1539: Artifacts and Archaeology from Conquistador Hernando De Soto’S Potano Encampment and the Lost Franciscan Mission

By Dr. Ashley White

History books sometime forget that the bloody and painful history of America begins here in Florida long before Jamestown and Plymouth were even thoughts. Florida is the location of the first American Thanksgiving, that was celebrated in 1564 with the landing of the French Protestant pilgrims as well as the first Christmas observance by Hernando de Soto and his army during their 1539 winter encampment. During this most early time in American history, the explorers were besieged with tropical diseases, poisonous snakes, alligators, pirates, starvation and even cannibalism. It is hard to find a more exciting story than that even in an adventure novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503546837

Dr. Ashley White

Dr. Ashley White is an American archaeologist, surgeon, and author. He completed doctorate level forensic anthropology training and is an expert in the recovery and conservation of human remains and material cultural artifacts. Dr. White has degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and East Carolina University, as well as has worked at Duke University. An emeritus fellow surgeon, Dr. White has been researching ancient plagues for the past three decades. This evidence based bio-archaeology project has granted him access to some of the world’s most sensitive archaeological sites in Asia—including Russia, China, India and Turkey, the Middle East, North and Sub-Sahara Africa, England, Scotland, Ireland, twelve additional countries in Europe, North and Central America, and South America, including the Amazon Basin. Dr. White has served on the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America, located at Boston University. Dr. White works with the AIA Cultural Property Legislation and Policy Committee and the International Committee of the Blue Shield that are responsible for investigating and responding to issues concerning the illicit black market trade in antiquities and cultural artifacts while enforcing the Hague Conventions. Dr. White is the author of numerous research publications and the well received Physical Signs in Medicine and Surgery: An Atlas of Rare, Lost and Forgotten Physical Signs. This comprehensive Atlas was originally conceived for doctors providing needed care in dangerous, rugged, and remote situations often created by catastrophe, disasters, epidemics, and military conflicts. Dr. White lives with his wife, Michele, and son, Ethan, on their ranch located in Florida and their home in the Georgia Blue Ridge Mountains. Academic Press Journal UK London

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Fred Ashley White. 705754

Library of Congress Control Number: PENDING

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5035-4684-4

               EBook       978-1-5035-4683-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 06/11/2015

Academic Press Journal

Division of UK Scholarly Open Access

Montpelier Street

London SW7 1HH UK

Contents

Prologue

Acknowledgments

Abstract

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SPANISH EXPEDITIONS AND MISSIONS IN CENTRAL FLORIDA

CHAPTER 2

DESCRIPTION AND EXCAVATION HISTORY OF SITE MR03538

CHAPTER 3

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF MR03538 COMPARED TO KNOWN MISSION SITES

CHAPTER 4

THE RICHARDSON SITE 8AL100

CHAPTER 5

ANALYSIS AND PROVENIENCE OF ARTIFACTS FROM MR03538

Aboriginal Material Culture

CHAPTER 6

SUMMARY FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Book Club Questions and Discussion Guide

Answers

For

SHELLY & ETHAN

The two brightest stars in an infinite galaxy

1539

ARTIFACTS AND ARCHAEOLOGY FROM

CONQUISTADOR HERNANDO DE SOTO’S POTANO

ENCAMPMENT AND THE LOST FRANCISCAN MISSION

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Crossbow points, 7-layered chevrons, mail armor, and Ferdinand and Isabella coins now backed up with XFR testing, this is the definitive De Soto site. The discovery and recognition of the White site is a major archaeological and historical event. The on-going investigations and interpretation of the White / De Soto site promise to clarify the Spanish and Indian history of north-central Florida and to add immeasurably to our knowledge of the Hernando De Soto expedition.

23640.png Dr. Charles M. Hudson, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and History, University of Georgia. Professor Hudson is considered the world’s top scholar on Hernando De Soto, author of countless research publications and Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun.

This (the De Soto site) is an extremely important site, historically and archaeologically.

23642.png Dr. Gifford Waters, Collections Manager for Historical Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History and an expert on Spanish missions.

I looked at the archaeological evidence. There is absolutely no doubt that is a De Soto contact site. The site Ashley White has found seems certainly 100 percent I’d say to be the main Indian town of Potano that De Soto had been at and also the later location of the mission of San Buenaventura de Potano.

