Prologue
Much has been written about the Expedition to Cíbola (1540-1542) led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado.1 In 1940, Coronado’sentrada, or reconnaissance, caught the imagination of Americans as an opportunity to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Spain’s exploration of the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico. Earlier, in 1935, Congress had created the Coronado Cuarto Centennial Commission to spearhead the commemoration of that historic event.
The Expedition to Cíbola is part of the Age of Discovery that followed Columbus’s First Voyage in 1492. Rumors, forged by ancient myths about rich civilizations, abounded throughout the Americas and spurred a number of European expeditions to explore in all directions. At least two great civilizations were found. Tenochtitlan, in Mexico, gave rise to the possibility that the myths could be true. Peru confirmed that more than one such civilization was possible. Meanwhile, Spanish officials in Mexico City pursued the idea that another could be found. To that end, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was commissioned to lead a large expedition to find it. Thus, Coronado sought the Seven Cities of Cíbola or Quivira, thought to be another rich civilization located somewhere far to the north. With a force of 285 Spaniards, several missionary priests, and about 800 Indian auxiliaries supported by a large supply train, Coronado moved northward. Finally, mythical Quivira was disproved, and Coronado found neither mineral wealth nor rich civilizations.
The expedition began at Compostela, moved north to Culiacan, crossed northwesterly through Sonora and entered present United States somewhere in southeastern Arizona. From there, the expedition proceeded northward to Zuni Pueblo. A detachment of the expedition explored the south rim of the Grand Canyon, which was seen and described by Europe ans for the first time. From Zuni the expedition traveled eastward to Tiguex on the Rio Grande where Albuquerque now stands. The expedition wintered there, explored as far north as Taos Pueblo and south, probably to Socorro. Other pueblos such as Jemez and Zia were visited by the expedition. By springtime, Coronado and his men had moved eastward to Pecos Pueblo and out to the Great Plains reaching as far northeast as present Lyons, Kansas. Soon after reaching a place they thought was Quivira, Coronado suffered a serious head injury after falling off his horse in a race. Injured, depressed, and disappointed, Coronado returned to Mexico following the same route through Arizona and Sonora. In two years the expedition traveled over 4,000 miles from Compostela to the plains of Kansas and back.
The expedition’s reports gave Europeans their first glimpses of places and people in the interior of North America. Among the marvels seen by Coronado’s men were the Grand Canyon, the southern Rocky Mountains, the Continental Divide, the Rio Grande, and the many Indian pueblos along it from Taos to Socorro, and others from Zuni and Jemez to Pecos. Other places included Canon Blanco and Palo Duro Canyon, in the Texas Panhandle, and the Great Bend of the Arkansas River in Kansas. On the Great Plains they saw buffalo numbering in the thousands and, Plains tribes, who lived off the land, seasonally following the herds from sunrise to sunset.
The significance of the expedition is based on the vast lands explored and the people with whom contact was made a mere forty-eight years after Columbus’s First Voyage. The expedition began a literary history of the area explored along with the first ethnological descriptions of tribes from Plains to Pueb
