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HISTORY OF ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO, 1680—1888
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At Vacapa Niza remained some nine days,
sending messengers to the coast, who brought back tidings of the pearl
islands—now 34 in number—and cowhide shields. Here he met natives from the
east, known as ‘pintados’, who had something to say of the ‘seven cities’. And from here he sent the negro ahead to explore
the way, and after four days Estevanico sent back
such glowing reports of what he had heard about Cíbola,
with its seven great towns and stone buildings and turquoises, that even the
credulous fraile hesitated to credit them.
About the 6th of April, with two islanders and three ‘pintados’ added to his
company, he left Vacapa, and in three days came to
the people who had given the negro his information about Cibola, and who now
gave the good friar his fill of marvels. Pressing on for five days—possibly
including the previous three—through a well-settled country, they came to a
pleasant and well-watered settlement near the borders of a desert. Between Vacapa and this place without much doubt they had crossed
what is now the southern bound of Arizona.
The desert having been crossed in four days, the route lay for five days
through a fertile, irrigated valley, with many settlements of superior and
friendly Indians. This may be reasonably regarded as the Gila valley in the
region of the Pima villages. Here the friar understood that the coast turned
abruptly westward, which means simply that the natives described the ocean as
much farther off than the gulf coast had been in the south; but he says he went
in person and saw that such was the case, which was hardly possible. These
people knew of Cíbola, wore turquoises, and in some
cases cotton, and they told of woollen garments woven
in Totonteac from the fur of a small animal. In one
of the rancherías was met a native of Cíbola, who gave much information about its seven towns, Ahacus being the largest—exaggerated though in a sense tolerably accurate descriptions of the since well-known Pueblo
towns. He also told of other towns and provinces. Many others confirmed and
supplemented the reports all along the way; turquoises and hides and other
articles from Cibola were plentiful; and the negro, whose zeal kept him far in
advance with his native attendants, sent back the most encouraging messages.
For three days more they travelled in this valley or a similar one; and then,
on the 9th of May, they entered the final despoblado;
that is, from the region of the modern Phoenix or Florence they entered the
mountainous uninhabited tract, their course lying north-eastward, toward Zuñi.
For twelve days Fray Marcos pressed on, following the negro’s route, and
well supplied with food by the natives accompanying him, until, on the 21st of
May, he met one of Estevanico’s men returning with
the worst of news. On reaching Cíbola, instead of the
usual welcome, the negro had received an order not to enter the town, on pain
of death, being forced to remain with his company in a house outside, without
food, and being deprived of all the presents he had received on the journey.
Next day, one of the men, going to a stream for water, looked back, and saw the
negro running away from pursuers, who killed some of his companions. Then he
made haste to inform the friar. Niza’s companions were greatly terrified, but went forward at his solicitation; and one
day’s journey before reaching Cíbola, two more of Estevanico’s men were met, wounded, and stating that the
negro had been killed. Thus perished black Stephen,
the discoverer of Arizona.
There were threats among Niza’s followers of holding him responsible for
the killing of their friends, and the friar said he was willing to die; but
through the agency of gifts and threats the excitement was calmed. He then went
forward with two chiefs, and from a hill got a glimpse of Cíbola,
on a plain at the foot of a round hill, just as the natives had described it,
and apparently more populous than Mexico, though said to be the smallest of the
seven in a province far excelled by others beyond. A cross being erected on a
heap of stones, formal possession was taken in Mendoza’s name, for the king, of
all that region, as the new kingdom of San Francisco. Then Fray Marcos hastened
homeward, “con harto más temor que comida”, at the rate of eight or ten leagues per
day. In a valley stretching eastward below Vacapa, he
saw far off seven ‘poblaciones razonables’,
and heard that gold was plentiful there, but deemed it best to postpone a
closer examination. At Compostela, perhaps in June or July, he reported to the
governor, to whom he had before sent messengers from various points; and in
August went with Coronado to Mexico, where, on the 2d of September, he formally
certified the accuracy of his report.
