The History of the Americans

This episode welcomes back our old friend from the Cabeza de Vaca saga, Esteban, and the advance scouting work he led, with a drunken friar, for the Coronado expedition into the American southwest. #VastEarlyAmerica Selected references for this episode Robert Goodwin, Crossing the Continent 1527-1540: The Story of the First African-American Explorer of the American South Stan Hoig, Came Men on Horses: The Conquistador Expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca George Parker Winship, The Journey of Coronado, 1540-1542 Bartolomé de las Casas

Back in April 2021, as we traveled the Florida Keys for a vacation much-deserved by my wife, who has been working very hard, and not-at-all deserved by me, I read a good part of Samuel Bawlf’s book “The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake 1577-1580.”  This was part of my advance reading for Drake’s exploration of the west coast of the United States on, well, a secret mission for Queen Elizabeth I of England.  The book includes a prelude chapter that I thought so good, and so evocative of the tradition of privateering in exactly the part of the country in which I was vacationing, that I am going to read it aloud. Herewith, a pirate’s story, with another remarkable story of survival in the New World toward the end. Selected references for this episode Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580 John Toohey, "The Long, Forgotten Walk of David Ingram" Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation

In this episode, we follow the Soto expedition in the American south from the aftermath of the battle of Mabila to the “discovery” of the Mississippi River with more than the usual number of qualifiers, Soto's anticlimactic death, the first true exploration of northeastern Texas, a journey past the site of New Orleans, the ultimate escape of almost half the expeditionaries and, as promised, a short review of the weird recommendations of the Federal government's De Soto Expedition Commission. Enjoy! Selected references for this episode David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas Final Report of the United States: De Soto Expedition Commission Quigualtam (Wikipedia) Luis de Moscoso Alvarado (Wikipedia) Rex W. Strickland, "Moscoso's Journey through Texas," The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, October 1942.

This episode is the third to explore Hernando de Soto’s invasion of the American southeast from 1539-1542.  Our goal, as always, is to make history fun and interesting, even when it is also brutal and ugly! Hernando de Soto and his army spent the winter of 1539-40 in the center of Apalachee territory, now downtown Tallahassee. During 1540, the entrada explored Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, east Tennessee in the Knoxville area, and Alabama, finally coming to blows with the great chief Tascalusa in an epic and very bloody battle somewhere between Mobile and Selma. At the end of this episode, Soto is nominally victorious, but he is on the brink of losing everything. Selected references for this episode David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas Final Report of the United States: De Soto Expedition Commission

Welcome to the History of the Americans Podcast, episode 18.  This episode is Hernando de Soto part 2.  Last week we introduced the story of Hernando de Soto’s three year invasion of the American south, from 1539 to his death in 1542, ending the episode just as his 600 man expedition arrived on the gulf coast of Florida, probably Tampa Bay.  Ponce de Leon had gone ashore in roughly the same place in 1521, and Panfilo de Narvaez had disembarked his doomed expedition there in 1528.  Soto, like Ponce and Narvaez before him, would claim all of North America for Spain from roughly the same spot. He would survive longer than either Ponce or Narvaez, but not by much. Claiming North America for Spain was a dangerous business! Credit: David Ewing Duncan Selected references for this episode David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas Final Report of the United States: De Soto Expedition Commission

This episode is Hernando de Soto Part 1.  I am recording this on April 14, in Key West, Florida. Today we kick off the story of the first real invasion of the American south, Hernando de Soto’s reconnaissance-in-force – the Spanish word is entrada -- from 1539-1542. Last week’s episode tied up various loose ends that brought us to this point, including that the correct shorthand for Hernando de Soto is, actually, “Soto,” not “de Soto.”  Measured by money and glory, by the late 1530s Hernando de Soto was at the very top of the second rank of Spanish conquistadors.  Hernan Cortes had conquered the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan, uncovered staggering wealth, and pushed his territory north and south from there.  Francisco Pizzaro had conquered the Incas of Cusco, and Soto enabled that conquest as Pizzaro’s most courageous and brilliant battlefield commander. Soto returned to Spain in the spring of 1536 after 22 years seeking and finding his fortune in the New World.  He was now 36 years old.  Soto had by that age gathered a significant pile of loot from his adventures in South America, and no small amount of glory.  People who weren’t Soto and could not have achieved his astonishing victories in Central and South America would have called it quits and retired as one of the richest men in Europe’s richest country.  Soto was not that kind of man.  He knew there was another Cusco or Tenochtitlan to be found and conquered, this time with Soto in command. Selected references for this episode David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas Final Report of the United States: De Soto Expedition Commission

Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 16.  This episode is called “Sidebar: Bringing it all Together.” In the History of the Americans podcast, a sidebar is an episode outside of the progression of the timeline, which at this writing has reached roughly 1536.  The purpose of this sidebar is to talk a bit about the show to date, and put the first thirty years of European exploration and conquest of the territory that is now the United States in context.  In other words, bringing it all together! Reference for this episode Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America

This episode is Cabeza de Vaca part 4, the final in the Cabeza de Vaca series. We recorded this episode on March 30, 2021 in Austin, Texas. The last time the remnants of the ill-fated Narvaez expedition landed on a coastal island somewhere near today’s Galveston, Texas and, thereby, “discovered” Texas.  Of the eighty or so alive at the end of Cabeza de Vaca 2, only three remained with our protagonist, Cabeza de Vaca, and would eventually make it back to New Spain.  It is now 1534, almost six years after the expedition landed in Tampa Bay, and the final four are heading south in search of Panuco, the northernmost outpost of New Spain under the authority of one of that era’s nastiest conquistadors, Nuno de Guzman. Selected references for this episode Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez A New History of Old Texas Podcast by Brandon Seale Cabeza de Vaca resources online at Texas State University

We will no longer refer to the Narvaez Expedition in the title of the episode because, as you know if you listened to Episode 13, in late November 1528 schizz got seriously real. It could no longer be said that there was a Narvaez Expedition.  Panfilo de Narvaez himself was dead on a raft, adrift with two other corpses in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, and his original landing party at Tampa Bay in April of that year had dwindled from 300 men and 42 horses to two rafts of 40 or so starving men, each crew unaware of the other, castaway on opposite sides of a barrier island near Galveston on the Texas Gulf coast.  Almost eight years would elapse before the final four of these roughly 80 wretches would reconnect with the bleeding edge of Spanish civil authority on the Pacific coast of Mexico. We recorded this episode on March 25, 2021, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and if you listen carefully you can hear the birdies of spring and a couple of trains whistling in the distance. Subscribe by email! Selected references for this episode Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez A New History of Old Texas Podcast by Brandon Seale

This episode continues the shocking story of the doomed Narváez expedition and its almost unbelievable struggle to survive. In this episode, the expedition begins to unravel in Florida, and cooks up a crazy scheme to send 250 men across the Gulf of Mexico on rafts. All of this ends up with the "discovery" of Texas! And, of course, a lot of dead Spanish. Subscribe to The History of the Americans by email! Selected references for this episode Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez Alex D. Krieger, We came Naked and Barefoot: The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Across North America Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo y Valdez and Harbert Davenport, “The Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas The route of the rafts across the Gulf (map on thehistoryoftheamericans.com): The route of the rafts across the Gulf of Mexico (credit Andrés Reséndez)