It amazes me that it has not been found yet. I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject. In my opinion, as well as many others, this is the most historically important site in the Southeast. It is somewhere in Central or South Alabama, and as of now lost. The Desoto Chroniclers estimate thousands of Indians perished, most were likely burned alive. This is the largest known battle on US soil until the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. It is driving me nuts that I can't go and visit the site. Maybe one day somebody will find it. Hopefully it will be undisturbed. Chalices for saying mass, medicine and wine bottles, thousands of looted pearls, among other important artifacts would likely be found at the site.

Skinny knows. He told me but swore me too secrecy. He's waiting to reveal after I buy the land and all that surrounds it to protect it from looters. having said that, I'll let you come visit Ronnie.

I too know the location. Loose lips sink ships

I was looking for arrowheads over west of Selma one time and came up on a spot that you could pick up teeth and bones by the bucket.It was so creepy that I quit picking up the arrowheads. I did get some of the most perfect bird points that you have ever seen.

Very interesting to me also. A lot of people have tried to find it. I think it will be unearthed by accident or already has and just pushed out of the way unknowingly. But just a WAG from someone who has only read on the subject.

Jawbone actually hits on an interesting point: If you owned the land it is found on what would you do?? Part of me would want to leave it undisturbed. Another part would want it unearthed, left where it is and can be best preserved, and turn it into a public park for viewing.

Are you talking sharks teeth?? If so, they are fairly common in the black belt. Oyster reefs are also fairly common there.

Personally, If I owned the land, excuse me, when I own the land, I will let archaeologists study it first, after building adequate protection from looting and trespassing. Then depending on what they unearth, maybe build a little visiting center or something. If they don't find much of anything to display, just put up a sign indicating the significance of the site and references to read further info on it. Of course it will all be surrounded by my deer sanctuary and private hunting spot since it will be here in Central Alabama. Crap, I probably said too much already.

FYI, Blackwell Bend is a protected site now because after the 89 flood human remains in association with a Spanish Conquistadors helmet surfaced. I recall this created quite an excitement about Maubila, but for some reason Skinny can answer it was discounted as the exact site. Close but not quite.

These were human teeth and it was creepy.

Well, THAT is not common. Jimmy Hoffa??

Those are actually everything points. When the bow came into use the point size went down to almost nothing.

You should let Skinny know where that place is.

I would like to hear skinnys take on this. I like to read his commentary.

Without stealing Skinny's thunder, because I'm sure he'll respond when he gets out of class or off the throne, whichever the case may be, he has taught me that there was a village that Desoto visited before going to Mauvilla. If they can find this village, they will find Mauvilla. This site has a definitive type of pottery associated with it. This is one of the reasons Skinny is more interested in looking at our pottery shards we pick up than the pretty points.

Eventually, the site will be located. It will be on private land so the right person just has to find the right thing at the right time and show it to the right person who it turn tells the right archaeologist. The clues are out there, it is just a giant puzzle waiting to be solved.

Buncha Idots up in here. It's pronounced "MO-BEEL," and it's exit 3 on I65.

I read a forum thread one time where a guy met a sharecropper who invited him in and the sharecropper was stirring his fire with a spanish lance. Said he found it in his field.

This was close to Ghees Bend.

Probably not Maubilla because the spanish stayed for a month and would have cleaned up everything. Somewhere on the route maybe where some interesting stuff happened causing someone to lose a lance.

If it is found, I'm still in good shape and UA woks at the site any - I'll probably go back for master's in anthro just to work at the site some.

Sorry, but I'm letting Troy work it through Skinny.

How kind of you. Maybe I'll volunteer. I'll have to leave the wild animals my dog drags up at the house though. lol.

Press Register ran a story years ago about a local guy that took over looking for it. Apparently the Dad was an architect or engineer but devoted his spare time to looking for it and left volumes of notes, etc from his decades of search. If I remember correctly the son was fairly certain he knew the location but was waiting on permission to further research it. Don't believe there was ever a follow up story.

Interesting part of the battle is the sheer number killed by so few Spaniards- much like the Spanish conquest of other civilizations. If the Indians would have gotten out in the open- not "trapped" inside their wooden fort - the outcome would have probably been different regardless of Desoto's horses. They were just too cramped to fight.

If it is the article I recall, they speculated it was in Clarke County. Most that have studied it think it is here in Dallas Co.. While no one has the exact site located, most experts have a pretty good idea of a general area, I think.

Jawbone- yeah Clarke rings a bell. I might have to try and search for that article. Fascinating stuff for sure.

More information please, very interesting to read.

It's in Dallas county. Waaaay back in a swamp that a family talked about on here not too long ago protected their whole lives. They know about it. It goes unmentioned by them now but back in the early 90's someone almost got too close to finding it. They made sure that person never said a word about it.

