HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

THE CAUSES OF THE CORONADO EXPEDITION, 1528-1539

ALVAR NUÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA

trading

Graders

The American Indians are always on the move. Tribes shift the location of their homes from season to season and from year to year, while individuals wander at will, hunting, trading or gossiping. This is very largely true today, and when the Europeans first came in contact with the American aborigines, it was a characteristic feature of Indian life. The Shawnees, for example, have drifted from Georgia to the great lakes, and part of the way back, during the period since their peregrinations can first be traced. Traders from tribe to tribe, in the days when European commercial ideas were unknown in North America, carried bits of copper dug from the mines in which the aboriginal implements are still found, on the shores of Lake Superior, to copper the Atlantic coast on the one side and to the Rocky mountains on the other. The Indian gossips of central Mexico, in 1535, described to the Spaniards the villages of New Mexico and Arizona, with their manystoried houses of stone and adobe. The Spanish colonists were always eager to learn about unexplored regions lying outside the limits of the white settlements, and their Indian neighbors and servants in the valley of Mexico told them many tales of the people who lived beyond the mountains which hemmed in New Spain on the north. One of these stories may be found in another part of this memoir, where it is preserved in the narrative of Pedro Castañeda, the historian of the Coronado expedition. Castañeda's hearsay report of the Indian story, which was related by an adventurous trader who had penetrated the country far to the north, compares not unfavorably with the somewhat similar stories which Marco Polo told to entertain his Venetian friends.1 But whatever may have been known before, the information which led to the expedition of Friar Marcos de Niza and to that of Francisco Vazquez Coronado was brought to New Spain late in the spring of 1536 by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca.

In 1520, before Cortes, the conqueror of Motecuhzoma, had made his peace with the Emperor Charles V and with the authorities at Cuba, Panfilo de. Narvaez was dispatched to the Mexican mainland, at the

'The Indian's story is in the first chapter of Castañeda's Narrative. Some additional information is given in Bandelier's Contributions to the History of the Southwest, the first chapter of which is entitled "Sketch of the knowledge which the Spaniards in Mexico possessed of the countries north of the province of New Galicia previous to the return of Cabeza de Vaca." For bibliographic references to this and other works referred to throughout this memoir, see the list at the end of the paper.

head of a considerable force. He was sent to subdue and supersede the conqueror of Mexico, but when they met, Cortes quickly proved that he was a better general than his opponent, and a skillful politician as well. Narvaez was deserted by his soldiers and became a prisoner in the City of Mexico, where he was detained during the two years which followed. Cortes was at the height of his power, and Narvaez must have felt a longing to rival the successes of the conqueror, who had won the wealth of the Mexican empire. After Cortes resumed his dutiful obedience to the Spanish crown, friends at home obtained a royal order which effected the release of Narvaez, who returned to Spain at the earliest opportunity. Almost as soon as he had established himself anew in the favor of the court, he petitioned the King for a license which should permit him to conduct explorations in the New World. After some delay, the desired patent was granted. It authorized Narvaez to explore, conquer, and colonize the country between Florida and the Rio de Palmas, a grant comprising all that portion of North America bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, which is now included within the limits of the United States. Preparations were at once begun for the complete organization of an expedition suitable to the extent of this territory and to the power and dignity of its governor.

On June 17, 1527, Narvaez, governor of Florida, Rio de Palmas and Espiritu Santo-the Rio Grande and the Mississippi on our modern maps-sailed from Spain. He went first to Cuba, where he refitted his fleet and replaced one vessel which had been lost in a hurricane during the voyage. When everything was ready to start for the unexplored mainland, he ordered the pilots to conduct his fleet to the western limits of his jurisdiction-our Texas. They landed him, April 15, 1528, on the coast of the present Florida, at a bay which the Spaniards called Bahia de la Cruz, and which the map of Sebastian Cabot enables us to identify with Apalache bay. The pilots knew that a storm had driven them out of their course toward the east, but they could not calculate on the strong current of the gulf stream. They assured the commander that he was not far from the Rio de Palmas, the desired destination, and so he landed his force of 50 horses and 300 men-just half the number of the soldiers, mechanics, laborers, and priests who had started with him from Spain ten months before. He sent one of his vessels back to Cuba for recruits, and ordered the remaining three to sail along the coast toward the west and to wait for the army at the fine harbor of Panuco, which was reported to be near the mouth of Palmas river. The fate of these vessels is not known.

Narvaez, having completed these arrangements, made ready to lead his army overland to Panuco. The march began April 19. For a while, the Spaniards took a northerly direction, and then they turned toward the west. Progress was slow, for the men knew nothing of the country, and the forests and morasses presented many difficulties to the soldiers