23644.png Dr. Jerald T. Milanich, Curator Emeritus in Archaeology of the Florida Museum of Natural History. Professor Milanich is the leading expert and author of multiple books about the Potano culture and Hernando De Soto’s expedition.

Prologue

Indiana Jones has forever linked archaeology in our minds with nonstop action sequences involving the occult, grave robbers, lost treasure and of course lots of venomous snakes and poison arrows; but for most of us working in the field that is far from the truth.

Archaeology is simply our scientific process of studying humans through what they leave behind as material culture. Having served for several years with Harrison Ford on the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America, his celebrity was a romantic reminder of that exciting Hollywood vision, but memories of fieldwork include a stark different reality. Most of us remember the endless torment of biting flies and those friendly gnats that drill into your eyes looking for water. It is so hot in some regions, a dangerous fever would go unnoticed until you fell into that nice square grave you just dug for yourself. Your iPod is always dead because there is no electricity in this part of the world and that Talking Heads song playing in your head asks—well—how did I get here? How did I get in this jungle, or desert or cave? We usually start our projects by deciphering ancient documents, but can be spurred into immediate action when a bulldozer bounces a skull through an excited construction site. Archaeologists also love different types of surveys and excavations to protect the Holy Grail of archaeology – what we call context. Context is much more than the location of where something is found, it is what surrounds an object and helps give it meaning. Studying that relationship reveals events in time that placed it there. Rarely projects take a slight turn off of what you are expecting; creating delays, but sometimes the routine can go way – way off the radar, beyond anything in the realm of expectation. It turns out there really is a lost treasure, grave robbers, a missing mummy and tales involving the Spanish Inquisition, yet the most bizarre thing in this Monty Python adventure was while we were uncovering lost history we were also digging up controversy.

Evidently there is a subject in American history you just don’t mess with and that’s Hernando de Soto’s route. There is no more elusive expedition on planet earth than his and this has intrigued researchers for more than a century. How could an army of 600 men and 220 horses leave no trace? So if you want to be embroiled in controversy, then be the anthropologist that discovers a De Soto encampment that can help reconstruct the expedition.

The current route marked with De Soto’s Trail signs through the southeast United States was a total fabrication by local politicians lobbying their Congressional representatives. How do we know this? Well, it’s because when that Trail was created there was absolutely no supporting archaeological evidence – that bears repeating – absolutely no supporting archaeological evidence. How could this be? It seems everyone wanted a piece of the action – and action meaning tourist dollars.

Harvard anthropologists began looking for the mysterious De Soto route in the 1870s and investigations continued with the Smithsonian Institute in the 1880s. During the 1930s there was special effort to locate the De Soto landing place and a joint resolution of Congress created the United States De Soto Expedition Commission in 1935 and President Roosevelt appointed the members. The investigators for the Commission admitted they could not decipher the Portuguese and Spanish names given to the Native cultures visited by De Soto, thus any modern Indian tribe with a similar phonetic sounding name whether in Nebraska or Arkansas became a site visited by De Soto. It seems they forgot the cultures conquistadors visited were extinct and any distant relation had been forcibly relocated, during the Trail of Tears.

In 1939, after no evidence for the route had been found, Congress published The Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission. Was this to be the true permanent official route accepted by historians? Evidently, as Congress quickly moved to make it so and instructed the De Soto Commission to place markers along the route followed by the conquistadors. On May 30th 1939 the National Society of Colonial Dames unveiled the first marker at Shaw’s Point, the designated landing site with all of the pomp and circumstance of a colorful parade through Bradenton. Area mayors, Boy Scouts and the Fire Department made it official. In the fervor to stimulate local tourism and entice the National Park Service to build a park there, Shaw’s Point was renamed DeSoto Point and on December 3rd 1939 the lead story of the Bradenton Herald was, DeSoto’s Landing Place Fixed by Authorities. Robert Bentley, the manager of the Bradenton Herald wrote in a January 2nd 1940 editorial Here is something upon which the Chamber of Commerce and other civic organizations should lend their energies this year. A developed park at DeSoto Point would bring hundreds of thousands there because of its historic interest plus the entertainment such a place could be made to provide. Literally, there’s millions in it. The route in the report was adopted by many academics even though it lacked archaeological data, but many academics did not want to rock the funding boat or face the severe opposition by suggesting the route actually does not go through your town.

De Soto’s expedition is a volatile subject because of its lasting