Coronado and the Turk crossing the Llano Estacado (DRAWING BY JACK JACKSON)
GOLDEN CONQUISTADOR
Between the years 1540 and 1542, a Spanish conquistador traveled across parts of what are today the states of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas in search of gold. This man’s full name was Francisco Vázquez de Coronado. His explorations came about as a result of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions reaching Mexico City in July 1536. Once the Four Ragged Castaways were safe, they began to talk about their adventures, which had gone on for almost eight years.
As often happens when stories are repeated over and over again, with each telling a bit of truth is lost as the storyteller tries to make the adventures seem more fantastic than they really were. Also, listeners will sometimes exaggerate what they have heard when repeating it to friends or family. In a very short time, Spaniards in Mexico City came to believe that really rich cities lay to the north. Important men were eager to organize expeditions and risk lives in the hope of finding great wealth. These men believed that somewhere in America they would find fabulous cities with streets paved in gold. Since the time of Columbus, Spaniards had looked for a golden city they called El Dorado.
The most powerful of these treasure seekers was Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy (chief royal official) of Mexico. By this time in history, Spaniards already knew about the very real wealth of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru. It was certainly possible that the country to the north of Mexico also contained great riches, and the viceroy was eager to check out the truth of the matter.
Mendoza chose as his scout a priest named Father Marcos de Niza. Since Niza had never been to the north country, he needed a guide. The viceroy bought the African slave named Stephen, who had been one of the Four Ragged Castaways, and sent him back to the country he had escaped from. Keeping Niza company was another priest and several Indian helpers who carried supplies and equipment. But Stephen was to lead the way.
As the party moved up the west coast of Mexico, the priest who accompanied Father Niza fell ill and had to be sent home. Then an unfortunate decision was made. Stephen was much younger and stronger than Father Niza, and he asked to travel ahead of the main group at a faster pace. Niza gave Stephen permission to do so, and the black man was soon in front by several days.
It was agreed that Stephen would send back wooden crosses of different sizes to show how much wealth he had discovered. After several days, a huge cross arrived from the black man. He had reached villages in present western New Mexico where the Indians lived in adobe houses built like apartments that were several stories high. While among these Indians, called Zuñis, Stephen had demanded too much wealth and special privileges. The Zuñi chiefs decided that he must die because he was evil. They fell upon him with weapons and killed him.
Father Niza learned of Stephen’s death as he approached the Zuñi villages, which he could see in the distance. He believed that because the chiefs had killed the African, it was too dangerous to go any closer. Without learning more about the Zuñis or their villages, Niza turned around and hurried back to Mexico City.
Along with their belief that they would find strange creatures and great treasure in America, Spaniards thought that somewhere they would discover seven towns built close together. A Spanish legend claimed that centuries ago seven Catholic bishops had fled from Muslim invaders and crossed the Atlantic Ocean. These bishops had each founded an incredibly wealthy city in the New World. The Seven Cities of Cíbola, as they were called, would be the richest of all towns in America.
When Niza met with the viceroy, he reported on the unfortunate death of Stephen. But he also had exciting news. He had been told that the Zuñis lived in seven villages. The smallest of them, according to Niza, was larger than Mexico City! Could these be the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola?
This news created much more interest than the tales told earlier by the Four Ragged Castaways. Viceroy Mendoza quickly organized a large army of soldiers dressed in shiny armor and mounted on horses. Placed in charge of this expedition was Francisco Coronado. Father Niza would act as its guide. He would lead the army back to the place where Stephen had died. There the Spaniards believed that they would finally find the Seven Cities of Cíbola.
The viceroy made a good choice in appointing Coronado as the leader of his expedition. Don Francisco was governor of the region in western Mexico where the army would be organized. He was also the viceroy’s closest friend, and Mendoza knew that his captain was wise, intelligent, and brave. Also, Coronado’s wife, doña Beatriz, was a wealthy lady, and she made sure that her husband had the finest clothing and armor. To ensure that his every need was met, Beatriz provided her husband with African servants, several grooms, and extra horses and mules.
