University of Virginia Library

49. CHAPTER XLIX.

The warriors of the Apalachian had been set in motion, by the
impatient Tuscaluza, before Vasconselos was able to take the
field. His pride made him impatient. Advised of every step
in the progress of the Spaniards, he had commanded that their
steps should be followed; and, taking counsel, for awhile, from
Istalana, he had pursued a cautious policy, which studiously forebore
risking anything on a general battle. His present chief
warrior was Chicaza, who controlled an immense district of
country, and could bring at least five thousand warriors into the
field. The progress of De Soto had now brought him into the
territories of this Chief. To him, Tuscaluza — preparing himself
to take the field—had sent instructions to harass the Spaniards,
cut off detachments and supplies, whenever occasion offered, but,
on no account, to engage in general action. It was the fortune of
the Great King to Apalachia, to possess great Captains, who, like
the ambitious Chiefs among more civilized nations, have too
much self-esteem to hearken to the words of counsel, or even to
obey the commands of their superiors always. Chicaza ventured
battle with the enemy, and was defeated. But not till a dreadful
massacre had taken place, as terribly murderous to the red
men as that of Mauvila, and quite as fatal to the Spaniards.

De Soto had possessed himself of the village of Chicaza.
The first act of the fierce Cassique was the destruction of his own
town. He decreed it to the flames. It was a bitter cold night
in February, the north wind blowing wildly, and dark clouds
scudding across the sky, when the Cassique led his forces, in
three separate bodies, to the attack. The Spaniards knew not of
their danger, till the dwellings, in which they had sheltered themselves,
were all in flames. Scouts and sentinels, officers and
men, had been alike neglectful of duty. The red men stole into
an unwatched camp. They gave no alarm, until they had laid
their inflammable torches beneath the cottages, and until their
shafts, tipped with lighted matches, had swept to the straw-roofed

lodges, and fastened themselves inextricably among the reeds.
Then did the war-whoop sound the signal for assault; then did
the wild conchs deliver their mournful blasts, and the wooden
drums, and rattles of the Chicazas resound fearfully about the
beleaguered habitations. Then did the red men, three thousand
in number, rush to the battle, surrounding the village on every
side, and dealing their effectual arrows whenever the Spaniards
sallied forth.

We must not enter into the details of this battle. We can
only give results. The red men were beaten,—that is, they were
driven off, for shelter, to their thickets, and several hundred of
them were slain. But the victory, like that of Mauvila, was one
over which the Spaniards could only groan, not exult! Fifty
of their soldiers had been slain, with several hidalgos among
them; as many horses had perished also, and a like number
were more or less hurt. At one time, but for Nuno de Tobar and
Andres de Vasconselos, the Spaniards must have been utterly
destroyed. An entire company fled in panic from the scene of
action, and were brought back by Tobar. The Portuguese
captain and his veterans, in fact, were the true saviors of the
army. When the morrow's sun shone upon the work, the hot
tears, spite of himself, gushed forth from the eyes of the haughty
Adelantado, who felt, with the onward progress of each day, how
nearer he approached the complete annihilation of all his hopes.
His gloom and vexation of spirit increased the gulph between
himself and his followers. He had for them no words of patience.
He was guilty of daily injustice. He mortified their pride by
his haughty disregard to their sufferings and wishes; he discouraged
their sympathies, by the rejection of all communion
with them. His best officers, among them Nuno de Tobar and
Andres de Vasconselos, approached him with entreaty and exhortation.
But the presence of the latter—of both in fact—only
reminded him painfully of one, to whom he ascribed the ruin of
his fortunes. Though he named not Philip de Vasconselos to
either—though, in their ignorance of what he knew, he offered
them no clues to the secret origin of his own agonies, he yet replied
to them with a bitterness that seemed to take for granted
their perfect knowledge of his secret.

“Oh, ye do well to exhort and to entreat, and counsel. Why
do ye not go further? Why not command. Ye know not the
presence of this fiendish fate that pursues our steps. Ye know
not the damnable presence that haunts our fortunes with daily
terrors. Yet ye wear his aspect. Ye are innocent forsooth;

Yet why do ye go with him in your hearts, that ye may the
better pluck down ruin on my head.”

“What means his Excellency,” demanded the confounded
Nuno de Tobar. The scowling eyes of De Soto were set upon
Andres de Vasconselos. The latter proudly answered, and with
a calm cold sterness of manner, which made the resemblance
between himself and brother much more evident than ever.

