ships—the original seven, the caravel and the two brigantines, and a final ship, the Santa Ana, which Soto had purchased from Hernan

Ponce de Leén. Once again, Gonzalo Silvestre’s poor memory may have played a part in Garcilaso’s estimate; most likely, the correct number of ships is indeed nine. We shall now consider those persons who accompanied Soto from Cuba to Florida. The royal officials of the expedition wrote that, aside from sailors, the total number of soldiers was 513. But once again we have varying figures from

the chroniclers: Hernandez de Biedma wrote that there were 620 men, whereas Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, quoting Ranjel, placed the figure at 570, not counting the sailors. And Garcilaso’s figures are once again overstated: he claimed that, not counting the mariners but including the islanders who wanted to accompany the expedition,”3 the total number of persons embarking for Florida was 1,000. Some of these differences may be a matter of semantics, since the royal officials were referring to military personnel only, whereas Garcilaso considered all persons, including servants, administrators, priests, and even tourists. More realistic figures may be those of Hernandez de Biedma and Ranjel, for their estimates are closer to those given by

other witnesses to the events: Pedro de Arévalo and Francisco de Guzman both declared that 650 persons mas Oo menos accompanied Soto to Florida.”4 On balance, this figure of about 650 persons would seem to be closest to the

truth. Soto organized his men in a fashion similar to that of other expeditions throughout the Indies during the same period.?5 Three royal officials—an accountant, a factor, and a treasurer—were assigned to the expedition to collect the relevant taxes for the Crown, but Soto controlled all the other appointments: he selected the priests who would accompany him; he appointed the ever-present scribes who would record any event that might have legal impli-

214 Ignacio Avellaneda

cations; and he procured the services of blacksmiths, farriers, carpenters, caulkers, and other artisans who would take care of the arms, ropes, clothing, leather products, shoes, bridges, and ships. He certainly also would have appointed a surgeon, or medic, and an apothecary, both indispensable to care for his men (it is known at least that one Alvaro de San Jorge tended soldiers’ wounds}.

Soto assigned the military organization of his army to a captain-general under his direct command. This top officer, aided by a chief-constable and a field marshal, directed the various cavalry and infantry captains—who were each responsible for a group of less than one hundred soldiers—as well as the activities of other minor leaders. There was an ensign-general, and trumpeters and

fiddlers also. Personal services were provided to the more distinguished members of the expedition by the servants they took along. Soto, for instance, was guarded by a group of 60 halberdiers commanded by a captain, and he was also assisted by a secretary, an aide, and pages. After the fashion of all other expeditions of conquest in the Indies, Soto secured the voluntary or forced assistance of the Indians he encountered along the way. These provided porter, guide, and interpreter services, and most important, nearly all the food consumed by the army and often its lodgings. The assistance of the Amerindians was crucial to the advancement of well-armed European armies. Nevertheless, relations between Europeans and Amerindians could not have been worse. In the Spaniards’ eyes, the role of the natives was to pay homage to the distant Spanish King and to serve, obey, and pay tribute to the newly arrived Europeans. Any deviation from these simple principles met with harsh punishment and often death, for it was taken as rejection of the only admissible authority.2° The identities of all the men accompanying Soto from Cuba to Florida may never be known, for they were not screened and registered by the authorities upon their departure from Havana. Not all the persons leaving were even the same as those who came from Spain, for many were lost in Cuba and others added, a fact rarely acknowledged by those who have written about this expedition. In consequence, if we are to know the characteristics of those who accompanied Soto to Florida we should concentrate on the survivors, for they left many traces of their lives, including invaluable testimonies of what took place in Florida. Chronicler Elvas testified that 311 Spaniards departed from the mouth of the Great River, the Mississippi, and arrived in Panuco, New Spain, whereas Garcilaso wrote that there were slightly fewer than 300 survivors. A list,

probably compiled by survivor Luis Hernandez de Biedma, contains the names of 211 fellow survivors and, in some cases, their places of origin and their trades. Of four witnesses to the events, three claimed that the survivors numbered 350, and one claimed that there were 300 survivors. Probably the

Hernando de Soto and His Florida Fantasy 215

best estimate is that of Elvas, whose account has proved to be generally reliable. Recent investigations have identified 258 survivors.2” Of these, 92 per-

sons—more than one third of the total—joined the expedition in Cuba or were part of Soto’s entourage and friends who did not register in Seville upon departure. If it is estimated that out of those 92, 30 men at best were part of Soto’s entourage,?8 then the remaining 62 represent about 25 percent of the surviving army. If that percentage is extrapolated to the 650 persons departing from Cuba, it suggests that the expedition added more than 150 replacements in Cuba. Primary historical sources provide scant indication of the experience of Soto’s recruits while in Cuba. Garcilaso wrote that, following the enthusiastic example of wealthy Vasco Porcallo, many Spaniards who were living in Cuba joined Soto’s expedition. Yet since 700 arrived at that island and only 650 departed for Florida, more persons were lost than were gained. One

witness, in his legal deposition, claimed that several of the men went into hiding in Cuba because they did not want to continue to Florida, and another witness added that some sick soldiers also remained behind.2° But such evidence fails to explain the great losses the expedition suffered in Cuba. These losses are best understood when one considers that the men had ample time in Cuba to realize that Soto’s third choice did not compare well to other ventures taking place in the Americas at the same time, about which news was pouring into Havana by early 1539. There was great treasure still being found in Peru; Mexico still offered great potential; the gold of Dabeiba

and the tombs of Cent caused a sensation; and riches at beckoned from Xerira and Meta south of Venezuela and Santa Marta (soon to be known by the generic name of Eldorado). Such news must have been irresistible to the men waiting in Cuba on a vague promise of uncertain discoveries in Florida. The characteristics of the survivors provide additional evidence on how Soto organized the enrollment of men for his expedition. More than qo percent of them came from Soto’s province of birth, Estremadura, and another 5 percent from neighboring Portugal; these were followed by natives of both Castiles and the province of Leon. There were also an Italian and a Frenchman among Soto’s recruits. Not one of the conquerors who finished the expedition was older than Soto, who was about 42 years of age, and their mean age was 24 years. Ninety-five percent could sign their name, suggesting a very high literacy rate when compared with the average sixteenth-century Spaniard. The survivors were commoners as a rule, but a small percentage of them could claim noble status. After Florida, they arrived in Mexico, where the largest percentage remained; the second largest group went to Peru, and the third returned to Spain. The rest dispersed among the Spanish-American colonies and several returned to Cuba. Many of those who remained in the New World established homesteads, married, and raised families.

216 Ignacio Avellaneda

From a sixteenth-century perspective, it seemed that Soto had wasted his efforts in financing, organizing, and directing what turned out to be hazy fantasy, in pursuit of which he sacrificed his life. Nothing had been gained by the

exploration of Florida: no cities were founded, no fortresses were built, no colonies or missions were established, no Indians were permanently Christianized or subjected to the Spanish King, no precious metals or other treasures were obtained, no great Indian civilizations were encountered, not even a water passage to the Orient was found. From a twentieth-century perspective, however, the accounts of Soto’s travails are proving to be a unique and precious source which is yielding increasing data on the social, economic, and political organizations of both the Spanish overseas enterprise and the Native Americans of Florida.

Notes 1. See Demetrio Ramos Pérez, E] mito del Dorado, su génesis y proceso (Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1973}. 2. Soto asked for the conquest of the San Juan River, which had already been assigned to his old friend, Gaspar de Espinosa; see John R. Swanton, Final Report of the United

States De Soto Expedition Commission (1939; reprint, Washington Dc: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985], 75—76. For Soto’s Florida grant, see Swanton, Final Report, 76—79.

3. Vazquez de Ayll6n and his Chicorian page, Francisquillo, dispersed news about the fertility of the Florida land, the abundance of fish, the existence of gigantic natives and probably pearls. Miruelo spoke about silver and gold. Ponce de Le6n, Vazquez de Ayll6n, and Gémez proved that the natives could be enslaved and sold at a profit. All of them thought there was a water passage to the Orient in Florida. See Paul Hoffman, A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast in the Sixteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). 4. Swanton, Final Report, 63. Alvar Nuhez arrived in Lisbon from Mexico on 8 August 1537, according to his own account, whereas Soto was granted the conquest of Florida on the previous 20 April. 5. Garcilaso wrote that Soto had more than 100,000 ducats, whereas Rodrigo Ranjel (reported by Oviedo) placed that figure at 100,000 gold pesos, and Elvas at 180,000 cruzados. See Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, The Florida of the Inca: A history of the Adelantado, Hernando de Soto, Governor and Captain General of the kingdom of Florida, and of other heroic Spanish and Indian cavaliers, written by the Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega. .., trans. John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980}, 4; Rodrigo Ranjel, in Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias: Islas y Tierra-Firme del mar océano, § vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1959}, 2: 153; Fidalgo de Elvas, in Buckingham Smith, Narratives of De Soto in the Conquest of Florida (Gainesville: Palmetto Books, 1968}, 6. The following conversion rates may be used: 1 cruzado=1 ducat=375 maravedies;

. Hernando de Soto and His Florida Fantasy 217 1 gold peso=450 maravedies=4.219 grams of fine gold; 1 castellano='%o of a gold mark= 4.6 grams of fine gold. 6. Soto and Hernan Ponce de Leon agreed on a partnership whereby they were to share in equal parts all their income and expenses. After Soto died, his widow was sued by Ponce

on the assumption that she had kept some of the former partnership’s assets. This suit, that by its nature is a valuable source, is in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville (hereaf-

ter AGI], Justicia 750A and B. Luis de Moscoso declared in that suit that he had seen Soto spending 30,000 castellanos in Castile and additional monies in Cuba. He added that even though Soto had brought from Peru over 100,000 gold pesos, he incurred a great loss when the Crown took a great part of them in exchange for future royal rents; see AGI, Justicia 750A, pieza 2. 7. Enrique Otte, “Los Mercaderes y la Conquista de América,” in Proceso hist6rico del conquistador, ed. Francisco de Solano (Madrid: Alianza Editorial S.A., 1988), 51-79. 8. José Ignacio Avellaneda, “The Conquerors of the New Kingdom of Granada,” Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1990, 33-36. 9. Garcilaso wrote that many cavaliers and others sold their possessions to go to Florida, adding that Diego de Guzmdén joined the conquest with a good supply of elegant clothes, fine weapons, and three horses; see Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 19, 477. Elvas named seven conquerors who risked their fortunes to go to Florida. He also mentioned by name eight Portuguese who sold their lands to go, and many other Spaniards who did likewise; see Buckingham Smith, Narratives, 5-9. 10. The contributions of these men in the Florida enterprise are listed in their probanzas de servicios. The probanza is a public document made by an individual listing the services he had rendered in the name of the King. For the Osorios, see their probanza in AGI, Patronato 51-3-1; for Gallegos, Ac1, Mexico 204; for Méndez de Sotomayor, AGI, Patronato 63-10; for Alonso Vazquez, AGI, Patronato 51-3-2; for Cordero, AGI, Patronato 105-6; for Villegas Prieto and his two witnesses mentioned, AG1, Patronato 69-2; for Rodrigo Vazquez, AGI, Patronato 60-5-7; and for Juan de Anasco, AGI,

Patronato §7-1-4. |

11. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 21. Soto’s financial assistance to his relatives is found in AGI, Justicia 750A, pieza 2. 12. AGI, Justicia 750B, pieza 8. 13. For the statement of the witnesses see AGI, Justicia 750B, pieza 8; for the cabildo letter see Smith, Narratives, 288; for the other royal official assertion see Swanton, Fi-

nal Report, 97-99. 14. See Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 21~22, and Smith, Narratives, 12. The official records do not include any Buena Fortuna or Santa Barbara; see Hugette et Pierre Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique (1504-1650), 8 vols. (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1955-59}, 2:288—99. 15. See Ignacio Avellaneda, Los sobrevivientes de la Florida: The Survivors of the De Soto Expedition (Gainesville: P. K. Yonge Library, 1990}, 38-39, 84~—85. See also Smith, Narratives, 9—14, 22; Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 21, 29, 31, 403. Swanton

mentioned five or six women only; see his Final Report, 80. 16. Regarding the color loro men, see Avellaneda, Sobrevivientes, 84—85,; the white slave of dona Isabel, called Isabel also, is mentioned in AG1, Indiferente General 1962;

218 Ignacio Avellaneda Anasco’s slaves are indicated in his probanza, AGI, Patronato 57-1-4; Vasconcelos’s and Don Enrique’s slaves are described by Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 333. The marital relation between the Lady of Cofitachequi and Vasconcelo’s slave is mentioned

in Smith, Narratives, 68. 17. Avellaneda, Sobrevivientes, 6—7. 18. Crist6bal Gallego’s and witness no. 16’s answers to questionnaire presented by dona Isabel in her suit with Ponce de Leon, Aci, Justicia 750B, pieza 8. 19. Historian James Lockhart wrote: “In the English-speaking world Soto has had a

reputation of a shining knight, an embodiment of various imaginary virtues, as opposed to the unmitigated vices of other conquerors. Porras Barrenechea has convincingly destroyed this legend for all who will listen. Porras was right in saying that the Anglo-Saxons engaged in their image-building of Soto mainly for the puerile reason that Soto could be considered an explorer of the United States. Still, if he was no saint or image of benevolence, Soto does stand out as a knight of sorts, hasty, dashing and gallant.” Men of Cajamarca (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), 191. 20. Introduction to Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, xxi. See also Garcilaso’s Own exaggeration on Pp. §4.

21. Letter transcribed in Smith, Narratives, 281-82. 22. Letter transcribed in Smith, Narratives, 281. The testimony of the other witnesses is found in AGI, Justicia 750B, pieza 8 and pieza 3. 23. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 53. 24. Probanza of Pedro de Arévalo Brizeno, in act, Patronato 150-14-6. 25. Avellaneda, “The Conquerors”, chapters 1-2. 26. See Vigil, this volume.

27. Avellaneda, Sobrevivientes. Here, 257 survivors have been identified, but the name of another, Baltasar Hernandez, should be added. He was the son of Francisco Hernandez and Catalina Martin, citizens of Badajoz. According to Garcilaso he was a scribe whom Garcilaso met in Peru afterwards; see Florida of the Inca, 406. 28. The known survivors who did not register in Seville and who were most likely part of Soto’s entourage are ten: Juan de Anasco, Luis Daza, Cristébal de Espindola, Juan Gaitan, Baltasar de Gallegos, Juan Lopez Cacho, Gonzalo de Monzén, Garcia Osorio, Juan Ruiz Lobillo, and Juan de Viota. 29. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 44. The first witness is Garcia Osorio, whose testimony is in AGI, Justicia 750A, pieza 3; the second witness is Fray Francisco de Torres, whose deposition is in AGI, Justicia 750B, pieza 8.

Robert S. Weddle

Soto’s Problems of Orientation: Maps, Navigation, and Instruments in the Florida Expedition

He thought that experience in the South was sufficient to show him what to do in the North, and he was deceived as history will tell. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, discussing Hernando de Soto, in Edward Gaylord Bourne, ed., Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto

Like many another New World explorer, Hernando de Soto embarked on his Florida venture with a set of preconceived notions that later proved false and that ultimately contributed to his failure. Problems that stemmed from lack

of prior knowledge of the territory to be explored were common to all the early conquistadors. These included, primarily, the lack of maps and firsthand accounts to guide them, and the primitive state of navigational technology. Soto’s problems, however, were compounded by his poor judgment. Soto’s first and most obvious miscalculation was basing his expectations of La Florida and the means of its subjection upon his experience in Peru. There, Pizarro’s army was fortunate enough to discover an Inca faction willing to guide and help it. Perhaps for this reason, while gathering the best soldiers, supplies, and equipment for his inland march, Soto failed to include in his company any person capable of instrument navigation on land. He was thus often at the mercy of Indian guides, who had their own reasons for giving him false information. When they failed him, Soto had to fall back on instinct, hasty reconnaissance, or pure guesswork. All of this accounts for the lack in the Soto chronicles of geographical data that would guide present-day students of his route. Like his predecessor Panfilo de Narvaez, Soto viewed the problem of orienting himself all too simplistically.

Soto’s third error—again like Narvaez—lay in his failure to coordinate land and sea movements, which ultimately led to his cutting himself off from his ships altogether. But most damaging of all was his great pride, which got in the way of his making rational decisions at critical moments. When Soto embarked from Sanlucar de Barrameda on 7 April 1538, the maps in his possession offered only vague information about Florida. Exactly

220 Robert S. Weddle

which map he most relied on is not known, but the choices were limited. Surely he had visited the Casa de Contratacién in Seville to view the padrén real, or master chart. He may even have had a copy of one of the new maps that reflected the latest knowledge of the Gulf of Mexico’s northern coast. Drawn by one of the royal cosmographers, Diogo Ribeiro (Diego Ribero) or Alonso Chaves, these maps, like the sketch originating with the 1519 voyage of Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, showed the coastal configuration with general accuracy.! Yet specifics as to islands, bays, and shoals were dangerously lacking. Both Ribeiro and Chaves had also worked on the padrén real; their maps must have contained essentially the same information. Yet neither offered significant data on the continental interior. At the time of Soto’s journey, the farthest European penetration of La Florida from the Gulf of Mexico had been Narvaez’s disastrous effort, and his men had never gotten beyond Apalache before they sought to escape by sea.? But even that bit of information had not yet reached Spain when Ribeiro produced his 15 29 map. Chaves’s 15 36 padron has been lost, but it was undoubtedly quite similar to Ribeiro’s. He may have borrowed from various other maps to provide a few additional Florida place names, but none of them would have provided reliable information as to the location of bays and harbors.’ And they offered no help at all as to what lay beyond the coast. But in 1538 as Soto looked ahead toward the conquest of La Florida, he had reason to walk with a swagger. He had acquitted himself well in Peru and had acquired great riches in the process. Quite understandably, men flocked to his banner. A profligate king had readily granted to him—in exchange for a sub-

stantial loan from his Peruvian loot—the rights to a territory extending “from the Province of Rio de las Palmas to Florida,” where everyone else who

had tried had failed. What Soto did not own, he could buy, even (so he thought) the expertise that would land him in Florida and guide him forward to a successful conquest and still greater riches. He brought together, therefore, the best of men, ships, horses, and arms that could be found. They were abundantly supplied and ably equipped. How could he fail? In Soto’s management of his men and resources, there is a strangeness that defies analysis. Perhaps the greatest enigma concerns the person and performance of Juan de Ahasco, who accompanied Soto to the Spanish Court. Anasco had not been with Soto in Peru, and he is described only as an hidalgo of Seville. He may have been Soto’s “in” with the Crown, for he came away with a royal license to trade among the Florida Indians and appointment as the expedition’s comptroller (contador).5 “Somewhat more than 31 years of age when the expedition left Spain,” he was Soto’s favorite for any task requiring skill and resourcefulness, “and seems to have been one of the best educated officers in the army.”° He served Soto not only as comptroller but also as a captain of the cavalry and, on occasion, navigator—a billet for which his

Soto’s Problems of Orientation 221

qualifications were often questioned by his companions, although there seems to have been none more able. The captain’s position was not concerned with the sailing of a ship—that was a task assigned to the ship’s master—but with commanding the fighting men aboard. None of Soto’s captains were mariners, and navigation at sea fell to men like Alonso Martin, chief pilot on Soto’s flagship, who is not mentioned again after the Florida landing. If there were other pilots on the voyage,

which there surely were, they are not identified by name. Neither do we know whether Soto even sent a skilled pilot with the party that he dispatched to carry out the advanced reconnaissance of the Florida coast. Soto’s ships reached Santiago de Cuba from Spain on 29 June 15 38. The governor immediately dispatched Juan de Anasco on a “300-league” canoe trip to Havana to make advance preparations for the arrival of Soto’s army. Soto himself undertook a reconnaissance of the island with the cavalry, while the infantry and the dependents remained on the ships and sailed for Havana.

At Havana, Anasco rallied the inhabitants to rebuild the town, recently victimized by French pirates, and arranged quarters for those to come. When the ships arrived, he took one of the fleet caravels and a bergantin obtained locally and sailed for Florida to find a suitable landing place for Soto’s army.’

Little is known concerning Anasco, so it is hard to judge why Soto entrusted him with such a vital undertaking. It is known that he was a man of considerable dash, not given to agonizing over decisions, and he occasionally had bursts of temper. On at least one occasion, according to the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, he had acknowledged “the severity of his own evil disposition.’””8

The trust that Soto placed in him may have been an irritant to some of the expedition’s luminaries. The Gentleman of Elvas, for example, complained of Anasco’s presumption in claiming navigational ability that he did not possess. Alonso de Carmona, one of Garcilaso’s informants, says Ahasco was an object of ridicule because he had never been to sea before embarking with Soto. Yet the Inca himself proclaims the man “a great mariner, cosmographer and astrologer.”? Soto, in any event, relied heavily on Anasco’s pathfinding abilities, on land and at sea. It was Anasco who chose the Florida landing place. The landing site is crucial to understanding much of what Soto did later, yet the question of where it might have been is, at the very least, fraught with uncertainty. To proclaim that he landed at Tampa Bay, or that he did not, is presumptuous. Anasco’s voyage began late in 1538. Garcilaso claims that Soto, not satisfied with the results, sent him back to Florida a second time, but Anasco himself relates only one trip. If he took a pilot with him, he makes no mention of it. At the approach of winter, he encountered.foul weather that put the ships

222 Robert S. Weddle

in jeopardy. Anasco managed to find an inhabited bay “seventy-five to eighty leagues from Havana” that offered him safe harbor, and when he returned to Cuba he brought back with him four Florida natives to serve as interpreters for the forthcoming venture. !° The distance given, figured at 3.43 miles per league, represents approximately 257 to 275 nautical miles, and represents certainly a reasonable estimate for Tampa Bay." By contrast, the Narvaez expedition, which also sup-

posedly landed at Tampa Bay, estimated the distance from Havana at 100 leagues—about 70 miles farther. This discrepancy may or may not indicate a different landing place. Later, when the main expedition sighted the Florida shore, Anasco failed to

recognize the landmarks, which is not surprising, given the monotonous view of the Florida coast. Anasco traveled with Soto and his chief pilot, Alonso Martin, to locate the harbor, which he finally recognized after a night of travail. Although the channel was marked for the larger ships, they nevertheless scraped bottom while trying to enter. “This day,” reported Soto’s secretary, Ranjel, “there were hard words between the Governor and Johan de Anasco.” Five days were spent bringing the ships into the bay, with constant heaving of the sounding lead. The location, according to Ranjel, was “due

north of the island of Tortuga ... and ten leagues west of the Bay of Johan Ponce.”!2 Was this indeed Tampa Bay, which is noted for its deep entrance channel? And where was Ponce’s bay? Certainly more than ten leagues from Tampa. The landing, Ranjel discloses, was in the territory of a chief called Ocita (Ecita or Ucita], aname which Swanton concedes may be other than Timucuan.!3 For years scholars have thought that the border between the Timucua and their southern neighbors, the Calusa, was at Tampa Bay; hence, by longstanding consensus, Soto could not have landed farther south. More recently, however, evidence consisting of ceramic remains has been offered to show that the Timucua actually ranged as far south as Charlotte Harbor, while the Calusa never ranged farther north.!4 These findings substantially increase the range of possible landing sites. From the Indians near the landing, Soto’s men took Juan Ortiz, who had lived among the natives for eleven years, since his capture from one of Narvaez’s ships. For the first year he had been Ocita’s slave and was kept at hard

labor with no freedom of movement. He had then escaped to live with Mocozo’s tribe {definitely Timucuan, according to Swanton) but dared not exercise his new freedom for fear of encountering his former master’s warriors. Indeed, he had traveled no farther than ten leagues in any direction.'5 It appears, therefore, that Ortiz spent his entire captivity near the Calusa—Timucua border, which is to say, not far from Charlotte Harbor. Elvas’s statement that Ortiz’s two captors, Ocita and Mocozo, spoke different languages seems

Soto’s Problems of Orientation 223

to support such a conclusion.'¢ It should also be understood that Ortiz had not been with Narvaez’s main force when he was captured. He had returned with the ships to Havana, then come back to search along the Florida coast for some sign of the expedition. The point at which the Indians seized him is uncertain. His appearance near Soto’s landing place, therefore, does not confirm that Narvaez and Soto landed in the same area. The Juan Ortiz story has its sequel in that of Juan Munoz, a ship’s boy of fourteen on Pedro Calderén’s caravel, which Soto left at port when he began his march inland. After the main force had departed, Munoz was seized by Indians and spent the next ten years in captivity. When the expedition of Fray Luis Cancer appeared offshore in 1549, he managed to escape and reach the ship in a canoe.!’ There is scarcely room to doubt that Soto’s landing place and Cancer’s were the same. The U.S. De Soto Expedition Commission, having decided that Soto landed at Tampa Bay,'8 claimed that Munoz’s rescue constituted “proof” that Cancer’s ship had entered Tampa Bay also. Actually, when the matter is examined in the light of the Cancer expedition record, quite the opposite seems to be the case. Cancer sailed from Havana in May 1549, in a ship too large to allow close shore navigation. The ship anchored off the Florida coast at 28° latitude—just above Tampa Bay. On information from natives on shore, the vessel then sailed south to seek a port described as being a journey of a day and a half by land.!9 From latitude 28°, the main entrance to Tampa Bay would have been reached in less than thirty miles. Cancer, however, relates a voyage of eight

days, followed by another eight spent getting the ship anchored, in two fathoms, within a shallow bay. Tampa Bay, which offered a number of deep anchorages, surely had been missed, probably because the ship had sailed too

far seaward. All of these circumstances—some of them recalling Soto’s strikingly similar experience in berthing his ships—suggest that the landing was at either Charlotte Harbor or nearby San Carlos Bay.2°

Then to Cancer’s ship came Juan Munoz, fleeing by canoe from his ten years of captivity and bearing news that he had seen two of Cancer's companions on shore slain by the natives. He later witnessed, from offshore, the slaying of Father Cancer himself, who could not be dissuaded from going ashore

to preach the gospel to his brothers’ murderers. This unfortunate episode quite certainly occurred near the site of Soto’s landing and Munoz’s capture. Rather than proving that the location was Tampa Bay, however, it seems to do quite the opposite. In recent years, archaeologists have succeeded in accumulating sixteenth-

century Spanish artifacts to suggest Soto’s probable route through the South.?! So far, evidence has not surfaced to place him south of Tampa Bay. But the absence of physical evidence in any locality is not sufficient proof in

224 Robert S. Weddle

itself that he was not there. And, depending on the association, the mere presence of early Spanish material may not prove a location as being on Soto’s route. European artifacts, especially trade and gift items, often were transported great distances in Indian hands. Many are the pitfalls that forestall efforts to determine a precise route for the sixteenth-century travelers. Soto, having left Calderén with the ships at the landing place called Espiritu Santo Bay, traveled north, then west to reach Anhaica Apalache. There he made camp for the winter. Archaeologist B. Calvin Jones in 1987 located Soto’s winter camp in the heart of Tallahassee.2? From this point, Soto sent Juan de Anasco to reconnoiter the coast, “eight leagues” away, to seek a har-

bor that would accommodate the ships. Such distance estimates, without certain knowledge of the length of a league or the directness of the march, are of little value in fixing locations. Anasco found the abandoned Indian village of Aute, with which Narvaez had also had contact. Nearer the Gulf shore, he

came upon the ruins of Narvdez’s camp, complete with the bones of the horses his men had consumed while building the boats in which they sought to escape their plight. To maintain that this was at some place other than the St. Marks area, one must ignore the evidence from several archaeological sites.23 Yet Nunez Cabeza de Vaca’s narration of the difficulties encountered in reaching the Gulf, once the boats had been built, suggests a site near the mouth of Ochlockonee Bay, rather than the St. Marks area.”4 With all its uncertainties, Anasco’s distance of eight leagues seems too much for St. Marks. Anasco did carry instruments—probably the same astrolabe that was to surface later—for observing the latitude, so that the port might be found later from the sea. (This is the only reference to the use of such navigational aids until after Soto’s death. For examples, see figure 1.) Having accomplished his task, Anasco withdrew to the winter camp to receive his new orders. He, with thirty cavalrymen, was to go back to the landing place called Espiritu Santo Bay and bring torward Calderon and the bergantines.?° It took twelve days to reach the bay, traveling “130 leagues” through country already terrorized by the Spaniards. The distance given, approximating 450 miles, or an average of 37 miles per day, is evidently exaggerated. If any conclusion at all is to be drawn from it, it seems to favor Charlotte Harbor over Tampa Bay as the destination. On his arrival, Anasco spent eight more days careening the vessels. He then sent the two caravels off to Havana and traded places with Calderon; while Calderon led the cavalry back to the winter camp, Anasco sailed the bergantines tor his Apalache port, serving as his own pilot. The voyage took twentyfive days. Despite Anasco’s diligence in marking trees and observing the latitude near Narvaez’s “Bay of Horses,” he had difficulty finding it from the sea. The markers could not be seen, as they had been erected on shallow inlets that became bare tidal flats at ebb tide. Those waiting on shore built a boat

Soto’s Problems of Orientation 225

L ty ae me NY hy yw

‘2 L Oo £2 > Vii_ Ane &

iD 6 ‘a See

Figure 1. Astrolabes from Soto’s time. A Texas archaeological team recovered these astrolabes from the remains of three Spanish ships wrecked on Padre Island in 1554. The specimen at center is dated to 1545, the others to 15 50. Photo courtesy of Texas Histori-

cal Commission. |

that went out two leagues each day seeking the vessels until they at last appeared.2° Here again, a location other than St. Marks is suggested, for St. Marks, though shut in by oyster banks, had a fairly well defined entrance. At this point, Soto put the infantry captain Francisco Maldonado of Salamanca in charge of the ships and ordered him to run the coast west to look for a port where Soto might take the army, entering “all the coves, creeks, and rivers.”2” Two months later, Maldonado returned to report that he had found a deep, sheltered bay, called Ochuse, “sixty leagues” away. Both the description and the distance indicate Pensacola Bay rather than Mobile. Maldonado then was sent to Havana for supplies, after which he was to return to Ochuse and await the governor’s arrival by land. But Soto’s plans changed, and the rendezvous was never effected. Soto’s change of plans was precipitated by his inquiries made that winter at Apalache. He was seeking information on the western country, where he intended to go in the spring. An Indian boy still in his teens, who had been reared by native traders and had traveled widely, came forward to tell of a

226 Robert S. Weddle

place near the Atlantic shore called Cofitachequi. This lad—christened Pedro but called by the diminutive Perico—explained that in that place there was Silver and gold and great quantities of pearls. His tale brought to mind

: Lucas Vazquez de Ayll6n’s failed effort to establish a colony in that region in the 1520s, and the riches that had been ascribed to it. On 3 March 15 40, Soto’s army—perhaps encouraged by one of Vazquez’s men now in its ranks—left Anhaica Apalache “in quest of the country which that Indian stated to be on another sea.” The troops followed the trail designated by Perico, who, despite his willingness to serve as guide, still wore his neck shackle and chain.?8

Implicit in this march are both Soto’s motivation and his method. He sought a source of wealth like that which he had seen in Peru. To find it, he put his trust in what the Indians told him and fixed his direction of travel accordingly. There is no record that celestial navigation was employed at any stage of the march. Its direction was based solely on information that had been gleaned from the Indians. Juan Ortiz, the rescued castaway, now became a crucial member of the expedition, since he could communicate with the natives. Soto’s chosen method occasionally failed, because of his bullying tactics that alienated the Indians, but also because of difficulties with communication and the false or misleading information provided to the expedition by the native guides. Six weeks after leaving Apalache, in the Indian town of Patofa, Perico “began to lose his bearings because he no longer knew ... the country.” Suspected of perfidy, he would have been thrown to the dogs had he not been the only one whom Juan Ortiz could understand.2? Additional guides were taken from Patofa, but they, too, became lost in the trackless wilderness that separated their country from the enemy territory of Cofitachequi. Groping about a labyrinthine pine barren eight days after leaving Patofa, Soto dispatched his captains, each with ten men, to look for a road or a native village. Baltasar de Gallegos went northwest up river; Juan de Anasco downstream, southeast; Juan Rodriguez (or Ruiz) de Lobillo and Alonso Romo in other directions. It was Anasco who returned after an absence of two days with news that he had found a village. He brought food and a native guide, whom Perico could understand, a matter of “no little relief to us because of the difficulty everywhere. . . of being understood.”2° The army marched for the village—named Socorro for the succor it provided—to partake of its hospitality. Such rare bright spots in Soto’s Indian relations were quickly tarnished. Romo came in the next day, bringing four or five captured natives who refused to reveal the location of their habitation. Under Soto’s orders, one was burned in the presence of his companions. Still refusing to give directions to their village, the others were accorded a similar fate.?!

Gallegos, more successful at procuring guides, brought some native

| Soto’s Problems of Orientation 227 women who directed them toward Cofitachequi. Anasco was sent across a deep river to obtain canoes and interpreters, with whom Perico could converse, from the village on the other side. Soto, reaching the stream the next day, was met by La Cacica, the woman chief, who removed a string of pearls from her own neck and put it on Soto’s. They had finally arrived at the legendary Cofitachequi (placed by different writers on various South Carolina rivers from the Savannah to the Wateree}, which was calculated as thirty leagues, or two days’ travel, from Vazquez de Ayllon’s seaport.?2 Artifacts from the Vazquez de Ayllon expedition and the discolored pearls of Cofitachequi were not enough to arrest Soto’s march. With a trace of gold

reportedly found in the river nearby, he turned toward the mountains, remembering that gold had been found in the mountains of Peru. He was guided by the woman chief until she stole away on the approaches to Xuala. At that point, further reports of gold spurred the Spaniards on toward the Blue Ridge, to Chiaha and Acoste, whence men were sent to reconnoiter the province of

Chisca, farther north. The scouts found the northern country so mountainous and so devoid of sustenance as to forbid the army’s travel in that direction. Soto, continuing his practice of impressing guides and bearers from the various chiefdoms, turned instead toward Coca. The march now pointed toward the Gulf of Mexico, where Francisco Maldonado would be waiting with the ships at Ochuse. It was Soto’s practice, says Elvas, to keep a cacique in custody for the time it took to pass through the cacique’s territory. Soto was then assured that the towns along the way would be awaiting his arrival and would provide the guides and porters that he needed. These would be set at liberty before the expedition moved on, or as soon as it reached a chiefdom where others were available; which is to say, they remained at Soto’s convenience.?3 The natives

seethed with resentment at such tactics. As the army marched across Alabama, through Coga, Ullibahali, and Tascaluca, the disturbing news of Soto’s harshness preceded him. At Mabila, the Indians’ resentment boiled over in the terrible battle of 18 October 1540. Before leaving Mabila, Soto received word that Maldonado was waiting for him at Ochuse, within six days’ travel, or thirty leagues (about one hundred miles).3¢ Instead of marching for Ochuse, he turned inland again, still hoping to bring success out of failure. There is little in the Soto chronicles to indicate why he chose the specific route he took from Mabila, or how he found his way. Traversing a maze of river drainages in Alabama and Mississippi, he evidently relied on scouting forays by his own men—such as that made by Vasco Gonzalez on 21 November —to locate Indian villages that might be raided for provisions. Nine days

later, a chief named Apafalaya was taken as a guide and interpreter as the

228 Robert S. Weddle

army proceeded up the river that bore his name. It seems to have been this man who pointed the way through “many bad passages and swamps and cold rivers’”35 to Chicaca, in northern Mississippi.

After the winter sojourn among the Chickasaw had ended in fiery rebellion, the Spaniards traversed another swamp. Anasco, scouting ahead with fifteen horse and forty foot, came upon an Indian village whose inhabitants were armed and waiting. Soto injudiciously ordered an attack, with unhappy results. Driven by hunger and weary of battle, the army now sought the rio grande (the Mississippi) and safety on the other side. Traversing another watery wilderness, they came to Quizquiz and, avoiding confrontation, crossed the great river from Mississippi into Arkansas on 18 June. In the meantime, Maldonado, having failed to find Soto at Ochuse, pursued his instructions to “run the shore as far as the River Espiritu Santo.”3° According to Garcilaso, he did much more: with another ship captain, Gdmez Arias, he continued to search for the expedition until, in October 1543, he learned at Vera Cruz of the arrival in Mexico of the tattered remnants of Soto’s army and the tragic outcome of the expedition.3’ The survivors told of how the long sweep through Arkansas and Louisiana had drained Soto’s energies and his spirit. His remains lay buried in “un rio

grande called Rio de Spiritu Santo [the Mississippi.” He had chosen the maestre de campo, Luis de Moscoso Alvarado, to succeed him as governor. Moscoso had then met with his officers to determine his course. Even Juan de Anasco, “a cavalier and nobleman who had labored most in this exploration,” says Garcilaso, had had enough. Priding himself as a cosmographer, Anasco proposed to lead the dwindling army “very quickly” to Mexico. But he reckoned without knowledge of the great distance involved and the difficulties of the unknown land.38 The “march westerly” toward New Spain was decided upon, says Elvas, in part because there was neither “captain nor pilot nor needle nor chart’’—testimony that those who had served as captains in crossing the ocean were not actually mariners. Additionally, Elvas says, no one knew how far it was to the sea; some claimed it might be as far as five hundred leagues. Even if the distance were shorter, the river that might take them there was formidable, for it might “take some great turn through the land, . . . or fall over rocks” where all would be lost.3? There could be no more eloquent statement of the Spaniards’ disorientation, of which the march itself gave ample demonstration. After

marching overland “more than a hundred leagues’—reaching well into Texas—they turned back to the Mississippi to build boats with which to escape by sea. In truth, they carried in their ranks men better qualified for building ships than for conquering the wilderness. On this rio grande, “two hundred leagues from the sea in a pueblo called Nuimoya [Aminoya],” Moscoso later wrote to the king, “we built seven bergantines.’”“°

Soto’s Problems of Orientation 229

The sea also offered many uncertainties. Some of the navigational instruments had been consumed in the fire at Mabila. Only the astrolabe, less damaged because it was made of metal, had been salvaged by Anasco’s diligence. While the boats were being built, he repaired the astrolabe and made a crossstaff from a ruler. On a piece of deerskin he constructed a sea chart of the Gulf. He still carried a mariner’s clock he had brought with him, and now he put together a sailing guide. Thus, he says, he was able to lead the ships to a safe haven in the Rio Panuco.*! These first European vessels to sail on the Mississippi took seventeen days

to reach the Gulf. They left the river through the right-hand distributary channel to be swept seaward by the current. After they had groped back within sight of land three days later, Moscoso held council on whether to sail straight across the Gulf or to follow the shore. There were different opinions, says the Gentleman of Elvas: “Juan de Anasco, who was very presumptuous, valuing himself much upon his knowledge of navigation, [as] with other matters of the sea of which he had little experience, influenced the Governor.” They soon came back toward shore, however, as the majority favored the security of the coast, “there being neither sea card nor pilot to show the way.”* Garcilaso quotes Alonso de Carmona as saying, “The mariners and others ..., having pondered the fact that this man [Anasco] was not a seaman, and had never embarked in his life except for this expedition, ridiculed him.” Angered, Anasco threw all his navigational aids into the sea except the astrolabe. They were saved by the alertness of someone in the boat that followed.*3 In the end, Anasco seems to have vindicated himself; if he was an amateur navigator, he was a fast learner. With the instruments he himself had made, he was able to take the latitude (e/ altura del norte) from Polaris. He did so the night before arriving at the Rio Panuco, thereby calculating the distance to the river as eight leagues. He advised trimming sail so as not to overrun the river during the night. Two of the vessels that refused to do so passed the river without seeing it, and wrecked their craft upon the beach; their inhabitants had to walk the fifteen leagues to the town of Panuco.*4 Out of the Soto expedition (or so it is supposed) came the so-called “De Soto Map,” drawn by Alonso de Santa Cruz, a cosmographer in the Casa de Contratacion in Seville since 1530. The map, however, reflected much more information than was obtained by the Soto entrada; it included data from the expeditions of Vazquez de Ayllén, Juan Ponce de Leon, Narvaez (and Nunez Cabeza de Vaca], and Vazquez de Coronado. The map itself lay among Santa Cruz’s personal papers until his death in 1572 and therefore played no part in the expeditions to La Florida that took place in the interim. The first person to benefit from it was Juan Lopez de Velasco, who began his landmark assessment of Spain’s overseas possessions in 1573. The map showed how little was

known of the Gulf coast and the adjacent interior; but it brought forth the

230 Robert S. Weddle

best information yet on the native towns, river courses, and other features of the interior. Of some sixty Indian towns on the map, fourteen correspond to those given in the three primary accounts of the Soto expedition. Lopez de Velasco recognized the map’s value in this regard. Nothing was known of the native habitations along the northern Gulf shore, he wrote, beyond what had been described by Santa Cruz.*5 Yet Soto himself, considering the magnitude of his effort, left little for others to build upon. Seemingly always disoriented, he left a confused set of tracks for others to follow. The legacy of this confusion is seen in the next explorer to descend the Mississippi to its mouth, well over a century later. The Frenchman La Salle, seeking to interpret his own observations in the light of the Soto chronicles, became hopelessly lost. But that’s another story. | Notes 1. Map attributed to Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, 1519, original in Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter Aci), Mapas y Planos; Ribeiro world map, reproduced in William P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton, and David B. Quinn, The Discovery of North America (New York, 1972}, 106-7. 2. See Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Relacién de los naufragios y comentarios de Al.var Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (Madrid: Libreria General de Victoriano Suarez, 1906). 3. The Chaves map, which has been lost, was reconstructed by Jean Delanglez (El! Rio del Espiritu Santo, United States Catholic Historical Society Monograph Series, 21 [New York, 1945], 25} from the description given by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés (Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y Tierra-Firme del mar Océano, ed. José Amador de los Rios (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1851-54], 2:150). Concerning Soto’s purported use of the map see Edward Gaylord Bourne, ed., Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida (New York: Allerton, 1922], 2:104 and n.7. 4. “La capitulacién con el soberano para la conquista de la Florida,” in Antonio del Solar y Taboada and José de Rujula y de Ochotorena, eds., E] Adelantado Hernando de Soto, Breves noticias y nuevos documentos para su biografia (Badajoz: Ediciones Argueros, 1929], 9I-99. 5. King’s order quoted in John R. Swanton, Final Report of the United States De Soto

Expedition Commission (1939; reprint, Washington pc: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985], 85.

6. Swanton, Final Report, 84-85. 7. Juan de Anasco, “Probanza,” Puebla de los Angeles, 30 May 1544, AGI, Patronato 57, no. 1, ramo 3. “The Spanish word vergantin [bergantin],’”’ says Swanton (Final Report, 99), “has commonly been translated “brigantine” but a brigantine is properly a two-masted vessel with square sails on the foremast, and is very much larger than the craft to which the name vergantin was applied.” He substitutes “pinnace,” noting that it is not a precise equivalent. Here, the word is left untranslated. 8. Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, The Florida of the Inca: A History of the Adelantado,

Soto’s Problems of Orientation 231 Hernando de Soto, Governor and Captain General of the kingdom of Florida, and of

other heroic Spanish and Indian cavaliers, written by the Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega..., trans. John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951}, 218. The Inca’s work was first published in Lisbon by Pedro Crasbeeck in 1605 as La Florida del Ynca. Historia del Adelantado Hernando de Soto, Governador y capitan general del Reyno de Ia Florida, y de otros heroicos cavalleros Espanoles é Indios. Under the editorship of Andrés Gonzalez Barcia Carballido y Zuniga (using the pseudonym Gabriel Daza de Cardenas), the book was reprinted in Madrid in 1723.

