The Pascagoula Democrat Star

Was It DeSoto's Body
St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

"I believe that I helped to bury Don Fernando DeSoto," said Oliver Rigsby, a native Louisianian, now at the Southern. "In 1853 I was living at Baton Rouge, and, in company with a couple of other young men, named Davis and Hurin, went up the river on a hunting expedition. We went up above the present site of Port Hudson, where the river makes a sharp bend to the west.

"There had been a big rise in the river a month before—one of the greatest ever known. We had landed on a lot of rubbish that had been swept down by the river, and used some of it to cook our supper. Hurin sat on an old log that appeared to have been washed up from the bottom of the stream, and tapped on it with a hatchet.

"It gave out a hollow sound, and he began to chip into it. The wood was soft and spongy, and he soon cut through the outer crust, and, putting his hand inside, drew forth a rusty sword. We quickly demolished the log, and found it to contain a helmet, badly corroded, and a human skeleton—that of a man apparently six feet tall. On one of the bony fingers was a large seal ring, and about the neck was a small chain, to which was suspended a bronze crucifix.

"We carried the skeleton inland a quarter of a mile and buried it on a little knoll between two large live oak trees. Hurin kept the sword and appropriated the crucifix. It is said that DeSoto's body was incased in a hollow tree and sunk in the Mississippi river in 1542. Whether the skeleton we found was his or not I do not know, but it had the appearance of having lain in the river for centuries."