Cortés claimed that Niza’s narrative was fiction, his pretended
discoveries resting only on reports of the natives and information derived from
Cortés himself; but Don Hernán was not in this
instance an impartial critic. Coronado and his companions, in their expedition
of the next year, disappointed in their expectations, applied some plain terms
to certain phases of the friar’s misrepresentations. Padre Kino seems to have
thought that the Gila ruins might have been Niza’s seven cities, and Humboldt
partially accepts that view. And most later writers have had occasion to dwell
on his gross exaggerations, sometimes indulging in harsher terms. Yet the fact
that Coronado, accompanied by Niza to Cíbola in 1540,
with all his criticism does not seem to doubt that the friar actually
made the trip as he claimed, is, of course, the best possible evidence
against the theory that he visited northern Sonora, and imagined the rest. A
close examination shows that nearly all the statements most liable to criticism
rest solely on the reports of the natives, and only a few, like the visit to
the coast, and the actual view of a great city at Cíbola,
can be properly regarded as worse than exaggeration. My space does not permit
the reproduction of descriptive matter with sufficient fullness to illustrate
the author’s inaccuracies. Fray Marcos was an imaginative and credulous man,
full of faith in northern wonders, zealous for spiritual conquest in a new
field, fearful that the great enterprise might be abandoned; hence the general
couleur de rose of his statements; hence perhaps a few close approximations to
falsehood; but there is no good reason to doubt that he really crossed Sonora
and Arizona to the region of Zuñi.
As to his route, so far as details are concerned, the narrative
furnishes no foundation for positive theories, though possibly by a
reproduction of all the data with carefully prepared topographic maps,
obviously impracticable here, approximately accurate results might be reached.
As far as the Gila valley, Niza’s route was possibly farther west, in part at
least, than that of Coronado, to be noticed presently; I have no doubt that it
crossed the region between the Pima villages and Florence; and beyond that
point the two routes were perhaps nearly identical. I refer the reader also to
the map given later in this chapter.
ULLOA
AND ALARCON.
Preliminary reports of Niza’s progress, sent south by the friar and
reaching Mexico before July 1539—possibly including an outline of what he said
of his discoveries after his return to San Miguel or Compostela—moved Cortés to
renewed effort, lest perchance the great northern prize should elude his grasp;
for he claimed the exclusive right of conquest in that direction, and had
strenuously but vainly opposed Mendoza’s act in preparing for an expedition;
though he denied that the friar’s pretended discoveries had any foundation in
truth. He had a fleet ready, and he made haste to despatch three vessels, under the command of Francisco de Ulloa, from Acapulco in July.
As this expedition did not reach the territory now under consideration, its
results being confined to a survey of the gulf and peninsula coasts, and
especially as the voyage has been fully recorded in another volume, I do not
deem it necessary to say more on the subject here. The viceroy also entered into a contract with Pedro de Alvarado, with a view
to northern exploration, but the Mixton war and
Alvarado’s death prevented any practical results. After protesting and
struggling against the new expeditions of 1540, Cortés went to Spain, and
appears no more in northern annals.
Another expedition by sea, fitted out by Mendoza to cooperate with that
of Coronado on the land, was that of Hernando de Alarcon. This also has been
described elsewhere, and as an exploration of the gulf requires no further
notice in this connection; but in August and September Alarcon made two trips
in boats up the Colorado River, which he named the Buena Guía.
He possibly passed the mouth of the Gila, though he mentions no such branch;
and it may be regarded as probable that he at least passed the Arizona line.
This party also heard reports of Cíbola, and of
Niza’s adventures; and near the mouth of the Colorado they left letters, found a little later by a branch of Coronado’s expedition
under Melchor Diaz.
Governor Coronado, as we have seen, came to Mexico with Niza, to consult
the viceroy and make final arrangements for the conquest of Cíbola and its seven cities. The conditions were most favorable; Mendoza was an
enthusiastic supporter of the scheme; the friar’s tales were eagerly listened
to, and often repeated with the usual distortions; an air of secrecy and
mystery on the part of Coronado served still further to excite the popular
interest; and never since the time of Nuño de Guzmán
had the response to a call for volunteers been so satisfactory. There was a
fever of exploring zeal, and it seemed as if the whole population of Mexico
might be easily induced to migrate northward. Niza was made provincial of his
order, and the Franciscans became zealous in the cause. A force of 300
Spaniards and 800 Indian allies was easily enlisted. Many of the former were
gentlemen of good family and high rank, some of them bound to serve Coronado,
who was made captain-general of the expedition, only by their promises as
gentlemen. The names of those bearing by actual rank or courtesy the title of
captain are given in the appended note. In February
1540, the army was at Compostela, whither went Viceroy Mendoza to deliver a
parting address of encouragement; and in April the general with an advance
party set out from San Miguel de Culiacan.