9. Fidalgo de Elvas, “True Relation of the Vicissitudes that Attended the Governor Don Hernando de Soto and some Nobles of Portugal in the Discovery of the Province of Florida, now just given by a Fidalgo of Elvas,” in Narratives of De Soto in the Conquest of Florida, ed. Buckingham Smith (Gainesville FL: Palmetto Books, 1968), 184; translated from the original Portuguese work, Relacgam verdadeira dos trabalhos g ho governador do Fernddo de souto e certos fidalgos portugueses passarom no descubriméto da prouincia da Frolida (Evora, 1557}. Rodrigo Ranjel, “A Narrative of De Soto’s Expedition Based on the Diary of Rodrigo Ranjel his Private Secretary,” in Bourne, Narratives, 2:53 (translated from Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, cap. 21, lib. 27). Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 600. 10. Anasco, “Probanza.” rr. The distance represented by a league here, as elsewhere, is by no means certain. Charles Hudson, Chester B. DePratter, and Marvin T. Smith, “Hernando de Soto’s Expedition through the Southern United States” (in First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570, ed. Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Milbrath], p. 83, calculate the Jegua comuin at 3.46 miles, suggesting that that was Soto’s unit of measurement rather than the 2.63-mile legua legal used in Swanton, Final Report. For further discussion, see Hassig, this volume. The marine league was slightly different; 17.5 leagues made a degree; hence, 3.43 miles per league. 12. Ranjel, “Account,” 53~—54.

13. Ranjel, “Account,” 54; Swanton, Final Report, 47. 14. Ripley P. Bullen, “The Southern Limit of Timucua Territory,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 47 (April 1969): 416. 15. Elvas, “True Relation,” in Smith, Narratives, 33. 16. Elvas, “True Relation,” in Smith, Narratives, 31. 17. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 229-32. 18. Swanton, Final Report, 122. 19. Luis Cancer, “Relacion de la Florida,” in Colecci6n de varios documentos para la historia de la Florida y tierras adyacentes, ed. Thomas Buckingham Smith (London, 1857), I:191I—92.

20. Cancer, “Relacion,” 195. Swanton (Final Report, 122) takes the 28° latitude of the first landing as proof for Tampa Bay, ignoring the eight days spent sailing south. 21. See Jeffrey M. Mitchem, “Artifacts of Exploration: Archeological Evidence from Florida,” in Milanich and Milbrath, First Encounters, 99-109. 22. Charles R. Ewen, “Anhaica: Discovery of Hernando de Soto’s 15 39-1540 Winter

Camp,” in Milanich and Milbrath, First Encounters, 113-14. ,

232 Robert S. Weddle 23. See Mitchem, “Artifacts,” ror. 24. See Harbert Davenport, ed., “The Expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez by Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo y Valdés,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 27 (April 1924): 217n.,; also Robert S. Weddle, Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery, 1500-1685 {College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985), 193, 205.

25. Anasco, “Probanza.” |

26. Luis Hernandez de Biedma, “Relation of the Conquest of Florida,” in Smith, Narratives, 235. 27. Biedma, “Relation,” 235. 28. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 253—54; Ranjel, “Account,” 86; Biedma, “Relation,” 236 [quote], 240; Elvas, “True Relation,” 64. Concerning creation of Vazquez de Ayll6n’s Chicora legend, see Paul E. Hoffman, A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast during the Sixteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990}, 21. 29. Ranjel, “Account,” 91; Elvas, “True Relation,” 59. 30. Ranjel, “Account,” 94-95; Biedma, “Relation,” 239. 31. Ranjel, “Account,” 97. Following the account of this incident, Oviedo interposes an implied condemnation of Soto’s tactics, as he does here and there throughout. 32. Biedma, “Relation,” 240; Elvas, “True Relation,” 64. Cf. National Geographic map, “Deep South,” The Making of America series, 1984, with maps accompanying Hudson, et al., “Hernando de Soto’s Expedition,” 81, 83. 33. Elvas, “True Relation,” 77. 34. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 384; Elvas, “True Relation,” go. 35. Ranjel, “Account,” 129—30. 36. Biedma, “Relation,” 236. 37. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 632-33. 38. Luis de Moscoso Alvarado to the King, Mexico, 16 October 1543, AGI, Mexico 95, ramo 3; Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 509—10. Moscoso’s letter refutes Delanglez’s argument (Rio del Espiritu Santo, 59—62) that the Soto expeditionists did not recognize the Mississippi as the Rio del Espiritu Santo portrayed on maps beginning with Alvarez de Pineda’s. 39. Elvas, “True Relation,” 150-51. 40. Moscoso to King, Mexico, 16 October 1543, AGI, Mexico 95, ramo 3. 41. Anasco, “Probanza”; Alonso de Carmona, in Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 600. Anasco’s claims are set forth in the questions he put to several of his companions on the expedition, in the presence of the alcalde mayor of Puebla de los Angeles and the royal notary. Number 21 asks: “Whether they knew that in the Pueblo of Aminoya the aforementioned Juan de Anasco made an astrolabe, a cross-staff and a sea

chart, and with a clock that he brought, he made a sailing guide, with which instruments he guided the ships to safety in the Rio de Panuco.” The witnesses included Arias Tinoco, Diego Garcia de Leon, Fabian Rodriguez, Garcia de Godoy, Francisco de Reynoso, Antonio Martinez, Miguel de Tiedra, and Alvaro Fernandez. Samuel Eliot Morison (The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, 1492-1616 |New York: Oxford University Press, 1974], 162—63) says the only ship’s clock available before the late sixteenth century was the ampolleta or reloj de arena (sand clock), a half-

Soto’s Problems of Orientation 233 hour glass containing just enough sand to make its transit from the top of the glass to the bottom in thirty minutes. 42. Elvas, “True Relation,” 184-85. 43. Carmona, in Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 600. 44. Anasco, “Probanza,” confirmed by Gonzalo Silvestre’s account quoted by Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 605—17. 45. Juan Lopez de Velasco, Geografia y descripcion universal de las Indias (Madrid, 1971}, 93.

Ross Hassig

Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida: How Good Were Estimates?

This chapter examines the general problems entailed in reconstructing the route of Hernando de Soto by viewing his trek in the light of a similar journey by Hernan Cortés during the conquest of Mexico in 1519—21, the latter being

perhaps the best known and documented entrada of the period and one that presents similar difficulties in reconstruction. Accordingly, a closer examination of this journey may be suggestive as to the accuracy of early Spanish explorers’ measures of distance in general and specifically in the Southeast. The reconstruction of Spanish journeys through unexplored parts of the New World is important for our understanding of the Spaniards as well as of indigenous societies. Frequently this has involved retracing the probable routes based on the recorded distances traveled, assuming that such measures can be accurately reconstructed. However, this assumption is not at all certain. Henry R. Wagner’s study is probably the most detailed assessment of Cortés’s route to Tenochtitlan, but even this exhaustive study fails to achieve consensus, and the conclusions it does reach depend on disregarding some accounts and privileging others. ! Cortés’s Trek

Cortés’s trek into central Mexico in 1519 is perhaps the best documented and

analyzed of all Spanish entradas in the sixteenth-century New World. Although its general outlines are fairly well known, many of its specifics remain in question. One potential source of bias in these accounts is their manifestly political purpose. The extant accounts of the Spanish entrance into and conquest of Mexico

were not written as dispassionate histories. Instead, they were all written with political purposes in mind, most of them long after the fact, for the purpose of securing additional favors or privileges from the king of Spain. (For the comparable motivations of the Soto chroniclers, see the papers in Part 1 of this volume.} Even Cortés’s account, written during and immediately after

Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida 235

the conquest, was intended to secure the political backing of the king so that Cortés would reap the benefits of the conquest rather than Governor Velazquez of Cuba, who initially authorized and subsidized the expedition. While these accounts do contain much that is accurate, one thing that is clear is that they dwell at length on the hardships suffered by the conquistadors and little on their comforts. Doubtless many of these hardships were real and some attempt was made to record things honestly, but many appear to have been exaggerated on many points, including numbers of enemies fought, wounds received, and distances traveled, especially under adverse conditions. This source of uncertainty aside, the five firsthand accounts often conflict with one another and contain internal contradictions. For our purposes, the best account to examine is that of Hernan Cortés, because only his and that of Bernal Diaz del Castillo are at all comprehensive, and only the former was roughly contemporary with the events recorded. Taking, then, Cortés’s letters, his discussion of the trek from Vera Cruz to Tenochtitlan does not supply a full account of the distances required to make the journey, although he does mention the names of the major towns through which he passed. But even the distances he records are general and frequently conflict with one another. For instance, he records the distances between Almeria and Tenochtitlan as 60 or 70 leagues, that between Almeria and Vera Cruz at 12 leagues, and that between Vera Cruz and Tenochtitlan at 90 or 100 leagues.? Similarly, remembering that the distance between Almeria and Vera Cruz is 12 leagues, Cortés nevertheless records the distance to the Panuco River as 30 leagues from the former but 50 or 6o leagues from the latter. Such vacillation also holds true for shorter, and presumably more certain, distances. For example, he puts the distance between Texcoco and Ixtapalapa at 6 small leagues in one place, less than 6 leagues in another, and Diaz del Castillo puts it at only 4 leagues.* Without belaboring the point, none of the conquistador accounts offers reliable, consistent distance estimates. But even if they did, they leave unanswered the question of how long a league actually was. The Spanish League Spanish measures of distance were most accurate at sea, where an instrument called a quadrant could measure latitudes.5 Without a true horizon, this device was not usable ashore, and there the measurement of distance had to be more direct.

The standard unit of measure for linear distances at that time was the league, and Spanish colonial accounts are replete with references to them, which give the impression of relatively absolute measures. But as additional

236 Ross Hassig

accounts are read, it quickly becomes obvious that something strange is going on. Most commonly, measures are simply given in leagues, but in a minority of cases, these leagues are qualified and given as either short leagues or long leagues, which throws doubt on their apparent standardization. Some of this uncertainty has been clarified by the work of the modern geographer, Roland Chardon. He has noted this great disparity in league distances, especially as they are found in travel accounts. However, Chardon’s work has not escaped criticism.’ There were two types of leagues in use in Spain and her colonies at that

time, the statute league and the common league. Statute leagues were approximately 4.19 kilometers in length, whereas common leagues were about

5.5 kilometers. Although travel accounts commonly give distances in leagues, for these to be meaningful the size of the league must be known.

To determine which league was being used in travel accounts, Chardon evaluated distance measures in sixteenth-century New Spain by examining a trip through flat terrain (that of Fray Alonso Ponce in the late 1580s through the flat terrain of northern Yucatan).? As recorded, leagues varied in length, ranging from 3.5 to 7 kilometers each, but with a mean length of 5.255 kilometers. Some assumptions were necessarily built into Chardon’s analysis, and the most evident in this case was that the linear measurements he used to assess the recorded league were taken along the shortest possible distance

between the termini of the journeys. But having thus achieved an average length per league, he reasonably concluded that the one most likely being used was the common league of 5.5 kilometers, while the statute league was reserved for juridical matters.!° As helpful as his clarifications are, as reasonable as it is to use the common

league for Pedro Ponce’s journeys, it is not altogether clear that common leagues were always used in this way. For instance, in 1554, the distance between Chalco and Mexico City was recorded as five small leagues, and this is by no means an isolated instance. Even if common (long) leagues were more

typically used for linear measurements, they were not always.!! Instead, whether short or long leagues were used apparently depended on the distance to be measured and which size was seen as more readily fitting the circumstances. Both leagues were clearly used for linear measures, but logic would suggest that long leagues were more common with longer distances whereas short or long leagues would be used for shorter distances, depending on which more accurately fit the circumstances. Although this has not been soundly demonstrated, the existence of different-sized leagues, and their apparent interchangeability for measurements, makes one question the expected accuracy of Spanish accounts. Moreover, it is not clear how the various authors arrived at the distances they cite, although in a rare exception one man was appointed to count and

Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida 237

measure his steps on Coronado’s expedition into the American Southwest, which then allowed him to state with relative accuracy the distances traveled.!2 This trek took place through the desert of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States and then onto the Great Plains, where the terrain was relatively flat. But it does not appear that this practice was adopted elsewhere: if the size of the steps and number needed to comprise a league were recorded for other treks, they have not survived. Thus the objectivity of the league elsewhere is more apparent than real, because only numerical totals remain, which presents us with an altogether different problem. Complications Even if the league’s length was that suggested by Chardon, could the Spaniards have actually traveled the distances they claim in the time recorded? Various complicating factors suggest that such speeds are unlikely to have been attained. First, mode of transport affects travel distance. This is true in part because some, such as horses, travel faster than others, such as human feet, although the need to feed and care for animals slows and complicates such journeys. Except for their military value, these problems may well have made horses

more of a hindrance than an asset in traveling, especially in the case of Cortés’s entrada, which began with only 16 horses and over 400 men, although the men reportedly also outnumbered the horses on Soto’s expedition, 620 to 323, resulting in a similar situation.!8 Although they had some horses, most Spaniards traveled on foot, which limited the speed of the entire party to that of men on foot. Also, despite their speed, horses cannot go everywhere men on foot can, and because the extant trails were constructed for foot traffic, part of the journey may have entailed hunting for alternative routes accessible to horses that would have further slowed the parties’ overall] linear progress. Second, terrain is also a factor. Not only can horses travel faster than human feet and thus alter distances traversed in a single day, but different modes of transport are differentially efficient in different topography.

The type of terrain significantly alters the distances traveled, with hills such as the Appalachians through which Soto marched being perhaps the most significant. Foot travel uphill or on steep downhill slopes slows to 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles] per hour cross-country and generally requires approximately 20 percent more time than marching on level terrain.'4

Foot traffic emphasizes the directness of a route and thus often passes through rugged terrain relatively directly rather than emphasizing ease of gradient to avoid topographical obstacles that may prove major hindrances to horses.!5 This means that routes selected for animal traffic tend to be longer

238 Ross Hassig

than those for foot traffic. At the same time, routes selected for foot traffic may be difficult for animals to use, since obstacles such as ravines will offer little hindrance to foot traffic but may be virtually impassable for horses. Since there were no horses or other draft animals in the New World, roads were obviously not established with them in mind, and to the extent that the Spaniards followed Indian roads with their horses, their passage may have been greatly retarded. Thus, travel by foot permits relatively direct routes, whereas animal transport demands that the characteristics of the beast be taken into consideration, typically forcing a gentler but more circuitous route. However, the analysis of this variable is complicated by the fact that the early Spanish explorers were mounted but were forced to make use of Indian trails geared to foot traffic. A third factor is the time of day of the trek. Travel at night significantly degrades speed. U.S. Army march rates put night marches at 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) per hour on roads and 1.6 kilometers {1 mile) cross-country.!* However, Spaniards did not usually march at night because they were unfamiliar with the region and therefore lacked destinations requiring a definite arrival time,

they did not know the route, and such travel was considerably slower than daylight travel. Since time is the principal variable being recorded, a fourth factor is the season. In winter there are fewer hours of daylight, so marches restricted to daylight would necessarily be shorter. This suggests that conventionalized distances, as between Mexico City and Vera Cruz, must have been based

on winter travel times since these were the shortest, because otherwise they would have been elastic, and similar conditions likely affected Soto’s company.

Fifth, weather conditions are closely tied to seasons and can have a profound impact on travel rates. In the regions in question, snow is a minor fac-

tor, but rain is not. Significant amounts or prolonged periods of rain can significantly degrade roads and trails, turning dry paths into quagmires, especially after the churning of many feet, reducing the speed of travel and signifi- | cantly shortening what a day’s travel actually meant. In late colonial Mexico, the trek from Mexico City to Vera Cruz that took 20 to 22 days during the dry season required 35 days in the rainy season, reflecting a significant decline in per-day travel.!’ Aside from terrain, the nature of the trails is a sixth factor. The width of the trails being used would also have profoundly affected travel times and distances: the narrower the trail, the farther the party will be stretched out and the greater the time required to reach the destination because of the added time required for the last person both to begin and end the march. This can be reduced by having more people march abreast, which is, in turn, dependent

Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida 239 Table 1

Arriero Journey from Mexico City to Veracruz, 1803/8

Common Statute

Location Day # Kilometers Leagues Leagues

Carpio ]2 27 4.9 6.44 Otumba 35 6.36 8.35 Apam 3 4] 74S 9.79 Mexico City

[rest] 4 0

Atlangatepeque 5 37 6.73 8.83 Piedras Negras 6 204.55 3.645.97 4.77 San Diegd 7 25

lrest| 9 0

Tonquita 8 30 5.45 7.16 Tepeyagualco 103.64 28 5.09 6.68 Perote I] 20 4.77 Vigas | 12 25 4.55 5.97 Xalapa 13 28 5.09 6.68 [rest] 14 0 Ensero 15 20 3.64 4.77 Plan del Rio 16 23 4.18 5.49 Rinconada 17 15 2.73 3.58 Paso 14de Varas 18 12 2.18 2.86 Antigua Veracruz19 2010 30 1.82 5.45 2.39 7.16

Total 20 426 77.45 101.67

on trail size. In Mesoamerica, most roads were restricted to a width of two people to facilitate commerce, although those in North America were probably the width of only a single person. But even if they were wider in places, perhaps even for most of their distance, the determining factor is the narrowest single place, so the smallest choke point in a trail is what determines the number of people who can walk abreast. Of course, the smaller the party, the less significant this factor is. A seventh factor is the presence of extraneous encumbrances which might have had a negative impact on travel time. Loads had to be carried, but the main hindrances were animals—not horses, since they were faster than men on foot, but farm animals, specifically pigs. These were not a consideration for Cortés’s trek, but the presence of hundreds of pigs on Soto’s could well have affected march rates.!9 As natural foragers, pigs would have posed few feed problems, but they did have to be herded. Unlike the other animals on

240 Ross Hassig

that expedition, pig herds do not travel as fast as a walking man. Instead, they

typically travel between 5 and to miles a day, depending on weather and roads, and since the latter were lacking, their probable walking speed would have been closer to the slower rate.2° Moreover, although pigs can swim, they typically must be ferried over substantial water obstacles, which would have

slowed any trek.2! To the extent that pigs accompanied Soto’s men, they would have significantly slowed their progress. An eighth factor affecting travel time is misinformation by native informants, both unintentional and deliberate, although its effects are difficult to calculate. Both Spaniards and natives used days to indicate distance, but for lesser durations or when attempting to state distances devoid of time, different cultural concepts of distance may well have led to misunderstandings, particularly when Spaniards relied on native estimates rather than traveling the distances themselves. However, lack of data prevents a fuller consideration of the impact of such factors. How, Then, Was Cortés’s Route Reconstructed? In light of the debate over the length of a league and our uncertainty over the effect of the many factors that could have slowed the Spaniards’ march, how does this affect the reconstruction of the conquistadors’ route? Cortés’s route has not been, nor can it be, reconstructed based solely on the number of leagues recorded as marched. Not only is that record incomplete, but there are insufficient references to actual directions traveled or uniquely

identifiable topographical features. Instead, the conquistador routes have been reconstructed by bringing into adjustment three major types of information: time, places, and distances. Although also subject to critical assessment, various accounts offer tempo-

ral descriptions of the trek. Typically, for both Mexico and the Southeast, these are recorded in terms of the number of days needed to get from point A to point B, although these are not always accurate. For instance, Bernal Diaz del Castillo says the Spanish force marched from Vera Cruz to Xalapa in a single day, which is highly unlikely.22 But more helpful have been the numerous references to specific days, either by day, month, and year, or in terms of the

liturgical calendar—both of which were probably, though not invariably, more accurate, given the presence of clerics on both expeditions. By critical comparison of various accounts, the most crucial dates have been relatively well established, such as the day Cortés landed at Vera Cruz, the day he reached Tenochtitlan, and the date he conquered the city. These, then, provide the basic temporal boundaries within which all other events must be

placed. :

The second variable is place. The locations of many smaller towns through

Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida 241

which the Spaniards marched are still debated, but the major locations are well known and beyond serious dispute. Examples of the latter include Tenochtitlan, Tlaxcallan, Cholollan, Tetzcoco, and Cempohuallan—all still occupied today and all firmly attested by an unbroken string of documentary evidence stretching back almost five hundred years. Thus, these provide some

spatial parameters which must be reconciled with the other data. For Soto, however, most settlements are uncertain and arguments for their locations typically depend on the accuracy of recorded travel distances which are also notoriously uncertain.23 The third variable—distance—is indeed the least certain of the three. Nevertheless, the likelihood of Chardon’s estimate of 5.5 kilometers per league can be assessed in relation to the Spaniards’ average of 5 leagues per day by drawing on comparable travel rates elsewhere. There are numerous examples of recorded travel distances in preindustrial societies, but little information about walking speeds in general. However, one source is the calculated rates for armies— in this case, the U.S. Army. U.S. Army march rates are 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) per hour on roads, or 20 © to 32 kilometers (12.5 to 20 miles} in a normal 5—8 hour march per 24-hour period. The actual speed of march is 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) per hour—calculated at a pace of 76 centimeters (30 inches) and a cadence of 106 steps per minute, with a 1o-minute rest halt per hour included—under relatively ideal

conditions.24 These figures are for a normal march. Forced marches cover greater distances by marching more hours, not by going faster, but they are avoided if possible because they impair the fighting efficiency of the army.?5 Any march in excess of 32 kilometers (20 miles} per 24-hour period is considered a forced march, and the U.S. Army’s maximum recommended distances are 56 kilometers (35 miles) in 24 hours, 96 kilometers (60 miles} in 48 hours, and 128 kilometers (80 miles) in 72 hours.26 Although it may appear inap-

propriate to apply modern infantry march rates to Spanish explorers, these rates accord nicely with the speeds of preindustrial armies. For instance, in the invasion of ancient Greece, Xerxes’ army required at least nineteen days to cover 280 miles; resting one day in seven, the army marched at a maximum rate of 16.5 miles per march day, or slightly less than 15 miles per campaign day.2” Alexander the Great's army achieved a maximum march rate of 19.5 miles per day, Hannibal’s rate was 10 miles a day, and in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, the average was 15.28 In 1760 General Lascy marched on a road for ten days, averaging 22 miles per day, while in the early nineteenth century, Napoleon, Marshal Blicher, and Frederick the Great all averaged 15 miles per day for ten days—the standard distance for the time.2° Pre-modern infantry rates of march generally varied from 5 to 20 miles per day.30

Despite the neatness of this fit and taking into consideration the factors

242 Ross Hassig discussed above that could affect travel times and distances, there are two other major considerations that still require discussion. The first is the effect of meandering. Any distances recorded by Spanish explorers would be travel distances and not necessarily linear distances. Based on the well-known Mexican route between Acapulco and Mexico City in the early nineteenth century, Alexander von Humboldt estimated that for any given linear distance, an additional one-third had to be added to account for meandering.?! This calls into question the practice of identifying sites that are the stated linear distance apart as those visited by Soto. The second additional factor is psychological. Distance estimates are frequently inaccurate, both because of inaccurate perception and then inaccurate recal].32 Moreover, travel on an unknown route seems longer than on a known one because there is no basis for judging progress other than time. Without familiar landmarks, it is difficult to anticipate destinations and gauge progress accordingly, so the last steps seem as long as the first. But the nature of the route itself also affects perceptions of distance. Trips involving many turns are perceived as longer than equivalent distances in straight lines, so meandering routes are perceived as longer than straight ones of equivalent distance.*4 All of this throws doubt on the accuracy of the leagues recorded, and rightly so, given their obvious inaccuracy in many cases. So how has Cortés’s route

been reconstructed? By bringing into conjunction known places and times. These are the only relevant, firmly established data and it is on the basis of these that the conquistador route has been established. Leagues are used selectively, but are more commonly discarded as unreliable, misleading, or irrelevant. Routes in Mexico and the Southeastern United States So what can we make of the recorded leagues? In the absence of some objec-

| tive basis of measurement, that is, something uniform such as measured leagues, distances cannot be accurately known, especially the first time a journey is made. In Spanish accounts, league distances are frequently given as ranges—3 or __ 4 leagues, 5 or 6 leagues—suggesting a considerable uncertainty in measure,

often resulting in considerable variation in total distance. Distances that were solidly established between well-known places may have been fairly reliable, but distances on a trek into unknown or unfamiliar terrain were very uncertain. The only uniformity available to the conquistadors was time—days—and

these became the standard of movement rather than actual distance. Time was used in this fashion throughout colonial Spanish America. Thus, for

Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida 243

instance, Alexander von Humboldt notes that in late colonial Mexico, although people used leagues to describe travel distances, they shortened them as the road became more difficult and lengthened them as it eased, effectively

using time rather than distance as the measure, but presenting it in linear terms. Most commonly, a day’s journey was considered to be 5 leagues, but the reality is that it is the time—one day—that is certain and not the distance— 5 leagues. Rather, 5 leagues is essentially shorthand for a full day’s trip, regardless of the actual linear distance traversed. Thus, despite the specificity we now attach to linear measures, in the sixteenth century, distance was not considered as an absolute spatial extent, but was regarded essentially as a

function of time. ,

In the case of Mexico, the times, distances, and routes of the conquistadors have been fairly well established because the destinations are known. This knowledge was not achieved by reconstructing the route from recorded times and distances; indeed given especially the unreliability of distances, had such destinations not already been known they could not have been reliably recon-

structed.

Tracing Soto’s route is an important task, possibly the pivotal one for the early history of the southern United States, and it should be encouraged. But the better known and much better documented examples of similar treks in Mexico do not suggest that much confidence can be accorded to these efforts unless some additional information is unearthed at the suspected sites or in the archives.

Notes 1. Henry Raup Wagner, The Rise of Hernando Cortés (Berkeley ca: The Cortés Society, 1944).

2. Hernando Cortés, Cartas y Documentos (México: Editorial Porrtia, 1963), 34, 36, 62.

3. Cortés, Cartas, 36, 194. 4. Cortés, Cartas, 125, 152; Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana (México: Editorial Porrta, 1977}, 1:443. 5. John H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 146—48. 6. René Chardon, “The Elusive Spanish League: A Problem of Measurement in Sixteenth-Century New Spain,” Hispanic American Historical Review 60 (1980): 294; René Chardon, “A Quantitative Determination of a Second Linear League Used in New Spain,” Professional Geographer 32 (1980): 463. 7. W.S. Eubanks Jr., “Studying De Soto’s Route: A Georgian House of Cards,” The Florida Anthropologist 42 (1989): 374-76.

244 Ross Hassig 8. Chardon, “Elusive Spanish League,” 295; “The Linear League in North America,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70 (1980): 150; “Quantitative Determination,” 465. 9. Chardon, “Elusive Spanish League,” 295—99; Chardon, “Quantitative Determina-

tion,” 463-64. 10. Chardon, “Elusive Spanish League,” 302; Chardon, “Linear League,” 147-51; Chardon, “Quantitative Determination,” 465. 11. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, ed. Epistolario de Nueva Espana (México: Antigua Libreria Robredo de José Porrtia e Hijos, 1939—42), 7:260. 12. Pedro de Castaneda de Nagera et al., The Journey of Coronado (New York: Dover, 1990}, 41.

13. Luis Hernandez de Biedma, “Relacion del suceso de la jornada que hizo Hernando

de Soto, y de la calidad de la tierra por donde anduvo,” in Coleccion de varios documentos para la historia de la Florida y tierras adyacentes, ed. B. Smith (London, 1857), 1:47.

14. Karl von Clausewitz, On War(New York: Random House: 1943], 275; U.S. Army, Foot Marches, Field Manual No. 21-18 (Washington pc: Department of the Army, 1971],

II. 15. Ross Hassig, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 32; P. W. Rees “Route Inertia and Route Competition: An Historical Geography of Transportation Between Mexico City and Vera Cruz” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1971), 21-22. 16. U.S. Army, Foot Marches, 11. 17. Rees, “Route Inertia,” 214-15.

18. Archivo General de la Nacién, Mexico City, ramo de Consulado 179, not paginated. Kilometer distance estimates taken from Rees, “Route Inertia,” 219. 19. Biedma, “Relacion,” 51; Charles Wayland Towne and Edward N. Wentworth, Pigs: From Cave to Corn Belt (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950), 74-75. 20. E. C. Burnett “Hog Raising and Hog Driving in the Region of the French Broad River,” Agricultural History 20:99; Towne and Wentworth, Pigs, 122. 21. Towne and Wentworth, Pigs, 121. 22. Diaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera, 1:181. 23. E.g., Chester DePratter, Charles M. Hudson, and Marvin T. Smith, “The Hernando de Soto Expedition: From Chiaha to Mabila,” in Alabama and the Borderlands,

from Prehistory to Statement, ed. R. Reid Badger and Lawrence A. Clayton (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985}; Charles Hudson, Marvin T. Smith, and Chester B. DePratter, “The Hernando de Soto Expedition: From Mabila to the Mississippi River,” in Towns and Temples along the Mississippi, ed. David H. Dye and Cheryl Anne Cox (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990}. 24. U.S. Army, Foot Marches, 11. 25.U.S. Army, Foot Marches, 16. 26. U.S. Army, Foot Marches, 11. 27. F. Maurice, “The Size of the Army of Xerxes in the Invasion of Greece 480 B.c.,” Journal of Hellenistic Studies 50 (1930): 212.

Leagues in Mexico versus Leagues in Florida 245

28. D. W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 20; C. Neumann, “A Note on Alexander’s March-Rates,” Historical Journal of Ancient History 20 (1971): 196-98. 29. Clausewitz, On War, 275-77. 30. Neumann, “Alexander’s March-Rates,” 196-98. 31. Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1811-22), 1:xxxix. 32. J. A. Russell and L. M. Ward, “Environmental Psychology,” Annual Review of Psychology 33 (1982): 661. 33. Russell and Ward, “Environmental Psychology,” 662; E. K. Sadalla and S. G. Magel, The Perception of Traversed Distance,” Environment and Behavior 12 (1980): 67,

75-76.

Jack D. Elliott Jr.

Of Roads and Reifications:

The Interpretation of Historical Roads and the Soto Entrada

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— and whether pigs have wings.” Lewis Carroll, “The Walrus and the Carpenter”

In “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” a poem in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the walrus refers to “speaking” of “things” in the form of a

seemingly nonsensical array of nouns and questions. In the same book a rather pedantic Humpty Dumpty explains his inscrutable speech by declaring, “When / use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more or less.” Carroll elaborated on the whole matter in his Symbolic Logic when

he argued that “any writer of a book is fully authorized in attaching any meaning he likes to any word or phrase he intends to use. If I find an author saying, at the beginnings of his book, ‘Let it be understood that by the word black I shall always mean white, and that by the word white I shall always mean black,’ I meekly accept this ruling, however injudicious I may think it.”! One would gather that although quite a variety of speech is possible, referents may or may not be obvious; but if they are not obvious, they should be clarified. This has not always been the case. This chapter deals with the usages of the term “road” and how that usage has been unwittingly abused by not taking into consideration the complexity involved in the term’s referent.” In specific, I address the example of how speculators on the route of Hernando de Soto through present-day Mississippi have made the assumption that Indian trails, or roads, of the early nineteenth century were in use during the sixteenth century and thus were proba-

bly used by the Spaniards. The assumption is based upon a rather naive

Of Roads and Reifications 247 _

understanding of the term road. The problems involved in the usage of the term are admittedly not widespread, but they have appeared in a variety of sources and thereby warrant an interpretation of the term and the manner in which it is used. When the Swanton De Soto Commission report was released in 1939, its discussion of Soto’s route through present-day Mississippi was replete with either direct or indirect references to early nineteenth- and occasionally eighteenth-century roads or trails that were assumed to have possibly provided the expedition passage from the Tombigbee River to the Mississippi. The discussion in that work was based on various speculations that had been made in preceding decades, in all of which the same trail assumption had been made. Virtually every option considered for Soto’s passage through Mississippi was based upon (1) the unjustified assumption that the winter camps of 1540—41 were in the Redland vicinity of Pontotoc County, and (2) the consideration of only historic trails for the expedition’s route between the Tombigbee River and Redland and between Redland and the Mississippi River.

The report began its consideration of the Tombigbee River crossing by assuming without discussion that the crossing had to have been at either Waverly, Aberdeen, or Cotton Gin Port, all being the sites of early nineteenthcentury crossings, and then, having made this assumption, debated which of the three was most probably used by the Soto expedition.‘ In like manner, all three of the points suggested for the site of the discovery of the Mississippi River—Memphis, Commerce Landing, and Sunflower Landing—were in part predicated on the existence of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century roads.

As early as 1880 Mississippi historian J. F. H. Claiborne speculated that Soto had crossed the Tombigbee River at Lincecum Shoals, south of Waverly, and then proceeded to Chicaga (which he, too, believed to be in the Redland vicinity) following an Indian trail that was well-remembered by the early settlers of the area.5 Thirty years later, Henry S. Halbert deemed a Waverly cross-

ing of the Tombigbee unlikely and suggested instead “the old Chickasaw crossing” at Cotton Gin Port.¢ In selecting the alternate crossing point, Halbert was also falling back on a historical geographical situation that was still dimly remembered by the older citizenry during his lifetime. In a 1921 article on Soto’s route through Lowndes County, Mississippi, W. A. Love opted for a Cotton Gin Port crossing with an argument that relied very heavily upon historic Indian trails. Love explicitly stated the credible assumption that the territory through which Soto passed “was not a trackless forest, but traversed by main trails and many cross trails” and that “De Soto,

as well as other explorers in their marches traveled along [these] Indian trails.” Having stated this assumption, however, Love then proceeded to ex-

248 Jack D. Elliott Jr.

amine various eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century trails without considering his more questionable assumption, that is, that the specific trails discussed were relevant to the sixteenth-century cultural landscape. The third site considered by the Swanton Commission for the Tombigbee crossing was Aberdeen, or Morgan’s Ferry as the Commission termed it. Prior to 1939, no known speculation had been published suggesting Aberdeen as the crossing site. However, personal correspondence between Swanton and John Fordyce, on the one hand, and W. A. Evans of Aberdeen, on the other, suggests that Evans was the instigator of this suggestion.’ The year following the release of the Commission’s report, Evans published his arguments for Aberdeen.? Much like Love, he stated the valid but seemingly obvious assumption that the Soto expedition had followed Indian trails, but left unstated his more questionable assumption that historic trails known in 1940 were reflective of

sixteenth-century trails, and again his argument was heavily based on this assumption. By 1922, James H. Malone had championed a previously proposed route from Chicaga (which he, too, believed to be at Redland) to the Mississippi River at the site of Memphis. His lengthy argument was based in large part on

historic Indian trails that had connected the Chickasaws with the site of Memphis.!° A few years later, J. P. Young wrote in support of Malone using as

evidence the fact that “an ancient trail existed from the lower Chickasaw bluff, southeastward to the Chickasaw old fields [emphasis mine].”!! The Swanton Commission considered not only the Memphis crossing but also sites at Commerce Landing and Sunflower Landing.'2 As evidence for the

latter they used the 1830s road termed “Charley’s Trace” by the land surveyors, noting that the western few miles of it appear to conform to the route of the western end of a road on the 1755 John Mitchell map of the Southeast as

the “Route of Col. Welch to the Missisipi in 1698 since followed by our traders.”!3 Evidence for Commerce Landing was in part based on an unnamed map by Broutin that depicted a road converging on the site’s vicinity.!4 Additionally, the 1835 Lusher map of the Chickasaw Cession depicts a road named the “Helena Trace” converging there from the east.!5 In the case of both Sunflower and Commerce Landings, the two historical roads used as evidence for

each site hardly correspond to each other, a fact that is barely noted. Nevertheless, similar arguments have continued to be made.'® In sum, acommon practice in interpreting the route of the Soto expedition has been to take historically defined roads of eighteenth- or, more usually, early nineteenth-century vintage and project their existence centuries into the past without examining the viability of such a procedure. It might also be noted that the use of the flimsy hypothesis of a Redland site for Chicaga is little more than a projection of notions of early nineteenth-century Chickasaw settlement back three hundred years into the past.

. Of Roads and Reifications 249 A consideration of the “Natchez Trace” will help to clarify the conceptualization of historic Indian trails that lies behind speculation on the Soto route. The Natchez Trace has been regarded since the nineteenth century as “ancient,” in a vague sense!’; one nineteenth-century writer even noted that it was “older than the pyramids of Egypt,”!8 while an early twentieth-century writer described it as having been “traveled by mankind from time immemorial.’”? Within the last few years I have even heard it described by a former president of the Natchez Trace Parkway Association as “the oldest road in the world.’”’2° This image of incredible antiquity has been broadcast by the 1990

official Mississippi highway map, which describes the Natchez Trace as “over 8,000 years old.”?!

The notion of the incredible antiquity of the Natchez Trace has even crept in an uncritical fashion into the professional archaeological literature, where it has been used to interpret Middle Woodland period (ca. 100 B.c.—A.D. 600] trade.22 This argument, never explicitly developed in any source, is based in

part on the supposed proximity of the Bynum, Miller, and Pharr mound groups to the Natchez Trace. In reality, though, the nearest of the mound groups to the Natchez Trace (Bynum] is over four miles distant from the site of the road during the early nineteenth century. The inference of proximity was possibly derived from the fact that the Bynum and Pharr groups are adjacent to the Natchez Trace Parkway, a twentieth-century highway built and maintained by the National Park Service to commemorate the Trace but not necessarily following the same route. The use of historic trails to interpret prehistoric and protohistoric traffic circulation is apparently based on the notion that the trails encountered by the Anglo-Americans during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have remained essentially unchanged following their origins in the misty prehistoric past. Although linking these frontier roads to the protohistoric or prehistoric past was in some cases correct, the overall notion of a prehistoric past and its cultures was something that was little understood, in part because of a lack of empirical evidence and interpretive constructs. In lieu of any knowledge of the thousands of years of aboriginal culture history, it was not difficult to make the mistake of believing that the relatively recent aboriginal cultural setting, with its Choctaw and Chickasaw settlements and its interconnecting trails, was representative of an indefinitely old, essentially static historical continuum.?3 The belief that Indian trail systems were essentially static

appears to be based on the unfounded popular notion that trails almost always followed stream divides and were thereby largely determined by the recalcitrant topography.?4 Clarification of the problem involves an examination of the definition of the word “road” and the manner in which a specific road is defined. “Road” is defined as: (1) an open way, generally public, for the passage of vehicles, per-

250 Jack D. Elliott Jr.

sons, and animals, and (2) a course or path. Pertinent definitions of important component terms are: “way”—a course affording passage from one place to another; and “course’”—the route or path taken by something that moves.”5 “Road” appears to have two major components to it: (1) the flow of traffic, which is to say the abstraction for a series of movements of individual things, and (2) a spatial order to the traffic in the form of lines that connect places, usually settlements and centers of activity. Additionally, a road should not be confused with the associated term “roadbed” that is “the foundation and surface of a road.’’26

Having defined road, I will examine the definition of individual roads. Looking over a highway map, a county road map, or a street map, the referent for a specific and distinct road would seem implicitly self-evident. On maps, roads are labeled with names or numbers. Yet without labels what one sees is a network or an interwoven array of roads without termini or boundaries to

separate them as distinct individual units. Boundaries between individual roads are defined as being at certain intersections, although the bases of these definitions are not always self-evident. To understand how specific roads are defined, it is appropriate to examine how the phenomenon is perceived in the mind of an individual, in this case how the concept of a specific road is constructed. You find yourself in the woods in an unfamiliar area, when you come upon what one would interpret as a road, that is to say what physically appears as a flat strip of pavement about 25 feet wide, bounded on two sides by graded and

turfed ditches and extending out of sight in two directions. Although you have defined this as being part of a road, you still have no proper name to give it. The road is simply there; where it “begins” and “terminates” is not known. Lost, you flag a ride and a truck stops. You ask the driver what road you are on and he informs you that it is Highway 32, a designation that means nothing to you. So you ask him where the highway leads to and from. He says that it begins thirteen miles behind him, at its junction with Highway 17 in Rock Creek and leads east on through Barton until it terminates twenty-two miles ahead at its intersection with Highway 57 in Freiburg, which is your destination. Now you are no longer lost because you know where the road runs in relationship to a place with which you are familiar, that is, Freiburg. The driver offers you a ride to Freiburg, so you climb into his truck and you depart. Along the way you pass what you perceive to be another road that intersects Highway 32. It is apparently a county road in that it is narrower and is not paved. A metal sign identifies it as “Old Highway 32.” The driver explains that the county road was formerly State Highway 32, but when the Highway

Department straightened the highway thirty or forty years ago they abandoned a portion of the old highway, which then passed into the county’s juris-

Of Roads and Reifications 251

diction, at which time it was termed “Old Highway 32.” So, in effect, part of the road “Highway 32” had moved from one location to another. The driver, who is obviously an old-time resident of the area, is quite familiar with the road. He continues talking about it, noting that before the State Highway Department was established, Highway 32 had been known as the Rock Creek-— Freiburg road, although it was also known as simply the Freiburg road. Additionally, the portion between Barton and Freiburg was occasionally referred to as the Freiburg—Barton road. “And you know,” the driver continues, “long before that, this road was an Indian trail. Of course, I don’t reckon that it ran exactly the same way. And there weren’t any of these towns like Rock Creek

and Barton and Freiburg back then. I reckon that the trail must have connected some Indian villages that used to be around here somewhere.” One might make several generalizations from this description. First, for each person there is an implicit pre-understanding as to what constitutes a specific road and how that road relates to his or her own perceived world. This involves the ability to create a more or less distinct mental map of the road, in which the road, its termini, and length are related to places and to other roads, and this involves, if need be, the ability to relate this mental map to a specific

setting, that is, the ability to identify a specific physical manifestation—a path, a roadbed, or perhaps even an unmarked course—with the mental image of the road.

One might also assume that that individual exists within an empirical world of people, places, and routes of movement between those places. This world is the creation of its history, the cumulative product of decisions, individual and corporate, and demographic, economic, and technological changes. Places and the routes that connect them exist in a reciprocal relationship, where changes in routes produce changes in the distribution of places, and changes in places result in changes in routes. Third, the flow of traffic along specific routes does not produce discrete or distinct units that can be termed “roads” and given proper names. Roads attain their nominal designations with all of the inherent geographical implications that go with them through some form of consensus within a society. The roads are defined on the basis of their relationships within a network of roads and places, and these definitions are subject to change as a result of changes of route, changes in settlement, or for any number of reasons that might arise within the society’s perception of the transportation network. An individual who is unfamiliar with a road system is able to construct a mental map based on integrating information obtained while participating in a society into the pre-understanding of what constitutes roads.