“I know not what your Excellency designs to say, for a truth
all that you have spoken sounds strange and unmeaning in mine
ears; but if their be any purpose to charge aught of our disasters
upon my neglect of duty or want of loyalty, then do I demand
that you name my accuser, and my sword shall answer to his falsehood.”

“Even thus he spoke! Thus he looked! Thus he defied me
ever!” cried De Soto, his memory still retaining full recollection of
the reserve and self-esteem which in the case of Philip de Varcomelos
had always offended the amour propre of the Castilian.

“Of whom speaks the Adelantado?” demanded Tobar.

“Of whom! Jesu! one would think you had slept, without
hearing the cries of war, without feeling the shock of battle,
without scathing in the scorching flames that swept over us by
night, during the last thirty days of strife and honor.”

Such was the sudden burst of seeming astonishment, with which
the adelantado replied to his lieutenant. He continued, ardently
and wildly—

“Of whom should I speak, but of that insolent Jate which has
dogged our steps from Chiala, and which hangs over us with ruin.
Oh! ye know not. Ye are blind. Ye will remain blind until the
knife is at your throats, and there is no means left ye for escape.
Hark ye! Ye have seen De Soto overthrown, for the first time
overthrown, in single combat; man opposed to man, lance to lance
steed to steed. And ye have seen all this achieved by a naked
savage of the Apalachian! No mail upon his breast, no helmet
upon his brow, no crest upon gleaming shield, declaring his deeds
in war. Yet he had a name. Once he had crest and shield, and
cuirass. Ha! Ha! A red savage! and ye thought it was a mere
savage, a naked Apalachian of the hills, whose lance could foil that
of Hernan De Soto, whose charge and thrust could roll the Castilian
warrior into the dust. Oh! blind! Hark ye! It was no
red man no Apalachian, though wearing his semblance. It was
this accursed Fate, I tell you, that pursues us now, that will still
pursue us, that will feed upon us all, even as the vulture and the
wolf glean among our bones bleaching in the wilderness. But I
will not fall in vain! There will be a bloody issue yet. His crest

against mine, and so help me, Blessed Jesu, as I shall yet plant a
fatal stroke of the battle-axe between his accursed eyes—that Fate
of mine! He shall not overthrow me quite. In my fall, ye shall
behold his also! ay, ay! but a little while. But a few days now—
so gentlemen, get ye ready for march, away.”

The officers stared aghast. The mind of De Soto was evidently
affected. His brain was wild and fevered; and such for
several days continued to be the mood which prevailed with him,
and the manner of his speech. But his inflexible will was still
active and commanding, and sufficed for authority. He drove
his reduced regiments still forward, after a very brief delay,
spent in repairing swords and armor, and giving rest to the
wounded. But dreadful were the sufferings of the troops. The
winter was very cold, and, dreading the torches of the red men,
they could no longer venture to occupy the villages.

Tuscaluza and Istalana were now both in the field once more,
and the authority of the latter prevailed with the Great King.
The redmen were no longer so confident of their prowess as to
risk a general action. They contented themselves with guerilla
warfare. They hung upon the wings, and in the rear of the
Spaniards, harrassing them at every step. They encountered
them in front with sudden darts, whenever the thickets enabled
them to cover themselves readily from the cavalry. De Soto,
maddening with every day's experience, with fever burning high
in his temples, and uncicatrized wounds scalding him beneath his
armor, grew more savage in his moods, and more and more
persuaded himself that a Fate hung above his banner, which
should finally swoop down in vengeance, burying it in blood forever.
With such a superstition working in his soul, he was no
longer the great Captain, who had won eminent position in arms,
with a glory second not even to that of Cortes and Pizarro.
He was now moody and capricious, unstable of resolve,
changeable of purpose, without purpose in fact, and wandering,
like a vagrant with his army, to and fro, as the winds blew and
the waters ran.

At length they told him of a red man seen on horseback, even
then in sight of the army, though at a distance.

“Ha!” he cried—“It is the Fate! He seeks me; we shall
meet once more! we shall meet! we shall end it soon. Ha! Ha!
now shall we see!”

And he bade them help buckle on his armor, and he rode forth
at the head of his army, and lo! upon a little eminence, there
stood the mounted warrior of the Apalachian, as if awaiting him.

