7 - Invasion and Devastation

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Imagine how the mounted Spanish conquistadors appeared to Native Americans who had never seen a horse before. The animals seemed so wild - snorting through flared nostrils and swishing long, silken tails. And they were fast, swifter even than deer. Yet, the Spanish were their masters. They pulled the reins left, and the horses moved obediently in that direction. The conquistadors must have appeared incredibly powerful, an impression magnified by the metal armor many wore. The Indians, dependent upon their crops of corn and beans and squash, considered the sun sacred and omnipotent, and these visitors with light skin seemed to carry the sun in their flesh. The beards some of the Spanish wore further accentuated their dissimilarities.

Then there were their clothes. While the Indians sometimes donned lavish fur mantels to ward off the cold and colorful costumes to celebrate ceremonial occasions, they had never seen anything like the dress of the strangers. Generally, the Indians prided themselves on being unencumbered and wore as little as possible. They marveled at the thick quilted armor favored by the Spanish.

As the Spanish moved across the land encountering various groups of native people, the reception they received was often hospitable, although sometimes they met bands ready to fight. The attitudes and actions of the Spanish also varied. At least some treated the natives with open disdain and rewarded friendliness with treachery.

Sorting out who spilt blood first and why, in most situations is impossible, hut once there were injuries and death the war cries for revenge were hard to still. For both the Spanish and the natives, separating those with peaceful intentions from aggressors must have been difficult. Their languages were so different and customs so alien.

Inhabitants in the Fort Benning area still followed the Mississippian way of life. They hunted, gathered fruits and nuts, and cultivated large agricultural fields dominated by corn. They still venerated chiefs who lived atop earthen mounds. The most important mound center in the region was in Alabama, the Abercrombie site, not far from Fort Benning. There were villages on Fort Benning land and scattered farmsteads tended by individual families. At least some villages probably also featured mounds. Archeologist David DeJarnette located pottery on Fort Benning where a mound once stood, pottery associated with the Abercrombie site, indicating contact between the two sites.

The Indians living on Fort Benning land no doubt heard tales of the strange visitors on the periphery of their world. Prehistory, the years when there was no written record, was ending. History began in the region with the coming of the Spanish who recorded what they saw and experienced. While some quibble about exactly when history started in a particular area, major change was sweeping over the Southeast that would quickly envelop everyone.

One of the first Spaniards to arrive in the Southeast was Lucas Vazquez de Allyon. His two ships weighed anchor off the South Carolina coast in 1521 He befriended local Indians, then invited some onto his ships where he shackled them and set sail. He intended to sell the captives into slavery in Hispaniola, the Caribbean island now known as the Dominican Republic, which the Spanish then controlled. But one of the ships sank, drowning everyone on board, and conditions on the other vessel rapidly deteriorated. The Indians refused to eat, and many became ill and died. By the time the ship docked in Hispaniola, the surviving Indians were so emaciated that Spanish authorities took pity on them and set them free, except for one. Allyon kept him prisoner, taking him to Europe for display. The Spaniard returned to the East Coast in 526 to establish a colony, but illness, food shortages, and hostile natives doomed the attempt.

In 1528, Pamphilo Narvaez inched the European presence closer to the Fort Benning area. However, harsh conditions and angry natives forced his expedition of about 600 people to flee from eastern Florida.

Next came Hernando de Soto, the European who probably first directly impacted life in the Fort Benning area. Even though he never set foot on the land occupied by the post, he traveled a broad circle around it, wreaking havoc everywhere he went, setting into motion changes with devastating impact on the local people. De Soto perhaps had even more ties to Fort Benning. There are hints that his soldiers met the Yuchi Indians, possible ancestors of a people who eventually settled along the Chattahoochee River. Some researchers also contend that the conquistador traveled through the Indian towns Tuskegee, Chiaha, Tamathli, and Kasita that eventually resettled along the Chattahoochee, some of them on what became Fort Benning land.

De Soto landed at Tampa Bay in La Florida in 1539, leading 600 soldiers. There were also several soldiers' wives and a number of slaves and servants in the entourage, which included 200 horses and many pigs to be slaughtered as needed for food. De Soto also brought along vicious Irish wolfhounds to enforce his own harsh justice, unleashing the dogs against any Indian guide who displeased him.

Already rich from pillaging the Peruvian Incas, de Soto was determined to add to his coffers by finding more gold in North America. While other Spaniards traded with the Indians, de Soto stole what he wanted, including precious stores of corn. He abducted Indian women for his soldiers and native men to haul his supplies, often chaining these slaves to prevent escape. He frequently burned Indian villages after stealing any valuables. Then, to guarantee safe passage through a group's territory, he humiliated chiefs by kidnapping them. As a final symbol of conquest, he planted Christian crosses in village plazas or atop the Indians' sacred mounds.

