Like De Soto, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado[3] was a younger son who
improved his minimal prospects for worldly success by attaching himself
to a patron—in this case it was the king’s fabulously wealthy viceroy,
Antonio de Mendoza—and going with him to the New World. They arrived in
1535, when Coronado was 25.
Because of Mendoza’s position and character, Coronado’s rise was faster
and more genteel than De Soto’s. Two years after settling in Mexico City
(originally Tenochtitlán), he married Beatriz de Estrada, an heiress
whose father had been the illegitimate son of Spain’s first king,
Ferdinand. About the same time Mendoza arranged for his appointment to
Mexico City’s governing council and shortly thereafter named him
governor of the far northern province of Nueva Galicia. (The position
was open because Nuño de Guzmán had been arrested for slave-hunting, and
his successor had been killed while fighting Indians.) The only battling
Coronado did during those years was putting down a revolt of black
slaves in the mining district of Amatepeque. Though he had the rebel
leaders drawn and quartered, a standard punishment of the times, he
seems to have been more humane than many of his contemporaries.
Even before Coronado’s appointment was officially announced, De Soto’s
agents in Mexico notified him that their employer had become
_adelantado_ of Florida. In other words, hands off ... a bluff, since
the limits of De Soto’s jurisdiction had not been established. But the
very fact of the warning shows that De Soto and his people were
suspicious of how the winds might be blowing in Mexico.
They had reason to be. Mendoza had finally put together a reconnoitering
party whose early entrance into the desirable area would give him a
prior claim over either De Soto or Cortés. Take-off point for the group
was to be Culiacán, an outpost on the western fringe of Nueva Galicia,
800 miles from Mexico City, that Guzmán had founded a few years earlier.
The explorers were hurried across those rough miles by Nueva Galicia’s
new governor, Francisco de Coronado, and a retinue of restless young
blades looking for something to do. From Culiacán on, the scouts were
guided by the black, Estéban, who had traversed part of the country with
his owner, Andrés de Dorantes, and Cabeza de Vaca. (Mendoza had
purchased Estéban from Dorantes after the three whites of the party had
turned down the viceroy’s request that they take over the work.) Indians
of the north—some of them had come to Mexico City with Cabeza de
Vaca—acted as porters. Leader of this belatedly assembled group was a
Franciscan friar, Marcos of Niza, assisted by a friend, Fray Onorato.
Fray Marcos, a native of Nice, France, spoke Spanish clumsily, even
though he had spent time with Pedro de Alvarado’s forces in Guatemala
and Pizarro’s in Peru, where he had become familiar with the astonishing
wealth of the Incas. He is said to have been a good cartographer and to
have written learned papers about the Indians, none of which has come to
light. He penned such an entrancing letter about Peru to Mexico’s
Archbishop, Juan de Zumárraga, that the prelate invited him to visit
Mexico City and housed him after his arrival early in 1537. The
impression he made led the archbishop to arrange his appointment to an
important office in the Franciscan order in New Spain, and the Viceroy
to make him leader of the search for the cities of the north.
Coronado and his escort covered the 800 miles to Culiacán on horseback,
as befitted grandees. Marcos’s party walked, the friars in loose gray
robes and sandaled feet. After bidding farewell to the governor at the
outpost, the explorers and their Indian porters forged ahead on March 7,
1539. (In two more months De Soto would leave Cuba for Florida.) Fray
Onorato soon fell ill and turned back. Undeterred, Marcos continued on
to a settlement called Vacapa, close to the boundary between the
present-day states of Sinaloa and Sonora. There he decided to pause
while messengers summoned Indians from the coast, for part of his errand
was to learn whether a big expedition could be supplied by ships.
Estéban refused to wait. Away from the friar’s restraints, he ceased
being a slave and became a king. During his wanderings across the
continent he had learned how to get along with Indians, speak their
languages, win their gifts, and (we can suppose) entice their young
women. But he dared not simply run away. So he said that as he advanced,
accompanied by two huge hounds and part of the Indian bearers, he would
keep Marcos informed of his gleanings. Unable to write, he devised a
symbol that could be delivered by messengers. A small cross would
signify that he had heard of a northern city that sounded moderately
important. A medium-sized cross would proclaim a significant city, and a
big one something truly superlative.
Presumably this tactic was devised to corroborate what the messengers
told Marcos to his face. Told him—this man who knew none of the local
Indian tongues and whose Spanish was not of the best? How?
Actually, it would have been easy, except for Marcos’s dangerous
preconceptions. A long trade trail linked the jungles of Mexico to the
merchandising town of Háwikuh in the Zuñi country of today’s New Mexico.
Háwikuh’s middlemen trans-shipped along the trail tanned buffalo hides
from the plains, turquoise from New Mexico, cotton mantas from the Hopi
villages in Arizona, and bits of clear green olivine called peridot (the
source perhaps of Cabeza de Vaca’s lost arrowheads). They received in
exchange brightly colored parrot and macaw feathers and sometimes the
birds themselves, plus coral and raw carved seashells from the Gulf.