Fourth, although one tends to associate a defined road with a specific course across the landscape and with specific landscape modifications or

252 Jack D. Elliott Jr.

roadbeds that may be associated with it, such as a beaten path, an embankment across a bottomland, or a pavement, these should not be confused with the road itself. Occasionally the course might be altered, as in the case of our Highway 32 being straightened, or physically altered with the laying of pavement or building up of causeways, and yet we will not necessarily redefine the road. Instead, we will typically speak of it as having “moved” or having been “changed.” Fifth, individual roads as they are defined are bound to their given historical periods. That is not to say that they always suddenly come into existence. In the case of our Highway 32, we can trace it back through time, through name changes and alterations of route, until we reach its Indian trail predecessor, which was not related to any of the places that are located along Highway 32. Wecan, in effect, trace the highway back through its antecedent roads indefinitely, but we must admit that at some time in the past it becomes meaningless to refer to it as “Highway 32.” Given the complexities implicit in defining roads within one’s own social milieu, matters become more problematical as one begins to deal with roads of the past. In a fairly well-documented case, one can justifiably speak of the Natchez Trace within its milieu of the early nineteenth century, where the term indicates the flow of traffic—boatmen, pioneers, and Indians—along a known path through a frontier setting between Natchez and Nashville. The term is meaningful in that it describes a coherent historical and geographical phenomenon, even though, as Dawson Phelps has pointed out, the name itself, “the Natchez Trace,” was not predominantly used to described the phenomenon. Instead, a variety of other names was used to name either the entire road or component parts, such as the “path to the Choctaw Nation,” the “Choctaw—Chickasaw Trail,” or the “Chickasaw Trace.”27

Most historic trails are not nearly so well documented in terms of definition and specific location. In a study of eighteenth-century Choctaw trails, Kenneth Carleton has noted that the available documentary evidence, usually maps, does not name or distinguish individual roads within the network. Without documented distinctions between roads, he was forced to define roads arbitrarily, giving each of them a numerical designation. Furthermore, in attempting to re-locate the trails, the best that could be done was to locate

them within the nearest quarter of a township (i.e., within three miles square}.28

In other cases, available documentation suggests that certain trails and/or river crossings that were used for interpreting Soto’s route may have only been briefly used prior to their documented period of usage. For example, the trail crossings of the Tombigbee River at Aberdeen considered by the Swanton Commission to be a possible Soto crossing cannot be documented prior to 1830 and might very well have developed in 1830 as a response to increasing

Of Roads and Reifications 253

Anglo-American settlement on the east bank of the Tombigbee.29 Another discussed road from the 1830s, Charley’s Trace, has little documentary evidence to prove that it existed in the eighteenth century.°° Overall, the available documentary evidence indicates increasing ambiguity as one moves further into the past. Additionally, none of this evidence suggests a rigid and unchanging trail network. For the prehistoric or protohistoric Southeast there is effectively no evidence of specific locations of roads, either archaeological or archival, except by way of inference from the locations of archaeological sites. In historical contexts where substantial physical modifications were produced by road construction, such as in the Roman Mediterranean, one might expect to find datable remains. Indian trails of the Southeast, however, were essentially narrow paths that might at best leave a mark on the landscape through eroding.?! Although Halbert reported in 1877 what might have been the eroded bed of a protohistoric trail, relic trails are so ephemeral as to be virtually nonexistent and therefore have been of little value in historical interpretation.32 Thus it is virtually impossible to prove that a route of traffic passed through any one place at any given time. Also, in lieu of documentary evidence, conceptualizations of specific roads are lost, and to use a road name from an historical period for a prehistoric or protohistoric period is to imply otherwise. By way of contrast, the other components of the settlement landscape, set-

tlements themselves, tend to leave material evidence of their presence, which we term archaeological sites. Recent studies of protohistoric and historic aboriginal settlement in north Mississippi using archaeological and archival sources have revealed a situation of flux, of numerous movements of social groups during the centuries since 15 40.33 This new, empirically based work should nullify any attempt at simply projecting a historic settlement pattern into the sixteenth century. To do this with settlements is to run the risk of being proven wrong by the results of archaeological research. With roads, though, such projections can neither be proved nor falsified, although

they can usually be assumed to be false if evidence indicates settlement change. However, with virtually no empirical evidence available, reconstruction of prehistoric and protohistoric trail systems is effectively impossible. The problem involved in projecting roads from one era back into another is apparently the product of a misconception. A road is not a “thing,” if by thing we mean that it exists in and of itself as a discrete, bounded entity. Instead, a road can more appropriately be characterized as an abstraction of a nexus of interrelated elements within a larger process or context. To treat a road as a thing rather than an abstraction is to create a reification. To project a specific road with its name into the past is to reify it. In doing this we not only imply the relevance of an historical name for an entirely dif-

ferent time period, but we also imply that that road remained essentially

254 Jack D. Elliott Jr.

unchanged despite all of the changes in settlement pattern that can be documented archaeologically. Meaningful concepts of individual roads can be created: (1) for present roads based on observations from our own present milieu, or (2) for historical roads based upon evidence relevant to the given period, as suggested above for representations of the early nineteenth-century Natchez Trace and the eighteenth-century Choctaw trails. If there is little or no evidence for specific roads, as is the case of the historical geographical setting of the Soto entrada, little can be said. The existence of roads in the prehistoric and protohistoric Southeast can certainly be assumed. To reconstruct a road system for this context, however, the best that can be done is to create a probabilistic model. This model can only be formulated for heuristic purposes, because even to claim that it is a hypothetical model is to overstate its value. A hypothetical model should be testable, but considering the virtual absence of material remains of these roads, testing would seem to be precluded. The construction of such a model is also contingent upon the availability of sufficient archaeological data to reconstruct the settlement distributions for the time and period. Basic assumptions must be outlined, including which settlements are connected and how. Road courses were undoubtedly based on a variety of factors, including settlement location and an optimal reduction of travel time and travel cost.34 Furthermore, there would have been tradeoffs between these factors. Thus, whereas the roads might attempt to avoid crossing streams and other barriers by circumventing them, there would have been a limit to the degree to which a trail would have been altered to bypass these barriers. To bypass every barrier would often have resulted in exorbitant travel time between places. In conclusion, in reconstructing Soto’s route the only relevant geographical data are based on physical geography and settlement archaeology. Roads can only be inferred, which in effect means that even if villages that Soto visited can be identified, we will never be able to locate the exact route that was

followed between these villages. In attempting to reconstruct the exact route, we therefore reach the frontier between what can be known and what will probably remain unknown.

Notes I would like to express my appreciation to James R. Atkinson and Keith Baca for calling my attention to a number of articles that I might otherwise have overlooked. 1. Quoted in Richard Kelly, Lewis Carroll (Boston: Twayne, 1977), 104. 2. luse the term “road” in a generic sense to include not only highways and streets, but also the less conspicuous trails and traces of the past. 3. John R. Swanton, Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commis-

Of Roads and Reifications 255 sion (1939; reprint, Washington pc: Government Printing Office, 1939; reprint, Washington Dc: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 222—23, 233—37. 4. It has been suggested that the usage of historic river crossings for interpretation of the route of the entrada is valid in that these crossings reflected the existence of natural fords which might have been determinants of route location during the sixteenth century. However, the problem of natural fords has seldom been addressed in connection with nineteenth-century crossing places by route speculators. In a few cases there were natural fords, such as Lincecum’s Shoals south of Waverly. For Cotton Gin Port and Aberdeen, it is not clear whether there were fords. Certainly, there were many more important factors in these places’ becoming important river crossings during the nineteenth century. Second, there are a number of other fords in the same vicinity that should have been considered if the writers were not, in fact, interested in historic roads. For example, a cursory examination of other fords reveals (1) a point known as “Indian ford” located on the Tombigbee near Hamilton, Mississippi; (2) “the point .. . heretofore known as Colbert’s Ford” located near present-day Barton Ferry between Aberdeen and Columbus; and (3) the Ten Mile Shoals located below Columbus. See Jack D. Elliott Jr., A Cultural Resources Survey of Selected Construction Areas in the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway: Alabama and Mississippi (Mississippi State: Department of Anthropology, Mississippi State University, 1978}, 2:60—61; William A. Love, “Route of De Soto’s Expedition through Lowndes County, Mississippi,” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society: Centenary Series (Jackson: Mississippi Historical Society, 1921), 4:274; Ruth Basinger Morgan, A Place Called Darracott (Aberdeen Ms: Allmond Printing, 1978}, 22. 5. J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State (Spartanburg sc: The Reprint Company, 1978), 5-6. 6. Henry S. Halbert, “The French Trading Post and the Chocchuma Village in East Mississippi,” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Jackson: Mississippi Historical Society, 1910}, 11:325—29.

7. William A. Love, “Route of De Soto’s Expedition through Lowndes County, MisSissippi,” 270. 8. Letters, John R. Fordyce to W. A. Evans, 13 March 13, 1937, and John R. Swanton to W. A. Evans, 29 March and 6 April 1937, in W. A. Evans Collection, Evans Memorial Library, Aberdeen, Mississippi. 9. W. A. Evans, “The Route of De Soto across Monroe County, December, 15 40,” Journal of Mississippi History 2 (1940): 71-78. 10. James H. Malone, The Chickasaw Nation: A Short Sketch of a Noble People, (Louisville ky: James P. Morton, 1922). 11. J. P. Young, “De Soto at Chickasaw Bluffs,” in A Symposium on the Place of Discovery of the Mississippi River by Hernando De Soto, ed. Dunbar Rowland (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1927}, 43. 12. Swanton, Final Report, 234-37. 13. John Mitchell, “A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America (1755],” in The Southeast in Early Maps, ed. William P. Cumming (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), plate 59: Township Plats for the Choctaw Cession of Dancing Rabbit Creek.

256 Jack D. Elliott Jr. 14. The reference was possibly to the map by Broutin and De Verges, Carte Particuliere dune partie de la Louisianne (ca. 1740), copy in the Natchez Trace Parkway Headquarters, Tupelo, Mississippi. 15. Henry M. Lusher, Map of the Lands in Mississippi ceded by the Chickasaws to the United States in 1832 and 1834 (Pendleton’s Lithography, 1835). 16. James R. Atkinson, “The De Soto Expedition through North Mississippi in 15 40—

41,” Mississippi Archaeology 22 (1987): 69; Richard A. Weinstein, “Some New Thoughts on the De Soto Expedition through Western Mississippi,” Mississippi Archaeology 20, no. 2 (1985): 15-16. 17. William E. Myer, “Indian Trails of the Southeast,” Forty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1924-1925 {Washington Dc: Government Printing

Office, 1928], 811; also cf. Dawson A. Phelps, “Natchez Trace: Variant Locations” (unpublished typescript in the Natchez Trace Parkway Library, Tupelo, Mississippi, n.d.}, 2.

18. W. A. Evans, Mother Monroe (Hamilton ms: Mother Monroe Publishing, 1979), 47.

19. E. T. Winston, Story of Pontotoc (Pontotoc Ms: Pontotoc Progress Press, 1931), 15. 20. This quote is identical to one earlier attributed by Daniels to an unidentified “expansive Mississippi politician.” Jonathan Daniels, The Devil’s Backbone: The Story of the Natchez Trace (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 8-9. 21. “Official Highway Map of Mississippi” (Jackson: Mississippi Highway Department, 1990). The image of the antiquity and immutability of the Natchez Trace is so entrenched in the mind of the public that, according to Albert J. Devlin, it appeared in Eudora Welty’s The Wide Net, along with the Mississippi River, as a symbol of the con-

stancy of human history in which the Trace and the River stood “immune to time, maintaining their intrinsic structure as perennial facts of the landscape” {Albert J. Devlin, Eudora Welty’s Chronicle: A Story of Mississippi Life |Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1983], 72). Another dubious interpretation of the Natchez Trace is the notion that it began as a bison trail. Although Indians might have occasionally used animal trails, their occupation of the Americas for millennia would suggest that there were Indian trails prior to Indian trails, with one system merging into another back to the Pleistocene, and little need for bison to establish the trails. Trawick Ward, commenting on the absence of bison remains in late archaeological contexts in North Carolina, has made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that because of the bison’s “uncanny skills for charting routes along lines of least topographic resistance” and their ability to create “wide, open paths through the wilderness,” they were

not killed by the Indians because they were needed to “maintain this elaborate network of roads which they [the Indians] also used to great advantage.” H. Trawick Ward, “The Bull in the North Carolina Buffalo,” Southern Indian Studies 39 (1990): 20. 22. This notion apparently began with John L. Cotter, who had erroneously observed

that the Bynum site village was “established on a low ridge ... over which the old Natchez Trace passed.” John L. Cotter, “Prehistoric People along the Natchez Trace,” Journal of Mississippi History 12 (1950): 233. Also see John L. Cotter and John M. Corbett, Archeology of the Bynum Mounds, Mississippi {Washington pc: National Park

Of Roads and Reifications 257 Service, 1951), 34, 57; Sharon I. Goad, “Middle Woodland Exchange in the Prehistoric

Southeastern United States,” in Hopewell Archaeology: The Chillicothe Conference,ed. David S. Brose and N’omi Greber (Kent Ou: Kent State University Press, 1979}, 245; Ned J. Jenkins, “Miller Hopewell of the Tombigbee Drainage,” in Brose and Greber, Hopewell Archaeology, 175; Ned J. Jenkins, Gloria G. Cole, H. Blaine Ensor, and Mary C. Hill, Archaeology of the Gainesville Lake Area: Synthesis, Report of Investigations no. 23 (University: Office of Archaeological Research, University of Alabama, 1982}, 74; Ned J. Jenkins and Richard A. Krause, The Tombigbee Watershed in Southeastern Prehistory (University: University of Alabama Press, 1986], 58; John A. Wal-

thall, Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast: Archaeology of Alabama and the Middle South (University: University of Alabama Press, 1980), 151. 23. As a recent example of such a mindset, Prout observed that archaeological evidence predating 2000 B.c. and located within the early nineteenth-century boundaries of the Chickasaw Nation suggest that this people had been residing within that area for over four millennia. He was apparently under the impression that every prehistoric archaeological site located within that area was to be identified with the “Chickasaw” rubric. W. E. Prout, A Historical Documentation of Colbert, Waverley, and Palo Alto, Mississippi (Columbus: Mississippi University for Women, 1975}, I. 24. Daniels, The Devil’s Backbone, 6; Evans, “The Route of De Soto Across Monroe County, December, 1540,” 72; Myer, “Indian Trails of the Southeast,” 743; Phelps, “Natchez Trace: Variant Locations,” 22—23 n.4.

25. William Morris, ed., The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992). 26. American Heritage Dictionary, 1992. 27. Phelps, “Natchez Trace: Variant Locations.” 28. Kenneth Hoffman Carleton, “Eighteenth-Century Trails in the Choctaw Territory of Mississippi and Alabama” (M.A. thesis, University of Georgia, 1989), 69-72. 29. Janet E. Rafferty, B. Lea Baker, and Jack D. Elliott Jr., Archaeological Investigations at the East Aberdeen Site (22Mo819) (Mississippi State: Department of Anthropology, Mississippi State University, 1980}, 36-37. 30. The closest approximation to Charley's Trace is a road depicted on the rather crude De Crenay map of 1733 which has the same orientation (that is from southeast to northwest], but it intersects the Mississippi River approximately twenty miles downriver from where Charley’s Trace intersects the river. Given this discrepancy and the crudeness of the De Crenay map, an identification of the two roads is highly problematical. Baron De Crenay, “Carte de Partie de la Louisianne,” copy on file in the Natchez Trace Parkway Library, Tupelo, Mississippi.

31. In 1820 while traveling through the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, Adam Hodgson observed that the main trail along which he traveled was “a blazed path about a foot broad.” This trail was intersected by “little crosspaths” that included cowpaths and “hunter’s [sic] paths” which were a “little narrower” than the main trail. Adam Hodgson, Remarks during a Journey through North America in the Year 1819, 1820, and 1821 (New York: Samuel Whiting, 1823), 272, 282. 32. Halbert, quoted in William A. Love, “Route of De Soto’s Expedition through Lowndes County, Mississippi,” 274.

258 Jack D. Elliott Jr. 33. For example, see the work of James R. Atkinson on the settlement history of the Chickasaws and Chakchiumas, two groups that were encountered by the Soto expedition: “The Ackia and Ogoula Tchetoka Chickasaw Village Locations in 1736 during the French-Chickasaw War,” Mississippi Archaeology 20, no. 1 (1985}: §3—72; “The De Soto Expedition through North Mississippi”; “Historic Chickasaw Cultural Material: A More Comprehensive Identification,” Mississippi Archaeology 22, no. 2 (1987): 32— 62; “A Historic Contact Indian Settlement in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi,” Journal of Alabama Archaeology 25, no. 1 (1979): 61~82. 34. The variety of factors relevant to route location are discussed in Peter Haggett, Andrew D. Cliff, and Allan Frey, Locational Analysis in Human Geography (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977}.

Ann F. Ramenofsky Patricia Galloway

Disease and the Soto Entrada

In the last decade, historians, ethnologists, and archaeologists have reexamined the nature and consequences of the sixteenth-century Spanish entradas in the Southeast. In these efforts, analyses of the Hernando de Soto venture have loomed large, and this focus is quite understandable.! The entrada extended over a vast area. Except for the trek by Cabeza de Vaca, the Soto expedition lasted longer than any other, and there are several accounts of

the expedition attributable more or less directly to survivors. As a consequence, we have considerable, albeit culturally biased, knowledge about ethnic diversity in the Southeast in the mid—sixteenth century. A repeated focus in recent Soto scholarship is the importance of disease

transmission as the mechanism of population decline in the sixteenthcentury Southeast.? Historical documents and archaeological records show that fundamental changes in population size and distribution postdated the Soto venture in many regions of the Southeast. What is more difficult to determine is whether specific diseases provided the mechanisms for specific changes in population. European descriptions of native illness in the sixteenth-century Southeast are rare and nonspecific. In the Soto chronicles, for instance, the descriptions of Biedma, Ranjel, and Elvas contain only eight references to disease and death.3 Of that total, two episodes are directly tied to dietary inadequacies. In the other instances, death is attributed to such general symptoms as fever (in the case of Soto himself), lethargy, or generic pest. Moreover, five of eight de-

scriptions refer to Spanish, not native, illness and death. Thus, all the Soto documents contain only three references to native illness, and all are from the Elvas narrative. Elvas’s first reference describes an event at Cofa, where a native guide is said to have foamed at the mouth. In Elvas’s second reference, he attributed the abandonment of towns around Cutifachiqui to a pest that occurred during the earlier Ally6n exploration: this is the episode most frequently cited as

260 Ann F. Ramenofsky and Patricia Galloway

metonymic evidence for widespread contagion. Elvas’s third reference describes Indians who died of lethargy in the vicinity of Nilco. The question for researchers interested in the disease history is how to interpret these vague and rare references. Does the infrequency equate with a disease-free environment? Although such an interpretation is possible, we suggest that infrequency and vagueness are the result of sampling and observer biases.* Explorers not only had to know what they were observing, but they had to be in the right places at the right times. All diseases are characterized by incubation periods of varying durations. To see a sick native, an explorer had to recognize illness when he saw it and had to be present when physical symptoms developed. Yet explorers were transients across native landscapes. Because of incubation periods, most disease outbreaks likely occurred after physical contact had terminated. Since the Soto expedition rarely backtracked, observations regarding native episodes of illness were likely missed. Studying infectious diseases archaeologically could, of course, clarify some of the documentary problems, but the archaeology of infectious diseases is plagued with its own set of problems. Infectious agents are not preserved in archaeological soils. Although disease agents may express themselves as osteological traces, the problem of equifinality arises in attempting to link osteological manifestations of diseases to specific infectious agents. Quite simply, except in unusual cases such as mild treponemal infections, causes of bony changes are the result of multiple, or nonspecific, agents.5 Even when it is possible to link agent and osteological trace, it is difficult to argue that the agent was the cause of death. The temporal lag between the onset of infection and expression in the skeleton can suggest a debilitating but not necessarily terminal illness.° At best, archaeologists may, in rare instances, be able to state that an infectious agent was present. There are several archaeological alternatives to direct discoveries of infectious disease. Although differing empirically, these approaches are united in inferring the presence of disease from effects. As Larsen’s long-term research along the Georgia coast suggests, it is certainly productive in appropriate settings to analyze changing mortality profiles of pre- and postcontact skeletal series for evidence of population decline.” Because the Guale skeletal series con-

tained more and older individuals than the precontact series, Larsen and his co-workers suggested that birth rate declined and that mortality increased. In Florida, Mitchem and Hutchison have inferred that sixteenth-century disease outbreaks caused the deaths of some seventy individuals buried in the Tatham mound of the west coastal area. The Tatham mound burial population contained three hundred individuals and, as evidenced by Spanish trade goods and metal cut marks on bone, many of the interments appear to date to the Soto period. Evidence to support the inference that seventy indi-

Disease and the Soto Entrada 261

viduals were epidemic victims derives from their mass burial: all individuals were buried in a single ceremony—and all were placed on a single surface of clean white sand.°®

These changes were then linked to historical descriptions of disease. Archaeologists working in other parts of the Southeast have employed changes in settlement abundance, distribution, or type to argue that infectious diseases were the mechanisms of population change in the sixteenth-century Southeast.!° Historical and archaeological efforts are drawing attention to the importance of infectious diseases as a mechanism of change among native peoples, but the scholarship is still in its infancy. To refute or strengthen our inferences about the importance of diseases in causing population loss, we must address the flip side of archaeological arguments from consequences and historical arguments from symptoms. We need to know what types of microbial agents might have been harbored by an expedition of 500 to 700 people. We need a discussion of the possible pathways of transmission. In the following discussion we attack the question of infectious disease and the Soto expedition head on. Limitations imposed by documents and archaeological records preclude definitive conclusions regarding the type or number of infections transmitted to native peoples. Nonetheless, it is clear that when analyzed from the perspective of infectious disease, the primary documents contain abundant information regarding possible routes or types of infection that could have been transmitted. Our goal, then, is to discuss the possible infections that participants in the Soto entrada could have transmitted to native southeastern people. We begin by describing disease reservoirs and mechanisms

of transmission. Then, by using the narrative sources for the Soto expedition and epidemiological knowledge, we construct an exhaustive list of possible diseases carried into the Southeast. Through further historical analysis, that initial list is restricted to not only the possible, but the most likely. Reservoirs and Types of Transmission

Parasites that cause illness in humans originate from one of two reservoirs: other infected humans or infected nonhuman animals. In the first instance, human populations are both sources and recipients of the microbial parasite. Without a human reservoir, the microbe simply cannot survive. Ramenofsky has termed the transmission pathway of diseases in which humans are the only reservoir direct, meaning that the chain of contact and infection occurs

wholly within human populations.!! Infectious parasites are transmitted from sources to recipients through coughing, sneezing, sexual intercourse, or body wastes. When nonhuman animals are the reservoir, humans are largely extraneous

262 Ann F. Ramenofsky and Patricia Galloway

to the survival of the parasite. The nonhuman reservoir is, however, essential. Although extraneous in terms of microbial survival, humans can be infected by microbes housed in nonhuman reservoirs and can become quite sick. Typically, infection in human populations occurs through accidents of proximity. For example, if human populations are in the right place at the right time, an insect carrying yellow fever can bite a human and the infection will be transferred to a human host. That infection can then be picked up by a healthy, or susceptible, mosquito, which in turn carries the parasite to another human. Ramenofsky terms the alternating cycles of transmission between human and nonhuman populations indirect.!2 Occasionally, as in the case of influenza, the reservoir—recipient transmission cycle reverses. Human rather than nonhuman populations are the reservoir of the illness, and humans accidentally transmit the microbe to other vertebrates or to invertebrates. The same parasite may then be returned to the source for another bout of illness.

The pattern of illness and recovery or death that results from human sources tends to be different from that which results from nonhuman sources. Typical of the directly transmitted human diseases is a period of illness of variable duration, followed by recovery or death. Immunity builds through infection and is long-term or even lifelong. Thus, if an individual survives a bout of illness from a uniquely human disease, his antibody army is in place and will likely repel reinfection by that same species at a later date.' To counteract such a host response of long-term immunity, human viruses, bacteria, and protozoa have evolved a varied set of survival strategies. First, such parasites may require large populations with a constantly recharged pool of susceptible individuals. The classic case of measles, for instance, requires a susceptible pool of 40,000 births per year, or a total population of approximately 200,000.!4 As the size of the susceptible pool increases or decreases, the probability of microbial survival also increases or decreases. With other microbial survival strategies, however, the size of the population is of little importance. These alternative strategies include a long infectious period, survival of the parasite outside the host, and a carrier, or asymptomatic, state in the host. Microbes that survive in nonhuman populations behave differently from those for which humans are the only reservoir. First, carrier states are com-

mon in these diseases.'5 This statement does not mean that all indirectly transmitted diseases are subacute or asymptomatic, only that there may not be obvious symptoms of illness. The vertebrate or invertebrate reservoir can retain an infection in such a carrier state for a very long time, perhaps indefinitely, without ever showing signs of illness. So long as the infected individual or population is alive, the microbe can continue to be transmitted to humans. Second, because cycles of indirect transmission are more complex than

Disease and the Soto Entrada 263 Table 1

Diseases that originated in Europe

Human Reservoir Non-Human Reservoir

Virus Bacteria Bacteria Protozoa Cold Pneumonia Bubonic Plague Malaria

Influenza Scarlet Fever

Measles Whooping Cough , Mumps Typhoid Fever Rubella Smallpox Yellow Fever

those of direct transmission, they tend to occur over longer periods of time. Parasites that infect human populations derive from either other infected humans or nonhuman animals. Characteristics of the diseases that derive from different reservoirs vary. When humans constitute the sole reservoir, the infection tends to have a rapid onset and to last for a short period of time. Infections from nonhuman animals are typically longer-lived and may not ever be

expressed in acute observable symptoms in the reservoir. Moreover, the source can transmit the parasite for long periods of time. The Soto Entrada as Disease Reservoir Because humans and domesticated animals were part of the Soto entrada, the expedition was potentially well-stocked with infectious parasites that could have spread to native Southeasterners. Simple potential, however, is not sufficiently specific for this discussion. We need to know what directly and indirectly transmitted diseases could have come across the Atlantic and been carried into the Southeast. To build this perspective requires a consideration of the composition of the entrada and the disease environments through which its personnel passed. Because the expedition originated in Spain, the personnel could have been harboring all the human infections that initially evolved in Eurasia (Table 1). We have restricted this total to the infectious diseases common in Europe in the sixteenth century. Although we do not know the specific ages of the initial voyagers, Avellaneda suggests that the 650 or so people included both sexes and children as well as adults.!° The presence of younger people on the voyage greatly expands the list of potential human parasites. The development of immunity restricts the age range of many human infections to chil-

264 Ann EF Ramenofsky and Patricia Galloway Table 2 Diseases added to expedition in Cuba

Non-Human Reservoir Virus —S:éBacteria’=~=—= &—& OS al t|!oe) { = G 7 ; Aa “~ S| Y \Sin oO 2 50 isae: esSb.-7 ‘aa3s ON ee iM = as ros A) pO ha j nt Fa ~ Oo | way SZ GSR | ay A, a s ' eK gc in 2 i>} we I pe =) b= Fan) O

|\: ws) = a \ 7 w ~ 5 | ; = aan / 5) co) ~ 2 aa a UY 0 2] § 2 | 7 a< |i1wr e( s\§ 2 | . &\ BV, \aut din S) =] (wo! cD) Bo 15 Ue . 2 Jen A-------6 BD y aa 3\ = 2 ° | o3 Tg Spa pages we bie ! .

| ” \Y

gOfo) sor) fa. t] s‘=2ZBy NO c te Sox Q

The Significance of the Soto Route 321

and assuming our route is reasonably close to the mark, archaeologists should be able to recover additional sixteenth-century European artifacts as their own work progresses. A twisted Nueva Cadiz bead, for example, has

recently been found quite nearby the reconstructed route in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.?! The archaeological discovery of the Governor Martin site

in Tallahassee, Florida, the site of Soto’s winter camp, is another notable achievement, and it is possible that additional sites where Soto’s army camped for weeks or months at a time will be uncovered.*? Will it ever be possible to achieve complete consensus on the accuracy of the new route? Among the public at large, I do not think that it is likely to happen any time soon. Many people retain a vested interest in one or more parts of the old route, for reasons of tradition or local sentiment. I have argued the merits of the case for the new route with a number of these individuals, but so far I have not seen any inclination on their part to reconsider their positions. There is a better chance of a consensus developing among anthropologists and historians, but even with these groups it is by no means a sure thing. The new route has been challenged by scholars on several different grounds. To me, the most rewarding challenges have been those which are based on empirical evidence. In almost all cases, these critics advocate routes that differ significantly from the new route, and in most cases they argue for a route that is identical or similar to that of the U.S. De Soto Expedition Commission.33 These challenges have often led to a helpful reexamination of the data, and in several instances they have enabled me to make adjustments which strengthen my route. The proposals of different routes that have been most difficult to argue about fruitfully have been those dealing with only a short segment of the route.34 Since one can only hope for a route with the least

number of inconsistencies, if the route segment in question is very short, there is frequently not enough scope for testing consistency or inconsistency with other kinds of information. Other critics have challenged the new route on methodological grounds. We now realize that in some instances, we have not been sufficiently clear about our methods. For example, we have been criticized for using a legua comun of 3.64 miles to the league, and for assuming that Soto and his army marched 17.5 miles per day, rain or shine, over mountain and meadow.* Neither is true, and these criticisms have forced us to be more explicit about our methods. In that regard, at least, they have been helpful. There is a final methodological concern that some believe undermines the credibility of our entire enterprise. It is the argument that one or more of the four narratives is derived from the others.*¢ If this is true, some critics argue, then the practice of using one document to corroborate another is limited at best, and at worst impossible. Any compromise in the believability of any of the corroborating documents, they argue, necessarily erodes confidence in

322 Charles Hudson , our conclusions. Though the scope of this present paper precludes my doing so here, I am prepared to argue that the evidence is extremely weak that any Soto document is derived from another. But even if it could be proven that the account by the Gentleman of Elvas is derived from that of Rodrigo Ranjel, and that the account of Garcilaso de la Vega is in turn derived from that of the Gentleman of Elvas, are they simply to be discarded as sources? I would argue that a source should be completely discarded only if it can be proved that the derivation has been total. Any scrap of information, however problematic, is precious. For example,

it is well known that for most of the native societies of the nineteenthcentury Southeast, kinship was matrilineal—traced through the female line. Moreover, this kinship system is explicitly described in at least one early eighteenth-century sgurce.3’ But one might ask whether matrilineality was ancient in the Southeast, or whether it was somehow produced during the traumatic first century after European contact. A scrap of information reported by the Gentleman of Elvas suggests that matrilineality is, in fact, old in the Southeast. According to Elvas, while Soto and his army were at Chiaha, the chief there complained to Soto that he did not truly possess power over his people. Rather, the chief explained, this power was in the hands of his uncle, and he would not be fully empowered until after his uncle’s death.38 We know that in matrilineal kinship systems, a man’s social power and prerogatives are usually inherited from his closest male “blood” relative. Most often, this would be an uncle, his mother’s brother. Because the Gentleman of Elvas does not specify that the uncle in question here was a maternal uncle, we cannot find in this story incontrovertible evidence for matrilineality in the sixteenth-century Southeast. Nevertheless, the case for matrilineality is strengthened by the fact that a similar case of authority passing from uncle to nephew is mentioned by Ranjel in the chiefdom of Ocute.?9 Even if it could be proven that there are no intertextual borrowings in the Ranjel, Gentleman of Elvas, and Garcilaso de la Vega accounts, there remains the general problem of verifying the independent origins of certain narrative elements. We know that among Soto’s soldiers there grew up a body of lore and shared experiences such that none of them could have written a truly independent account of the expedition.*° Soto’s army was a small one and its soldiers must have constantly compared their individual perceptions and experiences. Marc Bloch has shown that as much as half of what soldiers remember about their wartime experiences is filtered through their conversations with other soldiers.*! The Soto project highlights, then, what must be a basic question in historical methodology. What should be the critical standards for historical research when documentary evidence is sparse and difficult to interpret? Should the same standards that pertain to historical writing that is based on plentiful

The Significance of the Soto Route 323

documentary materials be applied in such cases? I do not believe that they can be.

Like the Soto expedition, the American Civil War lasted for about four years. Yet to Civil War historians, who must master mountains of documentary information, the paltry record of the Soto expedition must seem laughably incomplete. The fullness and completeness of the social history that can be reconstructed on the basis of such scanty information, even when amplified by archaeology, must be extremely limited. But is it reasonable to argue, therefore, that no history of the Soto expedition or of the native sixteenthcentury Southeast should be attempted? Surely not. Responsible evaluation and criticism must be brought constantly to bear on this effort, but the criti-

cal apparatus must be appropriate to the data. : Which brings us to a final consideration of this early period of our history. Because absolute certainty about sources and events is not possible, and because the actors in this drama are exotic and remote, the Soto expedition has often been romanticized by the public, and such romantic fantasies continue

to have wide appeal. In this regard, it resembles other historical eras and events for which we have only scant documentary evidence. The early Roman period in England is a case in point. Only a handful of scrappy references to Druids appear in Greek and Roman sources, and the only additional source

of information about them comes from archaeology, as is the case for the early prehistoric Southeast. Yet, amazing claims are made today on behalf of the Druids. There are, in fact, not a few individuals in present-day England who fancy themselves to be Druids. They dress up in robes and, on supposed Druid holidays, perform mystical rites at archaeological sites such as Stonehenge. Likewise, amazing things have been written about Druids. As the ar-

chaeologist Stuart Piggott has observed, the history of the Druids is “bedeviled with almost unbelievably fatuous speculations and fantasies, and shot through and through with... Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy.’”42 May we expect that similar, amazing claims will be made with regard to Soto and the Southeastern chiefdoms? The answer is yes. It comes with the territory. In our own research, we have already faced challenges that threaten to embroil us in discourse and argumentation bordering on the bizarre.*3 But such problems should not deter serious scholars from trying to gain some understanding of the human actors in the old, Old South. We are not willing to settle for a history that aims at less than a comprehensive understanding of the actions of humankind through time.

Notes 1. Charles M. Hudson, Marvin T. Smith, Chester B. DePratter, and Emilia Kelley, “The Tristan de Luna Expedition, 1559-1561,” Southeastern Archaeology 8 (1989): 31-45.

324 Charles Hudson 2. David B. Quinn, North America from Earliest Discovery to First Settlements: The Norse Voyages to 1612 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977], 240—61. 3. Eugene Lyon, The Enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Spanish Conquest of 1565—1568 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1976}, 100-130. 4. Charles Hudson, The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566—1568 {Washington pc: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990). 5. John Worth, “Late Spanish Military Expeditions in the Interior Southeast, 1597—

1628,” in The Forgotten Centuries: Europeans and Indians in the American South, 1513-1704, ed. Charles Hudson and Carmen McClendon (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994}, 104-22. 6. Charles Hudson, “The Genesis of Georgia's Indians,” in Forty Years of Diversity: Essays on Colonial Georgia, ed. Harvey H. Jackson and Phinizy Spalding (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 25—45.

7. John R. Swanton, Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission (1939; reprint, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985}, 2. 8. John R. Swanton, “The Indians of the Southeastern United States,” Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 137 (Washington pc: Government Printing Office, 1946), map 2. g. Charles M. Hudson, The Southeastern Indians (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976}, 107—16.

1o. Chester B. DePratter, “Late Prehistoric and Early Historic Chiefdoms in the Southeastern United States” (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1983); Marvin T. Smith, “Depopulation and Culture Change in the Early Historic Period Interior Southeast” (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1984). 11. Marvin T. Smith and Stephen A. Kowalewski, “Tentative Identification of a Prehistoric ‘Province’ in Piedmont Georgia,” Early Georgia 8 (1980): 1-12. 12. Vernon J. Knight Jr., “A Summary of Alabama’s De Soto Mapping Project and Project Bibliography,” Alabama De Soto Commission Working Paper 9 (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Museum of Natural History, 1988). 13. David J. Hally, Marvin T. Smith, and James B. Langford Jr., “The Archaeological Reality of de Soto’s Coosa,” in Columbian Consequences, vol. 2:, Archaeological and

Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands East, ed. David Hurst Thomas (Washington pc: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990}, 2:121-38. 14. Bruce D. Smith, “The Archaeology of the Southeastern United States: From Dalton to de Soto, 10,500—500 BP,” Advances in World Archaeology 5 (1986): 62. 15. David G. Anderson, “Political Change in Chiefdom Societies: Cycling in the Late Prehistoric Southeastern United States” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1990). 16. Fidalgo de Elvas, True Relation of the Hardships Suffered by Governor Fernando de Soto & Certain Portuguese Gentlemen during the Discovery of the Province of Florida, Now Newly Set Forth by a Gentleman of Elvas, 2 vols., facsimile and translation, ed. and trans. James A. Robertson (De Land: Florida State Historical Society, 1932—33], 2:72.

17. Luis Hernandez de Biedma, “Relation of the Conquest of Florida,” in Narratives of De Soto in the Conquest of Florida, trans. and ed. Buckingham Smith (New York: Bradford Club, 1866], 236, 268.

The Significance of the Soto Route 325 18. Charles M. Hudson, Marvin T. Smith, and Chester B. DePratter, “The Hernando de Soto Expedition: From Apalachee to Chiaha,” Southeastern Archaeology 3 (1984): 65-77. 19. Hudson, Juan Pardo. 20. Charles M. Hudson and Jerald Milanich, Hernando de Soto and the Indians of Florida (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1993). 21. Charles M. Hudson, Marvin T. Smith, David Hally, Richard Polhemus, and Chester B. DePratter, ‘Reply to Boyd and Schroedl,” American Antiquity 52 (1987): 845-56. 22. Hally et al., “Archaeological Reality.” 23. Knight, “Soto Mapping Project.” 24. Jay Johnson, “Chiefdom to Tribe in Northeast Mississippi,” this volume. 25. James R. Atkinson, ‘The De Soto Expedition through North Mississippi in 15 40— 41,” Mississippi Archaeology 22 (1987): 61-73. 26. Rufus A. Ward Jr., “The Tombigbee Crossing of the De Soto Expedition,” Mississippi Archaeology 21 (1986): 62-68. 27. Dan F. Morse, “Archaeology and the Population of Arkansas in 1541-43,” and Phyllis A. Morse, “The Parkin Archaeological Site and its Role in Determining the Route of the de Soto Expedition,” both in The Expedition of Hernando de Soto West of the Mississippi, 1541-1543, ed. Gloria A. Young and Michael P. Hoffman (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993), 29-35, 58-67. 28. Scott Akridge, “De Soto’s Route in North Central Arkansas,” Field Notes, Newsletter of the Arkansas Archaeological Society 211 (1986): 3-7. 29. Frank F. Schambach, “The End of the Trail: The Route of Hernando’s Army through Southwest Arkansas and East Texas,” The Arkansas Archaeologist 27/28 (1986-87): 9-34 (published in 1989). 30. Nancy Adele Kenmotsu, James E. Bruseth, and James E. Corbin, “Moscoso and Route in Texas,” in Young and Hoffman, Expedition, 106-31. 31. John W. Adkinson, “Early Spanish Bead Found in Tuscaloosa County,” Stones and Bones: Newsletter of the Alabama Archaeological Society 33 (1991): 2. 32. Charles R. Ewen, “Soldier of Fortune: Hernando de Soto in the Territory of Apalachee, 1539-1540,” in Thomas, Columbian Consequences, 2:169—98.

33. Keith J. Little and Caleb Curren, “Conquest Archaeology of Alabama,” in Thomas, Columbian Consequences, 2:169—98. 34. See, for example, Lewis Larson, ‘The Pardo Expedition: What Was the Direction of Departure?” Southeastern Archaeology 9 (1990): 124-39; Chester B. DePratter, Charles M. Hudson, and Marvin T. Smith, “The Juan Pardo Expeditions: North from Santa Elena,” Southeastern Archaeology 9 (1990): 140-46. 35. C. Clifford Boyd Jr. and Gerald F. Schroedl, “In Search of Coosa,” American Antiquity 52 (1987): 840—44; Hudson et al., “Reply to Boyd and Schroed1.” 36. Patricia Galloway, ‘“Incestuous Soto Narratives,” this volume. 37. Thomas Nairne, Nairne’s Muskhogean Journals: The 1708 Expedition to the Mississippi River, ed. Alexander Moore (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988], 33, 45, 61-62.

326 Charles Hudson 38. Elvas, True Relation, 107. 39. Rodrigo Ranjel, “A Narrative of De Soto’s Expedition,” in Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, ed. Edward Gaylord Bourne (New York: Allerton, 1922), 91. 40. George Lankford, “Legends of the Adelantado,” in The Expedition of Hernando de Soto West of the Mississippi, ed. Gloria Young and Michael Hoffman (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993}, 173-91.

41. Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1964], 49—50.

42. Stuart Piggott, The Druids (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1975), 1. 43. W. S. Eubanks Jr., “Studying de Soto’s Route: A Georgian House of Cards,” The Florida Anthropologist 42 (1989): 369—80; Charles M. Hudson and Marvin Smith, “Reply to Eubanks,” The Florida Anthropologist 43 (1990}: 36—42.

Part 4

The Expedition and Euro-American History

Ralph H. Vigil The Expedition of Hernando de Soto and the Spanish Struggle for Justice

The Indian Question and the Parties to the Struggle Following Columbus's voyage of discovery and his settlement of Hispaniola, the colonization enterprise became extremely complex, involving a struggle between the Crown, the Church, and the colonists. Before settlement, however, material and spiritual goals were joined in a commercial venture between Columbus and the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabella. Most of the

I,200 men who sailed with the Admiral were salaried employees of the Crown, whose main duty would be to take possession of the island and its gold. The few artisans and peasants who were also on board would establish the expedition’s trading post, and the seeds and livestock that made up a part of the ship’s cargo would provide subsistence. It was expected that the Indians they encountered, later described by Columbus as generous and cowardly, would barter their gold for Spanish baubles; they might also be enslaved. Finally, the clerics who accompanied the expedition, led by Fray Bernardo Boyl, would preach the Gospel and convert and baptize the Indians:.! Everything turned out otherwise. Supplies ran low and Columbus’s order

that those who would not work should not eat angered his men. These disaffected expeditionaries, men without women, hunted for gold and preyed on

the Indians. The differences between Columbus and his men, on the one hand, and Father Boy! and his clerics, on the other, were many; and the Indians resisted the Spaniards or ran away. Columbus soon replaced the barter system with a tribute system, forcing the Indians to labor in the mines. Rebellious Indians were enslaved, and five hundred of these were transported to Spain in 1495. Later, to appease his rebellious men, Columbus gave them

lands and Indians. Indian forced labor was subsequently formalized by Governor Nicolas de Ovando. Because Queen Isabella considered the Indians to be free subjects of

the Crown, Ovando was instructed to inform the native rulers that the In-

330 Ralph H. Vigil

dians were to be protected but were obliged to pay tribute in the same fashion as other royal subjects. Initially, Indians might only be made to work in the royal placer mines or in public works. When, however, the Indians refused to cooperate, royal decrees created the system of encomienda.

The Encomienda The encomienda was initially a formal grant of Indian Crown vassals to deserving conquistadors and worthy settlers. Indians were required to perform labor for the recipients of these grants, as well as to provide tribute. In return, the Spanish encomendero pledged to defend the colony from internal and external enemies and to Christianize his Indian charges. In granting encomiendas, the Crown intended both to reward meritorious Spaniards and to incorporate Indians into Christian civilization by placing them under the protection and tutelage of responsible Spaniards. Encomienda, so excellent in its intent, proved to be the major factor in the destruction of the Indians of Hispaniola. Encomenderos flaunted their responsibilities, and Indian population declined from perhaps 1,100,000 at contact to approximately 18,000 by 1516.3 Since the first epidemic among the Indians was not recorded until 1518, mistreatment and the destruction of the

Indians’ social system rather than disease caused this early catastrophe. Later, when the encomienda was imported to the mainland with the conquests of Panama, Mexico, and Peru, it also served as a factor in the demographic disasters witnessed there. While epidemic disease and famine were the primary factors in Indian deaths on the mainland, mistreatment and the disruption of their societies certainly contributed to the Indians’ decline.4 The Dominicans began protesting the cruelty and avarice of the encomenderos beginning in 1511. By then, the Crown was also well aware that the Indians required better protection, but, as historian Benjamin Keen has ob-

served, its motives in addressing the Indian question often differed from those of the Dominicans. The Crown viewed with alarm the rapid demise of the Indians because it desired “the preservation of a large, tribute-paying population.” Moreover, since the Crown had only recently tamed the unruly nobility of Castile, it recognized that “excessive concentration of land and Indians in the hands of colonists might lead to the rise of a class of feudal lords independent of royal authority.” The Church, like the Crown, also had a significant stake in the preservation of Indians. As Keen notes: “If the Indians died out as a result of Spanish mistreatment, the great task of saving souls would remain incomplete and the good name of the church would suffer. Besides, who then would construct churches and monasteries and support the servants of God in the Indies?”5

The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 331

The Laws of Burgos and the Requerimiento To discharge the royal conscience and end the agitation raised by the Dominicans, the Laws of Burgos were issued in 1512—13. In addition, because the conflict between the Dominicans and the colonists of Hispaniola also raised the issue of the Crown’s just title to the Indies and its justification for future missionizing among the as yet unconquered Indians, Doctor Juan Lopez de Palacios Rubios of the Royal Council was commissioned to draw up the Requerimiento 1n 1§13.

