Part 25

DeSoto is at great disadvantage both in numbers and in supplies of munitions. Moscoso lingers with the reserves. He is much in need, should be here, but delays. With strained vision, DeSoto looks for his lieutenant, but he comes not. The fight is now hand to hand. The Indians are perhaps fifty to one against the Spaniards, but order and discipline, powder and ball, crossbow and sword, horse and armor prevail against the odds. DeSoto leads his troops in person. His men are animated by his dauntless presence and the terror of his execution. He fights like a common trooper. The blood still oozes from his wound, but he fights on still. The Spaniards not only hold their own, but force the savages back.

At this juncture Moscoso arrives. The Indians rush again within the walls and make fast the gate. DeSoto now plans for the final onset. His heavy ordnance is to be brought into prompt execution. On the spot he organizes his detachments, and while the arrows are flying, he assigns to each body its task in the closing scene of the drama. Coolness like this is almost superhuman, but DeSoto is not cooler than his men.

The axes begin to ring on the gate. Nerved now to desperation by this, the Indians fight with more ferocity than ever. With resounding blows the axes fall on the doomed gate. From the summit of the walls and from the portholes the arrows are rained down on the Spaniards, but striking their encased armor glide off. Huge pebbles, the size of a man's fist and larger, fall like hailstones upon their helmets, but to no effect. The gate begins to give way, it reels, it falls with a creaking crash, and the Spaniards sweep within. Indians and Spaniards alike fight like demons. DeSoto still leads, hewing down man after man with his broadsword. His men follow with equal execution.

Torches in hand, the walls are being fired. The thick plastering is knocked off and in many places, the fires begin. Ladders are improvised, the walls are scaled, and near the summit the torch is applied. The fifteen pent-up men are released, jump with exhilaration into the fray, and do deadlier work than the others. The fires begin to climb the walls. They toss high in air their forked tongues. In a swaying column the smoke darkens the heavens.

For nine long hours the battle has raged without cessation, and the end is not yet. Yells, orders, shrieks, the clang of steel, the stroke of axes, the roar and crackle of flames mingle in common confusion. DeSoto rushes on a big warrior, raises his lance to drive it through him and receives a long arrow in his thigh. He cannot stop to extricate it now, and while it is protruding, and is much in his way, he fights on like a demon unchained. Rising in his saddle he sways his sword about his head and yells, "Our Lady and Santiago!" and plunges anew into the storm of battle. Spurring his horse into the thickest of the fight, he lays many a warrior low.

The Indians begin to break away. They rapidly disappear. The fires become intense, unbearable. It is a circle of flame leaping from eighty buildings of dried wood, all at once. The fires rage. The dead braves lie in heaps both within and without the wall. The blood stands in puddles over a wide area. At last there are no Indians to fight. They have fled in confusion to the woods, and DeSoto is master of the situation.

October 18, 1540, remains to this time the date of the bloodiest Indian battle that was ever fought. The sun goes down on a city which in the early hours of the day resounded with the sound of cane lutes, and the voices of many dancers. The mighty buildings which met the astonished gaze of the Spanish conqueror, are now a mass of charred ruins. The autumn grass, green and luxuriant in the morning, is now red with gore. The populous city of ten hours before is deserted. The great trees, rich in foliage, are now blasted and seared. Where peace and prosperity were, havoc is now enthroned. DeSoto had won; his greatest obstruction is now out of his way, but fresh, and now unconjectured, troubles await him for which he is ill prepared.

AFTERMATH OF THE BATTLE

The morning following the battle of Maubila the autumnal sun broke in radiance over the desolate scene. The high oaken walls were gone, the great buildings had vanished, the ancestral oaks that stood about the grounds now looked like bare sentinels with arms of nakedness--scarred, barkless and leafless, the greenswarded square of the morning before was a sheet of black. When the morning before DeSoto first beheld it, Maubila was a busy hive of humanity, but it was now as silent as the desert. The buzz of conversation was no more, the cane lute was silent, the shout of the warrior had died away, the voices of the Indian maidens were hushed. The warriors were now stiff in death--the maidens had perished. From the smouldering ruins of the burned city, still crept a slow smoke, while around the borders of the horizon it shrouded the fronting woods. Nothing was wanting to complete the scene of desolation, nothing to finish the picture of horror.

About the grounds lay heaps of the dead, many burned to blackness, while around the walls without, bodies were scattered like leaves. The wide paths leading to the city from different directions, were paved with the dead, while along the neighboring streams they lay, still grasping their bows and tomahawks. Wounded unto death, they had dragged their bodies in burning thirst to the streams, had slaked their intense desire for water, and had lain down to die. Squaws and babies were intermingled with brave warriors, while maidens in their tawdry regalia, worn to greet the Spaniard and his men, were stretched in death. The leaves, grass, and low underbrush about the once proud city, were painted in the blood of its brave defenders, now no more.