Flowing with the goods was a traders’ _lingua franca_, a melange of the
principal languages the merchants encountered along the way—their own
native tongue, bits of that spoken by the Pimas and Opatas of northern
Mexico, Nahuatl, the tongue of the Aztecs, and bits of Spanish. So there
was a medium by which Estéban’s messengers, especially the one who
brought a cross as big as a man, could talk to the eager friar.
From the cross’s bearers and from other informants along the way, Marcos
heard of, and sent back reports to Mendoza, about the rich kingdom
called Cíbola and its seven cities, one of which, he understood, was
also named Cíbola. Terraced houses of stone rose three and four stories
high. Doors were decorated with turquoise: clothing and ornaments were
lavish. Near to this magnificent kingdom were others, equally rich.
[Illustration: Antonio de Mendoza, first viceroy of New Spain. A
capable administrator, he laid the foundations for three centuries
of Spanish rule in the Americas. He encouraged industry, education,
and the work of the church. Firm but just, he tried to protect the
Indians from the worst abuses but was not able to bring about
emancipation.]
[Illustration: Coronado saw country like this south of Santa Fe, New
Mexico, as he marched toward the Great Plains.]
Mere travelers’ yarns? Not necessarily. Consider who Estéban’s
messengers were. They resided in small, trailside settlements made up of
_jacals_ built of mud-daubed sticks. In comparison, the terraced pueblos
of Arizona and New Mexico, inhabited by hundreds of people who had
sufficient leisure to attend to other pursuits than just getting enough
to eat—such places, which most of them had only heard about from
boastful peddlers, were bound to seem impressive. Talking through
interpreters in signs and their _lingua franca_ jumble, they tried to
convey their wonder to Marcos—as did one person who said he was a native
of Cíbola and apparently enjoyed bragging about it. While listening,
moreover, Marcos was remembering the Incas and Aztecs and the legends of
the Seven Cities of Antilia. Seven in Cíbola as well! Whose imagination
would not be fired?
He never overtook Estéban. According to his report to Mendoza, he and
his retinue of Indians had been toiling for 12 days across a
_despoblado_ (uninhabited region) and were within three days’ march of
the city of Cíbola when one of the black’s erstwhile companions met them
and said, weeping, that the Cíbolans had slain Estéban out of fear that
he had come as a spy for would-be conquerors—as, in fact, he had. Two
days later, the tale was confirmed by other Indians who had fled from
Cíbola “covered with blood and many wounds.”
Convinced they were walking to their deaths, all but a handful of
Marcos’s followers deserted him. With those few, he wrote later, he went
cautiously forward until he glimpsed the city. It rose before his eyes
more magnificent “than the city of Mexico.” And equally wealthy kingdoms
lay beyond.
Deciding to rename Cíbola St. Francis after the patron saint of his
order, Marcos erected a heap of stones, placed a cross atop it, and
announced to the air that he was taking possession for Spain. Then back
he hastened, “more satiated with fear than food.” So he said.
Skeptics have long argued that Fray Marcos never got anywhere near
Cíbola. They point to the vagueness of his report, which nowhere
describes topographical features, vegetation, or soil types, although
his instructions had directed him to study all those things. They also
insist that he could not have tarried in Indian towns and have made side
trips searching for the coast, as he claimed he did, and still have
reached and returned from Cíbola in the time known to have elapsed. And
how could he have mistaken a relatively small, mud-plastered pueblo for
a metropolis grander than Mexico City?
Supporters of the friar, unwilling to believe a man of the cloth could
be an out-and-out liar, juggle time figures their own way and suggest
that his impression of the pueblo was an optical illusion produced by
slanting rays of morning sunlight and made more vivid by the mixture of
weariness, excitement, hope, and fear with which he regarded his goal.
They also point out that when a full-scale expedition marched north to
take possession of the country, he went along. Would he have done that
if his statements were lies that would inevitably be exposed?
It seems likely that he did turn back immediately after learning, at
some distance from Cíbola, of Estéban’s death. But vanity and fear of
consequences would not let him admit the truth to the Viceroy and the
governor. So he concocted a tale out of the descriptions he had heard
from Indians along the way—descriptions he believed, reasonably enough,
were accurate and would bear scrutiny later on.
His temporal superiors accepted his statements partly out of an eager
credulity of their own and partly because they were in a hurry to
complete their claims to the Seven Cities. (De Soto was already in
Florida; three ships outfitted by Cortés and commanded by Francisco de
Ulloa were tacking north along the coast looking for sea approaches to
the new kingdoms.) It has even been charged that the Viceroy, Mendoza,
may have suggested some of the glowing details that were incorporated
into Marcos’s report. Most certainly he rewarded the friar by pressuring
the Order of St. Francis to make him, rather than candidates who had
been around much longer, the father-provincial of the Franciscans in
Mexico. As a result, pulpits began resounding with homilies on the work
that awaited the pious—and, by implication, the enterprising—in the
north. This of course stimulated recruiting, not only of idle _hidalgos_
but of solid men with money enough to equip themselves and their
followers for an extensive journey.
