University of Virginia Library

47. CHAPTER XLVII.

We have given a sufficient specimen of our Choctaw chronicler
for a while. Relying on his authority as heretofore, we shall yet
forego the stately simplicity, and the quaint solemnity of his style,
as far as possible in the future, and trust to that which is more
natural to ourselves and readers. We need repeat, after this
sample of our authority, that his account is the most trustworthy
of all the parties; and our materials will show that he supplies a
thousand deficiencies, in the details, which the vexed vanity of the
Spanish invaders would never allow them to put on record.
We proceed now to our history.

The fall of De Soto occasioned naturally a tremendous sensation.
The wild exultation of the red men rang throughout the
field as for a victory already gained, and a most unexpected triumph
rendered certain. The Adelantado of the Spaniards was
considered by the simple natives in the light somewhat of a godman—a
demi-god, who was in some degree invincible, or like
Achilles, only vulnerable in some small region not easily reached
by dart or tomahawk. They were now disabused of this superstition,
and their spirits rose in consequence to the highest pitch
of hope and enthusiasm. They knew not but that he was already
slain; at least, he was in the power of their champion; that
seemed certain, and a single stroke of the terrible lance which
Vasconselos carried was alone needed for the coup de grace.
Istalana, now doubly glorious, and a favorite in their eyes, seemed
prepared to satisfy their expectations. Wheeling about to return
to the charge, his lance was couched, and the vulture, commissioned
by the fates for his destruction, already threatened De
Soto with the consummation of his doom.

But the Spanish chivalry were not prepared to suffer the conqueror
to complete his work of vengeance. They had seen the
fall of their governor; and, with a mixed howl and shout, the gallant
cavaliers who had attended him, and who had only remained
a short distance from the scene of the passage between himself
and Istalana, now dashed forward to his rescue. They were just
in season. Our Portuguese Mauvilian was already upon his

enemy. De Soto who had succeeded in recovering his feet, had
drawn his sword, and was ready to defend himself.

“Hernan de Soto,” cried Vasconselos, to the complete astonishment
of his opponent, “thy hour is come! The doom for thee
is written! Thou shalt die beneath the hand and curse of the
man thou hast basely dishonored!”

He knew the voice. He could no longer doubt the person.

“Philip de Vasconselos!”

“Ay! and thy fate! Prepare thee!”

“I fear thee not, renegade and traitor!”

“Ha! thou shalt feel me!”

And the lance was couched at his breast. De Soto raised his
sword in defence. Philip would have sprung from his steed and
encountered him on more equal footing with the battle-axe, but
just then the rush behind him required him to guard himself.
The Spanish knights were upon him. There were Nuno de Tobar,
and Balthazar de Gallegos, and many others. Philip gave
the rowels to Bajardo. He dashed through the thick array.
Gonzalo de Sylvestre was rolled over upon the earth; Alonzo de
Piños was reached by the lance which failed to slay him, but
knocked out several of his front teeth, and greatly disfiguring his
mouth, spoiled the prettiest face in the army. Others were
handled only less roughly, and thundering through them as the
great buffalo thunders through a forest of prairie dogs, the wonderful
cavalier of the red men broke away from the network of
foes which for a moment seemed to threaten him with captivity
or death. His forest followers were not idle. The warriors of
Mauvila launched themselves, with desperate valor, into the
thickest of the wild array, and the battle, with all its terrors, was
resumed on every side.

It raged with no abatement for more than an hour, and with
no seeming change of fortune. Many of the Spaniards perished;
many of their horses. Hardly one escaped without wounds;
but the naked red men suffered death, and not wounds, with every
hurt. More than a thousand had perished in the strife, when
Istalana, whose plans had been wholly baffled by the impatient
pride and haughty valor of Tuscaluza and his general, succeeded
in drawing off a portion of his forces to the shelter of the forest,
into recesses where the horses could not pursue, and whence the
arrow could be shot with unerring and unexpected aim. The
red men disappeared almost in the twinkling of eye, leaving the
field strewn with their bodies.

Coçalla was the first to receive Vasconselos. But where was
Juan? Philip looked about him with inquiry. The page was

behind him carrying bow and arrows, and was covered with the
dust and blood of the field.

“Ah! boy; and I bade thee not?” said Vasconselos reproachfully.

“I saw them as they surrounded thee, Señor, and I could no
longer remain away.”