The Laws of Burgos attempted to reconcile the economic self-interest of the encomenderos with the Crown’s professed principal intent to Christianize and preserve the Indians. But as was to occur with other legislation governing Spanish-Indian relations, no effective provisions were made for the code’s implementation. As the royal judge Alonso de Zorita observed, “The more laws and decrees are sent, the worse is the condition of the Indians by reason of the false and sophistic interpretation that the Spanish officials give these laws, twisting their meaning to suit their own purpose.’ Moreover, the code of Burgos, for all its pious phrases, reflected the negative view of Indian character held by the educated theologians and officials who drew up the code and sanctioned the existing situation that was destroying the Indians.’ The code stated that because the Indians “by nature” were “inclined to idleness and vice,” the royal authorities should burn their lodges and move the natives to the vicinity of Spanish communities, where they would be Christianized much sooner by continuous association with the colonists. Encomiendas were to continue and a third of the Indians were to work in the mines, but no Indians might be used as carriers of supplies to the mines. Indians were to be given forty days of rest after working in the mines for five months in the year. Further, Indians were to be fed cooked meat at least on Sundays and feast days, and Spaniards who beat them or called them dogs were to be fined.®

For its part, the Requerimiento was a most curious document. It asked the Indians to understand that the Pope was the political and spiritual head of the world, and demanded that the Indians acknowledge the sovereignty of the Spanish Crown by reason of the papal donation of 1493. Should the Indians reject these demands, and the priests they were asked to receive for their instruction in the Catholic faith, war might be legally waged against them “in all ways and manners.” Conquered Indians would then be subjected to the obedience of Church and Crown, their goods would be taken from them, and Indian men and their families would be made slaves.? When Pedrarias Davila was appointed governor of Panama, he carried a copy of the Requerimiento with him. Oviedo, the royal chronicler of the Indies, records the first attempt to read it to the Indians of Santa Marta. But be-

332 Ralph dH. Vigil

fore the document could be read, the Indians attacked the Spaniards, and the 300 men on land had to be reinforced by another 1,000, led by Pedrarias. Eventually, the entire cohort entered the village, which had been abandoned by the Indians. Oviedo had been assigned the duty of reading the Requerimiento, but there were no Indians there to hear it. Oviedo then suggested to Pedrarias that since the Indians did not care to hear the theology of the Requerimiento, and because there was no interpreter to make them understand it, the governor might put it away until an Indian should be caught and put in a cage, from where he might gradually master its contents with the help of the bishop. Oviedo continued, “And I gave him the Requerimiento, and he took it with much laughter, and that of those who heard me.”!° Continuing his account, Oviedo then stated: Later, in 1516, I asked Doctor Palacios Rubios (who had written that proclamation) if the consciences of the Christians were satisfied with that Requerimiento, and he said yes, if it were done as the proclamation required. But I recall that he often laughed when I told him of that campaign and of others that various captains later made. I could laugh much harder at him and his learning (for he was reputed to be a great man, and as such had a seat on the Royal Council of Castile}, if he thought that the Indians were going to understand the meaning of that Requerimiento until many years had passed."

Another critic of the Requerimiento was Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican brother and a repentant encomendero, who now also took up the cause of the Indians. After becoming protector and procurator of the Indians in 1516, he acted as their representative with the Spanish government until his death in 1566. Las Casas’s chief target was the encomienda system itself, but he also attacked the notions of Indian conquest and enslavement, urging instead the peaceful conversion of the Indians. In contrast to some clerics and Humanists who believed that Indians were slaves by nature, Las Casas defended the Indians’ intellectual capacities and argued that slavery was accidental and unnatural. The Indians, Las Casas ar-

gued, were men with rational souls who had done the Spaniards no harm. Conquistadors, he said, who as Christians were obliged to uphold natural law and the Gospel, were wrong when they made no distinctions between infidels and wantonly usurped the Indians’ lands. Las Casas noted that the word “conquistar” was a term used by many tyrants, and meant no more than to kill, rob, capture, subjugate, and deprive of goods, lands, and lordships men who had done no evil, harm, or injury to those from whom it had been received.!2

Regarding the Requerimiento, Las Casas also objected: neither discovery nor the papal grant to the Indies gave the kings of Castile temporal lordship or possession of the Indians and their lands. The Indians followed natural law, Las Casas argued, and had their natural lords and kings, free princes who rec-

The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 333

ognized no one, not even the Roman Church, in fact or by right as their superior. Consequently, the Crown’s title to the Indies did not deprive the native lords of their power nor their subjects of their liberties, lands, and wealth. The papal grant given the Castilian kings only gave them the right to preach

the Gospel to the Indians and convert them in this manner, without detriment to their rulers and without depriving their subjects of their freedom and

possessions.! Las Casas believed that his friend Palacios Rubios had incorrectly adopted the thinking of Henry of Susa (Ostiensis} as the basis for the Requerimiento.'4 Las Casas asked, rhetorically, whether the Indians would be obliged to obey if it were the Moors or the Turks making the same demands in the name of their lord Mohammed, the creator of the world and its men. For Las Casas, the Requerimiento was “unjust, impious, scandalous, irrational and absurd,” and, he said upon reading it, he knew not whether to laugh or to weep.!5 Citing Christ’s teachings, by word and deed, that to advance the Gospel by force was contrary to God’s will, Las Casas in 1516 recommended the peaceful colonization of the Indies by Spanish farmers who would teach the Indians to till the soil and live as they did. “In time the natives would become civilized, intermarriages would take place, and the population would thus prosper and increase.””'6 In the 1540s Las Casas was still fighting on the Indians’ behalf. More fully aware of the actions of the many slave hunters and conquistadors who had killed, terrorized, tortured, and destroyed the Indians, he proposed to end their “diabolical crimes” by sending from areas that have already been pacified and in which some have embraced our faith, representatives chosen from among the recent converts, in the name of some pious and religious men to whom they are devoted. These representatives would tell the other peoples in that province the purpose for which those pious men, who are vastly different in their conduct from the other, murderous men, come into those provinces, that is, to proclaim to them the way of truth and the worship of the true God. This is how we are destined to bring vast provinces to the faith. Afterward it would be useful to build a fortification in a suitable place where the preachers would have their residence after a garrison of good and honest men had been installed. Now since these members of the garrison would not seek the death or the wealth of the Indians, the monarch would be obliged to give them abundant salary."

Spanish-Indian Relations in Florida Prior to Soto’s Expedition

At the time the Dominicans were protesting the mistreatment of the Indians on Hispaniola, Spanish slave hunters were kidnapping the peaceful Indians of the Bahamas to replace those who had died laboring in the mines. Since the Bahamas were depopulated by 1513, the “discovery” of Florida in that year may be viewed as “an extension of slave hunting beyond the empty islands.”!8

334 Ralph H. Vigil

Juan Ponce de Leén’s journey to Florida for slaves and Eden’s fountain, whose waters were said to give everlasting health and rejuvenation, resulted in his death. Having been appointed adelantado of Florida, he had sailed for the mainland in 1520. Mortally wounded, he soon returned to Cuba. Many of the 250 men who went with him also lost their lives; some were killed by Indians and others perished from disease.!° Following Juan Ponce’s death, the search for the Fountain of Youth was superseded by the search for the transcontinental Strait of Anian and mythical lands of wealth said to exist in the interior. This search began with Lucas Vazquez de Ayll6én, who left for the mainland in 1526 with 500 men and a great

quantity of trade goods. After founding a settlement (perhaps in Virginia}, Ayll6n died; there followed divisions among the Spaniards and a slave revolt. Of the 500 men who left for the north, only 150 sick and starving men returned to Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.2° The next expedition to Florida was led by the inept Panfilo de Narvaez in 1528. This arrogant and tyrannical captain had imprisoned Lucas Vazquez de Ayll6n when Ayllon had accompanied his expedition to Mexico in 1520 as royal judge. In an attempt to prevent open conflict between the forces of Hernan Cortés and his own, Narvaez had imprisoned Ayll6n, but to no avail. After adding this expression of contempt for the authority of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo to his defeat by Cortés, the one-eyed and misguided conqueror led an expedition to Florida in 1528. Of the 300 men who made land, only four survivors, among them Alvar Niifez Cabeza de Vaca, arrived in Mexico to inspire the expeditions of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado and Hernando de Soto.?!

Continuing Reform Efforts and the Position of the Crown

As conquests or attempted conquests were made in these years, Las Casas and other defenders of the Indians continued with their reform campaign. In the 1530s Fray Francisco de Vitoria at the University of Salamanca wrote and lectured on the Spanish Crown’s authority over the Indies and its inhabitants. In 1537 Pope Paul III promulgated the bull Sublimis Deus which stated,

in part, that the Indians “must be invited to receive the faith of Christ with the preaching of the word of God and with the examples of a good life.”22

Vitoria’s efforts “to raise the level of his country’s colonial policy and ground it firmly on the twin bases of international law and Christian humanitarianism” resulted in a silencing order from the Crown in 1539. Pope Paul’s bull and the brief that empowered the archbishop of Toledo to press for its

compliance were sequestered. As is apparent from these and other actions by the king and the Royal Council of the Indies, the Crown held no doubt concerning its temporal and

The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 335

spiritual authority over the Indies. While Charles V considered the Indians to be free men, he tolerated a colonial system that rested on an unjust foundation. The de facto slavery of the encomienda, the de jure slavery of Indians, and the wars of conquest that justified their enslavement caused most of the evils visited upon the Indians. Moreover, laws defending the Indians might be issued, but these decrees were ignored or imperfectly executed because government from afar failed to moderate greedy royal agents and Spanish adventurers who sought to acquire wealth quickly “and thus rise to very high estates disproportionate to their persons.”’”4 Hernando de Soto: The Personality of a Conqueror

Like many another adventurer in the Indies, Hernando de Soto, born into a family of the lower nobility in Badajoz, Estremadura, left this poorest region of Spain and sought through military exploits “to be worth more” (valer mds). He “was advanced by fortune. . . that he might fall the greater depth.” On his arrival in Panama in 1514, this youth in his late teens had “nothing more than blade and buckler.” But the dark, graceful, and merry-faced Soto had the virtues of the warrior. He was brave, dashing, loyal, patient in adversity, believed that the Lord God of hosts favored him, and lusted for glory and wealth. He - proved to be a great horseman in both saddles and one of the best lances who crossed to the Indies; “and there were few as good and none better, unless it were Gonzalo Pizarro, to whom by common consent was invariably given the honor of first place.”’25

Don Hernando, “always the first or the second” in battle, became a captain of a troop of horse within a few years. Oviedo, called by Las Casas “a deadly enemy of the Indians,” says that Soto “was much given to that sport of killing

Indians, from the time he went for a soldier with the governor Pedrarias Davila.”26

Having made his mark in Castilla del Oro by 1520, Soto was one of the principal captains in the conquest of Nicaragua. He was also alcalde of Leon fora short time, and acted as captain of Governor Diego Lopez de Salcedo’s guard in 1527. But when word was received that Pedrarias had been assigned this region, Soto acted as one of the leaders of the mutiny against Salcedo. In addi-

tion to holding “some of the best encomiendas in Nicaragua,” Soto also gained wealth in the Indian slave trade. Indian captives were shipped to Panama, where they were auctioned off to bidders.2’ Although the narrative of the Gentleman of Elvas states that Soto went by Pedrarias’s order to conquer Peru, it appears that don Hernando and his old master fell out before the latter’s death in 1531.28 Whatever their relationship before the governor’s death, Soto married one of the governor’s daughters in Spain before leaving for the conquest of Florida.

336 Ralph H. Vigil

Always seeking a higher estate, the ambitious and newly rich Soto thus married an upper-class Spanish woman of wealth and station. Soto’s wife, dona Isabel de Bobadilla, had for an uncle the first Count of Pufonrostro. Moreover, her father, the count’s brother, was dubbed “the gallant” and “the jouster.” All of this sounds very Castilian and of ancient lineage, but Pedrarias Davila’s noble antecedents were of very recent origin.?° On his mother’s side, dona Isabel’s father was an “Old Christian.” On his

father’s side, Pedrarias was the grandson of a converso of obscure lineage named Diego Arias Davila whose wife was a Jewish tavern keeper who accepted baptism. Which things being so, dona Isabel’s great-grandfather was a self-made man, part of the arriviste nobility raised up from the middle class and converted Jews.?° Diego Arias Davila went from spice merchant and tax farmer to the office of contador mayor (head tax farmer of Castile and collector of revenues) in the reign of Enrique IV (1454-74). His grandson, the governor and conqueror of Panama, “distinguished himself by his rapacity and savagery.” He was also accused of using blacks in his slave-hunting expeditions and giving Indians to clerics, blacks, and converted Jews. Although Oviedo claimed that the governor was responsible for the death of two million Indians, he noted that Pedrarias’s daughter was a kind and charming woman of great presence.*! Soto and dona Isabel had no children, but in Nicaragua he fathered a daughter, dona Maria de Soto, and in Peru he took as his mistress a daughter of the Inca emperor Huayna Capac. By this woman don Hernando also had a daughter, dona Leonor de Soto, who married a poor notary named Garcia Carrillo. Dona Leonor was not listed in Soto’s will, and she and her husband and children lived very modestly in Cuzco in 1573.*2 James Lockhart has observed that various unsatisfactory biographies have been written about Soto. One might add that because we must fashion heroes in the American grain, this “hasty, dashing and gallant” warrior enjoys a reputation in the English-speaking world “as a shining knight, an embodiment of various imaginary virtues, as opposed to the unmitigated vices of other conquerors.” Granted his courage he was not sagacious, and the record demonstrates that he was as ruthless as any of his companions.?3

If Soto lamented Atahualpa’s execution, he thought nothing of torturing Atahualpa’s general in order to find where Huayna Capac’s and Huascar’s gold might have been hidden. After being set on fire by Soto’s order, Chalcuchima was brought to Hernando Pizarro “with his legs and arms burned and his tendons shrivelled.’’34 Soto undoubtedly learned methods of torture from Pedrarias and other ac-

complished plunderers. Pedrarias was a veteran of the North African wars, and “divine justice,” says Las Casas, chose to make him the executioner of the Central American Indians. Called furor Domini because he was “a flame

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of fire who burned and consumed many provinces,” Pedrarias and his followers “invented new methods of cruelty in their torture of Indians to make them reveal and give up their gold.””35

Among the countless abominable acts ordered or approved by Pedrarias is one that resembles Soto’s later torture of Chalcuchima. After being given gold worth 9,000 castellanos by a native ruler in Panama, Pedrarias, believing the cacique had more gold concealed, had his feet burned. More gold was handed over, but the torment continued. Because he had no more gold or did not want to give more, the Spaniards burned the cacique in this manner until his bone marrow exuded from the soles of his feet and he died. Soto’s actions in Florida reflect his earlier training and experiences in Central America and Peru. Oviedo tells his reader to heed the fate of this “illguided governor, instructed in the school of Pedrarias de Avila, in the disper-

sion and destruction of the Indians of Castilla del Oro, graduated in the deaths of the natives of Nicaragua, and canonized in Peru, according to the order of the Pizarros.” He then notes that after being delivered from all these infernal pathways, Soto returned to Spain loaded down with gold. But “he knew

no rest nor could find it either single or married, without returning to the Indies to shed more blood, not content with that which had already been spilled.’’3’

Granted that Soto’s treatment of the Indians in Florida was a carryover from his training in earlier conquests, he was always his own man. “His excessive independent power was at the root of his rivalries with Pedrarias,” and in Peru he was mistrusted by both the Pizarros and Almagro because he wanted an independent command.?8 But having gained this command, Soto acted more like a mounted scout and Indian killer than a royal official charged with winning over a “strong, indomitable, and very warlike people.”?9 If the accounts of Spanish behavior during the course of the Florida expedition are to believed, Soto must have

thought that the tactics used against the Indians of Central America and Peru, “which was another kind of attack and rout of Indians,” would win him Florida and its peoples. “He deceived himself,” writes Oviedo, and entered a land that had seen the death of “Juan Ponce de Leon, Licentiate Lucas Vaz-

quez de Ayll6n, Panfilo de Narvaez, and others more dexterous than Hernando de Soto.’””49

Soto’s desire to always be in the vanguard was noted by Rodrigo Ranjel, his

secretary. During the first reconnaissance of the land of Florida, a contrary wind came up and Soto and the few men with him dropped anchor and went on shore without arms. Because those who were on the other ships could not have aided him had this been necessary, this apparent care for minute details was really “carelessness and excessive diligence or lack of prudence on the part of the governor, because such tasks are delegated to other persons and not

338 Ralph H. Vigil

to him who has to govern and direct the army, and it would have sufficed to have sent a lesser captain to make that reconnaissance.”4! In addition to being unable to delegate authority, the mature Soto was a stern man of few words who listened to himself and ignored the counsel of others. “Although he liked to know what the others all thought and had to say, after he once said a thing he did not like to be opposed, and as he ever acted as he thought best, all bent to his will.’”42 Soto’s Contract with the Crown

Soto, after returning to Spain from Peru with more than one hundred thousand pesos de oro, judiciously lent the Emperor Charles V part of his fortune. Charles, for his part, made him a knight of the Military Order of Santiago in consideration of his services and merits. Soto initially wanted the government of Quito or Guatemala, but settled for the command of Florida. Having accepted this governorship, Soto learned that Cabeza de Vaca had arrived at court. Although Cabeza de Vaca’s written relation spoke of the poverty of Florida and his hardships, rumor quickly spread that he had told his kinsmen and the Emperor that Florida “was the richest country in the world.’43 These rumors of another fabulous kingdom rich in gold induced many men of good condition, including two kinsmen of Cabeza de Vaca and the brother of the Marquis of Astorga, to join the expedition. Soto’s contract with the Crown gave him the right to conquer, pacify, and settle the provinces from the Rio de las Palmas on the Mexican coast as far as Florida, as well as the New Land previously granted to Licentiate Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon. He was given the offices of governor, captain general, adelantado, and high sheriff. Although Soto was given the right to grant Indians in encomienda, he was also required to take clerics designated by the Crown “to instruct the natives of that province in our Holy Catholic Faith.”4 Should Soto in his conquest capture any cacique or principal lord, a sixth part of the lord’s treasure was to be paid to the Crown. The rest of the wealth

was to be divided among the conquerors after paying the royal fifth to the treasury officials accompanying the expedition. But if the native lord was killed in battle, or sentenced to death or killed in any other manner after his capture, one half of his treasure was to be paid to the Crown. Further, all treasure found in graves, Indian temples, or in any religious, private, or public place was to be divided equally between its discoverer and the Crown. Because the king had been informed of the notorious evils inflicted on the Indians in past expeditions of discovery and settlement, he informed Soto that he had suspended licenses for this purpose until the Royal Council of the Indies deliberated these offenses at great length. In agreement with the Coun-

The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 339 : cil, the king wished to avoid these abuses by giving order to future discoveries

and settlements. Hence, a general provision containing articles that Soto must keep was made a part of the contract with the monarch. Before listing these articles, the provision declared that both on the islands and the mainland the Indians had been forced to do great and excessive tasks in the gold mines and pearl fisheries, and on farms and other works. Because

the Spaniards had compelled the Indians to work without giving them clothes or food for their sustenance, and had treated them with more cruelty and enmity than that accorded slaves, so great a number had died that many islands and parts of the mainland no longer had an Indian population. Indians who had survived these cruelties had fled their communities. Because they had taken refuge in the mountains or other places, this had greatly hindered their conversion. And when they had told neighboring Indians of the violence done them, these frontier Indians had made war on the king’s subjects. Many Christians had been killed by the Indians, including innocent friars and clerics who had suffered martyrdom preaching the Faith. Since the principal intention of the Crown was to spread the Faith by bringing the Indians to the knowledge of Christianity, future discoveries and settlements should be made without offense to God or injury to the Indians. Seeking to remedy past abuses, the king ordered the judges of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo and the governors, alcaldes mayores, and other magistrates of particular jurisdictions in the Indies to inform themselves of those subjects who had abused Indians. Magistrates having knowledge of subjects who had killed, robbed, or harmed Indians in other ways were to report their guilt to the Council. Any report submitted should also contain an opinion as to the punishment to be handed down, keeping in mind God's service and the royal justice. Were a magistrate in his investigations to find that any person held Indian slaves who had been unjustly taken and brought from their lands, these Indians were to be taken from their masters. Should these Indians wish to return to their lands, this was to be done if at all possible. However, because of the danger that might ensue to their souls, those Indians found to be Christians but not of the Catholic faith were not to be returned to their communities. Former Indian slaves not returned to their homes must be allowed to live as free men, or were to be granted in encomienda if judged incapable of living on their own. Before giving them their freedom or placing them in encomienda, the magistrates must obtain the opinion of the prelate or his delegate. In their absence, the magistrates were to seek the agreement and opinion of the local

parish priest or his assistant. Magistrates placing Indians in encomienda should always have respect and consideration for their good and benefit, and

340 Ralph H. Vigil

take care that the Indians would be well fed and instructed, treated as free men and not as slaves, and not compelled to work excessively or taken to the mines against their will. In his effort to give order to present and future expeditions, the king ordered that friars or priests selected to accompany the expedition were to be recommended to the Council of the Indies, which would pass on their training and character so as to insure their suitability for the instruction, education, and conversion of the Indians. The priests should take great care for the Indians’ welfare, and not acquiesce in their evil treatment. Should violence or injury

be done to the Indians by any person of whatever rank or condition, the priests should inform the king as quickly as possible so that he and the Council of the Indies might punish the offender rigorously. Immediately after reaching the land to be explored and settled, the Indians were to be told by means of interpreters that the king had sent his subjects to this region of the king’s dominions to teach them good customs, to end their vices and the eating of human flesh, to instruct them in Christianity so that their souls might be saved, and to attract them to the king’s lordship so that they might be better treated than they were, in the manner of his other Christian subjects.

Also, they were to tell the Indians all that had been ordered to be proclaimed and required of them by the Catholic Sovereigns of blessed memory. Hence, the king ordered that the Requerimiento, signed by the royal secretary Francisco de los Cobos, be read to the Indians by the interpreters once, twice, or as many times as the clerics thought necessary for full understanding of its contents. After the admonition and demands of the Requerimiento were known to the Indians, the Spaniards might construct fortresses and dwellings in suitable places, taking care that these be built with the least injury and harm to the

Indians. Those Indians employed in this labor were not to be branded or killed, nor might they be compelled to surrender their possessions and lands. Rather, they were to be treated as neighbors deserving of good treatment and instruction in Christian doctrine, and the same form and order should be followed in exchange of goods and other business transactions. Also, no person might enslave Indians under penalty of losing all his goods and offices and the royal favor, except if the Indians refused to receive the priests brought for their instruction and salvation. The Indians might also be made slaves if they refused to give obedience to the king, or if they made war against the Spaniards, thus preventing the search for mines or the exploitation of gold and other metals in these mines. In cases of this sort, as well as in defense of life and goods, the Spaniards might make war against the Indians and make slaves of them. Before the Spaniards took up arms against the In-

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dians, however, the clerics had to agree that the war and the enslavement of the Indians was necessary and just. Finally, the king stated that if it appeared to the priests that the Indians would be better served by separating them from their vices, particularly those of sodomy and cannibalism, the clerics might assign them in encomienda. Spaniards given these Indians should treat them as free men, and following the distribution the clerics should send a report of the quality and ability of the Indians and what had been ordered for the service of God and the good and utility of the Indians. The Expedition to Florida On 30 May 1539 Soto arrived in his colony with an army of 600 footmen and 250 horsemen.*5 He may have landed at Tampa Bay, called Espiritu Santo by the Spaniards after the day on which land was seen by the expedition.** Soto

had come, said Oviedo, “to continue the profession, stained with blood” which he had followed in other parts of the Indies.4’ Because of the vagueness of the accounts written by his contemporaries, the narratives raise more questions than they answer about the route of the expedition and the identity and behavior of the Indians it encountered. Still,

the actions of the Spaniards on the coast and on the line of march are described vividly, either directly or at second hand.48

Soto’s actions against the Indians are explained, in part at least, by the fierce resistance he met. In many instances, his offers of friendship were refused because the Indians were well aware of the atrocities already committed by explorers and slave hunters beginning with Juan Ponce de Leon. Moreover, if he had the Requerimiento read to the Indians—as he seems to have done before entering Ichisi—he was either not believed or not understood by the warlike Indians of Florida “resolutely attached to their liberty, their beliefs, and traditions.’’4? At the town of Urribarracuxi the cacique refused Soto’s offer of friendship. In the province of Acuera the cacique’s reply to Soto’s offer of peace was that he “had long since learned” that the Spaniards were “professional vagabonds” who robbed, sacked, and killed wherever they went.*° In other instances the Indians professed friendship and aroused the wrath of the Spaniards when Indian guides lied to them of wealth a short distance beyond, thus seeking to be

rid of these rainbow seekers by leading them to where they might be ambushed and killed.! Because the Indians were viewed by Soto as either deceitful savages or prideful savages who resisted savagely, he attacked and treated them savagely. As for the Indians, they had different ethical norms than the Spaniards and saw them only as slave hunters, robbers, and killers. If one has to judge

342 Ralph H. Vigil

which of these contrasting views is most correct, it appears that of the trinity of motives that impelled Soto and his men, the desire for gold was largely divorced from the wish to serve God and king. _ After landing in Florida the Spaniards turned their back to the sea and went in search of the land’s treasure. “The first idea in the minds of these cavaliers,” says the Inca Garcilaso, “was to conquer that kingdom and seek gold and silver, and they paid no attention to anything that did not pertain to these metals,”’52

That the Indians had good reason to view the Spaniards as mortal enemies was quickly evident. Shortly after disembarking, Soto received word that Indians had assembled at the town of Ocita, ten leagues to the west of where the expedition had made land. When Vasco Porcallo arrived at Ocita by Soto’s order, because no Indians were found he burned the town and set the dogs on the Indian he had for a guide.

In describing this incident, Oviedo uses the term aperrear and tells his reader that the word means “to have the dogs attack or kill, tearing the Indians to pieces, for the conquistadors in the Indies have always used greyhounds and fierce and brave dogs in their wars; and for this reason I earlier made reference to the hunt of the Indians.”53 Oviedo’s statement that dogs of war were regularly used by Soto and other conquistadors in the Indies is confirmed by other chroniclers, even the Inca Garcilaso, who tends to minimize Soto’s cruelties. A gallant Irish greyhound mentioned by Oviedo is called Bruto by Garcilaso, and called a bloodhound by the Gentleman of Elvas.54 Greyhounds, wolfhounds, bloodhounds, and other large dogs were used to hunt down and kill Indians, and one of the better images of these hounds as seen by Indians is found in Sahagin’s account of the Mexican conquest. They were large. They had ears folded over; great dragging jowls. They had fiery eyes— blazing eyes; they had yellow eyes. They had thin flanks—flanks with ribs showing. They had gaunt stomachs. They were very tall. They were nervous; they went about panting, with tongues hanging. They were spotted like ocelots; they were varicolored.55

After finding that slaves for his mines and plantations could not be seized easily, Vasco Porcallo decided to return to Cuba. His departure did not lessen the cruelties inflicted on the Indians. After being told by the Indians of Paracoxi that there was much gold in the province of Cale, the Indians who gave this information were chained together to act as guides. When the guides led the Spaniards to where Indians lay in ambush, “the Spaniards permitted the dogs to kill four of them.” This caused one of the surviving captives “to direct his captors faithfully.”5° Blinded by greed and Soto’s vain sermons and lies that good lands lay ahead, the stubborn Spaniards marched on accompanied by their chained Indian bearers. Even without arms, the Indians proved dangerous. After Indians at

. The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 343 Napituca were defeated, some three hundred captives attempted to kill Soto and his men with pestles or weapons seized from their masters. So many were the deeds done by these rebellious captives that Soto could only exclaim: “May God defend me, and that the lords of the Council of the Indies were here to see how His Majesty is served in these parts.” To which Oviedo replied that because the Council indeed knew how the king’s conscience was being served, “they have ordered an end to the tyrannies and cruelties, and that the pacification of the Indians have better order, so that God, Our Lord, and the Caesarian Majesty may be better served, and the consciences of the conquistadors may be made safe, and the natives of the land may not be mistreated.”5’ The Indians killed many of the governor’s men when the army wintered at Apalache. In order to intimidate the Indians, Spaniards pursued them, burned them, and cut off their hands and noses. The Indians were not intimidated by these measures, and fought the Spaniards until they departed the place in March 1540.°8

On the way to Cofitachequi, the Spaniards lost many of the pigs they had brought with them as an emergency food supply. Other pigs were eaten when they ran out of provisions. Suffering from hunger and drenched by rain, they finally found the pleasant village of Himahi and food. Besides the corn in the

village, there were mulberries in their season, berries in the plains, and countless wild roses in the surrounding countryside with a finer, sweeter fragrance than those of Spain. A day after finding the town, one of the captains captured four or five Indians and brought them to Himahi for questioning. Not one of them chose to reveal the location of their lord’s village, “although they burned one of them

alive before the others, and all suffered that martyrdom for not making it known.”’59

When the Spaniards arrived at Cofitachequi, the cacica there greeted them

warmly, gave them gifts, and told them that pearls might be found in the sepulchers of the town. More pearls were found at the town of Talomeco, a league distant from Cofitachequi. But when Soto left Cofitachequi, the cacica declined to give him guides or bearers because of the outrages that had been committed by men of low degree among the Spaniards. So Soto took her and her female slaves with him in return for her hospitable treatment, making true the adage “Por bien hacer, mal haber.’’©° In Santo Domingo, Rodrigo Ranjel explained the motives for the actions taken by Soto and his men in Florida. Tamemes, or bearers, were taken from

the Indians so as to have more slaves or servants to carry the supplies the Spaniards had plundered or had been given. Because some tamemes died and others ran off or were exhausted, it was necessary to replace them by taking

more. That Indian bearers were soon exhausted or killed is indicated by

344 Ralph H. Vigil

the taking of five hundred bearers at Chiaha on 28 June 1540. More Indians were taken and put in iron collars and chains at Coza in August. In October the cacique of Tascaluza gave Soto four hundred carriers, and told him that

he would give him the one hundred Indian women he also demanded at Mabila.®!

The Spaniards took many young and comely women as servants, and also to satisfy their “filthy and excessive lecheries.” Oviedo maintained that the women were baptized more for the Spaniards’ carnalities than to instruct them in the Faith.®2 And after the Indians gave what they had, the Spaniards held the caciques and other principal men as hostages so that their subjects might not rise up against them while they robbed the land, or did whatever else they wished. When Oviedo observed that the Spaniards never stopped or rested for long in any place they came to, and that rather than carrying out settlement or conquest, the Spaniards had disturbed and destroyed the land and deprived

the Indians of their freedom without making them either Christians or friends, Ranjel agreed. He said that neither the governor nor his men knew where they went: Soto was intent on finding a land rich enough to satisfy his greed. “And as for disturbing the land and making no settlement, nothing else could be done until they found a place that might satisfy them.”® Oviedo concluded that Soto and his men willfully refrained from doing what they should have done, and wrongly chose the anticipated riches of the world. Turning away from God, they became lost men driven by diabolical greed and carnal passions. Unwilling to understand the state of their disturbed lives and disordered souls, these conquerors desolated the land and became killers of themselves and the Indians.“ Las Casas agreed with Oviedo about the bloody deeds done by Soto and his comrades, but differed with him concerning the nature of the Indians of Florida. Las Casas stated that Soto’s vile deeds and those of the petty tyrants he led were too many and too horrible to recount, but might be compared to the acts of wild beasts committed against well-disposed, intelligent, civil peoples living in orderly fashion in densely populated settlements. As usual, they massacred a great number so as to instill fear in the hearts of the survivors. They afflicted and killed many by making them carry loads, as is done with beasts of burden. When one of the bearers would tire or fall, they cut off his head at the neck so as not to unlink the chain from the neck-collars of the Indians who went before him, and the body would fall to one side and the head to the other.

Another example given by Las Casas of Soto’s harsh treatment of the Indians is his statement that the Spaniards entered a town and were very cordially greeted and given a surfeit of food, and more than six hundred Indians to carry their loads and care for their horses. After the Spaniards left the town,

The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 345

a captain related to Soto returned and killed the lord of the land with lance thrusts and sacked the town. In another large town the Spaniards killed children and adults, young and old, sparing no one, when the Indians appeared unwilling to share what they had.° Las Casas chose not to identify the Spaniards or to name the towns in which these alleged crimes took place. After stating that “the fourth tyrant” (Soto) had gone to Florida in 15 38, but that nothing had been heard of him for three years, he wrote: “Three or four years after I wrote the above, the rest of the tyrants who went with that chief tyrant, who died there, left the said land of Florida; from them we learned of the unheard of cruelties committed principally by him against the innocent Indians who had harmed no one, and con-

tinued after his death by other inhumane men.’’*’ , While Las Casas did not mention Soto and other tyrants directly in the Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies, he and Fray Rodrigo de Andrada specifically mentioned him in a written request to the king in 15 43.68 In

this memorial concerning the New Laws of 1542-43 and injustices committed against the Indians since the beginning of the conquest of the New World, the friars declared that the worst offenders against the Indians were those captains called adelantados or governors, granted the right to conquer lands in the Indies or to discover and subjugate pacific Indians by war. Their sole purpose and intent and their deeds are and have been nothing more than the continuation, increase, and addition of murders to murders, robberies to robberies, sins to sins, desolations to desolations, despoilments to despoilments, so as to consume and cause the ruin of that world (all of which we are prepared to give very sufficient and abundant and true testimony in this royal court).°

Las Casas and Andrada noted that although some limitations had been placed on these tyrants who killed Indians as if they were bedbugs, neither the king’s laws nor the audiencias’ instructions nor the restrictions of any judge were complied with in the very remote and almost inaccessible lands in

which these harmful men exercised authority. Hence, the friars urged the king to declare all contracts and capitulations entered into with these adelantados and governors null and void. Enormous crimes had been committed against the king’s Indian subjects by these men granted concessions and titles, the friars said, especially by the German tyrants of Venezuela, the agents of the Welsers of Augsburg who had depopulated over four hundred leagues in this grant. After these agents of the Welsers the friars listed Sebastian Benalcazar, a “cruel hangman” who carried

the meat of slaughtered Indians to feed and maintain the condition of his fierce, man-killing dogs. Third in order of cruelties and killings and preceding Governor Alonso Luis de Lugo of New Granada, described by Las Casas as “a most irrational and bestial man,” was Hernando de Soto, “presently laying

346 Ralph H. Vigil

waste those parts of Florida, as the testimony of his deeds will declare when he appears.”70

For the individual who asks whether Las Casas exaggerated Soto’s misdeeds and whether his Brief Relation matches any incident in the extant sources, one can only reply that incidents mentioned by Oviedo, the Gentleman of Elvas, and the Inca Garcilaso are not dissimilar from Las Casas’s account. While the Gentleman of Elvas does not mention that Indian carriers were killed when they became exhausted, he does state that some carriers killed their Christian masters and fled. Other Indians filed their chains at night with stone, and if caught “were punished” so as to warn the other Indians not to do the same.”! The Gentleman of Elvas does not describe the method of punishment, but it is easily inferred. That towns were sacked and burned and their inhabitants killed by Spaniards or their Indian allies is learned from the Gentleman of Elvas and the Inca Garcilaso. After a scouting party led by Juan de Anasco arrived at Himahi, located in the province of Cofitachequi, Indian allies of the Spaniards directed by their leader Patofa robbed the town’s temple and “killed all of the people they could capture both inside and outside the town, making no exception for age and sex; and from these slain they took the scalps from the ears up with admirable skill and dexterity.” Other villages in the vicinity were sacked by these Indians, who killed all of the persons they captured.’2 When the Spaniards reached Mabila on 18 October 1540, they were badly

received and Soto set fire to the town’s houses during the battle that took place. Many of the 2,500 Indians who died in the struggle were smothered and burned to death after running into the flaming houses to escape the attack of

the Spaniards.” At Chicaca, where Soto took up winter quarters in late 15 40, three Indians were caught stealing the Spaniards’ hogs. Soto had two of the Indians killed, and the third was sent to his chief after his hands were cut off.’”* After the battle at Tula, Soto sent six Indians of those captured to their cacique after cutting off their noses and right hands, “with the message that, if he did not come to him to apologize and render obedience, he would go in pursuit, and to him, and as many of his as he might find, would he do as he had done to those he sent.”75

Shortly before his death, so that the Indians of Nilco and Guachoya “might stand in terror of them,” Soto sent troops to Nilco. The Spaniards attacked the town of perhaps six thousand souls, and some Spaniards “were so cruel and butcherlike that they killed all before them, young and old, not one having resisted little or much.””6 After reading Ranjel’s account as presented by Oviedo and considering its

The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 347

relationship to the accounts of the Gentleman of Elvas and the Inca Garcilaso, while discounting the latter’s obvious imaginative bent, one is inclined to believe Las Casas’s statement that on another occasion, the Spaniards summoned more than two hundred Indians from a town or the Indians came to meet them of their own free will. In any case, Soto ordered his men to cut all the Indians’ faces from their nose and lips to their chins, leaving their faces flat. Streaming with blood, the wretched Indians were sent to carry “the news of the works and miracles done by those baptized preachers of the Holy Catholic Faith.”7” In short, we do not need Las Casas’s few examples of Soto’s misdeeds to

confirm his claim that Soto was one of the most notorious and experienced among those who had destroyed many provinces and kingdoms. Las Casas’s condemnation of Soto’s conduct in Florida, learned from survivors of the illfated expedition, does not contradict the extant sources; rather, it confirms the cruelties and massacres perpetrated against the Indians as noted in these accounts. As William B. Rye observed in the nineteenth century, Soto was primarily a looter and plunderer rather than a colonizer, and cruelty and avarice were predominant traits in Soto’s character.’8 Still, Soto’s psychological makeup and his actions against the Indians of Florida did not differ greatly from the traits found in other conquistadors and their actions, for example, Pedrarias in Pan-

ama and Nicaragua, Pedro de Alvarado in Guatemala, and Alonso Luis de Lugo and Pedro de Urstia in New Granada.” Proof of this is the promulgation of the New Laws of 1542—43, which declared that the Indians were free persons and decreed fundamental reforms in the regulation of Indian labor, tribute, and the encomienda system.®° Soto, like most conquerors, demonstrated the conspicuous virtues of bravery, generosity, and fortitude. But he and other conquistadors, as Las Casas notes, were filled with greed and ambition, desired temporal blessings to an inordinate degree, and sinned greatly when viewed by the standards of their own faith. Moreover, Soto was “imbued with the sense of profound moral superiority that characterized Spain’s onward moving Christian soldiers,” and this trait—a combination of arrogance and vain glory, twigs arising from Pride, the root of all harms—more often manifested itself in “a brutal contempt for the Indian than in a desire for his or her conversion.”8! Granted that Soto and his fellow conquistadors demonstrated a uniformity of action in their expeditions arising from similar motives, it is also evident that not all conquistadors fit an exact mold. Hence, the question of whether he was crueler or kinder than his contemporaries has been posed by several historians. David J. Weber’s recent study of Coronado concludes that his expedition

348 Ralph H. Vigil

“contrasted sharply, for example, with the predatory plundering of the southeastern part of North America by Hernando de Soto, which occurred simultaneously with Coronado’s entrada into the Southwest.’82 An earlier study of Soto by R. B. Cunninghame-Graham places Soto midway between Cortés and Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, and notes “that Soto, judged by the modern standard, was as cruel as other conquerors, by the nature of their trade, are bound to be; that is, he did not hesitate to kill, either for policy or to strike terror in a foe.”83 Cunninghame-Graham’s contemporary, Woodbury Lowery, also notes that “according to our present standard” Soto was “very cruel.” But he observes that his “mutilations, the burnings, the rending with dogs, were the approved, though barbarous, methods of his profession, above which neither his religion nor his own manhood impelled him to rise, and long contact with an inferior and weaker race, such as he had experienced, tended to brutalize the mind and render it incapable of distinguishing those subtler bonds of acommon humanity which it is the triumph of Chris-

tianity to have proclaimed.” Both Cunninghame-Graham and Lowery were mistaken in thinking that only one standard is prevalent in the present or the past. As Weber notes concerning Coronado, “several standards of conduct, some of them contradictory, may exist simultaneously” in any age. Hence, if we judge Coronado,

Cortés, or Soto by the standards set by “rapacious thugs such as Nuno de Guzman, the notorious slave hunter of Nueva Galicia,” they do not appear all that bad. If, however, they are judged by the standards of Fray Bartolomé de

Las Casas, then the expeditions of Coronado and Soto were “illegal and immoral,’’85

In conclusion, Hernando de Soto was a poor gentleman who sought the wealth of the Indies. He was not as treacherous as Pedro de Ursua or as literate as the empire builder Hernan Cortés, but was probably as brave as any of the famous conquistadors who carried the banner of Castile to the Indies. Having

participated in the conquest of wealthy Peru, he went in search of another golden kingdom. Instead of colonizing Florida and patiently pacifying the Indians, he spent his time in unprofitable wanderings. In his struggles with the Indians his daring was clearly matched by his cruelty. Before his death on 21 May 1542, he sought the sea beyond “the great fogs that came out of the river.” But even in his illness and deep despondency, he remained constant in his adversity and a heroic son of Estremadura. When the cacique of Quigaltam sent word that it was not his custom to visit anyone, but rather to be visited and served, Soto grieved that he could not cross

the great river, half a league broad and sixteen fathoms deep, “to see if he could not abate that pride.’’®°

Fortune, who dispenses her favors without a legal writ, granted Soto time for confession of his sins before he died of the fever. After giving him the

The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 349

Great River as a burial place, Soto’s successor sold the governor's property at

public auction. “It consisted of two male and three female slaves, three horses, and seven hundred swine.” In Havana, Cuba, dona Isabel had an inventory taken of her husband’s possessions on 6 December 15 43, two days after learning of the adelantado’'s death. On 23 December his property in Cuba was sold. After the costs of the sale and other obligations were deducted, dona Isabel was given 3,121 pesos de oro and three tomines.®’ As is evident, Soto’s expedition, given his expenses, had not been a successful economic venture.

Notes 1. J. Vicens Vives, ed., Historia de Espana y América, § vols. (Barcelona: Editorial Vicens-Vives, 1961), 2:5 30—3I.

