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Pastimes : Latin America Forum
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To: Tom Clarke who started this subject10/28/2000 7:02:08 AM
From: Tom Clarke   of 47
 
The claim that Hernando de Soto killed 37 Georgia Indians turns out to be just another politically correct myth.

European colonists cut a bloody swath through the New World, and certainly Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto was among the most brutal as he marched 1,000 men from Florida to Oklahoma in the sixteenth century. Yet the infamous gold hunter seems to have gotten a bad rap on one alleged massacre.

The De Soto Expedition has long been blamed for slaughtering at least 37 Native Americans whose remains were excavated in the 1970s from the King site in northwestern Georgia. The bones were thought at the time to show damage that was consistent with injuries caused by the Spaniards' metal weapons.

A re-analysis of the bones, however, absolves De Soto of guilt in that one incident. "There is simply no evidence to suggest any Native Americans at the site were killed by people in De Soto's party," said archaeologist George Milner of Pennsylvania State University. Marks on the bones that had been blamed on the Spaniards were actually caused after death by such things as gnawing rodents and the tools used in the excavation, he said. "We did not find a single example of a lethal injury from a heavy, sharp, metal weapon." Milner said only one of the 37 skeletons showed evidence of a lethal blow — an impact that left a large hole in the forehead. "But this death had nothing to do with sixteenth-century Spaniards," he said, and was probably caused by a Native American stone ax.

Milner said he is not minimizing De Soto's brutality, but "we have eliminated a major discrepancy between archaeological and historical information."

discoveringarchaeology.com
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