Philip smiled sadly on the Moor. But when he looked a
second time on Coçalla, he beheld that she too had had shared the
dangers of the fray. She had been more fortunate than Juan,
and had been wounded in the arm. Oh! what were the pangs
of that young attendant when he beheld Vasconselos take the
beautiful arm of Coçalla into his hands and carefully help to
bind up the still bleeding limb. The hurt was fortunately slight.
But it was a wound received in his defence; and, more fortunate
still, it was an arrow from her bow that stuck in the thigh of
De Soto himself, giving a painful wound, which would have
driven from the field that day any cavalier of merely ordinary
courage. Vasconselos had seen, before the action was over, that
De Soto was hurt. He saw it by his riding, though he knew not
the nature of the wound. Little did he dream what hand had
sent the shaft. When he did know, when he conceived fully that
page and princess had both gone forth to his rescue the moment
that they beheld his peril, the heart of the melancholy knight
was very full. No tears gathered in his eyes. He had forgotten
how to weep; but never did eyes declare such tender emotions;
and he looked from Juan to Coçalla, and he took the
hand of the princess and kissed it, while he drew the trembling
Moor to his bosom, and said to him fondly—

“Boy, thou shalt evermore be brother to me. I have no
other brother now but thee.”

Andres de Vasconselos had been one of the cavaliers whose
ranks that day he had so fiercely broken through. But he had
raised no lance against that young kinsman's bosom.

Juan trembled with terrible emotions as, for the first time,
he was strained so warmly to the breast of his lord. He felt
that the heart within him was like a molten sea—all fire, all
tears, scalding and streaming, but ready all the while to break
through all barriers and be poured out like water on the sands.
But the tenderness was for a moment only, and even while the
knight strained the Moorish page to his bosom, the Princess
Coçalla interposed, and laid her hand first, and then her head
upon his shoulder, and said in the most melting manner—

“Ah! Philip! Ah! brave Philip.”

But, just then, Juan cried out with a change of feeling:—

“Oh! Señor, thou art wounded.”

The red stain was apparent through the white cotton of his
vest. The garments were sticking to the wound upon his
bosom.

“Let it remain,” said Philip, as page and princess, now both
excited with fear, proposed to attend the hurt.

“Let it remain. It is nothing, and now bleeds no longer.”

It was but a flesh-wound made by the partly spent shaft from
a cross-bow. He had pulled out the arrow during the fight, and,
pressing the garments upon the wound, had succeeded in stopping
the flow of blood. There was no time now for surgery.
The Spaniards had renewed the action, and Istalana was required
to go forth again.

Furious with the sanguinary courage of the Mauvilians, conscious
of the peril which awaited his own and the fortunes of his
army and mortified deeply with the disgrace of his overthrow in
the sight of foes and followers, Hernan de Soto only delayed the
action long enough to enable his followers to recover from exhaustion.
It was necessary to obtain possession of the town.
There his people would find shelter and provisions, both of which
they began to need. There had the red men stored their supplies
for the winter. Several of the houses were great granaries of
maize, beans, and potatoes. There, too, were their great armories—arrows,
arrow-bolts, and macanas, darts, and stone hatchets.
To possess himself of these, was to supply his own soldiers, and
greatly to impoverish and enfeeble the red men. There, too, exulting
in his savage pride and power, was the hateful and insolent
Tuscaluza, the only cassique among the native princes who had
ever shown himself really formidable to the Spaniards in Apalachia,
up to the present moment. All his passions and all his
reflections conspired to goad him to the most desperate efforts to
make his way into the fortress of Mauvila. To remain without,
exposed to the perpetual assaults of thousands of enemies, springing
up in the twinkling of an eye, and melting away as suddenly
into their great forest shelters, was a prospect that threatened
nothing short of ruin.

But it was necessary to plan the attack upon the fortress with
a due regard to the thousands who guarded it, and of the other
thousands who swarmed throughout the forests in his rear. The
latter, too, were led by one who knew equally well what was proper
to the warfare of the red men and the Spaniards. Bitter and
savage were the moods which possessed De Soto as he thought
of Philip de Vasconselos.

“And I have fallen beneath his lance this day; and, but for
my followers, I had been slain by the very man whom I had
doomed to dishonor and left to death!”

