de Soto (Probably) Never Slept Here: Archaeology, Memory, Myth, and Social Identity

Accounts of the expedition of Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto to Southeastern North America (1539—43 CE) provide the first written descriptions of the Indigenous peoples and physical geography of the interior of this region. These accounts have become not only indispensable resources for archaeologists wishing to reconstruct the social, cultural, and political landscapes of Native Americans at the moments of first contact with Europeans, but essential components of existential ontology for many modern Southeastern communities. This paper examines the case of Childersburg, Alabama, which, despite archaeological evidence to the contrary, has developed a mythic civic charter that asserts itself to be the oldest continually occupied European community in the present United States.