[Illustration: Acoma]
Acoma embodies a thousand years of Pueblo life. According to an origin
belief, the first dwellers were guided here by _Iatiku_, “mother of
all Indians.” Archeologists trace occupation to at least late
Basketmaker times (AD 700). A few centuries later, ancestral Pueblos
are living on top in houses of stone and adobe.
The native word for Acoma is _ʔá-·k′u_, a word of ancient root that
means “place of preparedness.” In September 1540, Alvarado’s men
arrived at the great rock and marveled at the sight of the village and
its people (about 200) on top. “The village was very strong,” said a
Spaniard, so difficult of access that no army could assault it.
The Acomans came down to the plain ready to fight the Spaniards. But
when they saw that the intruders could not be frightened off, they
offered peace and gave them food and deerskins.
This illustration is artist L. Kenneth Townsend’s interpretation of
the village about 1540—a world outside time.
Pleasant encounters characterized the rest of the journey east. Alvarado
sent a cross ahead of his party to the “province” of Tiguex (rendered
Tiwa today), a concentration of 12 pueblos located on both sides of the
Rio Grande in a broad valley at the foot of the abrupt Sandía Mountains.
Thus prepared, retinues of important elders greeted them, decked out in
ceremonial regalia and marching to the shrill piping of bone flutes.
Presumably either Alvarado or Fray Padilla read them the _requerimiento_
that made each town subject to the King of Spain. To this they added the
Church’s authority by erecting in the villages they visited, as far
north as Braba (Taos), large crosses made by Brother Luis de Ubeda with
an adze and chisel he had brought along for this purpose. Reactions were
surprising, perhaps because the Indians also used varieties of the cross
pattern in some of their ceremonies. They eagerly bedecked Brother
Luis’s Christian symbols with prayer feathers and rosettes made of plant
fiber, sometimes climbing on each other’s shoulders to reach the tops of
the cruciforms.
Impressed by Tiguex’s friendly people and stores of food, Alvarado sent
Coronado a message suggesting that the recombined army winter there
rather than in the high, cold lands of Cíbola. Then on he went across
what is now called Glorieta Pass into the valley of the Pecos River.
There on a flat-topped ridge between a tributary stream and the main
river was the finest pueblo the Spaniards had seen. The pattern was
familiar: terraced houses rising four stories high around several
plazas. Additional storage was provided in extensions running out from
some of the corners of the main square. Balconies that provided walkways
for the people on the upper floors served also to shade those beneath.
Ladders running through holes in the walks served in the place of
stairs. A constant need for firewood and building material had
eliminated the forests for a mile or more around the pueblo, opening
fine vistas of the high peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the
north, the red cliffs of Glorieta Mesa to the west, and the lower
Tecolote foothills to the east.
By dominating the main trail linking the Plains Indians and the Pueblos
of the Southwest, Cicuyé had become an even more powerful trade center
than Háwikuh, and its people boasted that no enemy had been able to
conquer them. But what of these bearded strangers who, with their swords
and horses, had overrun Háwikuh in a single rush? Acting perhaps on the
advice of Bigotes and Cacique, the people of Cicuyé decided to be
friendly. An unarmed delegation marched out beating drums, playing on
bone whistles, and carrying gifts. They listened blankly to the reading
of the _requerimiento_, which demanded their submission to the King of
Spain, then let the strangers rest among them for a few days (meanwhile
keeping their young women out of sight), and gladly furnished guides
when Alvarado announced he wished to continue far enough east to see the
“cows” and the people who lived among them.
The guides were Plains Indians. Though they have been called “slaves” of
Bigotes and Cacique, it seems more likely they were traders who, having
been stranded in Cicuyé after bartering their goods, earned their keep
by performing menial tasks while waiting for an opportunity to return
home. One was named Ysopete, and may have been—accounts vary—the youth
whose chest bore the tattoo of a buffalo. A Wichita Indian from central
Kansas, Ysopete designated his homeland as Quivira: thus a new word in
American mythology. With him was El Turco, the Turk, so-called by the
Spaniards “because,” wrote Pedro de Castañeda, “he looked like one.” The
resemblance probably arose from his turban, a headdress used by the
Pawnees of eastern Kansas, or, in the Turk’s language, Harahey.
Shortly after reaching the plains east of the Pecos River, Alvarado’s
explorers found themselves in the middle of a vast herd of buffalo.
Lancing the huge beasts from a running horse and afterwards dining on
the tender, roasted meat of their humps made for high living, but the
sport was soon forgotten in a greater excitement. The Turk said he knew
where there was gold. In Quivira. And even more in Harahey.
[Illustration: This ancient pueblo kiva at Pecos is one of two
restored kivas in the park. At center is the firepit and stone draft
deflector.]
