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Francisco Vázquez de Coronado

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Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján (1510 – 22 September 1554) was a Spanish conquistador and explorer, who led a large expedition from Mexico to present-day Kansas through parts of the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542. Coronado had hoped to reach the Cities of Cíbola, often referred to now as the mythical Seven Cities of Gold, which is a term not invented until American gold-rush days in the 1800s. His expedition marked the first European sightings of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, among other landmarks. His name is often Anglicized as "Vasquez de Coronado".

The Coronado Expedition 1540–1542

Early life[edit]


Francisco Vázquez de Coronado went to New Spain (present-day Mexico) in 1535 at about age 25, in the entourage of its first Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, the son of his father's patron and Coronado's personal friend.[1] In New Spain, he married twelve-year-old Beatriz de Estrada, called "the Saint" (la Santa), sister of Leonor de Estrada, ancestor of the de Alvarado family and daughter of Treasurer and Governor Alonso de Estrada y Hidalgo, Lord of Picón, and wife Marina Flores Gutiérrez de la Caballería, from a converso Jewish family.[2] Coronado inherited a large portion of a Mexican encomendero estate through Beatriz and had eight children by her.

Coronado Expedition[edit]


Coronado was the Governor of the Kingdom of Nueva Galicia (New Galicia), a province of New Spain located northwest of Mexico and comprising the contemporary Mexican states of Jalisco, Sinaloa and Nayarit. In 1539, he dispatched Friar Marcos de Niza and Estevanico (more properly known as Estevan), a survivor of the Narváez expedition, on an expedition north from Compostela, in present-day Nayarit, toward present-day New Mexico. When de Niza returned, he told of a city of vast wealth, a golden city called Cíbola, whose Zuni residents were assumed to have killed Estevan. Though he did not claim to have entered the city of Cíbola, he mentioned that it stood on a high hill and that it appeared wealthy and as large as Mexico City.

Coronado assembled an expedition with two components. One component carried the bulk of the expedition's supplies, traveling via the Guadalupe River under the leadership of Hernando de Alarcón.[3] The other component traveled by land, along the trail Friar Marcos de Niza had followed Esteban on. Coronado and Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza invested large sums of their own money in the venture. Mendoza appointed Coronado the commander of the expedition, with the mission to find the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. This is the reason he pawned his wife's estates and was lent 70,000 more pesos.

In the autumn of 1539, Mendoza ordered Melchior Díaz, commander of the Spanish outpost at San Miguel de Culiacán, to investigate Friar de Niza's findings, and on November 17, 1539, Díaz departed for Cíbola with fifteen horsemen.[4] At the ruins of Chichilticalli, he turned around because of "snows and fierce winds from across the wilderness".[4] Diaz had encountered Coronado before he had departed San Miguel de Culiacán, and reported that initial investigations into Friar de Niza's report disproved the existence of the bountiful land he had described. Díaz's report was delivered to Viceroy Mendoza on March 20, 1540.[4]


Coronado set out from Compostela on February 23, 1540, at the head of a much larger expedition composed of about 400 European men-at-arms (mostly Spaniards), 1,300 to 2,000 Mexican Indian allies, four Franciscan monks (the most notable of whom were Juan de Padilla and the newly appointed provincial superior of the Franciscan order in the New World, Marcos de Niza), and several slaves, both natives and Africans.[5][6] Many other family members and servants also joined the party.

He followed the Sinaloan coast northward, keeping the Gulf of California to his left until he reached the northernmost Spanish settlement in Mexico, San Miguel de Culiacán, about March 28, 1540, whereupon he rested his expedition before they began trekking the inland trail.[7] Aside from his mission to verify Friar de Niza's report, Melchior Díaz had also taken notice of the forage and food situation along the trail, and reported that the land along the route would not be able to support a large concentrated body of soldiers and animals. Coronado therefore decided to divide his expedition into small groups and time their departures so that grazing lands and water holes along the trail could recover. At intervals along the trail, Coronado established camps and garrisoned soldiers to keep the supply route open. For example, in September 1540, Melchior Díaz, along with "seventy or eighty of the weakest and least reliable men" in Coronado's army, remained at the town of San Hieronimo, in the valley of Corazones, or Hearts.[8] Once the scouting and planning was done, Coronado led the first group of soldiers up the trail. They were horsemen and foot soldiers who were able to travel quickly, while the main bulk of the expedition would set out later.