Many of Coronado’s men were young, some of them being no more than sixteen or seventeen years of age. For these youngsters, marching off to find the Seven Cities of Cíbola was like a fairy tale come true. Their heads were filled with high hopes for adventure and the prospects of becoming very rich.
When Coronado set off for Cíbola, he had a total of about four hundred adults and young men in his army. More than half of them rode horses, while the rest of the troop were foot soldiers. There were also hundreds of Indians and a few black slaves who carried supplies and equipment. Coronado himself had twenty-three horses and three or four suits of horse armor. He also had a personal suit of gold-colored armor and a helmet topped with a feather plume.
Although filled with excitement, most of the soldiers had no idea of the difficulties that lay ahead on the long march to Cíbola. In late April 1540, Coronado left the town of Culiacán in western Mexico, where he had looked after last-minute details. He did not arrive at the Zuñi villages until early July. Along the way, his men suffered from a scalding sun and lack of water. They were also dirty, footsore, and often hungry, for very little food could be found on the trail. But always there was the lure of great wealth, if the cities were indeed paved with gold. That hope kept the men going.
At last Cíbola was in sight. What a shock it must have been to these treasure hunters! Instead of a great city with streets of gold and Indians wearing sparkling jewels, Cíbola was a little town with its houses made of mud and “all crumpled together.” Worse, the Zuñis were prepared to fight Coronado and his tired, hungry soldiers.
Outside the town, Coronado faced two or three hundred Indians armed with bows, arrows, and war clubs. Hiding inside the houses were even more armed natives. The Indian leaders ordered don Francisco and his soldiers to go back in the direction they had come from. They were warned not to enter the town or they would be killed.
Coronado did not want to fight the Zuñis. He told the Indians that he had come in peace and would not harm them, but they must honor his king who lived beyond the great ocean. If they failed to do so, he would use force against them. Coronado’s soldiers did not wish to fight the Zuñis either. By then they were so weak and hungry that the thought of eating corn tortillas and turkeys kept their minds off the disappointment of finding nothing but mud houses.
Still, all the attempts to avoid fighting failed, and in the end Coronado led an attack on Cíbola. With his splendid golden armor and feather-decorated helmet, Francisco was so conspicuous that he quickly became the target of Indian attacks. As he entered the pueblo on foot, Indians standing on the roofs of two- and three-story buildings hurled down stones on the Spanish captain. Had he not had a good, strong helmet, Coronado would almost certainly have been seriously injured or killed. Twice he was knocked off his feet, and twice he was rescued by his men, who covered his body with their own and took the full blows of the stones.
When the town finally fell to the Spaniards, Coronado had two or three cuts on his face, an arrow in his foot, and many bruises on the rest of his body. Most important of all for the Spaniards, Cíbola contained good supplies of food. In the words of one of the soldiers, “We found something we prized more than gold or silver; namely, plentiful maize [corn] and beans, and turkeys larger than those in Mexico. And [we found] salt better and whiter than any I have ever seen in my whole life.” It was clear that extreme hunger had changed Spanish values.
After the battle for Cíbola, Coronado and his men explored the other Zuñi towns and found them as poor as the first. By then his soldiers were really angry with Father Marcos de Niza and called him a liar for reporting towns larger and richer than Mexico City. Fearing that some of his soldiers might actually injure the priest, Coronado sent Niza back to Mexico City.
For several months, Coronado kept his main army at Cíbola while he decided what to do next. Thinking that other parts of this new land might contain some wealth, he sent out captains toward the west. One of these men, named García López de Cárdenas, was the first white man to see and describe the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in present-day Arizona.
During the fall of 1540, while Coronado remained at Cíbola, he was visited by Indians from the east who were led by a handsome native that the Spaniards called Bigotes (Whiskers). Bigotes told don Francisco that there were richer towns beyond the mountains to the east. Also, beyond those same mountains were many “cattle” (buffaloes).
Coronado chose Captain Hernando de Alvarado to explore these new lands and told him to report back in eighty days. Alvarado was the first white man to see the great Sky City of Acoma. It was a town built on top of a huge column of rock several hundred feet in height, with a large flat top. The only way to get to Acoma was to use the handholds and footholds that had been carved in stone by its Indians. Alvarado thought Acoma to be the greatest stronghold that he had ever seen.
