PART I.


 THE SURVIVORS


 1. Introduction


 On May 25, 1989, the United States celebrated the 450th
anniversary of the landing of Hernando de Soto and his host on the
western shores of Florida. De Soto's was the longest and most
detailed exploration of the southeastern United States conducted
some eighty years before the Mayflower reached Plymouth Rock.

 For this celebration it is appropriate to know, with the best
possible certainty, who survived this four year and two month
journey which traversed ten present-day states. With that purpose
this work presents a register of those who accompanied Hernando
de Soto, the Adelantado de la Florida, until his death on the banks
of the Mississippi River and afterwards followed its currents to the
Gulf of Mexico and beyond.

 Fifty three years ago President Franklin D. Roosevelt
appointed anthropologist John R. Swanton to the United States De
Soto Expedition Commission. Swanton delivered his report to the
House of Representatives in 1938, covering all aspects of the de
Soto expedition.1 This report included a list of the participants
compiled from the writings of the four known contemporary
chroniclers of this expedition, a few original documents published
in the nineteenth century, and a transcription of the passengers
registered in Spain to proceed to Florida via Cuba.2 Swanton's
archival research was interrupted by the Spanish civil war. His
practice of adding the persons found in the cited sources did not
take into account those who sailed from Spain but did not continue
beyond Cuba, nor all those who were added in Cuba.