2. The land and Indians given the rebels were “in most cases, a mere legal confirmation of what they already had.” Troy S. Floyd, The Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, 1492-1526 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), 42—43. 3. It appears that a count of Indians by Bartholomew Columbus in 1496 is the basis for the sixteenth-century assumption that Hispaniola at the time of the Spaniards’ arrival had over a million inhabitants: Carl O. Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), 65-69. For higher figures, see Bartolomé de Las Casas, Doctrina {Mexico City: Ediciones de la Universidad Nacional Autonoma, 1941], 5, and Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean, 3 vols. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1971], 1:376—410. For a criticism of what he calls the “High

Counters,” see David Henige, “On the Contact Population of Hispaniola: History As Higher Mathematics,” Hispanic American Historical Review 58 (May 1978): 217-37. 4. Many Indians committed suicide “after having killed their children, saying it was far better to die than to live so miserably, serving such and so many ferocious tyrants and wicked thieves. The women, with the juice of a certain herb, dissipated their pregnancy, in order not to produce children, and then following the example of their husbands, hung themselves. Some threw themselves from high cliffs down precipices; others jumped into the sea; others again into rivers; and others starved themselves to death. Sometimes they killed themselves with their flint knives; others pierced their bosoms or their sides with pointed stakes.” Girolamo Benzoni, History of the New World (London: Hakluyt Society, 1857), 77-78. The Milanese Benzoni served under Sebastian de Benalcazar in Ecuador and Colombia. He arrived in the New World in about 15 41.

5. Benjamin Keen, The Aztec Image in Western Thought (New Brunswick ny: Rutgers University Press, 1971], 72. 6. Alonso de Zorita, Life and Labor in Ancient Mexico: The Brief and Summary Relation of the Lords of New Spain, trans. and with an Introduction by Benjamin Keen (New Brunswick ny: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 216—17. For Zorita’s life see Ralph H. Vigil, Alonso de Zorita, Royal Judge and Christian Humanist, 1512-1585 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987]. Writing in the 1560s Zorita stated that the West

350 Ralph H. Vigil Indies islands and other extensive regions on the mainland had been depopulated of Indians in his time. 7.Toa reader of the twentieth century, the Laws of Burgos seem, in their practicable

measures, a cold-blooded sanctioning of current methods of exploitation of the Indians.” Lesley Byrd Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966}, 31. 8. Charles Gibson, ed., The Spanish Tradition in America (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, 1968}, 61-82. Other articles stated that pregnant women after the fourth month should not be sent to the mines; Indians were to be given hammocks by their encomenderos; and Indians might perform their ceremonial dances. 9. Gibson, Spanish Tradition in America, 58—6o. 10. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y Tierre-Firme del mar Océano ..., Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, vols. 117— 21, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1959}, 3:228—30. 11. Benjamin Keen, ed., Readings in Latin-American Civilization, 1492 to the Present (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967}, 89. 12. Las Casas, Doctrina, 15. 13. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3 vols. (Mexico—Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1951), 3:19. 14. Henry of Susa, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia in the thirteenth century, believed “that when heathens were brought to a knowledge of Christ, all the powers and rights of dominion held by these heathens passed to Christ, who became the Lord over the earth in

both the spiritual and temporal sense.” Since Christ’s representative on earth was the pope, who had given the New World to the kings of Castile, the Crown in Castile by this interpretation held temporal power and possession of the Indies. See Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (1949; reprint, Boston: Little, Brown, 1965], 28. 15. Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3:31.

16. Henry Raup Wagner with the collaboration of Helen Rand Parish, The Life and Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967], 21.

17. Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, trans., ed., and annotated by Stafford Poole, C.M. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 179—80. As Lino Gémez Canedo notes, Bartolomé de Las Casas’s idea of a system of fortresstrading posts to be established within the Indian territory of Cumana (1519-21) “had the same purpose that presidios did at a later date: to safeguard the lives and works of the friars and settlers against unjustified attacks by the Indians.” Lino G6mez Canedo, Evangelizacién y conquista: Experiencia Franciscana en Hispanoamérica (Mexico City: Editorial Porrda, 1971), 79—80. 18. Sauer, The Early Spanish Main, 160.

19. Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 2:5;01-5; Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:320—21.

20. Manuel Lucena Salmoral, “La extrafia capitulaci6n de Ayll6n para el poblamiento de la actual Virginia: 1523,” Revista de Historia de América 77—78 (January— December 1974): 9—31; Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:327; Frederick W. Hodge

The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 351 and Theodore H. Lewis, eds., Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States (1907; reprint, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1946], 174. Oviedo mentions the slave revolt in one

sentence. Herbert Aptheker states that the expedition included approximately one hundred black slaves and that these slaves fled to join the Indians of the area after the rebellion. The blacks thus became “the first permanent inhabitants, other than the Indians, in what was to be the United States.” One can only note that Aptheker’s sources do not confirm his statement regarding the rebellion. See Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York: International Publishers, 1967}, 163. 21. Frank Goodwyn, “Panfilo de Narvaez, A Character Study of the First Spanish Leader to Land an Expedition to Texas,” Hispanic American Historical Review 29 (February 1949): 150—56; Ralph H. Vigil, “A Reappraisal of the Expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez to Mexico in 1520,” Revista de Historia de América 77—78 {January—December 1974): IOI-25.

22. Manuel M. Martinez, “Las Casas on the Conquest of America,” in Bartolomé de Las Casas in History: Toward an Understanding of the Man and His Work, ed. Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971), 309—49 (see p. 316).

2.3. Martinez, “Las Casas on the Conquest of America,” 317. For Vitoria’s views and

the discrepancy between his relecciones, see Martinez, idem, and Ralph H. Vigil, Alonso de Zorita, 30—31 and bibliography cited.

24. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brevissima relaci6n de la destruici6n de las Indias, with Bernardo Vargas Machuca, Refutacion de Las Casas (Paris: Libreria de la Viuda de C. Bouret, n.d.}, 24. As Wagner notes, “All through Casas’ writings we can follow the dual motive of the kings of Spain in the subjugation of the Indies: gold and conversion. The royal need for revenue came first, but afterwards there was the obligation to convert the natives.” The inherent contradiction between the two motives explains why Las Casas was successful, “but only up to a point.” Wagner, Las Casas, 2.48. 25. Soto’s expediente for membership in the Military Order of Santiago was conducted in Badajoz, and dona Isabel de Bobadilla in her dowry agreement states that he was a native and vecino (citizen and voter} of Badajoz. See Antonio del Solar y Taboada and José de Rujula y de Ochotorena, E] Adelantado Hernando de Soto. Breves noticias y nuevos documentos para su biografia (Badajoz: Ediciones Argueros, 1929], 125, 159. However, the expediente also states that he was a native of Jerez de Badajoz, and his will states that this is where he wished to be buried. Idem, 123, 210. What is certain is that Soto’s father was from Jerez de Badajoz and his mother from Badajoz. For the quotations, see Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 33, and Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, The Florida of the Inca: A history of the Adelantado, Hernando de Soto, Governor and Captain General of the kingdom of Florida, and of other

heroic Spanish and Indian cavaliers, written by the Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega..., trans. John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951], 501. 26. Garcilaso de la Vega, Florida of the Inca, 500—501; Bartolomé de Las Casas, Histo-

ria de las Indias, 3 vols. (México—Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Econémica, 1951],

3:392-94; Lewis Hanke, All Mankind Is One: A Study of the Disputation between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepulveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and

352 Ralph dH. Vigil

Religious Capacity of the American Indians (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974], 34—40; Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:156. 27. James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972], 192-93; William L.

Sherman, Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1979}, 54. 28. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 135; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 193. 29. Julio Caro Baroja, Los Judios en la Espana Moderna y Contempordnea, 3 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones ISTMO, 1978], 1:130—32, 2:282, 3:326. 30. Baroja, Los Judios, 3:326. 31. Baroja, Los Judios, 2:282; Juan Friede, ed., Documentos inéditos para la Historia de Colombia, to vols. (Bogota: Academia Colombiana de Historia, 195 5-60}, 1:160—61; Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 3:353, 2:153. 32. Solar y Taboado and Rujula y de Ochotorena, Adelantado, 47-51, 191-97; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 199. See also Goodman and Wunder, this volume, for dona Leonor’s efforts to secure her share of Soto’s estate . 33. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 191; William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain (Norfolk cr: New Directions, 1939), 45. Williams opens his essay on Soto with the line: “She—Courage is strength—and you are vigilant, sagacious, firm besides.” See José Rabasa, this volume. 34. John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970}, 70.

35. Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3:14; Las Casas, Brevissima relacion, 42. 36. Las Casas, Brevissima relacion, 45-46. 37. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:173. 38. Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 193—94. 39. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:159. 40. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:176. 41. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:15 4. 42. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 175. 43. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 136. 44. For this quotation and what follows concerning the articles mentioned in Soto’s

contract, see Coleccién de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonizacién de las posesiones espanioles en América y Oceania, 42 vols. (Madrid: José Maria Pérez, 1864-84], 15:354—63; and Solar y Taboada and Rijula y de Ochotorena, Adelantado, 91-117. 45. Coleccién de documentos inéditos, 15:364. 46. Woodbury Lowery, The Spanish Settlements within the Present Limits of the United States, 1513-1561 (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), 219. More recently, see Charles M. Hudson and Jerald Milanich, Hernando de Soto and the Indians of Florida (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1993}. 47. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:156. 48. Theodore H. Lewis states that the expedition explored parts of the present states of Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Ar-

| The Expedition and the Struggle for Justice 353 kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. See Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 129. David J. Weber has noted that “one student of the Hernando de Soto expedition could conclude that ‘we quickly found that when we used the De Soto narratives alone, it was possible to take the expedition almost anywhere.’” See David J. Weber, Myth and the History of the Hispanic Southwest |Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 31. His source is Charles Hudson, who presented a paper at the Columbus Quincentennial Conference on Archives and Records for Studying the Hispanic Experience in the United States, 1492-1850, 23 September 1987. See Charles Hudson, this volume.

49. Antonello Gerbi, Nature in the New World from Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Ferndndez de Oviedo, trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985], 349. 50. Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca, 118. 51. See, for example, the incident at the place the Spaniards called Malapaz. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 156~57. 52. Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca, 103. 53. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:156; see also idem., 4:419. 54. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:159; Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca, 126-27; Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 157. 55. Bernardino de Sahaguiin, General History of the Things of New Spain, Florentine Codex, trans. and ed. by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe NM: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1950-82], vol. 12, part 13, p. 20. 56. Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca, 105. 57. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:161; see also the relation of Luis Hernandez de Biedma, factor of the expedition, in Edward Gaylord Bourne, Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, 2 vols. (New York: Allerton, 1922], 1-40 (quote is from p. 6). Biedma states that of the three hundred fifty warriors who attacked the Spaniards before the battle at Napituca, the Spaniards killed some and captured the rest. He does not mention the battle of Napituca. The Gentleman of Elvas says that thirty to forty of the Indians fell by the lance, and that those who were captured were put in chains and apportioned among the Spaniards before the battle. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers

in the Southern United States, 159. 58. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:162. 59. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:166. The Gentleman of Elvas calls the town Aymay. He states that one Indian was burned. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 172. 60. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 176. 61. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:173. 62. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:172. 63. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:172. 64. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:173. 65. Las Casas, Brevissima relacion, 111. 66. Las Casas, Brevissima relaci6n, 112. 67. Las Casas, Brevissima relaciOn, 110-11.

354 Ralph H. Vigil 68. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Obras Escogidas de Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas: Opusculos, Cartas y Memoriales. Uustracién Preliminar y Edici6n por Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, 5 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles), 5:181—203. 69. Las Casas, Obras, 196. 70. Las Casas, Obras, 199. See also Vigil, Alonso de Zorita, 32, 84-85, 91 ff., 96, I119— 20, 321n. for details concerning Lugo and Benalcazar in New Granada. 71. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 160—61. 72. Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca, 293-95. 73. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 193. 74. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 196. 75. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 219. 76. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 230-31. 77. Las Casas, Brevissima relacion, 112. 78. Richard Hakluyt, Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida, ed. and with an introduction by William B. Rye (London: Hakluyt Society, 1851), xxix.

79. For the conquest and settlement of New Granada, see Vigil, Alonso de Zorita, 8 3—120.

80. The New Laws contained fifty-four articles, twenty-three of which were concerned with the good treatment and preservation of the Indians. Enslavement of Indians was forbidden, and Indian slaves held without legitimate title were to be freed. Compulsory personal services were ended, and tribute and services were to be fairly assessed and regulated by the audiencias. Encomiendas were to be of moderate size, new grants of encomiendas were prohibited, existing ones were to be vested in the Crown upon the death of the holders, and all those held by public officials and ecclesiastics were to be transferred to the Crown. When the New Laws caused a revolt in Peru and much protest in the other Spanish colonies, the Crown retreated and compromised the issue. Encomiendas continued, but the laws against Indian slavery and enforced personal services remained and were reaffirmed. Moreover, the New Laws did curb the power of the encomenderos, and encomiendas gradually escheated to the Crown between 1550 and 1800. 81. Weber, Myth and the History of the Hispanic Southwest, 10; Benjamin Keen, A History of Latin America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988], 73. 82. Weber, Myth and the History of the Hispanic Southwest, to. 83. R. B. Cunninghame-Graham, Hernando de Soto Together with an Account of One of His Captains, Gongalo Silvestre (London: William Heinemann, 1903), 195. _ 84. Lowery, Spanish Settlements, 245~46. 85. Weber, Myth and the History of the Hispanic Southwest, 11. 86. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 229—30. 87. Hodge and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 235; Solar y Taboada and Rujula y de Ochotorena, Adelantado, 223-73.

Lawrence J. Goodman John R. Wunder Law, Legitimacy, and the Legacy of Hernando de Soto

Sick with fever and no longer able to support himself on his own two feet, on 16 May 1542 the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto summoned his personal secretary to record his final will and testament, the last document he would ever author. Destined to die only five days later, Soto in his will tried to bring to a fitting and proper Christian end his wildly adventurous life, and, in his own words, to “pay the price” of salvation.! If it was through his will that the adelantado hoped to attain expiation, he achieved it, almost. Soto remembered his wife in Spain, his long-time partner Hernan Ponce de Leon, to whom he had once promised half of his fortune, and he even provided generously for the two illegitimate children he had fathered in Panama and Nicaragua. But to the bastard daughter he had sired in Peru by an Inca princess, Soto, for unknown reasons, left nothing. Twenty years later, this daughter, dona Leonor de Soto, would begin a twenty-five year legal process demanding compensation, her rightful inheritance share, for her father’s fateful sin of omission.? The Legal Setting Dona Leonor’s legal battle began on 20 June 1562 when she and her husband, public notary Garcia Carrillo, presented their opening statement to the Audiencia of Lima in Peru. The nature of their case, the types and content of the briefs they submitted, and the procedure they followed all attest to the peculiar condition of the Spanish legal system in the sixteenth century.

In the sixteenth century two different visions of the role of the Spanish monarchy competed for supremacy, and the tension between the two explains much about both the strengths and the weaknesses of Spain’s legal system at the time. The first of these, a holdover from the Middle Ages, envisioned the Spanish monarch as a personal sovereign. It was an image that had

been reinforced over many years by virtue of the Iberian rulers’ frequent travels throughout their realms. With the king or queen regularly present, at least in spirit, in every Spanish town or municipality, Spanish subjects coun-

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ted upon the sovereign, whom they considered infinitely merciful and fairminded, to be available as a last recourse in resolving local disputes and conflicts. Indeed, for a people who drew precious little distinction between what was moral and what was just, the king’s justice was considered to be best of all. Even as late as the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the monarchs held weekly public audiences to redress, in the most moral possible way, the grievances of any and all subjects who came forth.3 Increasing bureaucratization and an expanding empire made it extremely difficult for Charles V and Philip II to maintain the image of a personal monarch; gradually, a second view of the king as an administrative ruler began to emerge. The days of the itinerant and ubiquitous monarch came to an end, as

did the weekly public tribunals conducted by the monarchy. Charles V expanded Spain’s administrative system, and Philip seemingly disappeared behind a stack of official documents. One of the ways Spanish rulers had traditionally met the public’s demand

for the presence of the king was through the conciliar system. By the sixteenth century this substitute judiciary had become streamlined and institutionalized throughout the Empire. When the king could not be present because of time and distance, his royal officials, who were considered his personal representatives to the people, would be present for him. In the New World, audiencias, or royal councils, were created to serve both as advisory boards to the viceroys and as last courts of appeal in their respective jurisdictions. At the pinnacle of this structure, under Philip II, was the Madrid-based Royal Council of the Indies, which, like the audiencias, had both judicial and administrative responsibilities.* The concept of a personal king helps to explain Spain’s emphasis on a rule of law and justice. Since the conciliar officials acted as the king’s representatives, they were expected to dispense justice in an unbiased and fair manner, just as the king would. Numerous compendia of laws were promulgated during this time, all of them designed to render more uniform legal practices and judicial decisions throughout the Empire. Equally significant, and also a result of Spain’s “personal” monarchy, was the remarkable access of the common people to the Spanish legal system. Just as Ferdinand and Isabel had en-

deavored to hear the cases of even the humblest of their subjects, so too would the Crown’s councils and tribunals now be open to all comers, at least in theory. Richard Kagan, in his book Lawsuits and Litigation in Castile, has shown just how often the average Spanish citizen used the royal courts.5 Although complete figures do not exist for South America in the sixteenth cen-

tury, the fact that Leonor de Soto, a destitute and illegitimate half-caste woman, could be heard by the highest court in Peru suggests that New World courts were similar in this respect to those in Spain.

It is clear, then, that the Spanish monarchs wanted justice for their sub-

Law, Legitimacy, and Legacy 357

jects. Philip II once reportedly told an advisor that in cases concerning the royal interest, “the verdict must always be given against me.’6 But whether or not justice was always served is not so clear. When the monarchs adjudicated trials, they had been concerned, first, with the rule of law and with rendering fair and judicious decisions, and second, with doing what was morally correct. In the sixteenth century, these two concerns sometimes proved incompatible. While legal structures and compendia were designed to ensure as unbiased a judicial hearing as possible, more often than not judges did what they felt was ethically right or simply what they wanted. Thus, legal precedent and statutes were subordinated to the legal tradition of arbitration based on morality, and inevitably the system gave judges far too much discretion. In Leonor de Soto’s suit, for example, neither the litigants nor the oidores mention possibly pertinent laws or legal precedents, yet countless references are made to the worthiness of Leonor de Soto, the hardships she and her mother have endured, and the moral obligation of the Crown and the judge to provide for her. In many ways the sixteenth-century Spanish legal system was caught between two different time periods. Its institutions with their accessibility and progressive legal codes were heralding the dawn of the nation/state, while its officials were stubbornly entrenched in the legal practices of the Middle Ages. The Litigants In order to prove descent, political position, and moral rights, it was crucial for Leonor de Soto to establish the identity of her mother, Leonor Coya, as an Inca princess and to verify her mother’s relationship with Hernando de Soto. Even so, the testimony of twenty-four witnesses and countless briefs and court records do little to clarify the mystery of just who Leonor Coya was and when Hernando de Soto might have met his Inca mistress. The “Coya” surname was given to so many Inca princesses that the name in and of itself did little to establish Leonor’s claim. Neither is Leonor Coya mentioned in many of the chronicles of Soto’s expeditions. This is not hard to understand, since some chroniclers would have undoubtedly hesitated to besmirch the great adelantado’s name with reports of an illicit affair with an Inca woman, albeit a princess. As a result, despite piecing together and comparing multiple pieces of seemingly disparate evidence, we can still only speculate about the identity and lineage of dona Leonor Coya. Dona Leonor Coya is first mentioned in the context of the Inca civil war of the 15 30s between the two sons of Huayna Capac, Huascar and Atahualpa. In 1586 Miguel Cabello de Balboa, a Jesuit priest, wrote his chronicle of Peru, including an epic tale of love and sacrifice in which dona Leonor Coya became dona Leonor Curriculor.? Among the ruling Inca Huascar’s concubines in the

358 Lawrence J]. Goodman and John R. Wunder

early 1500s was one of whom he was particularly fond, originally named Cumbillaya but called by Huascar, Curriculor, or “Star of Gold.”8 According to Cabello, she had been a gift from the reigning lesser lord of the valley of Ica, who, though he was unable to attend Huascar’s coronation, wished to send his felicitations nonetheless. Jealousy soon overtook Huascar’s other concubines. Curriculor herself was poisoned, but her child by Huascar, also named Curriculor, came into the protective hands of Huascar’s sister, Corraticlla, in Sequillibamba near Cuzco. One day when the young Curriculor was fifteen, a captain in the service of Huascar’s brother, Atahualpa, came through Sequillibamba on his way to deliver a message to Huascar. His name was Quilaco Yupanqui, and, according to the priest, Quilaco and Curriculor fell instantaneously in love. Duty called Quilaco away, but before returning to Atahualpa’s camps in Quito, he pledged to marry Curriculor in three years when, he and Corraticlla both hoped, the mounting tension between Huascar and Atahualpa would have subsided. Four years passed; civil war broke out between Atahualpa and Huascar; Corraticlla approached her death; and Huascar threatened to marry off Curriculor to one of his captains. Amidst this confusion, the desperate Curriculor donned male clothing and followed one of Huascar’s squadrons into battle in Yanamarca where, among the wounded, she found Quilaco. She nursed her lover back to health, only revealing her true identity to him once he had recovered. According to Cabello, the two lovers then met Hernando de Soto in Jauja, where he baptized them Leonor Curriculor and Hernando Yupanqui. Two years later, Yupanqui died, Soto took Leonor Curriculor as his own lover, and the child Leonor de Soto was soon born. This story, rich in heroics and adventure, remains the accepted account of dona Leonor Coya’s origins. It finds no support, however, in the trial records. No mention is ever made of a Curriculor or a Quilaco Yupanqui, nor even of

any of the events Cabello describes, in spite of the fact that the witnesses were questioned thoroughly on the details of Leonor Coya’s life. Additionally, countless witnesses, including Leonor Coya herself, identify Soto’s lover as the daughter of Huascar’s father, Huayna Capac, not, as the story would seem to indicate, Huayna Capac’s granddaughter. Even the dates do not correlate: two of the witnesses swear to having seen Leonor Coya in Cajamarca in 15 33

where Soto was before he ever journeyed to Cajas. Nor is it possible for Quilaco Yupanqui to have died two years after he encountered Soto. Even as- | suming the three met in 15 33, for Quilaco to have died two years later would not have allowed Soto, who returned to Spain in 1535, to witness the birth of Leonor de Soto and baptize her, as witnesses said he did.? Though Cabello claimed he heard the story from don Mateo Yupanqui, a member of the royal Inca family, it seems more likely the priest, who was also a sonnetist, added

Law, Legitimacy, and Legacy 359

the story to make his otherwise relatively turgid history of the Inca empire more appealing. The half-Inca, half-Spanish historian Garcilaso de la Vega also mentions dona Leonor Coya in his 1617 Royal Commentaries of the Incas.’° Fearing reprisal after having assassinated his brother Huascar in early 1533, according to Garcilaso, Atahualpa assembled the entire royal family on the outskirts of the city of Cuzco and had each one executed. Garcilaso says that the husta, or princess, dona Leonor Coya escaped. He makes no mention, however, of her ever encountering Hernando de Soto. Garcilaso does note that she first married Juan Balsa and later the explorer Francisco de Villacastin. The name Juan Balsa is probably a distortion of the name of Leonor Coya’s first husband, Juan Bautista, and Villacastin was, according to the chronicler Bernabé Cobo, married to another of Huascar’s “wives.””!! If the witnesses who claim to have seen Leonor Coya in Cajamarca in 15 33

are correct, there are two plausible scenarios that might explain when, where, and how Soto met his Inca lover. The first is suggested by the chronicles of Diego de Trujillo, a fellow conquistador who traveled with Soto during some of his more major reconnaissances in Peru.!2 Trujillo says that when the Spaniards first learned of Atahualpa’s existence, Pizarro sent Soto north from Cajamarca to meet the Inca lord in Cajas. Once there, Soto and his followers chanced upon what the Spaniards called “houses of the virgins,” in reality

Inca convents where the ruling lord placed some of the most beautiful women in his realms to remain virginal and serve him. Soto apparently had little respect for Inca customs, and he divided the holy virgins up among his men. Trujillo supplies no more details than this, but it is possible that one of the virgins, who were often of royal blood, may have been Leonor Coya. If this were so, it would explain the origins of Garcilaso’s story. Trujillo says Atahualpa’s men were guarding the Inca temple, though the women in the temple were most probably Huascar’s, since he was the legitimate ruler of the southern Incas and thus would have had the right to choose the women who resided there. Garcilaso may have thought Leonor Coya was one of Huascar’s wives fleeing from the wrath of Atahualpa because “wives” was the way the Spanish described these virgins’ relationships to the Inca lord. Because the two brothers had just waged a bloody battle in Cajas, Garcilaso may have be-

lieved that the vengeful Atahualpa intended to slaughter the virgins. Or maybe Leonor Coya was simply fleeing the war-torn region and had taken refuge in the holy temple, a place no Inca, except those of royal female descent, could enter. There are two problems with this scenario. The first has to do with timing. Garcilaso says Atahualpa slaughtered Huascar’s wives a few months earlier than the incident at the house of virgins. The second problem has to do with

360 Lawrence J. Goodman and John R. Wunder

the trial testimony. No one ever testified at trial that Leonor Coya was related to Huascar. Rather, on two occasions, she is associated with Atahualpa, once

as his wife and then as his sister, but perhaps the presence of Atahualpa’s troops just made the Spanish think Leonor Coya was somehow related to Atahualpa when she really was not.'!8 The other explanation, which is more consistent with the witnesses’ testimony at trial, may be found in the chronicles of Pedro Pizarro, Francisco’s cousin.'4 Soon after the Spanish captured Atahualpa on 16 November 15 32, fear spread among Pizarro’s men that the Inca prince would lead an attack to try and rescue his father. Soto was sent out to reconnoiter the territory, and while he was gone, the panicking Pizarro had Atahualpa executed on 26 July 1533. Pizarro says that most of Atahualpa’s wives then killed themselves so as to be able to serve their husband in the afterworld. Two of them chose instead to live and wait for Atahualpa’s return, which he had promised them he would do. Since it was not uncommon for Inca lords to marry their sisters, one of these women might have been Leonor Coya, who was described (quite accurately, in this account) by the witnesses as both Atahualpa’s sister and his wife. With both of these explanations, of course, certainty is impossible, but they do provide logical explanations of the mysterious identity of dona Leonor Coya. The lot of Inca noblewomen who joined in liaison with Spanish men was not easy. Few married encomenderos; of those who did, fewer still inherited encomiendas. Francisco Pizarro had a child, Francisca, by an Indian noblewoman of Lima. He married the child to his employee, Francisco de Ampuero, and gave them a large encomienda, but this was an exception. Generally, In-

dian noblewomen lost their status in the new society engineered by their conquerors.!5 Certainly Soto’s taking up with an Inca noblewoman guaranteed her nothing, and similarly gave Soto no particular political advantages. The time for political marriages and diplomatic parity between Spaniards and Incas was quickly over. In any case, Hernando de Soto housed his twenty-two-year-old mistress in Cuzco, and sometime during the next two years Leonor de Soto was born.'® Upon Soto’s departure in 1535, Francisco Pizarro deposited Leonor Coya and her daughter in the house of Maria de Scobar to learn the rudiments of Catholicism. The Governor, Crist6bal Vaca de Castro, then arranged Leonor Coya’s marriage to Juan Bautista, the son of the armero, or keeper of arms, for Charles V, and issued the couple an encomienda. Their union was abruptly

terminated in 1546 when Gonzalo Pizarro’s lieutenant, Alonso de Toro, hanged Bautista for being an official of the system both he and Pizarro were rebelling against. Shortly after Bautista’s death, and sometime between 8 September 1546, when Leonor Coya wrote her will, and 1 October when the testament was executed, Leonor Coya died, naming Pedro de Bustinca and Pedro

Law, Legitimacy, and Legacy 361

Leon as her testamentary executors and leaving her entire estate to her only

daughter, Leonor de Soto. . Leonor de Soto, still a child and now homeless, was then taken in by the old family friend, Maria de Scobar. Eventually she married Garcia Carrillo, a public notary, in Lima, but when this marriage took place is unclear. Scobar gave part of her estate to Leonor as a wedding gift, and the newlyweds were able to settle down in Cuzco. By 1562, when they initiated their suit against Soto’s estate, they had had two children, Pedro and Juana de Soto, and claimed to be poverty stricken, a condition they may have exaggerated.

Later, in 1572, Carrillo sued Hernando Pizarro, Francisco’s brother, for 14,000 pesos, the proceeds Hernando had garnered from the sale of Amaru Cancha, Soto’s palace in Cuzco, to the Jesuits.!” One year later, again using

Soto’s name to his advantage, Carrillo gained possession of the fifteen yanaconas, or household servants, who had once served Leonor de Soto’s father.!8 By 1586 the couple had three more daughters. Their plight, whether they were able to rise up out of their poverty and whether Leonor de Soto ever personally benefited from her husband’s litigiousness, is yet suggestive of further historical mystery not clearly revealed by the documents.

The Trial The following account is based upon the first ever translation and scholarly use of Patronato 119, Ramo 5, a large group of legal documents comprising twenty-five years of episodic litigation with numerous briefs, interrogatories, and records submitted to courts in both Peru and Spain. Missing testimony and faulty chronological ordering frequently render the process of tracing the progression of the trial difficult. The picture of the case which does emerge generally conforms to what is known of Spanish civil suits of the period: they were repetitive, burdensome, and frequently more pen and ink than justice. Because audiencias were given jurisdiction in cases concerning the destitute or the indigent, Leonor de Soto’s suit was heard by the highest court in the land on 20 June 1562, when Garcia Carrillo appeared before the Royal Audiencia in Lima. Leonor de Soto herself only appeared in person when her case reached appeal. With witnesses from Lima, Cuzco, Huamanga, and Spain, Carrillo sought to prove that his wife was the daughter of Hernando de Soto and Leonor Coya and therefore the just recipient of an encomienda worth 12,000 pesos in yearly Indian tribute. On 7 and 10 July 1562, he presented as witnesses Nicolas de Ribera “El Viejo,” Pedro de Alconchel, Bernabé Picoén, Gonzalo de Moncon, and Francisco Velazquez de Talavera, all of whom had explored Peru with Soto, along with Maria de Scobar, one of the first Spanish women in Peru, and dona Inés, Leonor Coya’s sister.!9 The proceedings dragged on until 5 April 1566 and the reading of Leonor

362 Lawrence J]. Goodman and John R. Wunder

Coya’s will, which provided further evidence that Leonor de Soto was who she claimed to be. Delays due to slow communication, poor weather, jurisdictional conflicts, deaths, and untimely leaves of absence by magistrates were common in sixteenth-century civil suits,2° but the delays in this case probably had two different reasons. First, the court, in its dual role as legislator and adjudicator, was already swamped with the business of government. The period from 1562 to 1566, for example, was marked by another near civil war in Peru, the death of the viceroy, the inauguration of a new president of the Royal Audiencia, and the uncovering of the Inca Titu Cusi’s plotted rebellion against Spanish rule. Second, the documents collected in Patronato 119 represent records submitted by Leonor in her appeal to the Council of the Indies, and in all probability she and her lawyer omitted testimony and proceedings they thought to be redundant, unnecessary, or even conflicting. Thus, the proceedings were even more lengthy than the documents indicate. Moreover, from 1566 until 1575 the case remained at a standstill. Some of the delays in the 1570s were due to the absences of the judges Sanchez Paredes and Doctor Gabriel Loarte. Loarte, the chief judge in Lima, was serving as the prosecuting magistrate in Viceroy Francisco de Toledo’s campaign to obliterate Inca leadership. Loarte’s decision in that case in late 1572 to banish seven prominent members of the Inca community had engendered the ire of the judges in Lima, and Paredes was sent to Cuzco to conduct an inquiry into Loarte’s behavior. Loarte was subsequently found guilty of intimidating witnesses and modifying testimony, but Toledo was only mildly rebuked for his excesses.?!

Carrillo, meanwhile, seized upon the opportunity provided by Paredes’s presence in Cuzco to present witnesses who resided there. After having received the approval of the Audiencia of Lima, on 20, 23, and 29 December 1575, Paredes oversaw the interrogation of the explorers Alonso de Mesa, Mancio Serra de Leguizamo, Juan de Pancorvo, Diego de Trujillo, and Alonso Pérez.22 On 26 and 28 February 1576, the proceedings continued in Huamanga

with the testimony of the conquistadors Juan de Manueco, Juan Romo, and Diego Gavilan.

Although there is no record of their testimony, Fray Miguel and Bicentamehedo were questioned in Lima. Their statements, along with those of the witnesses in Cuzco, were formally read into the official record on 24 March 1575, in Lima. On 29 March the final two witnesses, Antonio de la Torre and Lorenzo de Figueron, were examined; again there is no record of their testimony. Now all Carrillo and his wife could do was wait for the court to reach a decision. Upon what, however, would the audiencia base its decision? Carrillo used

three lines of reasoning to justify his claim. First, he hoped to establish

Law, Legitimacy, and Legacy 363

Leonor de Soto as Hernando de Soto’s only daughter and the sole deserving beneficiary of any future compensation due to her father.23 Through the questions in the interrogatories and the confirming testimony, Carrillo told of Soto’s noble deeds in Peru, of his cohabitation with Leonor Coya, and of his selfless relinquishment of his lucrative holdings in Peru so that he might be able to explore Florida.24 No less than fifteen of the twenty-four witnesses in the case had been with Soto in Peru, a clear indication of the importance Leonor and Carrillo placed on this aspect of their case. The trial testimony does not give us a clear portrait of Hernando de Soto, the man. Certainly, he was a person driven by great ambition. To what degree that ambition may have colored his personal relationships is impossible to discern. Soto’s views of the Incas are documented more fully. He was quite capable of organizing an army to destroy Inca men, women, and children, along with their homes and villages. On at least one occasion, he was rebuked by Francisco Pizarro for his recklessness, although Pizarro also could not help admiring Soto’s efficiency.5 The second critical aspect of the case was Leonor de Soto’s relationship with Huayna Capac, to whose ancestors, the litigants reminded the judges, the Crown had legal obligations. While no precedents were specifically cited, there were many from which to choose. As early as 1534 the Bishop Vicente de Valverde had recommended that the King give financial restitution to Huayna Capac’s children for having taken the Inca’s land.”° In 1555 the Crown had awarded two of Atahualpa’s children annual stipends of 600 pesos each and two others 1,000 pesos each. Dona Inés’s predicament had been strikingly similar to that of her sister Leonor Coya. Both women were daughters of Huayna Capac and each had been a mistress of Pizarro. Inés had been awarded as much as 6,000 pesos in annual recompense as well as an encomienda.”’ As Leonor de Soto would claim in her appeal, she was the only one of Huayna Capac’s descendants not to have been compensated.?° Finally—and here it is evident just how much Spanish legal decisions were based on morality—Leonor de Soto sought to demonstrate that she and her mother had been victims. Robbed by Pizarro’s bandits, Leonor Coya then found her husband’s body hanging from a gallows. She died a few days later, no longer able to tolerate her grief, so said the testimony. Leonor de Soto herself was now destitute, unable to provide for her children. The message was clear: only through granting Leonor de Soto the desired compensation could | the Crown ever hope to assuage Leonor Coya’s death and the moral burden of her liaison with Hernando de Soto. It should be remembered that Leonor de Soto and her husband were asking for an encomienda. One could argue that the couple was motivated by Carrillo’s avarice, and there is some evidence to this effect. But Leonor de Soto

364 Lawrence ].Goodman and John R. Wunder

certainly had a voice in the matter to have pursued it for so long. In some ways, bringing suit allowed her to resume her role as the descendant of an Inca princess. If she received the encomienda she sought, Leonor would gain the right to Indian tribute while also assuming responsibility for the Indians’ religious welfare and general protection. An encomienda, a Spanish form of extortion, was a source of social and political status among the conquerors, and Leonor may have wanted this kind of recognition as well. A woman of two worlds, she sought a legal instrument that would bind her to both.?? While there is no transcript of the audiencia’s final decision, the tribunal evidently did not find Leonor’s arguments compelling. She was awarded an encomienda worth only 2,000 pesos in yearly tribute. But Leonor pressed on, and in October 1585 she traveled with her son Pedro to Spain, hoping that a higher authority would grant her the additional 10,000 pesos she believed essential to her survival. In Spain Leonor appeared before the Council of the Indies on ro April 15 86,

and she presented a formal recapitulation of the records from Peru on 30 April. Perhaps to expedite matters, she mentioned an encomienda yielding 3,000 pesos annually in the district of Ayabrie in Cuzco that had recently fallen open due to the death of the encomendero, don Luis Toledo.3° Then on 3 June 1586, Leonor appeared before the Council for the last time. Even if the judges did not find her legal arguments persuasive, she pleaded, they ought to act in their legislative capacity to redress a wrong which had gone ignored for so long. She was effectively asking, “Quid leges sine morbus’”—of what use are statutes without morals? The proceedings concluded with Pedro de Soto's

presentation of documents from the royal archives further detailing his

grandfather’s deeds in Peru.?!

Using the same three lines of argument, the Council, on 20 July 1587, found

in favor of Pedro de Soto. In respect of Hernando de Soto’s services, they

awarded Pedro an encomienda to extend throughout his lifetime and throughout the life of one of his successors. In addition, Pedro was required to

give half of his 2,500 peso yearly income to his parents for as long as they lived. Leonor de Soto’s journey to Spain had been worth only 625 additional pesos to her personally; ultimately, her son inherited an encomienda of medium size. Why it was Pedro who received the encomienda is subject to speculation. It is possible that Leonor was already in ill health and made her request on behalf of her son at the trial. More likely, the Spanish court was naturally inclined to favor Soto’s grandson over his daughter. Nevertheless, it was a victory of sorts for the legal legitimacy Leonor de Soto and her family had so doggedly pursued. After twenty-five years of litigation, all the parties would probably have agreed with the Spanish proverb, “A bad agreement is better than a good lawsuit.’32

Law, Legitimacy, and Legacy 365

The Significance of the Case This dispute accurately reflects the state of Spanish civil law in the sixteenth century. Leonor de Soto’s constant references to her state of poverty and helplessness, and her avoidance of legal statutes and precedents in her statement before the Council of the Indies on 3 June 1586, demonstrate just how completely Spanish law was steeped in morality. It represented the King’s means of dispensing God’s justice. The missing text of the audiencia’s decision and the vague text of the Council’s final decision also reveal the nebulous nature of Spanish law. Ultimately, Spanish law relied on isolated precedents rather than generally applied principles. This notion of the recognition of human frailties in the dispensing of justice fits most easily within those laws regulating bastardy and inheritance. Descent could be traced because children born out of wedlock were publicly

recognized. Marriages and extramarital relationships between Inca princesses and Spanish royal officials were common in sixteenth-century Peru, and these affairs involved exalted leaders such as Hernando de Soto as well as mid-level administrators such as Garcia Carrillo. In the earliest days of Spanish—Inca contact the Spaniards saw in such women an opportunity to advance their own standing, but once the conquest was near completion, these relationships held less political importance.33 The survival of a colonial empire was certainly not at stake, in a material sense, when Leonor de Soto attempted to claim her legacy, but in a metaphorical sense it was, because to deny her would have been contrary to established cultural practices. Moreover, denial would have meant that Spanish law was being strangely inflexible, a trait that even the Council of the Indies was not about to adopt. This limited research into Spanish legal history has revealed some additional information about sixteenth-century Spain and its empire. Tracts have been written on the Spanish empire’s changing legal treatment of the Indians, but the evolution of the entire canon of Spanish law has yet to be comprehensively examined. The sheer volume of legal documents available in the archives of South America and Spain makes this a difficult task. Spain’s was one of the most litigious of Europe’s empires, and possibly of all time; legal historians need to explore this area more fully so that important insights into the rise and fall of one of the world’s greatest empires are not lost. More importantly, the records of this case provide greater knowledge of the impact of exploration, and specifically that of Hernando de Soto. Soto’s deeds in Peru, retold and recounted by witnesses throughout Leonor de Soto’s trial, contributed significantly to Spain’s control of Latin America and testify to the legal ramifications of cultural contact. They justify, in our opinion, further investigation into his life, and particularly his relationship with Spanish law after his death.

366 Lawrence J. Goodman and John R. Wunder

Hernando de Soto was a man of the Spanish world. He was a part of its formal structure of laws, its bureaucratic and martial approaches to conquest, and the economic realities of a far-flung empire. Even in death, Soto was enmeshed in Spanish law. Legitimacy was a powerful civil law tradition that proved flexible, whereas under Anglo-Saxon common law there would have been little room to maneuver. Soto’s descendants sought to prove that legitimacy as a legal concept in Spain extended to the mestizos of Peru, and they won a reaffirmation of this important civil law concept. Hernando de Soto, when he ventured to Florida, left behind him many ca-

sualties in Peru, including his lover, Leonor Coya. Their daughter, in her twenty-five-year legal struggle against the Crown, exhibited a conviction and fortitude inherited from both her Inca and Spanish ancestors. The Columbian exchange included a melding of law and morality in the New World.

Notes Research for this article was sponsored in part by a 1988 Young Scholars Award from

the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition, the bulk of the primary sources came from two rolls of microfilm, De Soto Papers, 1537-1544, Reels #1 and #2, made available through the kind permission of Dr. Eugene Lyon of the St. Augustine Foundation, Flagler College, and Elizabeth Alexander and the staff of the P. K. Yonge Library at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. The authors are also grateful to Allan Kuethe, Texas Tech University, and Ralph Vigil and William Sherman, both of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, for their critical comments. The paper was presented at the 1989 annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History in Atlanta, where the authors received useful suggestions from Joseph McKnight, Southern Methodist University, and Jane Dysart, University of West Florida.

1. Soto died somewhere near the western bank of the Mississippi, in southern Arkansas or northern Louisiana, on 21 May 15 42. This account of Soto’s death is based on a description in Miguel Albornoz, Hernando de Soto (New York: Franklin Watts, 1986], 339-41. Unfortunately, no copy exists of this will, and its content can only be ascertained from second-hand sources. 2. All original source material used for this paper is contained in Patronato Real 109, Ramo 4 deposited in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain (hereafter abbreviated as pr], and the P. K. Yonge Library at the University of Florida. For more on Soto’s life, see Albornoz, Hernando de Soto, and Theodore Maynard, De Soto and the Conquistadors (New York: Longmans, Green, 1930). For a transcript of documents relating to Soto’s life, see Antonio del Solar y Toboada and Jose de Rujula y de Octoterena, eds., EI Adelantado Hernando de Soto. Breves noticias y nuevos documentos para su biografia. (Badajoz: Ediciones Argueros, 1929). 3. John Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469-1716 (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1963], 98. See also Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469-1714 (New York: Longmans, 1983}, 16—17. 4. For fuller accounts of the administrative and judicial structure in Spanish Amer-

Law, Legitimacy, and Legacy 367 ica, see Charles Gibson, Spain in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1968]; C. H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947); Bernard Moses, The Establishment of Spanish Rule in America (New York: Cooper Square, 1965); and J. H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966). For a description of those in Spain, see Richard L. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigation in Castile (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981). 5. Kagan, Lawsuits in Castile, esp. chapter 3, 79-127. 6. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 251. 7. Miguel Cabello Balboa, Historia de Peru bajo la dominaci6én de Ios incas, ed. Horacio H. Urteaga (Lima, 1920}, 180-83.

