FRANCISCO VÁSQUEZ DE CORONADO, (CA. 1510–1554)
An 1898 painting by Frederic Remington portrays Spanish explorer Francisco Vazquez de Coronado on his ill-fated quest in 1541 to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. The expedition, which included hundreds of soldiers and Native American guides, lasted two years and traversed some 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) of the American West. In the end, no cities of gold were found, and Coronado returned empty-handed and in debt.
Spanish conquistador in the American Southwest
Francisco de Coronado was born in Salamanca, Spain, a university town in the western province of León. At the age of 25, he was appointed to the staff of ANTONIO DE MENDOZA, Spain’s first viceroy to the newly conquered Mexico, and he traveled to Mexico City with Mendoza in 1535. By 1539, after his marriage to Beatriz de Estrada, the daughter of a wealthy Spanish colonial family, Coronado was governor of the newly organized province of Nueva Galicia on the west coast of Mexico.
In 1536, ÁLVAR NÚÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA and the slave ESTEVANICO returned to Mexico City from their eight years of wandering in the American Southwest, with tales of cities of great wealth to the north. Their accounts of CIBOLA seemed to coincide with the stories of the Seven Cities of Antillia, which, according to legend, had been established in the eighth century by seven Portuguese bishops who had somehow crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Three years later, under the sponsorship of Mendoza and Coronado, the Franciscan friar MARCOS DE NIZA and Estevanico were dispatched northward to locate this fabled land of wealth. In 1539, the expedition explored present-day southern Arizona. Estevanico was killed by the Indians, but Niza returned to Coronado in Nueva Galicia with reports that he had indeed seen a golden city.
Mendoza soon mounted a massive military expedition to claim these riches for Spain under Coronado’s leadership. In February 1540, Coronado led a force of more than 300 Spanish CONQUISTADORES, 800 allied Indians, and nearly 1,000 African and Indian slaves northward from the Nueva Galician town of Compostela on the west coast of Mexico, north of Puerto Vallarta. The force reached the port of Culiacán inland from the mouth of the Gulf of California. A seaward expedition, commanded by HERNANDO DE ALARCÓN, left the nearby port of Altata with three ships and sailed northward into the gulf, hoping to reach Cibola via the mouth of the COLORADO RIVER.
In April 1540, Coronado led an advance party of about 100 soldiers and Indians from Culiacán along the Sierra Madre into the Sonora region of northwestern Mexico. This group crossed into the present-day United States, near the site of present-day Bisbee, Arizona, in early summer 1540.
On July 7, 1540, Coronado and his army came upon the Zuni pueblo of Hawikuh in what is now western New Mexico, the settlement espied by Niza on his earlier expedition. Hawikuh, soon captured by the Spaniards, proved to have no gold or other riches. Niza accompanied one of Coronado’s lieutenants, MELCHOR DÍAZ, back to Mexico with instructions that the rest of the expedition proceed northward.
Díaz reached the main part of the Spanish force at Ures in Sonora, Mexico, then headed westward to make contact with Alarcón and his ships on the Colorado River. Díaz and his party reached the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers but were unable to find the Spanish fleet. They soon found a message from Alarcón informing them that the naval force, after sailing up the Colorado River for a distance of 50 miles, had been unable to meet up with Coronado and had returned to Mexico. Díaz then crossed the Colorado River and explored the plateau regions north of the Gulf of California. He was injured en route in an accident with a Spanish lance and soon died.
Coronado had meanwhile set up his headquarters at Hawikuh. On July 15, 1540, he sent out an expedition to the northwest under PEDRO DE TOVAR, accompanied by Friar JUAN DE PADILLA, to search for another of the fabled cities, still hoping to find gold. Tovar came upon the Hopi Indian settlement of Awatovi, in what is now eastern Arizona. After conquering the pueblo, he learned from the subjugated inhabitants of a great river to the west, probably the Colorado.