De Soto's army fought many skirmishes with the natives in Florida. The entrada, as it was called, spent the winter near Tallahassee, then in spring headed north into Georgia.

We know a great deal about de Soto's exploration because several members of his expedition, including his personal secretary, Rodrigo Ranjel, recorded details. Also, de Soto's experiences and a close approximation of his route are the focus of intensive recent research by Chester DePratter, Marvin Smith, and especially Charles Hudson.

As de Soto's army swung toward Fort Benning, it was forced to cross a major river, likely the Flint, in south Georgia. Spring rains had swollen the waterway to dangerous levels, but there was no alternative route in sight. They had to cross. The soldiers removed the chains from the Indian slaves and lashed the bonds together into one long chain. They tethered one end around a big tree on one bank of the river, then managed to swim with the other end across the waters and tie it around another tree. They then built a barge, which they pulled back and forth across the river by pulling on the chain. Twice the chain broke and the barge went bounding out of control. Somehow, everyone eventually crossed.

At this point the army began to veer away from Fort Benning territory as it headed north. Near the end of March, they reached the vicinity of present-day Macon, Georgia, then turned east. While traveling among people tied to the Ocute chiefdom, one of the Indian guides, a 17 year-old boy named Perico, fell into some kind of fit. The Spanish were so concerned they held an exorcism, trying to release the evil spirit they thought had invaded his body.

Perico insisted that if the Spanish traveled four days further east they would find gold. However, local Indians warned de Soto that if he headed in that direction he risked starvation because he would enter a large patch of uninhabited land. Researchers think the deserted area was along the Savannah River, the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina. De Soto, lured by the promise of finding gold, chose to follow Perico's advice and headed east. An Indian war chief, Patofa, and his warriors, accompanied the Spanish. (Indians often had both peacetime and war chiefs.)

De Soto and his men traveled four days. Just as they had been warned, they found no people, food, or gold. The terrain was so desolate they derided it as the "the desert of Ocute." On the fifth day, they reached the Savannah River, which they called Un grandisimo rio. Like the Flint River, the Savannah was swollen from spring rains, making crossing treacherous. Mounted soldiers crossed where the river swept around an island near where Augusta, Georgia is today. There were some stepping stones in the shallower spots, but soon the water lapped at the horse stirrups and saddlebags. Some of the pigs, squealing in fright, were swept away and drowned. The foot soldiers crossed the river further north. They linked arms in a human chain 30 to 40 feet long and slowly pulled themselves across the raging river. Exhausted but safe on the other side, they faced another crisis. They were running out of food. De Soto ordered everyone to move faster. Instead of the normal 17 miles traveled a day, they were now covering 30. They encountered more flooded rivers and often had to halt to build barges to cross them. Nine days after they had left the last Ocute village, the soldiers reached the location of present-day Columbia, South Carolina. It was late April, and the Spanish were hopelessly lost. They happened upon a few abandoned hunting or fishing shacks, but found no food.

Patofa and his warriors were little help as guides. Their goal was to find and fight their enemies from a chiefdom called Cofitachequi. But unlike the pitched battles between armies the Europeans were accustomed to, the conflicts between the two chiefdoms apparently involved skirmishes between hunting bands in a wide buffer zone. The Indians were as lost as the Spanish.

The spring rains continued to fall and rivers continued to rise. Still, the Spanish wandered. Finally, on April 25, a scout returned, reporting that he had come across a village. The army arrived at the village, called Aymay, after journeying 130 miles from the last Ocute community. They were now on the outskirts of the immense chiefdom called Cofitachequi that controlled most of what today is the eastern half of South Carolina, as well as parts of North Carolina.

The war chief, Patofa, and his followers raided several villages, looted and desecrated temples, and killed and scalped their captives. Their lust for battle satisfied, the Indians left for home.

De Soto wanted to find the reputed leader of Cofitachequi, a woman. He ordered at least one villager at Aymay tortured and then burned to death because he refused to divulge her whereabouts.

Somehow, de Soto eventually made his way to the chiefdom headquarters, reportedly near Camden, South Carolina. He camped on one side of a river, apparently the Wateree, and summoned the woman chief. The Lady of Cofitachequi-the chieftainess or a relative, accounts vary-soon approached de Soto and invited the strangers to cross the river to her village.

There the Indians presented the Spaniard with gifts of animal pelts, blankets, pearls, salt, venison, and other food, in a cordial welcoming ceremony.

De Soto demanded their precious metals, but when the Indians responded by bringing him copper and sparkling mica, he grew impatient, and demanded to see gold. De Soto interpreted their lack of cooperation for deliberate disobedience, and with a group of his soldiers, stormed to the top of a sacred mound where the roof of the temple was encrusted with strings of pearls and seashells. The soldiers moved to the entranceway which was guarded by six pairs of life-size human statues holding weapons as if ready to attack.