8. Cumbillaya is most likely a bastardization of Leonor Coya’s Indian name, Chumbe y Llaya. Spanish chroniclers frequently confused Inca names. 9. “Testimony of Bernabé Pic6n and Goncalo de Moncon,” pr, Audiencia in Lima: 10 July 1562, and “Testimony of Alonso de Mesa,” Cuzco: 20 December 1575. 10. Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, and General History of Peru, trans. with intro. Harold V. Livermore (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966}, 619-20.

11. See Bernabé Cobo, History of the Inca Empire, ed. and trans. Roland Hamilton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979). 12. Diego de Trujillo, Relacién del descubrimiento del reino del Perti, ed. Raul Porras Barrenechéa (Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1948), 54. 13. “Testimony of Bernabé Picon,” pr, Audiencia of Lima: to July 1562, and “Testimony of Lucas Martinez Vegaso,” pr, Audiencia of Lima: 10 July 1562. 14. Pedro Pizarro, Relation of the Discovery and Conquest of the Kingdoms of Peru, trans. Philip Ainsworth Means (Boston: Milford House, 1972], 226—27. 15. James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 15 32-1560: A Colonial Society (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 210-13. 16, “Testimony of Bernabé Picén,” pr, Audiencia of Lima: July 10, 1562. 17. Ella Dunbar Temple, “La decendencia de Huayna-Capac,” Revista hist6rica 11 (1937, pts. 1 & II): 161. Temple does not mention who won the case. 18. Rubén Vargas Ugarte, “Archivo de la Beneficencia del Cuzco,” Revista del archivo historico de Cuzco 4 (1953): 125. 19. On 20 June, Carrillo stated he intended to summon Isabel Rodriguez as a witness. Her testimony is not included. 20. Kagan, Lawsuits in Castile, 40. 21. For a full discussion of the episode, see John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970}, 416—55.

22. Missing is the testimony of the conquistador Juan de Pancorvo and dona Beatriz de Aguilar, Alonso Perez’s wife. 23. This, as we know from Soto’s will, was not true, but it is doubtful that dona Leonor knew of Soto’s other illegitimate children. 24. Unfortunately, given the uncertainty surrounding the actual route Hernando de Soto took through the United States, Carrillo presented no testimony relating Soto’s adventures there. 25. Maynard, De Soto, 105-13. There is no comprehensive biography of Hernando de

368 Lawrence J. Goodman and John R. Wunder Soto that outlines or even speculates on motivations harbored by Soto or reactions to Soto by others. Unfortunately, the documents translated offer no new clues to Soto’s personality. 26. Charles Gibson, The Inca Concept of Sovereignty and the Spanish Administration of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1948}, ror. 27. For an elaboration on these cases, see Hemming, Conquest of the Incas, 29, 345. 28. “Second Statement Before the Council of Indies,” pr, Council of the Indies, Madrid: 3 June 1586. 29. Maynard, De Soto, 11. Compare Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s self-creation as a Renaissance knight and literary man. 30. Fora short period of time the encomienda was falsely claimed, but it was eventually confiscated by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo.

31. These eighteen pages of records proved illegible. There is some semblance of writing, but the blurs make them undecipherable. Perhaps the originals can be translated, but those records were not available to the authors. 32. In actual fact, the new decision represented a decline in the amount Leonor de Soto was to receive. She had been awarded 2,000 pesos in Peru, but in Spain her son was awarded 2,500 pesos, and he had to give only half of that, 1,250 pesos, to his parents, at his own discretion. 33. James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532-1560 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968}, 166—69.

Juan Bautista de Avalle-Arce Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés: Chronicler of the Indies

The dean of the Spanish historians of the discovery and conquest of the Indies is without question Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, to use his name the way he signed his books. Although primarily known as an historian, including among Spanish literary critics, Oviedo was much more than that. Indeed, the more we know about his life, the more we may be able to illuminate his historical writing. Oviedo led a fascinating life, the details of which he told and retold in the very frequent autobiographical sections of his many works. He was born in Madrid, as he constantly reminded his readers, in June-July 1478.! He was tremendously proud of his identity as madrileno, long before Madrid became the capital of Spain, referring to his birthplace as “Madrid, such a noble and famous village, and like an egg yolk, placed right in the centre of its circumference.” He also tells us that his family was originally from the North, from Oviedo, and that they were “well-known noblemen, of illustrious lineages.’ Oviedo projected a self-conscious attitude of nobility, which has led some critics to suspect that his family may not have been so noble as he claimed. Indeed, in all likelihood his name was not Fernandez de Oviedo, but rather

Valdés. For instance, he always claimed to have no relationship with the many persons named Oviedo that were mentioned in his books. And in his Batallas y quinquagenas, as part of the biography of a Captain Valdés of the Royal Guard of the Catholic King, Oviedo interjects that “the principal heraldic arms that I carry through my father and grandfather are the arms of Valdés.”3 Furthermore, in 1548 Oviedo published in Seville the Rule of Spiri-

tual Life,* and on the front page he had the painter reproduce the arms of Valdés. Finally, his favorite son, to whom he resigned some of the Central American offices he held as a result of his activities as a conquistador, was called Francisco Gonzalez de Valdés. It should thus be clear that the great historian was really Valdés, but given the prevalent Spanish onomastic anarchy he chose the name Fernandez de Oviedo. Oviedo spent a significant part of his life as a courtier. He served briefly in

370 Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce

the household of the Duke of Villahermosa, an illegitimate brother of the Catholic King. In 1491 he changed masters and improved his position, moving on to serve the son and heir of the Catholic Kings, Prince don Juan, as a valet (mozo de camara). He lived in the Spanish court until the prince’s death in 1497. Years later he would recall his experiences at court in a fascinating volume which he entitled Book of the Royal Chamber of Prince Don Juan. Oviedo always had a knack for transmuting his most important experiences

into literature, and he continued to record his travels and experiences throughout his life.

The death of the heir to the throne threw all of Spain into mourning. Oviedo must have felt this death as a personal loss, because he soon uprooted himself and traveled to Italy, where his first stop was the ducal court at Milan, ruled briefly by Ludovico Sforza. He later recalled, in Batallas y quinquagenas, that he met there the famous painter Leonardo da Vinci, but he had to move on when the French King Louis XII conquered the city in 1499. Oviedo then went to Rome, where he was present at the various celebrations for the Jubilee Year of 1500 and where he met and disliked intensely the controversial son of the Spanish Pope Alexander VI, the famous Cesare Borgia, whom he repeatedly vilified in various works.§ Perhaps because of Cesare Borgia, Oviedo did not stay long in Rome. He kept on moving south, going next to the royal court of King Fadrique of Naples. Once again he served in the royal chamber, and once again his service was brought to an abrupt and unexpected end, as French and Spanish armies invaded the Kingdom of Naples in 1501. King Fadrique would die a prisoner in France, while his son and heir don Fernando de Arag6n, whom Oviedo served briefly, would go to Spain, first as a prisoner and then as the Viceroy of Valencia. Oviedo retained a very happy memory of his brief service to the royal house of Naples. In 1519, when he published in Valencia his first book, a chiv-

alric romance entitled Don Claribalte, he dedicated it to don Fernando de Aragon.’ From his own pen we know that he learned “toscano” (Italian) with enthu-

siasm and that he read and bought books in that language, which he then brought to Santo Domingo, where he read and reread them as an instrument of intellectual perfection. In his Quinquagenas de la nobleza de Espana, he reports: “I traveled throughout all Italy [a slight exaggeration], where I tried, to the extent of my ability, to read and understand the Tuscan language, looking for books in it, of which I still have some that have been fifty-five years in my possession, and I hope through them not to waste my time entirely.”8 Of the Italian authors the poet Francesco Petrarca, the idol of humanists, was his favorite, and Oviedo’s lasting familiarity with Petrarca’s work is attested by the frequency with which he quotes from the Trionfi and the Canzoniere in his last work, the Quinquagenas, just mentioned. He was also familiar with

Gonzalo Ferndndez de Oviedo y Valdés 371

Dante and Boccaccio, and although he never mentions the Decamerone (too licentious for his Puritan mind], he does often quote Boccaccio’s treatise De claris mulieribus, and in 1525 he translated the Laberinto d’amore, or II Corbaccio.® Of the Italian historians Oviedo demonstrates familiarity with Leonardo Bruni d’Arezzo, the founder of humanist historiography, and with his Aquila volante. He calls d’Arezzo a “curious and excellent historian.”!° In the Quinquagenas, he mentions the books of some of the most famous of the Italian historians: Paolo Giovio (Commentari delle cose de’ Turchi}, Andrea Fulvio (Antiquaria Urbis), and many more. Oviedo always remembered with nostalgia his years in Italy. Obviously it was his one crowning cultural experience, which put him in step with the rest of Europe’s intellectuals. In his various works he quoted Dante and Petrarca and their Italian commentators at length in Italian. He also tells us in his Batallas y quinquagenas that while in Italy he tried his hand at writing sonnets in Spanish.!! Unfortunately, none have survived. If they had, Oviedo would count among the first of the Spanish Golden Age poetic experimenters—though it must also be pointed out that although Oviedo wrote quite a lot of Spanish poetry, he was definitely not a good poet.!2 The year 1502 saw Oviedo back in Spain. He married Margarita de Vergara, whom he remembered after her death as “one of the most beautiful women of the kingdom of Toledo and our own Madrid.”!3 But this is one of the few things he liked to remember about those years. Obviously, they were unhappy years for him. We know that he became a public notary and secretary to the Council of the Inquisition. Then, after only a few years, he was widowed and apparently ready to leave Spain again. In 1512 he jumped at the opportunity to return to his beloved Italy in a military expedition, but it never materialized. In 1513, however, another very different and very important expedition, to the opposite end of the world, attracted his attention. This was the expedition of Pedrarias Davila to Panama, which Oviedo joined as lieutenant (i.e., representative} of the royal secretary Conchillos, who eventually held many lucrative jobs in the Indies. Conchillos commissioned Oviedo to act in his stead in everything to do with the preparation of precious metals, in all things pertaining to criminal and civil justice, and in branding all slaves captured in just war, which ensured a fixed income per branded slave for both Conchillos and Oviedo.'4 The expedition set sail for Panama in April 1514, but it turned out to be a complete failure for all concerned. To single out just one tragedy: Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, was decapitated by order of Pedrarias Davila. Oviedo started to feel uneasy in Panama and soon returned to Spain, where he remained from 1515 to 1520. Another member of the Davila expedition was Hernando de Soto. It is natural to assume that he and Oviedo must have met and come to know each other, but it is unlikely

372 Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce

that this acquaintanceship was friendly. Oviedo came to be a personal enemy of Pedrarias Davila; Hernando de Soto married one of Pedrarias’s daughters. When Oviedo returned to Spain in 1523, he actively sought, through the official channels of the Council of the Indies, to have Pedrarias’s governorship in Panama (Castilla del Oro) taken from him. He was successful, but his enemy had enough influence at court to secure a new appointment as governor of Nicaragua. When Oviedo sailed back to America, he went, perversely, to Nicaragua, where he met Hernando de Soto again, this time as captain of the governor’s personal guard. For his own sake and personal integrity, Oviedo entered into all sorts of negotiations with Pedrarias, and we have documentary evidence that Hernando de Soto was present during most of these negotiations.!> These were climactic years for Spain. For all practical purposes, its traditional reigning dynasty ended with the death of the Catholic King in 1516. The heir was the King’s grandson, Charles of Hapsburg, a foreigner who had been born in Flanders, had been educated by Flemish teachers, and who spoke no Spanish. Oviedo, in his own self-interest, immediately traveled to Flanders to present himself to his new sovereign. The results of this early introduction to the new king would come later. Having returned to Spain in 1517,

Charles I soon received the news that he had been elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and in 1519, after only a brief stay, he left Spain to seek the imperial crown. For a variety of reasons, his Spanish subjects conspired to

rebel against his authority, starting the short-lived civil war known as the War of the Comunidades in 1520. In that year, Oviedo set sail again for the Indies, but not before printing his first book, the aforementioned chivalric ro-

mance dedicated to the heir to the throne of Naples. It is interesting to note

that Don Claribalte was the first novel written in the New World, since Oviedo had written it during the Central American expedition.!® The book is not only a tale of knightly adventures; its second half presents Oviedo’s view of the ideal political relations between Spain, France, and England. When Oviedo returmed to the Indies for the second time, he left behind a smoldering feud with another famous historian of the Indies, Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas. Since Oviedo’s and Las Casas’s paths were to cross often, it

could be said that they were born to be enemies. Las Casas was an ardent

Catholic polemicist, dedicated to the defense of the American Indian, whereas Oviedo was intensely proud of Spain’s imperial destiny and supported any activity in the New World that would help Spain realize that destiny. In 1525, in a sworn statement to the Council of the Indies, Oviedo said about the Indians: “About Indians, and in the places where I have been, I know that some of them are sodomites, and many of them eat human flesh, and they are idolaters, sacrifice men, and are full of vices.”!” Oviedo satirized Las Casas’s 1519 request to transport a number of farmers, whom Las Casas

Gonzalo Ferndndez de Oviedo y Valdés 373

would knight with the golden spur, to help him peacefully settle Cumana.!8 Relations between the two men worsened when they discovered that they were both writing the history of the same events. Oviedo claimed that Las Casas, furious when the first part of Oviedo’s Historia was published in 1535, had ecclesiastical authorities in the Caribbean harass him. This feud lasted until the death of both polemicists. Back in the Indies, Oviedo resumed his earlier activities in Panama, with worse luck than in his first try, since an attempt was now made against his life.19 With his family settled in Santo Domingo, Oviedo returned to Spain once again, from 1523 to 1526. There he ceaselessly curried royal favor, in 1526 dedicating his Sumario de la natural y general historia de las Indias to the Emperor. The book, printed in Toledo, is a fascinating treatise containing precious ethnological and topographical information on the Indies.2° In the dedication Oviedo explained that the original manuscript for the treatise had been left behind in Santo Domingo, and that the summary had been written from memory to please his Majesty’s curiosity. He also alluded to another work that he had been writing for a long time, the manuscript for which was also back in Santo Domingo; although he did not mention it by name, Oviedo was referring to the Catdlogo real de Castilla, a history of Spain since the Creation, which is unpublished to this day despite its perfect and magnificent form.?! So we find that Oviedo was engaged in writing simultaneously two enormous works: the history of the Indies, which he would start to publish but never finish, and the history of Spain, which he would finish but never publish. In 1526 Oviedo returned to Central America, with new posts conferred by the Emperor that required him to travel frequently.22 In 1530 he returned to Spain once again, bringing with him the autographed manuscript of the Catd-

logo real de Espana, which he presented to Empress Isabel, the wife of Charles, in 15 32.23 In the Catalogo, Oviedo tells the reader that he had been

commissioned by the Catholic King back in 1505 to write the history of Spain, and that he had finally completed the work on 30 April 1532. In that same year of 15 32, the Emperor recognized Oviedo’s efforts, including his politically astute presentation of the Catdlogo to the Empress, by naming him the official cronista de Indias, “chronicler of the Indies.” The appointment as official cronista brought about a substantial change in Oviedo’s wandering ways. As he himself explained in his Historia general y natural de las Indias: “His Majesty commanded me, as an older man due some repose, to rest at home collecting and writing with more ease about these matters and the new history of the Indies.”24 So upon Oviedo’s return to the Indies in that same year of 1532, he finally settled down in Santo Domingo, with his family and his growing library. His acquisition of a permanent residence brought Oviedo another royal reward: appointment as “al-

374 Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce

caide de la fortaleza de Santo Domingo,” military governor of the fortress of Santo Domingo. As early as the reign of Alfonso the Wise in the thirteenth century, the Kings of Castile had exhibited a natural desire to have their deeds memorialized in history. But this desire did not become institutionalized until the middle of the fifteenth century, when the post of cronista mayor de Castilla was created.25 When the western hemisphere was discovered at the end of that century, the wish to document this extraordinary event and its aftermath became paramount. So early in the sixteenth century, in an unofficial way, the Italian humanist Pedro Martir de Angleria was designated to record these events, which he did, in Latin, in his Decades de Orbe Novo (1516}.¢ It was the sheer magnitude of the American enterprise that propelled Charles V toname the first official cronista de Indias. The text of the royal appointment (dated 18 August 15 32) reads, in part: What you say [referring to the Council of the Indies] is very appropriate, about writing

the matters of the Indies, so that they will be remembered. Since you think that Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo will do it well, having spent so much time there, and because of his experience and knowledge of such matters, do charge him with that, with the provision that before he prints or publishes anything, a copy be sent to us for inspection. For his work I am pleased to grant him 30,000 maravedies each year. . . so that he will write of the affairs of the Indies in a full fashion and in good style.’

Oviedo’s main duty was to write a full account of the Spanish enterprise in the Indies. In order to be able to write this history, he was given free access to all the filed documentation available on both continents and was empowered to seek new documents and to command written or oral relaciones {accounts} of all expeditions by one or several of their participants.?® In the quiet of Santo Domingo Oviedo worked diligently on his history of the Indies. Given his new post, he felt duty-bound to quickly begin publication of his magnum opus, and to this end he traveled once again to Spain in 1534. In Seville in 1535 the great German printer Juan Cromberger published

the first part of the Historia general y natural de las Indias, which contains the first nineteen books, magnificently printed and with illustrations by Oviedo himself.2° It should be noted here that not only was Oviedo’s penmanship beautiful, but he drew excellently, as all his autographs attest.3° In 1536 Oviedo returned to Santo Domingo, where he continued to work

assiduously. Meanwhile, the unfortunate expedition of Hernando de Sototo Florida set sail from Spain in April 1538, arriving at its point of disembarkation in Tampa in May 15 39. For the next three years the expedition undertook an endless succession of phantasmagorical marches and countermarches in search of gold, through unknown countries, in a ceaseless struggle against In-

dian tribes that were almost invariably hostile. As we have seen, Oviedo

. Gonzalo Ferndndez de Oviedoy Valdés 375 knew Hernando de Soto personally and well, but it was not from Soto, who died on the Mississippi in 15 42, that he gleaned the story. Oviedo never went to Florida and never saw Soto again, but the beginning of chapter 26 of the Historia general identifies Oviedo’s source: “Let us not have the reader wonder as to the punctuality with which the historian tells of the journeys, rivers, events that governor Hernando de Soto and his army met in those northern parts. Among the hidalgos, ‘noblemen,’ who participated in everything, there was one called Rodrigo Ranjel, mentioned before and to be named again, who was a soldier in the expedition, and he wanted to understand what he saw and how life went by, and, therefore, he wrote what happened to them daily, after their hardships, like a wise man and also for his

recreation.” |

Oviedo further explains how it was that he obtained Ranjel’s first-person account, a veritable diary of the Soto expedition by one of its soldiers: “After all these things happened, and a few more still to come, Rodrigo Ranjel came to this city of Santo Domingo in the island of Hispaniola, and he made a statement to this audiencia real {royal court of justice] about all these events, and he was told to write down all he had said and give everything to me, so that I, as Your Majesty’s chronicler of these histories of the Indies, would add it to

them, so that the discovery and conquest of the northern lands could be known.” Oviedo could not refrain from offering his own opinion, thus adding: “Let this be a warning to all who come to the Indies, so as not to get lost in the service of a captain who throws away their lives in the manner that my vigils and pages have told.” It is a sad but true epitaph for the vain and courageous

Captain Hernando de Soto.?! To judge by his name, Rodrigo Ranjel was born in Oviedo, the region in northern Spain where the historian’s own family originated.32 How Ranjel and Fernandez de Oviedo came to find one another in the immensity of America is easily explained. As official cronista de Indias, Oviedo had access to all

of the official statements concerning any and all expeditions in the New World; moreover, Oviedo’s home base, Santo Domingo, was an obligatory port-of-call for all Spanish ships traveling between Spain and the American mainland. Since Oviedo’s duties, as cronista de Indias and as alcaide, required him to interview all newcomers, it is easy to imagine how the meeting between Oviedo and Rodrigo Ranjel took place. The bedraggled Ranjel had arrived in Mexico in 15 43 with the pitiful remnants of the once glorious expedition. As he prepared to return to Spain (probably in 15 44), his ship would have called at the port of Santo Domingo, where he was required to make a full statement of his adventures to the audiencia real and to its alcaide. In Book 17, Chapters 22—28 of his Historia, Oviedo tells the story of the Soto expedition. He recalls very well that Hernando de Soto first came to the Indies in 1514, in the expedition to Panama of Pedrarias Davila, of which

376 Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce

Oviedo himself was a part. That his dislike for Soto dated from this experience is suggested by a long exhortation to the reader at the end of Chapter 26, in which Oviedo says, in part: “Pay attention to the events of this ill-governed governor (Soto, of course], instructed in the school of Pedrarias Davila in the waste and devastation of the Indians of Panama.”33 As we have seen, Oviedo had tried to close down that particular school, while Soto had been its star pupil. Oviedo faulted Soto’s command from the moment of the expedition’s landing in Florida, where he recorded an unhappy maneuver in the unloading of the ships which he attributed to “lack of prudence of the governor.”24 This sharp criticism of Soto’s actions, so different from the Inca Garcilaso’s later treatment of these events, continues throughout the narrative. For example, Oviedo shows Soto sending Captain Baltasar Gallegos ahead of him to explore the land, with specific instructions to write back untruthful reports so

that the bulk of the expedition would not lose heart; in other words, he clearly instructed a subordinate to lie. On another occasion, Oviedo laments: “Oh, marvelous God, what was this blindness and rapture that under such illaimed greed and vain preaching Hernando de Soto told those deceived soldiers that he took to a land he had never seen before! ”’35 And even more critically, shortly thereafter: “The governor proposed, as always, that the best thing was to keep going on without he nor his soldiers knowing whether this was right or wrong.’”%6 Finally, Oviedo attacked Hernando de Soto’s clearly un-Christian morals: when an Indian chief offered him three women and he accepted them, Oviedo wrote, “I wish that the governor had told those Indian chiefs, together with the excellences of the Cross and of the Christian faith, that he was married and that Christians cannot have more than one woman.”3’ When Oviedo returned to Spain in 1546 he did not publish the newest chap-

ters of the Historia general, only a slim volume on Christian philosophy, Regla de la vida espiritual y secreta teologia.?® In his middle years Oviedo had experienced a spiritual conversion, induced by his reading and meditating on the works of Erasmus. This happened at a time when Erasmus’s works and his followers were being actively persecuted by the Inquisition, yet we have Oviedo’s own assertion that he kept copies of Erasmus in Spanish and in Latin in his Santo Domingo library. The 15 46 publication of Rule of the Spiritual Life, Oviedo’s translation of a work by the Italian prelate Pietro da Lucca,

is solid evidence of that conversion. During his time in Spain, Oviedo also shepherded through the press a second printing of the first part of his history of the Indies.?? Oviedo’s limited output during this visit to Spain, which lasted until 1549, is probably explained by the fact that, back in Santo Domingo, by his own ac-

count, he had already started another encyclopedic work, which he was attempting to write simultaneously with his unfinished history of the Indies. I

Gonzalo Ferndndez de Oviedo y Valdés 377

refer to the Batallas y quinquagenas.*° Oviedo’s plan for this tome was simply monstrous: it was to have comprised eight hundred different dialogues about the noble houses of Spain—their genealogy, arms, historic feats, and economic means—all based upon noblemen of various ranks that Oviedo had personally known in Spain. The original manuscript of this fascinating treatise has been very badly treated, and it only numbers 132 dialogues.?! This trip to Spain did produce a new. honor for the old historian. The Emperor named him regidor perpetuo, perpetual alderman, of the city of Santo Domingo, to which he returned in 1549. Back home, Oviedo continued writing furiously, starting yet another enormous book, his Quinquagenas de la nobleza de Espana, a random recollection of historical figures, facts, and personal memoirs, in three beautiful autograph volumes that were finished on 24 May 1556, when Oviedo was 79.42 The final touches to these memoirs were made in Spain, where Oviedo had traveled earlier in 1556 with the purpose of publishing the complete text of his corrected and augmented history of the Indies. He lived to see only its Book 21 published, the first book of the second part.*3 The complete text was only published in the nineteenth century.44 Oviedo died in the same place and year in which Book 21 was published: Valladolid, 1557. Oviedo left behind many more unpublished autograph manuscripts, including some excellent treatises on Spanish heraldry and the continuation, right up to the reign of Charles V, of his Catdlogo real de Espana.*5 To the shame of Hispanic and historical studies, most of them remain in exactly that condition. For years I have been trying to conscript volunteers to publish them, with a modicum of success. Many of the autograph books of the Historia general y natural, published for the first time by José Amador de los Rios in the nineteenth century, were found in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, by the Chilean specialist José Anadén, who has been working

on them.*® But to date no modern critical edition of this work has been completed.4’

Notes 1. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Batallas y quinquagenas, ed. J. B. de Avalle-Arce (Salamanca: Diputacioén Provincial, 1989}, 280. 2. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Las memorias de Gonzalo Ferndndez de

Oviedo, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literature, ed. Juan Bautista de Avalle-Arce (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974), 1:311. 3. Oviedo y Valdés, Batallas y quinquagenas, 436.

4. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Regla de la vida espiritual y secreta theologia (Sevilla: Dominco de Robertis, 15 48). 5. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Libro de la camara real del Principe Don Juan, ed. J. M. Escudero de la Pena (Madrid: Sociedad de Biblidfilos Espanioles, 1870).

378 Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce 6. See, for example, his long autograph treatise Quinquagenas de la nobleza de Espana, which I have published under the more appropriate title of Las memorias de Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, 2:625—36. 7. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Libro del muy esforcado e inuencible Cauallero de la Fortuna, propiamente llamado Don Claribalte |Valencia: Juan Vinao, 1519}.

8. Oviedo y Valdés, Memorias, 2:543—44.

9. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Laberinto de amor (Sevilla: André de Burgos, 15 46}.

10. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y Tierra-Firme del mar Océano... , (Sevilla: Juan Cromberger, 1535}, 5:xi. 11. Oviedo y Valdés, Batallas y quinquagenas, 434. 12. The many examples that have survived are dull and prosaic. 13. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general 6:xxxix. 14. V. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, “Vida y escritos de Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo,” Biblioteca de Autores Espanioles, cxvii, xlv—xlviii. 15. Pérez de Tudela Bueso, ‘Vida y escritos,” cviii. 16. Pérez de Tudela Bueso, “Vida y escritos,” lxii. 17. Pérez de Tudela Bueso, “Vida y escritos,” xcvii—xcviii.

| 18. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 19:v. 19. Pérez de Tudela Bueso, Vida y escritos, 1xxxix. 20. Natural History of the West Indies by Gonzalo Ferndndez de Oviedo y Valdés, ed. and trans. Sterling A. Stoudemire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959).

21. Evelia Romano de Thuesen, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is preparing an edition under my supervision. 22. Pérez de Tudela Bueso, “Vida y escritos,” xcvi—cxci. 23. Most of this is told in the preliminaries to the Catdlogo real. 24. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:viii. 25. See J. L. Bermejo Cabrero, “Origenes del oficio de cronista real,” Hispania 40 (1980]: 395-409. 26. Alcala de Henares, Arnao Guillén de Brocar, 1519. 27. See Pérez de Tudela Bueso, Vida y escritos, note 14, CXViii. 28. See Pérez de Tudela Bueso, Vida y escritos, note 35. 29. See Pérez de Tudela Bueso, Vida y escritos, note 10.

30. See Daymond Turner, “Forgotten Treasurer from the Indies: The Illustrations and Drawings of Fernandez de Oviedo,” Huntington Library Quarterly 48 (1985): 1-46. 31. These quotations are all from the opening paragraph of the chapter in the Historia general. 32. See Julio de Atienza, Barén de Cobos de Belchite, Nobiliario espanol. Diccionario herdldico de apellidos espanioles y de titulos nobiliarios (Madrid: Aguilar, 1959), 645.

33. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 17:xxvi. 34. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 17:xxii. 35. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 17 :xxv.

Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés 379 36. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 17:xxv. 37. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 17:xxviii. 38. Oviedo y Valdés, Regla de la vida. 39. Printed in Salamanca by Juan de Junta, 1547. 40. Oviedo y Valdés, Batallas y quinquagenas, 280. 41. It is owned by the Biblioteca Universitaria, Salamanca. 42. Oviedo y Valdés, Quinquagenas de la nobleza de Espana. The autograph is kept at the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid. 43. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Libro XX. De la segunda parte de la general historia de las Indias (Valladolid: Francisco Fernandez de Cérdoba, 1557). See Daymond Turner, “The Aborted First Printing of the Second Part of Oviedo’s General and Natural History of the Indies,” Huntington Library Quarterly 46 (1983): 105-25. 44. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y Natural de Las Indias, islas y Tierra-Firme del mar Océano... , ed. José Amador de los Rios (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1851—5 4).

45. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Epilogo real, imperial y pontifical (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional], ms. 6224. 46. His work is unpublished to date. 47. A manuscript translation by the late Daymond Turner is in need of editing and annotation, and plans for its publication are unclear.

José Rabasa

The Representation of Violence in the Soto Narratives

She—Courage is strength—and you are vigilant, sagacious, firm besides. But I am beautiful—as “a cane box, called petaca, full of unbored pearls.” I am beautiful: a city greater than Cuzco; rocks loaded with gold as a comb with honey. Believe it. You will not dare to cease following me—at Apalachi, at Cutifachiqui, at Mabila, turning from the sea, facing inland. And in the end you shall receive of me, nothing—save one long caress as of a great river passing forever upon your sweet corse. Balboa lost his eyes on the smile of the Chinese ocean; Cabega de Vaca lived hard and saw much, Pizarro, Cortez, Coronado—but you, Hernando de Soto, keeping the lead four years in a savage country, against odds, “without fortress or support of any kind,” you are mine, Black Jasmine, mine. William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain On the next day, Tuesday, 30 September, they arrived at Agile, subject to Apalache, and

some women were captured; they are of such stuff that one Indian woman took a bachiller called Herrera, who had remained alone with her, behind his companions, and grabbed him by his genitals and had him so worn out and weakened that if other Christians had not come by and rescued him, the Indian woman would have killed him, since he did not desire her sexually, but rather she wanted to get free and run away. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias

A recent special issue of Archaeology dedicated to Hernando de Soto’s expedition to Florida published a series of articles documenting the extremely violent nature of this tentative conquest.! In a later issue of this magazine, a letter by a Hispanic woman (she makes reference to her “Spanish ancestors”} denounced the documentation of the violence as one more repetition of the Black Legend by “Anglos.”? There is no question that the editors of Archaeology committed a gross impropriety when they decided to illustrate the article

by using the same images that William R. Hearst used to promote the war against Spain in 1898, especially since they made no attempt to analyze them or even identify their source. The outraged reader also reminds us that “Anglos” have shed no less Indian blood. We should not forget, however, that

Violence in the Soto Narratives 381

there are plenty of romantic images of the Conquistador (with capital letters, indeed) Hernando de Soto, both in North American popular culture and, no less, in modern historiography (in Spanish as well as in English}. I have juxtaposed as epigraphs to this article two passages from very different kinds of sources that will enable me to problematize a bit this business of the uses of the Black Legend by “Anglos.’? Obviously, I do not intend to deny the Hispanophobia that feeds into “Anglo” condemnations of the Spanish conquest— simply to sort things out. I quote William Carlos Williams who, in spite of a middle name that evokes Hispanic ancestry, is the poet par excellence of Anglo America. And I quote Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, who has been seen as having contributed indirectly to the Black Legend, when in fact he was busy vindicating Spain—though not necessarily all the conquistadors who acted in her name. How Oviedo used Hernando de Soto in his Historia general y natural de las Indias is ultimately the subject of this article. By framing Oviedo between examples of North American high and popular culture, I seek to curtail squabbles over the relative horrors of “Hispanic” versus “Anglo” violence against Native Americans, or over which form of colonization is more truly representative of the significance of America in (Western) history. Such debates retain a thoroughly colonialist position. Hernando de Soto will be read here from a postcolonial perspective (i.e., one which neither privileges European culture as a frame of reference nor proposes colonization as a “civilizing” factor},

which will address first sixteenth-century juridico-legal prescriptions on wars of conquest and then move on to the aesthetics of violence in Oviedo’s portrayal of one such war. My reading of Oviedo is at odds with that of Martin and Ivana Elbl who, in

their contribution to this volume, interpret Oviedo’s moralizing (vis-a-vis the absence of moralizing in the Relacam by the anonymous “Gentleman of Elvas”} as an example of a perspective that is “black.” On the other hand, Patricia Galloway has argued that by condemning Soto as incompetent, Oviedo was attempting to atone for having fabricated lies in the first part of his Historia general y natural de las Indias, lies for which he was denounced by Bartolomé de Las Casas.‘ I will argue that Oviedo’s condemnation of Soto has less to do with a “change of heart” toward the Indians than with the new legal framework introduced by the New Laws of 1542. Three contextual frames tend to accompany Oviedo’s allusions and references to the New Laws: (1) a condemnation of the behavior of Spaniards (especially those he does not hold in high regard to begin with}; (2} an implicit questioning of the New Laws by laying the blame for the Indians’ deaths on their idolatry, sodomy, and weak intellects; and (3) a direct critique of the power of the Dominican order (in specific, Bartolomé de Las Casas}.5 Thus, the New Laws function as a code

382 José Rabasa

Oviedo grudgingly accepts but uses to advance his own policies. In the final analysis, Oviedo’s denunciation of Soto reproduces on a symbolic level the same violence he condemns. As implied by the title to this article, 1am interested in taking Oviedo’s and Williams’s passages as points of entry to an analysis of the culture of terror, whose mechanism Soto knew well—as can be inferred from the different accounts of the expedition. My point is to suggest how, beyond blatant material forms of terrorism (slavery, war, mutilations, and so on}, there are corresponding rhetorical forms. This last issue ultimately addresses the following questions: How can one write about or even against violence without being terroristic? In what ways is terrorism articulated in aesthetic representations (albeit moral reprobations) of violence? To properly address these issues we must attend to the rhetoric as well as the politics of writing about the New World.

These passages from Williams and Oviedo offer us two perspectives on Amerindian women. They provide the materials to reflect on what it means to write against violence. The first represents an allegorical character who, in addition to embodying a reference to indigenous culture, initially expresses (in order to eventually debunk) the idealized view of Soto that has made him the predilect conquistador in North American culture: consider Williams’s ambivalent, if not ironic, “you are mine, Black Jasmine, mine.” But as Wil-

liams points out in an earlier chapter dedicated to Ponce de Leén, “She” (América) is one of the voices that, according to Williams, inhabit the soul of North Americans: History begins for us with murder and enslavement, not with discovery. No we are not Indians but we are men of their world. The blood means nothing: the spirit, the ghost of the land moves in the blood, moves the blood. It is we who ran to the shore naked, we who cried, “Heavenly Man!”. These are the inhabitants of our souls, our murdered souls that lie... agh. Listen!6

This passage conveys what Williams meant by the notion of writing history against the grain. Williams never hesitates to demythologize the colorful Ponce de Leén, who according to the legend was searching for the fountain of youth, when in fact he was primarily concerned with capturing slaves for his plantation, then in decline due to a lack of laborers. Williams is more cautious with Soto. After all, this “favored son” has lent his name to streets, restaurants, shops, and to a popular car in the forties and fifties, while the armored image of a conquistador nowadays marks the De Soto Trail in several southeastern states. Williams rewrites the story of Soto by juxtaposing, with the paragraphs that express the voice of “She,” subjectless passages that are increasingly negative (for the most part derived from the accounts of Oviedo/ Ranjel and Elvas). But in a key moment, it is “She,” the dreamlike, enticing

Violence in the Soto Narratives 383

América (“You will not dare to cease following me”), who provides a starkly revealing profile of Soto: “Follow me, Senor, this is your country. I give it to you. Take it. Here are carriers for your burdens; here are girls for your beds; my best men for adversaries.” To this submission of América, as is already suggested by the gift of the adversaries, Soto responds by inflicting terror: “At the sight of your men in armor, terror strikes them.’ Williams draws a feminine representation of America that avoids a generalized tendency to deni-

grate Amerindian cultures by means of negative feminine traits. At once, “She” both undoes a misogynist conception of the feminine and dismantles the romanticized view of Soto. In spirit, Williams aims to write an “Indiancentered” history—whether he succeeds or not is another question. Let us now examine the quotation from Oviedo in the context of the Historia general. Oviedo has a grudge against Soto that dates back to the expedition

of Pedrarias Davila to Castilla del Oro in 1514, when Oviedo first came to America as “veedor de minas”: This governor was much given to hunting and killing Indians, since the time he participated in military expeditions with Pedrarias Davila in the provinces of Castilla del Oro

and Nicaragua. He was also in Pert and present at the imprisonment of that great Prince Atabaliba, where he became wealthy.9

Oviedo considers Soto little more than a murderer. This passage also exemplifies the moral commentaries that Oviedo inserts in rewriting the accounts (in this case, Rodrigo Ranjel’s of Soto’s expedition) that he collects for the His-

toria general. Oviedo, however, does not present himself here as el historiador to identify this statement on Soto’s character as his own. Thus this passage gains credibility, if not authority, by using the “story telling itself” device with no overt narrator. In other sections of his rewriting of Ranjel’s account, Oviedo makes reference to himself as el historiador or el cronista to testify to his fidelity to Ranjel or to emphasize the veracity of Ranjel. Thus Oviedo cites his eyewitness to highlight the limitations of providing an exhaustive report: “Other Indians did many other deeds which one could never fully describe, as he who was present told the historian.”!° And he defines the task of cronista as ordering Ranjel to provide him with a written account, “[he was] asked and charged that he should give me an account in writing of everything, so that, as chronicler of Your Majesties of these histories of the Indies, information regarding this expedition be gathered and included in the history.”!! Ranjel’s report is especially valuable and reflects his wisdom (read trustworthiness} because he supposedly wrote down everything that happened on a daily basis, “desiring to keep a record of what he saw and the course of his life, he wrote daily, at the end of his labors, every thing that happened, like a wise man, and for his recreation.”!2 The epigraph to this article exemplifies these journal-like entries in

384 José Rabasa

Ranjel Oviedo collects accounts that will both please and instruct readers so they will not let themselves be carried away by irresponsible governors like Soto, “since so many novelties and strange matters would be a delight for the judicious reader, and a warning for many who are likely to lose their lives in these Indies following a governor who thus dispenses the lives of others, as is apparent in these studies and writings of mine.’!3 But Oviedo not only selects accounts; he also elaborates an aesthetic vision and draws moral lessons by working over the “primary” sources. The castrat-

ing woman in my epigraph undoubtedly reflects an aestheticist intent to please a European audience avid for novelty. As for the moralistic intent, it can also be found in his disapproval of the earlier expedition to Florida of Panfilo de Narvaez in 1528, where he insists once more on the blindness of those

Spaniards who allowed themselves to be led by false promises: “I wanted them to tell me what those friars and Panfilo de Narvaez preached to those Spaniards that led them to venture so blindly, leaving their fatherland in pursuit of false words.’”"* Oviedo’s denunciation of Soto’s rampages in Castilla del Oro convey more than a mere bias. Indeed, as we will see later on, a colonial policy informs his moralism.

These statements on the aesthetic and moral dimensions of the Historia general clearly differentiate the rhetoric of the relacién type of historical writing from that of the crénica and the historia. The writer of the relacién must provide a truthful account of particulars, but not speculate over the meaning or significance of events. As Crown-appointed cronista, Oviedo must select and collect the most trustworthy accounts of the Indies. The separation between the task of the cronista and that of the historiador cannot be so Clearly drawn. In theory, the Historia general is a historia and not just a cronica: the task of collecting the totality of accounts is already a history inasmuch as the collection itself would ultimately convey the meaning of the whole enterprise and the designs of Providence. Thus the Historia general at-

tains its quality of historia precisely in those passages where the cronista/ historiador reflects and draws the moral significance of particular events. In the passage quoted above, Oviedo highlights this labor over the accounts,

“como por estas mis vigilias y renglones paresce” [as manifest in these studies and writings of mine”].!5 Similarly, in the chapters on Narvaez’s failed

expedition and Cabeza de Vaca’s subsequent journey across the continent, Oviedo underscores his work over the “primary” materials: “Although [Narvaez’s failure] does not have a remedy nor correction, it does hold some kind of lesson, or this account will bring it forth.”'° If the account is not exemplary in itself, Oviedo will make sure he draws its significance. As he makes reference to how “le causard esta relaci6n” (this account will bring it forth}, Oviedo

draws a thin line between those places where he expressly marks his interventions in the text and those modifications he introduces in the process of

. Violence in the Soto Narratives 385 “transcribing” the accounts. Thus attributions to esta relacién of comment would not simply imply a transcript of Ranjel’s diary or the (Narvaez/Cabeza de Vaca) “joint report,” but this rendition. These different modes of writing history, then, imply the deployment of specific rhetorics that dictate the nature of their historical “truth,” rather than just provide a form to an actual set of facts. The example of the castrating woman in the epigraph suggests the exotic as

a dominant trope in the Historia general, where it is found both in commentary and in rewritten source materials. Oviedo’s exoticism is particularly visible in his detailed and playful descriptions of American nature, but it also informs his representations, in both the Historia general and the Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias, of Amerindian women as inherently lascivious (i.e., due to their narrow vaginas) and Amerindian men as incorrigibly irrational (i.e., due to their thick skulls).!7 Though the passage on the castrating woman is a historical trifle, a speckle in Soto’s historiography, it invests the Amerindian woman with a paradigmatic quality, “e son tales” (and they are of such stuff].

