Posted on 11/04/2011 4:45:15 AM PDT by Renfield
Under a former Native American village in Georgia, deep inside what's now the U.S., archaeologists say they've found 16th-century jewelry and other Spanish artifacts.
The discovery suggests an expedition led by conquistador Hernando de Soto ventured far off its presumed course—which took the men from Florida to Missouri—and engaged in ceremonies in a thatched, pyramid-like temple.
The discovery could redraw the map of de Soto's 1539-41 march into North America, where he hoped to replicate Spain's overthrow of the Inca Empire in South America. There, the conquistador had served at the side of leader Francisco Pizarro...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
"Usually their demands for food and young women wore out their welcome very quickly," Mitchem said, "so the natives were almost always trying to make them leave as rapidly as possible."
Conquistador ping.
“”For an Indian in the South 500 years ago, things like glass beads and iron tools might as well have been iPhones,” said project leader Dennis Blanton, an independent archaeologist who until recently was Fernbank’s staff archaeologist.”
The PC police will be all over him.
where is this site located?
When you read about the event and try to match this body of Spaniards up against Midwestern or Tennessee Valley sites/events you can see there was a possibility they could have simply gone due West, past the Southernmost point of the Appalachians, and then gone North to the Ohio (then believed to be the upper Mississippi), crossed over and founded some sort of "La Villa Real" in a defensible area in Southern Indiana or Ohio.
Take a good look at Laurel Indiana some time ~ There's a Spanish town layout in the core. It's up on the Indiana escarpment, and has access to the Whitewater river (which takes you to the Ohio) and to the Miami river a few miles further which also takes you to the Ohio.
This place was abandoned when the first English settlers came to the area, and stayed abandoned until the 1830s or so.
I suspect there's a map somewhere with all these places the Spaniards settled at marked.
The Ayllon colony could very well have gotten to this area ahead of the great drought of of the 1560 to 1600 period ~ and prospered in some manner. They would have been equipped with tools and knowledge to build grist mills and distilleries. Alcohol could get you a lot of furs and gold.
Remember, there were NO FRENCH in this region until AFTER 1604 and they seem to have not had any maps. All their riverine expeditions were NEW STUFF to them. When De Soto came in 1541 he had information about where he wanted to go ~ there were sources that could have been in place for two decades!
“Why does it have to have been from a gift exchange? Why couldn’t the stash have been booty?”
Because Leftist dogma is that the Indians were wonderful, egalitarian, utopian, and treated their women as equals. To call it booty would mean they attacked the Spanish and took it, or snuck in and stole it.
I was in a mesa-covered Arizona park. The Indians had built their village on top of the biggest mesa and the path to the top was anywhere from a few inches wide to a foot wide. It could have been defended by elderly people dropping stones. Every drop of water and grain of food had to be brought up this awesomely dangerous path. There, beside the mesa, was a huge bronze plaque stating; “Obviously, the Indians built their village on top of this mesa because of the specular view it affords.” Really!? How many Indians died lugging firewood, water and food up there so they could enjoy the view?
My conclusion is that Leftists who study Indians are idiots.
I can vouch for the lefty part from personal experience.
There is a lot of new stuff being written about the early Americas. Charles Mann’s “1491” and “1493” are two recent examples.
LOL!!
IIRc there is a roadside plaque in Western NC, near Dillsboro/Sylva stating DeSoto passed that way. Don't know how that was determined.
LOL! Great post. We love seeing the Indian ruins throughout Arizona - they are an archeologist’s dream.
:: Conquistador ping. ::
Please note that your stallion stands in need of company.
I remember seeing roadside markers in north Georgia noting that de Vaca had passed through the area. That was 50 years ago.
About time there was a Procol Harum reference.
Deserters? Pissibly. But, I guess researchers and the author didn't consider that the Indians killed the explorers elsewhere and stole this stuff...then bringing it to the excavation site.
or Neil
I see your armor plated breast has long since lost its sheen.
never made it to Georgia,-it was a jewel-
used to drag race it
on the straightaways-
It could fly! 
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