De Soto Reaches the Mississippi River
In the spring of 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led an expedition of several hundred men through the southeastern region of what is now the United States in search of gold and a passage to the Pacific. After months of difficult travel marked by conflicts with Indigenous peoples and harsh conditions, the party arrived near present-day Walls, Mississippi. On May 8, de Soto became one of the first Europeans to sight the Mississippi River, then known to the Spanish as the Río de Espíritu Santo. His men constructed flatboats to cross the wide waterway under cover of darkness to evade local Native American forces. The crossing succeeded, allowing the expedition to continue westward, though de Soto would die the...