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Cite this Record
New World Discovery Archaeology Colloquium. Fred A. White. 2012 (tDAR ID: 391046) ; doi:10.6067/XCV8MP5446
http://core.tdar.org/document/391046
https://www.academia.edu/5430751/
New World Discovery Archaeology Colloquium
July 5th – July 12th 2012 with update interviews from February 7th 2013
Leading anthropologists discuss the Hernando De Soto expedition and America’s first Spanish missions. In 2012 and 2013 archaeologist Dr. Ashley White arranged a colloquium panel of academic scholars to be interviewed and filmed on location in Florida, Georgia, New York and New Jersey by the Halifax Media Group about the recent discoveries at the MR03538 archaeological site in Florida. The following discussions have been adjusted for length and hypertext links are provided for the entire archived conversations and videos.
Interview participants included:
Dr. Charles M. Hudson, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and History, University of Georgia
Dr. Jerald T. Milanich, Curator Emeritus in Archaeology of the Florida Museum of Natural History
Dr. Michele C. White, Bioarchaeologist, 1539 De Soto Project Site, Florida
Dr. Alan M. Stahl, Curator of Numismatics, Princeton University
Dr. Gifford Waters, Historical Archaeology Collections Manager of the Florida Museum of Natural History
Dr. John Worth, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of West Florida
Carl Halbirt, M.A., M.P.A., City Archaeologist, St. Augustine, Florida
Dr. Daniel Seinfeld, Archaeologist with the Florida Department of State Bureau of Archaeological Research
Dr. F. Ashley White, Director of the Florida Archaeological Survey
Ethan A. White, Trinity History Honors, De Soto Field School
Colloquium discussions based on the following Florida Department of State Division of Historical Resources Master Site File Reports:
2010 The Richardson Site 8AL100 and its association with the discoveries at the White / De Soto Site MR03538, the town of Potano and the mission of San Buenaventura. Tallahassee, FL: Florida Department of State, Bureau of Archaeological Research, Master Site File MR03538. http://core.tdar.org/document/391272
2010 Hernando De Soto Archaeology and Artifacts. Tallahassee, FL: Florida Department of State, Bureau of Archaeological Research, Master Site File MR03538. http://core.tdar.org/document/391004
2010 Artifacts from the 1580 Apula Visita and the 1607 San Buenaventura De Potano Mission. Tallahassee, FL: Florida Department of State, Bureau of Archaeological Research, Master Site File MR03538.
2010 Artifacts from the 1539 Hernando De Soto Potano Encampment. Tallahassee, FL: Florida Department of State, Bureau of Archaeological Research, Master Site File MR03538.
Findings of Fact:
1. The metadata survey we began in 2005 and published in 2010 reported the location of the San Buenaventura de Potano mission foundation at the 17th century Potano village Richardson site.
2. In 2005 we discovered a 16th century Potano village on the same wetlands associated with Orange Lake that is older than the Richardson site.
3. We excavated a primitive Franciscan mission / ranch structure within the 16th century Potano village dating from the 1580s and unearthed the largest cache of medieval coins ever found in the Americas.
4. Along the same wetlands between the 16th century Potano village and the 17th century Richardson village, We discovered the location of a conquistador army encampment with European artifacts confirmed through X-Ray Florescence Analysis that are in the early 1500s date range of the Narváez and De Soto entradas.
Series Part One
July 7th 2012
Interviews by Fred Heirs of Halifax Media with Dr. Jerald Milanich, Dr. Gifford Waters and Dr. Ashley White.
Hernando De Soto's route through Florida is as elusive to modern archaeologists as the gold the famed Spanish explorer sought throughout the southeastern United States.
Ever since De Soto's 600 men set foot on the shores of Tampa Bay, arriving from Cuba almost 500 years ago, historians have debated the exact direction of his failed treasure-hunting expeditions as far north as Tennessee and North Carolina.
But in north Marion County, an archaeologist has found what his contemporaries deem rarer than the gold De Soto was seeking — physical evidence of the explorer's precise journey through Marion County and enough information to redraw Florida De Soto maps and fuel many more archaeological digs based on his findings.
"It gets rid of the guesswork now on the route through Marion County," said Dr. Ashley White, the archaeologist who found the site. "Now, we know for sure he came up through the Black Sink Prairie to Orange Lake and looped around through Micanopy."
From the De Soto site, which sits on the one-time Indian town known as Potano, De Soto eventually marched to Utinamocharra in present-day Gainesville and later to Tallahassee for the winter.
Archaeologists who study Spain's settlement of Florida and De Soto's exploration into the southeastern United States, regard White's find as priceless and have little doubt as to the site's authenticity.
"I looked at the archaeological evidence. There is absolutely no doubt that is a De Soto contact site, and I am 99.99 percent sure this is the town of Potano, the major Indian town," said Dr. Jerald Milanich, the author of multiple books about De Soto's expedition and curator emeritus in archaeology of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.
"Until now, we really had no one location until all the way up to Tallahassee. Now we have a midway place."
Historians before White had dug thousands of pits into Florida's backwoods and sifted tons of dirt in hopes of finding artifacts linked to the explorer, without success. The only confirmed De Soto site in Florida is in Tallahassee, where De Soto's men wintered for five months.
"There is a lot of drainage (on the ranch) ... and all this sand broke loose and we had artifacts just lying on top of the ground," Ashley White said.
One was a coin minted before De Soto's 1539 expedition. It was in a clump of pines near Black Sink Prairie.
At the time, however, White's attention was riveted on the remains of a 16th century structure he discovered a couple of hundred yards away.
That structure turned out to be the mission of San Buenaventura de Potano, which was established some years after De Soto came through. There, White's team found copper coins of the era and brown streaks from what remained of the posts that anchored the church. It was enough to make him put the other site on the back burner.
White didn't know it at the time, but the first site was what other historians had been looking for: physical evidence of De Soto's exploration.
Meanwhile, the second site yielded its own archaeological treasure trove — about 100 medieval coins, the largest cache from that era in North America.
"Still, the original thought was that it was a Spanish ranch outpost, and that was our hypothesis for probably two years of the work here," White said. "(The De Soto) trail, it's not the first thing on your mind in Central Florida archaeology."
