Critical Essay on the Sources of Information

OUR account of the voyages of Ponce de Leon is mainly from the cédulas to him and official correspondence, correcting Herrera, who is supposed by some to have had the explorer’s diary, now lost. Oviedo mentions Bimini as forty leagues from Guanahani. The modern edition of Oviedo is vague and incorrect; and gives Ponce de Leon two caravels, but has no details. Gomara is no less vague. Girava records the discovery, but dates it in 1512. As early as 1519 the statement is found that the Bay of Juan Ponce had been visited by Alaminos, while accompanying Ponce de Leon,—which must refer to this expedition of 1513. The “Traza de las costas” given by Navarrete (and reproduced by Buckingham Smith), with the Garay patent of 1521, would seem to make Apalache Bay the western limit of the discoveries of Ponce de Leon, of whose expedition and of Alaminos’s no report is known. Peter Martyr alludes to it, but only incidentally, when treating of Diego Velasquez. Barcia, in his Ensayo cronológico, writing specially on Florida, seems to have had neither of the patents of Ponce de Leon, and no reports; and he places the discovery in 1512 instead of 1513. Navarrete simply follows Herrera.

In the unfortunate expedition of Cordova Bernal Diaz was an actor, and gives us a witness’s testimony; and it is made the subject of evidence in the suit in 1536 between the Pinzon and Colon families. The general historians treat it in course.

The main authority for the first voyage of Garay is the royal letters patent, the documents which are given by Navarrete and in the Documentos inéditos, as well as the accounts given in Peter Martyr, Gomara, and Herrera.

Of the pioneer expedition which Camargo conducted for Garay to make settlement of Amichel, and of its encounter with Cortés, we have the effect which the first tidings of it produced on the mind of the Conqueror of Mexico in his second letter of Oct. 30, 1520; while in his third letter he made representations of the wrongs done to the Indians by Garay’s people, and of his own determination to protect the chiefs who had submitted to him. For the untoward ending of Garay’s main expedition, Cortés is still a principal dependence in his fourth letter; and the official records of his proceedings against Garay in October, 1523, with a letter of Garay dated November 8, and evidently addressed to Cortés, are to be found in the Documentos inéditos, while Peter Martyr, Oviedo, and Herrera are the chief general authorities. Garay’s renewed effort under his personal leadership is marked out in three several petitions which he made for authority to colonize the new country.

AYLLON’S EXPLORATIONS.

[This sketch follows Dr. Kohl’s copy of a map in a manuscript atlas in the British Museum (no. 9,814), without date; but it seems to be a record of the explorations (1520) of Ayllon, whose name is corrupted on the map. The map bears near the main inscription the figure of a Chinaman and an elephant,—tokens of the current belief in the Asiatic connections of North America. Cf. Brinton’s Floridian Peninsula, p. 82, 99, on the “Traza de costas de Tierra Ferme y de las Tierras Nuevas,” accompanying the royal grant to Garay in 1521, being the chart of Cristóbal de Tobia, given in the third volume of Navarrete’s Coleccion, and sketched on another page of the present volume (ante, p. 218) in a section on “The Early Cartography of the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent Parts,” where some light is thrown on contemporary knowledge of the Florida coast.—Ed.]

Of the preliminary expedition on the Atlantic coast of Gordillo and the subsequent attempt of his chief, Ayllon, to settle in Virginia, there is a fund of testimony in the papers of the suit which Matienzo instituted against Ayllon, and of which the greater part is still unprinted; but a few papers, like the complaint of Matienzo and some testimony taken by Ayllon when about to sail himself, can be found in the Documentos inéditos. As regards the joint explorations of the vessels of Gordillo and Quexos, the testimony of the latter helps us, as well as his act of taking possession, which puts the proceeding in 1521; though some of Ayllon’s witnesses give 1520 as the date. Both parties unite in calling the river which they reached the San Juan Bautista, and the cédula to Ayllon places it in thirty-five degrees. Navarrete in saying they touched at Chicora and Gualdape confounds the first and third voyages; and was clearly ignorant of the three distinct expeditions; and Herrera is wrong in calling the river the Jordan,—named, as he says, after the captain or pilot of one of the vessels,—since no such person was on either vessel, and no such name appears in the testimony: the true Jordan was the Wateree (Guatari). That it was the intention of Ayllon to make the expedition one of slave-catching, would seem to be abundantly disproved by his condemnation of the commander’s act.

