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Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas

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Although Hernando De Soto: A Savage Conquest in the Americas is a biography, it reveals as much about the hideous cruelty the Spanish inflicted upon indigenous peoples as it does about the great conquistadors. In doing so, author David Ewing Duncan allows the reader to balance the triumphs of Soto with the vast human destruction he left in his wake. Neither an apologia nor a polemic, this book stays close to the facts and represents the best in popular history.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, De Soto unfolds like a riveting novel as it follows the explorer from his impoverished youth to his anti-climatic death near the Mississippi River. To anyone interested in the European conquest of the Americas (or in the decimation of the Indians and their cultures) this book is a must read.

In addition to Soto, the author chronicles the achievements and savageries of such other notables as Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, and Coronado. The book cleverly references and analyzes the works of American and Spanish historians, including those who were present as the conquerors murdered, raped, pillaged, enslaved, proselytized and bravely explored in South, Central and North America. Where there is a disparity in the record Duncan examines the conflict and suggests the account he considers the more reliable. At times the contemporary American Soto enthusiasts and the Spanish historians who are referenced throughout the book prove almost as intriguing as their subject matter.

Given the tremendous undertaking this work represents, Duncan manages to produce a highly readable and lively book. Even if the author can't help but reveal his personal revulsion at Soto's blatant inhumanity, Duncan also is objective enough to acknowledge flashes of true heroism and bravery. The Soto that the author presents is a historic Indiana Jones figure who descends into a Conrad-like Heart of Darkness.

The book cleverly incorporates maps, charts, paintings, and other graphics into the text. Further, although it may be tempting to skip the footnotes due to the length of the text, the reader is well advised not to do so. Buried in these footnotes are clever thoughts, insights and explanations.

This book richly deserves five stars and a second look by anyone who skipped it when it was first released.

Hernando de Soto was only 42 years old when he died. But in those 42 years he participated in and then led many explorations of Central, South and North America in the early 1500's. He and his fellow soldiers also brutally killed thousands of native peoples, captured and sold into slavery others, and took food, lodging, other necessities and, most importantly, gold and silver wherever he found them.

"Hernando de Soto, A Savage Quest in the Americas" is a no-holds-barred, well researched history on the life of one of Spain's most famous, and notorious, conquistadors. It follows him from his hardscrabble life as a boy in Spain, to his joining an expedition to the New World at age 14, to fame as a captain under Pizarro in the conquering of the Inca in Peru.

He triumphantly returns to Spain where he lobbies for a commission to explore and colonize North America and, of course, find more gold. Soto's savage quest in the Southeastern US is a look at one of the earliest explorations of the area, the sophisticated people who lived there and the impact of the Spanish explorers on the future of the new nation.

This is an incredible story of bravery, obsession and greed. It is not the kind of history that's taught in school. But it is part of the history of the Americas and it helps put in perspective how the New World grew and why some things are the way they are today.

One common thread of the Cortes, Pizarro, and Soto expeditions is that they were diven by lust for gold and wealth in land and slaves. Soto participated in the Pizarro expedition and won a large share of the incredible pile of gold stolen from the Incas in Atahualpa's "ransom". Soto finanaced his North American trek with his Peruvian gain, apparently fully expecting to reap similar gain there. All he got were a few pounds of burned pearls and a grave in the Mississippi River.
There was no interest by Soto (or Cortes or Pizarro) in doing any real exploration that would have resulted in usable maps, descriptions of the country or its inhabitants and their culture. He failed to establish a colony. Soto wasn't interested in any of that. The accounts we have of Soto's trek were hardly more than daily jottings that were so vague that modern researchers don't know more than a handful of places where the army actually stopped to rest. The actual route requires a broad pen, rather than a fine point, to draw on a map. The author does a fine job of weaving the several extant accounts into an understandable whole

An interesting book that firmly pushes the idea that Soto was a murderous butcher intent on destroying whatever and whomever was in his was as he sought gold in the New World.

David Ewing Duncan takes us from South America to Spain and finally North America with Soto leading the way at all times. We're with Soto and his men as the entrada into Florida starts well but ends, three years later, with the remaining men scurrying off to Mexico after a decidedly unpleasant time spent in the Southeastern USA.

