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Gallery: Juan Ortiz Found Alive

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	Actor: "It did not take long for us to see that this new land would not make our journey easy. Mangroves and swamps were around every turn, but we forged on."
	Actor: "DeSoto knows what motivates this army: gold. And he's sure it waits for us deep in the interior of this new world."
	240 Horses were brought to the new world to carry men and supplies on the expedition.
	An actor portraying Hernando DeSoto leads his men down a path in the forest.
	An actor portraying Hernando DeSoto leads men cautiously down a path in the Florida wilderness.
	An actor portraying a Spanish soldier stands on alert in the Florida wilderness.
	Actors portraying soldiers on the DeSoto expedition advance further into the Florida wilderness.
	An actor portraying Hernando DeSoto leads a group of soldiers through the Florida wilderness.
	Actor: "Our encounters with the local Indians came swiftly. They used the tropical woodlands to their advantage. They were like ghosts, they were there and then gone again."
	An actor portraying Luis de Moscoso leads a party of Spanish soldiers through the florida wilderness.
	An actor portraying Luis de Moscoso warns of an imminent Indian encounter.
	A Native American reenactor emerges from palmettos.
	The Native American reenactor flees.
	Actor: "But we were on alert, and once we engaged them with a skirmish they were quickly overwhelmed by our weapons and brute force."
	A Spanish soldier fires a harquebus, an early type of gun, at Native Americans.
	A reenactor portraying a Native American runs through Florida wilderness.
	A reenactor portraying a Spanish soldier persues a Native American.
	Actor: "But in one of the first encounters we were taken completely by surprise. Not by an ambush, but by what we heard in the fight: Christiano!"
	Narrator: "As it turns out, one of the first Indians captured was actually Juan Ortiz, a survivor of a small ill-fated attempt at colonization and conquest eleven years earlier, under the command of Narvaez."
	Narrator: "Ortiz had been captured and tortured by the Indians, but eventually he learned to live with the local people. DeSoto's spirits were raised. He had found an interpreter."
	Narrator: "Ortiz's experience with the native people opened his eyes to a different way of life."
	Narrator: "In the South were the coastal settlements of the Calusa, consisting of thatch buildings and complex maritime societies."
	An engraving by Jacques LeMoyne depicts Native Americans in a dugout canoe.
	Narrator: "To the North lay great chiefdoms like the Apalachee, Cofachiqui, and Cusa, who lived in large permanent settlements and relied on extensive agriculture, hunting, and fishing."
	An engraving by Jacques LeMoyne depicts a Native American village.
	An engraving by Jacques LeMoyne depicts a Native American camp.
	Narrator: "They had well-organized communities with a strong system of social ranking."
	Narrator: "The most outstanding features of these cultures were great mounds that served as temple bases and burial sites."
	Narrator: "Many of these chiefdoms extended for hundreds of miles and consisted of many cultures and languages."

 

Exploring Florida: Social Studies Resources for Students and Teachers
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