how the Indians saw and heard better and had sharper senses than any other people they had ever seen; how one day they were given two gourd rattles by Indian doctors who said these had come floating by a river from the north; how another day they saw a hawk’s-bell of copper, carved with a face, which they were told came from a country where there was much copper; how in a new tribe they came among, the men hunted rabbits driving the animal ever closer to each other and finally striking it with a club most accurately thrown; how these people were hospitable and hunted deer, quail and other game for them, and at night made them shelters of mats; how as they moved, the people, three or four thousand strong, went with them and asked of them cures, blessings, and breathings of sanctification upon their very food, until their duties became a great burden; how these people never spoke to one another, and silenced a crying child by scratching it from shoulder to calves with the sharp teeth of a rat in punishment; how through the summers and winters of seven years these and countless other memories came with them in their powerful will to keep walking to the west, to the west; how they avoided the courses of rivers that flowed south and east which would return them to the miseries of the seacoast and its barbarians; and how they looked for rivers that flowed south and west, which might lead them out of the unknown land toward the mapped places of New Spain.…
And by the grace of God, they had indeed found their countrymen. Now—continued the voice of government—after all the abuses and hardships so admirably survived, was there then information as to the material resources seen along the journey?
Nothing but the utmost in degrading poverty for the first six years, until the travellers moved westward through mountains, and encountered the river where the corn-raisers lived. Given rain, it must be good country. They saw it.
Was that all?
Not all, for though they did not actually see, they heard of great cities on the river to the north, with many storied houses, where there were great riches, according to the people who told them so, and in fact, there was some evidence, for the people gave them some turquoises, and five arrowheads carved out of emerald.
Emerald? Where were these? Could they be examined?
Unfortunately, they had been lost in a frontier fracas with Governor Guzmán’s men, but were perfectly real, a bright, polished, though not transparent, green.
And these fabulous arrowheads came from the cities to the north, on the river?
Yes, and had been obtained by trade with southerly Indians, who bartered parrot feathers for them. There were other things of interest, and possibly of value—beautifully made shawls better than those made in Mexico, bangles and ornaments of beads, including coral that was traded inland from the South Sea, that great ocean lying to the west.
Yes, yes, shawls and beads—was there by any chance any sign of gold and silver and other metals?
Not directly, save for a copper hawk’s-bell come upon in the prairies far inland. The trading Indians were asked, as of course all people were asked every time they met anyone, whether gold and silver were in use in the great river houses. The reply was no, they did not seem to place much value on such substances. However, in the mountains through which they had come, reported Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, he and his friends had themselves seen many signs of “gold, antimony, iron, copper, and other metals.”
In other words, though the natives did not employ them, there were deposits of natural wealth?
So the trading Indians had said.
This was curious, in the face of earlier reports that came officially to the viceregal government, through an Indian belonging to Governor Guzmán, who said that as a child he had gone with his father—a trader—to those northern river cities, and he well remembered them, there were seven of them, where there were whole streets made up of the shops of gold- and silversmiths. Still. They might well be the same cities.—What was the way like? A road? Landmarks? A trail?
A trail, principally, once past the northern outposts of Governor Guzmán. It was employed for the travel of traders. There were many such guiding paths to be seen, made by the people who went from place to place for food and barter.
Could the way be followed by strangers to the land?
Probably—certainly, if anyone went along who had once travelled it.
Good. The refugees would please prepare a written report of all they had seen, as fully as possible, to be forwarded to the home government.
It was like the imperceptible rising of a pall of smoke from unknown land which became slowly visible.
All the evidence was translated into visions of wealth. But after all, experience made it seem plausible that the northern country should be another Mexico, another Peru, where in their own terms of gold and silver the conquerors had found wealth so real and heavy that the treasure ships returning to Spain with only the King’s fifth of all colonial income were worth whole fleets of raiders to the French and British. From the very first evidence at the tropical coast, with Montezuma’s gifts to Cortés of golden suns the size of carriage wheels and the rest, there was promise in every report of an unknown land.
Cortés believed that he held moral and legal right to all new conquests in the continent he had been the first to overcome. He spoke privately and urgently with Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and was not amazed at what he heard. In 1528, had he not already petitioned the Emperor for a patent to the northern lands, where this river was that they spoke of? Now it must certainly be his to exploit. Everything would appear to justify his selection as commander of an expedition to the great house-towns of the north—experience, ability, seniority, not to mention what might be due to him in gratitude for his past discoveries, pacifications and enrichments.
But the Viceroy had been given a firm understanding of the crown policy toward Cortés. All honor, consideration, respect—but no power. Power in the hands of the Marquis of the Valley tended to become too personal; too possibly enlarged until the crown itself might in its colonial relationship come to appear somewhat diminished, which would be unsuitable. As interest grew in the conquest of the north, there was talk that the Spanish Governor of New Galicia, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, would be named by the Viceroy to organize and command the new colonization. He had come to Mexico in the suite of the Viceroy a year or so before, and had shown himself to be an able man of government. The Viceroy conversed with him—secretly, for fear of Cortés—and arrived at a plan for further investigation of the north before the full expedition should be sent. The Bishop of Mexico had a remarkable guest, a certain Franciscan friar, called Marcus of Nice, who was known to be bold, saintly and selfless. Let him go north to find, if he could, the seven cities of Cíbola, of which such firm evidence had already been noted, and let him pacify the Indians as he went, and return with news. To guide him, the Moor Estebanico, who had already walked on much of the traders’ trail in the northern wilderness, would be sent along. Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had earlier declined an invitation to return to the north, and had sailed for Spain. The other two survivors were settled in Mexico. The Moor was the best one to go.
The plan was agreed upon in the summer of 1538, and from New Galicia Francisco Vásquez de Coronado dispatched the friar and the Moor, with Indians who knew the immediate north, in the mid-spring of 1539. Fray Marcus was robed in a gray zaragoza cloth habit. Estebanico, fleetly accompanied by two greyhounds, went clad in bright clothes with jingle bells at his wrists and ankles, carrying as a badge of importance one of the gourd rattles long ago acquired in the inland plains whither it had floated by river. The party travelled on foot. The Viceroy’s orders to the friar said, in part, “You shall be very careful to observe the number of people that there are, whether they are few or many, and whether they are scattered or living together. Note also the nature, fertility, and climate of the land; the trees, plants, and
