Today we have more information about Scene 22 provided by Janeen Turk, senior curatorial assistant in American Art.
As he orchestrated a narrative for his massive panorama, Montroville W. Dickeson included a handful of pre-19th century historical moments. Scene 22: De Soto’s Burial at White Cliffs is one of these. Hernando de Soto, a Spanish explorer, was the first European to reach the Mississippi River. He and his men made it to the River in 1541 and then explored a bit farther west. By early 1542, they had returned to the Mississippi, just in time for de Soto to perish near the site of his greatest discovery. The story goes that de Soto had tried to convince the local Native Americans that he was a god, so his men buried him in the Mississippi River at night, to hide the fact that he was not immortal after all.
Beyond de Soto’s importance to the story of the Mississippi, Dickeson would have been interested in this subject because of his own familiarity with the White Cliffs site. This was a spot Dickeson explored while living in Natchez, and he devotes one of his Lotus articles to his experience there. His article, however, centers around the natural beauty and geological interest of the locale and does not discuss the death or burial of de Soto (although he does describe the threat of death by alligator which he believed to be endemic to the region).
They do seem hungry…
