page_title: History of Randolph, Tennessee
section_title: Hernando de Soto
hierarchical_section_title: History of Randolph, Tennessee / European explorers / Hernando de Soto
caption_attribution_description: De Soto's First View of the Mississippi.
context_page_description: Randolph is an unincorporated rural community in Tipton County,
  Tennessee, United States, located on the banks of the Mississippi River. The lands of the Mississippi River Basin were inhabited by Paleo-Indians and later Native American tribes of the Mississippian culture for thousands of years. The Tipton Phase people and the Chickasaw Indian tribe populated the Mississippi River valley near Randolph during the Mississippian period. In 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto crossed the Mississippi River at or near Randolph. French explorer Cavelier de La Salle built the first French fortification at or near Randolph on his 1682 canoe expedition of the Mississippi River.
  European settlers arrived in the area around 1800. The town of Randolph was founded in the 1820s as one of the earliest European settlements in Tipton County. The location of Randolph, on the second Chickasaw Bluff along the banks of the Mississippi River, just south of the lower mouth of the Hatchie River, provided for an ideal harbor for flatboats and steamboats and made the town an early center of river commerce in West Tennessee. Randolph shipped more cotton annually than Memphis until 1840.
context_section_description: Hernando de Soto (c. 1496–1542) was a Spanish explorer who led the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern United States and the first European documented to have discovered the Mississippi River.
  In 1541, De Soto and 400 men reached the Mississippi River in the area of what is modern Shelby County in southwest Tennessee or DeSoto County in northwest Mississippi. Within four weeks of their arrival, the expedition had built several floats in order to cross the river and continue their expedition westward into what would later become Arkansas territory. There is a documented controversy about the exact location of Hernando de Soto's crossing over the Mississippi River. A report published in 1874 suggests that "De Soto (...) traveled up to Randolph, and there built boats and crossed the river". Other documentations claim that it is "generally believed and (...) probably true" that De Soto crossed the Mississippi River at Memphis.
caption: De Soto's first view of the Mississippi River
exif: {}