Ayllon, according to Spanish writers, after reaching the coast in his own voyage, in 1526, took a northerly course. Herrera says he attempted to colonize north of Cape Trafalgar (Hatteras); and the piloto mayor of Florida, Ecija, who at a later day, in 1609, was sent to find out what the English were doing, says positively that Ayllon had fixed his settlement at Guandape. Since by his office Ecija must have had in his possession the early charts of his people, and must have made the locality a matter of special study, his assertion has far greater weight than that of any historian writing in Spain merely from documents. It is also the opinion of Navarrete that Ayllon’s course must have been north.

Oviedo does not define the region of this settlement more closely than to say that it was under thirty-three degrees, adding that it is not laid down on any map. The Oydores of Santo Domingo, in a letter to the King in 1528, only briefly report the expedition, and refer for particulars to Father Antonio Montesinos.

The authorities for the voyage of Gomez are set forth in another volume.

Upon the expedition of Narvaez, and particularly upon the part taken in it by Cabeza de Vaca, the principal authority is the narrative of the latter published at Zamora in 1542 as La relacion que dio Aluar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las Indias en la armada donde yua por gouernador Pãphilo de narbaez. It was reprinted at Valladolid in 1555, in an edition usually quoted as La relacion y comentarios del governador Aluar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo á los Indios. This edition was reprinted under the title of Navfragios de Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, by Barcia (1749) in his Historiadores primitivos, accompanied by an “exámen apologético de la historia” by Antonio Ardoino, which is a defence of Cabeza de Vaca against the aspersions of Honorius Philoponus, who charges Cabeza de Vaca with claiming to have performed miracles.

AUTOGRAPH OF NARVAEZ
(From Buckingham Smith).

The Relacion, translated into Italian from the first edition, was included by Ramusio in his Collection in 1556. A French version was given by Ternaux in 1837. The earliest English rendering, or rather paraphrase, is that in Purchas; but a more important version was made by the late Buckingham Smith, and printed (100 copies) at the expense of Mr. George W. Riggs, of Washington, in 1851, for private circulation. A second edition was undertaken by Mr. Smith, embodying the results of investigations in Spain, with a revision of the translation and considerable additional annotation; but the completion of the work of carrying it through the press, owing to Mr. Smith’s death, devolved upon others, who found his mass of undigested notes not very intelligible. It appeared in an edition of one hundred copies in 1871. In these successive editions Mr. Smith gave different theories regarding the route pursued by Cabeza de Vaca in his nine years journey.

AUTOGRAPH OF CABEZA DE VACA
(From Buckingham Smith).

The documents which Mr. Smith adds to this new edition convey but little information beyond what can be gathered from Cabeza de Vaca himself. He adds, however, engravings of Father Juan Xuarez and Brother Juan Palos, after portraits preserved in Mexico of the twelve Franciscans who were first sent to that country.

Some additional facts respecting this expedition are derived at second hand from a letter which Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes wrote after their arrival in Mexico to the Andiencia of Hispaniola, which is not now known, but of which the substance is professedly given by Oviedo.

The Bahia de la Cruz of Narvaez’ landing, made identical with Apalache Bay by Cabot, is likely to have been by him correctly identified, as the point could be fixed by the pilots who returned with the ships to Cuba, and would naturally be recorded on the charts. Smith believed it to be Tampa Bay. The Relacion describes the bay as one whose head could be seen from the mouth; though its author seems in another place to make it seven or eight leagues deep. Narvaez and his party evidently thought they were nearer Panuco, and had no idea they were so near Havana. Had they been at Tampa Bay, or on a coast running north and south, they can scarcely be supposed to have been so egregiously mistaken. If Tampa was his landing place, it is necessary to consider the bay where he subsequently built his boats as Apalache Bay. Charlevoix identifies it with Apalache Bay, and Siguenza y Gongora finds it in Pensacola.

