Hernando de Soto (c.1496/1497–1542) is a Spanish explorer and conquistador who, while leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, is the first European documented to have crossed the Mississippi River.

A vast undertaking, de Soto's North American expedition ranges throughout the southeastern United States searching for gold and a passage to China.

De Soto dies in 1542 on the banks of the Mississippi River in Arkansas or Louisiana.

Hernando de Soto was born to parents who were hidalgos of modest means in Extremadura, a region of poverty and hardship from which many young people looked for ways to seek their fortune elsewhere.

Two towns—Badajoz and Barcarrota—claim to be his birthplace.

All that is known with certainty is that he spent time as a child at both places, and he stipulated in his will that his body be interred at Jerez de los Caballeros, where other members of his family were also interred.

The age of the Conquerors comes on the heels of the Spanish reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from Islamic forces.

Spain and Portugal are filled with young men begging for a chance to find military fame after the Moors were defeated.

With discovery of new lands to the west (which seem at the time to be East Asia), the whispers of glory and wealth are too compelling for the poor.

De Soto sails to the New World in 1514 with the first Governor of Panama, Pedrarias Dávila.

Brave leadership, unwavering loyalty, and clever schemes for the extortion of native villages for their captured chiefs become de Soto's hallmark during the Conquest of Central America.

He gains fame as an excellent horseman, fighter, and tactician, but is notorious for the extreme brutality with which he wields these gifts.

During this time, Juan Ponce de León, who discovers Florida, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who discovers the Pacific Ocean (he calls it the "South Sea" below Panama), and Ferdinand Magellan, who first sails that ocean to the Orient, profoundly influence de Soto's ambitions.