Disentangling Sixteenth-Century Spanish Entradas in Interior Alabama

Summary

The route of Hernando de Soto’s entrada included central Alabama, where a 1540 battle at the Indigenous town of Mabila resulted in a catastrophic loss of supplies and morale for Soto’s army and thousands of Indigenous lives. Twenty years later, Indigenous peoples in the same region were affected by entradas from the Tristan de Luna settlement. Four years of archaeological survey have identified the Mabila province, including more than 200 sixteenth-century Indigenous farmsteads and more than 150 pieces of Spanish metal. This paper discusses the implications of these finds for the Soto and Luna expeditions and for the Indigenous people they encountered.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow