Posted on 07/09/2012 7:05:53 PM PDT by Engraved-on-His-hands
Hernando De Soto's route through Florida is as elusive to modern archaeologists as the gold the famed Spanish explorer sought throughout the southeastern United States.
Ever since De Soto's 600 men set foot on the shores of Tampa Bay, arriving from Cuba almost 500 years ago, historians have debated the exact direction of his failed treasure-hunting expeditions as far north as Tennessee and North Carolina.
But in north Marion County, an archaeologist has found what his contemporaries deem rarer than the gold De Soto was seeking — physical evidence of the explorer's precise journey through Marion County and enough information to redraw Florida De Soto maps and fuel many more archaeological digs based on his findings.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocala.com ...
Thanks! The classic I’ve always wanted to own!
Family had a ‘55 Chysler St. Regis Custom Coupe, with the big hemi engine. Custom built as my Dad was the advertising director for Chrysler Corp, and around the dining room table we, as a family came up with “Forward Look” in early ‘54: then mapped out the pentastar representing: Plymouth, Dodge, Desoto, Chrysler, Imperial, in pen, on Mom’s white linen tablecloth. She was not happy.
Dad folded the tablecloth into his briefcase to present to his office the next morning.
Your ‘58 should have gotten way better milage than that. The ‘58 was a 350 with 11:1 compression, and was known for 20+ MPG on the highway.
I had a Dodge with the 440 11:1 engine that could get 22 MPG at 80 MPH. Used to be able to go from Walnut Creek to Vegas without filling up on the way.
As for Indiana gold that is interesting. I know people often find ol' gold placers in several creeks in Michigan, I didn't know of a real prospect area in Indiana.
The De Soto dealership in Whittier, Calif. was on Philadelphia St., just east of Whittier High School. It closed in 1961 when the brand was discontinued, and the building remained vacant for years, save for a bust of Hernando De Soto that hung on the wall. The bust remained there, still illuminated by a green neon tube, until at least 1969. At night, it was especially eerie to see look through the window and see the symbol of a long-departed business still illuminated.
“What???
They found a 500 year old desoto in florida?
Does it run?”
Perhaps there is a reason the Air Force stores planes at a base in the desert instead of in a Florida swamp?
There are two other sites I believe the Spanish may have tapped out in the 1600s ~ but i'm not telling anybody where they are!
One of the Indian groups that may have caused DeSoto a great deal of trouble were the Shawnee who held court at the Falls on the Ohio. Nobody could go upstream or downstream without paying tribute.
They had, among other things, what seems to have been one of the largest armories of stone arrow and spear points ever found on Earth. Secondly, they did not control as far North as the Muscatatuck River because of frequent floods in the area.
That left the Ohio/Wabash/East Fork of the White River the access route to move through the Muscatatuck bottoms to near "Laurel" and then downhill to the Whitewater that drains into the Miami ~ that was your level route to avoid the Shawnee. If you went South through Kentucky they'd kill you.
If you transported goods through the interior of the American Midwest you had to do it via small boats on streams ~ some in season, but you could do that. One popular bypass was the St. Joseph River in Northern Indiana ~ it provided a short cut from Lake Michigan to Lake Erie!
Cool story.
Check out Spanish MInes in ILlinois ~ near Galena. These started out as Spanish lead mines.
About 25 miles SE of that site there's a coal field they seemed to have worked. Town layout follows Law of the Indies standards too.
I read an article in Science about 15 years ago or so which discussed pre-Columbian skulls which exhibited signs of scalping. Arguments of a European introduction of scalping are not tenable.
This kind of find just amazes me. Who knows what might be just below the surface, just under our feet? And sitting there for hundreds of years waiting to be rediscovered.
There were early claims that they smelted copper there, but it's much more likely that given the quality of the native copper they just pounded it with rocks.
It’s pretty amazing that Spanish explorers had so much more trouble with the North American Indian tribes than with the sophisticated civilizations of the Mayans, Incans and Aztecs. Of course, North American Indians were fighting Uncle Sam two hundred and fifty years after the first English settlers set foot on Plymouth Rock, so it’s clear they were of hardy stock.
FWIW, in the original story of Christine (the book), the car was described as being a special-order, with the next-year colors, so presumably the 1959 colors.
Civilization vs. the warlike nomad culture. It's an old story. It wasn't always clear that civilization was "the way to go" for mankind when you consider the depredations of the Huns, Mongols and so forth.
The Huns were a bandit gang from China. They changed ethnicity on their way West. The Mongols were HERDSMEN, not nomads. For the most part they were the technological equals of the Chinese ~ and they whipped them with IMPROVED METHODS and a BETTER HORSE with a BETTER SADDLE and a BETTER BOW!
Thanks Theoria!
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