40 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



fully for grants of territory in Ecuador and Guatemala. On April 

 20, 1537, however, he received the royal permission to "conquer, pacify, 

 and people" the territory from the Province of the Rio de las Palmas 

 as far as Cape Fear on the Atlantic, and to this was joined the governor- 

 ship of the Island of Cuba. During his sojourn in Spain he married 

 Isabel de Bobadilla, one of the daughters of his former commander, 

 Pedrarias. On April 7, 1538, he sailed from San Liicar, the port of 

 Seville, with seven large vessels and some smaller ones, touched at the 

 Canary Islands, and reached Santiago de Cuba, then the capital of 

 the islands, June 9 (or possibly 2 days earlier) and marched from 

 there to Havana at the head of his cavalry, while the vessels skirted 

 the island to the same point. During the winter of 1538-39, tw^o 

 caravels were sent across to Florida under Juan de Aiiasco and a port 

 selected suitable as a point of debarkation for his army. 



On May 18, 1539, De Soto sailed from Havana with a fleet of 9 

 vessels, and an army of about 600 men besides perhaps a hundred 

 more camp followers, servants, and slaves. There were more than 

 200 horses, a herd of hogs, some mules, bloodhounds to track down 

 the Indians, and a vast quantity of provisions and materials for 

 equipping the army and founding a colony. On May 25 they came 

 upon the Florida coast a short distance below Anasco's port. This 

 was soon identified, however, and on May 30 most of the army was 

 put ashore, while the vessels worked toward the Indian town which 

 was their objective, gradually unloading with the assistance of the 

 small boats accompanying them. The data supplied by the 

 chroniclers and the topography of the region indicate plainly that 

 this was the Indian town site on Terra Ceia Island, and the point 

 where the army was landed Shaws Point. On June 3, 1539, formal 

 possession was taken of the land of Florida, and shortly afterward 

 they had the good fortune to be joined by a Spaniard of Seville 

 named Juan Ortiz, formerly with Narvaez, who had lived with the 

 Indians nearly a dozen years and spoke their language fluently. 

 Until his death at Utiangue, west of the Mississippi, he was the chief 

 interpreter of the expedition. The town occupied by them was called 

 Ogita and probably belonged to one of the Timucua tribes. The coun- 

 try around it did not, however, appeal to De Soto as a suitable place 

 for a permanent settlement, and on June 20 he dispatched his Chiei 

 Constable, Baltasar de Gallegos, to an inland tribe called Urri- 

 paracoxi, whose chief was said to dominate those along the coast. 

 Although the Urriparacoxi chief proved unfriendly, Gallegos trans- 

 mitted such flattering accounts of the lands farther on, that De Soto 

 determined to move his army inland, and on July 15 began the march, 

 leaving about a hundred men under Pedro Calderon to hold the port 

 and form the nucleous of a colony in case he should decide to return 

 thither. A garden was actually planted by them during their stay. 



