1993 Choice Outstanding Academic Book, sponsored by Choice Magazine.

The De Soto expedition was the first major encounter of Europeans with North American Indians in the eastern half of the United States. De Soto and his army of over 600 men, including 200 cavalry, spent four years traveling through what is now Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. For anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians the surviving De Soto chronicles are valued for the unique ethnological information they contain. These documents, available here in a two volume set, are the only detailed eyewitness records of the most advanced native civilization in North America—the Mississippian culture—a culture that vanished in the wake of European contact.


 

"A rich, readable contribution to De Soto studies that commemorates the 450th anniversary of the ill-fated explorer's odyssey through the present southeastern U.S. and Texas. These translations of the four primary accounts of the venture, with new notes and introductions, make valuable historical and ethnographical information easily available and accessible both to scholars and to general readers. . . . All academic libraries and larger public libraries should purchase this exceptionally valuable compilation."

—Choice

"These handsomely produced volumes contain translations of virtually all known documents from the De Soto expedition, as well as new scholarship. For the first time all these sources are in one place. The editors, authors, translators, and support groups are to be congratulated for a lasting contribution to scholarship. These important volumes deserve to be on the shelves of every person interested in history, ethnohistory, or archaeology of the Southeastern United States."

—Florida Historical Quarterly