Coronado dispatched another officer, GARCÍA LÓPEZ DE CÁRDENAS, with a small force to the north and west. In mid-September 1540, López de Cárdenas and his men reached the rim of the Grand Canyon, the first Europeans to see this natural wonder.
At about the same time, another of Coronado’s men, HERNANDO DE ALVARADO, reached the Acoma Pueblo of the Keres Indians, west of present-day Albuquerque, New Mexico. Alvarado and his party subdued its people, then headed eastward to the Indian pueblos of the upper Pecos River, near present-day Las Vegas, New Mexico. At the Pecos pueblo, Alvarado encountered two Plains Indians held captive, Ysopete and the TURK. The Turk informed Alvarado of a tribe of Indians far to the north and east who lived in towns resplendent with gold and jewels. Although Ysopete revealed the Turk’s tales as lies, Alvarado took both of them back to Coronado in the hope that they would lead the Spaniards to this wealthy Indian civilization, identified as QUIVIRA.
In winter 1540–41, Coronado had moved his headquarters east to the Indian settlement of Tiguex on the Rio Grande, just north of what is now Albuquerque. Because of the Turk’s reports, Coronado, in spring 1541, led his expedition eastward into the northern panhandle of present-day Texas. He followed the Red and Canadian Rivers across the Staked Plains, making the European discovery of the Palo Duro and Tule Canyons. In the course of this journey, Coronado and his men became the first Europeans to encounter the vast buffalo herds of the Great Plains and witness how the Plains Indians hunted them.
Near Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, Coronado and an advance party of about 42 men turned northward through the western part of present-day Oklahoma, entering present-day Kansas. They crossed the Arkansas River, somewhere near present-day Dodge City, and came upon what is thought to have been Wichita Indian villages. After exploring the plains as far as present-day Lindsborg in central Kansas, Coronado decided he had been deceived by the Turk. It is theorized that the guide had used the Spaniards as a means to reach his home. Other sources suggest that the Turk had misunderstood the Spaniards, believing they would be interested in visiting the Pawnee, a people of the southern plains known to other tribes for the power of their medicine. Coronado had the Turk strangled for his apparent deception and an alleged attempt to incite the Pawnee against the Spanish, and began the long trek back to Tiguex.
The conquistadores spent the winter of 1541–42 at the Tiguex pueblo near present-day Albuquerque. In December 1541, Coronado suffered an injury when he fell from his horse. Weakened by this mishap, he led the expedition southward to the east shore of the Gulf of California, then proceeded to Compostela. He arrived in spring 1542, in time to take part in suppressing an Indian rebellion in Nueva Galicia known as the Mixtón War.
Charges of official misconduct were lodged against Coronado, stemming from his summary execution of the Turk and his failure to claim and occupy all the regions he had explored, although some of the priests in his party did remain behind to proselytize among the Pueblo Indians. In 1544, Coronado was dismissed from his post as governor of Nueva Galicia. Following an official inquiry, he was acquitted of any wrongdoing, and he spent the remainder of his life as a colonial administrator in Mexico City.
Although Francisco de Coronado’s two-year expedition yielded no golden cities for Spain, his explorations brought back much information concerning the extent of the lands north of Mexico. His men were the first known Europeans to see the Grand Canyon, which was not visited again by Spaniards until the explorations of FRANCISCO TOMÁS HERMENEGILDO GARCÉS in 1776. The tribes of the Southwest also had their first contact with Europeans as a result of Coronado’s quest. Horses that escaped from the Spanish were captured and used by the Native Americans, beginning the transformation of Plains Indian culture. In addition, the naval arm of the expedition, under Hernando de Alarcón, determined that Baja California was not an island but actually a peninsula. At the same time Coronado was seeking Quivira in Oklahoma and Kansas in spring 1541, another Spanish explorer, HERNANDO DE SOTO, was exploring the lower MISSISSIPPI RIVER region of present-day Arkansas less than 500 miles away.
