Report a correction
The de Soto expedition
Hernando de Soto led a Spanish expedition that between 1539 and 1543 marched through what are now the south-eastern United States. The expedition's four accounts are the only description we have of the Mississippian world functioning, and are therefore indispensable — while the expedition itself is a prime suspect in the collapse whose prelude it documented. The herd of pigs they drove along is a likely vector. This is why later English colonists met a thinly peopled landscape and drew the conclusion that it had always been empty.
Factual errors are corrected without argument once documented. What you send is read by a person and checked against sources — nothing changes automatically. See the editorial policy.