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Contact and European Arrival In May of 1539, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and an army of over 600 soldiers landed south of Espiritu De Santo (Tampa Bay), in the homeland of the Tocobaga Indians. Their mission was to "conquer, populate and pacify" La Florida. This was the first large-scale, organized European explorations of the interior of today's 48 continental United States. The expedition marched from one village to the next, taking food and enslaving the native peoples as guides and porters. Hundreds of lives were lost on what proved to be a calamitous journey. The arrival of European explorers brought large-scale changes to native societies and spelled the beginning of the end for the natives of Florida. The complex societies reported by the first chroniclers soon were depopulated and decimated by enslavement, battles, and European diseases for which the natives had little immunity.
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