A little more about what happened after Soto's death would have gone a long way. Not bad, though.

This book is a biography of the life of Hernando de Soto That is a point which sometimes is disappointing because we often have to leave some exciting events in history as de Soto departs to other places. This is exceptionally true at the end of the book. In between the beginning and end is some very disturbing truths about the conquistadores's savage treatment of the native Americans they encountered in the New World. Author Duncan deserves credit for telling it like it is while knowing that his subject becomes less and less of a heroic figure with every ghastly detail. It is still hard to fathom the incredible destruction of the Incan empire by the small force of Pizarro's men.

The author spends a fair amount of time evaluating the available evidence which is helpful. The second half of the book is an excellent view of SouthEast America that our own immigrant culture knows little about; partly because de Soto's men had so severely impacted it that it was essentially gone when our ancesters first encountered it.

The story of de Soto is essentially the tragedy of a dynamic life cut short, of a quest that fell short, and of a discovery of wealth that went overlooked. De Soto's focus on gold caused him to overlook a world that would surpass the importance of "wealthier" parts of the New World. Unfortunately, the book ends with the death of de Soto in present-day Arkansas. By giving us a single paragraph to tell what happened to his men after that, we come away feeling as stranded and lost as they were.

I came to this book because I enjoyed the author's other work: Calendar is a fascinating read, and From Cape to Cairo is really compelling. When I started this biography of Soto, I was surprised about the academicness of the work--lots of footnotes, for example. But as I read on, I found the same qualities which make reading Duncan's other works such a joyful experience present here. Though Soto may not be a "fun" topic, Duncan's prose is a great pleasure. And, as always, I learned a lot.

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Too much of the authors opinions, I guess I was looking for more of an historical account. The conquest of the New World is a controversial one, with many atrocities commited on both sides, however, history is grey and not always so black and white as Duncan portrays it.

This work could sit proudly alongside other works of the Conquest such as: Hugh Thomas's, "Rivers of Gold" and "Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico", also John Hemming's, "The Conquest of The Incas" and `The Search For El Dorado". It is perfect in almost every way as other reviewers have noted, a literary masterpiece.
Personally I am sick and tired of the constant comments concerning Soto and the rest of the conquistadors as a "pile of trash", "horrible men" etc., etc., as if the commentators suffer from a guilt complex because they are inheritors of the European Conquest or as if they are using as their standard modern humane liberals. Soto and the rest were products of their time, nothing more, nothing less. Take a look at their contemporaries in Protestant England and the Dutch conquerors of the East Indies. Also the rulers of the City States of Italy and the Papacy and the conquests of the Ottoman Turks. It was truly a barbaric and cruel age . There were few "humane" figures such as Father Bartolome De Las Casas, Cabeza de Vaca or Samuel de Champlain.
Also this is great account of an important period of exploration, to set alongside histories of the other great explorations in history. I would love to see Duncan do more work along this line, we may have one great historian here.