His gloomy musings were interrupted by the entrance of
several of his cavaliers, Nuno de Tobar and Andres de Vasconselos
among them. He was about to declare the secret which
he alone possessed, that of the identity of the red warrior Istalana
with the outlawed knight of Portugal. But the sight of Andres,
and the recollections of the old affectionate intimacy between
Tobar and Philip, led him to a prudent secrecy.

“No!” said he to himself. “Not yet! Let them once know
that Philip lives, and that this is he—remembering too that he
hath been wrongly doomed—and will they strive so bravely
against him? will they not, rather this brother of his, strive in
his behalf? May he not go over to him? May he not carry
others? In the moment of disaster, who clings to an old leader?
What numbers will gladly seize the moment to pass into the
embraces of the successful party? And know we not that many
have sought occasion to drop away upon the march, and wiving
with these savage women to grow to power among the tribes?
No! no! I must hush and hide this damnable discovery close
in the heart, where it only works to torture.”

Such were the brief, hurried, and natural, but unspoken thoughts
which occurred to the Adelantado, when he beheld his knights
enter to receive their orders. De Soto could not throw off the
savage gloom that possessed his soul and filled his countenance,
but he gave it an expression of swift ferocity.

“Well, señors, you are ready. It is time. Let us now to
work, with all our soul and strength, to scourge these savages to
the uttermost. Before the sun shall set this day, we must be in
in possession of yonder fortress. If we fail, our day has ended!
Do you heed me, all? While this sun lasts we must conquer
yon town, and hold it in possession. Yonder forests,”—and he
shuddered as he pointed to them—“harbor ten thousand enemies,
hateful and hating us, without pity or affection; with numbers
destined to hourly increase, pouring in ever as the vultures
throng about the carcass. Let us go forth.”

They were soon in full array, and in the field. De Soto had
already matured his plans. He had detailed the greater and better
portion of his cavaliers for the defence of his rear, while a
chosen body assailed the fortress. The horsemen were particularly
reserved, the better to avoid the shafts shot securely from
the walls. They were appointed to that better service upon the

plain in which the steed can exercise the chief faculty, that of
fleetness, which confers upon him his peculiar uses in war.

The battle was resumed. Tuscaluza and his warriors prepared
for the Spaniards along the walls. Istalana led forth his troops
from the forest, and against their rear. He was encountered by
the picked chivalry of De Soto which, in separate bodies of ten
men each, occupied the plain in their front, and, cased in armor—
all the vital parts protected except the eyes—offered but small
marks for the archery of the red men, while in their successive
charges they swept down hundreds. The horse was more vulnerable,
however, though some pains had been taken to proteet
him in the more exposed and sensitive regions of his body. Istalana,
or, as we shall henceforth prefer to call him, Vasconselos,
aimed at two objects—to bring his troops, only as archers, into
full play, and at the same time to cover them as much as possible
with the trees of the forest from the sweeping charges of the
horsemen. But, if he kept the cover of the forest wholly, he
failed to reach the cavalry with his arrows, the plain being of
such extent; and not to drive them from it, was to leave the
garrison without succor, or diversion, to endure the whole weight
of De Soto's assault. He accordingly prepared to throw a body
of five hundred active warriors, good with spear and battle axe,
between the detachment of cavalry in front of him and the forces
with which De Soto assailed the walls, while the rest of his troops,
covered as much as possible by the forest, kept the horse in full
employment with their arrows. He, himself, on foot, prepared
to lead his spear-men into the thickest of the fight, and between
the two divisions of the Spanish army.

“And now,” saith our old Choctaw chronicler, “the glorious
fight began once more, with a shock as of many thunderbolts.
And Soto, of Castile, led his great men close up against the
walls of Mauvila; and the great king confronted him there with
a terrible flight of arrows; and with heavy stones he drove him
back from the fortress. And when Soto, of Castile, was thus
driven back, he fell upon the warriors of the great chief Istalana,
and very terrible was the battle that ensued between these
mighty men of war. But, though many of the Spaniards were
slain and more hurt, yet, by reason of the armor of tough metal
which they wore, many escaped, who else had been done to
death, by the valiant strokes of Istalana and his spearmen. These,
on the other hand, being all men of naked valor, were sore
stricken by the Spanish bolts and darts; and the wise chieftain,
Istalana, when that he beheld how the battle went against his

