1540 — Oct 18, Spanish (de Soto) battle/massacre, with Atahachi, Mabila, AL –2,500-6,000
— 2,500-11,000 Various chronicles, reports, testimony emanating from the expedition. (Duncan)
— 6,082 Berney. Hand-Book of Alabama (2nd Revised Edition). 1892, p. 77.[1]
— 2,500-6,000 Blanchard range.[2]
— 3,020 Nunnally, Michael L. American Indian Wars. 2007, pp. 6-7.[3]
–High hundreds-2,500. Duncan. Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas, 1995, 388.
— 18-25 Spaniards killed according to the expedition chroniclers. Duncan 1995, 389.
— 13-35 Spaniards died of wounds afterwards. Duncan 1995, 390.
Narrative Information
Berney: “1540 – October 18. DeSoto fought the great battle of Maubila, or Maurila, with the tribe of Indians subsequently known as the Mobilians.”[4] (Berney. Hand-Book of Alabama (2nd Revised Edition). 1892, p. 77.)
Duncan: “Depending on which account you believe, Tascalusa had hidden three thousand, five thousand, or eleven thousand warriors in the huts, which he now threw against Hernando de Soto…” (Duncan 1995, 380.)
“As the fighting spread, Garcilaso claims that the wives and daughters of the Atahachi warriors joined in the battle, some of them grabbing weapons dropped by both Indians and Spaniards. These they turned on their enemy ‘with no less skill and ferocity than their husbands’”…. (Duncan 1995, 383.)
“This battle, one of the bloodiest fought in five centuries of warfare between Europeans and Indians on what would become United States soil, ended at sunset with Mabila in flames, and heaps of Indians lying dead or dying as men moaned and coughed, and blood soaked the ground…” (Duncan 1995, 384.)
‘Only Garcilaso, the great romantic, writes about the aftermath of Mabila with the proper blend of repulsion, pathos, and respect for the thousands killed – not because he was there, bu because he understood the horror of war’s aftermath both as a writer and a soldier, having served as a high-ranking officer in King Philip II’s army. Claiming that one could not walk down the streets of Mabila ‘for the dead bodies,’ Garcilaso writes that ‘the fire consumed more than 3,500 souls in the houses…the fire cutting them off from the door and suffocating and burning them inside without their being able to get out…it was pitiful to see.’ Most of the dead, he says, ‘were women’ who had come as wives ‘in obedience to their husbands, who had commanded them to do so. Others, who were single, said they had come at the importunity of their relatives and brothers who had promised to bring them so they might see…great celebrations…after the death and destruction of the Castilians.’ Still other women had arrived as lovers, fiancées, and girlfriends to watch ‘their gallants and sweethearts…who begged and persuaded them to come and see the valiant deeds and exploits they expected to perform against the Spaniards.’
“Outside the smoldering walls the horrors continued, says the Inca, with the fields and streams around the city filled with the dead and dying. ‘For four leagues round about in the woods, ravines and streams,’ he writes about the day after the battle ‘the Spaniards on going through the country found nothing but dead and wounded Indians, to the number of two thousand persons who had been unable to reach their houses. It was pitiful to hear them groaning in the woods, entirely helpless.’
“We will never know how many Indians died at the Battle of Mabila. Presumably, all the chroniclers exaggerate their tolls – which range from twenty-five hundred to eleven thousand – in order to make their own losses and stupidity look less awkward. Given what is known archaeologically about southern Alabama, the Indian army probably numbered no more than one to three thousand, even if allies from far away participated. This means that Elva’s body count of twenty-five hundred is not inconceivable, though my guess is the number of Indians killed was more likely in the upper hundreds, with a thousand being the upper limit.
“Whatever the number, this was a devastating loss for the Mississippians of Alabama, and beyond. In a single bloody conflagration, the Spaniards had killed or wounded virtually every fighting man in the region, including Tascalusa’s son and heir, ‘found lanced,’ and the king’s aides, generals, and priests. As for Tascalusa himself, ‘nothing was ever learned of the cacique, [ruler] either dead or alive,’ though he almost certainly perished, his body burned beyond recognition. Even more disastrous was what died with these Mississippian leaders – the centuries of collective knowledge about how to grow crops, build cities, worship gods, and administer the Atahachi government.
“By the time the next Europeans visited southern Alabama nineteen years later, during the 1559-61 Tristan de Luna expedition, the only trace of Tascalusa’s kingdom was a few survivors living among the ruins of an Atahachi city. Reduced to a society of primitive agriculturists quickly devolving into hunter-gatherers, they told the Spaniards that their country had once been great and powerful, until strangers looking like them had come and destroyed their crops and cities, and killed their people. The former kingdom of Atahachi proved so barren of food and essentials that Luna’s small group of soldiers and colonist nearly died of starvation after their provisions were destroyed in a hurricane….” (Duncan 1995 387-388.)
“According to the chroniclers, the total number of Spaniards killed at Mabila was between eighteen and twenty-five….” (Duncan 1995, pp. 387-389.)
(Duncan, David Ewing. Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas. 1995.)
Nunnally: “October 18, 1540, Battle of Maubila (Mobile) – Alabama. “A 950-man Spanish force under Hernando de Soto is attacked by Maubila Indians under Chief Tuscaloosa. The Indians are out-weaponed, and 3,000 Indians are reported killed. Twenty Spaniards are also killed.” (Nunnally, Michael L. American Indian Wars. 2007, pp. 6-7.)
Sources
Berney, Saffold. Hand-Book of Alabama (2nd Revised Edition). Birmingham, AL: Roberts & Sons Printers, 1892. Digitized by Google. Accessed 3-4-107 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=WDV_rsw3i2YC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Duncan, David Ewing. Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas. NY: Crown Publishers, 1995. Partially Google digitized; accessed 9-11-2012 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=YNOS6v78d7UC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Nunnally, Michael L. American Indian Wars: A Chronology of Confrontations Between Native Peoples and Settlers and the United States Military, 1500s-1901. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2007.
[1] Six thousand Natives and 82 from the Spanish expedition.
[2] Given Duncan’s skepticism with the estimates of chroniclers above the lowest estimate of 2,500 it is not conservative to go beyond his educated guess. However, since we have a source which has accepted one of the chronicler’s claims of 6,000 fatalities, we include it here though its plausibility is in question. On the other hand, as Duncan notes, there were a great many Atahachi gathered, not only because it was a capital city, but because many who lived elsewhere had been drawn to the site to witness a slaughter of invaders. When the city was intentionally burned (one of the reasons we refer to this as a massacre), it is indeed plausible that many hundreds or even thousands of non-combatant men, women and children died in the burning buildings.
[3] Cites: Rajtar, Steve. Indian War Sites. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999; and Reader’s Digest Publications. Through Indian Eyes. Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest, 1995. Gives 3,000 as Native losses and 20 Spanish.
[4] Berney adds the following note: “Pickett, in his History of Alabama, vol. I, p. 27, locates the site of this battle, which is said by Bancroft to have been one of the bloodiest Indian battles ever fought on the soil of the United States, at what is now Choctaw Bluff, Clarke county, on the Alabama river, about twenty-live miles above its confluence with the Tombigbee. The result of the battle was very disastrous to DeSoto, and, although victorious, his army became badly demoralized, and never recovered from its effects. DeSoto lost in killed eighty-two of his cavaliers, and killed 6,000 Indians.”