I've never heard of this before. Just read a quick article on it...cool stuff.

Thanks fellas. If were back in Bama, I'd get out there.

Cool

BINGO!!!!

They lynched them didn't they? The ones that got too close? I love all the tall tales of that family heritage

Naw. They just throw em in the swamp to feed the gators.

I bet that place is a deer sanctuary now.

They catapult trophy rocks in twice per week.

Most of those deer in that area are genetically blind from all the spotlights from back in the day. You just had to be a local that the family knew and then it was no holds barred. This is second hand info from my in laws of course.

It was some fun nights. Had some Hank Jr. Blaring on the radio whisky on ice.

So is it pretty much scientifically accepted that the place is on this family land in Dallas Co? I've never even heard of Mabila before this thread but this really interesting. Where is Skinny?

Can't be. The gators ate one of them. No, wait, he wasn't dead after all.

Obviously no one knows for sure, but most people that study it believe it to be in Dallas County. Again, speaking for Skinny, he thinks it is, and the area he names is in the same vicinity as .257's.

One thing that is pretty much universal is that it is from the Selma area, south to Clarke County. Most concentrate on just south of Blackwell Bend and around Cahaba. I've even read some say it was on the Minter land just north of Selma (Durant Bend). Several Aldeer guys have hunted that land before.

Skinny's probably sitting back laughing at all us ignorant amateurs, seeing how stupid we can really be.

I'm sure he is. But it's fun to stoke the fire on this boring hot late October night.

Good reads on topic...

http://blog.al.com/birmingham-news-stories/2009/09/experts_closing_in_on_site_of.html

https://www.ua.edu/news/2009/08/a-search-renewed-de-soto-tascalusa-battle-site-remains-elusive/

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cmamcrk4/pkt1.html

There is a pretty good case for Clarke county, AL. Just a belief I have and nothing based on anything factual - It was written that the Indians knew (as did De Soto's men) there was a Spanish contingent anchored and camped near Mobile (from most accounts roughly 100 miles downriver from Maubila) awaiting De Soto so I think Chief Tuscaloosa most likely took a long route southward to Maubila to allow his warriors time to prepare an ambush there. I think he was trying to lead De Soto as far out of his chiefdom as possible but as near the Spanish fleet in Mobile bay as he could get so after the ambush, a defeated or diminished De Soto would give up and move down river and leave. I have seen a couple of old French maps from the late 1700s that note the area around Choctaw Bluff in Clarke county as the area where Desoto fought. This was most likely based on local Indian folklore which carries some weight.

Piachi is a village sitting on the river, high upon a craggly bluff, that desoto got to before going to Mabila. Then they went into a "Monte", which some scholars say that is old Spanish for an overgrown field or prairie. Not a mountain like it would seem to indicate. My personal feeling is that it is in western Dallas county somewhere

I think if Desoto and his men went as far south as Clarke county, he would have had a mutiny on his hands. He sent a few men down to the coast to make contact with the ships awaiting. If they would have had a short trip there and back, his men wouldn't have wanted to turn north. This is just my opinion. Tascalusa's home town of Atahachi is probably Durant bend. It is the best fit in the vague descriptions anyway. What strikes me as very odd is why didn't Tristan DeLuna make an effort to visit the site when he made his way through the area only 20 years later. By that time most of the Indian population had been wiped out by diseases brought from Desoto.
In my opinion, of course I have a lot of em, the village they visited before arriving at Mabila, Piachi, is probably either on Whites bluff or somewhere north of 22 on the cahaba river on one of them bluffs. The Indians fought them at Piachi so it makes sense that they had a defended position across the river from where desoto's men were coming from. Where ya at skinny? You can't sit this one out forever. What say ye? We all a bunch of idots? Lol.

If it had been a running battle in the woods, the lances and horses would have done no good. The spanish killed many more with the fire than they did with swords.

Too bad.

BATTLE AT MABILA

On Monday, the eighteenth of October, the day of St. Luke, the Governor arrived at Mabila, having passed that day through some towns. But these towns detained the soldiers, pillaging and scattering themselves, for the land seemed populous; thus only forty on horseback arrived in advance guard with the Governor, and since they were a little detained, in order for the Governor not to show weakness, he entered in the town with the cacique, and all entered with him. The Indians then did an areito, which is their kind of ball with dancing and singing.

