In the summer of 1540, a party of Spanish conquistadors led by Hernando de Soto was exploring what centuries later was to become the southeastern United States, seeking gold and glory.

Those conquering explorers -- called conquistadors -- may have traveled up the Nolichucky River into Greene County. Or perhaps not.

Already known for his barbarism in Peru, de Soto led the first party to document seeing the Mississippi River, after following a route that led across what is now the Florida Panhandle into what now are Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Missisippi, before he died in what is now Arkansas.

Some historians say de Soto's party did not venture as far north as Greene County.

But others say that he traversed up and down the banks of the Nolichucky River, searching for gold that Coosa Indians (ancestors to the Creek Indians) told him he could find in what is now East Tennessee.

This summer, a group of 14 students from Illinois State University spent a month trying to find evidence pointing one way or the other.

They did not find conclusive proof, said Kathryn Sampeck, assistant professor of historical archaeology in ISU's sociology/anthropology department, but they learned much about how the natives that de Soto may have encountered would have have been living.

The college group would like to come back next summer for archaelogical research, she said.

The Illinois State students were living in Harris Hall, a dormitory on the campus of Washington College Academy in Limestone.

They concentrated their digging on a privately-owned site along the river in Greene County.

Sampeck said the WCA site was centrally located for visits to sites in Greene and Washington counties, and was itself an interesting historical setting for the field school, a required course in the field of archaeology.

Under the direction of Sampeck and several doctoral candidates, they excavated eight measured squares, each one meter on a side, to a depth of about 18 inches.

Sampeck said excavations have to go that deep to get "below the plow line" and find soil that has not been disturbed. Artifacts found in undisturbed soil can help trained archaeologists fill in gaps in the historical record, she said.

Many Native American pottery fragments and tool points were found, she said. On the very last day, diggers found very promising evidence, "a pattern of post molds," indicating the location of a round, "wattle and daub" Native American summer dwelling.

There was not enough time to fully excavate the site, Sampeck said, but the house was estimated to be about 15 feet in diameter.

The month-long course taught students archeological methods in a hands-on way, Sampeck said. They learned how to record sites, locate them, map the sites, excavate them, and recover, restore and analyze artifacts.

The restoration involved cleaning, sorting, relabeling and storing artifacts that were recovered in a 1970 University of Tennessee study of the Jackson Farm site in Greene County, as well as on U.S. Forest Service Land, and on another privately-owned site.

Sampeck's husband, Greene County native Howard Ernest Jr., was then a UT undergraduate, and took part in that earlier study.

Some of those artifacts were kept for a long time by the property owner.

Sampeck spent the last five months at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, reading Spanish accounts of early explorations in the U.S.

She said historian Charles Hudson had done a lot of work on what she called the "de Soto's raid" and "has him going right along the Nolichucky River" in his 1997 book, "Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun; Hernando de Soto and The South's Ancient Chiefdoms," published by University of Georgia Press.

During the 1930s most historians did not believe de Soto made it this far north, she said, but there is no disputing that he sent two men into Northeast Tennessee as scouts, seeking gold.

The "field school" dig that concluded this week did not find Spanish artifacts, as the 1970 UT dig did, Sampeck said. The earlier UT study found Spanish beads and metal of types that were clearly Spanish, she said.

The Spanish artifacts may mean that a Spanish party -- possibly de Soto's -- made it to Greene County, though it could also mean that the items were traded among tribes until they wound up here.

But this month's work did uncover evidence that will lead to more knowledge about the Native Americans who lived here at about the same time that de Soto was exploring, Sambeck said.

Small digs such as this one can give clues as to the population at that time, who those people were related to (based on styles of pottery and tools), and how they were connected to other groups.

Sampeck said the overall effort is aimed at "trying to reconstruct the network" of Native Americans, 16th century ancestors to the Cherokees, "that the Spanish encountered here."

Sampeck said it is clear from her studies at the Brown University Library that the southern Appalachian mountains were intriguing to all Europeans in the 16th century, even the Dutch, but especially the Spanish.

Sampeck is a specialist in Spanish colonial archaeology, and spent 10 years studying the same time period in El Salvador. Before that she studied in Boliva.

De Soto came to what is now the United States from Peru, after being made "Adelantade" or ruler of Florida, an area that, to the Spanish, included much of what is now the Southeastern U.S.

She noted that a Spanish expedition along the Carolina coast in 1511 spread European diseases inland, and tribes in the Appalachians were probably were still suffering from them when de Soto's men arrived in 1540.

Sampeck and her husband met when they were both involved in digs in Peru. Earnest is also a professor at Illinois State.

Coming to East Tennessee for the month-long field school was a homecoming for them and their four children, and a chance to spend time with family, she said.

Sadly, last Friday evening Earnest's father, Howard Ernest Sr., 86, a retired Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency supervisor and later an outdoor writer for the Johnson City Press, died.