Before leaving the north for Mexico, Coronado had despatched Diaz and Zaldívar, with fifteen men, to verify as far
as possible Niza’s reports. This party started in November 1539, and perhaps
reached the Gila valley, but on account of the excessive cold decided not to
attempt a crossing of the country beyond. From the natives they obtained
information about Cíbola and the other provinces, similar to that given by the friar, but considerably less
attractive and highly colored; and they also learned that the Cíbolans had requested the south-western tribes not to
permit the Christians to pass, but to kill them. This report was brought south
by Zaldívar and three men, who met Coronado at Chametla; and while the news was kept secret, it was
generally understood to be bad, and Fray Marcos had to exert his eloquence to
the utmost to prevent discouragement.
I append a note on the bibliography of Coronado’s expedition. As I have
said, the general left San Miguel about the middle of April, taking with him 50
horsemen, a few foot-soldiers, a body of native allies, and all the friars,
including Marcos de Niza. His route was across the Yaqui to Corazones and the Sonora valley, thence continuing his way northward. At the end of April the main army under Arellano also left San Miguel for
Sonora, where the Spaniards founded a settlement at San Gerónimo and remained till October, then joining the general in the far north, except a
garrison left at the new town. With the fortunes of this Sonora settlement of
San Gerónimo, abandoned after a change of site before
the return of Coronado, we are not directly concerned here. It should be
stated, however, that Melchor Díaz, sent back from Cibola to command the
garrison of 80 men, made, in 1540, an expedition to the gulf shore, and thence
up the Colorado, which he crossed to make explorations southward on the western
bank. He did not, apparently, reach the Gila, but he may possibly have passed
the Arizona line. He gave the name Río del Tizón,
from the fire-brands with which the natives warmed
themselves, to the Colorado, which Alarcon had called Buena Guía;
and in this enterprise he lost his life.
The march of Coronado’s party from Sonora to Cíbola in June and July, and that of the main army under Arellano in November and
December, presented nothing of special importance or interest for the
chroniclers, who have given us but few particulars of adventure or hardship.
For us the chief interest centres upon the route
followed, which, in its general features, is by no means so vaguely recorded as
has often been supposed, though in the absence of the original diary the
narratives are naturally confusing, incomplete, or perhaps erroneous as to
details, for some of which I refer the reader to the appended note.
In the map the reader will find the general limits of the route
indicated, with no attempt to show details, by the dotted lines on the right,
and Niza’s route by those on the left. The location of Sonora, in the region of
Arizpe, though there are difficulties respecting the exact sites of Corazones, San Gerónimo, and the
village of Sonora, may be regarded as unquestionable. That Coronado’s route was
via the Santa Cruz, and the site of the later Tucson, or that Chichilticale, the place where he changed his course to the
north-east, was in the region where the Gila emerges from the mountains, is
hardly less certain. Chichilticale, the ‘red house’,
a ruin which gave name to the place, has been generally identified with the
famous Casa Grande of the Gila, and I find no reason to question the identity.
The ruin in itself would not suffice to fix the route,
but it goes far to confirm the general purport of all the evidence. It is not
necessary to suppose that Coronado’s Chichilticale was the casa grande itself, but rather a place named
for that remarkable structure, not far away. Niza had probably received his
impressions of the Gila valley from the Pima villages; Díaz had noted rather
the adobe ruin; and Coronado may have passed to the right of it, or merely gone
with a small party westward to examine it. Nothing short of a minute diary of
each day’s journey could be expected to give a clearer idea of the course
followed. I make no attempt to identify the streams crossed on the march
north-eastward from the Gila between Florence and the San Pedro mouth to Cíbola.
