DeSoto's Unusual Tribute

In 1928, Chrysler created a new automobile. It was designed to be mid-priced for the average consumer, competing directly with brands like Hudson, Studebaker, and Oldsmobile. When Walter Chrysler looked for a name for this new line of cars, he hoped the mantle of an early American explorer would kindle peoples' spirit of adventure. Thus, Chrysler settled on the name DeSoto.

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Hernando DeSoto was not the most famous of the Spanish explorers in North America. Christopher Columbus probably heads that list, sailing under the Spanish flag, even if he was not Spanish himself. Columbus is credited with being the first European explorer to discover the Americas, though the Vikings probably landed in eastern Canada much earlier.

On the west coast of the United States, particularly in California, place names commonly invoke the history of exploration with common selections like Anza, Balboa, and Drake. Many of these, aside from the Englishman Sir Francis Drake, are Spanish because they are the ones who made the most inroads and ultimately paved the way towards a Spanish colonial presence in the Americas.

The Spanish were also active on the other side of the land mass that later became the United States. Much of the east coast was surveyed by Spanish ships well before the English Jamestown settlement. The Spanish tried to establish a base in the southeast after discovering Florida, though that goal was elusive for some time.

Spanish explorations that included Florida. Source: University of West Florida.

When one mentions Spanish exploration in Florida, the name Juan Ponce de Leon comes up. He was an official who was appointed governor of Puerto Rico by the Spanish crown and later was the first person to mount an expedition to Florida, mapping its coastlines. “La Florida” at that time meant not only the present day U.S. state, but also most of the southeast. While the “Fountain of Youth” mythology accompanies any mention of Ponce de Leon, historians generally believe his interest in it was only a myth. But it’s definitely true that the Spaniards began to believe that there are greater riches inland.

Enter Hernando DeSoto. If you travel through the southeast today, from Mississippi to Florida to South Carolina, and anywhere in between, you’ll encounter the name. There are towns, rivers, and schools named after DeSoto.

Like the others mentioned here, DeSoto was an explorer and conquistador. He was involved in earlier campaigns that included Pizarro’s notoriously brutal conquest in Peru. These days, when it matters how historical figures treated the native peoples, it bears mentioning that most of these conquistadors were utterly brutal to the Native American peoples they encountered. Yes, these explorers were operating during a time when that kind of treatment was par for the course, so to some extent we need to focus more on their other positive accomplishments. But there were some who were nicer than others.

The DeSoto journey. Source: ocala.org.

DeSoto may have been one of the worst. Natives were considered savages more than people. They were enslaved and used as guides, often killed, and their bodies were mutilated. When it became clear that DeSoto was not a friend, his expeditions were attacked by natives. He lost half of his men in the battle to eliminate those attackers. The kind of Spain commanded him to be kind to the natives and convert them to Christianity, but that was not reality on the ground.

With that footnote, we move on to consider DeSoto’s positive contributions. He was an intrepid explorer, covering a ton of area in his quest to find riches in the southeastern United States. His journey probably covered more land than any other early Spanish explorer in the Americas. He sailed from Havana and then embarked from Florida, went up through Georgia and the Carolinas, headed west into Tennessee, and then to Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

DeSoto died of fever and was buried at the Mississippi River. Because he had tried to convince some of the locals that he was a deity, his men buried him quietly, possibly in the river itself. And the men that remained on his expedition (half of whom had already perished) then travelled down the river, along the Gulf, and eventually reached the Spanish city of Veracruz, Mexico. That part of their journey may be reminiscent of another storied expedition, that of Alvaro Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, whose expedition travelled through Texas and major parts of the southwest and northern Mexico, amazingly reaching the colonized portion of Mexico.

A Desoto cab. Public domain.

Throughout the southeastern United States today, there are many DeSoto place names. There are schools as far away as New York and Wisconsin that bear DeSoto’s namesake. And of course, there was that car built by Chrysler. From 1929 until it was retired in 1961, more than two million DeSoto automobiles were produced, spreading his name even further. What an interesting tribute.

DeSoto car's emblem honored the explorer.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeSoto_(automobile)
https://www.makesthatdidntmakeit.com/blog/2017/12/6/the-story-of-desoto
http://www.virginiaplaces.org/settleland/spanish.html
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/de-soto-dies-in-the-american-wilderness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Ponce_de_Le%C3%B3n

Images: Top: history.com. DeSoto town: www.ci.desoto.tx.us. Others public domain or credited separately in the text.