Inside, more pearls and shells decorated the ceiling, and there were more statutes, some holding ceremonial weapons decorated with strips of copper. Ornate chests lined the walls. Inside some were the bones of honored ancestors. Others brimmed with animal skins, furs, and pearls. The Spanish stole everything valuable they could carry, then kidnapped the Lady of Cofitachequi and headed north.

Soon they were climbing their way through the mountains of North Carolina. Near Asheville, the Lady of Cofitachequi managed to escape, taking with her some of the pearls stolen from her people. De Soto's expedition moved west, exploring parts of north Georgia and eastern Tennessee. One of the early Yuchi villages, called Tsistuyi by the Cherokee, was likely located on the Hiwassee River in Polk County, Tennessee. These people apparently had encounters with various Spanish explorers, possibly including de Soto. The Spaniard's chroniclers refer to a people they called the chiscas or chichimecs (some historians think these were the Yuchi), but offer few details. We don't know how these encounters may have affected the Yuchi. At some point they apparently migrated south into Georgia, first living along the Savannah River before moving west.

The de Soto expedition moved southwest across Alabama. The soldiers continued to kidnap Indian chiefs and managed to avoid attack, at least for a while. Indians finally did mass for battle in a south central part of the state at a community called Mabila.

Surrounded by a stockade fence, the village bristled with defenses. There was a series of towers as part of the palisade. Seven to eight archers hid in the towers as the Spanish approached the village. A furious onslaught of arrows caught the Spanish unaware and drove them back.

The Spanish were spared from disaster by their quilted armor which stopped many of the Indians' arrows, rendering them harmless. For the Indians, the only recourse was to aim for the heads and necks of their foes and to fire at the horses. The power and swiftness of the animals also proved advantages for the Spanish who regrouped and rushed the garrison.

The battle raged for hours, but turned into slaughter as the Indians flung themselves almost suicidally at the Spanish. In the end, the Indian forces were crushed. Between 2,500 and 5,000 of them died.

The Spanish also suffered severely, although their casualties were much fewer. Twenty soldiers perished in the fight, and almost everyone was injured in some way. Twenty more died later from wounds. The Spanish also lost 50 horses and all of the remaining pearls stolen from the Cofitachequi. Gone too was much of their food and supplies, including spare clothing.

The crippled expedition continued west, but now faced almost continuous harassment from the Indians, who attacked swiftly in the night then retreated into the landscape they knew so well. De Soto grew despondent as his futile search for gold dragged on and his resources dwindled. On the western side of the Mississippi River, he caught a fever and died. His soldiers plunged his body into the river's gloomy depths.

The next European expedition to pass close to Fort Benning was the one organized by Tristan de Luna in 1558. His convoy moved north from the Gulf Coast and settled in either northwest Georgia or northeast Alabama almost 20 years after de Soto had visited the same area. The colony disbanded in 1561.

After the failure of the de Luna mission, the Spanish established missions and outposts along the Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida coasts, but for about 150 years Europeans stayed out of much of the interior of the Southeast. In that time, the vast majority of Mississippian mound cultures vanished. The contacts with de Soto and other explorers drove a killing stake into a system dependent upon devotion to hereditary chiefs. The humiliation of these leaders at the hands of the Europeans, the loss of vital food crops and shelter, and the many deaths and enslavements of the Indians were devastating. Trade patterns were altered and there was political upheaval. Taking even more of a toll were the diseases unleashed by the visitors, for which the natives had no immunity. Thousands died as a result.

There is some evidence that the mound system was already in decline even before de Soto arrived, probably because of diseases first incubated in North America when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean.

There is little information about what happened next on Fort Benning land during the century and a half after the early European incursions. The artifacts left by indigenous people reveal only a fragmented picture. Indians were making far fewer pots with complicated stamped designs. Their pottery was predominantly plain and undecorated.

At the Abercrombie site, archeologist Frank Schnell Jr. uncovered a number of Indian burials with Spanish trade goods, including silver beads, dating to about 1590. People living in the Fort Benning area probably traded for these goods with other Indian groups to the south or east who perhaps traded with still other Indians. This down-the-line exchange eventually reached the Spanish at St. Augustine, Florida.

Archeological research on Fort Benning and nearby also shows a reduction in the number of sites and the amount of artifacts at individual sites, evidence of the vast numbers killed because of smallpox, cholera, and other diseases introduced by Europeans.

When European explorers eventually ventured back into the Southeastern interior, the great mound centers had been abandoned. Muscogee Indians living in villages on what is now Fort Benning said that nearby mounds were built by 'the ancient people." They professed to know little, if anything, about these earlier inhabitants.

