Mickey Starling
reporter3@greenepublishing.com
Hernando de Soto landed in Tampa Bay in 1539, with 700 soldiers. He soon made his way into our present area, traveling through the Suwannee Valley. He built a bridge over the Suwannee River into the southern part of Madison County. Two days later, he reached the Aucilla River, where he faced one of several Indian attacks.
De Soto would later spend the winter in what is now Tallahassee, where he conquered a tribe of Apalachee Indians, taking their provisions and using some of them as slaves. He later made it all the way to Oklahoma. De Soto is credited with discovering the Mississippi River, where he later died. Like many explorers in this time period, many of de Soto's men died of starvation and disease.
One of the primary purposes of de Soto's expeditions to Florida was to find wealth. Although those efforts failed, the Spanish still needed missions and good trade routes, so explorations continued. Also, the Spanish were very religious people, and the explorers always traveled with priests who would set up missions and seek to convert and "civilize" Indians along the way. Since their efforts centered around causing the Florida Indians to settle into a fixed place, there was little success with these Indians who were used to moving about freely in search of food. Christianity gained deeper roots in Madison County when the Franciscan missionaries arrived some time later.
Much of the information for this article was taken from Tommy Greene's book, "Madison County: From the Beginning." The book is available for purchase at Greene Publishing, Inc., in Madison.