Mendoza reputedly put 60,000 ducats into the venture. Coronado added
50,000 that he raised by mortgaging his wife’s property. But they were
not completely reckless. They ordered Melchior Díaz, mayor of Culiacán,
to go north with soldiers and Indians and gather specifics about
geography that Marcos had neglected to describe (not having seen it) but
that an army on the march would find useful.
By February 22, 1540, less than seven months after Marcos’s return,
Mendoza and Coronado had gathered the bulk of their army at Nueva
Galicia’s drab capital, Compostela, some 525 miles west of Mexico City.
For the place and times it was a brave show: about 225 cavalrymen, 62
foot soldiers, an unrecorded number of black slaves, and upwards of 700
variously painted Indians. The group’s equipment, like that of De Soto’s
army, was a melange. There were a few suits of armor, including
Coronado’s gilded one, some cuirasses, coats of mail, and plumed helmets
but far more jackets of buckskin and padded cotton, high boots, and
leather shields.
The Indians were camptenders, stockherders, and warriors, but not
bearers, for unlike De Soto, Mendoza and Coronado meant to enforce royal
orders that forbade turning natives into beasts of burden. Some of the
Indians had wives and children along, as did three Spaniards, in spite
of edicts against camp followers. Hardly noticeable in the throng were
five gray-robed friars, including Marcos, who probably should not have
left his new job as Father Superior so soon. Yet he, too, had a big
stake in this trip.
Some 1,500 saddle and pack animals, both horses and mules, had been
gathered to provide transportation. Many of the cavalrymen had more than
one mount; Coronado took along 23. Each soldier was responsible for his
personal gear, and since few _hidalgos_ had the least idea of how to
pack a horse, many impromptu rodeos occurred. But “in the end,” wrote
chronicler Pedro de Castañeda, “necessity, which is all-powerful, made
them skillful ... and anybody who despised this work was not considered
a man.” In addition to the horse herd, there was a movable larder of
about a thousand cattle, sheep, and goats.
Though Mendoza had planned to lead the expedition, the demands of his
office prevented it, and he turned command over to Coronado, then aged
30. The next day the confused, dusty march began, over high hills and
through vales full of thickets. Trouble awaited at Chiametla, where once
Cortés and Guzmán had confronted each other over a ship. Resentful
Indians attacked a foraging party led by Coronado’s second-in-command,
killed him, and wounded five or six others. On top of that, in came
Melchoir Díaz with discouraging reports of what he had learned during
his scouting trip. Though heavy snow had kept him from entering the
mountains north of Arizona’s Gila River, he had interviewed several
Indian traders who supposedly knew Cíbola, and they had led him to
believe there was little, if any, silver or gold in the area. And the
road there, which Marcos had said was good, was very bad.
Rumors of the report leaked out and upset the soldiers. Marcos quieted
them during one of his sermons: Díaz hadn’t gone far enough. A
preacher’s word against that of a frontier roughneck. Coronado, at
least, was placated: why let go of either his credulity or his
investment this early in the game? But he was worried about dragging the
whole cumbersome army over a bad trail into a _despoblado_ lacking in
supplies. So he decided to go ahead with a vanguard of 80 horsemen, 30
or so footmen, an unknown number of Indians, some livestock, and the
expedition’s five friars. He placed the main army under; Tristan de
Arellano, told him to stay in Culiacán for 20 more days and then advance
to the Indian town of Corazones in the heart of Sonora, where further
instructions would be sent him.
It took Coronado’s vanguard from April 22 to July 7, 1540—eleven weeks,
counting rest stops—to cover the thousand miles that separated Culiacán
from Cíbola. (During those same weeks De Soto’s hungry men were marching
through Georgia into the city of pearls and on across the Appalachians
into Alabama.) Hard weeks on rough trails. Contrary to what Marcos had
said, they were veering farther and farther from the coast. Yet at that
very time, Hernando de Alarcón was sailing northward with three ships
loaded with supplies for him. How were they to make contact?
As events developed, they never did, and the vanguard crossed the
shimmering San Pedro plains into what was to be the United States with
an increasing apprehension that all gates were shutting behind them.
They followed the tree-shaded San Pedro River north to the vicinity of
Benson, Arizona, and then, with Melchior Díaz pointing the way, left it
and worked on through a series of broad-bottomed, mountain-bracketed
valleys to the Gila River, reaching it where Mt. Turnbull bulks huge
against the sky. An enormity of space and remoteness. One can still feel
it, for unlike the southeastern United States, where De Soto marched,
this land has been but little scarred by man’s devouring technologies.