Did the Pawnee (if he was a Pawnee) really say that? Some
anthropologists, Carroll Riley and Mildred Mott Wedell among them, have
wondered. As a trader, the Turk knew a smattering of Nahuatl, as did the
missionary friar, Juan de Padilla, one of his chief interrogators. To
this stumbling _lingua franca_, El Turco added the fluent sign language
of the Plains Indians, bits of which the Spaniards were beginning to
pick up, though not as skillfully as they thought. Moreover, the talkers
on both sides were discussing ideas and objects the others know nothing
about. These opportunities for misunderstanding were immeasurably
increased by the determination of Juan de Padilla to find the legendary
Seven Cities of Antilia.
A word about Padilla. He had served as a soldier under Cortés in Mexico
until deciding to enter the Franciscan order. He was hot-tempered,
obstinate, and consumed with the hope of bringing the lost citizens—the
wealthy, Christian citizens—of Antilia back into the mainstream of
Catholicism. He believed implicitly that their gorgeous metropolises lay
somewhere in the north. Meager Háwikuh and the Hopi villages had shocked
him profoundly, but word of true urban centers farther
east—Quivira!—reinvigorated his faith. He talked earnestly to the Turk
about the kind of places he wanted to discover and listened with intense
preconceptions to the trader’s answers.
Out yonder, the Turk told him, was a wide river full of fish as big as
horses. The canoes on the river held 20 or more rowers to a side, and
their lords sat in the sterns under brilliant awnings. This tale
corresponds with what the Gentleman of Elvas said about the canoes De
Soto saw on reaching the Mississippi half a year later. So maybe El
Turco had witnessed, during his wanderings, the Indian flotillas of the
lower Mississippi and the fish as well—gar can reach 10 feet in length.
The chiefs of the canoe tribes, he went on, were lulled to sleep by
little bells of gold (_acochis_) tinkling in the breeze. They ate (a
standard fantasy) from dishes molded out of _acochis_. But _acochis_, it
developed years later, was a Spanish rendering of _hawichis_, a generic
Pawnee term for any metal. Copper, perhaps? It was rare on the Plains
and in the Southwest, but there was some and it was displayed
conspicuously by important men.
That may be all the Turk said at first. But it was not all that Padilla
and the rest of Alvarado’s explorers heard. They harassed the Indian for
proof that he was telling the truth. Frightened, eager to get them off
his back, and desirous, possibly, of causing trouble for Bigotes, whom
he may not have liked, El Turco said he had once owned a bit of
_acochis_, but that Whiskers had taken it from him. The Spaniards
understood that the object was a bracelet.
By then the autumn days were growing cold, and it was time for Alvarado
to rejoin the army assembling in the Rio Grande Valley. On his way back
through Cicuyé, he confronted Bigotes and Cacique with El Turco’s
charge. They said they know nothing about the matter. Reluctant to set
himself up as judge without Coronado’s authorization, Alvarado seized
the pair, put them in chains—as he later did the Turk and Ysopete when
the one-time guides sought to disappear—and hurried out of the pueblo
through a shower of curses and arrows hurled after him by the outraged
inhabitants.
In Tiguex, too, affability had vanished. To provide shelter for the main
army, which was moving eastward in sections, an advance group under
hard-fisted Garcia López de Cárdenas had turned the people of Alcanfor
pueblo out of their homes to find whatever refuge they could in
neighboring towns. Coronado, who had taken a portion of the troops on a
swing through the pueblos northwest of Tiguex, had just moved into the
new quarters when Alvarado appeared with his captives. Immeasurably
relieved by the thought that the costly expedition still might succeed,
the general told Padilla, aflame with visions of the Seven Cities, and
Alvarado to get the truth from Bigotes however they could. The
inquisitors took him into a snowy field and set a war dog on him. Partly
it was bluff; the victim was scarred but not disabled. Cacique, too, was
attacked by a dog but less severely because of his age. Throughout the
ordeal, which created deep resentment along the Rio Grande, both men
persistently denied all knowledge of gold.
No dogs were set on the Turk. Though he, along with Ysopete, was also
kept in chains so that he would be on hand when needed in the spring,
his veracity was not questioned. For if the Turk was not believed, the
expedition lost its meaning.
Until spring did arrive, survival was the goal. At first the Spaniards
paid for the blankets, warm clothing, and food they requisitioned.
Later, when the Indians, who had little surplus, held back, foraging
parties roamed far and wide, taking what they desired without
recompense, including in at least one case, a Puebloan’s wife.
