The simple natives of the valleys and the mountains were regarded as game for the hunt. Had these natives been of a sturdier stock, — heroic, defiant, and resolved, and able from the first to contest each step and to resent each wrong of the invaders, — the game would at least have been lifted above a mere hunt as for foxes and rabbits to the more serious enterprise of an encounter with buffaloes, panthers, and grizzly bears. The tameness and defencelessness of the natives seem even to have become incitements to the Spaniards for a wanton sport of outrage upon them. There were master minds among the invaders, — men temporarily at least invested with powers, by commissions and instructions from their sovereigns, to exercise authority in the interests of wisdom and humanity. But their jealousies and the intrigues of their enemies at the court were constantly disabling and displacing them; so that there was here no grasp of control, no sternness of law and obedience.
The progress of the same kind of conquest by the Spaniards who first came into contact with the savages in the southern portion of our present domain, was attended by the same outrages and barbarities which marked its beginnings. De Soto had received his training for the opening and conquest of the regions of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, while a youth under Pizarro, in Peru. On his return the Spanish court made him governor of Cuba, and Adelantado, or provincial governor, of Florida. On arriving in Florida, in May, 1539, his first business was to capture some natives as slaves, pack-carriers, and guides. He found great help as an interpreter in a Spaniard, Juan Ortiz, who, having been captured by the Indians from the company under Narvaez, in 1528, had been living among them. De Soto had about a thousand followers, soldiers in full armor, with cutlasses and fire-arms, one cannon, two hundred and thirteen horses, greyhounds and blood-hounds, handcuffs, neck-collars, and chains for captives, all sorts
