Hernando de Soto (21 October 1496-21 May 1542) was a conquistador of Spain. He was the first explorer to land in the mainland United States and to cross the Mississippi River.
Biography[]
Hernando de Soto was born in Badajoz in the poor Extremadura region of Spain on 21 October 1496, and he spent time as a child in Baracarrota and in Badajoz, both of which claim to be his birthplace. After the end of the Reconquista, Spain and Portugal were filled with young men who sought wealth and glory in the New World explored by Christoffo Colombo. Soto was one of the men who was able to head on a ship to explore the New World for Spain and bring back untold riches for the Spanish Empire.
He sailed alongside General Francisco Pizzaro and served as one of his captains during his conquest of Peru from the Incan Empire. At the Battle of Cajamarca in 1532, Soto commanded mounted Spanish conquistadores and plundered the Incan camp, in addition to massacring the Incan troops under Emperor Atahualpa. Soto also led Spanish troops into the capital of Cuzco to plunder the city, but in 1539 Francisco Pizzaro and Diego de Almagro quarreled over Cuzco's dominion: Pizzaro's province, or Almagro's province. Soto was invited to aid Almagro in the conquest of the southern Inca Empire (Chile), but he packed up his treasure and returned to Spain.
De Soto's expedition
Upon returning to Spain, he was inducted into the Order of Santiago and gained 20,000 pesos from King Carlos I of Spain. Soto asked for the government of Guatemala, but he was instead given the tenure of Governor of Cuba. Soto was fascinated by Cabeza de Vaca's stories of surviving as a castaway, and he gathered a force of over 600 Spanish, Portuguese, and African adventurers to explore North America. He landed in Florida at Ozita on the western coast, and he headed north through Georgia and the Carolinas, turned west through Tennessee, turned south through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi (where he became the first explorer to cross the Mississippi River), and explored much of Arkansas. He made it to the village of Guachoyo in Arkansas, where he died of fever.