The original sources tell the tale of De Soto's plunder
By Nate Barker
The spring sun spills its soft yellow beams across a slow-moving river. Bitternut hickory and winged elms create a canopy of shade at the water's edge. Down river, a heron takes flight, and close by, a fox races through the underbrush, pursuing its next meal. Suddenly, through the trees, borne on a litter covered with fine white linen, an elegant lady is brought to the riverbank. She is the Lady of Cofitachequi; she alone can grant safe passage through her lands or, with a word, summon a hundred warriors to block the way forward.
This is not a scene from The Lord of the Rings. The year is 1540. Scholars believe this episode occurred on the banks of the Wateree River near Camden, South Carolina. The grand lady was the leader of Cofitachequi, a paramount chiefdom of South Appalachian Mississippian indigenous Americans. Hernando de Soto, the Spanish conquistador, sought an audience with her. He’d heard rumors of the riches of Cofitachequi and was hungry to possess them. What transpired after this meeting has long remained embedded in the myths and legends of this area, including a lost treasure. This story comes down to us from those who were there, and despite some discrepancies, these all recount the brutality, disruption, and terrible ordeals the native peoples endured at the hands of de Soto and his army.
From approximately 700 CE to 1600 CE, the indigenous Mississippian culture inhabited much of the Mississippi Valley, the Southeastern United States, and stretched as far north as Michigan and Wisconsin. These Indigenous peoples were known for their maize-based agriculture and what archeologists call “mound-building.” Mounds were used as platforms for ceremonies and, in some instances, for burial. Cofitachequi, a province of Muskogean-speaking peoples in South Carolina, was a paramount chiefdom in the region.
In Mississippian culture, it is generally thought that men worked as protectors and hunters, while women traditionally controlled food production and agriculture. Chiefs were usually men, with the chiefdom system dominated by heredity. How the Lady became chief of her people is not recorded. Perhaps no male relatives were available to take the role due to disease? Or, maybe women inherited the role of chief more prevalently in the Carolina region? It seems to have been relatively common-place; Spanish explorer Juan Pardo wrote of meeting other women chiefs in the same area in the 1560’s.
The story of The Lady of Cofitachequi comes down through history in three firsthand accounts. The first was written by De Soto’s private secretary, Rodrigo Rangel. Typical of his post, Rodrigo’s telling flatters De Soto and the expedition and paints a portrait of naïve natives needing Spanish rule. The second, written by Luis Hernandez De Biedma, an officer in De Soto’s army, is a “just the facts” version of the expedition without much embellishment. The third telling comes from a man named the Gentleman of Elva. This gentleman, a Portuguese knight, joined the expedition along with other adventurers from the Portuguese town of Elva. His narrative tells a tale of hardships, cruelty, and conquest. Taken together, these three accounts give us a comprehensive overview.
De Soto landed on the Gulf Coast of Florida, near present-day Tampa, in May of 1539 with over 600 men. His expedition through the southeast would be one of cruelty and pillage. Trekking northward into the Florida panhandle, he came to a region controlled by the indigenous Apalachee. As often happened, De Soto took captives to show authority. One slave boy, maybe to impress his captors or to appease them, soon related that he was originally from a region further north. “This country,” he said, was where “a woman did govern…and the town where she was resident was of a wonderful bigness.” The boy went on to account of “gold in abundance…taken out of mines…molten and refined.” De Soto had come to this new world to seek out just such treasures. The expedition now had a destination, riches to discover, and a mysterious lady to meet. In all of the accounts of this tale, not one author gives the Lady a name. She is simply the “lady.”
Traveling through present-day Georgia and into the central Piedmont region of South Carolina, the expedition continued to engage indigenous peoples. De Soto and his men often found themselves lost and, on many occasions, facing near starvation. In the branching tributaries of the Santee River basin, they captured four members of the Cofitachequi people. De Soto demanded that they disclose the location of the Lady and her city of riches. None would speak, so brutally, he had one of them burned to death. Soon, a captive confessed that a two-day journey would bring them to the Lady and her city. With the captives as a guide, De Soto sent men ahead to prepare an audience with the Lady of Cofitachequi.
A meeting was arranged by the banks of what is thought to be the modern-day Wateree River. When the Lady of Cofitachequi appeared, she was carried on a litter draped with fine white cloth. In all the written accounts, she is beautiful, graceful, and befitting a chief; she was paddled across the river to the waiting De Soto. Upon arriving, the Lady took a necklace of pearls from around her neck and placed it on De Soto’s. An abundance of pearls is mentioned in all the written accounts. Coastal tribes would have used pearls in bartering with inland regions such as Cofitachequi.
