14 
Introduction 
conquer, pacify, and settle all of the territory included in the former grants 
of Narváez and Ayllon. Recruiting his force in Spain and stopping en 
route in Cuba, De Soto landed at Tampa Bay in May, 1539, with 600 
men. The winter was passed in the present state of Florida and the next 
spring De Soto began the real task of exploring the interior—an under¬ 
taking that carried him through the present states of Georgia, North 
Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, 
and his surviving associates, after his death in May, 1542, into Texas, and 
later, by way of the Mississippi River, to Pánuco, the then northern out¬ 
post of New Spain in the east as Culiacán was the northernmost post in 
the west. 
The years 1542 and 1543, then, were very eventful ones. The summer 
of 1542 saw the return in disorder of the disgusted members of the Coro¬ 
nado expedition to Culiacán ; in November, 1542, the Villalobos expedition 
sailed west to the Philippines and the Moluccas where it was to go to 
pieces in the face of Portuguese hostility and rivalry; in April, 1543, 
Ferrelo returned to Navidad after having reached the Oregon coast in 
the vicinity of 42 0 30'; and in September, 1543, the survivors of the 
De Soto expedition arrived at Pánuco. Important as were these various 
expeditions on account of the first-hand knowledge gained of such vast 
regions and their peoples, not the least significance of them was that from 
Oregon south to Cape San Lucas, from the Gila and Colorado rivers east 
to the Rio Grande and Quivira, from Quivira and Central Texas east to 
the Cape Fear region and Tampa Bay, no great natural wealth and no 
superior native civilization had been encountered. The result was that 
interest in the northern region waned; after the return of the Coronado 
and the De Soto expeditions, New Spain was not to witness again such 
spectacular attempts to conquer the north. Instead, the frontier settled 
down to a more normal and gradual advance. 
The Northward Advance in New Spain, 1543-1590. 
In 1543 the frontier of settlement in New Spain extended in an irregu¬ 
lar semi-circle, with its base to the south, from Culiacán in the west to 
Pánuco in the east. By 1590 the northernmost outposts in both the east 
and the west had advanced still further to the north, while the arc of the 
circle had in large measure been filled in. This was the result of three 
important and separate and distinct movements—a western by way of 
Zacatecas and Durango; a central by way of Querétaro and San Luis 
Potosí; and an eastern from Pánuco as a base. In general the three 
columns of frontiersmen advancing into the north by way of these three 
lines of approach kept fairly on a parallel with each other until in 1590 
the frontier of settlement stretched in an irregular line from San Felipe 
on the Gulf of California to Cerralvo, forty miles south of historic Mier 
on the Rio Grande. 
In the west a temporary lull followed the return of the Coronado 
expedition. There political changes and the discovery of rich ores 6 were 
6 H. H. Bancroft, History of Mexico, II. (San Francisco, 1883) 551-552. 