This is Oviedo’s first mention of a systematic capture of women slaves. Oviedo disapproves the subjection of women to sexual abuse. According toa witness whom he does not name (we must presume that it is not Ranjel],

while men were captured to serve as tamemes ["porters,” in Nahuatl], women were captured and baptized for sex, “for their foul uses and lewdness, and that they had them baptized for carnal intercourse with them rather than to teach them the faith.’”8 We may wonder, however, how many Christians were victims of crushed testicles. The fact that Oviedo portrays the woman in the epigraph as not wanting to let the bachiller loose and him as not desir-

ing her sexually, “puesto que él no queria haber parte con ella como libidinos,” ought to make us suspicious of Oviedo’s characterization of the in-

digenous woman as well as of his condemnation of the sexual commerce. Deep down, the moralism of Oviedo has more to do with a Catholic modesty

than with a respect for the humanity of Amerindian women. Moreover, a

similar sentiment underlies his criticisms of Soto’s greed and cruelty. Oviedo’s vaunted moralism ultimately conveys a compliance with the Crown’s insistence on not abusing Indians, and in particular the new set of rules of the New Laws of 15 42, rather than a sympathy for the plight of Amerindians. But this makes Oviedo’s documentations and commentaries all the more useful for a reading of the culture of terror as it was practiced by Christians in different parts of America. We can already trace this sort of juridico-legal meditation in Oviedo’s Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias, published in 1525. Take, for instance, the passage where, after denouncing the term “to pacify” as actually meaning “to destroy” |”mas que pacifico, lo llamo destruido”], Oviedo goes on to praise

386 José Rabasa

the new legislation by the Council of the Indies: “Following the advice of many theologians and jurists and learned people, [the emperor] has made provisions and corrected what has been possible with his justice, and even more with the new reforms of his Council of the Indies.”!9 One must note that his reference to the wisdom of Charles V is framed by a set of paragraphs where Oviedo attributes the “lasciviousness” of Indian women to their narrow vaginas, warns Spaniards about using their swords against the “thick skulls”

(cascos duros) of the Indians, condemns the ritual anthropophagy of the Caribs, and reduces Amerindian cultures to a series of diabolical practices. The difference with Bartolomé de Las Casas (and the reason Las Casas opposed the publication of the Historia general) resides precisely in Oviedo’s attitude toward ritual anthropophagy, sacrifice, and indigenous knowledge and religion.2° Before examining the uses of terror in Oviedo, let us observe how violence is represented in the other two main accounts of Soto's expedition. I set aside Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida del Inca as a case of its own, not because it is not a direct testimony, but mainly because the value of Garcilaso’s history resides in its self-conscious literary rendition of the events. One can trace a series of claims of objectivity and metatextual statements conveying the notion that the subject matter of La Florida is the story of how to write a believable history of America—more specifically, a history from the point of view of an Indian author.2! Clearly, from this perspective, Garcilaso’s text holds a historical import apart from the question of its trustworthiness. I have already alluded to the Relacam verdadeira dos trabalhos g ho gouernador do Fernddo de Souto e certos fidalgos portugueses passarom no descobriméto da prouincia de Frolida (1557) of Fidalgo de Elvas apropos the epigraph by Williams.?? The only primary source in the strict sense of the term (leaving aside the brief Canete fragment} is Luis Hernandez de Biedma’s Rela-

ci6n del suceso de la jornada del cap. Soto, y de la calidad de la tierra por donde anduvo.”3 Both Elvas and Biedma corroborate the violence documented by Oviedo/Ranjel. The Relacam confirms the systematic use of violence and the capture of slaves without going into the detail of Oviedo/Ranjel. Biedma is less explicit in his account of how porters and women were taken or demanded from caciques. In all three, though with different degrees of intensity, one can hear the noise of the chains of the thousands of men and women who were drawn from one place to another by Soto’s armada (e.g., in the Relacam, just in the course of one week, four hundred slaves were taken in Ocute and seven hundred more in Patofa).24 The Elbls provide, at the end of their article in this volume, a very useful appendix that annotates variations as well as absences in these accounts. My point here, however, is not to com-

pare different versions of events, but to draw from the Relacam, and to a

Violence in the Soto Narratives 387

lesser extent from Biedma, an attitude—and even perhaps an aesthetic sensibility—-toward conquest and violence. The opening epigram by Fernao da Silveira to the 1557 edition of the Relacgam gives us a clue about how violence was read and the type of pleasure that was derived from its narration and description. On the one hand, this epi-

gram constitutes a minute prism that reflects the sensibility of the anonymous author and his readership, while on the other hand it manifests the “ob-

jectivity” of the text. By objectivity I do not mean that the author was impartial, but that the rhetoric of the representation of the facts and things of Florida is geared primarily to provide what appears to be a literal description rather than to elaborate a “figure.” Certain passages might lend themselves to an allegorical reading; however, it is worthwhile recalling that by definition allegories include a literal meaning. The epigram itself reproduces this structure. The epigram, written in two columns in the original, reads as follows:

We inhabit the He who would see the World, Northern Pole, the Golden Pole, the second,

and that people other seas, other lands, inhabit the achievements great, and wars, Southern Antarctic and such things attempted

Pole. that alarm and give pleasure,

Golden Pole is strike terror and lend delight; — used because read of the author this pleasing story,

the region where nothing fabulous is told,

is rich. all worthy of being esteemed, read, considered, used.5

The left-hand column opens with a fanciful geographical location (both Portugal and Florida are in the northern hemisphere) of the territories inhabited by “nds” (we) and “aquelas gentes” (that people). Nevertheless, this column reiterates a commonplace that associated southern latitudes with gold as it explains the “obscure” reference to Polo Aureo in the right-hand column. The didactic intent of the marginal annotation ends up obscuring the straightforward description of the book in the second column. This column begins with an allusion to the Polo Aureo and ends by underscoring the utility and truthfulness of the Relagam. What is true, of course, does not exclude the useful; as Horace would put it, the Relacam is dulce et utile. If all men are fond of listening to and seeing new things, especially from foreign and remote lands (as the editor André de Burgos reminds us by citing Aristotle in his prefatory note}, an account would be even more delightful if it were a “historia deleitosa” that narrates and vividly describes the heroic deeds, the wars—in fact, events “que ‘spantan e dao prazer, / poem terror e dao dulcor” (“that alarm and give pleasure, / strike terror and lend delight”). Paradoxically, the

388 José Rabasa

epigram characterizes the land as a Polo Aureo, when in the end the Relacam is the testimony of a failed, albeit systematic and tenacious search for gold and opulent provinces. Nevertheless, the mirage of a rich “Orient,” in the vicinity of Florida, remains intact. The epigram seems to tell us that the pleasure of reading would reside precisely in the story of how they followed a mirage of wealth and gave themselves to Soto’s adventure, and no less in the description of the size of the armada, of its power—in short, of the slave raids and military incursions. The Relacgam dwells to a lesser extent (say in comparison to Oviedo/Ranjel) on the exotic topos of the “savage Indian.” We find instead a sample of a “gallant Indies” topos in, for instance, the descriptions of the cacica of Cutifachiqui (or Cofitachequi in Oviedo} and even more pronouncedly in those of the cacique of Coga: The cacique came out to receive them at the distance of two crossbow shots from the town, borne in a litter on the shoulders of his principal men, seated on a cushion, and covered with a mantle of martenskins, of the size and shape of a woman’s shawl: on his head he wore a diadem of plumes, and he was surrounded by many attendants playing upon flutes and singing.6

In the Relacam this “gallant” image is a preface to the detention of the cacique and the subsequent massacre in Mavilla (Mabila in Oviedo). From the start the mirage of gold is accompanied by the abuse of Indians. The first news of a rich land is Cale, where men supposedly marched to war wearing gilded sallets, “traziam de ouro seus sombreiros, a maneira de celadas.”2’ From this point on, Indian leaders will be systematically held hostage. In the Relacam

there is a complete absence of any meddling that would legitimize Soto’s abuses; it never mentions a reading of the Requerimiento. It simply tells what happened: Soto’s men enter, destroy, and take captives. The author does not moralize or place the actions within a legal framework: to punish and set

an example are the only ends. A “bestial” {i.e., amoral) objectivity runs through the Relacam. Occasionally, the author looks back and tells us that the lands were destroyed and that those who passed through them again faced

extreme difficulties: “They reached Caliquen through much suffering because the land over which the governor had passed lay wasted and without maize.”’?8 Like a plague of locusts the armada had combed the region for corn:

“The Governor ordered all the ripe grain in the fields, enough for three months, to be secured.’?? The destruction of lands by armies is a commonplace in sixteenth-century documents of both European and American military campaigns; in the case of Soto as told in the Relagam, however, there is no concern whatsoever for their fate. These towns were not, after all, the great provinces of Soto’s dreams. When the author expresses his opinion, he limits himself to direct observa-

Violence in the Soto Narratives 389

tions. Take, for instance, his commentaries to Soto’s decision to abandon Cutifachiqui: “For though it seemed an error to leave that country .. . there were none who would say a thing to him after it became known that he had made up his mind.”2° The Fidalgo deplores the treatment of the cacica: “The Governor ordered that she be placed under guard and took her with him... which was not a proper return. . . ; and thus she was carried away on foot with her female slaves.”2! Thus Soto takes on the (very uncommon} semblance of

a conquistador who is only ruled by greed, to the extent of destroying the very source of wealth that would make possible a colonization of the land. Soto’s expedition is without doubt an example of “the-myth-of-Spaniardsenthralled-in-dreams-of-dorados.” Indeed, his behavior at times borders on the irrational. For instance, going by some towns he wanted to “befriend,” Soto destroys their fields, “Ihes talou e destruiu grandes maisais.”32 Recent _ scholarship has pointed out that the Amerindian cultures Soto invaded in the Southeast never recuperated from the destruction of their crops and the epidemics that followed. The destruction was such that by the middle of the seventeenth century, when contact was renewed, the indigenous cultures lacked the splendor attributed to them by some of the accounts of the Soto expedition.3 The Relacam’s rhetorical objectivity entails a representation of Indians in their own terms. An uprising is seen as a refusal to be subjected and enslaved, without passing value judgments. This perspective, obviously, does not exclude the interpretation of uprisings as acts of rebellion against the authority

of the Crown. Indians retain their dignity in the narration of the events, but the punishments by the (Christian) victor are also told impassively by Elvas: They who were subdued may have been in all two hundred men: some of the youngest the governor gave to those who had good chains and were vigilant; all the rest were ordered to execution, and, being bound to a post in the middle of the town yard, they were shot to death with arrows by the people of Paracoxi.34

Here Soto uses the Paracoxi, Indian “allies,” that were unbound by now, “ja soltos andavam.”*5 This passage suggests that from the initial contact with the Spaniards the Indians of Paracoxi had directed the Christians toward Cale and Caliquen to bring harm on an old enemy. All three accounts describe a systematic use of terror that is characterized

by the aperreos, mutilations, and burning of women and men alive. The whole purpose is to set an example. Let us take some passages from the Historia general, which, by the way, also further illustrate the thin line that sepa-

rates overt intervention from apparent transcription. Oviedo glosses Ranjel with a definition of aperreo to underscore the violence of the conquest: “The reader must understand that aperrear means to have the dogs eat them or kill them, thus tearing the Indian to pieces.”3° The burning of Indians to gain in-

390 José Rabasa

formation is also systematic, though unsuccessful, from what the following “transcript” of Ranjel would suggest: “Not one ever showed any knowledge of his lord’s town nor disclosed its location, although they burnt one of them alive before the others, and all suffered that martyrdom, for not disclosing it.”37 Disobedience is punished by cutting off hands and noses, and Oviedo likens the natives’ impassive reception of the penalty to the Roman stoics: “If they cut the hands and noses of some, they showed less feeling than if each of them was a Mucio Scévola of Rome.”38 All three accounts celebrate the Indian’s stoicism and refusal to submit to slavery. Oviedo/Ranjel speaks of four-year-old children who fought next to their parents at the battle of Mavilla, or Mabila, where young Indians would rather hang themselves or jump into fires than be subjected to slavery.2° This heroism is matched by Spanish valor: “And all the Spaniards fought like men of great spirit.”4° In spite of his moralistic diatribes against Soto, Oviedo also knows how to complement Ranjel’s account by praising the Spaniards. In the

Relacam the tragic end of Mavilla is told in a less heroic, but perhaps more realistic tone: ...and the Christians getting among them with cutlasses, they found themselves met on all sides by their strokes, when many, dashing headlong into the flaming houses, were smothered, and, heaped one upon another, burned to death.*!

It is never a question of belittling the Indians’ courage, but of describing the battle without privileging the courage of the Christians. Both accounts, however, concur that it was a massacre. The Relacam estimates that two thousand Indians died in the battle; Oviedo gives three thousand.

In Biedma’s account, the victory assumes a grotesque dimension as the Spaniards cured themselves “with the fat of the dead Indians, since we had no other medicine.”*2 Garcilaso also mentions the extraction of fat,*? but neither Oviedo nor the Relacam include it. However, Oviedo elsewhere in the

Historia general mentions and justifies that Cortés caulked thirteen boats with Indian fat, “el unto de los indios enemigos.”“4 This justification of the use of fat to caulk brigantines is juxtaposed with a description of how the Indians “dined on” the innumerable corpses that lay on the ground after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Thus the Conquest of Mexico would be justified even under the strictures of the New Laws—in fact, this account belongs to the second

part of the Historia general and bears the imprint of the new legislation. There is no reason to believe that if Oviedo had known of this use of fat after

the massacre he would not have failed to mention it. Oviedo knew all too well that the extraction of fat from corpses was a customary medicinal practice in European wars. Notwithstanding its commonplaceness, however, it is a sinister and symbolic act. It provides, therefore, a window on how terror exercises power over the life and death of the Indians.

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Soto had already used fat for medicinal purposes in Peru, and according to Michael Taussig, Soto’s use of fat gave rise to rumors among the Indians of a systematic extraction to send back to Spain. In the seventeenth century these rumors led to the revolt of Taqui Ongoy, or the Dance of Sickness. In our century, it takes the form of the phantasm called Nakagq, which usually appears in the form of a white or a mestizo who amasses Indian fat “to sell either to pharmacies where it is used in medicines or to people who use it to grease machines, cast church bells, or shine the faces of the statues of the saints.’’46 Whether for military or medicinal purposes, the use of fat constitutes a desecration of the body of the vanquished, and perhaps even a modality of cannibalism—an appropriation of the power of the enemy. As Taussig points out, “the Frazerian principles of sympathetic and contagious magic are clear: with the fat of those who have wounded me I will heal that wound.’ The use of fat is an act of terror that would have affected at once the survivors and the Indian slaves that were part of Soto’s camp. It asserts an absolute right over the bodies of Indians that the act of conquest has reduced to slavery; the extraction of fat implies a total exploitation of Indians as one more natural resource. Hence we can trace an economy of terror that articulates its principles on the life and death of the slave’s body. In spite of Michel Foucault's gnomic expression, “in the ‘excess’ of torture a whole economy of power is invested,” we should state with Taussig that “there is no ‘excess’,” where war, torture, and terror are an end and no longer a means.*8 In the Relagam it is clear that for both Soto and Moscoso, torture and violence constitute a spectacle where mutilated bodies are displayed. In passing, I should mention that it is somewhat ironic that Oviedo’s version stops precisely with Soto’s death. Since Moscoso does not deviate from Soto’s use of violence, there is hardly a case to make for the unique cruelty of the latter. Violence is a fundamental part of the theater of war and conquest—needless to say, on the part of both combatants. Take the infliction of wounds explicitly carried out to set an example in the following military encounter, which occurs right before Soto’s death: “About one hundred men were slain; many were allowed to get away badly wounded, that they might strike terror into those who were absent.’”4? According to the Relacam, the Christians generated so much fear that “the cries of the women and children were such as to deafen those who pursued them.”°° This is one of those few passages where the Relacgam deplores this abuse by the Christians: “Some persons were so cruel and butcherlike that they killed all before them, young and old, not one having resisted little or much.”*! One infers that some derived pleasure “tao crueis e carniceiros” [”so cruel and butcherlike”] from the cruelty and injury of helpless young and old Indians. Yet even this lamentation is more in tune

with the things that alarm and thereby give pleasure, “que ‘spantan e dao prazer, / poem terror e dao dulcor,” expressed in the epigram, than with some

392 José Rabasa

sort of abstract moral disapproval. The Relacam, furthermore, reiterates that in the course of the massacre Indians were purposefully wounded but not killed so that they would display their injuries: “[the Spaniards] broke through the crowds of Indians, bearing down many with their stirrups and the

breasts of their horses, giving some a thrust and letting them go.”52 The Relacgam concludes this war scene by leading us to understand that the Christians achieved the intended effect, “and greatly astonished at what they had

seen done to the people of Nilco, they recounted to their cacique with great fear everything that had happened.”*3 Of course, the Fidalgo was not present when the cacique of Nilco was informed. But Elvas’s assumption that the extreme cruelty would provoke fear implies a practice and rationale for violence and terror as ends in themselves. This lesson is perhaps what the epigraph means by an exemplary history, “digna de ser estimada / usada, lida e tratada” [“all worthy of being esteemed, / read, considered, used”. These last examples raise questions regarding the strategic function of terror and its textual as well as theatrical representation in the colonial drama

itself. It is worthwhile insisting that torture, cruelty, and terror are not unique to the sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadors—it still prevails even among twentieth-century “civilized” nations. I do not believe this is the

place to enumerate the atrocities that have been committed in our very recent past and others that unfortunately belong to the present. Recent reflections on the nature of war and terror, however, prove useful for an understanding of Soto’s invasion of Florida and its narrative variations. The dominant theoretical model of warfare in the West has been the confrontation of two individuals in a struggle to death. As has been pointed out by Elaine Scarry, only Clausewitz among the classical theoreticians of war has seen clearly the deficiency of a definition where the outcome of “a military contest carries the power of its own enforcement.’>4 Clausewitz finds a whole series of wars that manifest a disparity between the abstract objective of war to disarm and thus obtain a total victory, and peace treaties that were signed before one of the antagonists could be considered impotent. According to Scarry, the schema changes substantially when we change from a model based on two individuals locked in a struggle to one where two multitudes come face to face. In this instance, the notion of a total victory would be tantamount to genocide, slavery, or a permanent occupation. Scarry furthermore argues that the annihilation of a people is not a fundamental characteristic of war but of atrocity. The European invasion of America, however, was carried out by men who believed that its outcome would carry the power of its own enforcement. Given Soto’s objective of finding a “Dorado” (the conquest of a kingdom as rich or more so than Cuzco and Tenochtitlan), the apparently irrational capture of caciques, burning of villages, and razing of corn fields is,

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perhaps, wholly consistent with the end of a total victory—that is, permanent occupation and enslavement. Conquest, like warfare, has as its primordial objective to injure, or more precisely to out-injure the enemy.** In some instances we find that the Amerindians from Florida, as the different accounts put it, would come in peace: “venian de paz.” To surrender without a military contest does not imply an absence of injury, but rather unidirectional injuring. In such cases the Indians, anticipating the injuries that would result from war, would choose to submit themselves to Soto. Of course, this view would be the Spanish interpretation of Indian traditions that could very well be practices of hospitality or even forms of entrapment. Such a “surrender” obviously does not imply a lack of injuries, since the Indians are forced to forsake their sovereignty and to share their foodstuffs as well as to provide the Christians with porters and women. If they happened to be evangelized, the destruction of their consciousness, that is, of their interior culture, would complement the destruction of their persons and material culture. The subordination to Soto already implies a loss of “national” identity and an alteration in the native view of the organization of the world—in Scarry’s terms, a deconstruction of the world “in the interior of human consciousness itself.”55 The Franciscan conception of evangelization as a conquista espiritual is not a coincidence or a pacifist variation (avant la lettre) of Clausewitz’s maxim, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”5” As Clausewitz himself puts it: “A conqueror is always a friend of peace. .. . His ideal would be to enter into our State without opposition.”5§ The missionaries knew very well that their spiritual conquest was no less violent and repressive. One has only to refer the reader to the prologues and appendixes in Bernardino de Sahagitin’s Florentine Codex, or General History of the Things of New Spain, that explain how during the first decades of the conquest of Mexico the Franciscan friars trained a cadre of muchachos who would surveil the religious activities of their elders and terrorize them by surprising and arresting them in the middle of their festivities.>?

The candor in the missionary accounts of physical punishments and the extirpation of forms of thinking not compatible with the Christian faith or Western rationality recurs in the Soto accounts of burning towns, taking slaves, raiding food deposits, sexual abuses, mutilations, aperreos, and other means of injuring the Indians. This candor is especially manifest in the Relacgam and Biedma—we will shortly examine Oviedo’s moral reservations. And the aim is not to condemn Soto. Only Oviedo criticizes Soto, more for his greed than for the terrorism he practices. Biedma’s “relaci6n-like” account is brief and does not pay great attention to violence. As for the Relacam, it reads more like a manual of what every good conquistador must know than as a ju-

394 José Rabasa | ridical document. The choice of a journal genre fulfills a literary, rather than a testimonial purpose. We have already seen the “bestial” objectivity of the Relacam’'s accounts of terror and violence. There is no overt indication of the author’s intentions. We only have as a clue the reception (and horizon of expectations) that Fernando de Silveira anticipates in the epigram. Without doubt the description

and narrative of violence and destruction would be a source of pleasure [(“que’spantam e dao prazer, / poem terror e dao dulcor’’|, and nothing is farther from the horizon of expectations than a moral condemnation of the conquest of peoples abroad. There is a manual quality to the Relacam in the last

lines of the epigram, where not only its truthfulness but its utility are insisted upon [“digna de ser estimada / usada, lida e tratada”|. Let us now move on to examine how juridico-legal frameworks determine the writings of war and terror in Oviedo’s Historia general. Oviedo writes under the demands of the New Laws of 1542. As a result of their promulgation, explorers (at least in their accounts) followed different criteria and rules of action. Since Oviedo’s work was never published in its entirety, never completely revised to reflect a single point of view, these legal changes can also be traced in the different books of Oviedo’s Historia general, as well as in the 1535 and 1547 versions of the first part. Indeed, the Historia general was requisitioned by Andrés Gasco, “the inquisitor of the City of Seville,” and turned over to the Council of the Indies in 1563. Several rea-

sons have been given for the prohibition of its publication. Among them there are two worth mentioning because they belong to different historical moments and represent opposite ideologies. The first is Lopez de Gomara’s, who states that it was due to the opposition by Las Casas (apparently due to the defamation of Amerindians in more than one place in the Historia general); the second is Antonello Gerbi’s, who cites the “severe criticism of the clergy and the conduct of the Spanish in the Indies.’’*! Both are feasible explanations, but Gerbi’s must be nuanced; criticism in itself did not worry the Council of the Indies (the New Laws call for a report of everything}, but if Oviedo’s work were to circulate abroad, it would give a bad name to Spain. This concern is a trait of Philip II’s reign and of Counter-Reformation rebuttals of Protestant vituperations against Spain’s enterprise in the Indies. This

new political climate would situate the prohibition of Oviedo’s and Las Casas’s works under the same pragmatic of 15 56 that called for a censorship of

all books on the Indies.®? I insist on these historical specificities in the production and publication of the Historia general to avoid attributing Oviedo’s “new” position on the conquest to a change in his personal opinion. I do not believe we can document such a change of heart toward the Indians. Racism and exoticism continue to inform Oviedo’s representations of Amerindian cultures throughout the Historia general, notwithstanding his obligation toa

. Violence in the Soto Narratives 395 “descargo de la conciencia” (relief of the conscience) of the King and his preference for a colonial policy that favored settlement over the adventurism of

conquistadors like Soto. We ought to consider, moreover, to what extent Oviedo’s writing on Soto reflects the differences between the New Laws and the Crown’s provision for Soto’s governorship, which preceded them. Under the New Laws, slavery was completely forbidden; they specify that no “discoverer”—the term now preferred over conquistador—could remove Indians from their lands, with the exception of three or four to train as interpreters, “excepto hasta tres 6 cuatro personas para lenguas.” The New Laws also forbid all forms of pillage, “tomar ni haber cosa contra voluntad de los indios, sino fuere por rescate y 4 vista de la persona el abdiencia nombrare.” For the first time, it is required that every “discoverer” provide a full account in writing, “descubridor vuelva a dar cuenta 4 la abdiencia de lo que hubiere hecho y descubierto, y con entera relaci6n que tome de ello el abdiencia, lo envie al nuestro Consejo de la Indias.’ Before the New Laws, it was customary for explorers and conquerors to give an account of their actions, but it was not a legal exigency. And the reading of the Requerimiento was the only measure that guaranteed that the Crown’s “conciencias quedaran descargadas” (conscience would be relieved}, as it is expressed in the provision of Soto’s

conquest of Florida (and not discovery, as his invasion would have been named by the New Laws). Soto’s capitulacion (charter) with the Crown give him a sufficiently broad field of action to legitimate such abuses and terroristic practices as military incursions into towns, food raids, the enslavement of Indians, the pillage of graves, and the systematic retention of caciques as hostages. Indeed, the provisions recommend these procedures and specify what percentage of the resulting gains will be allotted to the Crown. Take, for instance, the following standard on ransoms: According to the rights of laws of Our Kingdoms, when Our people and captains of Our armadas, take hostage a Prince or Lord of the land where they make war in Our name, the ransom for such a lord or cacique belongs to Us.“

But given the excessive travails of those who war in the Indies, exception is made “of all the treasures, gold and silver, gained through ransom or other means, a sixth should be given to us and the rest distributed among the conquistadors” [my translation]. Thus, the capitulacion foresees Soto’s retention of one cacique after another as hostages. None of the accounts mentions ransoms; the demands for porters, women, and food seem matter-of-course, and the pearls of the cacica of Cutifachiqui read more as a gift than a payment of ransom. This provision, then, would seem to anticipate the captivity of another Atahualpa, not the preservation of an exact record of “trifles.” On the pillage of graves, the capitulacién provides that “of all the gold and

396 José Rabasa

silver. ..found...inthe graves... , half of it should be paid to us [the Crown] without discount, leaving the other half for the person that found and discovered the [site]” [my translation].6° Accordingly, the Relacam quite laconically informs on the pillage of graves in a town near Cutifachiqui: “They examined those in the town, and found fourteen arrobas of pearls, and figures of babies and birds made of them.’’*’ The specific weight of fourteen ounces suggests their removal from the grave. Biedma confirms this supposition, but in a less alluring scene that describes how the pearls have been damaged: “We took from it a quantity of pearls, weighting up to six arrobas.. . though they were not good, since they were damaged from lying in the earth and in the fat of the dead.’’°8 In the Historia general, however, Soto not only keeps the grave from being pillaged, but Oviedo has him expressing a moral maxim: “Leave them alone, and to whom God gives by good fortune, may Saint Peter bless him.”° Considering that in this passage Ranjel proposes pocketing the goods from the grave, “Senor no llamemos a nadie” [“My lord, let us not call anyone” |,” we may conclude that Soto’s maxim is pure Oviedo vintage—or, less likely, from another informant. Oviedo’s portrayal of Soto’s restraint could be read

as a form of protecting the name of Spain, rather than as an assessment of Soto’s character. The description of Soto’s perplexity toward the hollow thorax filled with pearls makes great literature anyway. For the “descargo de la conciencia” the capitulacion includes a provision,

written for Francisco de Montejo’s conquest of Yucatan in 1526, that demands the reading of the Requerimiento. From all appearances the Requertmiento was never read (at least none of the accounts explicitly says that it was} during Soto’s tentative conquest of Florida. If Soto, or someone concerned with vindicating the enterprise, had written an account, he would not have failed to mention it. Elvas did not have any reason to include this sort of information, but in the case of Biedma’s relaciOn it is a significant silence because of its judicial context. Considering that Charles V and the Council of the Indies are Oviedo’s most immediate addressees, his silence amounts to one more denunciation. On the other hand, the “spirit” of the Requerimiento underlies the binary categorization of Indians—between those who come in peace and those who resist. How can a people rebel without having first been subjected by means of the word or arms?7! The Requerimiento would ultimately preface pillage (and the partition of the booty with the Crown) with a “descargo de conciencia.” Oviedo ironically alludes to the New Laws when he presents Soto praising his own merits and expecting recognition from the Council of the Indies: “Oh my God, if those members from the Council were here to see how we serve Your Majesty!” After Soto’s exclamation, Oviedo quips: “And because they know it, says the cronista, that they have ordered tyrannies and cruelties to cease, and to proceed with more order in the pacification of the Indies.”’2 One

Violence in the Soto Narratives 397

wonders, however, to what extent the cronista Oviedo would have been willing to submit his own activities in the Indies retrospectively to the judgment of the New Laws. One only has to remember that occasion in the Darién—which dated back to the days of Pedrarias Davila but was written about by Oviedo after the New

Laws—when Oviedo burnt the cacique Corobari and two other caciques named Guaturo and Gonzalo. Oviedo shows his “humanity” toward Corobari by strangling him first because he wanted to die as a Christian (“Al cual yo mande ahogar primero porque quiso morir cristiano y era baptizado”). But he does not forget to corroborate the efficacy of bonfires as an instrument of terror: “This sort of death was given to him because Indians are afraid of fire, and do not fear all other forms of dying.””3 With the purpose of displaying the corpse of Gonzalo, Oviedo built a gibbet on the hill of Buenavista, “so that the Indians from Bea could see him from the lagoons that are about a league and a half or two below that hill.”’”4 As for Guaturo, he was hung in the plaza of Darién, while his wife, his two young children, and up to forty Indians were reduced to slavery because they were friends of Cemaco, “who was a cacique

of the Darién (he and his people had been given as slaves by the Catholic king).”75 This last legal point, that they had been given to him as slaves by Fer-

dinand the Catholic, would supposedly validate his procedures. But it also suggests that his negative judgments of Soto have more to do with a denunciation of Soto’s adventurism than with a “humanization” of Oviedo’s attitude toward Indians. Another example of Oviedo’s double standard is the condemnation of Soto’s aperreos and his celebration of Alonso Zuazo’s wise use of it. According to Oviedo, Zuazo displayed his sagacity (“parecio haberle alumbrado Dios” [“God seemed to have enlightened him”]) when he threat-

ened two amantecas who were experienced land surveyors (“que son como agrimensores experimentados”} with a dog who had been set against more than two hundred Indians for practicing idolatry and sodomy (“qual habia aperreado en veces mas de doscientos indios por idélatras y sodomitas”). The threat was designed to induce the two to come to an agreement regarding a map, a pintura, that established the boundaries of their lands, and it was apparently successful: “The lords and the amantecas were so filled with fear that the pintura came to be very accurate, and the parts approved it.””6 Notice that Oviedo offers no objection whatsoever to Zuazo’s feeding of “indios por iddlatras y sodomitas” to the dogs. The Historia general is, of course, also filled with moralistic diatribes against the excesses of Christians. An exemplary moment is Chapter 34 of Book 29, where Oviedo deplores the cruelties committed against the Indians and denounces Spain’s complicity in tolerating the atrocities of foreigners. But deep down, in this chapter and others, it is not clear whether he deplores more the Spaniards who have died as a result of failed expeditions or the two

398 José Rabasa

million Indians who, according to Oviedo, unjustly died at the hands of conquistadors like Pedrarias Davila.’’ In discussing these passages, Antonello Gerbi has credited Oviedo with originality in comparison with the Democrates alter of Sepulveda.’8 Septlveda’s treatise on the just causes of making war against the Indians, written against Las Casas, denies that Spain can be accountable for the excesses of the Spaniards.”? The choice of Pedrarias Davila as villain should already make us suspicious of any generalization about Oviedo’s sense of justice. Oviedo’s originality, according to Gerbi, would reside in making Spain responsible for the damage wrought by foreigners. The tenor of these passages from the Historia general, in my opinion, is on the contrary that the damages caused by war have been greater because there has been a large proportion of foreigners—that included even “griegos e levantiscos e de otras naciones.”8° Indeed, Oviedo ultimately exculpates Spain and lays the blame on the Indians: The reader should not be frightened by all these things I have spoken about; if you have read any treatise on war or conquest by another nation, in which are written the great cruelties among the Orientals and other diverse nations, you will not be surprised by what I have said about these Indians; war is the cause and will be the cause, wherever it happens, of great novelties and notable events, especially, as I have pointed out, when people from diverse and different nations, and different forms of warring gather to make war.8!

Oviedo is very far from absolving Indians from all guilt in his comparison with the “crueldades entre los orientales.” This same attribution of the evils of conquest to the “diversas nasciones” recurs in Chapter 2 of Book 45, but Oviedo here underscores the multiplicity of tongues: “Truly speaking, this is part of the nature of war, and even more in the armies of these parts, because the conquistadors do not speak one tongue.’’82 In fact, Oviedo is primarily concerned with the struggles for power among the Christians (and the responsibility of Spain), and not with the plight of the Indians: “All the blame of the mutinies and the abuses and the disputes belongs to the Spaniards, as it must, because the leaders and those who command are from Spain.”83 Oviedo recommends keeping foreigners away from the Indies to avoid riots and uprisings among the Christians. Once more, Oviedo addresses the Spaniards—

not the Indians. His concern for the Spaniards echoes, though somewhat awkwardly, in a comment to Ranjel’s account: “Heed, then, Christian conquerors, killers of themselves and others, attend to the actions of this ungoverned Governor.”’®4 We should resist this appeal to the Indians’ sufferings,

and hark to the “subcesos deste gobernador mal gobernado” ["actions of this ungoverned Governor”]. Oviedo is far from being a pacifist. In the proper place he knows very well how to represent the heroism of the Christian warriors and in particular Ranjel’s: “And Rodrigo de Ranjel turned to the Gover-

Violence in the Soto Narratives 399

nor, and asked him to remove more than twenty arrows that were stuck to his armor.”85 Oviedo complements this portrait of an indomitable warrior covered with arrows with a praise of the virtuous conquistadors: “There was so much virtue and shame this day in all. .. , [who] fought admirably, and each Christian fulfilled his duty as a most valiant soldier.”8° He praises them in spite of the injuries they suffered and the massacre of Mabila, where women and children fought against the Christians, “las mujeres y aun muchachos de

cuatro anos peleaban con los cristianos.” The survivors hung themselves, choosing death over slavery. The fat of the corpses, as we have seen in Biedma,

served to dress the wounds of the Christians. These passages that I have been citing have in common a pairing of Indians and Spaniards, where the evaluation of the Indians depends on the meaning given to the actions of the Christians. In order to make this point clearer, I will cite one more example of how the Indians are made responsible for their own destruction. After having attributed the “novelties” (i.e., atrocities} of the wars of conquest in America to the presence of foreigners, Oviedo adds

that along with the materials and inconveniences already cited, the same crimes and obscene and bestial faults of sodomite and idolatrous Indians, who have been so familiar since ancient times with obedience and service to the devil, and as a result forgot our God who is three in one, one ought to consider that their deeds are the cause of their sufferings, and that they are the main foundation on which God has grounded and allowed their deaths and travails.®’

This phantasmagoric and paranoid construction (by the “good” settler) of Amerindian culture as at the service of the devil plays as a refrain (with some variations) whenever Oviedo needs to attenuate the guilt of the Christians. It thus reiterates on a symbolic level the same violence that the moralistic diatribes condemn.®8 In fact, this invective reminds us of the “indios sodomitas e idolatras” that Zuazo fed to the dogs, as well as the lascivious women and the thick-skulled irrational men of other parts of the Historia general and the Sumario that I mentioned at the beginning of this article—and even that castrating woman that led Oviedo to refer to Amerindian women, “e son tales.” These passages that elaborate the semblance of an exotic humanity suggest an irredeemable savagery that in the end would justify extermination campaigns. This portrayal of Indians depends less on actual facts Oviedo may have known about them than on a stock of motifs readily available to represent “savagery.” Their function is primarily rhetorical and should be read in the context of sixteenth-century debates over the nature of American Indians and colonial policies.

Nowhere is Oviedo’s position toward Amerindians more clearly shown than in his representation of Indian bodies and voices. While there are many

| 400 José Rabasa passages in the Historia general that admire Indian textiles, houses, forts, and other aspects of material culture, there are plenty of others (for the most part made up by Oviedo) that denigrate the Indians’ reception of European cultural artifacts. Perhaps to temper the impending gravity of the massacre of Mabila with a comic note, Oviedo portrays the cacique in hardly flattering terms: “Notice how pleased he was with the buskins and the cloak and the horseback ride, that he felt he was mounted on a tiger or a ferocious lion, because this people held horses in the greatest terror.’’89 Oviedo transfers to the New World animals from Africa and Asia (for Oviedo, in the Indies, “tigers” are clumsy and “lions” cowardly) to accentuate the “proper colors” of colonial encounters in America—fear of horses.”

I would like to conclude with another “comic” portrait, in this case of a Spaniard, which will enable me to define the purpose of Oviedo’s criticisms of Soto’s enterprise in Florida. Ranjel (se testigo de vista, underscores Oviedo) saw don Antonio Osorio, the brother of the Lord Marquis of Astorga, wearing a doublet of the local coarse cloth, torn on the sides, showing his flesh, without a cap, showing his bald spot, barefooted, without breeches or shoes, a buckler on his back, a sword without a sheath, amidst heavy frost and cold.?!

Since don Osorio received an income of two thousand ducados from the church, his joining Soto is even more ridiculous: “I could hardly keep myself

from laughing when I heard that this knight had left the Church and the income above mentioned.”2 Oviedo cannot resist laughing at this pathetic portrait of a conquistador who had been misled by Soto. This is one of the few occasions where Oviedo gives us a somewhat flattering profile of Soto: “Be-

cause I knew Soto very well and although he was a man of worth, I did not suppose that he was so winning a talker or so clever, as to be able to delude such persons.”°3 But Oviedo deplores Soto’s capacity to convince people to follow him to Florida, perhaps, even more than his venturing into the land without knowledge or experience. According to Oviedo any of the three earlier failed governors of Florida was

more experienced than Soto, “Joan Ponce, Garay e Panfilo de Narvaez, ... tenia[n] mas experiencia que él en cosas de Indias.”** His earlier experiences in Castilla del Oro, Nicaragua, and Peru are worthless since “era otra manera de abarrajar indios.’”%> To attack and capture Indians, “abarrajar indios,” is hardly the issue, but the right knowledge. Oviedo blames Soto for daring to take people into Florida without possessing the required competence. In theory, Soto would have had an advantage over the earlier conquistadors; he not only had access to their accounts, but also found a ready interpreter in Juan Ortiz, a Spaniard from Panfilo de Narvaez’s expedition who had remained in Florida. As incompetent as Ortiz might have been, he must have been of use

Violence in the Soto Narratives 401

at least with the people he had lived with for twelve years. Biedma tells us that Ortiz possessed very little knowledge beyond his immediate surroundings, “had so little information about the land, that he did not know anything by sight nor by hearsay beyond twenty leagues; however, it is true that he told us when he first saw us that there was no trace of gold in the land.” At least he did not encourage them with false information. None of the guides promised them the kind of golden kingdoms of Cibola, Quivira, and Totonteac that the expeditions of Fray Marcos de Niza and Francisco Vazquez de Coronado desperately pursued during these same years in the Southwest—at times close enough for Soto and Coronado to have heard of each other from the Indians. Only Biedma mentions a town “that the Indians described as very large, so wonderful, that the people from the town, by shouting, caused birds on the wing to drop.”9” This fantastic town of Etocale turns out to be, in Biedma’s laconic phrase, “un pueblo pequeno” (a small town). This lack of news of fabulous kingdoms does not keep Soto from burning guides alive or feeding them to the dogs when he feels that they are lying or refusing to provide him with information—that is, to confirm his fantasies.

But Oviedo does not have in mind this sort of abuse in his complaints of Soto’s behavior. If we read beyond the apparent condemnation and compare his denunciations of Soto’s violence with other parts of the Historia general, we realize that war and terrorism were forms of exercising power that Oviedo understood only too well. In fact, everything suggests that Oviedo believed it was appropriate to torture and murder Indians guilty of practicing sodomy and idolatry. Oviedo’s criticism of the conquistadors aims to rationalize the colonial regime in America; it is never an abstract condemnation of violence. In Oviedo’s ideal society of businessmen and settlers laboring diligently in their assorted trading, farming, and mining enterprises, there is no room for the “irrational” economy of Amerindian cultures, nor, for that matter, for the adventurism of conquistadors like Soto. This position is very close to that of the Crown, which sought to regiment and control expeditions to avoid the waste of human and material resources that the failed expedition of Soto represented. (In passing, it is worth remembering that if the Crown listens to Las Casas, it is because he too seeks to represent its interests: his call for the dissolution of the encomienda is couched in terms that benefited it, i.e., the encomiendas reverted to the Crown.}*8 In the last instance, Oviedo’s main complaints against Soto were his capacity to fabricate his own phantasms and his venturing blindly into the land: the Indians did not know where they were going, nor did the Spaniards know the way, or what direction to take, and there were diverse opinions among them. . . and the governor proposed, as he always did, that it was best to go on, without him nor the others knowing if they were guessing right or if they were wandering.°9

402 José Rabasa

The conquest of Florida was beyond question one of the most violent military incursions in the New World. But as I have pointed out in this article, the capitulaci6n with the Crown already articulates a colonizing project that anticipates capturing caciques, pillaging graves, raiding food deposits, and a generalized climate of violence. It requires a reading of the Requerimiento for the “descargo de la conciencia” of the King, but this latter document in itself already constitutes an act of war—even though the injury is unidirectional. Once Spaniards had read the document and shown their military might, Indians had only war or submission as options. If the Black Legend feeds on this sort of reading, to deny its reality one would have to deny the existence of documents that propose, when they do not aesthetically celebrate, the practice of terror and warfare in this region of the world that was condemned to be “new.” The “histories” that highlight a romantic profile of the conquistador Hernando de Soto!°° are problematic not so much for their idealization of the conquistador, but because they tend to reiterate a degraded view of Amerindian cultures—that is, to perpetuate a culture of conquest that not only underlay the violence of that time, but is also being perpetrated today against indigenous communities.

Notes An early version of this paper was read in the panel on “Representations of the Colonial Project,” at the conference Rediscovering America 1492-1992, 26-29 February 1992, at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I am thankful for the comments from the audience and other participants in the panel. My special thanks go to Maureen Ahern, Marta Bermidez-Gallegos, and Jerry M. Williams. Patricia Galloway has provided invaluable comments and suggestions. 1. See “Hernando de Soto: Scourge of the Southeast,” special section, Archaeology

42, no. 3 (May/June 1989]: 26—39. 2. See Archaeology 42, no. § (1989): ro.

3. The source for the first epigraph is William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain {New York: New Directions Paperbook, 1956), 45. The second epigraph is from Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias: islas y Tierra-Firme del mar Océano ... , ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, in Biblioteca de Autores Espanioles, vols, 117—21 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1959), 2:161. In Spanish, the passage reads: “Otro dia, martes treinta del mes de septiembre, llegaron a Agile, subjeto de Apalache, e tomaronse sus mujeres; e son tales, que una india tomé6 a un bachiller, llamado Herrera, que quedaba solo con ella e atras de otros companeros, e asidle de los genitales y tivolo muy fatigado e rendido, e si acaso no pasaran otros cristianos que le

socorrieran, la india le matara, puesto que él no queria haber parte con ella como libidinoso, sino que ella se queria libertar e huir.” Unless otherwise specified, all English translations of Oviedo and other texts on Hernando de Soto are my own. I have consulted and benefited from Buckingham Smith's translations of Oviedo, Luis Hernandez de Biedma, and the Fidalgo de Elvas in Edward Gaylord Bourne, ed., Narratives

Violence in the Soto Narratives 403 of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida (New York: Allerton, 1922).

4. See Patricia Galloway, “Sources for the Hernando de Soto Expedition: Intertextuality and the Elusiveness of Truth,” paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, New Orleans, 1990. 5. See, e.g., Historia general, 1:267—68, 2:161, 4:264.