After leaving Culiacán on April 22, 1540, Coronado followed the coast, "bearing off to the left", as Mota Padilla says, by an extremely rough way, to the Sinaloa River. The configuration of the country made it necessary to follow the river valley until he could find a passage across the mountains to the course of the Yaqui River. He traveled alongside this stream for some distance, then crossed to the Rio Sonora, which he followed nearly to its source before a pass was discovered. On the southern side of the mountains he found a stream he called the Nexpa, which may have been either the Santa Cruz or the San Pedro of modern maps, most likely the northward-flowing San Pedro River. The party followed this river valley until they reached the edge of the wilderness, where, as Friar Marcos had described it to them, they found Chichilticalli.[9] Chichilticalli is in southern Arizona in the Sulfur Springs Valley, within the bend of the Dos Cabezas and Chiricahua Mountains. This fits the chronicle of Laus Deo description, which reports that "at Chichilticalli the country changes its character again and the spiky vegetation ceases. The reason is that ... the mountain chain changes its direction at the same time that the coast does. Here they had to cross and pass the mountains in order to get into the level country."[10] There Coronado met a crushing disappointment: Cíbola was nothing like the great golden city that de Niza had described. Instead, it was just a village of simple pueblos constructed by the Zuni Indians. The soldiers were upset with de Niza for his mendacious imagination, so Coronado sent him back to New Spain in disgrace.

Despite what is shown in the accompanying map, on-the-ground research by Nugent Brasher beginning in 2005 revealed evidence that Coronado traveled north between Chichilticalli and Zuni primarily on the New Mexico side of the state line, not the Arizona side as has been thought since the 1940s.[11] Also, most scholars believe Quivira was about thirty miles east of the great bend of the Arkansas River, ending about twenty miles west-southwest of the location depicted on the map, with Quivira being mostly on tributaries of the Arkansas River instead of directly on the Kansas River.[12] For details, see the heading below, "Location of Quivira...."

Conquest of Cíbola[edit]

The Coronado Expedition, 1540–1542 (DjVu format)

Coronado traveled north on one side or the other of today's Arizona-New Mexico state line, and from the headwaters of the Little Colorado River he continued on until he came to the Zuni River. He followed the Zuni until he found the region inhabited by the Zuni people. The members of the expedition were almost starving and demanded entrance into the village of Hawikuh, of which the preferred Zuni word is Hawikku. The natives refused, denying the expedition entrance to the village. Coronado and his expeditionaries attacked the Zunis. The ensuing skirmish constituted the extent of what can be called the Spanish "Conquest of Cíbola". During the battle, Coronado was injured. He never personally led his men-at-arms in any subsequent battles. During the weeks the expedition stayed at Zuni, he sent out several scouting expeditions.

The first scouting expedition was led by Pedro de Tovar. This expedition headed northwest to the Hopi villages, which they recorded as Tusayan. Upon arrival, the Spanish were denied entrance to the village they came across, and once again resorted to using force to enter. Materially, the Hopi region was just as poor as the Zuni in precious metals, but the Spaniards did learn that a large river (the Colorado) lay to the west.

Exploration of the Colorado River[edit]

Three leaders affiliated with the Coronado expedition were able to reach the Colorado River. The first was Hernando de Alarcón, then Melchior Díaz and lastly Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas. Alarcón's fleet was tasked to carry supplies and to establish contact with the main body of Coronado's expedition, but was unable to do so because of the extreme distance to Cibola. He traveled up the Sea of Cortés and then the Colorado River until the river entered the lower half of the Grand Canyon. In this exploration he hauled some supplies for Coronado, but eventually he buried them with a note in a bottle. Melchior Díaz was sent down from Cibola by Coronado to take charge of the camp of Corazones and to establish contact with the fleet. Soon after arriving at the camp he set out from the valley of Corazones in Sonora and traveled overland in a north/northwesterly direction until he arrived at the junction of the Colorado River and Gila River. There the local natives, probably the CocoMaricopa (see Seymour 2007b), told him that Alarcón's sailors had buried supplies and left a note in a bottle. The supplies were retrieved and the note stated that Alarcón's men had rowed up the river as far as they could, searching in vain for the Coronado expedition. They had given up and decided to return to their departure point because worms were eating holes in their ships. Díaz named the river the "Firebrand (Tison) River" because the natives in the area used firebrands to keep their bodies warm in the winter. Díaz died on the trip back to the camp in the valley of the Corazones.

While at Hawikuh, Coronado sent another scouting expedition overland to find the Colorado River, led by Don Garcia López de Cárdenas. The expedition returned to Hopi territory to acquire scouts and supplies. Members of Cárdenas's party eventually reached the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where they could see the Colorado River thousands of feet below, becoming the first Europeans to do so. After trying and failing to climb down into the canyon to reach the river, the expedition reported that they would not be able to use the Colorado River to link up with Hernando de Alarcón's fleet. After this, the main body of the expedition began its journey to the next populated center of pueblos, along the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

The Tiguex War[edit]

Hernando de Alvarado was sent to the east, and found several villages around the Rio Grande. Coronado had one commandeered for his winter quarters, Coofor, which is across the river from present-day Bernalillo near Albuquerque, New Mexico. During the winter of 1540–41, his army found themselves in conflict with the Rio Grande natives, which led to the brutal Tiguex War.[13] This war resulted in the destruction of the Tiguex pueblos and the deaths of hundreds of Native Americans.[14]

The Search for Quivira[edit]





The Querechos and the Teyas[edit]



