- ›› Coverage People : Hernando de Soto
If history is the story of what people have done, then American history began thousands of years ago, and by far most of it is that of Indian peoples and their ancestors before...
Glossary Term – Event
Hernando de Soto became the first European to document the Mississippi River.
Glossary Term – Event
Hernándo de Soto began his exploration of the what is now the southwestern United States.
Glossary Term – Person
Hernando de Soto (ca. 1496–1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. De Soto first journeyed to the Western Hemisphere in 1514, though his more notable travels came later. In 1539, he arrived in present-day Florida and in 1540 set off on a journey to find gold and other “mineral wealth.” On his way west, in 1541, de Soto reached the Mississippi, making him the first European to “discover” and document the river. Throughout de Soto’s expedition, he and his men clashed with indigenous peoples. They also inadvertently spread infectious...
Award-winning author Tony Horwitz discusses the research and writing process for his book A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America (2008).
In 1539, Hernando de Soto led the first major European expedition into the interior of the southeastern North America, an area then known as “La Florida.” This nineteenth-century engraving depicts Hernando de Soto’s discovery of the Mississippi River at a point below Natchez on May 8, 1541.
This map of “la Louisiane,” published by French geographer Guillaume de l’Isle, is the first detailed map of the Gulf Coast region and the Mississippi River, as well as the first printed map to show Texas and identify New Orleans.
By the early to mid-seventeenth century, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands were all competing for colonies and trade around the world. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, explorers, conquerors, missionaries, merchants, and adventurers sought to claim new lands to colonize. It was only a matter of time before imperial rivals butted heads over land possession and trade routes. Competition for land grabs, settlement, trade, and exploration led to the growth of New World imperialism and the economic system...