From here, the tales differ. Rangel tells the story of an overly submissive Lady. She is not only willing to hand over all the food stores and treasures of her region, but also allows the Spanish to enter burial mounds to take pearls off the dead bodies of their ancestors. She even entices De Soto to travel further inland to her town, Talimeco, where “you will find so many [pearls] that you will be unable to carry them on your horses.”
The Elva story strikes a different tone. Although the Lady still seems in awe of De Soto, she appears more diplomatic, perhaps realizing the destruction De Soto had brought to other areas and working to save her people through appeasement. She is quoted as saying, “Although my power be not answerable to my will, and my services be not according to my desire, nor such as so high a prince as your lordship deserveth; yet since the goodwill is rather to be accepted than all the treasures of the world…I offer you my person, lands, [and] subjects…” What De Soto could not have known is that the Cofitachequi people had been ravaged by plague, most likely brought by conquistador Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon, who visited the site in 1521. Perhaps the Lady was wary of the Europeans and the illness they might bring.
The Elva account relates that some Spaniards plundered the village and the sacred graves, causing the people there to “revolt.” The Lady then refused to aid De Soto with guides and supplies for his continuing expedition. In retaliation, and perhaps because the village did not hold the gold mines he sought, De Soto left the town and took the Lady as a prisoner. Conversely, the Rangel account states that the Lady was in awe of De Soto and agreed to travel with him.
Now a captive, the once grand Lady had been reduced to a bargaining piece as the expedition traveled. De Soto hoped other chiefdoms would see her subjugation and bow to his authority, but the Lady had other plans. As the expedition traveled through the Cofitachequi region, she and her servants, who were also taken, went into the woods to relieve themselves. While there, they escaped, taking a small basket of pearls with them. They ran to the nearby village of Guaxule, which the expedition had just passed through. De Soto, seemingly frustrated with the Lady and the lack of treasure, sent only one horseman to retrieve her. He returned with three escaped slaves but stated that the Lady “would not return.” He recounted that she had married another escaped slave and was planning to return to her home village. De Soto resigned the chase and moved on, continuing to explore and exploit the land and its people. He would die two years later near the banks of the Mississippi River.
Although The Lady of Cofitachequi had been left behind, her story had been deeply embedded into this region's myths. One hundred and thirty years later, colonists were still seeking her riches. When English colonists arrived to establish a settlement in present-day Charlestown, SC, they left within weeks to seek out the mythical Cofitachequi. Those who went claimed to have found a cache of pearls but kept the location a secret. They made contact with the indigenous people there, and in 1672, 100 warriors and the current chief of the Cofitachequi came to Charlestown to ally with the English. By this time, the Cofitachequi population had been decimated by illness and was only a shadow of its former self. The native population had no immunity to the diseases Europeans and their animals carried with them. It seems that the very act of searching for Cofitachequi is what destroyed it.
As for the Lady of Cofitachequi, her true motives and actions remain shrouded in the murky waters of history. Was she a naïve and willing accomplice or a woman trying to protect her people? Good leaders must indeed make difficult choices, and often, it is better to give some ground than to lose it all. Regardless, the Lady of Cofitachequi lived on in the minds of future explorers, adding to the legends surrounding this “new world.”
Nate Barker is a creator and freelance writer huddled down in a small niche of Northern New York. Through the years, he has followed his passions and encourages others to do the same. He went to college, and even got a master’s degree, but that was a long time ago. He has come to realize that life, just like history, is grander than the sum of its parts. You can find him at www.thebullybeard.com.
Online Resources and References
Primary Sources
Garcilaso de la Vega, “History of the Conquest of Florida.”
Rodrigo Ranjel, Account of De Soto | Early Visions of Florida.
Luis Hernandez de Biedma, “A Narrative of the Expedition.”
Knight of Elvas, A Narrative of the expedition of Hernando de Soto into Florida published at Evora in 1557. (2024, July 14).
Secondary Sources
DePratter, Chester B., Amer, Christopher. Underwater archeology at the Mulberry Site and Adjacent Portions of the Wateree River. South Carolina Institute of Archeology and Anthropology, November 1988.
Edelson, S. M. (2021). Searching for Cofitachequi: How English Colonizers Mapped the Native Southeast before 1700. XVII-XVIII, 78.
Hudson, Charles M , Knights of Spain, warriors of the sun : Hernando De Soto and the South’s ancient chiefdoms , (1997). Internet Archive.
Mississippian Chiefdoms, U.S. National Park Service.
Mississippian Culture - Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service).
Mulberry Mound - SC Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology | University of South Carolina.