White's hypothesis began to change as he examined the scant remains of the building and nearby artifacts and realized they shared similar architectural characteristics with other Florida mission buildings along Indian trails. Among those artifacts were colorful, handmade glass beads from the late 16th century, coins, pieces of pottery and nails.
Dr. Gifford Waters, historical archaeology collections manager of the Florida Museum of Natural History and an expert on Spanish missions, said finding the mission remains so close to the De Soto site reinforces the legitimacy of White's discovery.
Missionaries would have used De Soto's records to establish their churches along Indian trails and towns, Waters said.
"This (the De Soto site) is an extremely important site, historically and archaeologically," he said.
When White returned to his first site, where he found the oldest coin, he found two more coins. Both were minted before De Soto's Florida exploration began and were much older than those at the mission site. He also found glass beads, made near present-day Venice, Italy, that were more complex and older than those found at the mission site.
Then White found a few links of iron chain mail from Spain, with designs De Soto's men would have worn over their garments to protect them from Indian spears and arrows. The way the chain mail was linked predated the mission.
He also unearthed a pig jaw, unique to the domesticated herd of European animals De Soto brought to help feed his men.
There had been other Spanish explorers, such as Panfilo de Narvaez, but they had not brought Old World pigs, nor had they traveled as far inland.
Other archaeologists such as Milanich say the collection of artifacts represented a town on the move.
In their book, Dr. Milanich and archaeologist Dr. Charles Hudson had laid historical groundwork for the De Soto site more than 20 years ago. They attempted to map De Soto's trail based on written records and artifacts. Hudson is a professor of anthropology and history emeritus at the University of Georgia and author of many books on the history and culture of the Indians of the Southeast.
Those written records, which include at least three accounts written at the time by men who traveled with De Soto, put the explorer at the White site beginning on Aug. 11, 1539, and for the next three weeks.
Thousands of Potano Indians lived in the town and along lakes and rivers up into present-day Alachua County. The Potano Indians were a subset of the Timucua Indians who called North Central Florida home.
Milanich based some of his theories about De Soto's routes on Indian trails, many of which became modern highways and railroads.
"And we knew the trails led to Indian towns and knew De Soto in 1539 traveled on the Indian trails to get food and looking for wealth," Milanich said.
But the written records of those who traveled with De Soto were difficult to decipher. Geographical locations recorded hundreds of years ago using only descriptions of marshes, rivers and wetlands left many archaeologists like Milanich uncertain.
"As an archaeologist, I'd like to tell you we know everything, but we don't. We just have bits and scraps of information," he said.
Like bread crumbs marking a trail, archaeologists have to depend on things explorers left behind, such as the beads and coins.
"Like other Spanish explorers, the De Soto expedition brought trade goods they could give to the Indians to get them to be their friends, to pay them off, to provide bearers to carry their supplies, to get food and even get women, to get consorts," Milanich said.
It was that search for food that drove De Soto to White's location in 1539.
"Food was always a problem. If you're not eating, forget it," Milanich said. "And it was a huge operation going through central Marion County."
Unsure when winter would begin in Florida, De Soto was looking for a town to occupy with enough food to feed his troops.
Potano likely had a central communal wooden building, a plaza, a chief's home and several huts where other Indians lived.
But De Soto and the Indians didn't always coexist peacefully.
The Spaniard plundered towns that didn't cooperate and killed Indians who refused to help, often in a spectacle that served as a warning to other Indians.
The Europeans also exposed the indigenous people to diseases against which they had no immunity. Thirty years later, when the French met the Potano, the population had plummeted from as many as 30,000 to about 3,000 people.
Most of the Indians were happy to see De Soto leave, urging him on with tales of gold to the north, Milanich said. As soon as a route was staked out, De Soto sent word to his men scattered in a long trail behind him to follow.
In 1539, the Indians rebelled against De Soto's brutality and the diseases his expedition spread. They killed De Soto's men when they could get away with it as the Spaniards marched north. Captured Indian guides made the exploration as difficult as possible, sending the Spaniards wandering aimlessly in the hot, humid Florida summer.
De Soto finally marched to Tallahassee and wintered there into 1540.
"De Soto makes it all the way into Arkansas and they spend the next year running around looking for gold. There is none. There is no wealth," Milanich said.
"He had invested his fortune, his reputation and that of his family and his relatives and everything else. So he must have felt he couldn't get out at the time. He couldn't give up," Milanich said.
De Soto died in 1542 on the banks of the Mississippi and was interred in those waters.
Sixty-four years after his death, the Spanish built the mission of San Buenaventura de Potano just across a creek from White's De Soto site.
"The discovery of the (Potano) site is really a beginning, not an end," Milanich said. "The start of a lot more research, of learning about the area. It helps us to understand what things were like on a summer day in 1539, and I'm sure it's very exciting for people to realize that they had a very important bit of history right in their own backyard."
Series Part Two
July 8th 2012
Interviews by Fred Heirs of Halifax Media with Dr. Jerald Milanich, Dr. Alan Stahl and Carl Halbirt.
Archaeologist Ashley White is following historical bread crumbs left behind nearly 500 years ago.
The trail leads to a site where, in the summer of 1539, Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto and hundreds of his men camped midway between present-day Ocala and Gainesville, archaeologists now believe.
There is only one other confirmed De Soto encampment in Florida, a site in Tallahassee that later became home to former Florida Gov. John Martin and today is a five-acre state park.
The process of authenticating a historically significant find can be as time-consuming and painstaking as unearthing and cleaning the brittle artifacts buried in the earth.
In this case, it required the help of other archaeologists, historians and experts on Spanish culture in identifying and dating artifacts from the De Soto encampment and a nearby Spanish mission that was founded more than 60 years after De Soto.
In some cases, authenticating artifacts was as simple as showing a photograph to an expert hundreds or thousands of miles away. In others, researchers had to rely on X-ray florescence dating technology to determine if items such as chain mail came from De Soto's time and ground penetrating radar to certify the location of post holes in the mission's church.
The artifacts include coins minted before De Soto's expedition, multi-layered glass beads crafted in Italy during the early 16th century, bits of chain mail armor used by the Spaniard's men to try to protect themselves against Indians, and a mandible and teeth from a pig bred in Spain during the time De Soto set sail for the New World.