Continuing on, Alvarado reached the eastern edge of the Pueblo towns. At Pecos he found two Indians from the Great Plains, which lay even farther east. One of these natives was called the Turk, because Alvarado thought he looked like a man from Turkey. This man was an Indian from present-day Kansas, and he was important later on in drawing Coronado toward Texas.
Alvarado then continued his march beyond Pecos across the plains of eastern New Mexico and toward the Texas Panhandle. There he saw thousands of buffalo, which had first been seen and described by Cabeza de Vaca. Captain Alvarado thought those great animals to number more than fish in the sea. As he approached Texas, the Turk began to talk of a land still farther to the northeast that was called Quivira. There the Spanish would finally discover the rich towns of gold and silver they were looking for.
To prove the richness of the land, the Turk claimed that he had brought a gold bracelet from Quivira. It had been stolen from him by Bigotes and another Indian chief called Cacique at the pueblo of Pecos. Bigotes had supposedly hidden the bracelet from the Spaniards, and the Turk suggested that Alvarado should question the two Indians on its whereabouts.
Alvarado was so excited by the Turk’s story that he cut short his exploration and hurried back to Pecos. There he questioned Bigotes and Cacique about the bracelet. Both denied its existence and accused the Turk of lying. Alvarado, however, did not believe their denials. He arrested the two chiefs and placed them in irons. He then resumed his march toward Cíbola.
While Alvarado had been on the buffalo plains, other Spaniards sent out by Coronado had found land along the Río Grande near present-day Albuquerque that was occupied by Pueblo Indians. This area seemed to be a good place to camp during the winter of 1540–1541. With this news, Coronado decided to move his army there. So Alvarado, the captive chiefs, and the Turk did not have to travel all the way to Cíbola. Instead, they waited on the Río Grande for don Francisco’s arrival there.
At first, the Río Grande Indians were friendly. In trying not to upset them, Coronado’s scouts camped outside their pueblos. But when cold weather and snow came, the Spaniards asked the Indians to move out of one of their twelve villages. This the Indians agreed to do but were unhappy about it.
In the dead of winter, Coronado’s entire army moved from Cíbola to the Río Grande. On his first night there, don Francisco heard the report of Alvarado and met the Turk. Again, the Indian repeated his story about a land called Quivira, which was near his homeland. In Quivira the Spaniards would find a river flowing through the plains with fish as big as horses. The great chief of this land used pitchers, bowls, and dishes that were made of pure gold. To determine whether the Turk knew gold and silver when he saw them, the Spaniards tested him by handing him trinkets made of tin. The Indian quickly said that those items were not made of valuable metal.
Next, Coronado tried to find out if the story about the stolen bracelet was true. When don Francisco asked Bigotes about the gold jewelry, he again claimed that the Turk was lying. It did not exist. To get to the bottom of the matter, Coronado took Bigotes into a courtyard where he set dogs upon the poor Indian in a form of torture called “dog baiting.” Despite being bitten by the animals, Bigotes insisted that there was no bracelet.
Although he failed to find evidence of gold from Quivira, Coronado was wildly excited. He wanted to believe the Turk’s story and he did. The Seven Cities of Cíbola had proved worthless, but here was another chance to make his expedition a great success. So the Spaniards waited for winter to pass. In the spring they could leave for the Great Plains, where they would find Gran Quivira.
That winter of 1540–1541 was especially cold. Most of Coronado’s men had marched through hot weather on their way to New Mexico, and they had little or no warm clothing. The shivering soldiers began to demand cotton blankets and animal skins from the Pueblo Indians. When the natives refused to give them up, armed soldiers took these very items off the backs of the Pueblos. They also demanded turkeys, corn, and beans.
Finally, the Pueblos could not bear any more of this harsh treatment. They began a revolt by stealing several horses and amused themselves by killing the animals with bows and arrows. The Indians then fortified themselves within the walls of one of the other villages. There they refused to surrender and waved the cut-off tails of horses in the faces of the Spaniards. To defeat them, the Spanish battered down an outside wall and built a fire inside it. Heavy smoke drove the Indians from their houses, and many of them were killed by Coronado’s soldiers.
