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

We know Native people were there.

We know the material evidence connects them.

We know the encounter was part of a larger colonial campaign.

But the voices of the people who stood inside those houses are mostly lost.

THE SILENCE OF THE NATIVE RECORD

One of the saddest realities of early colonial history is that the written record is overwhelmingly European.

Native people had their own histories, but those histories were not preserved in Spanish manuscripts in the same way.

The absence of a Native-written account does not mean Native people lacked historical memory.