The Lady of Cofitachequi

A Gift of Pearls

She crossed the river to meet Hernando de Soto carrying a gift of pearls.

Within weeks, she would be walking under guard with his army, looking for a chance to escape.

Last time, De Soto left his winter camp near modern Tallahassee. Ships were supposed to meet him at Pensacola Bay. Instead of heading toward them, he followed a young captive's account of a wealthy country ruled by a woman.

That search took the expedition into Georgia, across South Carolina, over the mountains into Tennessee, and after finding her would eventually take them all the way to what would become Texas.

North Through Georgia

On March 3rd, 1540, the army marched out of Anhaica.

Many of the Native captives forced to carry Spanish baggage had died during the winter. Elvas describes them living in chains without adequate clothing. Now the soldiers had to shoulder more of their own food, supplies, and gear.

The first major obstacle was a swollen river, generally identified as the Flint in southwestern Georgia.

The Spaniards built a ferry and stretched a cable made from chains across the water. The boat traveled along that cable while the horses swam. Moving an army through this country meant stopping repeatedly to build a way across.

Farther north, the accounts describe houses with clay-covered walls and roofs made from reeds, corn stood in raised storehouses, and some communities maintained separate buildings for winter and summer.

The Spaniards were entering farming country whose people had considerable experience storing food and living through seasonal changes.

By late March, the route brings them into the vicinity of modern Macon, Georgia, possibly near the Lamar archaeological site. From there they continued toward the Oconee River country and the province of Ocute.

These modern locations follow the reconstruction associated with Charles Hudson and his colleagues. The broad route is useful, but we cannot pin every campsite to an exact spot.

Local leaders supplied food and people to carry it. Some also saw a use for this armed company.

The Spaniards depended on those decisions. They could not simply hunt enough deer to feed everyone while keeping the column moving. Elvas points out that they lacked both the local people's hunting skill and the freedom to scatter through the woods. A town's stored corn could determine whether the army marched the next morning or stopped to search for food.

Luis Hernández de Biedma says chiefs offered assistance if the Spaniards would make war on Cofitachequi, their enemy.

They warned that the road ahead had no dependable supply of provisions. Knowing that another chiefdom existed did not mean they regularly traveled there. Warfare had helped separate these communities.

Four Days of Provisions

The young guide, Perico, offered a much more attractive estimate. According to Elvas, the country they wanted lay only four days away.

De Soto took food for four days.

Six days later, the trail had narrowed until it disappeared.

They were crossing what the accounts call a desert. Here that means country without the settlements and stored corn the army needed. Think woods and difficult river crossings, not sand dunes.

The search carried them across the Savannah River and into present-day South Carolina. Men struggled through strong currents. Horses weakened as the corn ran short.

By the ninth day, Perico admitted he did not know where they were.

Elvas says De Soto threatened to have the dogs kill him. What saved the boy was his usefulness as an interpreter. Juan Ortiz could communicate with him, and De Soto could hardly afford to lose another link in that chain of languages.

Turning around offered little comfort. They had already consumed the provisions along their route. Exhausted men and horses would have to cross that same country again.

De Soto sent mounted parties out in different directions. One group returned with men leading their worn-out horses. They had found nothing.

The army began eating pigs from the herd De Soto had brought to establish his colony.

Eventually, Juan de Añasco found a settlement with corn. The accounts give its name in several forms, including Aymay. Hudson's reconstruction places this part of the journey near the Congaree and Wateree river country, southeast of modern Columbia.

Food and local guides finally gave the Spaniards a way forward.

The Lady of Cofitachequi

Around the beginning of May, they reached Cofitachequi.

The leading candidate for its principal settlement is the Mulberry site on the Wateree River near Camden, South Carolina. Archaeologists have investigated the mound and village complex there, though the identification remains a reconstruction.

The expedition waited across the river as the woman remembered as the Lady of Cofitachequi came to meet it.

Ranjel describes attendants carrying her on a litter covered in white cloth. She crossed in a canoe and addressed De Soto with composure. Then she removed a string of pearls from her neck and placed it around his.

Her people supplied canoes for the crossing and brought food, clothing, and hides.

Even with that help, getting across was costly. Ranjel says seven horses drowned as the rest of the army crossed. He noticed that some of the strongest fought the current, while weaker animals let it carry them and reached the other side. After the strain of the march, the expedition was still losing horses within sight of a town that had agreed to receive it.

Biedma identifies the woman who greeted them as the ruler's niece. The accounts leave some uncertainty about her precise position. What comes through clearly is that she represented authority, and people acted on her instructions.

We do not know her personal name.

The meeting had the appearance of a promising beginning. An army that had nearly starved was receiving help from the people it had traveled so far to find.

But the gifts also showed the Spaniards something they could carry away.

Pearls and Burials

The pearls at Cofitachequi were associated with the dead as well as the living.