[Illustration: Restored kiva of Kuaua pueblo, now preserved at
Coronado State Park, Bernillilo, N.M. This village was long thought
to be the Alcanfor pueblo that Cárdenas occupied. Though excavations
in the 1930s failed to prove the speculation, the diggers did find
these extraordinary kiva murals.]
Sensing correctly that the horses were the Spaniards’ main strength, the
Indians struck at one part of the herd, killing two dozen or so animals
and stampeding many others. Such attacks could portend disaster. With
Coronado’s blessing, Cárdenas stormed Arenal, the center of resistance.
After breaching the walls with battering rams, the Europeans lighted
smudge fires around the houses. As the gasping Indians fled into the
open, making signs of peace, mounted horsemen struck down many. Others
were tied to stakes and burned alive—a scene the Turk, Ysopete, and
Bigotes were forced to watch so that they could tell the people of their
villages what happened to rebels.
The episode occurred in December 1540. Shortly afterwards, the main part
of the army appeared, worn out by forced marches through heavy
snowstorms, but excited by rumors of gold, for the Turk, who by then
knew more about the lusts of the invaders than they knew about him, was
elaborating on his tales. With little to talk about but warm weather and
wealth, the force lost its hold on reality and, like De Soto’s,
disintegrated into a kind of insensate organism responding only to the
dynamics of survival. When a new center of resistance developed at a
pueblo called Moho, the Spaniards burned the town after a long siege,
killed many of the men who tried to flee, and made captives (as the
_requerimiento_ threatened) of more than a hundred women and children.
Some ambiguity surrounds Coronado’s part in these and other suppressions
of “revolt.” Though he was the army’s commanding general, he apparently
was never in the field during the moments of greatest carnage. He later
testified he never authorized the burning of settlements or the use of
dogs in battle. He personally took old Cacique back to Cicuyé and handed
him over to his people, promising to release Bigotes as well when the
army went through on its way to golden Quivira.
There was a practical side to the generosity, of course. He did not want
a hostile fort astride his back trail when he made his final advance.
Emphasize _final_. He badly needed a triumph to save himself from
bankruptcy and to make the king’s _audiencia_ understand that what
seemed atrocities had been necessary steps on the way to treasure for
the empire.
[Illustration: Coronado’s search for Quivira took him as far east as
central Kansas. Fragments of chain mail armor found at several sites
point to a Spanish presence in the 16th century. Coronado’s men very
likely saw country like this near Lindsborg, Kansas.]
The eastern advance began April 23, 1541. (Fifteen days later De Soto,
heading west, sighted the Mississippi.) Bedlam marked much of the
Spaniards’ travel, especially during the daily making and breaking of
camp. There were about 300 white soldiers, other hundreds of Mexican
Indian allies, some with women and children, a herd of a thousand
horses, 500 beef cattle, and 5,000 sheep—or so says Castañeda, possibly
with exaggeration. The people of Cicuyé, seeing the mass advancing under
a shroud of dust and remembering the fate of Arenal and Moho, became
friendly again. They received Bigotes with rejoicing and heaped supplies
on his one-time captors—anything to get the invaders moving on.
For many miles the Turk led the army east toward the Canadian River,
along the path he had shown Alvarado. They saw so many buffalo—charging
bulls killed a few horses—that Coronado would not venture guessing at
the numbers. They fell in with a meticulously described, to the joy of
future anthropologists, band of nomad Querechos, perhaps forerunners of
the Apaches. As spring waned, they found themselves in the Texas
Panhandle, atop the featureless immensity of the Llano Estacado, the
Staked Plains.
At that point, the Turk, who the previous fall had told Alvarado that
Quivira lay northeast, turned southeast. Why? Was he heading toward the
lower Mississippi and the kind of civilization he thought the Spanish
wanted? Or had he, during the pause in Cicuyé, agreed with the people
there to lead the invaders into a trackless part of the plains where
they would become lost and, deprived of maize, would starve.
Ysopete, who seems to have developed an acute antipathy for the Turk and
who was anxious to reach his home in Kansas, warned Coronado he was
being misled. Alvarado voiced suspicions. Coronado, however, clung to
his necessary faith in the Turk until they reached a point where the
abrupt eastern escarpment of the Staked Plains drops into almost
impassable badlands. There at last he put the Turk in irons and turned
the piloting over to Ysopete, assisted by some local Teyas Indians.
All this had taken precious time. To speed things along and to make food
easier to procure, Coronado ordered the main army to return to Tiguex
while he and 30 picked riders, 6 foot soldiers, Juan de Padilla, and a
few mule packers scouted out Quivira.[4]
Traveling light and sparing their mounts, Coronado’s group rode
northeast for a month. They reached the River of Quivira (now the
Arkansas) not far below present-day Dodge City, Kansas, and followed it,
still northeast, to its Great Bend, where they left it. A little farther
on they found the first Quivira (Wichita) village, a cluster of domed
huts built of stout frameworks of logs overlaid with grass, so that they
looked like haystacks. The surrounding land, rolling and fertile,
produced fine corn, pumpkins, and tobacco. But no gold.
