Storykeeper

The first recorded Europeans to cross the Mississippi River reached the western shore on June 18, 1541. Hernando De Soto and his army of three hundred and fifty battle-hardened conquistadors spent the next year and a half conquering the nations in the fertile flood-plains of eastern Arkansas.

Three surviving sixteenth-century journals written during the expedition detailed a complex array of twelve different nations. Each had separate beliefs, languages, and interconnected villages with capital towns comparable in size to European cities of the time. Through these densely populated sites, the Spanish carried a host of deadly old-world diseases, a powerful new religion, famines and wars. During this short timeframe, ninety to ninety-five percent of the existing population perished according to current estimations.

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