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The Search for Mabila: The Decisive Battle between Hernando de Soto and Chief Tascalusa

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Until I stumbled across a publication notice for this book in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I had never heard of Chief Tascalusa or Mabila, but the story sounded fascinating. The lost battlefield of a bloody conflict between Hernando de Soto's army and an Indian tribe (or two) defending their turf--who could resist? In many ways it is a sort of American Troy.

I eventually ordered the book and wasn't able to put it down. Now, let the general reader beware: this is a scholarly work that has plenty of footnotes and lots of what most people would call "dry" passages. But I enjoy such arcane matters and realize that they are the building blocks of good scholarship. And in that regard, this book does not disappoint. The Search for Mabila represents the work of an assemblage of (mostly) academic experts on the prehistory of Alabama--its geography, archaeology, and pre-Columbian cultures--all seeking to locate the lost site of Mabila (whence the city of Mobile derives its name). Because we have only one true eyewitness account of the battle, and that is very succinct (there are three other surviving accounts, but all told either at a distance of time or even second-hand), clues are sparse and the gaps among the narratives require extensive reconstruction and speculation. Different chapters explore everything from the earliest maps of the Gulf Coast to late Mississippian tribal pottery and culture to the types of flora and fauna that probably existed in the area in the 1540s, all in an effort to discover where Mabila once stood. While the conclusions are inconclusive, it's the search that matters. And as Vernon James Knight notes in the closing pages, even negative conclusions help narrow the possibilities for future research. This book certainly takes a huge step in that direction.

With a lot of effort and a little luck, maybe one day we will unearth Mabila and the historical treasures that lie buried there. When we do, we will glimpse a forgotten but fascinating chapter of our history.