6. Williams, In the American Grain, 39. 7. Williams, In the American Grain, §4. 8. Cf. Susan Hegeman, “History, Ethnography, Myth: Some Notes on the ‘IndianCentered’ Narrative,” Social Text 23 (1989): 144-60. 9. “Este gobernador era muy dado a esa monteria de matar indios, desde el tiempo que anduvo militando con el gobernador Pedrarias Davila en las provincias de Castilla del Oro e de Nicaragua, en también se hall6 en el Pert y en la prision de aquel gran principe Atabaliba, donde se enriquecio,” Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:156. See Avalle-Arce, this volume. 10. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:161 (“Otros indios hicieron otras hazanas muchas que no se podrian acabar de escribir, segund al historiador dijo el que presente se hall6”). 11. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:167 (“le mand6 e encarg6 que por escripto dijese e me diese a mi raz6n de todo para que como cronista de Sus Majestades destas historias de Indias se acumulase y se pusiese en el numero dellas”). 12. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:167 (“queriendo entender lo que via e como se le pasaba la vida, escribia a la jornada, a vueltas de sus trabajos, todo lo que les sucedia, como sabio, y aun por su recreacion”). 13. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:167 (“pues tantas novedades e peregrinas materias concurren para deletacion del prudente letor, e aviso de muchos que por estas Indias se vienen a perder tras un gobernador que asi dispensa de vidas ajenas, como por estas mis vigilias y renglones paresce”’). 14. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:290 (“Querria yo que me dijesen qué les predicaron esos frailes e Panfilo de Narvaez a aquellos espafioles que tan ciegos se fueron dejando sus patrias tras falsas palabras”). 15. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:167. 16. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:291 (“es cosa [Narvaez’s failure] que aunque no tiene remedio ni enmienda, tiene alguna parte aviso, o le causara esta relacion”). 17. See, e.g., Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 1:111; Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias, ed. Manuel Ballesteros (Madrid: Historia 16, 1986), 79, 91. 18. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:172 (“para sus sucios usos e lujuria, e que las

hacian baptizar para sus carnalidades mas que para ensenarles la fe”). 19. My translation; the Spanish is “con acuerdo de muchos tedlogos y juristas y personas de altos entendimientos, {el Emperador| ha proveido y remediado con su justicia todo lo que ha sido posible, y mucho mas con la nueva reformacion de su real consejo de Indians,” Oviedo y Valdés, Sumario, 82. 20. One must, therefore, not place these historians in the same category (as Ballesteros has done in an editorial note to this passage] simply on the grounds that both

404 José Rabasa use the term destruccién. Obviously, Ballesteros’s note is alluding to Las Casas’s Brevisima relacién de la destrucci6n de Indias, 1554. Cf. Stephanie Merrim, “The Apprehension of the New in Nature and Culture: Fernandez de Oviedo’s Sumario,” in 14921992: Re/Discovering Colonial Writing, Hispanic Studies, No. 4, ed. René Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini (Minneapolis: Prisma Institute, 1989), 186—88. On the utopian character of Las Casas’s ethnology, see José Rabasa, “Utopian Ethnology in Las Casas’s Apologética,” in Jara and Spadaccini, Re/Discovering, 263-89. 21. See José Rabasa, “’Porque soy indio’: Subjectivity in La Florida del Inca,” in Poetics Today 16 (1995): 78—108 (special issue on Latin America, ed. Walter Mignolo); Hugo Rodriguez-Vecchini, “Don Quijote y La Florida del Inca,” Revista Iberoamericana 48 (1982): 587-620. 22. Fidalgo de Elvas, Relagam verdadeira dos trabalhos g ho gouernador d6 Fernddo de Souto e certos fidalgos portugueses passarom no descobriméto da prouincia de Frolida, facsimile edition by Frederico Pery Vidal (Lisbon: Divisao de Publicacoes e Biblioteca Agencia das Colonias, 1940}. 23. I follow the edition in Joaquin Pacheco, et al., eds., Coleccidn de documentos

inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizacién de las antiguas posesiones espanolas de América y Oceania, 42 vols. (Madrid: José Maria Pérez, 1864-— 84), 3:414—41. Hereafter I cite this document and others from this collection as cpv1. Patricia Galloway (“Intertextuality”}| has argued that neither Ranjel nor the Relacam can

be considered primary sources. For the Canete fragment, see Eugene Lyon, “The Canete Fragment: Another Narrative of Hernando de Soto,” in The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1539-1543, ed. Lawrence Clayton, Vernon J. Knight Jr., and Edward C. Moore (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 1:307—10. 24. See Elvas, Relacam, 52-54. 25.Bourne, Narratives, 1:1; Elvas, Relacam, fol. lv:

Nos abita Quem quer ver o novo mundo, mos 0 polo ar- o Polo Aureo segundo,

tico seten- outros mares, outras terras,

trional, facanha grandes e guerras e aquelas e cousas tais empr’ender gentes habi- que ‘spantan e dao prazer, tam 0 Polo poem terror e dao dulgor antartico aus- leia poraqueste autor,

tral. é historia deleitosa

Disse Polo e vera nao fabulosa, Aureo porque digna de ser estimada

é terra rica. usada, lida e tratada. Finis.

26. Bourne, Narratives, 1:81; “Saiu o Cacique a receber dous tiros de béstea de povo

em um andor que seus principais aos hombros traziam, assentado em um coxim e cuberto com uma roupa de martas de feigao e tamanho de um manto de mulher; trazia na cabeca um diadema de pena e ao redor de si muitos indios tangendo e cantando,” Elvas, Relacam, 69.

Violence in the Soto Narratives 405 27. Elvas, Relacam, 36. 28. Elvas, Relacam, 40 (“Chegaram a Caliquem com muito trabalho porque at terra por onde o Governador havia passado quedava destruida e sem mais”). 29. Elvas, Relagam, 37 (“o Governador mandou encerrar todo 0 mais que havia séco pelo campo, que bastava para trés meses”).

30. Bourne, Narratives, 69; “E ainda que pareceu erro deixar aquela terra... nao houve quem cousa alguma lhe dissesse, sabida sua determinacao,” Elvas, Relacam, 60. 31. Bourne, Narratives, 70; “o Governador la mandou p6r em guarda e a levou consigo, nado con tao bom tratamentoo como ela merecia. .. . E assim a levava a pé com suas escravas, para que olhassem por ela,” Elvas, Relagam, 61. 32. Elvas, Relacam, 65.

33. See the articles dedicated to this topic in the special issue of Archaeology 42 (May/June 1989]. On massacres and in particular the King archaeological site, see Robert L. Blakely, ed., The King Site: Continuity and Contact in Sixteenth-Century Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988). See also the chapters dedicated to Soto

in First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570, ed. Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Milbrath (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1989], and in The Forgotten Centuries, ed. Charles Hudson and Carmen Tesser (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994). 34. Bourne, Narratives, 1:44; “Seriam por todos duzentos indios; foram todos subjugados e alguns dos mais mogos deu o Governador aos que tinham boas cadeias e recado para que se lhe nao fossem, e todos os mais mandou justicar amarrados a um esteio no meio de praca € os flecharam os indios de Paracoxi,” Elvas, Relacam, 42. 35. Elvas, Relacam, 42. 36. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:156 (“Ha de entender el letor que aperrear es hacer que perros le comiesen 0 matasen, despedazando al indio”).

37. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:166 (“nunca quiso ninguno conoscer el pueblo del senor ni descobrirlo, aunque quemaron uno dellos vivo delante de los otros, y todos sufrieran aquel, martirio, por no descobrirlo”}. 38. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:162 (“Si a algunos cortaban las manos y

narices, no hacian mds sentimiento que si cada uno dellos fuera un Mucio Scévola romano”).

39. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:175 (“Las mujeres y aun muchachos de cuatro anos renian con los cristianos, y muchachos indios se ahorcaban por no venir a sus manos, e otros se metian en el fuego de su grado”). 40. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:175 ({“E todos los espanoles pelearon como varones de grandes animos”}. 41. Bourne, Narratives, 1:97; “e depois de os cristaos entrar entre éle 4s cutiladas, vendo-se mui afrontados, sem reparo algum, muitos fugindo, nas casas ardendo se entraram, onde uns sobre outros se afogavam e morreram queimados,” Elvas, Relacam, 81. 42. CDI, 3:427 (“curamonos aquella noche con el unto de los mesmos indios muertos, que no nos habia quedado otra medicina”). 43. “Otros se ocuparon en abrir indios muertos y sacar el unto para que sirviese de ungtientos y aceites para curar las heridas,” Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, La Florida del Inca, ed. Sylvia-Lyn Hilton (Madrid, Historia 16, 1986), 370.

406 José Rabasa 44. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:152. Cf. Antonello Gerbi, Nature in the New World from Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985}, 308. 45. The dialogue between Oviedo and Joan Cano at the end of Chapter 54 of Book 33, dedicated to the Conquest of Mexico, specifically addresses the issue of the New Laws and criticizes Las Casas (see Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 4:259—64]. 46. Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987}, 238. 47. Taussig, Shamanism, 237.

48. Taussig, Shamanism, 27, and passim; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979}, 3-31; Michael Taussig, “Terror As Usual: Walter Benjamin’s Theory of History As a State of Siege,” Social Text 14 (1989): 3-20. 49. Elvas, Relagam, 126—27 (“Foram ali mortos cem indios, pouco mais ou menos, e muitos foram feridos de grandes lancadas, que os deixavam ir para que pusessem espanto aos que ali nao se haviam achado”}. 50. Elvas, Relagam, 126 (“os gritos das mulheres e meninos eram tantos que atroavam os ouvidos dos que os seguiam”’}. 51. Elvas, Relagam, 127 (“Huve ali homens tao crueis e carniceiros que velhos e moGos e quantos topavam diante matavam sem pouco nem muito haverem resistido”). 52. Elvas, Relacam, 127 (“rompiam os indios, derribando muitos com os estribos y peitos dos cavalos, e a alguns davam una lancada e assim os deixavam ir”). 53. Elvas, Relacam, 127 (“e mui admirados do que ilhe haviam visto fazer com os indios da Nilco, tudo como passou, com grande espanto a seu Cacique disseram”’}. 54. I owe to Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), the observations that follow on the nature of war and the concept that military contest carries the power of its own enforcement. Also of interest is André Glucksmann’s reading of Clausewitz in El discurso de la guerra, trans. M. Marti Pol (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1969). 55. See Scarry, Body, 63—64, and passim, where she argues that even though to injure is the main objective and end of making war, historical and strategic discourses on war tend to use a whole set of metaphors that conceal or completely omit this self-evident fact—it disappears from view. 56. Scarry, Body, 92.

57. Glucksmann, Discurso, 36; my translation. 58. Glucksmann, Discurso, 37; my translation. 59. “These boys were very useful in this task. Those from the house helped much more in uprooting the idolatrous rituals which were held at night. . . for these boys, by day, would spy out where something of this sort was to be performed at night... . The fear which the common people felt of these boys who were reared with us, was so great that, after a few days, it was not necessary to go with them when some feast or orgy took place at night. For if we sent ten or twenty of them, they seized and bound all those of the feast or orgy, even though there might be a hundred or two hundred.” Bernardino de Sahaguin, General History of the Things of New Spain, Florentine Codex, trans. and

Violence in the Soto Narratives 407 ed. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe nm: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1950-82), 13:80. 60. See Gerbi, Nature, 130. 61. Gerbi, Nature, 129—30. 62. See Juan Friede, “La censura espanola del siglo XVI y los libros de historia de América,” Revista de Historia de América 47 (1959): 45-94, 58; cf. Rolena Adorno, “Literary Production and Suppression: Reading and Writing About Amerindians in Colonial Spanish America,” Dispositio 11 (1987): 1-25.

63. Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, ed., Colecci6n de documentos para la historia de México (1858—66; reprint, Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1971), 2:216. 64. “Segun derecho y leyes de Nuestros Reynos, cuando Nuestras gentes y capitanes de Nuestras armadas, toman presso algun Principe 6 Senor de la tierra donde por Nues-

tro mandado hazen guerra, el rescate del tal senor 6 cacique pertenece 4 Nos,” cp1, 223542.

65. CDI1, §43 (“de todos los tesoros, oro y plata, y piedras, y perlas que se oviere del por

via de rescate 6 en otra qualquier manera, se Nos dé la sesta parte dello y lo demas se rreparta entre los conquistadores”). 66. cp1, §44 (“de todo el oro y plata... que se hallaren...enlos enterramientos. .. , se Nos pague la mitad sin descuento de cosa alguna, quedando la otra mitad para la persona que asi lo hallare y descubriere”’). 67. Elvas, Relacgam, §8 (“Foran buscadas as daquele povo; acharam-se catorze arrobas de perolas e meninos e aves formados delas”). 68. CDI, 3:421 (“sacamos de alli cantidad de perlas, que sereian hasta seis arrobas... aunque no eran buenas, que estaban danadas por estar debajo de la tierra y metidas en-

tre el sain de los indios”). , 69. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:168 (“Déjenlas estar, e a quien Dios se la diere en suerte, Sanct Pedro se la bendiga”}. 70. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:168. 71. Miguel Albornoz’s argument that the “fact” that Soto never read the Requerimiento demonstrates his realism, is an example of how Soto has been idealized by modern historians: “De Soto era un hombre realista; pese a las disposiciones del Consejo de In-

dias se habia abstenido del inutil formalismo del ‘requerimiento’ y asi habia dado instrucciones asus hombres para toda la expedicion” (Hernando de Soto: El Amadis de la Florida (Madrid: Ediciones de la Revista de Occidente, 1971], 289]. 72. Cf. Bourne, Narratives, 2:77 (“;Oh valame Dios, y si estovieran aqui aquellos del Consejo, para que vieran cOmo se sirve Su Majestad!”}; Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:161 (“Y aun porque lo saben, dice el cronista que han mandado cesar las tiranias y crueldades, y que se tenga mejor orden en la pacificaci6n de las Indias”). 73. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 3:272—73 (“Esta muerte se le did porque los indios temen el fuego, e todas las otras maneras de morir no las temen”).

74. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 3:272—73 (“para que los indios de Bea lo pudiesen ver desde las lagunas que estan debajo de aquel cerro bien legua y media 0 dos”). 75. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 3:273 (“que fué un cacique senor del Darién el cual e su gente e valedores e amigos estaban dados por esclavos por el Rey Catélico”}.

408 José Rabasa 76. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 5:350 {“Desto los senores y amantecas cobraron tanto temor, que la pintura vino después muy cierta, e las partes la aprobaron”’). 77. See Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 3:352-—56. 78. Gerbi, Nature, 327-28. 79. See Juan Ginés de Sepulveda, Tratado sobre las justas causas de la guerra contra los indios, bilingual edition by Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo {Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econémica, 1987}, 97, and passim. 80. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 3:355. 81. “Todas estas cosas que estan dichas, no os espanten letor, porque si habéis leido algunos tractados de guerra e conquistas de otras nasciones, no os maravillaréis de lo que tengo dicho destos indios, donde grandes crueldades entre los orientales e diversas nasciones hay escriptas; e la guerra es la que causa y causara, do quiera que la haya, grandes novedades e notables eventos, en especial, como he dicho, donde se juntan e

concurren diversas e diferentes maneras de hombres a militar y seguir la guerra,” Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 3:356.

82. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 5:27 (“Lo cual, en la verdad, es anejo a la guerra, e mucho mas en los ejercitos destas partes, porque no son los conquistadores de una lengua”’).

83. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 5:28 (“Las culpas de los motines e travesuras e contestaciones todas se atribuyen a los espanoles, como es razon, pues que los cabos e los que mandan son de Espana”). 84. “Oid, pues, letor, catdélico, no lloréis menos los indios conquistados que a los cristianos conquistadores dellos, o matadores de si y desotros, atended a los subcesos deste gobernador mal gobernado,” Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:173. 85. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:174 (“E volviose al gobernador Rodrigo Ranjel, e hizole sacar mas de veinte flecha que sobre si Ilevaba asidas a las armas”). 86. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:174 (“Hobo tanta vertud y vergiienza este dia en todos. .. , que pelearon por admiraci6n, e cada cristiano hacia su deber como valentisimo milite”). 87. “Juntos los materiales de los inconvinientes ya dichos, con los mesmos delictos e sucias e bestiales culpas de los indios sodomitas, idolatrias, e tan familiares e de tan antiquisimos tiempos en la obidiencia e servicio del diablo, e olvidados de nuestro Dios trino e uno, pensarse debe que sus méritos son capaces de sus dans, e que son el principal cimiento sobre que se han fundado e permitido Dios las muertes e trabajos,” Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 3:355. 88. On the contemporary use of these sorts of phantasmagoric constructs in the images of the underworld in the press and its link to the appearance of death squads, see Michael Taussig, “Terror As Usual,” 13. 89. Cf. Bourne, Narratives, 2:122; “ved qué contentamiento le podian dar esos borceguies e manteo e levarle a caballo, que pensaba él que iba caballero en un tigre oen un ferocisimo leén, porque en mds temor estaban los caballos reputados entre aquella gente,” Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:173—-74. go. See Oviedo y Valdés, Sumario, 93 ff., 98; cf. Gerbi, Nature, 302-4. 91. Cf. Bourne, Narratives, 2:130; “hermano del senor marqués de Astorga, con una ropilla de mantas de aquella tierra, rota por los costados, las carnes defuera, sin bonete,

Violence in the Soto Narratives 409 la calva defuera, descalzo, sin calzas ni zapatos, una rodela a las espaldas, una espada sin vaina, los hielos y frios muy grandes,” Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:176. 92. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:176 (“Yo no pude estar sin reirme cuando le oi decir que ese caballero habia dejado la iglesia y renta que es dicho”). 93. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:176 (“Porque conosci yo muy bien a Soto, y aunque era hombre de bien, no le tenia yo de por tan dulce habla ni mana que a personas semejantes pudiese él encargar”). 94. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:165. 95. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:165. 96. CDI, 3:415§ (“tenia tan poca noticia de la tierra, que de veinte leguas de alli no sabia ninguna cosa ni por vista ni por oidas; verdad es que nos dixo en viéndonos que no habia punta de oro en la tierra”). 97. Cf. Bourne, Narratives, 2:5; “que los indios nos lo hacian muy grande, tanto que nos decian que la gente dél, dando gritos, hacian caer las aves que iban volando,” cp, 3:415.

98. See, e.g., the memorial by Bartolomé de Las Casas and Domingo de Santo Tomas in Garcia Icazbalceta, Colecci6n, 2:231—36. 99. Cf. Bourne, Narratives, 2:94; “los indios que llevaban desatinaban, que no sabian camino ni lo espafoles tampoco, ni que partido se tomasen, e entre ellos habia diversos paresceres ... e el gobernador propuso, como siempre habia seido, que mejor ir adelante, sin saber el ni ellos en que acertaban ni en que erraban,” Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general, 2:166. 100. Cf., e.g., John S. C. Abbott, Ferdinand de Soto (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1898); R. B. Cunninghame-Graham, Hernando de Soto, Together with an Account of One of His Captains, Gongalvo Silvestre (London: William Heinemann, 1912); Albornoz, Hernando de Soto. All these romantic versions based their narratives on Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida del Inca. For a reading of Garcilaso’s cultural politics and questioning of the modern Western episteme, see Rabasa, “’ Porque soy indio.’”

Patricia Galloway

Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto

The Postmodern Problematic of Commemorative History This essay closes a book dedicated to the historiography of an exploratory expedition that took place some four hundred and fifty years ago. The book, at least in part, documents the proceedings of the Mississippi Historical Society meeting of 1991. This meeting was dedicated to new scholarship about the expedition of Hernando de Soto for one reason: as historian Mike Scardaville said a few years ago, “Major historical events spark popular interest, popular interest generates funding, and funding encourages research on themes that center on major events.”! Problems can arise, however, when the funding turns out not to have paid for what popular interest expected. The crux of the problem lies in what is meant by “popular.” Those of us who are comfortable with our societies as they are use anniversary celebrations as occasions to reinforce the rationale for the status quo, as instruments of social reproduction through the celebration and portrayal of the past not “as it happened” but as it ought to have happened if it is to justify conditions of the present day. Anniversaries thus become institutionalized as opportunities to assert specific values, and those who control the common wealth set money aside to spend on doing so; this kind of institutionalization usually reveals itself by being termed a “celebration” of the given event, and the money that is spent goes to projects that reinforce accepted views of it. The Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission, for example, was created in 1985 by a politically conservative Congress to celebrate the establishment of European cultural hegemony in the “New World,” and it carried out

its task chiefly by endorsing commemorative products like T-shirts and medals. It also had a part in arranging international commemorative events, like the sailing of replica ships to the East Coast and the Caribbean. In a society that views itself under a progressive model, as do Western liberal democracies, the centennial urge may also be articulated in institutionalized programs of self-examination and reevaluation designed to demon-

Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto 411

strate “how far we have come” toward the unquestioned Good Thing that is a

perfected democratic ideal. So it is that the very act of self-examination, rather than the event that provoked it, is seen to assert the society’s values. This is how academic history, as a publicly supported enterprise in the United States, has itself ostensibly been institutionalized over the course of the twentieth century. Indeed, this volume is one result of that institutionalization: as part of its Quincentenary initiative the National Endowment for the Humanities, through a Mississippi Humanities Council re-grant, provided funding for the research that produced many of the essays printed here.

This tension between the celebratory and scholarly evaluative motivations has not always been as acute as it is now. But since the late nineteenth century, the increasing professionalization of the disciplines of history and archaeology has produced a widening gulf between the public that concerns itself with celebration and the scholars who carry out scholarly evaluation, they do not share the same interests or the same standards for evaluating evidence. Until relatively recently, however, all shared a belief in an exceptionalist, triumphalist view of American history. With the emergence to dominance in academia of a generation of scholars who came of age during the political ferment of the 1960s and 1970s, equipped with the tools of the new social history, a new version of American history has emerged that challenges earlier assumptions about the achievement of American democratic ideals. The result is a widening rift between historians and the “educated lay public.’ The use of this expression at all has become invidious in the eyes of some, since the “public” in question is by implication the only public that matters. Actually, the term refers to an upper-middle-class to upper-class elite who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and the progressive narrative of American history that justified it. Many members of this particular public are disappointed by modern professional anniversary research because this research has been publicly justified by the celebratory motivation but is approved by many funding agencies according to the evaluative motivation and is carried out by academics whose approach is openly critical of cherished shibboleths.3 Even if there were not serious ideological differences, there would be differences between historians and lay people about what constitutes an appropriate study of history. Professional historians, whether they believe that objective truth is attainable at all in principle, all adhere to the article of faith that new evidence may always change our notions of “what actually happened”; after all, it at least guarantees permanent employment for them. The general public, however, is taught an implicit model of history in societal institutions like schools, where history is portrayed as a collection of facts whose

412 Patricia Galloway

immutable objective truth is guaranteed by their appearance in a textbook. Indeed, academic historians have wrestled for years with the desire of school boards for history texts that overtly indoctrinate with the values of the community and thereby shape the history that is taught. Yet one has only to examine school history texts from the past hundred years to discover that “the values of the community” change too; the rewriters of the past familiar to readers of Orwell have always held sway, under democracies as well as under totalitarian regimes. The fact is that “public” history—the history of schoolbooks, historical novels, theme parks like Six Flags Over Georgia or Williamsburg, classic comics, and made-for-TV movies—is history put to use, and because the use changes as the society changes, “public” history also changes. Yet it changes much more slowly than does “academic” history, simply because people are uncomfortable with swift societal change: if the

past seems to remain changeless, then changes in the present seem less threatening. In broad terms the historical profession as such, since its emergence as part of American academia at around the turn of the century, has espoused, in turn, two historical paradigms, or general models: the “great man” paradigm that sees history as the political will of a few leading men; and the “social history” paradigm that looks instead at the significance of the massed lives of classes of “insignificant” individuals. It is the second paradigm that now holds sway in the academic world, and its dominance has been increasing as graduate students of the 1960s mature into senior scholars and different segments of society receive attention from professional historians, in spite of the recent “culture wars” that attempt to retake part of this ground and reestablish great white men as the only significant makers of history. This latter agenda has enjoyed some popular success because most people now older than thirty learned what they thought was historical truth under the first paradigm. Both of these overarching views of history, together with the professionalization of historical research and the expression of contemporary prejudices of every kind, have been reflected in the mirror of commemorative studies of Soto’s expedition. The time lag in historical paradigms between professional historians and the lay public at least partly accounts for some of the acrimony that has arisen over what would seem on its face to be a very unemotional topic. And the situation is yet more complex. For the quincentenary of Columbus’s voyage and the four hundred fiftieth anniversary of Soto’s expedition happen to coincide this time with an era of tremendous worldwide political and intellectual change. Postcolonial and postindustrial realities include universal demands for human rights and ominous signs of environmental limits to growth, and these have led many to see the anniversaries of the beginnings

Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto 413

of colonialism and Euroforming in the western hemisphere not as paeans to the glories of political conquest and “taming the wilderness” but rather as opportunities for a soul-searching examination of the origins of multiculturalism and large-scale environmental alteration. The postmodern view of the primacy of discourse and the indeterminacy of “truth” is working its way through archaeology as the positivist assurance of New Archaeology gives way to the shifting complexities of cognitive archaeology; and through history as Annales microhistory gives way to the New Historicism. Questions are even being raised about disciplinary boundaries as archaeologists concern themselves with symbolic behaviors and historians begin to “read” the material record. But what is certain, this time around, is that we are, if only penitentially, just as interested in the “conquered” as we are in the “conquerors.” It was not always thus. Soto in American History to 1930

Of course, the first historians to write about the Soto expedition were the three about whom we have already heard so much in the preceding chapters,

now often erroneously considered primary sources: the “Gentleman of Elvas,” Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, and Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés. Here I am limiting myself to the discussion of American historians’ much later views of Soto and the expedition’s role in the history of the country, with particular attention to historians of Mississippi and the South as they reflected contemporary attitudes. But the availability of these Iberian sources has had important effects on American historical writing about the expedition. As is well known, the Elvas source was the first printed, in 1577; Garcilaso’s work came next, being printed in 1605; Oviedo’s account of the expedition was not printed in Spanish until 1851; while the manuscript account of the only eyewitness author (not, properly speaking, a historian at all), Luis Hernandez de Biedma, was printed in Spanish in 1858. Source availability was a very lively issue in the early days of Soto historiography in the United States. The first full-length American account of the expedition was written by Washington Irving’s nephew, Theodore, in 1835, after he had come across Garcilaso’s printed account in the course of his Spanish studies in Madrid. Irving made use of Garcilaso and Elvas {in a seventeenth-century English translation) alone, and although he learned of the existence of Biedma’s work before he reissued his book in 1857, and added a few footnotes referring to it, he spurned it as “the confused statement of an illiterate soldier.’4 Irving’s account was written because he felt that “a full account of an expedition which throws such an air of romance over the early history of a portion of our country, would possess interest in the eyes of my countrymen.”® It held great authority for many years because of the literary

414 Patricia Galloway

reputation of Irving’s family and the usual dominance of almost any work that is first in its field. Mississippian John Monette’s Valley of the Mississippi (1846) was not only

roughly centennial; it treated Soto’s expedition as the real starting point of the story of the Mississippi Valley, considering the native inhabitants worthy of remark only as background, where according to the effect wanted they were alternately “hostile,” “lurking,” or “indomitable.” Monette portrayed his Spaniards somewhat ambivalently as gallant crusaders and as avaricious torturers, but he needed them to write a “concise and connected history of the whole West, which discloses correctly the progressive changes, and notes the order in the chain of events, in their advance from isolated, feeble frontier colonies, to populous, wealthy, and enlightened states.”° He quoted Irving’s work profusely, echoing a familiar theme of the romantic views of Soto that would be fostered by a dependence on Garcilaso and Elvas: “Many portions of

the narrative may appear like romance, but the adventures of De Soto were only romance acted out in real life.” Such writings were roundly criticized by Lambert Wilmer in 1858: I fear that the unnatural mixture of the true and false, which has been practiced by some Spanish and American historiographers, will make it almost impossible for posterity to distinguish between the veritable records of past events and the flimsy inventions of the sentimental novelist. ... The most troublesome part of my task has been the separation of the facts of history from the fabrications of the historian.§

This criticism was informed by both Wilmer’s reluctance to believe anything glorious of the Spaniards and his close reading of the laconic Biedma narrative; in addition, Wilmer had learned of the existence of the Ranjel narra-

tive as interpreted in Oviedo’s Historia, although he had not yet seen that source, and he pointed sternly to the need for a full evaluation of all sources. But he did not argue with keeping the focus of study on Soto; instead he questioned whether Soto ought not to be seen less as a model than as an object of opprobrium. Thus this early writing about Soto, done by “amateur” historians of private means, moved from full-blown romanticism to the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty so dear to the Protestant heart of the early United States. It was as yet motivated only by the individual interests of the writers and did not consciously focus on a commemorative observance. And it unquestionably portrayed the history of the expedition as a function of the will of Soto and perhaps a few of his leading captains. The first observance of a centennial connected with Soto, in the 1840s, does not seem to have been literary. A painting of Soto’s discovery of the Mississippi, ordered in the 1840s, was completed by the artist W. H. Powell for the Capitol in Washington in 1853 (Figure 1], “at a period when the march of De

Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto 415

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Figure 1. W. H. Powell’s DeSoto’s Discovery of the Mississippi, 1853 {or 1855]. Courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol, Washington.

Soto was being most widely discussed by historians and the public.” Apparently, the topography in the painting was depicted according to the instruction of Frederick P. Stanton, congressman from Memphis, and thus portrayed the Chickasaw Bluffs region.? A Washington news story at the time remarked that “the discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto may be said to be the starting point in the history of that remarkable region, which has already astonished the world by its growth, its vigor, and its vast resources, and which is destined to be perhaps in less than two centuries the citadel and centre of the world’s civilization and the world’s freedom.’ That the expedition did play a part in the evolution of a regional identity is

evident in the fiction of William Gilmore Simms, one of the antebellum South’s leading men of letters. In 1854, under the pen name “Frank Cooper”

and drawing upon his own travels in the Tidewater and Old Southwest, Simms wrote a romantic novel about the expedition, Vasconselos.!! The novel itself is set mostly in Cuba (of 531 pages, only the last 154 take place on the North American continent}, and it is a dire tale of chivalrous good versus venal, corrupt, and debauched evil. The protagonists, none of them authentic historical figures, are the evil Balthazar de Alvaro, Soto’s main advisor; Al-

416 Patricia Galloway

varo’s beautiful, rich niece and ward Olivia; and the supremely chivalrous Portuguese knight Phillip de Vasconselos. The plot hinges upon love (Phillip’s for Olivia), incest {Alvaro’s with Olivia), false identity (Olivia’s disguise as a Moorish page to Phillip in Florida), and murder (Alvaro’s schemes against Olivia and Phillip and Olivia’s murder of Alvaro).

The hero, having learned of Alvaro’s base exploitation of Olivia, throws himself into the Soto expedition to forget, in spite of Soto’s personal animosity toward him. Yet he is unable to reconcile his ideals to Soto’s treatment of

the native population. He is stripped of his knighthood by Soto, at the prompting of Alvaro, for having urged the Lady of Cofitachequi to flee Soto’s

unchivalrous scheme to take her hostage. In a novel twist, he accepts the Lady’s love, offers to be her consort, and becomes the brains behind Indian resistance to the expedition at Mabila, Chicacga, and even west of the Missis-

sippi. Interestingly and perhaps most revealing of the chasm created in the view of southern history by the Civil War, Simms was actually censured by a postwar commentator for failing to let Phillip “bear these wrongs as a true knight should” instead of becoming “a traitor to his countrymen, content to sink into a savage chief, who finds a solace for the disappointments of love and ambition in the embrace of a loving and noble, yet still barbarian princess.”!2 Simms, of course, was simply taking Garcilaso’s symbolic “wedding” of the Lady and Soto! to a more fleshly conclusion, echoing both his favorite

Spanish source and the romanticized status of southern Indians after Removal had made them disappear. The novel is part of a sequence on the colonial period in the South expressing Simms’s conviction that the Spanish and French failures to colonize the

region permanently were due to their failure to undertake development of settlements, !* but the influence of Garcilaso’s view of Indian chivalry is evident, as is Simms’s own interest in the Indian culture of his region. Simms himself even makes use of the trope of the privileged source, attributing his account of Indian battles to a 1619 Indian manuscript on bark whose style bears a remarkable resemblance to Simms’s own.!® Yet although Simms admires the nobility of his Indian characters, he views them as fated to give way to the white race and its culture, and his license to allow his hero to “go native” may be found in what he portrays as a general slander among the Spaniards of the expedition, that the Portuguese knights are tinged with “Moorish” blood. That the expedition was more important to regional interests than significant from the broader perspective of world history is evident from the treatment accorded it by the British historian Arthur Helps. In his mid-century, four-volume history of the Spanish introduction of slavery into the Americas, Helps devotes but a single paragraph to Soto:

| Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto 417 Another Spaniard of mark, named Hernando de Soto, who was concerned in the capture of Atahuallpa, undertook the conquest of Florida in the year 15 38. His expedition, like those of his predecessors, proved unfortunate, and he died in the course of it.'6

Clearly, the American and Southern interest in Soto was not inspired by contemporary notions of the expedition’s historical importance. The legacy of the Civil War to Soto scholarship lay in the lingering bitterness of the formerly dominant white planter class. Thus white Southerners

especially made use of the Soto story, drawing from it the readings they wanted to support their wounded pride. J. F. H. Claiborne’s Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State, published in 1880, characterized the Spaniards as “cruel and remorseless,” but he also observed that they were “above all meanness’”—-meanness exemplified by Sherman’s march to the sea and “the wanton devastation of the Valley of Virginia.’”"” Also ambivalent toward the

Indians, whom he sometimes saw as cruel savages, Claiborne portrayed them, in their response to Soto’s depredations, as “this noble race of warriors—these native Mississippians.” Of the Spaniards’ defeat by the Chickasaws in 1541 and that of the French in 1736 and 1740, he said: “And may this ever be the fate of the invader of the territory of a free people!’””!8 The Soto ex-

pedition thus served Claiborne to create for Mississippi and its local autonomy an antiquity as respectable as that of the Atlantic colonies and to express

still-raw regional outrage at the outcome and consequences of the Civil War.!? Using Elvas as his major source, Claiborne judged Soto to be a poor general and a worse colonist. But perhaps most interesting for our purposes here, as we begin to discover

the development of a specifically local interest in controlling the story of the expedition, is the source that Claiborne quoted repeatedly for his treatment of Soto: a “learned and eloquent Centennial discourse” by “the Rev. Dr. Patton,” a Presbyterian minister from Alabama assigned to Tupelo, Mississippi,

whose speech was apparently replete with claims for the location of the Chickasaw battle with Soto in his adopted town.?° Following Patton, Claiborne confidently used eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historic Indian tribe locations to plot Soto’s route through Mississippi.2! A year after the publication of Claiborne’s Mississippi, Bernard Shipp published the first attempt at a complete biography of Soto, in Central America and Peru as well as in North America, but its tale of Soto in Florida was actually a translation into English of Pierre Richelet’s French abridgment of Garcilaso.22 Shipp attempted to make new contributions to the study of Soto’s expedition by gathering other materials about the natives of the Southeast in an appendix, but it was his supposedly complete Garcilaso translation that would see the most use.

418 Patricia Galloway

At the turn of the century, even as departments of history were being founded in major universities across the country, the history of the Soto expedition remained in the hands of nonacademic historians, as the works of Grace King (1898), John Abbott (1903), Frederick Ober (1906), and Walter Malone (1914) ran the gamut from a romanticizing use of primary sources to a catalog of secondary materials to an outright novel to an epic poem.?3 All four fell into the genre of hero canonization. King’s work was not affected by the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty because she was a historian of Louisiana, eager to emphasize her state’s non-Anglo origins (she also wrote a biography of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville], and although her aim was a smooth narrative without raw edges, King did have a knowledge of the origi-

nal sources and familiarity with their use. It is not evident that Abbott or Ober actually availed themselves of the sources much at all; both were content to rewrite Irving's original biography. The aims of Malone’s poem were more overt: published in 1914, it combined the gospel of progress with a completely undisguised racism: De Soto’s age was in truth like our own, and De Soto was himself a type of the American of to-day—one ever striving onward, heedless of difficulties, and despairing of nothing as impossible. . . . It is true that he was often imperious: it is true that his measures were often severe. But... let it not be forgotten ... that he who deals with savages is often provoked to act savagely himself. Should the white man seek to deal kindly with an inferior race, he learns soon enough that his leniency is construed as ev-

idence of weakness... making way for the march of civilization, the barbarian must necessarily suffer. Enlightenment comes not with peace, but a sword.?4

Clearly there was no interest here in the nameless “red men” Soto killed or the nameless tailors and swineherds who supported him while he did it. Many of the essays included in Dunbar Rowland’s Symposium on the Place of Discovery of the Mississippi River (1927) were written during the first two decades of the century. The volume was very limited in its interest, clearly reflecting Rowland’s desire to establish a Mississippi crossing of the river in opposition to the claims of Memphis, while ostensibly collecting writings of all viewpoints. Yet it is an interesting reflection of the state of Soto scholarship at the time, in that.it represented a pretty fair cross-section of the kind of professional qualification being brought to bear in historical studies. The only apparently professional historian represented was Professor T. H. Lewis, who was Rowland’s preferred expert;25 Rowland himself had studied the law before becoming (in the year of Lewis’s essay’s original publication) first Direc-

tor of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, where he had served at the time of the publication for twenty-five years; J. P. Young was a judge; and Charles A. Barton also seems to have had a legal background. Reading the essays, one can see, beneath the elaborate expressions of courtesy that

Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto 419

each allows his antagonists, the beginnings of a split between the “amateur” historians and the “professionals,” Lewis and Rowland. Although their aims were the same—the establishment of a specific location marking a “first” — the professionals clearly took a jaundiced view of the amateurs’ ability to evaluate evidence. None of the authors, however, is concerned with who or what the native peoples were; they focused exclusively on the Spaniards and their “discovery.” Not to be outdone by the tricentennial painting enshrined in the Capitol, and doubtless as a follow-up to his publication of the Symposium volume, in 1929 Dunbar Rowland commissioned a painting of Soto discovering the Mississippi (on Mississippi soil, of course} from the New Orleans—based painter Alexandre Alaux. The painting was to hang in the Mississippi State Capitol. Clearly, Alaux was aided in reaching his conception of the scene by Rowland himself, but we also have a notebook in which his daughter recorded research

materials he gathered for the painting. The notebook abstracts various sources he consulted about the flora and fauna to be portrayed in the painting—the Spaniards’ horses and dogs, native snakes, squirrels, and lizards and plants in bloom at the relevant time of year. For historical information he referred to J. William Jones’s School History of the United States, entries from Chamber’s Encyclopedia, Abbott’s Fernando de Soto, Pickett’s Alabama, Bancroft’s History of the United States, Rowland’s History of Mississippi: The Heart of the South, and R. B. Cunninghame-Graham’s Hernando de Soto.26 This last source is quoted copiously, including a lengthy and acerbic criticism of what Cunninghame-Graham refers to as “the picture which seems to have most fired imagination in the United States” that “hangs in the

Capitol at Washington, and in the humbler dwellings of citizens, occasionally a pale engraving or a woodcut of it decorates the walls”—and which

is a slightly misremembered version of the Powell painting. In contrast to these criticisms, then, Alaux produced a painting in which the Spaniards are less heroic, less well-dressed, and portrayed in a much wilder setting, where plants and animals are painted in great detail (Figure 2}.

The 1939 Centennial and Its Products With 1935 we arrive at the first conscious and intentional attempt at the institutionalization of a Soto expedition commemoration. In that year, Congress created a United States De Soto Expedition Commission.2’ The motivation for this legislation is not explicitly stated in the final report, but given the date, it would be a likely guess that the original thought was to establish another job-creation scheme under the direction of the Smithsonian when the route-marking part of the project should get underway. The Commission’s enabling legislation justified its creation because Soto’s was “the first

Ee ,ah,| BES aeheae fi 420 Patricia Galloway

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F . . , a a in 7 - 38 Figure 2. Alexandre Alaux’s painting of Soto discovering the Mississippi, 1929. Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

and most imposing expedition ever made by Europeans into the wilds of North America,” and its intention was that “this four hundredth anniversary of that great expedition be properly celebrated and markers be definitely determined and established after thorough investigation.” The president was thus directed to appoint five to seven members to the Commission, which would make “a proper study” and return its recommendations in a year’s time. This legislation was subsequently amended, as the task was seen to be greater than originally supposed, and the final report was produced in 1939. The 1935 Commission as a whole was certainly elitist, but it was also certainly not academic. Its members came from Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama (in addition to Dr. John Swanton of the Smithsonian], but most of the members concerned themselves only with celebratory aspects: markers, pageants, and—rather innovatively—films. The real evaluative work of establishing the trail was given over to Swanton, an anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, who was assisted by an engineer and local historian from Arkansas, John Fordyce, and a botanist and local his-

Commemorative History and Hernando de Soto 421

torian from Louisiana, Caroline Dormon.’§ Significantly, it was Swanton’s view that prevailed when there were differences of opinion, and Swanton’s interest in Indian cultures was strongly reflected in the almost equal time and attention Indians were given in the route study. The work of this “fact-finding committee” led to a preliminary report in 1936, but all Congress actually did as a result was to resolve in 1937 to participate in the Pan American Exposition in Tampa in 1939, on the date of the actual centennial and at the presumed spot of Soto’s landing.

It is interesting to note that this first official effort at commemorating Soto’s expedition had sanctioned the very new social science discipline of anthropology by giving the task to Swanton. In spite of the professionalization of history, although perhaps because of its Anglo-dominated interests, profes-

sional historians were notably absent from the Commission, and had they been present there would have been a much greater struggle to establish the importance of cultures over deeds. Clearly Swanton’s assumption was that such evaluation of the historical sources as needed to be done had already been done and that evaluation of said sources was not likely to change. Sucha point of view was not surprising in an ethnographer who had his own blind spot: he believed that Indian societies had been preserved unchanging in a “primitive” state from their origins through to the nineteenth century. His “ethnographic present” and the confident “historical present” of his historical contemporaries had much in common. The final report, printed in 1939, offered many additional recommendations, none of which, with the exception of the printing of the report, was carried out, probably because public interest had something else to concentrate on in 1939. Several of these recommendations are worth mentioning because, fifty years later, they were pursued again in the most recent centennial effort. The Commission had found that better knowledge and increased study of the original sources was needed, and it recommended that the original-language sources be printed with facing-page translations to encourage such study, at a cost of $25,000.29 It had recommended placing up to one hundred markers at important points along the route at a cost of $20,000. It had suggested that each state mark acommemorative highway route and that some major highway at least partly duplicating the route be denominated as a De Soto Highway.*° As a popular counterpoint to the efforts of the De Soto Expedition Commission, but in the same vein of WPA job creation projects in the South, we may trace the appearance of Soto expedition themes in the public art for newly built post offices and courthouses financed through the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the Treasury Department during the 1930s. Certainly it was the case, in this effort both to provide the public with exposure to the arts and to provide employment for artists, that there was a subsidiary intention that

422 Patricia Galloway

positive images of the American past, and especially of the American future, be fostered. In that context, it is not surprising that Soto’s expedition emerged as a theme, if only because the “discovery” of the Mississippi River had been attributed to it and the South in particular wanted to “share the bountiful and victorious history of the rest of the country” by placing in its public spaces “enduring reminders of their place in American culture.”?! But there was also obviously a centennial emphasis, for the theme appeared repeatedly throughout the areas of the South that might be seen as remotely connected with the expedition: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In addition, the finished paintings represent only the tip of the iceberg. In the state of Mississippi alone, for example, multiple images of Soto were submitted to the competitions for artists to receive the commissions for post office murals in 1935 (for the major city post offices across the country} and 1939 (for small post offices}. Two examples illustrate vividly how the romantic theme of Soto as noble white explorer prevailed in the artistic imagination. The individual competitions for the decoration of major post offices across the country encountered a major difficulty in 1935 in the case of the Jackson, Mississippi federal courthouse and post office, where disagreement between the local panel and the Section necessitated two competitions. All told, more than twenty cartoons were submitted; of those, two included Soto (Figures 3 and 4}, while two others focused on the expedition alone. One of these latter was a conventional realist rendering of Soto’s expedition facing the Mississippi as seen from midstream (Figure 5), while the other was a vigorous modernist rendering of a battle between Spaniards on horseback and Indians on foot (Figure 6}. The latter image was the fourth choice of the local committee, but was placed first by the Section. When confronted by this preference, the local committee demurred and a new contest was held, but the designs were not preserved when again the local committee and the Section failed to agree. In the end, another artist, who had entered the competition for a mural for the Justice Department in Washington, was appointed and did not render a Soto topic. The competition for the decoration of the much smaller Pontotoc post office had an outcome that illustrates the degree to which the romance of the expedition could hold sway over the portrayal of official art. The local committee seems to have been led by E. T. Winston, local newspaper editor and amateur historian, and the subject may even have been suggested by him. In fact, the “Wedding of Alfonso Ortiz and Soawana, Christmas, 1540” (Figure 7} does not portray an authentic episode from the expedition, as its prose description by Winston published in the Pontotoc Progress and reprinted in a recent local history implies.32 Attributed to the Elvas account via Hakluyt and Claiborne, neither the incident itself nor anything like it is to be found anywhere in an authentic account. In fact, I have been unable to trace any precise

y eSoto 423

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