Of the expedition of Soto we have good and on the whole satisfactory records. The Concession made by the Spanish King of the government of Cuba and of the conquest of Florida is preserved to us. There are three contemporary narratives of the progress of the march. The first and best was printed in 1557 at Evora as the Relaçam verdadeira dos trabalhos [=q] ho gouernador dō Fernādo de Souto e certos fidalgos portugueses passarom no descobrimēto da provincia da Frlorida. Agora nouamente feita per hū fidalgo Deluas. It is usually cited in English as the “Narrative of the Gentleman of Elvas,” since Hakluyt first translated it, and reprinted it in 1609 at London as Virginia richly valued by the Description of the Mainland of Florida, her next Neighbor. It appeared again in 1611 as The worthye and famous Historie of the Travailles, Discovery, and Conquest of Terra Florida, and was included in the supplement to the 1809 edition of the Collection of Hakluyt. It was also reprinted from the 1611 edition in 1851 by the Hakluyt Society as Discovery and Conquest of Florida, edited by William B. Rye, and is included in Force’s Tracts (vol. iv.) and in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana (vol. ii. pp. 111-220). It is abridged by Purchas in his Pilgrimes.

YO EL REY.

[The sign-manual of Charles V. to the Asiento y Capitulacion granted to De Soto, 1537, as given by B. Smith in his Coleccion, p. 146.—Ed.]

Another and briefer original Spanish account is the Relacion del suceso de its jornada que hizo Hernando de Soto of Luys Hernandez de Biedma, which long remained in manuscript in the Archivo General de Indias at Seville, and was first published in a French version by Ternaux in 1841; and from this William B. Rye translated it for the Hakluyt Society. Finally, the original Spanish text, “Relación de la Isla de la Florida,” was published by Buckingham Smith in 1857 in his Coleccion de varios documentos para la historia de la Florida.

In 1866 Mr. Smith published translations of the narratives of the Gentleman of Elvas and of Biedma, in the fifth volume (125 copies) of the Bradford Club Series under the title of Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida, as told by a Knight of Elvas, and in a Relation [presented 1544] by Luys Hernandez de Biedma.

AUTOGRAPH OF BIEDMA.

From the Coleccion, p. 64, of Buckingham Smith.

The third of the original accounts is the Florida del Ynca of Garcilasso de la Vega, published at Lisbon in 1605, which he wrote forty years after Soto’s death, professedly to do his memory justice. The spirit of exaggeration which prevails throughout the volume has deprived it of esteem as an historical authority, though Theodore Irving and others have accepted it. It is based upon conversations with a noble Spaniard who had accompanied Soto as a volunteer, and upon the written but illiterate reports of two common soldiers,—Alonzo de Carmona, of Priego, and Juan Coles, of Zabra. Herrera largely embodied it in his Historia general.

Still another account of the expedition is the official Report which Rodrigo Ranjel, the secretary of Soto, based upon his Diary kept on the march. It was written after reaching Mexico, whence he transmitted it to the Spanish Government. It remained unpublished in that part of Oviedo’s History which was preserved in manuscript till Amador de los Rios issued his edition of Oviedo in 1851. Oviedo seems to have begun to give the text of Ranjel as he found it; but later in the progress of the story he abridges it greatly, and two chapters at least are missing, which must have given the wanderings of Soto from Autiamque, with his death, and the adventures of the survivors under Mosçoso. The original text of Ranjel is not known.

These independent narratives of the Gentlemen of Elvas, Biedma, and Ranjel, as well as those used by Garcilasso de la Vega, agree remarkably, not only in the main narrative as to course and events, but also as to the names of the places.

