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Return to First Page ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume LI (Spring 1992)
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had few positive one for de Soto. The laconic flavor of his account is perhaps best captured in the relation of his commander's death:"The Governor, at seeing himself thus surrounded, and nothing coming about according to his expectations, sickened and died."(6)
Nor does the commander get high marks in the next of the eyewitness accounts, that provided by his private secretary Rodrigo Ranjel to the audiencia on the island of Hispanioloa in 1546. Here our added complication first appears. One finds the Ranjel report embedded in the massive general history prepared by the sixteeth-century Spanish adventurer, colonial administrator, and scholar Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes.(7) Why this will create difficulties appears immediately: Ranjel begins his account (which ends abruptly and without explanation at the third winter encampment at Autiamque) with a criticism of de Soto's insistence upon being a part of the risky search for a port on the mainland, an action censured as irresponsible-better to leave such tasks in the hands of lesser, more expended men-and the critical stance thus established is maintained throughout, making the Ranjel version easily the most hostile toward the expedition, its commander, and its troops.(8) Captured Indians enchained in coffles appear constantly, often accompanied by indignant commentary, and only in Ranjel is it mentioned that the Spanish expected females for
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Items of which were either unknown or long forgotten. See Henry R. Wagner, "Henri Ternaux Compans: The First Collector of Hispanic Americana," Revista Interamericana de Bibliografia 4 (October 1954): 283-294. The translation used here is that of Buckingham Smith in 1866, reprinted in Bourne, Narratives,11, 3-40 (cited as Biedma).
6 Biedma, 35. Laconic he was, but not non-committal: How often does a subordinate report that his commander has died of confusion?
7 The Historia General y Natural de las Indias was first published in its entirety in 1851, under the direction of Jose Amador de los Rios. That edition is reprinted as volumes 117-121 of the Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles (Madrid, 1959). Biographical information has been taken from Juan Perez de Tudela Bueso's lengthly and informative introduction to that edition (vol.117, vii-clxxv). It has been available in English only in this century. The first English translation was done by Edward Bourne, and appeared in 1904 as "A Narrative of De Soto's Expedition Based on the Diary of Rodrigo Ranjel, His Private Secretary, by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes" in volume 11, 41-149 of his aforementioned Narratives. References made here to the Ranjel narrative are to that work, cited as Ranjel.
8 Ranjel, 52; similar comments at 65 and 145.