The identity of Cíbola and the Pueblo towns of Zuñi is so clearly established by all the evidence, and has been so generally confirmed by such
investigators as Simpson, Davis, Prince, Bandelier, and others, that I do not
deem it necessary even to fully recapitulate the proofs. No other group of
towns will at all meet the requirements of the narratives. The difficulties and
objections hardly merit notice. The few who have favored other groups have been
led mainly by a desire to justify some exaggerations of the discoverers, by
finding ruins to represent a grander Cíbola; and in
support of their conclusions have found little more than the presence of ruins
in most directions from most groups. The position of Cíbola as the first Pueblo province found in coming north-east, or left on going
south-west; its geographical relations to Moqui in
the north-west and Acoma on the east; the definite statement of Castañeda that as far as Cíbola,
and a day or two beyond, the streams flowed into the South Sea, but later into
the North Sea; the correspondence of one of its towns on a rock to the ruins of
Old Zuñi, and of the rest to the still existing town
and ruins in the vicinity; and the agreement from the time of Espejo of all the
early Spanish authorities who wrote intelligently on the subject—appear to me
conclusive.
Thus about the 10th of
July—I give only approximate dates, without pointing out minor discrepancies in
the different narratives—Coronado and his men came in sight of the famous Cíbola. The town first approached, and named by the
Spaniards Granada, stood on a rocky mesa corresponding to the ruins of Old Zuñi; the one seen by Niza, if he saw any, was in the
valley, like the pueblo still standing but perhaps built later; while the others are still represented by heaps of ruins. The people of
Granada, not appreciating the benefits to be gained by submission to the
Spaniards’ king and Christians’ God, came out in warlike array to annihilate
the little band of invaders, their arrows killing a horse and piercing a
friar’s gown; but with the battle-cry of ‘Santiago’ the soldiers chained, and
drove them within the walls, killing several. The town was taken by assault,
after a struggle in which the general was knocked down by stones thrown from
the roofs, and had his foot pierced by an arrow. Submitting, the natives forthwith
abandoned their town. A few days later the other villages sent in their formal
submission, with some gifts; but on being urged to become Christians and
Spanish subjects, they fled to the hills. Some of them came back as the weeks
passed by; and relations between the two races during the conqueror’s stay were
friendly, though marked by caution on the part of the natives.
And now that Coronado was at last master of the famous ‘seven cities’,
both he and his companions were grievously disappointed. They had found,
indeed, an agricultural people, living in stone and adobe houses of several
stories, dressed to some extent in cotton, skilled in the preparation of
buffalo hides, and various other petty arts, and even having a few turquoises.
Yet the kingdom of rich cities had dwindled to a small province of small and
poor villages, and the conquest seemed a small achievement for so grand and
costly an expedition. Doubtless, however, the Pueblo towns as they were found
would have excited much admiration but for the contrast between the reality and
the brilliant magnificence of the invaders’ expectations. On making inquiries
respecting Niza’s three grand kingdoms outside of Cíbola,
they learned that of Marata the natives had no
knowledge whatever; that Totonteac was said to be a
hot lake, with four or five houses and other ruined ones on its shores; and
that Acus, a name that had no existence ‘with an
aspiration nor without’, was probably Acuco, a small
town and not a province. Right heartily was the padre provincial cursed by the
army for his gross-exaggerations, to which a much harsher term was freely
applied. What Fray Marcos had to say in his own defence does not appear; but Cíbola was soon made too hot for
the good friar, who was sent back to Sonora, and thence farther south, to
appear no more in northern annals. He probably departed with captains Diaz and
Gallego, who in August were despatched with orders
for the main army under Arellano, who was to join the general, leaving Diaz in
command at Sonora, while Gallego should go on to Mexico, carrying Coronado’s
report of August 3rd, as already cited.
Coronado remained at Zuñi from July to
November. Notwithstanding his disappointment, he had no thought of returning without making additional explorations; and, indeed, there
were reports of more distant provinces, where fame and wealth might yet be
successfully sought. The most brilliant indictions pointed to the east, whither we shall follow the invaders in the next chapter;
but information was also obtained about a province of Tusayan, with seven
towns, situated some 25 leagues toward the northwest, doubtless the Moqui villages. Before August 3rd Captain Tobar, with a
small force including seventeen horsemen and Fray Juan Padilla, was sent to
explore. Marching for five days through an uninhabited country, this party
entered the province by stealth, and approached one of the towns at night. In
the morning the surprised inhabitants came out, and after listening to what the
strangers had to say, they drew on the ground a line which must not be passed.