unused to woodcraft. Little help could be procured from the Indians, who soon became openly hostile wherever the Spaniards encountered them. Food grew scarce, and no persuasion could induce the natives to reveal hidden stores of corn, or of gold. On May 15, tired and discouraged, the Spaniards reached a large river with a strong current flowing toward the south. They rested here, while Cabeza de Vaca, the royal treasurer accompanying the expedition, took a small party of soldiers and followed the banks of the river down to the sea. The fleet was not waiting for them at the mouth of this stream, nor could anything be learned of the fine harbor for which they were searching. Disappointed anew by the report which Cabeza de Vaca made on his return to the main camp, the Spanish soldiers crossed the river and continued their march toward the west. They plodded on and on, and after awhile turned southward, to follow down the course of another large river which blocked their westward march. On the last day of July they reached a bay of considerable size, at the mouth of the river. They named this Bahia de los Cavallos, perhaps, as has been surmised, because it was here that they killed the last of their horses for food. The Spaniards, long before this, had become thoroughly disheartened. Neither food nor gold could be found. The capital cities, toward which the Indian captives had directed the wandering strangers, when reached, were mere groups of huts, situated in some cases on mounds morende of earth. Not a sign of anything which would reward their search, and hardly a thing to eat, had been discovered during the months of toilsome marching. The Spaniards determined to leave the country. They constructed forges in their camp near the seashore, and hammered their spurs, stirrups, and other iron implements of warfare into nails and saws and axes, with which to build the boats necessary for their escape from the country. Ropes were made of the tails and manes of the horses, whose hides, pieced out with the shirts of the men, were fashioned into sails. By September 22, five boats were ready, each large enough to hold between 45 and 50 men. In these the soldiers embarked. Scarcely a man among them knew anything of navigation, and they certainly knew nothing about the navigation of this coast. They steered westward, keeping near the land, and stopping occasionally for fresh water. Sometimes they obtained a little food.

Toward the end of October they came to the mouth of a large river which poured forth so strong a current that it drove the boats out to sea. Two, those which contained Narvaez and the friars, were lost. The men in the other three boats were driven ashore by a storm, somewhere on the coast of western Louisiana or eastern Texas. This was

The most important source of information regarding the expedition of Narvaez is the Relation written by Cabeza de Vaca. This is best consulted in Buckingham Smith's translation. Mr Smith includes in his volume everything which he could find to supplement the main narration. The best study of the route followed by the survivors of the expedition, after they landed in Texas, is that of Bandelier in the second chapter of his Contributions to the History of the Southwest. In this essay Bandelier has brought together all the documentary evidence, and he writes with the knowledge obtained by traveling through the different portions of the country which Cabeza de Vaca must have

in the winter of 1528-29. Toward the end of April, 1536, Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes, and a negro named Estevan, met some Spanish slave catchers near the Rio de Petatlan, in Sinaloa, west of the mountains which border the Gulf of California. These four men, with a single exception,' were the only survivors of the three hundred who had entered the continent with Narvaez eight years before.

Cabeza de Vaca and his companions stayed in Mexico for several months, as the guests of the viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza. At first, it was probably the intention of the three Spaniards to return to Spain, in order to claim the due reward for their manifold sufferings. Mendoza says, in a letter dated December 10, 1537,' that he purchased the negro Estevan from Dorantes, so that there might be someone left in New Spain who could guide an expedition back into the countries about which the wanderers had heard. An earlier letter from the viceroy, dated February 11, 1537, commends Cabeza de Vaca and Francisco Dorantes-he must have meant Andres, and perhaps wrote it so in his original manuscript-as deserving the favor of the Empress. Maldonado is not mentioned in this letter, and no trace of him has been found after the arrival of the four survivors in Mexico. All that we know about him is that his home was in Salamanca.3

Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes started from Vera Cruz for Spain in October, 1536, but their vessel was stranded before it got out of the harbor. This accident obliged them to postpone their departure until the following spring, when Cabeza de Vaca returned home alone. He told the story of his wanderings to the court and the King, and was rewarded, by 1540, with an appointment as adelantado, giving him the command over the recently occupied regions about the Rio de la Plata. The position was one for which he was unfitted, and his subordinates traversed. Dr J. G. Shea, in his chapter in the Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. ii, p. 286, disagrees in some points with Mr Baudelier's interpretation of the route of Cabeza de Vaca west of Texas, and also with Mr Smith's identifications of the different points in the march of the main army before it embarked from the Bahia de los Cavallos. Other interesting conjectures are given in H. H. Bancroft's North Mexican States, vol. i, p. 63, and map at p. 67.

Buckingham Smith collected in his Letter of Hernando de Soto, pp. 57-61, and in his Narrative of the Career of Hernando de Soto (see index), all that is known in regard to Ortiz, one of the soldiers of Narvaez, who was found among the Indians by De Soto in 1540.

Mendoza to Charles V, 10 Diciembre, 1537. Cabeza de Vaca y Dorantes, despues de haber llegado aquí, determinaron de irse en España, y viendo que si V. M. era servido de enviar aquella tierra alguna gente para saber de cierto lo que era, no quedaba persona que pudiese ir con ella ni dar ninguna razon, compré á Dorantes para este efecto un negro que vino de allá y se halló con ellos en todo, que se llama Estéban, por ser persona de razon. Despues sucedió, como el navio en que Dorantes iba se volvió al puerto, y sabido esto, yo le escribí á la Vera-Cruz, rogándole que viniese aquí; y como llegó á esta ciudad, yo le hablé diciéndole que hubiese por bien de volver á esta tierra con algunos religiosos y gente de caballo, que yo le daria á calalla, y saber de cierto lo que en ella habia. Yél vista mi voluntad, y el servicio que yo le puse delantre que hacia con ello á Dios y á V. M., me respondió que holgaba dello, y así estoy determinado de envialle allá con la gente de caballo y religiosos que digo. Pienso que ha de redundar dello gran servicio á Dios y á V. M.-From the text printed in Pacheco y Cardenas, Docs. de Indias, ii, 206.

"Some recent writers have been misled by a chance comma inserted by the copyist or printer in one of the old narratives, which divides the name of Maldonado-Alonso del Castillo, Maldonado -making it appear as if there were five instead of four survivors of the Narvaez expedition who made their way to Mexico.