To DeSoto it was a victory dearly bought. He had won by dint of discipline and of orderly evolution, by means of powder and bullet and encasing armor, but he had paid a heavy toll. It was the beginning of his own end, and that of the expedition which he led. Eighty-two Spaniards of the small band were either dead, or a little later, died of their wounds. Forty-five horses had been killed, and much of the clothing of the men had been consumed in the flames, together with medicines, relics, and much other valuable property. There was not an unwounded man in the party save among the priests, who did not share in the fight. Some of the men bore as many as eleven wounds, and in not a few instances, the arrows were still buried in the flesh, made difficult of extrication because of the triangular shape of the stones with which the arrows were tipped. Every surgeon was dead excepting one of the staff, and he the least skillful. Following the example of the men under Cortez in Mexico, the Spaniards cut away the fat part of the thighs of the slain Indians, and bound the flesh about their wounds. The camp was removed sufficiently away from the scene to escape the stench of the dead, the Spanish slain were buried, and DeSoto was left to plan for the future. Forgetful of his own wounds, he was intent on the comfort of his men. He would seek to cheer them with visions of fortune yet to be realized, and with promises never to be fulfilled.

In the solitude of thought, DeSoto kept well within himself. He realized the seriousness of the situation, was half inclined to abandon the quest for gold, but his proud spirit revolted against acknowledgement of failure. Yet a serious breach had been made in his ranks, his resources were impaired beyond recuperation, winter was coming on, he knew not the condition of the country ahead, nor did he know what the temper of his troops would be after the reaction from the battle. He talked to no one, for the very excellent reason that he did not know in whom to confide. The Spaniard is wary, suspicious. Every one suspects every other. Daring as DeSoto was, he was not without a modicum of precaution. As he had westward gone, the tribes had increased in intelligence and in formidableness. What lay before him toward the further west, he knew not. He could not sustain another Maubila. After all, would it be wise or not, to seek again the fleet in Tampa Bay? Here was a perplexity with which to wrestle. He must act, and that soon, but how, was the question that harassed his mind.

One ray of hope pierced the gloom of the silent and morose Spaniard--the Indian tribes westward and northward, on learning of the fate of Maubila, sent envoys of peace to DeSoto, attended with assurances of good will and of friendship. Stricken with terror by the feat of the valiant white invader, they were anxious to placate him in advance. Whatever may have been their sentiments before, they were now sycophantic enough. Among the Indian visitors it was said by some that the Chief Tuskaloosa had fled during the battle, but the general opinion was that he had perished. These same Indian envoys told DeSoto that the great chief had long been planning for the extinction of the Spanish host, and that his plot was deeply laid, which news served to encourage the Spaniard with the belief that he had committed no blunder in overthrowing him. These envoys gave partial nerve to DeSoto in his growing perplexity and despondency.

While the commander sat alone in his tent meditating on what course he should pursue, his men nursed their wounds, and with returning relief, they became the same volatile spirits as before. Up to this time, their confidence in their leader had been supreme. While they did not comprehend his unusual moroseness, and while no one would venture to approach him with any degree of familiarity, they confided in his judgment, and lolled the days away in utter indifference of the future. Sprawled on their rough pallets of leaves and straw, or else stretched on the grass beneath the wide trees, they would while away the time gambling. Their cards had been destroyed by the fire, but they improvised others. They were inveterate gamblers. Throughout the entire march these reckless fellows gambled at every halt. Money, jewelry, horses, clothing, and even Indian mistresses were staked in the games. With nothing now to beguile the tedium of the camp, they whiled away the days in gaming, while the demure commander sat alone in his tent doubtful as to what to do next. Heartened by the reports of the envoys, DeSoto finally almost resolved to push westward, but an unexpected dilemma arose for which he was least prepared. Idleness was demoralizing his men, and an unlooked-for trouble was in store for him, the news of which almost stunned him, when he learned it. Far severer and sorer than any yet encountered, it went to his heart like cold steel, when once it was realized.

