By Tim Sanders

I thought this would be an excellent time to discuss the epic story of Hernando De Soto, the great Spanish explorer without whom modern-day Alabama would be little more than a backward Southern state with littered roadsides and unleashed dogs running amok. Reasons for this discussion include:

1. Historical columns contain practical information which will help the average reader in his everyday life.

2. Historical columns often give the reader valuable insight into that dark, mysterious past from which he has sprung ... or sprang.

3. I couldn’t, for the life of me, think of anything else to write about this week.
 

JANUARY 9, 1500 - Hernando Air Flow De Soto is born in the Spanish province of Extremadura. He weighs 8 lbs. 9 oz., is 21" long, and comes complete with fender skirts, hood louvers, pile carpeting and four doors. For our purposes, he is immediately appointed governor of Cuba.

APRIL 22, 1539 - Hernando De Soto and his hearty little band (five trombonists, four trumpeters, three guitarists, two clarinetists and of course Julio on castanets) set sail from Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay for Miami in hopes of finding riches in Florida before immigration laws are tightened. Unfortunately, poor navigation causes them to miss Miami.

MAY 30, 1539, 5:46 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time - De Soto and his weary entourage land on Florida’s Gulf Coast in the Tampa Bay area and head north. By late August, he and his Courageous Conquistadors (band name) have progressed only nine miles northward, due to Tampa’s enormous elderly population and the resulting traffic congestion.

OCTOBER 1539 - De Soto and his band fight their way across the wilds of Highway 4 to Highway 27. It is during this trip that the abbreviated rest stop, alligator taunting, and the 50-yard dash are invented.

NOVEMBER 3, 1539 - The explorers reach Orlando, where rumors of a magic kingdom guarded by huge rodents prove to be little more than hyperbole. By the end of the month, they are on their way north again.

DECEMBER 4, 1539 - The band performs their trademark hit, "He’s DeLightful, He’s DeLovely, He’s De Soto," for a group of Cherokee Indians who’ve recently opened a casino in Apalachicola. Most of De Soto’s band escapes, but they lose a trombonist, their vocalist has his tongue cut out, and their keyboard is chopped into small pieces to make it stop squealing.

DECEMBER 5, 1539 - De Soto fires his speech-impaired vocalist. His band is non-union.

DECEMBER 7, 1539 through MARCH 13, 1540 - After discovering a tasty new variety of mushrooms somewhere in either the Carolinas or Tennessee (they can’t remember which), De Soto and his band wander the Southeast and Midwest looking for a new trade route to China. Everyone wants to get to China, because it has gold, Ming vases, and lots of tea. It is during this period that many historians believe De Soto’s band discovers the southern shore of Lake Michigan, which they mistake for the Pacific.

FEBRUARY 9, 1540, 9:16 p.m. Central Standard Time - After constructing crude wooden rafts and sailing toward what they think is Shanghai, the intrepid, half-frozen explorers land on the shores of Milwaukee. No gold, no Ming Dynasty. No tea, only beer. Discouraged and still slightly tipsy, they start their southward trek the next day.
JULY 30, 1540, 12:05 a.m. - De Soto sets foot in Alabama.

JULY 30, 1540, 12:08 a.m. - Never one to act rashly, De Soto finally sets other foot in Alabama. He now has a banjo on his knee, and although his physician advises him to have it surgically removed, he insists on continuing his quest for gold, tea and a decent vocalist.

OCTOBER 9, 1540 - De Soto's band parks overnight at De Soto State Park in DeKalb County, Alabama, and early the next morning De Soto falls into a very precipitous cataract there. He survives, and the local Indians name the falls in his honor–Dork Falls.

SOMETIME AFTER OCTOBER, 1540 (OR PERHAPS BEFORE, WHO CARES?) - De Soto and his band travel to south Alabama, where they are scheduled to meet a band of Indians who fiercely oppose printing their road signs in Spanish. De Soto wins the battle of the bands, but his brass section is decimated, and one of his woodwinds is tomahawked.

MAY 11, 1541 - De Soto and his Conquistadors are amazed when, by pure happenstance, they spy the Mississippi River in northwestern Mississippi. They appoint a committee which spends several weeks determining the correct spelling of "Mississippi," and then prepare to cross the river and finally enter China to avail themselves of her riches.

JUNE 26, 1541 - Unfortunately, what they enter is Arkansas. It is another disappointment. De Soto’s grand announcement that he comes from Alabama with a banjo on his knee does not impress the natives. He finds no gold, only a little rock.

MAY 21, 1542 - After spending nearly a year touring Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Rhode Island, De Soto and his band return to the banks of the Mississippi, where he hopes to obtain a small business loan and open a souvenir shop. Sadly, the great explorer dies of either fever, gout, epilepsy, or bad mushrooms, depending on which historian you read. His grief-stricken band reverently dresses him in full armor and heavy sandbags and drops him, banjo, kettle drum and all, into the Mississippi River at either Memphis, Tennessee, Helena, Arkansas, or Lake Providence, Louisiana, depending again on who you choose to believe.

MARCH 13, 2006 - A bill is introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives requesting that Alabama’s Little River Canyon be added to the official list of De Soto’s burial sites. According to an aide to Alabama Congressman Robert B. "Spanky" Aderholt, "I seen dozens of Studebakers, Fords, and Cadillacs come to rest at the bottom of that canyon over the years. I don’t reckon an extra De Soto would hurt."