For Dr. Alan Stahl, curator of numismatics at Princeton University, coins found at archaeological sites are as good as calendars, and three of the many coins White found point to De Soto. They were minted far earlier than coins associated with the Spanish mission period and were found some distance from the mission site, along with other De Soto-era artifacts.
“It was pretty clear what was what,” Stahl said. “Coins are the one aspect of the government of the state that every individual would have come in contact with. Very few people would have met the king, but most people, even in the Middle Ages, had coins with the king's name and image.”
Stahl said coins during De Soto's time stayed in circulation far longer than modern coins. Most rulers didn't mint new copper coins for decades because it cost more to make them than they were worth.
Stahl said he would expect copper coins, rather than gold or silver, to be found at an archaeological site.
“If you had a gold coin and you dropped it, chances are you would pick it up. You would go back and dig it up even if you dropped it in a latrine,” Stahl said.
Copper coins blended with the color of soil and weren't as easily found, or worth looking for.
Stahl said coins were hauled along in expeditions because soldiers and workmen had to be paid.
Jerald Milanich is a De Soto expert, curator emeritus in archaeology of the Florida Museum of Natural History and author of books about De Soto and the Florida Indians.
For Indians, the currency was glass, not coins, and some of the beads White found matched those De Soto would have given to Indians, Milanich said.
Two dozen layered glass beads and seven Nueva Cadiz beads from the early 16th century were found at the De Soto location.
“Imagine if you'd never seen a piece of glass. It was really a valued thing. So the Indians were really taken in by the beads and the colors — red, white and blue were important to them and their cosmology and their belief system,” Milanich said.
The red, white and blue chevron beads were taken to Italy for authentication and were found to be consistent with those made in Murano, near present-day Venice.
Beads are not rare at prehistoric Indian sites, but glass beads were rare because the Indians had not yet acquired the skill to produce them, said Carl Halbirt, archaeologist for the city of St. Augustine.
Likely given to Indian chiefs, the glass beads were a symbol of power and probably didn't make their way to other Indians.
“The one (analogy) that comes readily to mind is the word ‘bling.' It's something shiny and easily recognizable,” Halbirt said. “It's something people would say, ‘Ah, there's a person of power and authority who has some clout.'
“Maybe to them it was gold because it was something different they had never seen before,” he said.
Milanich said the pig bone was significant because it was the same animal artifact found at the De Soto site in Tallahassee.
“De Soto's expedition traveled with a drove of pigs — pork on the hoof,” Milanich said.
Pictures of the chain mail were sent to several museums, including the Museo Arqueológico Nacional Madrid and the L'Hôtel national des Invalides in Paris, and the samples were compared to chain mail stored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Historians were able to date the chain mail found at White's site to between 1490 and the 1530s. The chain mail was subjected to X-ray fluorescence testing, which dated the iron elements to the 15th century.
Milanich said the accumulation of artifacts White found is what would be expected at a De Soto site and a later mission site.
“Like other Spanish explorers, the De Soto expedition brought trade goods, things they could give the Indians to get them to be their friends, to pay them off, to provide bearers to carry supplies, to get food and to get consorts,” Milanich said.
“When De Soto arrived, (at the Indian village) the Indians would have been cleaning hides ... making pottery ... carrying on with their lives. All that would change when De Soto shows up.”
Series Part Three
July 8th 2012
Interviews by Fred Heirs of Halifax Media with Dr. Ashley White, Dr. Alan Stahl and Carl Halbirt.
Not all of the holes dug at the Spanish mission and Hernando De Soto sites were put there by archaeologist Ashley White.
Five years after White found the two sites, looters began their own stealthy excavations in search of historic treasures.
“The artifacts, individually, are not very valuable monetarily, but historically they have tremendous value,” White said.
But treasure hunters aren't easy to deter. To keep the looters away from the real treasures, White had to come up with an elaborate ruse.
White created a phony archaeological dig on a distant part of the property near Orange Lake, complete with orange markers, wooden grids and strings methodically placed to give the illusion that important work was taking place there.
To make sure looters would take the bait, White constructed the faux dig in plain sight close to a nearby road. He didn't even care that the treasure hunters would probably find a few historic artifacts there.
“Most likely they'd find Native Indian pottery, arrowheads and things like that,” he said.
What motivates looters is as difficult to decipher as some of the artifacts White finds.
“I don't know if people have a personal passion or they just want to sell the items on eBay, or both,” White said.
It wasn't the first time looters zeroed in on the property.
Local residents told White that long before he excavated the 700-acre tract, a group of strangers descended on the site and set up what appeared to be a sanctioned archaeological dig.
It was 1979, and White said residents were under the impression that the strangers were from the University of Florida.
“The people (who saw the dig) described in detail that they set up many tents and were there for the summer and part of the fall,” White recalled.
UF, however, has no records of conducting an archaeological dig there.
The treasure hunters dug up a burial mound on the property and set up long tables of artifacts that included human bones. They brought in a tractor and large screen shaker to sift and sort findings from the dirt.
What the group found is not clear. What they did not find is clear: They did not find the artifacts that prove Hernando De Soto camped there in 1539 on his expedition through the current-day Southeast or the nearby Spanish mission site of San Buenaventura de Potano.
Looting is as old as archaeology itself.
A recent survey of archaeologists revealed that about 79 percent reported looting of their sites worldwide. And 24 percent said they have chanced upon looting in progress at their digs.
For a site like White's, looting wouldn't be very profitable.
Alan Stahl, curator of numismatics at Princeton University, who examined the coins found at White's mission and De Soto sites, said Spanish copper coins of that era are worth only about $10 to $20.
In Florida, penalties for digging for artifacts on state land can range between five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Federal penalties can reach five years in prison and a $100,000 fine. Penalties for digging on private land, however, are far less severe unless human remains are involved.
But looters can create havoc on a significant site, White said.
“Looting disturbs the time line and the answers we're looking for. If you have a site and someone goes in the (excavation area), they disturb the context (of the artifacts in relationship to one another),” White said.
The context can be as important as the artifacts themselves. Where artifacts are found, and in relationship to other artifacts, indicates if they come from the same period. Disturbing that context by removing artifacts or moving them distorts the historical record.
