526 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
could not have subsisted his horde of ruthless followers, with their at- 
tendant trains of captives and domestic animals.* La Vega, Biedma, 
and above all the Knight of Elvas, bear witness to this fact on almost 
every page of their narratives.t We are also told that, on both sides 
of the river, the natives lived in walled towns,t and that they gathered 
every man his own crop,§ which they stored in barbacoas|| or granaries, 
made somewhat like those in Carolina. 
Passing over an interval of a hundred and fifty or two hundred 
years, and coming down to the eighteenth century, we find the condi- 
tion of affairs in all that region practically unchanged. The same 
tribes, with scarcely an exception, that held the country east of the 
Mississippi in the time of De Soto still possessed it, and lived substan- 
tially within the same boundaries as they did when first visited. In 
the meantime, the Mississippi had been explored from the Falls of St. 
Anthony to its mouth, the French and English had pushed their trad- 
ing posts everywhere throughout the valley, and were contending for 
the possession of all that vast domain; but the Indians, save when 
brought into immediate contact with the whites, still pursued the even 
tenor of their way, and hunted and fought, danced and worshiped, much 
as their ancestors had done some two hundred years before. They built 
their houses and fortified their villages in much the same manner,{] and 
cultivated their fields and gardens with the same rude and unsatisfac- 
*<«We landed six hundred and twenty men and two hundred and twenty-three 
horses.” Narrative of Biedma, in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, part 1, p. 97. This is 
the smallest number given by either one of the chroniclers of this expedition, and it 
is accepted for this reason. it will be seen that no mention is made of the drove of 
hogs, though it must have been large, as we are told, l. c., p. 104, that in the at- 
tack made by the Indians on the Spaniards when in winter quarters at Chicaga, 
they destroyed ‘‘three hundred hogs,” besides fifty-seven horses. The Gentleman 
of Elvas says “ fifty horses and four hundred hogs.” 
t ‘In the barns and in the fields great store of maize. - - - Many sown fields 
which reached from one (town) to the other,” p. 152. ‘In the town was great store 
of old maize, and great quantities of new in the fields,” p.172. - - - ‘The maize 
that was in the other town was brought hither; and in all it was esteemed to be six 
thousand harnegs or bushels,” p. 203. - - - ‘As soon as they came to Cale, the 
governor commanded them to gather all the maize that was ripe in the fields, which 
was sufficient for three months,” p. 130: Narrative of the expedition of Hernando de 
Soto, by a Gentleman of Elvas, in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, part u. ‘De Soto did 
not kill any of his hogs, because they found plenty of provisions:” Herrera, vol. v, 
p. 312: London, 1740.‘ Caciquess” of Cofachiqui ‘‘had 2,000 bushels of maize in 
one of her towns:” Jbid., p. 317. 
+ Gentleman of Elvas and Biedma, in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, part 11, pp. 103, 104, 
160, 172: Philadelphia, 1850. Garcilasso de la Vega, seconde partie, pp. 19-37: Paris, 
1709. 
SA brief note, - - - taken out of the 44th chapter of the Discovery of the 
Inland of Florida on the backside of Virginia, begun by Fernando de Soto, a. D. 1539, 
in Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. vu, third series, Degli: 
|| Gentleman of Elvas, l. ¢., p. 137. 
4] Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, vol. 1, p. 251: London, 1763. Dumont, Memoir 
in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, part vy, p. 108: New York, 1853. 