While watching this, some soldiers saw them placing bundles of bows and arrows secretively in some palm leaves, and other Christians saw that the huts were filled high and low with concealed people. The Governor was warned, and he placed his helmet on his head and commanded that all should mount their horses and warn all the soldiers who had arrived; and scarcely had they left, when the Indians took command of the gates of the wall of the town. And Luis de Moscoso and Baltasar de Gallegos and Espindola, Captain of the guard, and seven or eight soldiers remained with the Governor. And the cacique plunged into a hut and refused to come out from it; and then they began to shoot arrows at the Governor. Baltasar de Gallegos entered for the cacique, and he not wanting to leave, he [Gallegos] cut off the arm of a principal Indian with a slash. Luis de Moscoso, awaiting him at the door in order not to leave him alone, was fighting like a knight, and he did everything possible, until he could suffer no more, and said: "Senor Baltasar de Gallegos, come forth, or I will have to leave you, for I cannot wait for you any longer."

During this time Solis, a resident of Triana of Seville, and Rodrigo Rangel, had mounted. They were the first, and for his sins Solis was then shot down dead. Rodrigo Rangel arrived near the gate of the town at the time that the Governor and two soldiers of his guard with him were leaving, and about him [the Governor] were more than seventy Indians, who halted out of fear of the horse of Rodrigo Rangel, and he [the Governor] wishing him to give it to him, a black man arrived with his own [horse]; and he commanded Rodrigo Rangel to aid the Captain of the guard who remained behind, who came out very fatigued, and with him a soldier of the guard, and he on horseback faced his enemies until he got out of danger. And Rodrigo Rangel returned to the Governor, and he drew out more than twenty arrows that he carried hanging from his armor, which was a quilted tunic of thick cotton; and he commanded Rangel to guard [the body of] Solis until he could bring him out from among their enemies, so that they might not carry him within, and so that the Governor might go to collect the soldiers.

There was so much virtue and shame this day in all those who found themselves in this first attack and the beginning of this bad day. They fought admirably, and each Christian did his duty as a most valiant soldier. Luis de Moscoso and Baltasar de Gallegos left with the remaining soldiers through another gate.

In effect, the Indians ended up with the town and all the property of the Christians and with the horses that they left tied within, which they then killed. The Governor gathered all the forty on horseback who were there, and they arrived at a large plaza in front of the principal gate of Mabila, and there the Indians came forth, without daring to venture far from the palisade; and in order to draw them out, they pretended that those on horseback were fleeing at a gallop, withdrawing far from the ramparts, and the Indians, believing it, ventured from the town and from the palisade in their pursuit, desirous of employing their arrows, and when it was time, those on horseback turned around on their enemies, and before they could take shelter, they lanced many. Don Carlos wished to go with his horse up to the gate, and they gave his horse an arrow wound in the breast, and not being able to turn [his horse], he dismounted to draw out the arrow, and another came which struck him in the neck, above his shoulder, from which, asking for confession, he fell dead. The Indians did not dare to venture again from the palisade. Then, the adelantado encircled them on many sides until all the army arrived, and they entered it through three sides setting fire, first cutting through the palisade with axes; and the fire traveled so that the nine arrobas of pearls that they brought were burned, and all the clothes and ornaments and chalices and moulds for wafers, and the wine for saying mass, and they were left like Arabs, empty-handed and with great hardship.

The Christian women, who were slaves of the Governor, had remained in a hut, and some pages, a friar, a cleric, and a cook and some soldiers; they defended themselves very well from the Indians, who could not enter until the Christians arrived with the fire and brought them out. And all the Spaniards fought like men of great spirit, and twenty-two of them died, and they wounded another one hundred and forty-eight with six hundred and eighty-eight arrow wounds, and they killed seven horses and wounded twenty-nine others. The women and even boys of four years struggled against the Christians, and many Indians hanged themselves in order not to fall into their hands, and others plunged into the fire willingly. See what spirit those tamemes had. There were many great arrow shots sent with such fine will and force, that the lance of a gentleman, named Nuno de Tovar, which was of two pieces of ash and very good, was pierced by an arrow through the middle from side to side, like a drill, without splintering anything, and the arrow made a cross on the lance.

Don Carlos died this day, and also Francisco de Soto, nephew of the Governor, and Juan de Gamez de Jaen, and Men Rodriguez, a good Portuguese gentleman, and Espinosa, a good gentleman, and another called Velez, and one Blasco de Barcarrota and other very honored soldiers; and the wounded were most of the people of worth and of honor. They killed three thousand Indians, in addition to which there were many others wounded, which they found afterward dead in the huts and by the roads. Nothing was ever learned of the cacique [Tuscalusa], either dead or alive; the son was found lanced.

The battle having taken place in the manner stated above, they rested there until Sunday, the fourteenth of November, treating the wounded and the horses, and they burned a great part of the land. From the time that this Governor and his armies entered in the land of Florida up to the time that they left from there, all the dead were one hundred and two Christians, and not all, to my way of thinking, in true penitence

Sounds like a good way to give all the natives STDs.