“Maybe they pull an item out of context that would give you the answer. Maybe they disturb it so bad they put an item in the wrong context,” he said.
Carl Halbirt, the city of St. Augustine's archaeologist, said when looters take something from a site, society loses.
“They're part of the heritage of the country. If you dig that site for your own personal gain, what you're doing is robbing the country of its heritage,” he said.
Series Part Four
July 9th 2012
Interviews by Susan Latham Carr of Halifax Media with Dr. John Worth, Dr. Charles Hudson, Dr. Gifford Waters, Dr. Ashley White and Dr. Jerald Milanich.
In a sandy, overgrown expanse of countryside midway between Ocala and Gainesville lie clues to the early exploration and colonization of the New World.
Not far from where a team of archaeologists found evidence of Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's encampment, they also discovered beads, pottery and other artifacts from a later period that historians believe confirm the site of the lost Mission San Buenaventura de Potano near Orange Lake.
Buenaventura was one of four Spanish missions built among the Potano Indians in Marion and Alachua counties in the early 17th century. Post holes found there are believed to be from the mission's church.
"The one we found was completely lost from history," said Dr. Ashley White, an archaeologist, pathologist and member of the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America. "It was exciting to confirm that."
Historical documents support White's hypothesis that Apula, an earlier "visita," or mission without a resident priest, had been established in the town of Potano, the site at Orange Lake. It was destroyed in 1584, and Buenaventura was built on that site.
The first Spanish settlement in Florida was founded in 1565 at San Augustine, which is present-day St. Augustine. Then, Franciscan priests began establishing other missions in hopes of converting the native people to Catholicism.
The Florida mission period continued from 1587 to 1706 and ended when the English began raiding Florida.
But these missions served another purpose for the Spanish Royal Crown, which funded them. The mission Indians were used as forced labor to help grow food to feed the St. Augustine colony.
"Their interest in the missions was mostly about financing a labor pool," said John Worth, associate professor of anthropology at the University of West Florida.
Worth said four missions were established among the Potano Indians in Alachua and Marion counties between 1606 and 1608,
According to Worth's book, "The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida," Fr. Martin Prieto established three of them in 1606 in Gainesville's Fox Pond area. The first was in the principal town of San Francisco de Potano with a population of 400. Prieto then established Santa Ana de Potano, with a population of 400, followed by San Miguel, with a population of 200.
A fourth mission, dedicated to San Buenaventura, was established by another friar, Fray Pareja, in 1607 or early 1608. Buenaventura had a population of 200.
Gifford Waters, historical archaeology collections manager of the Florida Museum of Natural History, was involved in 2006 in the excavation of the San Francisco de Potano site in Gainesville. San Francisco was a "doctrina," which is a regional mission with a resident friar, he said.
"The documents say they would do daily masses," Waters said. "They would head out from the doctrina where the friar resided and say mass in the various visitas in the area."
San Buenaventura, Santa Ana and San Miguel were considered visitas.
Jerald T. Milanich, curator emeritus in archaeology of the Florida Museum of Natural History, describes the people who spoke Timucua as living roughly in the top one-third of the Florida peninsula, north into Georgia, and roughly northwest of Orlando to the south.
The Apalachee Indians' province was west of the Aucilla River. The Timucuan comprised about 25 to 30 individual chiefdoms.
In 1601, a Potano chief, who was 15 or 16 years old, went to St. Augustine to ask Spanish Governor Mendez de Canco to resettle the town of Potano, near Orange Lake. Potano had been burned in a raid in 1584.
"Buenaventura was later established there," Worth said.
Worth said the Potano were accepting of the mission system until the Timucuan rebellion of 1656, when the natives tired of being used as labor.
"They seemed to be fairly invested in the Spanish mission system," he said. "The only people who complained were the native religious practitioners. They had rivalries with the priests, but that didn't last long because the chief was in control."
Having a mission brought status to the chief. That relationship not only brought gifts such as cloth and beads to the chief but also Spanish protection against unfriendly interlopers.
Waters, of UF, said the Indians were probably aware of the politics of the day, with the British to the north making advances into Spanish-held Florida.
"The native Americans were not passive participants in what was going on," Waters said. "They were trying to make alliances that would benefit them."
But those benefits came at a price.
The Native Americans would have been required to provide food for the friar and also send food to the St. Augustine mission, Waters said.
Young, unattached males would be sent to St. Augustine from about January or February to June to farm, and then they would return to the mission. Because the mission's population was so small, it is likely only five, and perhaps fewer, men would be sent to St. Augustine, Worth said.
"The chief would pick out which men would go," Worth said. "They were paid for their work. They were not slaves."
However, taking those young men left very few marriage partners for the women, which caused the Timucuan population to dwindle, Worth said.
The Potano missions were similar in makeup, but on a much smaller scale, to Mission San Luis de Apalachee, an important Apalachee mission established in 1656 in Tallahassee,
Charles M. Hudson, emeritus professor of anthropology and history at the University of Georgia, said the Potano were a small, rural, independent group of hunters and gatherers, unlike the Apalachee people, who had a more advanced military command structure.
Unlike the Potano missions, Spaniards lived at San Luis, which was considered the western capital of the Spanish missions and second only to St. Augustine in importance. Today, there is an exact, reconstructed mission built on the original site of Mission San Luis, where visitors can see artifacts that were excavated at the site, experience life at a Spanish mission and learn about the fate of the Apalachee people.
The reconstructed church at San Luis is a rectangular structure made of wattle and daub with a peaked, thatched roof. It is 110 feet by 50 feet, much larger than the one at San Buenaventura, which was 63 feet by 36 feet.
"There was one center aisle," Kent Peacock, a guide at Mission San Luis, said about the church there. "The aisle divided the congregation between male and females."
There were no pews. The Spanish stood in the front; the Apalachee stood in the rear.
White said the post holes found at Buenaventura indicate the structure also was an "aisle" church.
The custom at the missions was to bury people beneath the church floor, with more important people buried closer to the altar, about a foot deep.
Worth said there would have been a "convento," or friary, at Buenaventura that would be the home to the visiting priest. There would have been an indoor kitchen as well.
