Luis de Moscoso Alvarado

Alvarado accompanied his uncle on expeditions to the Americas, where he participated in the conquest of present-day Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.[1] In 1530 Pedro sent Alvarado to set up a colony in present-day eastern El Salvador. On May 8, 1530 Alvarado founded the town of San Miguel de la Frontera in modern San Miguel Department. In addition, Alvarado founded San Miguel with about 120 Spanish cavalry, as well as with infantry and Indian auxiliaries, crossed the Lempa River and founded San Miguel on 21 November 1530.[2]

In 1534, he traveled to Peru with his uncle on an expedition through what is now Ecuador. As Alvarado explored the area, he and Pedro discovered several tribes in the Manabí Province.[1]

A proposed route for the de Soto and de Moscoso Expedition, based on Charles M. Hudson map of 1997.[3]

After returning to Peru,[1] Alvarado and his two brothers decided to work with Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto.

Alvarado returned to Spain in 1536 due to discord between Diego de Almagro and Francisco Pizarro. In Spain, apparently, Alvarado made improper use of the wealth he had acquired in Peru, forcing his return to the Americas to recover it. He left the Spanish port of Sanlucar de Barrameda with de Soto's army, commanding one of the expedition's seven ships.

On April 7, 1538 the expedition reached Florida's coast via Cuba. Alvarado obtained the title of "maestro de campo" (field commander) and kept this title until an incident with the Chickasaw Native American band, in March 1541. In this incident, many of the horses and twelve Spaniards died, apparently (and mainly) because of Alvarado's error. De Soto died on May 21, 1542, in what became Arkansas, leaving Moscoso as the commander of the army. After consulting with the other leaders, Moscoso decided to abandon the mission to found a colony and take the expedition to Mexico.[1][4]

Moscoso and his army marched west, possibly reaching northwest Louisiana and Texas. They encountered Late Caddoan Mississippian peoples along the way, but lacked interpreters to communicate with them and eventually ran into territory too dry for maize farming and too thinly populated to sustain themselves by stealing food from the local populations. The expedition promptly backtracked to Guachoya on the Mississippi River.[1][4]

Over the winter of 1542-1543 they built seven bergantines, or pinnaces, with which to seek a water route to Mexico. On July 2, 1543, the 322 survivors of originally more than 600 soldiers and servants went down the Mississippi. Along the way they had a running three day battle with the chiefdom of "Quigualtam", in which more men were lost. Alvarado's expeditionary group eventually made it to the Gulf Coast on July 16th, 1543, and began sailing westward along the Louisiana and Texas shores. The group probably also found some of Texas' bays (possibly Matagorda Bay, Corpus Christi Bay or Aransas Bay) before finally reaching the Pánuco River, and then traveling on to Mexico City.[5]

There Moscoso wrote two brief letters to king of Castile at the time, Charles V, although they explained little about the expedition. In present-day Mexico he served to the viceroy of New Spain Antonio de Mendoza and accompanied him to Peru in 1550, where Luis Moscoso died in 1551.