A second revolt, in another village, also ended with victory for Coronado’s men after some hard fighting. In this case, the Spaniards used horses, crossbows, lances, and muskets to attack the Indians. When these weapons failed to bring victory, the Spaniards cut off all outside water to the pueblo. Finally, in March, the siege ended. The Indians at this pueblo surrendered more from lack of food and water than from Spanish arms. Since it was spring, the natives had to plant crops or their families would starve the next winter.
Having put down two revolts, Coronado was glad to leave the Río Grande for the plains. By then he had received more horses and men from the viceroy in Mexico. When he crossed the Río Grande on April 23, 1541, Coronado led more than fifteen hundred persons, one thousand horses, five hundred cattle, and about five thousand sheep. It was a huge departure for the land described by the Turk, with the Turk himself acting as guide.
On his march to the plains, Coronado’s first problem came as he attempted to cross the Pecos River. Because it was spring, the stream was swollen with water from melting snow. If he tried to swim the animals across the river, the sheep with water-soaked wool would struggle and then drown. There was nothing to do but wait for the stream to go down or build a bridge. Coronado called on his carpenters, and in a short time a wooden bridge spanned the Pecos.
After safely crossing the Pecos River, Coronado continued on toward the Texas Panhandle. The Spaniards soon came across enormous herds of buffalo. One of the soldiers, Pedro de Castañeda, later remembered how these strange animals had stirred interest among the Spaniards. The animals were so fearsome in appearance that “at first there was not a horse that did not run away on seeing them.” Castañeda described buffaloes as having large eyes that “bulge out on the side, so that when they run they see anyone who follows them.” He thought their beards and horns made them look like huge goats with a hump larger than a camel.
After seeing so many bison, the Spaniards met the first Indians who lived on the plains. These were nomadic Apaches, who followed the movement of buffalo herds from one place to another. They lived in little tents (tepees) made of buffalo hides and depended almost entirely on bison for food. Coronado noted that these natives, because they could not find water on the plains, drank the buffalo’s blood and stomach juices and carried extra liquid in gut containers. These Apaches also used almost every part of the buffalo—meat for food, hides for clothing and tepees, and bones and horns for tools.
The large dogs kept by the Apaches were especially interesting to the Spaniards. These animals were used to pull things from one campsite to another on wooden poles called a travois. The Apache dogs were half-wild, and they barked and snarled at being harnessed and put to work.
While crossing part of the Texas Panhandle, Coronado’s men camped near a large canyon that the Turk had led them to. While there, the Spaniards encountered harsh West Texas weather for the first time. They lived through a violent thunderstorm and hailstorm they would not soon forget.
The storm began in the afternoon with high winds and dark clouds that soon brought hail. In a very short time, the hailstones were “as big as bowls, or larger,” and fell “as thick as raindrops,” so that in places they covered the ground a foot or more in depth. The hailstones were so large that they dented Spanish helmets and caused the soldiers to take cover under their shields. Almost all the horses broke loose from their tethers and dashed madly into the canyon as they tried to escape the painful stones.
Perhaps worst of all, the hailstones broke all the clay pots and plates used by Coronado’s army. These could not be replaced. On the plains of New Mexico and Texas, the natives did not use any kind of dishes. They simply snatched up raw or half-cooked buffalo meat with their hands and ate it.
After the hailstorm, Coronado decided to send most of his army back to the Río Grande. There were simply too many men and animals to move very fast, and he intended to strike out for Gran Quivira with about thirty mounted soldiers and six or seven soldiers on foot.
To make sure that the army had plenty of food for the return trip to the land of the Pueblos, the Spaniards began to hunt and kill hundreds of buffaloes. They cut up the meat and dried it to make jerky. The daily hunts proved especially dangerous, because of the endless plains that surrounded the canyons.
Spaniards compared these lands, which they called the Llano Estacado (Stockaded Plain), to the ocean. There was not a single point on the horizon that could serve as a landmark. The grass was as tall as a horse’s belly, and it rolled and tossed in the wind like waves at sea. In the excitement of following and killing buffaloes on the hunt, Coronado’s soldiers often lost their bearings. This was easy to do, because all around them the sky seemed like a small dome set over a “sea of grass.”
