But the hostile savages did not leave them alone. When Spring came and the horsemen resumed their march, they were repeatedly harassed by the red men, who crept near them on every side, and cut down any unsuspecting Spaniard who wandered from the column.
Pursuing a northwesterly course, the cavaliers at length came upon a great force of the natives, who, stripped to their waists and painted with various colors, yelled their defiance and brandished their spears and arrows at the invaders. Nearby was their stronghold, a palisade surrounding their huts, which had three entrances. The Spaniards advanced in three columns to attack these openings.
What could these half-clad redskins do against men in steel armor, and with sword, buckler, and arquebusier? The Castilians drove them into their fortification like sheep, and there massacred them as they had the fierce warriors under Tuscaloosa. According to old accounts, two thousand of the Indians were slain, although the native warriors inflicted quite a loss upon their attackers. The invaders secured provisions, corn, and female slaves, which they transported with them in their journey towards the northwest.
The Spaniards took their battles lightly, for they considered it all a part of the day’s work. They resumed their march, but now they must have been pretty sure that no El Dorado could exist in this flat and somewhat marshy country. Still, they were cheerful, and when, a few weeks later, they came upon a great muddy river which was so wide that they could not see a man upon the other bank, they felt that certainly their trip, their many discomforts, and their losses, had not been in vain. When they viewed the turbid current of the Mississippi they were filled with silent awe, and a priest, holding the cross of Christ high in the air, blessed the surging flood, while De Soto cried out: “I take you in behalf of the King of Spain, and shall call you mine own from henceforth!”
This gallant cavalier was a man of resource. He set his soldiers immediately to work constructing boats, and, gradually moving up the river in order to find a place where it would be possible to cross—for the little army was upon high bluffs (now called the Chickasaw Bluffs)—he transported all in safety to the other side and into the land of Arkansas, the seventh State of the present Union, upon whose soil these restless explorers had set their feet.