Then Fray Juan, who had been a soldier in his youth, lost his patience, and
said to the captain, “Indeed, I know not for what we have come here”. The
Spaniards made a charge; and the natives after losing many lives were defeated,
and sued for peace, bringing gifts of food, cotton stuffs, leather, and a few
turquoises. They, too, admitted the invaders to their towns, similar
to those of Cíbola but somewhat larger, and
became for the time submissive vassals of the king of Spain. They had their
tales to tell of marvellous things beyond, and
mentioned a great river, several days’ journey down the course of which lived a
nation of very tall men. Thereupon Don Pedro returned and reported to the
general.
Then Captain Cárdenas, who had succeeded Samaniego as maestro de campo,
was sent, with twelve men, to seek the great river and the tall men. Being
kindly received by the people of Tusayan, who furnished guides, Cárdenas
marched for twenty days, or fifty leagues as one narrative has it, westward
over a desert country, and at last reached the river. But so high were its
banks, that though deemed as large as the river that flows past Seville in Spain, and said by the Indians to be over half a league
wide, it looked like a mere rivulet flowing three or four leagues below; and so
precipitous that in five or six days’ journey the Spaniards could find no place
where they could get to the water. At the most favorable spot, three men spent
a day in the attempt, but only succeeded in descending about one third of the
distance. Being advised by the guides that it would be impossible to penetrate
farther for want of water, Cárdenas returned to Cíbola.
This was the first visit of Europeans to the great canon of the Colorado, a
region but rarely penetrated even in modern times. It was clearly understood by
the chroniclers of the expedition that this river, flowing from the north-east
to south-south-west, was the Rio del Tizon,
discovered by Melchor Díaz near its mouth. No further explorations were
attempted in this direction, and the Moqui towns were
not revisited by Europeans for more than forty years.
CORONADO’S
EXPEDITION
Seventy-five years before the English succeeded in establishing
themselves on the northeastern coast of North America, a band of Spaniards,
starting from what was already a populous and flourishing colony at the City of
Mexico, penetrated the opposite extreme of the continent, and explored
thoroughly a region as extensive as the coast line of
the United States from Maine to Georgia.
The accounts of their experiences were all written by members of the
expedition. With two exceptions they were written during the journey, and were
the official reports prepared by the general and sent to the viceroy in Mexico
or the emperor-king in Spain, or by the lieutenants in charge of special
explorations. The first and principal narrative was written for the purpose of
providing a history of the expedition, by one of the common soldiers some time after his return to Mexico, when he apparently
felt that there was danger that posterity would forget the deeds of those with
whom he had toiled and suffered in the vain search for something which would
reward their costly undertaking. All that is known of the author, Pedro Castañeda, beyond what he relates in this narrative, is
that he was a native of the Biscayan town of Nájera in northern Spain, who had established himself in the Spanish outpost at
Culiacan, in north western Mexico, at the time Coronado organized his
expedition, and that he was the father of eight surviving children, who, with
their mother, presented in 1554 a claim against the Mexican treasury, on
account of the father's exploits.
In February, 1540, the army whose fortunes are
recounted in these narratives assembled at Compostela, on the Pacific coast
west of Mexico city. When it passed in review before the viceroy Mendoza, who
had provided the funds and equipment, the general in command, Francisco Vazquez
Coronado, rode at the head of some two hundred and fifty horsemen and seventy
Spanish foot soldiers armed with crossbows and harquebuses. Besides these there
were three hundred or more native allies, and upward of a thousand negro and
Indian servants and followers, to lead the spare horses, drive the pack mules,
carry the extra luggage, and herd the droves of oxen and cows, sheep and swine.
