Hernando de Soto

Hernando de Soto (Jerez de los Caballeros, c.1496/1497–May 21, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who, while leading the first European expedition to the territory of the modern-day United States, was the first European to discover the Mississippi River.

A vast undertaking, de Soto's expedition ranged throughout the southeastern United States searching for gold and a passage to China. De Soto died in 1542 on the banks of the Mississippi River at present-day Lake Village, Arkansas. Hernando de Soto was born to parents who were hidalgos of modest means in Extremadura, a region of poverty and hardship from which many young people looked for ways to seek their fortune elsewhere. Two towns—Badajoz and Jerez de los Caballeros—claim to be his birthplace. All that is known with certainty is that he spent time as a child at both places and he stipulated in his will that his body be interred at Jerez de los Caballeros, where other members of his family were also interred. The age of the Conquerors came on the heels of the Spanish reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from Islamic forces. Spain and Portugal were filled with young men begging for a chance to find military fame after the Moors were defeated. With discovery of new lands to the West (which seemed at the time to be far East Asia), the whispers of glory and wealth were too compelling for the poor.

During that time, Juan Ponce de León, who discovered Florida, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who discovered the Pacific (he called it the "South Sea" below Panama), and Ferdinand Magellan, who first sailed that ocean to the Orient, profoundly influenced De Soto's ambitions.