If any of the leading _conquistadores_ who march through these pages
kept a running account of his adventures, the journal has been lost.
Except for occasional letters, the closest we can come to firsthand
information are reminiscences written or dictated by lesser participants
many years after the events described. Some supplementary material also
comes from court testimony. More immediacy is lost by the fact that most
English readers must depend on translations of varying accuracy and
fluency. There are several translations of all main documents.
The first of the New World adventurers to reminisce in print was Cabeza
de Vaca. His _Relación ..._ appeared in 1542. Buckingham Smith’s English
translation, first printed in 1855, was later included with several
other documents in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States,
1528-1543_, edited by Frederick Hodge and Theodore Lewis (New York,
1907).
The same work also contains Smith’s translation of _Narratives of the
Career of Hernando de Soto_ by an anonymous Hidalgo (gentleman or
knight) of Elvas, Portugal, first published in Portugal in 1557 by a
survivor of the long march. Smith’s translation, somewhat modified,
reappeared in Gaylord Bourne’s two-volume _Narratives of the Career of
Hernando de Soto_ (New York, 1904). Bourne’s volumes also contain
reminiscences by Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto’s secretary, and Luis de
Biedma, the latter a spare account. The longest and lushest of the De
Soto tales is _The Florida of the Inca_, the Inca being Garcilaso de la
Vega, son of a Spanish father and an Incan mother. He drew his
information from the oral accounts of three of De Soto’s soldiers and
used his active imagination to embellish what he heard. The first
complete English translation, by John and Jeannette Varner, appeared in
1951 (reprinted by University of Texas Press, 1980). Miguel Albornoz has
published a novelized biography, _Hernando de Soto, Knight of the
Americas_, translated by Bruce Boeglin (New York, 1986).
Some secondary material, which uses anthropological, archeological, and
geographic research to shed light on the early explorations, should be
mentioned. One instance: _Final Report of the United States De Soto
Commission_, John R. Swanton, chairman (Washington, D.C., 1939). The
commission sought to retrace De Soto’s zigzagging route. Jeffery P.
Brain’s new edition of the _Final Report_ for the Smithsonian Press
(Washington, D.C., 1985) revises Swanton’s conclusions in many places.
Another interesting formulation is “De Soto Trail: National Historic
Trail Study, Draft Report” (NPS, 1990). In an appendix Charles Hudson
offers a new reconstruction of De Soto’s route. The articles in _First
Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States,
1492-1570_, Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Milanich, eds., (Gainesville.
1989), fill out our understanding of New World societies during the
first decades of exploration.
Still the best introduction to Coronado and his expedition is Herbert E.
Bolton’s classic biography, _Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains_
(1949). George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey have brought together in
_Narratives of the Coronado Expedition_ (Albuquerque, 1940) all the
primary documents, including testimony from Coronado’s trial, that
anyone except specialists needs to know about the first Spanish
_entrada_ into the American Southwest. The chief items are the
_Relacións_ of Juan de Jaramillo and Pedro de Castañeda. Castañeda’s
_Relación_ also appears in Hodges and Lewis.
A sampling of the historical dispute over Friar Marcos’s doings in the
Southwest can be found in articles by Henry Wagner and Carl Sauer in the
_New Mexico Historical Review_, April 1937, July 1937, and July 1941.
See also Cleve Hallenbeck, _The Journey of Fray Marcos de Niza_ (Dallas
1949). The place of the religious in the Coronado expedition is examined
by Fr. Angelico Chavez of New Mexico in _Coronado’s Friars_ (Academy of
American Franciscan History, Washington, D.C., 1968). John L. Kessell’s
_Kiva, Cross, and Crown_ (National Park Service, Washington, D.C., 1979)
looks at the relationships between the Coronado expedition and the key
pueblo of Pecos. Albert H. Schroeder has analyzed Coronado’s route
across the Plains in _Plains Anthropologist_, February 1962. Carroll L.
Riley, in the _New Mexico Historical Review_, October 1971, and _The
Kiva_, winter 1975, shows that in Coronado’s time long trade routes and
hence a rudimentary system of verbal communications, fortified by signs,
linked Cíbola (Háwikuh) and the Indians of Mexico. Other trade trails
carried goods and knowledge from the interior across the Colorado River
to the Pacific and out onto the Plains. A new account of Coronado’s
march is Stewart L. Udall, _To the Inland Empire_ (New York, 1987).
The principal sources on Cabrillo (Juan Paez’s “Summary Log” and court
testimony about Cabrillo’s accomplishments) were published by the
Cabrillo Historical Association in _The Cabrillo Era and His Voyage of
Discovery_ (San Diego, 1982). The best biography, Harry Kelsey’s _Juan
Rodriguez Cabrillo_ (The Huntington Library, 1986), is based on
extensive new research in sources.
★GPO: 1992—312-246/40005