The expedition started on February 23d, and a month later, on Easter
day, it entered Culiacan, then the northwestern outpost of European
civilization, half way up the mainland coast of the
Gulf of California. Here Coronado reorganized his force and, toward the end of April, he started north ward into the unknown country
with a picked force of two hundred men equipped for rapid marching, leaving the
rest to follow at the slower pace of the pack trains and the four-footed food
supplies. Following the river courses up stream, the advance party was soon
deep in the mountains. For two long months they persistently pushed ahead, the
inhospitable country steadily growing worse. Eventually other streams showed them
the way out on to a level district crossed by well-worn trails which led them
toward the “Seven Cities of Cíbola”. These were the
goal of whose fame they had heard from the Franciscan friar, Marcos of Nice,
who had viewed them from a distant hilltop two years previously, and who now
accompanied the expedition as guide and chaplain.
It was perhaps on July 4th, 1540, that Coronado drew up his force in
front of the first of the “Seven Cities”, and after a sharp fight forced his
way into the stronghold, the stone and adobe-built pueblo of Hawikuh, whose ruins can still be traced on a low hillock a
few miles southwest of the village now occupied by the New Mexican Zuñi Indians. Here the Europeans camped for several weeks,
seeking rest, refreshment, and news of the land. A small party was sent off
toward the northwest, where another group of seven villages was found in the
region still occupied by the descendants of the people whom the Spaniards
visited, the Moqui tribes of Tusayan. As a result of
the information secured here, another party journeyed westward until its
progress was stopped by the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, then seen for the
first time by Europeans. Explorations were also made toward the east, where the
river villages along the Rio Grande were found to be larger and better stocked
with food supplies than the settlements at Cíbola-Zuñi.
Coronado therefore moved his headquarters to the largest of these river towns, Tiguex, near the modern Bernalillo, a short distance north
of Albuquerque. Here, as the winter of 1540-41 was setting in, he was rejoined
by the main body of the army, which had laboriously followed the trail of its
general through the mountains and across the desert.
In one of the river villages Coronado found an Indian slave who said he
was a native of Quivira, which he described as a rich and populous place far
away in the east. Acting upon this information, with the Indian as a guide,
Coronado started on April 23d, 1541, with his whole army to march to Quivira.
From Cicuye or Pecos, whose ruins can still be seen
by the traveller from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé trains, the guide seems to have led the
white men down the Pecos River until they were out of the mountains, and on to
the vast plains where they soon met the countless herds of bison or “humpbacked
oxen”. For five weeks the Europeans plodded onward across what is now known as
the “Staked Plains”, following a generally easterly direction.
They had probably crossed the upper branches of the Colorado River of
Texas and reached the head waters of the Nueces, when Coronado became convinced
that his guide was endeavoring to lose him in this limitless expanse of rolling
prairie. The food supplies were beginning to run low, and so the army was
ordered to return to the villages on the Rio Grande. Some of the natives of the
plains, met with on the march, had answered the questions about Quivira by
pointing toward the north. That no chance might be left untried, the general
selected thirty of the freshest and best-mounted of his men to accompany him in
a search in that direction. For forty-two days they followed the compass
needle, whose variation probably took them about three degrees west of a true
northward course. At last their guides told them that
they had reached Quivira, when they were not far from Great Bend on the
Arkansas River, whose course they had followed from the neighborhood of Dodge
City. It was a village of Wichita Indian tepees.
Coronado spent a month in exploring the surrounding country, moving his
camp to a larger village further north, and sending out messengers and
reconnoitering parties in all directions. Having assured himself that there was
nothing to reward his search, he returned to the main body of his army, the
Quiviran guides leading him by a much shorter route, along the line of the
famous Santa Fé trail, to the Rio Grande. Every clew which promised anything of
value to the Spaniards had been followed to its utmost, without revealing
anything which they desired. In the spring of 1542 Coronado started back with
his men to Cíbola-Zuñi, through the rough mountain
passages to the Gulf of California, and so on down to the city of Mexico, where
he arrived in the early autumn, "very sad and very weary, completely worn
out and shame-faced". He had failed to find any of the things for which he
went in search. But he had added to the world as known to Europeans an extent
of country bounded on the west by the Colorado River from its mouth to the
Grand Canyon, on the east by the boundless prairies, and stretching northward
to the upper waters of the Rio Grande and the southern boundary of Nebraska.
MAP OF CORONADO’S EXPEDITION
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