Mabila[1] (also spelled Mavila, Mavilla, Maubila, or Mauvilla, as influenced by Spanish or French transliterations)[2] was a small fortress town known to the paramount chief Tuskaloosa in 1540, in a region of present-day central Alabama.[1] The exact location has been debated for centuries, but southwest of present-day Selma, Alabama, is one possibility. In late 2021, archaeologists announced the excavation of Spanish artifacts at several Native American settlement sites in Marengo County that indicate that they have found the historical province of Mabila, although not the town itself. They theorize that the town site is within a few miles of their excavations.[3]
In 1540 Chief Tuskaloosa arranged for more than 2,500 native warriors to be concealed at Mabila, prepared to attack a large party of foreign invaders in the Mississippian culture territory: Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his expedition.[1]
When Hernando de Soto first met Tuskaloosa at his home village and asked him for supplies, Tuskaloosa advised them to travel to another of his towns, known as Mabila, where supplies would be waiting. A native messenger was sent ahead to Mabila. When Tuskaloosa arrived with the first group of Spaniards, he asked the Spanish people to leave the settlement and territory. A fight broke out between a soldier and a native, and many warriors emerged from hiding in houses and began shooting arrows at the Spaniards.[1] The Spaniards fled, leaving their possessions inside the fortress. The conflict that resulted is called the Battle of Mabila. Armed with guns, the Spaniards eventually burned down the village and killed most of the warriors.[1][4]
Fortress town
The walled compound of Mabila, one of many encountered by the Spaniards in their exploration,[1] was enclosed in a thick stuccoed wall, 16.5-ft (5-m) high. It was made from wide tree trunks tied with cross-beams and covered with mud/straw stucco, to appear as a solid wall.[1] The fortress was defended by Muskogee warriors, who shot arrows or threw stones.
Artist's impression of Mabila: note walls appear solid (stuccoed tree trunks).
...on a very fine plain and had an enclosure three estados (about 16.5 feet or 5-m) high, which was made of logs as thick as oxen. They were driven into the ground so close together that they touched one another. Other beams, longer and not so thick, were placed crosswise on the outside and inside and attached with split canes and strong cords. On top they were daubed with a great deal of mud packed down with long straw, which mixture filled all the cracks and open spaces between the logs and their fastenings in such a manner that it really looked like a wall finished with a mason's trowel. At intervals of fifty paces around this enclosure, were towers capable of holding seven or eight men who could fight in them. The lower part of the enclosure, to 'the height of an estado' (5.55 feet), was full of loopholes for shooting arrows at those on the outside. The pueblo had only two gates, one on the east and the other on the west. In the middle of the pueblo, was a spacious plaza around which were the largest and most important houses.[1]
Battle of Mabila
The Spaniards suffered their greatest losses of the De Soto Expedition during the battle at Mabila, but the Mississippians suffered even more grievous losses.[1] De Soto had demanded supplies, bearers, and women from the powerful Chief Tuskaloosa, when they met him at his main town. He said they needed to go to another settlement, and took them to Mabila.
On October 18, 1540, de Soto and the expedition arrived at Mabila, a heavily fortified village situated on a plain. It had a wooden palisade encircling it, with bastions placed so that archers could shoot their longbows to cover the approaches. Upon arriving at Mabila, the Spaniards knew something was amiss. The population of the town was almost exclusively male- young warriors and men of status. There were several women, but no children. The Spaniards also noticed the palisade had been recently strengthened, and that all trees, bushes, and weeds, had been cleared from outside the settlement for the length of a crossbow shot. Outside the palisade, they saw an older warrior in a field, who was seen exhorting younger warriors, and leading them in mock skirmishes and military exercises.[5]
When the Spaniards reached the town of Mabila, ruled by one of Tuskaloosa's vassals, the Chief asked de Soto to allow him to remain there. When de Soto refused, Tuskaloosa warned him to leave the town, then withdrew to another room, and refused to talk further.[1] A lesser chief was asked to intercede, but he would not. One of the Spaniards, according to Elvas, "seized him by the cloak of marten-skins that he had on, drew it off over his head, and left it in his hands; whereupon, the Indians all beginning to rise, he gave him a stroke with a cutlass, that laid open his back, when they, with loud yells, came out of the houses, discharging their bows."[1]
The Spaniards barely escaped from the well-fortified town. The Indians closed the gates and "beating their drums, they raised flags, with great shouting." De Soto determined to attack the town, and in the battle that followed, Elvas records: "The Indians fought with so great spirit that they, many times, drove our people back out of the town. The struggle lasted so long that many Catholics, weary and very thirsty, went to drink at a pond nearby, tinged with the blood of the killed, and returned to the combat."
