Garcilaso de la Vega, the "Inca," was never in Florida, despite his remarkable record of Hernando de Soto's activity there. He was a sixteenth century historian born of a wealthy father and Incan mother in the New World then educated in Europe. He interviewed several DeSoto Expedition survivors, among them Captain Gonzalo Silvestre, one of DeSoto's Thirty Lancers, then published his findings in "Florida of the Inca" in 1605. Inca described Florida's geography, which has not changed much since Desoto's visit, in remarkable detail. His record of Florida places is unmistakable to anyone with a sound knowledge of its landscape and resource exploitation. Many Florida forests, fields, rivers and swamps have been cut, mined, channeled or drained in the last several centuries. They "look" different today, but were, at one time, as Inca described them. Inca used different names for places than those who were with DeSoto, confusing scholars for centuries. Given that Inca's chronology of DeSoto's activity agrees with the DeSoto Chroniclers, we are able to divine which place names the others used for his* (map below), although the spelling of each varied among them.
The other Chroniclers failed to mention this. They simply called each province by its most powerful village's chief's name within it. Most of them named provinces at various intervals, all with boundaries at natural obstacles, most often at large rivers, as Florida Counties are today (shown on map).
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