And like the Apalachee at San Luis, the Potano Indians would have had a council house. The main mission structures would have surrounded a plaza.
"We have clear evidence and documents that each village had a council house," Worth said. "That's where important decisions were made."
The council house was also a place where dances were held and visitors would sleep.
"The chief probably would have had his own house near the plaza," Worth said.
The plaza was a place where the Indians would have held violent, sometimes deadly, ball games. The winners would rise in stature.
"That's one of the things the priest tried to get rid of," Worth said about the games.
But ultimately, the ball games were allowed to exist. "It was a pressure valve, instead of going to war," Worth said.
Daily life at Buenaventura would have focused on the seasons of agriculture.
"Every family had their own plot," Worth said. "They farmed mostly beans, and corn and squash. For the Potano, particularly those living on Orange Lake, they supplemented their diets with any kind of wild food, acorns, wild grapes, wild cherries."
They also would have eaten palmetto berries and fish. Women would have taken care of the domestic chores.
During the winter, men would have worn deerskin or cloth woven from mulberry. During the mission period, the Potano were encouraged to wear Spanish-style clothing, with its ideas of modesty, made of linen or cheap cloth. And the men were expected to cut their hair.
But the mission system eventually came to an end.
There was a massive population collapse of the Apalachee and Timucuan Indians — about 95 percent — between 1600 and 1680.
"It was not just disease, but that was a major factor," Worth said. "Indians were exposed to diseases from the moment they interacted with the Spanish. It's almost a shock-wave effect."
The young men sent to work in St. Augustine also were overworked and undernourished, and they were attacked by wolves on their way back to their home missions. Some of the native people simply fled. Others died during raids
"We're looking at extinction," Worth said. "It's total extinction of a culture."
The original population was about 150,000, Worth said. "By 1681, 6,550 people lived in the missions," he said.
The missions themselves, under increasing attacks from the British and the Creek Indians to the north, were abandoned in 1706.
Series Part Five
July 9th 2012
Interviews by Susan Latham Carr of Halifax Media with Dr. Charles Hudson, Dr. Ashley White, Dr. Jerald Milanich, and Dr. Daniel Seinfeld.
Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto was an accomplished horseman and lancer and a fearless adventurer. His passion for conquest and his desire for gold fueled his 16th century expeditions in Central and South America and, ultimately, what is now the southeastern United States.
De Soto was the first European to pass this way. He spent three years and his own money battling the aboriginal people as he trekked 4,000 miles through what is today Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas.
"He was ambitious. He wanted social standing. He had been very successful in his life up to the point of this expedition, and he was trying to become more," said Charles Hudson, professor emeritus at the University of Georgia. "That was his flaw, and that's what did him in."
For years, De Soto's expedition through Florida and the American Southeast remained a mystery to historians. But in the 1990s, Hudson and Jerald Milanich, curator emeritus in archaeology at the University of Florida and the Florida Museum of Natural History, reconstructed the route.
Based on their earlier work, and a recent archaeological find of coins, beads, pig bones and chain mail from that era, a site in north Marion County near Orange Lake has been identified as a De Soto camp and places the conquistador at that location on Aug. 12, 1539.
Professional archaeologist and pathologist Dr. Ashley White, who sits on the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America, and a team of other archaeologists and scholars have confirmed that finding.
De Soto is believed by many historians to have been born around 1500 to parents who were minor nobles of modest means in Extremadura, an impoverished area in southwest Spain.
"He was poor," Hudson said. "A lot of conquistadors came from there. It was a very poor, hard-scrabble land he came from, so he was highly motivated and was used to a rough life."
Little is known about his early years or his family, although it is believed his family fought the Moors during the reconquista, a period in the eighth century when Christian states tried to recapture the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims. According to Hudson's book, "Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun," on Feb. 25, 1514, at roughly the age of 14, De Soto joined an expedition to Panama led by Pedro Arias de Avila, commonly referred to as Pedrarias. De Soto reportedly brought with him only his sword and shield.
The young De Soto became skilled at attacking and taking food and gold from Indians, often using brutal tactics. He also amassed wealth from slave trading. Under Pedrarias, De Soto made a fortune during the conquest of Panama and Nicaragua and, by about 1530, he was one of the six wealthiest men in Nicaragua.
Then in 1531, while the Incas were embroiled in a civil war, he joined Francisco Pizarro's conquest of Peru. When the riches from that conquest were divided, De Soto received the third-largest share. Even so, he added to his wealth by looting all of the gold and silver he could find.
"He was in the business of conquering New World people from the time he was a teenager," Hudson said. "It's kind of astounding he was not killed."
Hudson said no one really knows what De Soto looked like in appearance, although there are speculative drawings. He said De Soto was literate and certainly was educated in warfare.
"He was not afraid of anything," Hudson said. "There was no formal military. They were really entrepreneurs and adventurers."
Hudson said De Soto could be cruel and was known to torture and kill Indians who deceived him.
"That was not unusual in Europe," Hudson said.
De Soto's ambitions grew with his riches. He wanted to achieve the status of Pizarro and explorer Hernan Cortes, who had conquered the Aztecs and portions of Mexico.
He returned to Spain in 1536, where he married Pedrarias' daughter, Isabel de Bobadilla.
A year later, Emperor Charles V named De Soto governor of Cuba and gave him permission to conquer La Florida, now the Southeast United States. He left Spain in April 1538 and arrived the following month in Cuba, where he began making his final arrangements for the expedition. Because he had found gold on his earlier expeditions, he believed he would find more during this expedition.
On Sunday, May 18, 1539, De Soto left Havana Harbor with nine ships, about 600 people, more than 200 horses and a supply of dogs and pigs. He reached Tampa Bay on May 26.
When the explorers unloaded in the Bradenton area, there was a confrontation with Indians. Historians believe De Soto established his first camp at the Village of Uzita, where he captured Indians as guides.
"Each and every day the arrows rained down on these guys," White said.
During June and July, De Soto made his way north. Along the way, he battled Indians and took many captive as guides to locate food and riches and to work as slaves to carry the Spaniards' gear.
By July 24, the expedition reached what is now Floral City in Citrus County. The explorers didn't linger long, however. They pushed on in search of riches, which their Indian guides told them lay ahead in Ocale.