It might seem that the Spaniards needed only to follow the tracks of their horses back to camp, but that did not work. According to Pedro de Castañeda, the grass would straighten up again as soon as they went across it. And once the sun reached its high point around midday, it was not possible to determine any direction by it.
Once lost, a hunter needed to stay quietly in one place until the sun began to set. Only then could he determine which direction was west. Not everyone had this much discipline. Those who lacked patience, “had to put themselves under the guidance of others.” Unfortunately, some hunters became hopelessly lost and continued on as if they were crazy.
Back at camp, Spaniards fired off guns and blew bugles, hoping to help lost hunters find their way. Depending on the direction of the wind, sound might not carry very far. Coronado may have lost more soldiers to the landscape of the Great Plains than to battles with Indians.
Coronado and the Turk crossing the Llano Estacado (DRAWING BY JACK JACKSON)
As the main army headed back to the Río Grande and the land of Pueblos, Coronado marched off in a different direction, toward Gran Quivira. Now it was time for the Turk to make good on his promise that he could lead Coronado to a country where gold was so plentiful that Indians used it for tableware.
Once again, Coronado had never seen anything like the seemingly endless plains that he had to cross. There was not a single tree, shrub, or rock to mark the way. Don Francisco had to use a compass to keep him on course for much of the trek to Kansas. Even so, he became so concerned about getting lost that he made a poor foot soldier count every step taken by his horse over the course of an entire day! Only in this manner could the Spanish commander keep track of the distance he had traveled through a land described as containing “nothing but cattle and sky.”
As he approached land along the Arkansas River in present-day Kansas, Coronado became increasingly concerned that the Turk had lied to him about the wealth of Grand Quivira. He kept the native in chains and questioned him daily about his truthfulness. When at last the Spaniards came to what the Turk called Grand Quivira, they found only Wichita Indians who lived in grass huts with large fields of corn nearby. These same Indians would later move southward toward Oklahoma and Texas, with most of them living along the Red River.
Under torture, the Turk finally admitted that he had told gross lies to the Spaniards. There had never been a gold bracelet taken from him by Bigotes. He had led the Spaniards onto the Great Plains, drawing them closer to his homeland. In doing so, he planned to gain his freedom by urging the Quivirans to slaughter the Spaniards and their horses. But nothing had worked out as the Turk had hoped.
Coronado was not a bloodthirsty captain and did not like seeing anyone die. But it was now clear that his last hope of finding wealth in Grand Quivira for his friend the viceroy and for the king of Spain had failed. Partly out of anger and frustration, and partly to satisfy the desire of his soldiers for revenge, don Francisco reluctantly agreed that the Turk must die. His lies had brought great danger to the lives of Spaniards on the plains of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. And not a single ounce of gold had been found. Before heading back to the Río Grande to join the main army, Coronado ordered that the Turk be strangled. The execution was carried out, and the Indian’s body was left in the land that he led the Spaniards to.
Not every Spaniard was in a hurry to leave the land of the Wichitas, even though there was no gold. Juan Padilla, the only priest on the march to Gran Quivira, wanted to expose these natives to the Christian God. He would later choose present-day Kansas as his mission field.
But for Coronado there was nothing to do except admit failure and march back to the Río Grande as quickly as possible. The return march followed a more direct route along the course of the Arkansas River and eventually across the extreme northwest corner of the Texas Panhandle. Once he reached present New Mexico, don Francisco followed the proven trail that crossed the Pecos River. He arrived at the Río Grande during the fall and chose to remain among the Pueblo Indians for a second winter.
Likely route of Coronado’s travels to and from Quivira in present-day Kansas (CENTER FOR MEDIA PRODUCTION, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS, ADAPTED FROM HERBERT E. BOLTON’S Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains)
While he waited for spring and warmer weather to begin the march back to Mexico, Coronado suffered a serious injury. He decided for fun to race his favorite horse against an animal owned by one of his soldiers. At full gallop, the saddle girth on Coronado’s horse broke and spilled him under the hooves of his own mount. In the accident, Coronado received a severe blow to the head. Although the injury was not life-threatening, his friends admitted that the handsome and dashing captain was never again “quite the same.”
