the country, whether it is broken or flat; the rivers, whether they are large or small; the stones and metals which are there; and of all things that can be sent or brought, send or bring samples of them in order that His Majesty may be informed of everything.… Send back reports with the utmost secrecy so that appropriate steps may be taken, without disturbing anything.…”
Would Cortés be listening?
The faithful friar was back in Mexico by early summer, making his reports first to Governor Vásquez de Coronado at Compostela, and later to the Viceroy in the capital. He told a temperate story, as full of fear as of conjecture, and earnestly hopeful of truth, in spite of its hearsay with occasional exaggerations and inaccuracies. It was a story with its regrets, too. He had gone faithfully northward, observing the land, passing from people to people, by whom he was cordially received, with food, triumphal arches, and requests for blessings. Estebanico he sent ahead with Indian guides, who were to return on the trail to tell the friar what his black man had seen: a small cross if he had seen a moderate-sized settlement, two crosses if a larger one, a great large cross if a big city. Day by day the messengers came back with ever larger crosses, until they bore one as high as a man. The great cities so long imagined must surely be coming into view.…
Meantime, Indians from the west coast brought shells of the kind known to contain pearls. There were deserts to cross, but the land became gentle again, and the journey was feasible. Finally one day came weeping messengers with bloody wounds who told of how Estebanico had halted at a great city at the base of a high mound. There he sent to the chief his ceremonial gourd rattle with its copper jingle bells. On seeing this, the chief hurled it to the ground, crying that it belonged to people who were his enemies and ordering its bearers to retire from the land. But Estebanico had refused, an attack had followed, the Moor had been killed by arrows, along with many of his Indian party. Those who returned to report declared that this took place before the first of the cities of Cíbola, which they said had many stories with flat roofs, doorways paved with turquoise, and other signs of wealth.
Friar Marcus then believed all was lost. His Indian companions were angered against him, for he had led them into a land of danger where many of their relatives had been killed along with Estebanico. He opened his sacks containing articles of trade, gifts received farther back on the trail, and made them presents, and declared that faithfully he would go forward and see but not enter the city of Cíbola. Two of the Indians finally agreed to go with him, and at last he saw the city with his own eyes, from a safe distance. It looked as he had expected—terraced, made of stone, and larger than the city of Mexico, which itself had over a thousand souls. Even so, the Indians told him it was the smallest of the seven cities. Giving thanks to God, he named it the new kingdom of Saint Francis, built a cairn of rocks surmounted by a cross, and solemnly possessing the whole of Cíbola for the Emperor and the Viceroy, retreated to his waiting party.
One more matter needed observation—a valley many days’ journey to the east, where he was told that in well-populated towns there was much gold which the people used for vessels, for ornaments of their persons, and for little blades with which they scraped away the sweat of their bodies. He believed that he saw only the mouth of that valley which lay at the end of the mountains of the north. There he planted two crosses and took formal possession, and hurried back to Compostela and Governor Vásquez de Coronado.
What he told was fitted ardently into the statements of Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and into the long-sustained expectation of a true discovery of the lost cities of Atlantis—a dream kept alive in a time of marvels and credulities by Europeans whose exploits had already been marvellous enough to render any rumor plausible.
Excitement was high and gossip general. The Viceroy sent to Cortés, as a common courtesy, a brief of the friar’s report. From his hacienda at Cuernavaca, the Marquis replied with thanks and a formidable offer to co-operate in any expedition of settlement sent to Cíbola. Presently he was in the capital, scornfully letting it be known that in fact he had himself supplied Friar Marcus with most of the information which other people accepted as having been gathered at great personal risk by the Franciscan in his northern journey. The feeling of movement was in the air.
People felt which way the wind was blowing. Cortés called upon Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, whom he knew to be in the confidence of the Viceroy, and proposed himself for the expedition to conquer, settle and exploit Cíbola. Vásquez de Coronado faithfully reported the hungry offer to the Viceroy, who rejected it sharply, and gave his young provincial governor a wigging into the bargain. It was as well to have the position made clear: he had already recommended Vásquez de Coronado to the Emperor for appointment to the command of the expedition to the north; and with no further word to the great, the difficult, the restless Marquis, the Viceroy by royal authority on January 6, 1540, issued the commission to Vásquez de Coronado, with the order “that no impediment or hindrance whatsoever be placed in your way in the discharge and exercise of the office of captain-general in the said lands, that everyone accept your judgment, and render and have others render you, without any excuse or delay, all the assistance that you may demand from them and that you may need in the performance of the duties of your office.…”
It was time to move rapidly.
Cortés was only waiting for the spring sailings from Veracruz to hurry back to Spain, where he meant to press his claims personally upon Charles V.
Already a fleet and an army had left Spain once again for Florida. Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had hoped to return to the new kingdom of his long suffering as commander of the present Florida fleet, but he was too late with his petition to the King. A veteran of the Peruvian campaign, Don Hernando de Soto, had already received the commission. De Soto sailed with much of Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s information in his head, imagining that he understood the country of his grant, all the way from Florida to the Rio de las Palmas.
Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was a fateful man; for in Compostela, and Culiacán, and the city of Mexico, another expedition in consequence of what he had seen, heard, and suffered, now made ready for the north, where waiting to be found in the distance of time and rumor, beyond the cities of Cíbola, was the valley of the long river, with its people who grew corn and wore mantles of cotton.
5.
Destiny and the Future
In midsummer of 1540 the Pueblo World of the river had the news of what was happening at the rocky towns to the west, in the deserts, where Zuñi people lived. New men had come, in shining garments, with tremendous animals on whose backs they rode. It seemed that these animals, with their great teeth in their long bony heads, ate people. There was a battle at the town of Hawikuh, where before the town the Indians made a line of sacred meal on the ground which they told the newcomers not to cross. One of the strangers advanced and made a long statement with a one-handed gesture to his brow, his breast, and each shoulder. More came up behind him. The Zuñis sounded their war horn, and were ready, with leather shields and bows, arrows, lances and maces. The women and the little ones and the old ones were sent many hours before to the hills beyond the town. The war captain gave the signal and arrows flew. Then came the men with the high animals, and gave war, making loud sudden noises with flashes of fire and smoke, and thrusting with hard knives as long as a leg. The Zuñis broke and ran to their town, the invaders followed, and a hot fight brought the surrender of the town in a little while. The new men broke into the food stores and ate like starving dogs. They made peace, and treated everyone kindly, though they had killed twenty Zuñis in the battle. Their chief was a grand lord who had been hurt in the fight, wearing a helmet of gold. He now recovered, and remained with his men at Hawikuh. Various chiefs from other pueblos went to see him, bringing him gifts of turkeys, animal skins and food. To them he gave marvellous little things never before seen, some to be worn, either as ornaments, like the flashing beads, or on the head, like the red caps, others to be played with, like the little bells. He made much of a sign to be given with fingers, crossed one over another,
