De Soto Crosses the Mississippi

1541

Hernando de Soto's bedraggled expedition reached the Mississippi River below modern Memphis and spent weeks building barges to cross the brown flood. Mound-building Chickasaw chiefs watched from the opposite bank. De Soto would die of fever the following spring, and his men would hide his corpse in the river. His expedition's devastating impact through disease and violence was so severe that later explorers found only shadows of the chiefdoms he had encountered.