Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas - Hardcover

Duncan, David Ewing

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517582228 ISBN 13: 9780517582220

Publisher: Crown, 1996

Synopsis

For the first time, a book that tells the truth about Hernando de Soto's legendary expedition across what would become the United States, where he squandered a fortune in gold won in the conquest of Peru, and drove himself slowly mad searching for a second Inca empire. Maps and line drawings.

About this title

About the Author:

David Ewing Duncan is a writer for several national publications, a special producer and reporter for ABC's Nightline, and author three other books. He researched and traced the path of Soto's expedition for more than seven years.

From Publishers Weekly:

Ruthless conqueror of Central America and Peru's Inca empire, the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto is sometimes portrayed as a saintly bearer of civilization, while other biographers see a brutal butcher. To freelancer Duncan, this son of an impoverished Spanish squire?who became fabulously wealthy by looting gold and selling or working to death thousands of slaves in Panama and Nicaragua?was, above all, a gambler and insatiably ambitious megalomaniac. From 1539 to 1543, de Soto and his army of 600 men trekked 4000 miles through 10 future Southeastern U.S. states, seeking a nonexistent second Inca empire laden with gold. Instead they stumbled upon the Mississippians, a sophisticated culture of city- and mound-building natives. The Spaniards' systematic plunder, murder, warfare and enslavement of the Indians brought the collapse of their civilization. De Soto died of fever in 1542 at the age of 42; more than half his men were killed by the Mississippians. Drawing on expedition logs, colonial archival manuscripts, eyewitness accounts and recent archaeological finds, Duncan strips away decades of mythmaking to plumb the conquistador mentality in a vibrant, gripping biography. Illustrated.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0517582228
• ISBN 13: 9780517582220
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 570