MURMURING AND MUTINY

Nearly eight months now lie behind the expedition, and they had been months of almost superhuman endurance. Exposure to rain and cold, groping through tangled swamps, and wading or swimming numerous creeks and rivers, undergoing hunger, fatigue, and sickness, kept in constant anxiety, by day and by night, lest they be attacked by a stealthy foe, climbing high hills and mountains without the semblance of a road, or even a path, fighting frequently without any knowledge of the force opposed, utterly cut off from communication with home, or with the outside world, and utterly without any compensation for all endured--when were the trials of a body of men greater? Their ranks were now thinned, most of their luggage was gone, they were worn out by long marches, many of their comrades were sleeping in graves in a land of wilderness, and yet not a grain of the much-sought gold has been found. Many had staked their fortunes on the quest, and these young, blooded Castilians were now beginning to show signs of hostile restlessness.

DeSoto discovered all this, and he had so often cheered them with dazzling phantoms, while he had only poverty and distress to offer, that he knew not whither to turn in an extremity so dire. A difficulty now faced him that required greater courage than that needed to resist Indian arrows, for his men were quietly fomenting rebellion. They had learned from Indian visitors to the camp, that a fleet of Spanish ships, under Maldinado, was lying off the present location of Pensacola, awaiting the return of DeSoto. This was corroborated by other reports from the coast. This impelled a determination on the part of the men, to break away and seek the shores of the south. DeSoto would himself have turned southward at this juncture, but for his humiliating failure. The vision of his sumptuous home in distant Spain rose often before him, and in his dreams he had pictured a palace rivalling that of royalty, in consequence of his discovery of gold, but he was destined never to see that home again.

The worst at last came. His apprehensions were fully confirmed when he learned that under the leadership of some of his most trusted men, a conspiracy was hatching to leave him to his fate, and make their way southward, some proposing to sail home, others to join a new expedition to Peru. In order to satisfy himself fully, DeSoto quietly slid about the camp at night, and by a process of eavesdropping gain what he might. Among his men were some who had deserted Pizarro at a juncture, and DeSoto began to prepare for the worst. This was the severest trial of his eventful life. He had no means of knowing who were his friends, or indeed whether he had any. The crisis was extreme.

Turning the matter over in his mind, DeSoto finally resolved on a desperate course. He had been planning to found a Spanish settlement in this particular region, and had gone so far as to send an Indian agent to Ochus, where the plans of colonization were being arranged. Goaded to the extreme of desperation, he proposed to make a bold show of authority and force. It was now just a month since the battle, and all his men had so far recovered from their wounds that they were again able to take up the line of march. Reserving his plan to himself, on the morning of November 18, he suddenly issued an order to get ready to move at once. His men did not know what direction he would go, but to their astonishment, he turned northward. He accompanied his order with a threat to kill any man who undertook to disobey. This was quite unusual, indeed, nothing like it had before occurred, and it took the men quite off their guard. Before the troops could confer or consult, every man was in his saddle and strung out on the line of march. By this means DeSoto surprised the men instead of their surprising him. He was really without authority in a step so arbitrary. The expedition was entirely voluntary, but DeSoto saw that unless he could by a single stroke, shatter the rising revolt, he should be totally undone.

Giving up the idea of a colony, DeSoto moved toward the northwest, beyond the confines of the present County of Clarke, and through the territory of Marengo and Greene, as they now are, and, after five days, reached the Black Warrior River about where the village of Erie now is. Here he encountered resistance. The news of the disaster at Maubila had spread to the remotest settlements, arousing the Indians to vengeance, and at Erie, they appeared 1,500 strong, painted, and bearing clubs and bows. As though nothing was before them, the Spaniards moved steadily on, the Indians falling back, while they filled the air with their arrows. On reaching the river, the Indians in haste filled their waiting canoes and rowed rapidly across, and such as could not find place in the boats, plunged in and swam the stream. On the opposite side, the Indians met a large reinforcement that had gathered to dispute the passage of the river by DeSoto. The Spaniards began leisurely to fortify, giving but slight heed to the wild demonstrations on the opposite side, which the Indians observing, quietly dispersed and disappeared, save a number who were left to watch the object of the Spaniards.

Detailing a hundred men to cut timbers and construct rafts, DeSoto quietly rested till the arrangements were complete, when he began to cross with his force, giving no attention to the showers of arrows from the foe. Struck by his cool determination, the Indians fled precipitately.

No region before entered, had so impressed DeSoto, as this one. He was charmed by its natural grandeur. The late dry fall had enlivened the autumnal scenery, the grass was still green, which, together with the flaming foliage of the forests, lent magnificence to a wide scene. The soil was of a deep black, and the surface somewhat rolling, the billows of green and the delicious color of the engirdling woods, affording a view lovelier than any he had ever before witnessed. The troop was now passing through the upper part of Greene County, where it borders on Pickens.

