Posted on 09/30/2006 12:31:55 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
It's believed to be the largest battle between Europeans and Native Americans north of the Rio Grande, but the city of Mabila remains lost... A team of historians, archeologists and geologists have come to the University of Alabama for three days to study the battle.. Their aim, though, isn't to find the city, but to compile everything known, for possible future excavations, said Jim Knight, a UA anthropology professor who helped organize the conference... Finding Mabila means addressing a host of problems ranging from suspect accounts of De Soto's expedition to the possibility that modern dams may have flooded the site... It is believed De Soto landed in the Florida peninsula – possibly Tampa Bay – and traveled north to Tallahassee, then turned northeast through Georgia into the Carolinas before going southwest into Tennessee and entering Alabama in the north. But his entrance and route in the state is disputed... There are several problems in determining De Soto's route. For instance, the four existing accounts of the journey are at best a crude guide and possibly useless, said George Lankford, a retired professor at Lyon College in Arkansas... Although De Soto's timeline and journey across small and big rivers can be traced, placing it on a modern map is impossible, Knight said. Still, the written record yields enough information to place Mabila near the banks of the Black Warrior River in Hale County to the merging of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers in Clarke County, Knight said... [B]both Knight and Lankford said better translations of the original Spanish texts could reveal better geographical signs for De Soto's route.
(Excerpt) Read more at tuscaloosanews.com ...
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Interesting article.De Soto certainly logged some miles.The Tampa/St.Pete area was a popular landing site for early explorers.Lots of artifacts in the area,so i imagine there was a good sized indian population in this area.Unfortunately for DS-no gold.
Irish Potato Famine, a group of Choctaws collected $710 and sent it to help starving Irish men, women and children. "It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and they had faced starvation… It was an amazing gesture. By today's standards, it might be a million dollars." according to Judy Allen, editor of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's newspaper, Bishinik, based at the Oklahoma Choctaw tribal headquarters in Durant, Okla. To mark the 150th anniversary, eight Irish people retraced the Trail of Tears. [2]
That gesture by the Choctaw brings to mind something recounted on Letterman the night he resumed his show some weeks after 9/11. A farming/ranching community in Montana, which had been afflicted by drought for a few years at that point, took up a collection for the victims in NY. Letterman added, "If that doesn't tell you what you need to know about America, I can't help you."
The Coronado expedition likewise left no (or perhaps few?) identifiable artifacts.
Coronado and the Seven Cities of Gold?It's coming back to me now.I've forgoten so much.We covered the early explorers in school.
Cibola.
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