"They initially thought they would get to Ocale and find plenty of food, and they didn't," Hudson said. "The problem was getting reliable information. These Indians were not widely traveled."
Hudson said De Soto used torture to extract information.
The Indians in Ocale used brutal tactics of their own. After several of De Soto's men were killed and buried, the Indians dug the bodies up at night, cut them into little pieces and hung them from the trees. When De Soto's men awoke in the morning, the birds were eating the Spaniards' body parts in the trees.
On July 26, De Soto entered the Swamp of Ocale, a cove of the Withlacoochee River, in an area that was extremely difficult to cross.
"They were up to their necks in water with Indians shooting at them from canoes," Hudson said.
Suspecting the Indians had tricked them into taking this treacherous route, De Soto threw four Indians to the dogs, which tore them apart.
The principal villages of Ocale were on the east side of the Withlacoochee River.
According to Hudson's studies, De Soto reached Itarholata, believed to be present-day Ocala, on Aug. 11. The next day, he was in Potano, near Orange Lake.
On Aug. 13, De Soto reached Utinamocharra in present-day Gainesville, but much of his army remained in Potano until Aug. 22,
From October 1539 to March 1540, De Soto stayed at his winter camp in Anhayca, in present-day Tallahassee, where the Apalachee Indians had larger stores of food than other tribes.
Daniel Seinfeld, archaeologist with the Florida Department of State Bureau of Archaeological Research, said it was a dangerous time for De Soto to be in Tallahassee. He said the Apalachee Indians were great archers and waged guerilla warfare against the Spaniards.
"He lost a number of men here," Seinfeld said. "Even gathering firewood, he would be attacked."
In the spring, De Soto headed for what is now Georgia and beyond.
In Mabila near current-day Mobile, Ala., De Soto's men were embroiled in a fierce battle with the Indians. Hundreds of Indians were killed.
"The Indians got together and decided we are going to do these guys in," Hudson said. "They found they were unequal to the Spanish military techniques."
As the expedition wore on, the explorers failed to find treasure, and some of them died. Morale began to flag.
Hudson said the people on the expedition had invested their money in hopes of finding more riches and were becoming frustrated.
Then De Soto took ill with a fever. Sensing he was nearing death, he appointed Luis de Moscoso as captain general. De Soto died May 21, 1542, in modern-day Arkansas, and his body was submerged in the Mississippi River.
Moscoso led the failed expedition through Texas and Louisiana to its completion in Mexico in 1543, with about 311 survivors.
"It would have been considered a failure in every definition," Hudson said about De Soto's expedition. "They didn't even end up with a sense of how big North America was. They couldn't find portable wealth."
Ultimately, it was De Soto's failure to find riches for Spain and his failure to settle colonies along the way that separated him from Pizarro, Cortes and Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who founded St. Augustine in 1565.
But De Soto's expedition did pay some dividends long-term, historians say.
"Only in that it let them know they were not going to find a big, rich society up there that they could plunder," Hudson said. "Spain really didn't attempt to go up that way again."
The English and French did, though, because they were interested in land and natural resources.
"On the other hand," said Milanich, "the expedition, through word of mouth and through the written accounts of a few of the participants, resulted in a lot of information about the Southeast, including Florida. Later, Spanish and other Europeans profited from that intelligence."
Series Part Six
July 9th 2012
Video Interviews by Fred Heirs and Doug Engle of Halifax Media Video with Dr. Jerald Milanich, Dr. Michele White, Dr. Ashley White, Dr. Alan Stahl, and Ethan A. White.
Closing remarks on video interview by Dr. Jerald Milanich, “The site that Ashley White has found seems certainly 100 percent I’d say to be the main town of Potano that De Soto had been at, and also the location of the later mission of San Buenaventura de Potano.”
Part Six archive links for entire video interviews:
Past Horizons Television
http://www.pasthorizons.tv/discovery-of-conquistador-hernando-de-sotos-1539-encampment/
Archaeology Newswire
http://www.youtube.com/user/ArchaeologyNewswire?feature=watch
The Florida Archaeological Survey
https://sites.google.com/site/archaeologicalsite/home
The Archaeology Channel
http://archaeologychannel.org/news-from-tac/video-news-from-tac/1286-video-news-from-tac-may-2013
Series Part Seven
February 7th 2013
Museum Exhibition Interviews by Fred Heirs of Halifax Media with Dr. Ashley White et al.
The artifacts archeologist Dr. Ashley White found near the Black Sink Prairie near of Citra shed light on the infamous Hernando De Soto expedition through Florida and were readied for a September 2012 exhibition at the Appleton Museum of Art.
The excavation site is one of only two in Florida authenticated to show De Soto's route north in search of gold in 1539. He and his entourage encamped at the Potano Indian village in Marion County before marching to Utinamocharra in present-day Gainesville and later to Tallahassee where they spent the winter of 1540.
What the exhibit would not have included had it debuted as scheduled, White said, was the 9,000-year history of the aboriginal people at the De Soto site and a later Catholic mission site.
The museum will now host a larger, more comprehensive exhibit, which opens Saturday.
“New World Treasures: Artifacts from Hernando De Soto's Florida Expedition,” will include aboriginal artifacts from the site as well as artifacts placing De Soto and the 600 men under his command in Marion County.
“Postponing the September show was worth it to include the cultures before the Europeans arrived at the site,” White said. “I just thought it was more important. It needed to be De Soto and the mission and the people that were here before the Europeans.”
The postponement gave White time to more fully prepare and catalog the aboriginal artifacts he had already found and keep looking for more on the 700-acre property.
The additional time also gave him an opportunity to hire a historical recovery team that used electromagnetic and metal detection equipment to find more De Soto artifacts, painting an even more vivid picture of the expedition.
The new finds include a half-dozen harquebus (rifle) lead bullets, two iron crossbow arrow points designed to go through armor, coins and glass beads.
Finding the arrow points and the bullets from the same group of men was significant, White said.
“What made it exciting was that it was a transition from the use of the crossbow to firearms,” he said.
“Working in a peat bog is extremely difficult, but then you hit an oxygen-free zone (in the earth),” he said. “And we found a crossbow point, but we didn't know what it was, it was so encrusted we thought it might be a railroad spike.”