people, he drew them cunningly away from between the ranks
of the Spaniards, and gave them shelter for a season among the
great trees of the forest. And De Soto, of Castile, again strove
with the great king against the walls of Mauvila, and his axe-men
toiled to cut though the walls, and to beat down the gates of the
fortress; and a second time were they driven back, sorely smitten,
because of the heavy stones delivered from the fortress. And
again did the brave Istalana give battle to the retreating
Spaniards, and to those who fought from the backs of the mighty
beasts. And the battle went now one way, and now the other,
and, for a season, neither party prevailed in the conflict. But
great was the loss, and grievous the blows of blood which were
delivered on both sides among the champions. And, among the
people of Mauvila, there was great slaughter. Many cassiques
of fame perished in valiant agonies, crying to the gods to open
the blue mansions in the happy valley, and to send for them the
bright maidens, each bearing a cheering bowl to quench the thirst
of the wearied spirit. The mighty Oolenoe Ifisto was the first
to fall, having slain many foes. Then Chinabee Himantla gave
up the ghost, wearing more than thirty scalp locks upon arm
and thigh; and there were many more, brave like these, who
sang that day the song of the last fight. And many other great
chiefs were stricken and hurt in the fighting of this day. Istalana,
the great chief himself, was stricken twice, but he said nothing of
his hurts, while he gave death to other men to drink, sorely
against the will of him who hath no thirst.

“But it was not only to the chiefs of Mauvila that the hurts and
the death were given. The Great Chief of the Spaniards, Soto of
Castile, felt the sharp arrows in his thigh and side; but he was not
slain. The lying prophet of the pale faces was scored with a flying
shaft, like a coward, in the back. But he lived, that men
might say, this is the mark of one who fled. And there was a
goodly youth, a kinsman of Soto, of Castile, one whom they call
Carlos, whose throat the arrow filled, so that he never called for
drink again. And many were the warriors and chiefs besides,
for whom they made bitter moaning that night in the camp of
the Spaniards.

“But the truth demands that I declare, that, on the third assault
upon the walls of Mauvila, the warriors of Soto, of Castile,
prevailed. And they prevailed by reason of the fact, that the
Great King was hurt with a lance that entered his bosom even
where he strove with a great warrior at the gate of the fortress.
And when the warriors of Mauvila beheld the Great King fall,
they sent up a mighty cry. And the women, with foolish tongues,

spread it along the walls and through the town, that the Great
King was slain, even Tuscaluza; but, of a truth, it was not so.
Grievous was his hurt, and glorious, since it was made upon his
open breast, in full front, and even in the moment when, with his
mighty stone-hatchet, he clove the brain of a great warrior of
the Spaniards. But, nevertheless, men thought him slain; and
when his people bore him away from the gate to a place of safety
without the walls, and into the forests on the other side—as was
counselled by the prophet—then the women lamented, and the
foolish warriors broke their weapons and fled from the walls
which they were bade to defend, and went hither and thither, not
knowing what to do; and, by reason of this folly, the followers
of Soto, of Castile, broke their way through the walls, and beat
down the gates, and their great captains, on their mighty beasts,
rode headlong through the streets of Mauvila, smiting as they
went. Then was it too late, when our warriors hastily caught up
their arms, and renewed the fight.

“And the women of Mauvila strove, too, in the ranks of battle,
and very great and glorious was the slaughter. But the
Spaniards prevailed in battle against our people, and when this
was beheld by the brave women of Mauvila, they seized bright
torches of the living flame. And they gave it wings; and they
sent it from housetop to housetop; and they hid it away in the
hearts of the houses. And where they had their husbands slain,
they flung themselves into the burning houses, and they welcomed
the coming of the Spaniards with arms of flame, waving
them on, as they passed over the walls and through the gates
with songs of triumph and defiance. It was a day of rich
blood. And the people of Mauvila left for the Spaniards only a
feast of famine, and music of agony and groans, with a raging
fire to quench the thirst which they knew, from eating at such a
banquet. The brave Tuscaluza, the son of the Great King, was
slain; but the Great King himself was made safe in the big
forests lying toward Chickasah. Thither came also the mighty
chief Istalana, who had grevious hurts upon his breast, upon his
face, upon his arms and side. Sorely was he stricken; and
they brought him upon the shoulders of the Tamenes toward
Chickasah, and the princess Coçalla, of Cofachiqui, tended him,
while he lay hurt, and the strange black page, Juan, watched beside
him nightly when he slept.”