“Now,” cried De Soto to his followers—“Now, do ye keep

back, while ye see me transfix this insolent enemy—this Fate
that haunts my footsteps to destroy—with but a single thrust of
my good spear. Ho! Sant Iago, to the rescue!”

And with the famous slogan of Spanish battle, the maddened
cavalier dashed forward to the assault.

Meanwhile, as the Spaniards clearly saw, the red warrior welcomed
the encounter; for he waved his long lance aloft in the
sunlight, and he, too, advanced as if glad to engage in the mortal
struggle with the noble Castilian. But it was no part of the
policy of the Spanish knights or soldiers to suffer the Adelantado
to peril himself in single combat, in his present diseased and
feeble state. Besides, they had seen the wonderful and unaccountable
prowess which the red warrior had shown on horseback.
They naturally concluded the one before them to be the same
who had already overthrown their leader, and they began to share
in the superstitions which he had taught them to respect. They
dashed forward in a body to the support of De Soto, and, with
their approach, the strange warrior of Apalachia melted from
sight, man and horse, into the dim shadows of the impenetrable
forest.

“Whither went he?” demanded the Adelantado. “Did the
earth swallow him? Did ye see him ride away?”

“Verily,” said one, “he disappeared as suddenly as he came!
We saw not how! Perhaps into the forest.”

“But had he not been a fiend from hell, could he have sped
from sight unseen—unheard?”

The knights crossed themselves solemnly, and each muttered
to himself a prayer.

“It is the Fate—my Fate!” exclaimed De Soto as they led
him back; “but I shall cross weapon with him yet! Sant Iago
against the Fiend, my friends! I will conquer mine enemy!”

Days passed; the Spaniards still pressed forward; still harassed
by their sleepless enemies, and unable, with all their arts,
to bring the wily red men to a general action. But De Soto was
told of a fortress into which Chicaza, the Cassique, had thrown
himself, upon the very borders of his province, and where he
appeared preparing to defend himself. The news seemed to concentrate
all the energies and purposes of De Soto. It gave him
a definite purpose. The fortress was called Alabama, and stood
upon the banks of the Yazoo river. The garrison was large.
The fortress was strong and built like that of Mauvila. The
Adelantado at once led his army against it; clouds of the red men,
under Tuscaluza and Istalana, hanging upon his wings and rear.
A terrible fight ensued; the infantry of the Spaniards assailing

the fortress, while their cavalry was required to defend their rear
against the forest rangers that hovered on their flanks. The
Spaniards were again victorious, at the usual price of victory.
They lost some twenty of their bravest soldiers. The loss of
the red men was more severe, but not such as the superlatively
extravagant chroniclers of their people would have us believe. In
fact, the defence of the fortress was only one of those modes
which the policy of the Apalachians taught them to employ, by
which gradually to waste and exhaust the strength of the invaders.
They did not expose themselves unnecessarily; those
who fought without the fortress had the woods for a convenient
shelter, with a thousand avenues open to their light-heeled rangers
for flight, while they were almost impenetrable to the cavalry of
their enemies. The garrison, on the other hand, when closely
pressed on three sides of the fortress, simply leapt the river, and
swam over to the other side. In this conflict, both De Soto and
Philip de Vasconselos were again wounded, but neither severely.
A snare was laid by the Spanish knights for taking the mysterious
horseman of the Apalachians; but the plan was badly conceived,
or badly managed. It was suspected, and Istalana fought on foot,
with battle-axe and macana. Once he came nearly to blows with
De Soto, and, but for the sudden fluctuations of the combat, would
have succeeded in his efforts to do so. A press of knights suddenly
threw a wall of iron and defensive spears between him and
his prey, and he was baffled. The red men melted away from
before the Spaniards, even as the morning mists before the sun,
satisfied with what was done, and leaving to their enemies but a
barren conquest.

The event of this battle was to confirm De Soto in the bitterness
of his moods, and that strange phrenzy—not, however, unnatural—which
had taken possession of his brain. He was a
terribly stricken man, and his mind frequently wandered, while
his frame seemed no longer capable of that hardy endurance; was
certainly no longer seen to exhibit that elastic energy, which had
hitherto distinguished it in every progress. But still he pressed
his people forward, heedless whither, except that he always religiously
strove to leave the sea behind him. He dared not contemplate
the sea. He dared not move the heads of his columns
in that direction, lest he should so madden his followers as to be
unable to control their future course. They had too fully shown
him the lingering passion in their hearts to return; and this return
was what his pride could not contemplate. Failing to conquer
as he had promised, he preferred to bury his fortunes and his

shame together in the depths of the wilderness. He was a fine
example of the terrible selfishness of ambition.