The harquebus was considered a matchlock firearm and was used during the 15th and 16th centuries.
Areas underground with low oxygen levels typically result in artifacts being better preserved. Once the arrow points were cleaned, they were a match to those used during prior Spanish explorations, White said.
The lead balls were disfigured and within feet of where the arrow points were discovered in a marshy peat bog close to where White made his first De Soto discoveries. That site also is close to where the Spaniards built the mission of San Buenaventura de Potano some years after De Soto passed through.
White said he didn't know why the lead balls were disfigured, but early in the expedition they could have been used during target practice or for shooting at the Indians who routinely attacked De Soto and his men.
White previously had found pieces of iron chain mail, coins, a variety of beads used for trade with local Indians and the lower jaw bone of a pig that was linked to the De Soto expedition. There had been other Spanish explorers, such as Panfilo de Narvaez, but they had not brought Old World pigs, nor had they traveled as far inland.
The additional De Soto artifacts are consistent with White's theory that the explorer's trek went through the Black Sink Prairie to Orange Lake and looped north through Micanopy.
Postponing the museum show also resulted in an additional treasure trove of aboriginal pottery and stone tools. In the same area as the mission, and where he had previously found more than 100 Spanish coins and dozens of glass beads, White dug deeper.
At about 3 feet deep, he and his team found clay potsherds from the Alachua Indian Culture, dating from about A.D. 600 to A.D. 1700. The pottery resembles that from the Ocmulgee culture found along the Ocmulgee River near Macon, Ga. White suspects the Indians could have migrated south to where the pottery was found.
The deeper the team dug, the more they found.
Another foot deeper, they uncovered artifacts from the Cades Pond culture. Those were non-agricultural, hunter/gatherer people who typically lived adjacent to wetland prairies. They lived in the excavation area from A.D. 100 to about A.D. 600.
Along the lower edge of that additional 1 foot excavation, they found evidence of the Deptford Culture and Indians that lived there between 800 B.C. and 700 B.C.
Digging another 2-plus feet near some freshwater springs in the area, White found Paleo-Indian stone tool artifacts dating back as early as 7000 B.C.
“You would think that the springs have been there since the Ice Age ... and a continuous occupation (by people) for the past 9,000 years,” White said.
The expanded dig also revealed broken porcelain fragments suggesting that the mission included a separate kitchen area, White said. The pieces were most likely produced in Puebla, Mexico, during the 17th century.
All the artifacts found tell of the popularity of the site, which was close to freshwater and a bog once filled with water used for fishing and canoe transportation, White said.
“The holy grail for archeology and me is what we call context,” White said. “Context is not simply location … but what surrounds an artifact (and its relationship to other artifacts).
“We now have a 9,000 year time and connectivity, and it goes from the Paleo to the Deptford to the Cades Pond to the Alachua culture and eventually the European culture,” White said.
Jerald Milanich, the author of multiple books about De Soto's expedition and curator emeritus in archaeology of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, said of the De Soto find, “I looked at the archaeological evidence. There is absolutely no doubt that is a De Soto contact site, and I am 99.99 percent sure this is the town of Potano, the major Indian town. Until now, we really had no one location until all the way up to Tallahassee. Now we have a midway place.”
“This (the De Soto site) is an extremely important site, historically and archaeologically,” said Gifford Waters, historical archaeology collections manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History and an expert on Spanish missions. Missionaries would have used De Soto's records to establish their churches along Indian trails and towns, Waters said.
Charles M. Hudson, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and History, University of Georgia, a leading De Soto expert said “The discovery and recognition of the White site also known as the White / De Soto site is a major archaeological and historical event. The on-going investigations and interpretation of the White site promise to clarify the Spanish and Indian history of north-central Florida and to add immeasurably to our knowledge of the Hernando de Soto expedition. The White site MR03538 now joins the Governor Martin Site at the Apalachee village of Anhaic east of Tallahassee, Florida as the only sites confirmed with Adelantado Hernando de Soto’s entrada. These significant sites correlate with the evidence and progress ethnohistorians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have contributed to reconstruct De Soto’s route.”
In 1997 after more than fifteen years of research Charles M. Hudson working with numerous scholars including Jerald Milanich reconstructed the closest route to the actual expedition thus far. The map was published that same year by the University of Georgia Press. The map route evidence corresponds with the original first hand chronicles and the actual site location of MR03538.
De Soto left Tallahassee and wended his way into Arkansas. He died in 1542 on the banks of the Mississippi and was interred in those waters.
“New World Treasures: Artifacts from Hernando De Soto's Florida Expedition” will be on display at the museum through Dec. 31.
Copyright permission for Dr. Ashley White to use any and all materials created during the project by Thomas McNiff, Managing Editor Ocala Star-Banner Halifax Media Group.
Halifax Media Editorial Team:
Thomas McNiff, Managing Editor Ocala Star-Banner Halifax Media Group and Susan Smiley-Height Assistant City Editor, Ocala Star-Banner Halifax Media Group.
Copyright permissions to reprint all Halifax Media coverage, images, maps and video of the De Soto project by Thomas McNiff, Managing Editor.