The Teyas, like the Querechos, were numerous and buffalo hunters, although they had additional resources. The canyons they inhabited had trees and flowing streams and they grew or foraged for beans, but not corn. The Spanish, however, did note the presence of mulberries, roses, grapes, walnuts, and plums.[19]

An intriguing event was Coronado's meeting among the Teyas an old blind bearded man who said that he had met many years before "four others like us". He was probably talking about Cabeza de Vaca, who with Esteban and two other Spanish survivors of the Narváez expedition to Florida made his way across southern Texas fourteen years before Coronado.[20]




Another guide, probably Pawnee and named Ysopete, and probably Teyas as well told Coronado that he was going in the wrong direction, saying Quivira lay to the north. By this time, Coronado seems to have lost his confidence that fortune awaited him. He sent most of his expedition back to New Mexico and continued with only forty Spanish soldiers and priests and an unknown number of Indian soldiers, servants, and guides. Coronado, thus, dedicated himself to a reconnaissance rather than a mission of conquest.




Coronado was escorted to the further edge of Quivira, called Tabas, where the neighboring land of Harahey began. He summoned the "Lord of Harahey" who, with two hundred followers, came to meet with the Spanish. He was disappointed. The Harahey Indians were "all naked -- with bows, and some sort of things on their heads, and their privy parts slightly covered".[26] They were not the wealthy people Coronado sought. Disappointed, he returned to New Mexico. Before leaving Quivira, Coronado ordered the Turk garroted. The Turk is regarded as an Indian hero in a display at Albuquerque's Indian Pueblo Cultural Center because he led Coronado onto the Great Plains and thus relieved the beleagured pueblos of Spanish depredations for at least a few months.

Location of Quivira, Tabas, and Harahey[edit]



Expedition end[edit]

Coronado returned to the Tiguex Province in New Mexico from Quivira and was badly injured in a fall from his horse "after the winter was over", according to the chronicler Castañeda—probably in March 1542. During a long convalescence, he and his expeditionaries decided to return to New Spain (Mexico). Coronado and his expedition departed New Mexico in early April 1542, leaving behind two friars.[28] His expedition had been a failure. Although he remained governor of Nueva Galicia until 1544, the expedition forced him into bankruptcy and resulted in charges of war crimes being brought against him and his field master, Cárdenas. Coronado was cleared by his friends on the Audiencia, but Cárdenas was convicted in Spain of basically the same charges by the Council of the Indies. Coronado remained in Mexico City, where he died of an infectious disease on September 22, 1554.[29]

Coronado caused a large loss of life among the Puebloans, both from the battles he fought with them in the Tiguex War and from the demands for food and clothing that he levied on their fragile economies. However, thirty-nine years later when the Spanish again visited the Southwestern United States, they found little evidence that Coronado had any lasting cultural influences on the Indians except for their surprise at seeing several light-skinned and light-haired Puebloans. See: The Chamuscado and Rodriguez Expedition and Antonio de Espejo.


Also see Coronado (disambiguation)


Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade references the "Cross of Coronado". According to the film, this gold cross, discovered in a Utah cave system, was given to Coronado by Hernán Cortés in 1521. Such an event never happened because Coronado would have been 11 or 12 years old in 1521 and still living in Spain. In addition, when Indy captures the cross from robbers aboard a ship off the coast of Portugal, the ship can be seen to be named 'The Coronado'.

In 1992, underground found footage filmmaker Craig Baldwin made the film "O No Coronado!"[30] detailing the expedition of Coronado through the use of recycled images from Westerns, Conquest films and The Lone Ranger television series.

There is also a small "island" (it is actually a tied island) near San Diego named Coronado. Most visitors cross the Coronado Bridge to get there.




Coronado Road in Phoenix, Arizona, was named after Coronado.



  2. ^ estrada1
  3. ^ Winship. pp. 39–40
  4. ^ a b c Winship. p. 38
  5. ^ Winship. pp. 32–4, 37
  7. ^ Winship. pp. 38, 40
  8. ^ Winship. p. 60
  9. ^ Winship. pp. 40–41
  10. ^ Winship. p. 143
  12. ^ Flint and Flint, Documents of the Coronado Expedition. Albuquerque: U New Mexico Press, 2012, p. 602
  13. ^ Herrick, Dennis. Winter of the Metal People: The Untold Story of America's First Indian War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Sunbury Press, 2013.
  16. ^ Winship, 214
  17. ^ Winship, 65
  19. ^ Winship, 70
  20. ^ Winship, 232
  22. ^ Winship, 69–70
  24. ^ Winship, 113, 209, 215, 234–237
  25. ^ Bolton, 293 and many subsequent scholars
  26. ^ Winship, 235
  29. ^ Bolton, 406
  30. ^

Further reading[edit]

    Ebook at
  • Herrick, Dennis (2013) "Winter of the Metal People: The Untold Story of America's First Indian War, Sunbury Press, Mechanicsburg, PA.

External links[edit]