There were another 24 or so similar villages in the kingdom of Quivira.
The Spaniards spent nearly a month riding disconsolately among them,
gradually absorbing the truth that riches of the kind they wanted lay
neither here nor, as far as they could learn, further east. (During the
same period., De Soto was arriving at the same opinion while wandering
through parts of Arkansas.) Angry questions were inevitable. Why had the
Turk sought to mislead them both with his tales and his guidance? Under
pressure he said the people of Cicuyé had put him up to it on the
supposition he could lure the invaders to their doom. Perhaps they had.
Or perhaps El Turco was simply trying, in his extremity, to shift blame.
The last straw came when Ysopete, El Turco’s enemy, said the Pawnee was
trying to stir up the Quivirans against the Spaniards. Acting on
Coronado’s orders, a party of executioners strangled and buried him,
secretly at night lest the Quivirans be aroused.
There were no repercussions. Guided by several young Quivirans, the
scouts returned by a direct route to the Rio Grande Valley, arriving in
mid-September. In Coronado’s mind, the absence of treasure was
conclusive, but among those who had not gone to Quivira were many who
believed that if the scouts had continued eastward, they would have
found the Seven Cities. Coronado agreed half-heartedly to make another
attempt the following spring, but fate intervened. During a horse race
with a friend, his saddle girth broke and he was thrown under the hooves
of his opponent’s mount. Though his body gradually recovered, his
spirits did not. After another miserable winter in Alcanfor, he ordered
the army to start home. He was carried much of the way in a litter swung
between two mules hitched in tandem.
[Illustration: On the great plains Coronado encountered a nomadic
people he variously called “Teyas” and “Querechos.” They were the
buffalo-hunting Apaches, who followed the migrating herds, packing
their goods from place to place on _travois_ hauled by dogs. They
impressed the Spaniards more than any Indians they had met. “They
are a gentle people, not cruel,” wrote the expedition’s chronicler
of the Apaches, “faithful in their friendship, and skilled in their
use of sign.”]
By dying, De Soto escaped being tried for failure. Not Coronado. He was
investigated for derelictions in connection with an Indian rebellion
that swept his province immediately after his departure, for mistreating
the Indians of Tiguex, and for failing to press on beyond Quivira. Every
enemy he had and a pack of opportunists and publicity hunters in quest
of an audience took the stand against him, often blurting out scandalous
rumors that had nothing to do with the case. Ill, his mind cloudy, he
testified poorly in his own defense. But he had supporters, too, and in
the end, largely through the help of Viceroy Mendoza, he was cleared of
all legal charges. Though he lost the governorship of Nueva Galicia and
some of his property there, he retained his seat on Mexico City’s
council until his health, poor since his return, broke completely. He
died on September 22, 1554, aged 44.
There is a footnote. A few Mexican Indians stayed in Háwikuh and Cicuyé
and a survivor or two were found in those towns when Spanish exploration
of the Pueblo country resumed four decades later. Some religious people
also stayed. One, old Fray Luís de Ubeda, the builder of crosses,
settled at Cicuyé, hoping to spread Christianity by baptizing children.
His fate is unknown.
Fray Juan de Padilla’s tale is more dramatic. Obsessed with saving
Indian souls by bringing them to the Church and dreaming still of the
Seven Cities, he accompanied the young Quiviran guides back to their
homes from the Rio Grande. Helping him drive along some pack mules, a
horse, and a flock of sheep were two Indian _donados_ of Mexico named
Lucas and Sebastián, Andrés do Campo, a Portuguese, a black
“interpreter,” and a handful of servants. (Indians were not allowed to
become full-fledged friars, but if they were “donated” to the Church by
their parents, they could, as _donados_, serve as assistants.)
The missionary adventure was short-lived. While attempting to press on
east of Quivira, the group was attacked by unidentified assailants.
Padilla died, bristling with arrows. Do Campo, the two _donados_, and
perhaps some others escaped. Separated, the _donados_ and do Campo
traveled along different routes from tribe to tribe for at least four
years until at last they reached Pánuco, Mexico—trips as astonishing but
far less famed than the odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca, whose
cross-continental traverse had put all these ill-fated land expeditions
into motion. And so, except for the salt-water adventures of Juan
Rodríguez Cabrillo, the epics had reached full circle.
[Illustration: Cabrillo’s voyage of discovery carried him past
California’s Big Sur. In four centuries, this coast has lost none of
its enchantment.]