Addition Newswire Archives:
PAST HORIZONS TELEVISION - DISCOVERY OF CONQUISTADOR HERNANDO DE SOTO'S 1539 ENCAMPMENT
http://www.pasthorizons.tv/discovery-of-conquistador-hernando-de-sotos-1539-encampment/
THE ARCHAEOLOGY CHANNEL
http://archaeologychannel.org/news-from-tac/video-news-from-tac/1286-video-news-from-tac-may-2013
FOX NEWS
PBS - NPR
http://www.wuft.org/news/2012/07/09/marion-county-archeological-discovery-soon-to-be-on-display/
ARCHAEOLOGISTS VERIFY DE SOTO DISCOVERY
DE SOTO EXHIBIT REACHES FARTHER BACK INTO SITE'S PAST
http://www.ocala.com/article/20130207/ARTICLES/130209741
JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL WARFARE Vol. III, Issue 4
http://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/cms/karwansaray/medieval-warfare.html
ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVE
http://www.ocala.com/section/TOPIC0212
DE SOTO FIND RESHAPES HISTORY
http://www.ocala.com/article/20120708/COLUMNISTS/120709797&tc=ix
DE SOTO DISCOVERY CHANGES HISTORY BOOKS
ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARTIFACTS DISCOVERED AT HERNANDO DE SOTO'S 1539 ENCAMPMENT
DISCOVERY OF THE LOST MISSION OF SAN BUENAVENTURA DE POTANO
http://www.ocala.com/article/20120709/ARTICLES/120709742/1478/TOPIC0212?Title=Lost-mission-revealed
ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARTIFACTS DISCOVERED AT MISSION SAN BUENAVENTURE DE POTANO
ARCHAEOLOGIST DEVISES ELABORATE RUSE TO THROW OFF LOOTERS
HERNANDO DE SOTO FEARLESS TRAILBLAZER
EXPLORING THE SITE OF DE SOTO'S ENCAMPMENT
ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE
http://archive.archaeology.org/news/2012/monday-july-9/
ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE NEWS ARCHIVES
http://www.archaeology.org/news/?p=2449
ARCHAEOLOGY DAILY NEWS
THE HISTORY CHANNEL BLOG - NEW DE SOTO SITE CONFIRMED
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/18029
THE ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS NETWORK
http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2012/07/hernando-de-soto-encampment-site-found.html
EL MUNDO
HISTORY NEWS NETWORK - GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
http://hnn.us/articles/archaeologist-has-found-evidence-de-sotos-expedition
ARCHAEOLOGIST UNEARTHS DE SOTO'S SOJOURN
PROTECTING AGAINST LOOTERS CAN BE CHALLENGING
EL HISTORIADOR
http://www.elhistoriador.com.ar/gaceta/gaceta66.html
ARCHAEOLOGIST USES A VARIETY OF TECHNIQUES TO PROVE DISCOVERY
TOP ANTHROPOLOGISTS DISCUSS FLORIDA MISSIONS
DE SOTO'S TREK THROUGH FLORIDA NO LONGER A MYSTERY
SE ENCUENTRA UN NUEVO SITIO DE DE SOTO EN FLORIDA
http://www.campodemarte.com/se-encuentra-un-nuevo-sitio-de-de-soto-en-florida.html
HERALD TRIBUNE DE SOTO LEFT A TRAIL OF ARTIFACTS
ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA - FIELD NOTES NEWS
http://www.archaeological.org/fieldnotes/newsbriefs/9615
NEW WORLD TREASURES EXHIBIT
http://www.theledger.com/article/20120710/NEWS/120719943
LA AVENTURA DE LA HISTORIA
LOST MISSION OF SAN BUENAVENTURA UNCOVERED
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120709/ARTICLES/120709641?p=1&tc=pg
THE NUMISMATIC BIBLIO SOCIETY JOURNAL
http://www.coinbooks.org/club_nbs_esylum_v15n30.html#article9
COMPLETE MAP OF DE SOTO EXPEDITION
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120709/MULTIMEDIA/120709644&tc=ix
MULTIMEDIA MAP OF DE SOTO EXPEDITION IN FLORIDA
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120709/MULTIMEDIA/120709643&tc=ix
RESTOS DE EXPEDICION ESPANOLA EN FLORIDA
http://www.diariolasamericas.com/noticia/142711/restos-de-expedicion-espanola-en-florida
THE BONE COLLECTORS Vol. 31 No. 10 October 2012
http://artisticeye-fas.com/uploads/PDFs/BoneCollectors_GT_1012.pdf
DAILY KOS - DE SOTO DATA
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/14/1144422/-Archaeological-Stuff
AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE Fall 2012
http://www.americanarchaeology.com/aatoc.html
THE REMAINS OF THE HERNANDO DE SOTO EXPEDITION DISCOVERED
ARCHAEOLOGY EXCAVATIONS BLOGSPOT.COM
http://archaeologyexcavations.blogspot.com/2012/07/archaeologist-uncovers-evidence-of.html
AMERICAN HISTORY MAGAZINE Vol. 12 No. 5 December 2012
http://www.historynet.com/american-history http://www.historynetshop.com/ah1212.html
TOP STORIES OF THE YEAR
http://www.ocala.com/article/20121221/ARTICLES/121229900
HERNANDO DE SOTO DISCOVERY OPENS A NEW WORLD
http://www.ocala.com/article/20130203/ARTICLES/130209933?tc=cr
SPANISH LANGUAGE NEWS ARCHIVES
EL MUNDO
THE REMAINS OF THE HERNANDO DE SOTO EXPEDITION DISCOVERED
LA AVENTURA DE LA HISTORIA
SE ENCUENTRA UN NUEVO SITIO DE DE SOTO EN FLORIDA
http://www.campodemarte.com/se-encuentra-un-nuevo-sitio-de-de-soto-en-florida.html
RESTOS DE EXPEDICION ESPANOLA EN FLORIDA
http://www.diariolasamericas.com/noticia/142711/restos-de-expedicion-espanola-en-florida
EL HISTORIADOR
http://www.elhistoriador.com.ar/gaceta/gaceta66.html
Digital archives of this research are housed at:
Arizona State University
Digital Antiquity Repository
The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR)
http://core.tdar.org/browse/creators/146041
https://unc.academia.edu/DrFAshleyWhite
https://sites.google.com/site/archaeologicalsite/
http://core.tdar.org/document/391661
Video Documentaries
http://archaeologychannel.org/news-from-tac/video-news-from-tac/1286-video-news-from-tac-may-2013
Field School Image Archive
http://core.tdar.org/document/391621
The New World Archaeology Colloquium
Leading anthropologists discuss the Hernando De Soto expedition and America’s first Spanish missions. A panel of top academic scholars were interviewed and filmed on location in Florida, Georgia, New York and New Jersey by the Halifax Media Group about the discoveries at the MR03538 archaeological site in Florida.
http://www.academia.edu/5430751/New_World_Discovery_Archaeology_Colloquium
http://core.tdar.org/document/391046
https://sites.google.com/site/archaeologicalsite/home/archives
Physical archives of this research are housed at:
The Florida Department of State - Division of Historical Resources
Bureau of Archaeological Research
R.A. Gray Building
500 S. Bronough Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0250
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