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Some related outside links
This is a transcription of a Florida
Public Radio report recorded at the De Soto winter encampment event
on January 13, 1996, and aired in late January/early February of the same
year. My thanks to Buzz Conover for taping me a copy of his report.
“In 1513 Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida near present day St. Augustine.
He is given official credit for the discovery of the Sunshine State, but
there is still plenty of debate as to whether or not he was the truly the
first of the European explorers to discover the peninsula we live on. The
debate also surrounds the route of another of Florida’s explorers Hernando
de Soto. While scholars debate his route through the Southern United States
in search of gold, it can be proved he spent the winter of 1539 just blocks
from Florida’s Capitol. Buzz Conover prepared this report.”-Narrator
“Chain-mail shirts seem to have been the most common armor that was
worn, although it did have the regrettable tendency to get punctured by
Indian reed arrows. So they took to wearing what is called an escaupil,
like this one I’m wearing. The conquistadors learned about these from their
expeditions in Mexico with Cortés, It’s an Aztec form armor. Take
cotton or wool about three fingers thick and quilt it down. It’s very effective,
we’ve shot crossbows and other stuff at it, without managing to puncture
it. It works, its lighter and a lot of De Soto’s soldiers ended up leaving
their expensive chain-mail shirts behind at this particular spot.”-T.B.
“Tim Burke is playing the part of a soldier in Hernando de Soto’s expeditionary
force which landed near Tampa in May of 1539. He’s dressed in a chain-mail
shirt, conquistador’s helmet, and armored leggings. The 1500’s Spanish
militiaman is telling people what is was like to explore the New World.
He’s also letting the adventurous on-lookers, usually children try on one
of the thirty pound shirts made of thousands of metal rings.”-B.C.
“Put your arms up through it and get your hands through the sleeves.”-T.B.
“It’s cold!”- Youngster (Victim)
“Well I’m sorry, its a cold day!” Fiendish Laughter “There you go. Ole! Now do some jumping-jacks.”-T.B.
“A little heavy?”-B.C.
“Yeah. [I feel like] I got ten pound weights on my shoulders. I probably
do.”-Youngster
“Historians agree on the general path that the De Soto expedition took
through Florida and what are now the Southern States from 1539 to 1541.
But until recently there was little if any evidence of De Soto’s trek.
In 1987 while an office park was being built off one of Tallahassee’s main
roads, just a few blocks from the Capitol, Calvin Jones, an archaeologist
with the State of Florida, made a crucial discovery while looking for a
lost Spanish mission.”-B.C.
“One day in March of 1987, actually March the eleventh, the day I found
the sight, I passed here and in front I saw a large construction sign that
said there was a big office complex to be built. So I said, well hell this
is my chance. I’ll just drive out there and dig a hole. No one was around,
so I drove out in the front yard, which is now the road way in called De
Soto Drive, in front of the two buildings. This is just about the right
lay of the land, so I dug a hole with my shovel and within fifteen minutes
I found Spanish pottery, an early Spanish olive jar.”-C.J.
“The discovery of the olive jar confused Jones, because it predated
the mission he was looking for. He gathered together volunteers and continued
to dig the site for two weeks. It was then he realized it was not a mission
he had found, but the 1539 winter campsite of explorer Hernando de Soto.”-B.C.
“What really became very clear to me that it was De Soto’s camp, was
when we found the first chain-mail, the round ringlets. Because I was aware
of the accounts of the De Soto expedition. So we had quite a bit of historical
information on what happened. The fact that they had that kind of armor
and so forth and the later expeditions didn’t. We found the chain-mail
that was the clincher for me along with the early olive jar and beads and
other earlier artifacts too. Small bits, small artifacts not worth a lot
of money, but worth a great deal in terms of proving that this was the
winter camp.”-C.J.
“For close to a year the archaeological dig continued. Workes unearthed
over forty-thousand artifacts including early Spanish pottery, copper coins
from the early fifteen hundreds and the jaw of a pig. Which further proved
that De Soto had been there. Pigs were unknown to the New World prior to
the arrival of the Spanish and diaries from members of the De Soto expedition,
mention they brought pigs with them. Jones says most of what was found
within the one-acre dig was military equipment.”-B.C.
“His men were deployed here around this tree edge, which is actually
more-or-less the military crest of the hill. In other words it is the breakpoint
of the hill, at which it is no longer flat, but begins to slope down. That’s
were he had his men deployed. We know that from having excavated around
the front. We found clusters of artifact areas about every fifty feet apart.
And those clusters of where artifacts were, we’re talking about horse-shoe
nails, boot tacks, chain-mail, Spanish pottery and so forth. In clusters
of fifty foot circles more-or-less and then those circles are about fifty
feet apart around this hill. So we have found a spot in here of one of
these clusters about a hundred feet away where the truck, is parked with
the gray truck. In fact this area here had a the largest clump of chain-mail,
the biggest piece of about three inches square, that hadn’t disintegrated
not far from that magnolia tree.”- C.J.
