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The State in the Making
An Outline of Four Centuries
Nearly a century before the Mayflower anchored at Plymouth Rock in 1620, Mississippi's history began. Spanish treasure ships linking the western hemisphere to the dynastic empire of Charles V made the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico a Spanish Main.
In 1528 Panfilo de Narvaez, armed with a grant from Charles V, landed in Florida. Before the year was out the leader of the expedition—his ships scattered and his following reduced—vanished into a Gulf storm; there were few survivors. The expedition of Nunez Beltran Guzman two years later fared little better. Guzman failed to discover the fabulous "seven cities of Gbola,” said to lie far north of Mexico City. But rumors of vast treasures and wonderful people tempted the monk, Marcos de Niza, in 1539; and Estevan, his Negro scout, actually sighted a formidable pueblo of the Zuni.
In the next year, Mendoza, Viceroy of Mexico, sent Francisco Vasquez
de Coronado, with a strong force of soldiers and friendly Indians, to take
possession of the northern land, and, more particularly, of its portable
riches. Coronado found little he could carry away, and spent himself in
searching farther to the north, or northeast—even to the valley of the
Platte River—for Quivera, where he hoped to find a rich city. He found
merely a pastoral Indian village. Bitterly disappointed, Coronado, ih 1541,
turned southward, apparently by the route that was to become the Santa Fe Trail.
Roaming in the interior at the same time, in a vain search for gold, was another Spanish expedition, headed by De Soto. In the summer of 1541 the Coronado and De Soto parties seemed to be within a few days’ march of each other; and Coronado, suspecting this, sent a messenger to find De Soto. But he was unsuccessful.
De Soto comes more directly into Mississippi history. Of all the explorers of that period, he, probably, was the only one to enter the region now within the State.
AN OUTLINE OF FOUR CENTURIES	61
Hernando (Fernando) de Soto, of gentle birth but needy, had accompanied Pizarro to Peru in 1531. Together, they had plundered the rich empire of the Incas. A few years later, De Soto, now a gentleman of renown and possessed of vast wealth, appeared at the Spanish court "with the retinue of a nobleman.” When he asked for permission to undertake the conquest of Florida at his own expense, King Charles V readily acquiesced, commissioning him also as Governor of Cuba, and captain-general
of any provinces he might conquer.
After wandering through the wilds of what are now the States of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, he entered Mississippi in 1540. Somewhere below the site of Memphis, Tennessee, he discovered the Mississippi River in May 1541. After veering westward, De Soto, dejected and near death, returned to the river; and upon its banks he died, May 21, 1542. His body was buried in the waters that were to give him immortality, close to the
present site of Natchez.
After De Soto, the primeval country was not disturbed until the 17th century. In 1673, Father Marquette and the trader Joliet, inspired by the ambition of Louis XIV, descended the Mississippi River from the mouth of the Wisconsin River to a point below the mouth of the Arkansas River —"from the latitude of 420 to 340” as Marquette’s own narrative has it. Their voyage prepared the way for Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who in 1682 followed the course of the Mississippi to its mouth and, in a sweeping gesture, claimed the whole valley for France. In rapid succession, Hennepin, Cadillac, and Tonti, among others, made further explorations on the river.
It was Pierre’le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, however, who founded the first permanent white colony in the lower Mississippi Valley. Iberville, having urged upon the French court the importance of taking possession of La Salle’s "Louisiana” and of finding an entrance to the Mississippi from the sea, left Brest on October 24, 1698, with a commission from Louis XIV to occupy Louisiana. Accompanying him were nearly 200 colonists, with whose aid in 1699 he established Fort de Maurepas at what is now Ocean Springs. This settlement (see Tour 1) was the seat of government for a territory that extended eastward to present-day Pittsburg and westward to the present Yellowstone National Park.
Before La Salle’s explorations had established France’s claims to the Mississippi Valley, however, this region had been included in the so-called Carolina Grant made in 1629-30 to Sir Robert Heath by King Charles I of England. In 1633 it was included in the Charles II grant to Clarendon, Carteret, and others. Eventually a London physician, Coxe, put forth pre-