There is also a letter of Soto, dated July 9, 1539, describing his voyage and landing, which was published by Buckingham Smith in 1854 at Washington, following a transcript (in the Lenox Library) of a document in the Archives at Simancas, and attested by Muñoz. It is addressed to the municipality of Santiago de Cuba, and was first made known in Ternaux’s Recueil des pièces sur la Floride. B. F. French gave the first English version of it in his Historical Collections of Louisiana, part ii. pp. 89-93 (1850).

THE MISSISSIPPI, SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

[This sketch is from a copy in the Kohl Washington Collection, after a manuscript atlas in the Bodleian. It is without date, but seemingly of about the middle of the sixteenth century. The “B. de Miruello” seems to commemorate a pilot of Ponce de Leon’s day. The sketch of the Atlantic coast made by Chaves in 1536 is preserved to us only in the description given by Oviedo, of which an English version will be found in the Historical Magazine, x. 371.—Ed.]

The route of De Soto is, of course, a question for a variety of views. We have in the preceding narrative followed for the track through Georgia a paper read by Colonel Charles C. Jones, Jr., before the Georgia Historical Society, and printed in Savannah in 1880, and for that through Alabama the data given by Pickett in his History of Alabama, whose local knowledge adds weight to his opinion. As to the point of De Soto’s crossing the Mississippi, there is a very general agreement on the lowest Chickasaw Bluff. We are without the means, in any of the original sources, to determine beyond dispute the most northerly point reached by Soto. He had evidently approached, but had learned nothing of, the Missouri River. Almost at the same time that Soto, with the naked, starving remnant of his army, was at Pacaha, another Spanish force under Vasquez de Coronado, well handled and perfectly equipped, must in July and August, 1541, have been encamped so near that an Indian runner in a few days might have carried tidings between them. Coronado actually heard of his countryman, and sent him a letter; but his messenger failed to find Soto’s party. But, strangely enough, the cruel, useless expedition of Soto finds ample space in history, while the well-managed march of Coronado’s careful exploration finds scant mention. No greater contrast exists in our history than that between these two campaigns.

A sufficient indication has been given, in the notes of the preceding narrative, of the sources of information concerning the futile attempts of the Spaniards at colonization on the Atlantic coast up to the time of the occupation of Port Royal by Ribault in 1562. Of the consequent bloody struggle between the Spanish Catholics and the French Huguenots there are original sources on both sides.

On the Spanish part we have the Cartas escritas al rey of Pedro Menendez (Sept. 11, Oct. 15, and Dec. 5, 1565), which are preserved in the Archives at Seville, and have been used by Parkman, and the Memoria del buen suceso i buen viage of the chaplain of the expedition, Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales. Barcia’s Ensayo cronológico is the most comprehensive of the Spanish accounts, and he gives a large part of the Memorial de las jornadas of Solis de Meras, a brother-in-law of Menendez. It has never been printed separately; but Charlevoix used Barcia’s extract, and it is translated from Barcia in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (vol. ii. p. 216). Barcia seems also to have had access to the papers of Menendez, and to have received this Journal of Solis directly from his family.

On the French side, for the first expedition of Ribault in 1562 we have the very scarce text of the Histoire de l’expédition Française en Floride, published in London in 1563, which Hakluyt refers to as being in print “in French and English” when he wrote his Westerne Planting. Sparks could not find that it was ever published in French; nor was Winter Jones aware of the existence of this 1563 edition when he prepared for the Hakluyt Society an issue of Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages (1582), in which that collector had included an English version of it as The True and Last Discoverie of Florida, translated into Englishe by one Thomas Hackit, being the same text which appeared separately in 1563 as the Whole and True Discovery of Terra Florida.

