THE NATIVE VILLAGE THAT HID HERNANDO DE SOTO’S FIRST CAMP IN AMERICA

But it can prove that the village was a living community rather than a political abstraction.

THE WOMEN OF THE VILLAGE

Women are also often underrepresented in conquest narratives.

Spanish chroniclers sometimes described women only when their labor or political status affected the expedition.

But women were central to Native communities.

Agriculture, food processing, household production, kinship, trade, and political relationships depended heavily on their work.

A village could not function without them.

The archaeological record of houses and food production therefore represents their labor even when the chronicles do not name them.