At a time when the Catholic Church in England was drawing and quartering heretics, a tradition which Henry the 8th carried on after he broke with Rome, the Spanish explorers in the new world were slaughtering, burning alive, and tearing apart with dogs Indians whom they sought to enslave or whose gold they wanted. de Soto was indeed a monster but he was our (Western civilization's) monster. Clever, brutal and determined, how did he and others like Cortez and Pizzaro bring it off? They had superior technology: steel swords and pikes, horses and armor. They had the secret weapon of disease. And they used trickery. But it doesn't add up especially in Mexico and Peru. Duncan's book leaves out disease. He doesn't mention whether, like in Mexico, disease preceded Pizzaro's attacks in the Andes leaving the Incas decimated and disoriented. Otherwise were the Incas so stupid and/or outgunned as to not be able to stop the few hundred Spanish who attacked them. de Soto and Pizzaro seemed to have a winning strategy: use trickery to kidnap the Cacique and pretend to ransom him for total surrender of gold, slave laborers and women. In addition, promise his enemies or conquered peoples a strategic alliance until they were no longer needed and then turn on them. Why did it work and work more than once? It doesn't add up in my mind. Did the Inca just miss opportunity after opportunity? Spanish military technology wasn't that much better to overcome such great odds.
Then again de Soto was some Christian. He tortured and slaughtered without the slightest shame or guilt. He whored and made sexual slavery a concomitant of conquest. Certainly the Spanish in reconquering Spain and maintaining dominance in the low country in the face of the Reformation were quite violent, but not as systematically nor to the extent of the Conquistadors. Then there was the Inquisition with the stake and torture but not so extensively nor frivolously.
Back in Spain Las Casas and Dias bemoaned de Soto's behavior. But like most frontiersmen, neither Crown nor Church could control him. When Cabeza de Vaca was governor of Uruguay Conquistador in Chains: Cabeza de Vaca and the Indians of the Americas, he reigned in brutal exploitation of Amerindians and was imprisoned by the colonists. It was the same in the cross Appalachian frontier. As much as England and, later, the Federalists tried to institute a paternalist policy towards the natives and their land, they could not stop, the Davey Crockett's and land speculators (among whom were Washington and Jefferson) from driving the Indians out.
So de Soto in Central America is a conqueror, slaver, and encomiendero, and in Peru a conquistador who, though booted out, leaves with unimaginable wealth. This is not enough for him. Spurred by a reference of Cabeza de Vaca that there was gold to the north of Cabeza's wanderings in Florida, de Soto uses his fabulous wealth to make an entrada in La Florida. There he ravages his way through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and on to the Mississippi River. Finding no gold nor prosperous civilization to exploit he does not give up and go home but continues into Arkansas finally returning to the Mississippi to die apparently disillusioned. He persisted though it was obvious a thousand miles earlier that La Florida possessed no treasure. Ignoring the protests of some of his men, de Soto turns his back on potential sites for agricultural colonies wanting only riches.
Again his strategy of technology, cunning, and recruitment works despite the fact he gets mauled a couple of time. Still the natives are not able to do more than lose at a ratio of more than ten to one. Although a number of different Mississippian mound peoples seem like they could overcome de Soto, they manage not to. And although some withdraw into the forests, most end up hosting him with food, women, and bearers. The variety of towns/village dwellers in the Southeast and South, some of whom exercise control over wide area and numbers of vassal people, is amazing. Where we usually think of North America being inhabited by hunter-gatherers, we find instead relatively prosperous farmers and societies with rulers and gentry. It is hardly a primitive world. How it prospered and why the societies declined is not clear in Duncan's book. It doesn't seem we know why. de Soto's rampage may have been one element. But there was also decline in places before he arrived. And there were precipitous collapses in his wake. Some members of his entrada returning a mere twenty years later found villages unrecognizable. Was it just de Soto's disruption (occasionally suggested by the author) or was it the grim reaper of small pox (again not sited as a cause). The Southeast of the U.S. the British and French found a hundred years later was populated by hunter-gathers who had no recollection of their predecessors.
de Soto's strategy of living off the land, which Duncan says was borrowed from European wars, works while de Soto's army sojourns among fairly advanced agriculturalists, but fails when he comes to the edge of the prairie. The Indians who ventured forth from the woodlands into the prairie to hunt buffalo neither grew enough to feed de Soto's men nor surrendered as the more settled people eastward had done. With no gold evident and no food de Soto retreats back to the Mississippi where he and his men hang on. After his death the transmissippian Indians harass the Spaniards who then to try to walk it Mexico but get stopped by the Texas drylands. They finally build boats for travel down the river and across the Gulf back to New Spain.
Reading Duncan's book gives rise to lots of speculation as to the relative brutality of the Spanish versus, the English, French and Dutch. de Soto must have been among the worst, but I am not sure. In a modern world he might easily have run a gas ovens. But then where does he fit with Rwandas and the bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia? A good question. A good book. It leaves one to think about the holier than though attitude of North Atlantic folk when they criticize others for human rights violations. Have we fully owned our past? I don't think so. Thank you David Duncan for giving us some of our past back.

Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World