“The exact size of the encampment is not known but Jones speculates that it runs through a residential neighborhood and under a local shopping center. He’s hoping someday to conduct an archaeological dig under the shopping center, to confirm the location of the rest of the camp. For Florida Public radio, I’m Buzz Conover.”-B.C.
The Florida Park Service is again sponsored the De Soto Winter Encampment
event on the original site. The event took place on January 8-11, 1997.
As in years past, Wednesday through Friday is for school groups and open
to the general public on Saturday.
Shirley Deal of the Florida Park Service was kind enough to pass along
some letters they received as a result of last year’s living history event,
some highlights as follows:
Dear Sir,
For all the teachers, parents and students at Woodville Elementary School, I would like to you all for a marvelous learning experience and delightful time. Our Wednesday trip to the De Soto State Historic Site is one that none of us will forget. We not only learned a wealth of new information and reinforced what was in the excellent materials provided for class instruction, but also found all the adults who made our trip a success warm, patient, and well organized.
Those who played the parts of the Spanish were outstanding. The children were enthralled and learned so much more from them than from a text. We thank them for their time and commitment for making history come alive for the public.
We look forward to next year’s event and hope that many of our parents took the opportunity to share this experience with their children.
-Mary Lee Robertson
I have just two questions. Did those people that were acting did they sleep in those huts? Or were they just pretending? Here’s one more question. How do [you] keep that stuff safe in the rain?
- Railey Sancho
Thank you for letting us come to your DeSoto [encampment]. I really enjoyed it. I liked the part when the woman who made the clay things. When we went in the woods I liked when the people had [showed] us what they eat. And the people who had the gun.
-Jasma Sampson
Excerpted from an AP wire service story in the Tampa Tribune, December
25, 1996; p.8 Florida/Metro
TALLAHASSEE - The first Christmas celebration in the United States probably wasn’t very merry or even very peaceful.
“They undoubtedly held Mass because they were here during this time,” said Calvin Jones, the archaeologist who discovered the site. “It must not have been a pleasant Mass because arrows were flying.”
“The [Apalachee] village was set afire twice during that time by flaming arrows,” Jones said.
The interchange was one of devastation for the Apalachee, who lost their town, and disappointment for the Spaniards, who didn’t find the gold they sought.
“It was not a wonderful way to celebrate the first Christmas on American land,” Jones said.
The place where de Soto spent the winter in 1539 today is owned by the state and designated a historic site. A small sign marks the site...largely passed by as commuters drive back and forth to downtown Tallahassee.
Once a year however, the state park agency puts on an interpretative program for hundreds of area school children. A few weeks before or after Christmas, Jones talks to about 1,200 students.
A few hundred adults also come to the site, according to Wesley Smith,
a state parks manager.
The 1998 De Soto Winter Encampment
or What I Did on My Winter Vacation
Sponsored by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection the 7th Annual DeSoto Winter Encampment took place over January 7-10th in Tallahassee. I attended this year and was joined by Ranger Susan Sernaker (aka the ship’s boy) from De Soto National Memorial. Typically, school group tours are run through the encampment on Wed.-Fri. with the Camp opened to the general public on Saturday. This year I retraced the route of expedition (well actually the State of Florida’s De Soto trail, I’ll let the scholars argue about the actual route)on my way to Tallahassee to help get a general feel of the terrain traversed by Soto’s army. It looked pretty swampy. In all I suspect I would have preferred to join Calderon’s infantry on the caravels on their Gulf voyage to Soto's camp at Anhaica. Along the way I noted that most of the interpretive exhibit signs have been accessoriesed by the addition of bullet holes. A state unchanged from that I had noted while doing survey control work for FDOT in North Florida back in ‘91.
Ably assisted by Ranger Susie & Ranger Allen Gerrett of the Florida Park Service, I, naturally worked with the Spanish Arms & Armor portion of the school group tours. Do to the numbers of students involved and the bus schedule one has about 10 minutes to explain Spanish military technology and answer questions. A presentation that at the Memorial typical lasts 1/2 an hour. How much of this experience these children will retain I would not venture to guess, though I did note that a number of them did return with their parents for more on the Saturday.
One can tell really quickly which teachers have a class that’s under control and those that don’t. (Sheila, I bet you rule yours with an steel gauntlet, or at least a large copper skillet.)
Calvin Jones, the discoverer of the site, who is sadly extremely ill, did visit on Friday. Some of the other state archaeologists did bring bring out some of the European artifacts recovered from the dig. Of particular note where the beads. The chevrons in particular where much smaller than those I’ve been using for display.
I did also get in a long discussion with a gentlemen discussing our mutual dislike of the Galloway Historiography book.
Once again I found all the Florida Park Service
Rangers to be incredibly courteous, helpful and thankful for the contributions
that re-enactors bring to this event. I occasional hear horror stories
from other re-enactors about dealing with government agencies. That has
not been my experience. Perhaps it helps that we 16th century types are
few and far between.
Calderon's Company-
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