In 1541, the Mississippi native Chickasaw, the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his troops managed to flee. What remained were countless metal objects belonging to the Spaniards, which the Indians then collected and converted into useful everyday objects. Archaeologists have now found 80 of these unusual metal objects during excavations.
The Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto was instrumental in the conquest of Panama, Nicaragua and Peru by the Spaniards in the early 16th century. From 1539 he then led one of the largest expeditions of the conquistadors through the southeastern part of what is now the USA. With 600 men, hundreds of horses, pigs and heavy equipment, de Soto moved north after landing on the west coast of Florida, pillaging and murdering – always in search of alleged gold treasures.
Put to flight by the Chickasaw
After the conquistadors in the southeast were unable to find what they were looking for, they turned west and met the Chickasaw tribe east of the Mississippi in 1540. The encounter was peaceful at first, after the Indians, led by Chikasha Minko, left a village to the Spaniards as a place to spend the winter. But over time, tensions rose. When de Soto then asked the Chickasaw that hundreds of Indians should be available to him as porters for the next section of his expedition, Chikasha Minko and his tribe had enough: They attacked the Spanish village in a night attack and beat the Europeans in the Escape. A second attack followed a little later, in which the Spaniards lost again.
For a long time, these victories brought peace to the Chickasaw from the conquistadors: for around 150 years they remained almost unmolested. Later they belonged to the so-called “five civilized nations” – five Indian tribes that had adapted to the American-European culture and adopted Christianity as a religion. Nevertheless, they were resettled along with the other tribes in 1831 and had to leave their homeland. In search of their roots, the Chickasaw Nation has now commissioned archaeologists to search for relics of their ancestors in the old tribal area on the Mississippi.
Conquistadors items repurposed
When Charles R. Cobb’s team also used metal detectors as part of these excavations, they made a surprising find: Although the Chickasaw did not process metals and made their tools, weapons and everyday objects from bones, stone or plant material, the detectors struck dozens of places former Indian settlement. In total, the researchers unearthed more than 80 metal objects. “We could hardly believe this abundance,” says Cobb. “Typically, we only find a handful of European objects in such excavations, which then mostly belonged to a person of high status.” de Soto’s expedition unearths.
Also exciting: the objects originally came from the Spaniards, but the Chickasaw had converted the horseshoes, axes, nails and harnesses for their own purposes. Among the finds were horseshoes converted into scrapers, barrel bands from which the Indians made blades, and pieces of copper that were used to make jewelry. The rosette of a horse’s bridle adorned with a cross was made into a brooch. “One of the most amazing finds is an exact copy of an Indian stone ax made from the iron of Spanish conquistadors,” reports Cobb. “I’ve never seen anything like it in the entire southeastern United States.”
Numerous finds made from iron chains were less uplifting. “The Spaniards had tons of such chains with them to chain the Indians abused as prisoners and porters,” explains the archaeologist. “The chain relics that have now been found are among the earliest evidence of European slavery in what is now the USA.” Some of these chain links were converted into drilling and cutting tools by the Chickasaw, as the pointed ends are evidence of. “The finds are also remarkable because they testify to a fundamental event in the cultural history of the Chickasaw – the first encounter with Hernando de Soto and the Spanish conquerors,” explains co-author Brad Lieb, archaeologist of the Chickasaw Nation.
Source: Florida Museum of Natural History; Professional article: American Antiquity, doi: 10.1017 / aaq.2021.17