THE NATIVE VILLAGE THAT HID HERNANDO DE SOTO’S FIRST CAMP IN AMERICA
The people of Capachequi already knew the village existed.
Their descendants carry the history forward.
European arrival did not make the place historically meaningful.
The archaeology simply allows modern researchers to recover information that had been obscured.
This distinction is important when writing Indigenous history.
The land was not waiting to be discovered.
It was already inhabited.
It already had names.