SOTO, FERDINANDO [Fernando, or Hernando] DE (I496?—I542), Spanish captain and explorer, born at Jerez de los Caballeros, in Estremadura. In 1519 he accompanied d'Avila on his second expedition to Darien. In 1528 he explored the coast of Guatemala and Yucatan, and in 1532 he led 30o volunteers to reinforce Pizarro in Peru. He played a prominent part in the conquest of the Inca kingdom (helping to seize and guard Atahualpa, discovering a pass through the mountains to Cuzco, etc.), and returned to Spain with a fortune of 180,00o ducats, which enabled him to marry the daughter of his old patron d'Avila. Excited by reports as to the wealth of Florida (a term then com monly used in a much wider extension than subsequently), he sold part of his property, gathered a force of 62o foot and 123 horse, armed four ships, and obtained from Charles V. a com mission as "adelantado of the Lands of Florida" and governor of Cuba. Sailing from San Lucar in 1538, he first went to Havana, his advanced base of operations; starting thence on May 12, 1539 he landed in the same month in Espiritu Santo bay, on the west coast of the present State of Florida. For nearly four years he searched for gold. He probably passed north into Georgia as far as 35' N., then south to the neighbourhood of Mobile, and finally north-west towards the Mississippi, which was reached in 1541; the following winter was spent on the Ouachita, in modern Arkansas and Louisiana, west of the Mississippi. As they were returning in 1542 along the Mississippi, De Soto died. De Soto's men, under Luis Moscoso de Alvarado, descended the Mississippi to the sea in 19 days from a point close to the junction of the Arkansas with the great river, and thence coasted along the Gulf of Mexico to Panuco.
Three narratives of this expedition are extant, of seemingly inde pendent origin. (I) Relacam . . . (Evora 1557) professing to be the work of a Portuguese of Elvas, who had accompanied the expedition, was published in an English translation by Hakluyt in 1609 (reprinted from the 1611 edition by the Hakluyt Society [London, 1851]). (2) The famous history of Florida by Garcilasso de la Vega ; it was com pleted in 1591, and first appeared at Lisbon in 16o5 under the title of La Florida del Ynca, and has since passed through many editions in vari ous languages. (3) A report presented to Charles V. of Spain in his Council of the Indies in 1544, by Luis Hernandez de Biedma ; it is printed in Ternaux-Compans' "Recueil de pieces sur la Floride" in the Historical Collections of Louisiana (Philadelphia, 185o) and in W. B. Rye's reprint for the Hakluyt Society of Hakluyt's translation of the Portuguese narrative (The Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida, London, 1850.
See also Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i.; J. H. M'Culloch, Researches . . . concerning the aboriginal history of America (Baltimore, 1829) ; Albert Gallatin, "Synopsis of the Indian Tribes," in Archaeologia americana, vol. ii. (Cambridge, Mass., 1836) ; E. G. Bourne (ed.), Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida (2 v., New York, 1904) ; J. W. Monette, History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Missis sippi (New York, 1846, 2 vols.)