Hernando de Soto

Hernando de Soto (Jerez de los Caballeros, Badajoz, Spain, c.1496/1497 –May 21, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. He lead the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States and was probably the first European to discover the Mississippi River.

The expedition was looking for gold and for a way to China. They explored the southern United States. De Soto died in 1542 on the banks of the Mississippi River at present-day Lake Village, Arkansas. Hernando de Soto was born to parents who were hidalgos in Extremadura, a region of poverty and hardship from which many young people looked for ways to seek their fortune elsewhere. His parents were poor, too. Two towns, Badajoz and Jerez de los Caballeros, claim to be his birthplace. All that is known with certainty is that he spent time as a child at both places. In his will, he wanted to be buried at Jerez de los Caballeros, where other members of his family were also buried. The age of the Conquerors came on the heels of the Spanish reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from Islamic forces. Spain and Portugal were filled with young men begging for a chance to find military fame after the Moors were defeated. With discovery of new lands to the West (which seemed at the time to be far East Asia), the whispers of glory and wealth were too compelling for the poor.

De Soto sailed to the New World in 1514 with the first Governor of Panama, Pedrarias Dávila. Brave leadership, unwavering loyalty, and clever schemes for the extortion of native villages for their captured chiefs, became De Soto's hallmark during the Conquest of Central America. He gained fame as an excellent horseman, fighter, and tactician, but was notorious for the extreme brutality with which he wielded these gifts.

During that time, Juan Ponce de León, who discovered Florida, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who discovered the Pacific (he called it the "South Sea" below Panama), and Ferdinand Magellan, who first sailed that ocean to the Orient, profoundly influenced de Soto's ambitions.