At Paris in 1586 appeared a volume, dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh, entitled, L’histoire notable de la Floride, ... contenant les trois voyages faits en icelle par certains capitaines et pilotes François descrits par le Capitaine Laudonnière, ... à laquelle a esté adjousté un quatriesme voyage fait par le Capitaine Gourgues, Mise en lumiere par M. Basanier. This was a comprehensive account, or rather compilation, of the four several French expeditions,—1562, 1564, 1565, 1567,—covering the letters of Laudonnière for the first three, and an anonymous account, perhaps by the editor Basanier, of the fourth. Hakluyt, who had induced the French publication, gave the whole an English dress in his Notable History, translated by R. H., printed in London in 1587, and again in his Principall Navigations, vol. iii., the text of which is also to be found in the later edition and in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (1869), i. 165.

Jacques Lemoyne de Morgues, an artist accompanying Laudonnière, wrote some years later an account, and made maps and drawings, with notes describing them. De Bry made a visit to London in 1587 to see Lemoyne, who was then in Raleigh’s service; but Lemoyne resisted all persuasions to part with his papers. After Lemoyne’s death De Bry bought them off his widow (1588), and published them in 1591, in the second part of his Grands voyages, as Brevis narratio.

One Nicolas le Challeux, or Challus, a carpenter, a man of sixty, who was an eye-witness of the events at Fort Caroline, and who for the experiences of Ribault’s party took the statements of Dieppe sailors and of Christopher le Breton, published a simple narrative at Dieppe in 1566 under the title of Discours de l’histoire de la Floride, which was issued twice,—once with fifty-four, and a second time with sixty-two, pages, and the same year reprinted, with some variations, at Lyons as Histoire mémorable du dernier voyage fait par le Capitaine Iean Ribaut en l’an MDLXV (pp. 56).

It is thought that Thevet in his Cosmographie universelle (1575) may have had access to Laudonnière’s papers; and some details from Thevet are embodied in what is mainly a translation of Le Challeux, the De Gallorum expeditione in Floridam anno MDLXV brevis historia, which was added (p. 427) by Urbain Chauveton, or Calveton, to the Latin edition of Benzoni,—Novæ novi orbis historiæ tres libri, printed at Geneva in 1578 and 1581, and reproduced under different titles in the French versions, published likewise at Geneva in 1579, 1588, and 1589. There is a separate issue of it from the 1579 edition.

It was not long before exaggerated statements were circulated, based upon the representations made in Une requête au roi (Charles IX.) of the widows and orphans of the victims of Menendez, in which the number of the slain is reported at the impossible figure of nine hundred.

Respecting the expedition of De Gourgues there are no Spanish accounts whatever, Barcia merely taking in the main the French narrative,—in which, says Parkman, “it must be admitted there is a savor of romance.” That Gourgues was merely a slaver is evident from this full French account. Garibay notes his attempt to capture at least one Spanish vessel; and he certainly had on reaching Florida two barks, which he must have captured on his way. Basanier and many who follow him suppress entirely the slaver episode in this voyage. All the De Gourgues narratives ignore entirely the existence of St. Augustine, and make the three pretended forts on the St. John to have been of stone; and Prévost, to heighten the picture, invents the story of the flaying of Ribault, of which there is no trace in the earlier French accounts.

There are two French narratives. One of them, La reprinse de la Floride, exists, according to Gaffarel, in five different manuscript texts. The other French narrative is the last paper in the compilation of Basanier, already mentioned. Brinton is inclined to believe that it is not an epitome of the Reprinse, but that it was written by Basanier himself from the floating accounts of his day, or from some unknown relater. Charlevoix mentions a manuscript in the possession of the De Gourgues family; but it is not clear which of these papers it was.

The story of the Huguenot colony passed naturally into the historical records of the seventeenth century; but it got more special treatment in the next century, when Charlevoix issued his Nouvelle France. The most considerable treatments of the present century have been by Jared Sparks in his Life of Ribault, by Francis Parkman in his Pioneers of France in the New World, and by Paul Gaffarel in his Histoire de la Floride Française. The story has also necessarily passed into local and general histories of this period in America, and into the accounts of the Huguenots as a sect.