In 1540 Hernando de Soto arrived

On This Day: In 1540 Hernando de Soto arrived at the Native Mobile village of Mabila, in present-day Clark County, Alabama. Inside the village, Chief Tuscalossa and the Mobile people had prepared to defend themselves against the Spanish as they had received word of their coming. The Spanish, under de Soto's command, attacked the village and eventually broke down the defending walls. One of the Spaniards recorded in his journal: "breaking in upon the Indians and beating them down, they fled out of the place, the cavalry and infantry driving them back through the gates, where losing the hope of escape, they fought valiantly; and the Christians getting among them with cutlasses, they found themselves met on all sides by their strokes, when many, dashing headlong into the flaming houses, were smothered, and, heaped one upon another, burned to death. "They who perished there were in all two thousand five hundred, a few more or less: of the Christians there fell two hundred... Of the living, one hundred and fifty (150) Christians had received seven hundred wounds..." Over 2,500 Mobile people were killed by the Spaniards. Over the next few centuries the Tuscaloosa peoples, Coosa peoples, Plaquemine Mississippian peoples from the Mississippi and Pearl River valleys and other native peoples came together to form a confederacy which became the historic tribe known as the Choctaw.