De Soto had his men set fire to the town, then by Elvas's account,
breaking in upon the Indians and beating them down, they fled out of the place, the cavalry and infantry driving them back through the gates, where losing the hope of escape, they fought valiantly; and the Catholics getting among them with cutlasses, they found themselves met on all sides by their strokes, when many, dashing headlong into the flaming houses, were smothered, and, heaped one upon another, burned to death. They who perished there were in all two thousand five hundred, a few more or less: of the Catholics there fell two hundred... Of the living, one hundred and fifty (150) Catholics had received seven hundred wounds...
Elvas noted later that four hundred hogs, and twelve horses died in the conflagration. But other contempary authors Ranjel-Oviedo and Garcilaso say seven and forty-five horses died in the battle, respectively.[6] The exact count of Indian dead is not known, but Spanish accounts at the time estimated that between 2,500 and 3,000 Indians had been killed by the raging fires within the city's walls. Spanish killed in action were either 22, 18, 25, 20, or 82 based upon the contemporary chroniclers of the time Ranjel-Oviedo, Elvas, Cañete, Biedma, and Garcilaso, respectively; with another 48 or more Spaniards dying from their wounds within days following the battle.[7] According to Garcilaso, "Most of the dead were women" who had followed their husbands, sweethearts, and others, to witness their glorious victory over the Castilians.[8] As for the Indian leader Tascalusa, neither he nor his body was ever found, and if he did perish in the burning city, his body would have been "burned beyond recognition."[9] In the "five centuries" of warfare between the Red man and the White man, the battle of Mabila was the first of the bloodiest battles ever fought on the North American continent.[10][11]
↑ The single primary source about DeSoto's expedition was written by Hernández de Biedma. Another account, usually described as that of DeSoto's aide Rodrigo Ranjel, survives only partially in a summary history written by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés. That secondary source had a strong influence on the formation of the text generally known as the Relaçam of the "Gentleman of Elvas" and, in turn, on the writing of Garcilaso de la Vega's Florida del Inca. (see review of The Hernando de Soto Expedition:History, Historiography, and Discovery in the Southeast in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30.3, Winter 1999, webpage: SIU-GArchived 2009-03-17 at the Wayback Machine ).
Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula. He played an important role in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, but is best known for leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States. He is the first European documented as having crossed the Mississippi River.
Manco Inca Yupanqui was the founder and monarch of the independent Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba, although he was originally a puppet Inca Emperor installed by the Spaniards. He was also known as "Manco II" and "Manco Cápac II". He was one of the sons of Huayna Capac and a younger brother of Huascar.
The Apalachee were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, specifically an Indigenous people of Florida, who lived in the Florida Panhandle until the early 18th century. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River, at the head of Apalachee Bay, an area known as the Apalachee Province. They spoke a Muskogean language called Apalachee, which is now extinct.
Tuskaloosa was a paramount chief of a Mississippian chiefdom in what is now the U.S. state of Alabama. His people were possibly ancestors to the several southern Native American confederacies who later emerged in the region. The modern city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is named for him.
The Coosa chiefdom was a powerful Native American paramount chiefdom in what are now Gordon and Murray counties in Georgia, in the United States. It was inhabited from about 1400 until about 1600, and dominated several smaller chiefdoms. The total population of Coosa's area of influence, reaching into present-day Tennessee and Alabama, has been estimated at 50,000.
Anhaica was the principal town of the Apalachee people, located in what is now Tallahassee, Florida. In the early period of Spanish colonization, it was the capital of the Apalachee Province. The site, now known as Martin Archaeological Site, was rediscovered in 1988.
Isabel de Bobadilla, or Inés de Bobadilla was the first female governor of Cuba from 1539–1543.
