Led by Hernando de Soto, an army departed the Apalachee lands on March 3, 1540, to continue northward, crossing the present-day Flint River, traversing the Mississippi River several times, and moving into the tribal lands of Cofitachequi, Coosa, and Tuscalusa. Over a three-year march, the expedition crossed mountain ranges, fought battles against Indian warriors, and forded many rivers, while half the army died from combat wounds, disease, and starvation. Hernando de Soto died of fever on May 29, 1541, and was buried in the Great River, the Mississippi. Only 311 survived to reach a Spanish-speaking colony at the Pánuco River in Mexico on September 10, 1543, ending a harrowing four-year journey. De Soto and his men spent more than four years searching for empires of gold but returned empty-handed, though they had passed the Southeast's largest gold deposits, later discovered in the Appalachian Mountains. The most enduring legacy of the expedition was the journals and writings of the survivors, now known as The De Soto Chronicles, which preserve valuable descriptions of life in sixteenth-century southeastern North America. As the army pushed farther into the Southeast and encountered many chiefdoms, Spanish contact proved fatal for numerous tribes through enslavement, the spread of European diseases among American Indians, and the disruption of political balance caused by the imprisonment of many chiefs; within twenty years, most of the tribes the expedition had encountered no longer existed.