The erratic progress of De Soto at length brought him to the
banks of the Mississippi. His was the first European eye, according
to the authentic history in our possession, which ever beheld
the vast, turbid and wondrous streams of the “Father of
Waters.” De Soto gazed upon them with but little interest.
He dreamed not of the glorious territories which they watered.
He saw not, through the boundless vistas of the future, the numerous
tribes who should dwell upon their prolific borders,
crowning them with the noblest evidences of life, and with the
loveliest arts of civilization. The spirit of the Adelantado was
crushed. The fires of ambition were quenched in his bosom.
His heart was withered: his hope was blasted forever. He was
now a dying man; not exactly a maniac, but with a mind ill at
ease, disordered, vacant, capricious; striving with itself: weary,
and longing only for the one blessing, which he had never suffered
himself to enjoy;—Peace! His heart did not exactly crave a restoration
to his home in Cuba, but the image of the noble woman,
his wife, rose frequently, reproachful in his sight. He had
loved her, as fervently as he could have loved any woman; but,
in the ambitious soul, love is a very tributary passion. It craves
love, but accords little in return. Its true passion is glory!

We have foreborne a thousand details of strife, anxiety, dread and
suffering, which the Spaniards were doomed to experience before
they reached the Mississippi. They were haunted by the perpetual
terrors of the Apalachians. Tuscaluza and his Portuguese Lieutenant
Istalana gave them no respite. They crossed the Mississippi.
They penetrated the country of the Kaskaskias, and still they
were under the eye and the influence of the Great King of the
Apalachians. The terrors of his name met them on every side.
The powers of his arm smote them in all their progresses. “The
Fate! The haunting and pursuing Fate! Oh! Philip de Vasconselos!”
cried De Soto to himself—“thou art terribly avenged.
Would that we could meet, mine enemy! would that, alone, we
stood naked, front to front, on the borders of this great heathen
river, spear to spear, and none to come between. Then, then!
Thy spear or mine! Thy fate or mine! I have wronged thee,
Philip de Vasconselos, but I should slay thee nevertheless.
Verily, thou art terribly avenged. I have wronged thee, but
what had these done to thee, thy christian brethren, that thou
should'st decree their destruction also? Yet thou shalt not!

Sant Iago! there shall come an hour when thou shalt be delivered
into my hands.”

The griefs, the sufferings of De Soto prompted a revival of his
religious enthusiasm. He commanded that a pine of gigantic
height should be hewn into the form of a cross. He had it planted
with solemn ceremonials upon the banks of the stream, and
consecrated its inauguration with great solemnity, and with propitiatory
sacrifices. His secret thought was to persuade the
blessing influences to resist and defeat the terrors of that fiend,—
that Fate,—with which he now believed himself to be pursued.
Thus then, more than three hundred years ago, the emblem of
Christian faith towered above the Father of Waters, and Christian
rites consecrated his mighty billows as they hurried with
glad tidings to the sea.

But these solemn ceremonials compelled no friendly auguries.
The further marches of De Soto only brought him to the bloody
embrace of newer enemies. How the arms and influence of
the Apalachians pursued him wherever he sped—how they roused
against him the warriors of Capaha, Tula and other tribes; what
were the combats, what the losses, the surprises, the fears, the sufferings
of the Spaniards, in their daily progresses, may be faintly
gathered from their own meagre chronicles. Incessant strifes,
sleepless nights, weary marches, wounds and toil, these, with final
mutiny among his own followers, utterly broke down the soul of
De Soto, and took from him all his strength. Let it suffice that
the noble Castilian at last consented to retrace his steps. The
decision came too late for his own safety. But he despatched a
small force, following the great river, with the hope to find the
sea at no great distance. Meanwhile, warring at every step with
new enemies, De Soto planted himself at length at a village which
he had captured, called Guachoya, on the western banks of the
Mississippi. Here he prepared to build brigantines, and make
his way out of a country in which death hunted forever at his
heels, and an angry Fate welcomed, with a constant defeat of
hope, wherever he ventured to plant his footsteps.