The Nodena site is an archeological site east of Wilson, Arkansas, and northeast of Reverie, Tennessee, in Mississippi County, Arkansas, United States. Around 1400–1650 CE an aboriginal palisaded village existed in the Nodena area on a meander bend of the Mississippi River. The Nodena site was discovered and first documented by Dr. James K. Hampson, archaeologist and owner of the plantation on which the Nodena site is located. Artifacts from this site are on display in the Hampson Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas. The Nodena site is the type site for the Nodena phase, believed by many archaeologists to be the province of Pacaha visited by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542.
Cofitachequi was a paramount chiefdom founded about AD 1300 and encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in South Carolina in April 1540. Cofitachequi was later visited by Juan Pardo during his two expeditions (1566–1568) and by Henry Woodward in 1670. Cofitachequi ceased to exist as a political entity before 1701.
Chiaha was a Native American chiefdom located in the lower French Broad River valley in modern East Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. They lived in raised structures within boundaries of several stable villages. These overlooked the fields of maize, beans, squash, and tobacco, among other plants which they cultivated. Chiaha was at the northern extreme of the paramount Coosa chiefdom's sphere of influence in the 16th century when the Spanish expeditions of Hernando de Soto and Juan Pardo passed through the area. The Chiaha chiefdom included parts of modern Jefferson and Sevier counties, and may have extended westward into Knox, Blount and Monroe counties.
The Tunica people are a group of linguistically and culturally related Native American tribes in the Mississippi River Valley, which include the Tunica ; the Yazoo; the Koroa ; and possibly the Tioux. They first encountered Europeans in 1541 – members of the Hernando de Soto expedition.
Luis de Moscoso Alvarado (1505–1551) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. Luis de Moscoso Alvarado assumed command of Hernando De Soto's expedition upon the latter's death.
The Nodena phase is an archaeological phase in eastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri of the Late Mississippian culture which dates from about 1400–1650 CE. The Nodena phase is known from a collection of villages along the Mississippi River between the Missouri Bootheel and Wapanocca Lake. They practiced extensive maize agriculture and artificial cranial deformation and were members of a continent wide trade and religious network known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, which brought chert, whelk shells, and other exotic goods to the area.
The Lamar mounds and village site (9BI2) is an important archaeological site on the banks of the Ocmulgee River in Bibb County, Georgia, several miles to the southeast of the Ocmulgee mound site. Both mound sites are part of the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park, a national park and historic district created in 1936 and run by the U.S. National Park Service. Historians and archaeologists have theorized that the site is the location of the main village of the Ichisi encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1539.
Ocale was the name of a town in Florida visited by the Hernando de Soto expedition, and of a putative chiefdom of the Timucua people. The town was probably close to the Withlacoochee River at the time of de Soto's visit, and may have later been moved to the Oklawaha River.
Quigualtam or Quilgualtanqui was a powerful Native American Plaquemine culture polity encountered in 1542–1543 by the Hernando de Soto expedition. The capital of the polity and its chieftain also bore the same name; although neither the chief nor his settlements were ever visited in person by the expedition. Their encounters consisted of messages sent by runners and a three-day long canoe battle on the Mississippi River. Multiple archaeological cultures, archaeological sites, and protohistoric and early historic period Native American groups have been proposed by historians and archaeologists to identify the polity, but their identity will probably never be known with any degree of certainty. The chroniclers of the DeSoto expedition said the chiefdoms near the Mississippi River, especially Guigualtam, were the best they encountered during their three-year journey through the southeastern United States.
Juan Ortiz was a Spanish sailor who was held captive and enslaved by Native Americans in Florida for eleven years, from 1528 until he was rescued by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1539. Two accounts of Ortiz's eleven years as a captive, differing in details, offer a story of Ortiz being sentenced to death by a Native American chief two or three times, saved each time by the intervention of a daughter of the chief, and finally escaping to a neighboring chiefdom, whose chief sheltered him.
The Taskigi Mound or Mound at Fort Toulouse – Fort Jackson Park (1EE1) is an archaeological site from the South Appalachian Mississippian Big Eddy phase. It is located on a 40 feet (12 m) bluff at the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers where they meet to form the Alabama River, near the town of Wetumpka in Elmore County, Alabama.
The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America, 1539–1543 is a two volume book collection edited by Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon James Knight, Jr., and Edward C. Moore, published in 1993 by The University of Alabama Press.
References
Duncan, David E. Hernando De Soto, A Savage Quest in the Americas. (1996) University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