Ranjel describes entering a temple with De Soto and finding human remains adorned with pearls. Biedma also records the removal of pearls from a burial place.

Elvas says the Lady directed the Spaniards toward graves where more could be found. That is his account of the exchange. It does not erase what the other descriptions make plain: the Spaniards were opening burials and taking objects placed with the dead.

During the search, Ranjel noticed a green object that looked like an emerald.

De Soto sent for Añasco, the royal accountant.

The supposed emerald turned out to be glass. They found more glass beads and rosaries with crosses.

Biedma mentions Spanish axes as well. The Spaniards connected these objects with Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón's earlier expedition to the Atlantic coast.

Back in Florida, they had found traces of Narváez. Here, hundreds of miles farther northeast, European objects reminded them that another Spanish venture had reached this region before them.

There were also abandoned settlements nearby. Elvas says local people reported a serious epidemic about two years earlier, but the account does not establish which disease had caused it.

Some Spaniards wanted to remain in this country. Elvas describes fertile ground, a favorable climate, and the attraction of a settlement within reach of the Atlantic, but De Soto rejected the idea.

He said there was too little food to support them and reminded his men of the rendezvous with Maldonado at the Gulf. Elvas also gives a less practical explanation: De Soto wanted treasure on the scale he had seen in Peru.

The country had supplied pearls, but it had not supplied the gold he expected.

He began asking about the next province.

A Welcome Becomes Captivity

Reports pointed toward Chiaha and the powerful chiefdom of Coosa. To reach them, he needed guides and people to carry the baggage.

Relations with the Lady had deteriorated. Elvas acknowledges that Spanish mistreatment had turned her people against the expedition. She wanted to withhold the assistance De Soto demanded.

He ordered her kept under guard and took her with him.

Ranjel dates the departure to May 13th. Elvas gives a different date, but both preserve the change in her circumstances.

The woman who had welcomed De Soto now had to walk with his captives.

Her authority remained useful to him. Along the road, she could order people to provide carriers. Holding her allowed De Soto to make demands through a leader whom communities already recognized.

The route turned north through the Carolina Piedmont toward Xuala, generally associated with Joara near modern Morganton, North Carolina.

Then it climbed into the Blue Ridge.

The precise mountain crossing is debated. Reconstructions revised around the identification of Joara take De Soto northward toward the Nolichucky drainage, rather than along the older proposed route through Asheville. These were mountain trails, with steep ground and limited supplies for an army and its horses.

Ranjel describes bitter cold late in May. Men who had recently marched through the Florida lowlands were now sleeping in mountain country.

Escape in the Mountains

Somewhere along this part of the journey, the Lady escaped.

Elvas gives the fullest account. She stepped away from the route into the woods, saying she needed to relieve herself. The women attending her lost sight of her. Searchers failed to find her.

She also got away with a cane chest of pearls that De Soto had allowed her to keep for the time being. Elvas says he had intended to ask for them before letting her return home.

That opportunity was gone.

Later, people returning to the Spanish column reported that she had reached Xuala and remained with an enslaved man who had also left the expedition. Elvas says they intended to return to Cofitachequi together.

That report is where his account leaves her. It does not let us follow her safely home or establish what happened afterward.

What we can say is that De Soto had lost his hostage, and she had escaped the army that took her from her country.

Rest and Resistance at Chiaha

The Spaniards continued toward Chiaha.

They reached it in early June. Hudson's route places the town on Zimmerman's Island in the French Broad River, near present-day Dandridge, Tennessee, in the area now covered by Douglas Lake.

After weeks of difficult travel, they found substantial stores of corn, along with bear fat and walnut oil.

The horses were in poor condition. Elvas says some could no longer carry their riders. At Chiaha, the expedition rested for several weeks while the animals grazed and recovered.

The soldiers camped under trees outside the chief's houses. For a while, there was food and room to rest.

Then De Soto demanded thirty women to take as slaves.

The townspeople left with their families during the night.

De Soto went after them with mounted men and infantry, destroying cornfields along the way. But the people had withdrawn to an island the horsemen could not reach.

He eventually withdrew the demand for women and accepted an agreement to supply carriers.

Even here, where the army had been fed and given time to recover, its demands had driven its hosts away.

Meanwhile, another report of valuable metal had sent two Spaniards toward the country called Chisca. De Soto was still looking for a mine that would justify everything the expedition had cost.

Toward Coosa and Mabila

By late June, the army was preparing to move on toward Coosa.

We have followed it from Tallahassee through Georgia and the Carolinas into eastern Tennessee. Texas still lies far ahead. First comes the turn south, toward the country of a ruler the Spaniards called Tascalusa.

De Soto had grown accustomed to taking leaders with him and expecting their people to supply his army.

At a town called Mabila, that practice would help bring him into the hardest fight of the expedition.

Would he finally find the gold he was searching for there?

Or would his lack of appreciation for his host’s hospitality be the end of him?