Five days more brought the Spaniards to the bank of the Little Tombeckbe. The Spaniards were impressed by the fact that in proportion to the fertility of the country, was a sparseness of population, the explanation being that the Indian detests prairie mud, making his home on the uplands, and descending to the fertile plains only to replenish his store of meat. Again at the Little Tombeckbe, the Indians appeared in hostile array, and DeSoto, eager to avoid battle, sent a friendly Indian across the stream to negotiate terms of peace. Him they slew within sight of the Spaniards, and then strangely fled to the woods, and DeSoto crossed without further interruption. He was now on the eastern border of Mississippi, but the final act of the tragedy was yet to come.

THE CLOSING SCENE

Though we have followed the daring and dashing DeSoto to the western confines of the state, the story would be incomplete without a record of the closing scene of his career. His life was thrilling in incident, even to the end. Entering the territory which long afterward came to be called Mississippi, DeSoto found it the most fertile and prosperous of the regions yet visited. Thriving Indian towns abounded with evidence of the most advanced Indian civilization he had yet met.

Though delayed, winter at last set in with unusual severity, and DeSoto decided to spend the cold season in that quarter. He was eager for the good will of the inhabitants, and sought by every possible means to gain it. Foraging over the country, his men would return with supplies, and always with prisoners. These DeSoto would liberate with much show of kindness, and dismiss them with presents to their chief. This would surprise the prisoners, and more the chiefs themselves. This resulted in bringing to his camp the chief of the Chickasaw tribe, the fiercest and most warlike of all those on the continent, and notably the most advanced. This chief, not to be outdone by the kindness of the Spaniard, brought as a present, one hundred and fifty rabbits, besides four mantles of rich fur. Nor did he cease with a single visit, but came again and again and chatted with DeSoto with unrestrained familiarity around his camp fire. The Indian was studiously diplomatic, and after several visits, disclosed to DeSoto that he had a certain rebellious subject whom he wished the Spaniard to subdue for him. This task, the chief further disclosed, was one attended with such complications as to prevent his action in the matter, and yet if DeSoto would intervene with sternness, the chief would see to it that it would not be forgotten.

DeSoto sent his men against the rebellious subaltern, burned his village and forced him to sue for terms with the chief. On occasion, when the chief would spend a few hours with him, DeSoto would send him home on one of his finest horses, much to the delight of the savage. But a strain came in their relations when after the fight with the insubordinate Indian, those of the tribe who had accompanied DeSoto's men back to camp were served with savory and toothsome bits of pork. The Indians had never before tasted swine meat, and they were so delighted, that they showed their appreciation by several nightly visits to the pig pens, and by a stealthy appropriation of some of the choicest rooters. DeSoto was willing to divide, but protested against his pig sties becoming the prey of nightly marauders. His men lay in wait for the red rogues, who caught three, two of whom they killed, and in order to advertise a warning to future offenders, cut off the hands of the third at the wrist, and set him free. This was one exception to the rule working both ways. The Spaniards had never scrupled to steal from the Indian, or to take, by force, whatever might please them, but so soon as somebody's else ox was gored, the rule of roguish reciprocity ceased its operation. The standard of the Spaniard was, might makes right. An early spring came with its balminess, its singing birds, and first blossoms, and DeSoto was actuated to move onward, and yet he was reluctant to quit the ease of so many months. He was worn down by the strain to which he had so long been subjected. He sought to rally himself, but his gait had lost much of its elasticity, his eye was not so lustrous, and the stylus of care had marked deep crowfeet on his brow. Whatever there was of nobleness in him, was turned into a sense of sternness. Presuming that he knew the Indian character, he had lost much already, but he proved not to be an apt scholar in Indianology. He had courted the good will of the chief of Chickasaws, and had been requited by a return of civility, but the Spaniard really had a contempt for Indian character, and contempt always clouds justice, and when exercised, leads often to serious error.

Now that he was about to quit his encampment, DeSoto made a peremptory order on the Chickasaw chief for 200 of his ablest men to become his burden bearers. The Chickasaws were the proudest and most arrogant of the Indian tribes, and rather than be humbled, they preferred death. As allies, they were valuable, as foes, formidable.

On the receipt of the order from DeSoto, the gentleness of the lamb was turned into the wrath of the lion, but the Indian chief wisely curbed his spirit, and sent an evasive answer, not without a dignified phase of manliness, and an expression of remindfulness that DeSoto did himself slight credit by failing to understand the stuff, of which himself, the chief, was made. This was not the first time that DeSoto had encountered men in these western wilds who were wiser than he took himself to be. DeSoto saw too late that he had turned loose a storm which he might not be able to manage. Moscoso was summoned, told to be on his guard, and to get ready for the worst. DeSoto impressed him with the importance of the utmost vigilance, but Moscoso saw nothing in it all, and continued lax.