Perhaps the accident, along with a sense of failure, changed the personality of Coronado. His good cheer and positive attitude were replaced by gloominess that lasted for the rest of his life. It was a sad turn of events for a man who seemed to have everything—a rich and beautiful wife, as well as the respect and admiration of his soldiers.
Coronado’s return march, from the Río Grande to Culiacán and then on to Mexico City, was uneventful. It was completed in the spring of 1542. Don Francisco must have felt especially bad as he explained to his friend, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, that he could not find any wealth in the north country.
While still in New Mexico, Coronado had written to his king, Charles V, to inform him of the expedition and his leadership of it. In this letter, he described something no Spaniard, other than those in his army, had ever seen: the Great Plains. Don Francisco told his king, “[I] reached some plains, so vast that I did not find their limit anywhere that I went, although I traveled over them for more than 300 leagues [900 miles].” He also reported that he had seen so many “cows” that it was “impossible to number them.”
In this same letter, Coronado wrote, “I have done all that I could possibly could do to serve Your Majesty and to discover a country where God Our Lord might be served and the wealth of Your Majesty increased.” I have done this “as your loyal servant and vassal [subject].”
Despite Coronado’s inability to find gold, in many respects his expedition of 1540–1542 was not a failure. Someone had to explore the land before the Spaniards could try to settle it. Don Francisco was the first to realize that a great land mass separated Florida and California. Maps up to this time showed very little territory between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. So Coronado contributed importantly to our early knowledge of North American geography.
It has been suggested that horses may have strayed away from the Coronado expedition and become the ancestors of the wild mustangs that later roamed the United States. This notion is false. There were almost no female horses (mares) among the hundreds of horses that accompanied Coronado and his army. Indians did not acquire large numbers of horses in North America until around 1650. This was more than one hundred years after Coronado had crossed the plains. These animals were most likely descendants of horses that had strayed from Spanish ranches and farms in northern Mexico.
Finally, what about the leadership qualities of Francisco Coronado? Had he not been a good leader, would his men have risked their lives to save him when he fell under a shower of stones at Cíbola? Had he not enjoyed the confidence of his men, they might well have turned on him after the disappointment of finding nothing but a “huddle of mud huts” at Cíbola, when they had hoped for golden cities. When they had to cross the endless sea of grass, guided only by a compass on their way to Gran Quivira in Kansas, would not these men have lost confidence in don Francisco?
Perhaps most important, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza never regarded his Golden Conquistador as a failure, despite losing so much money on the expedition. After all, how could one be blamed for not finding gold where there was none to be found? Mendoza remained a friend of Coronado until the viceroy left Mexico in 1550 for a new post in Peru. Four years later, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado died in Mexico. Buried with his wife, Beatriz, in Mexico City, he remains one of the best examples of Spanish leadership in America.
Materials used in preparing this chapter are described below. You can find more information about these sources in the Bibliography at the end of the book.
The most widely read biography of Coronado is Herbert E. Bolton’s Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains. Also useful are A. Grove Day’s Coronado’s Quest: The Discovery of the Southwestern States and John M. Morris’s prize-winning El Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536–1860. Morris’s book is the source for the description of the hailstorm in the Texas Panhandle.
Most quotes in this chapter are from Herbert E. Bolton’s Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains. Coronado’s letter to the king of Spain (October 20, 1541) is quoted from Texas History Documents: Volume I to 1877, edited by Randolph B. Campbell.
Today one can drive to Acoma Pueblo. It is situated on top of a great column of rock to the west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“Llano Estacado” is often translated as “Staked Plain.” But in traveling Interstate 40 between Tucumcari, New Mexico, and Amarillo, Texas, one sees the caprock in the distance. It seems to mark one side of the Llano like a stockade or fortress. Estacada in Spanish is best translated as “stockade,” not “stake.” Beside, how could Coronado have found wooden stakes on treeless plains?
Father Padilla returned to present-day Kansas in 1542. He was killed by unidentified Indians to the east of Quivira. Padilla was the first Spanish priest to die in the American West.