The pace of history quickened between 1633 and 1650 when the Spanish established missions in northern Florida, including the main mission, San Luis de Apalache, located within present-day Tallahassee. Then in 1670, the British landed at Charles Towne, later known as Charleston, South Carolina, and the race was on to try to win the allegiance of Indians living along the Chattahoochee River.

The British were aggressive traders who offered numerous goods-mirrors, glass beads, metal hatchets, European earbobs, buttons, cloth, rum, and other items-as well as what the Indians coveted the most-horses and guns. In return, the British secured animal pelts and slaves, which helped make some rich.

The yearning for English goods altered Indian life. They now captured slaves in numbers far exceeding any they had ever taken before the Europeans arrived. The natives felt they had to have guns to remain strategically on par with everyone else and to protect themselves from other marauding Indians looking for slaves. To get guns from the English, they had to capture slaves to trade.

The Spanish were at a disadvantage in exchanges with the Indians. Unlike the British traders, they were reluctant to supply the Indians with guns. Also, many of the Spanish sought to convert the Indians to Christianity, producing resentment, while most of the British seemed interested only in commerce.

The Spanish, after a hiatus from active exploration, again sought to penetrate and control regions outside their strongholds in Florida. In Georgia, they founded the mission Sabacola el Mayor in 1679, only a few miles south of Fort Benning. Fray Juan Ocon neglected to seek permission for the settlement from a local chief, the Grand Cacique, who ordered the missionaries out of his territory. The friar obeyed, but he returned two years later, accompanied by seven infantrymen to provide protection. However, he abandoned this mission as well when the Indians turned hostile, perhaps because they wanted no interference with English trade.

The British were represented in the area by an aggressive and wily trader named Henry Woodward. He visited the Fort Benning area in 685, and Spanish authorities in Florida learned he was there. Woodward enjoyed free access to Indian villages all along both sides of the Chattahoochee River. He apparently frequented villages such as Kasita and Kawita where Muscogee Indians lived.

Spanish authorities were angered at the Englishman's audacity. He openly worked in territory they considered exclusively under Spanish domain. They dispatched two separate armed expeditions (combined forces of Florida Indians and Spanish soldiers) into the Fort Benning area with explicit instructions to capture the elusive Woodward. Both efforts failed.

Lieutenant Antonio Matheos, who led the expeditions, and his soldiers captured at least one villager from Kawita, threatening and torturing him, but the Indian refused to disclose Woodward's whereabouts. Frustrated that the natives insisted on protecting Woodward, Matheos ordered the burning of four villages, maybe more. At least two of the villages were probably located on what is now Fort Benning. Remnants of one of these villages have been discovered by archeologists on the military reservation.

Chad Braley and Frank Schnell Jr. uncovered evidence at a site called Yuchi Town of an early village consumed by fire. Once inhabited by Hitchiti-speaking natives, the site revealed numerous Spanish trade goods. The archeologists think that this was one of the villages destroyed by the Spanish.

Because of the Spanish threats and the burning of villages, eight other Indian villages located near the Chattahoochee River yielded and formally agreed to have no relations with the English. Despite these agreements, however, the Indians continued to meet with the British and to accept their goods.

The Spanish launched three more unsuccessful raids in an effort to stop the burgeoning trade and to capture trader Henry Woodward, to no avail. Ultimately, Spanish officials concluded that the only way to stop the English was to build a permanent settlement in the area. Captain Don Enrique Primo de Rivera and 24 infantrymen arrived in 1689 to supervise the building of a fort adjacent to the Indian village of Apalachicola. About 20 Florida Indians participated in the fort construction and were also there to defend it.

Remnants of the fort were discovered immediately south of Fort Benning with the help of a monk at the Holy Trinity Monastery. Several excavations have been conducted at the site, uncovering part of the ancient earthen walls. Archeologists also found a number of Spanish artifacts, including pieces of olive jars, and many Indian pottery sherds, indicative of the interaction of the two cultures.

Ultimately, however, the fort failed to expand Spanish influence. Because of the fort construction and previous Spanish intimidations, many Indians, perhaps entire villages, abandoned their homes along the Chattahoochee River and relocated eastward. The Indians rebuilt on the Ocmulgee River near present-day Macon, Georgia. This removed a major portion of the population from the Fort Benning area, according to many researchers. Some, however, argue that Indians did not completely abandon their bases on the Chattahoochee even as they established frontier settlements near present-day Macon.

Former residents along the Chattahoochee left to move close to an English trading post. The Indians wanted to be near English goods that were no longer luxuries, but now necessities for many of them. And they wanted English protection from the Spanish.

The Spanish ultimately abandoned their settlement at Apalachicola, their northernmost fort in eastern North America, in 1691. The troops were recalled to St. Augustine. Within 20 years, there would be another major Indian migration, this time back to the Chattahoochee and the Fort Benning area.

Chapter 8: A Brave Journey

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