The Spanish Conquistadors DeSoto and Coronado

Introduction. I remember studying American history as a child in parochial grammar school in St. Louis years ago. My school was run by the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and our history books had the imprimatur (religious seal of approval) of the Catholic censors of the time, and, naturally we learned about history from the perspective of the Catholic Church - its heroes and its missionaries.

I learned much about the lives of men like Fathers Isaac Joques and Jaques Marquette as well as Lord Baltimore (Catholics, of course). The exploits of the separatist Puritans and their late 17^th century witch trials were also lessons we Catholic children did not miss. In sum, my early view of history had a decided bias.

I regard the foregoing as a deficiency in my education. I also believe I share something in common with most of my generation who learned U.S. History: Hardly any, or at least very little, emphasis is given to the history of the Spanish explorations, or entradas into the southern and southwestern United States frontier during our pre-colonial period.

For example, I was not aware that 80 years before the Pilgrims gave thanks after surviving a winter at Plymouth, the Spaniards gave thanks in Texas after having survived a tornado on May 23, 1541. The Conquistadors also may have dined on turkey afterward.[1] As another example, before my research for this paper I was unaware that the first Europeans to cross the Appalachian Mountains were the Conquistadors.[2]

One explanation of the general neglect on this period is provided by Ted Morgan in Wilderness at Dawn. Morgan says that the history of our country's settlement has been written and taught "from an Anglocentric point of view." This may be because England eventually won the colonial wars and partly because much of the Spanish efforts in this continent concentrated "on plunder rather than settlement."

However, Morgan maintains "it should be remembered that the first white men to settle in the United States were not religious dissidents ... but the emissaries of the Catholic empire of Spain, orthodox and loyal ... These subjects of the king wanted to win honors that the Spanish monarchy conferred and to gain a heavenly reward by saving heathen souls...The Spanish covered a lot of ground in the United States..." from California to Kansas down to Texas and east to Florida.[3] If the Spanish had concentrated on settlement, perhaps our country's history would have been dramatically altered.

This paper is a study, comparison, and contrast of two Spanish Conquistadors who were the leaders of two major forays into the southern and southwestern part of this country. Seventy years before the English faced the "starving time" in Jamestown, Spanish Conquistadors were hunting buffalo, living off the food stores of and kidnapping Native Americans in search of treasure that was always mas allá (farther from where they were - usually on the nearest road away from the peoples they were visiting). Hernando De Soto and Francisco Vázquez Coronado were those Spaniards, and they wreaked havoc in pre-colonial America.

The Conquistadors. The men whose legacy De Soto and Coronado followed were, like most human phenomena, a product of history. In the early 1500s the Conquistadors were at the vanguard of centuries of constant fighting to clear Spain of the Moorish invaders. They were men "trained in war, crusaders in their own land who had pushed the infidel back step by step ... The result was that their nobility were little better than armed and castled warlords."[4]

In 1492 the Moors were defeated in Spain, and the 800-year crusade was at an end. Men who fought their last battle against the Moors became soldiers of fortune and followed the sailors across the sea to seek out "new infidels" and "blaze a trail of murder and heroism that is unique in the history of European peoples."[5] By the time the likes of Hernan Cortés and Juan Pizarro were finished in Mexico and South America, the Spanish became the dominant colonial power and the richest nation in the world.

It is truly difficult not to grudgingly admire the absolutely astounding feats of bravery, leadership, and accomplishments of men like Cortés, who with a force of about 300 men conquered a civilization of millions in central Mexico in less than three years. They were absolutely the most accomplished warriors and tacticians of their day, and they used all the tools at their disposal to establish Spanish dominion over a vast area of the New World. One must use the term "grudgingly," because the Spaniards absolutely destroyed the Aztec culture, and through overwork, mistreatment, and the spread of disease, drastically reduced the population of the Native Americans.[6]

The Motives. Both De Soto and Coronado were motivated by the prospects of wealth and glory, but there were differences in their overall aims. De Soto, who was nearly 40 in 1541 and was already wealthy from his Incan adventure with Juan Pizarro, was commissioned by the King of Spain to settle what was called La Florida. Earlier Spanish explorers had heard reports and rumors from coastal Indians that there was a northern sea, which De Soto believed was the Pacific Ocean. De Soto planned to find a northern passage to China and trade Spain's fabulous wealth with that lucrative market.[7] (Of course, he would no doubt have welcomed the additional fame and power accompanying the successful settlement of North America.)

De Soto entered the western coast of Florida with an entourage of about 600, half of whom would perish in a fruitless quest through the Florida swamps and the southeast. The exploration ended when De Soto died of a fever and the remnants of his troop limped back to northern Mexico on small boats they had built.

Coronado, the younger of the two, was the 29-year-old governor of New Galicia in New Spain (Mexico). He was a protégé and favorite of the fabulously wealthy Viceroy of New Spain, Don Antonio Mendoza. Coronado and the Viceroy were excited by a report from a Dominican missionary, Fray Marcos de Niza, who reported to the Viceroy the existence of what could be one of the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola:

"The settlement is larger than the city of Mexico. At times I was tempted to go to it, because I knew that I risked only my life...but the fact is that I was afraid...and that if I should die it would not be possible to have an account of this land...When I told the head men with me how good Cíbola appeared to me, they said it was the least of the Seven Cities..."[8]

Spanish experience in conquering the Aztecs and the Incas was that large sedentary civilizations tended to amass great wealth. Cortés and Pizarro's success, wealth, and fame were from conquering those types of civilizations. Unfortunately for Coronado (and for Fray Marcos' credibility and reputation), what Fray Marcos actually saw was the Zuni Pueblo Village of Hawikuh in New Mexico whose inhabitants were to experience defeat at the hands of the Conquistadors.

Nevertheless, the Viceroy and his Captain General Coronado demonstrated an astonishing gullibility and outfitted an enormous expedition of men, horses, pack trains, and supply ships on a two-year journey of profitless exploration. This exploration would ultimately discredit the Conquistadors and ruin Coronado's health.

Initial failure. Both De Soto and Coronado were to experience early obstacles and failures in their journeys. Forever optimistic, neither seemed to be discouraged easily. De Soto should have learned the lesson from his predecessor, the one-eyed Pánfilo de Narvárez, whose ill-fated group of Spaniards and a Negro slave named Esteban began an exploration of Florida in 1528. Narvárez drowned on a ramshackle boat in the Gulf near the mouth of the Mississippi, and his two surviving cohorts Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and the slave Esteban wandered among the Indians for over eight years before repatriation in Mexico.[9]

The only exception to De Soto's bad luck and early encounters with the Florida swamps, recalcitrant (and later murderously hostile) Native Americans was the fortuitous discovery of a Spanish captive (an earlier survivor from the Narvárez expedition) who was to serve as an interpreter. De Soto never found much treasure except for a cache of pearls he looted from an Indian burial ground. He was later to lose all the pearls in a fire set during a battle with the Mauvillan Indians.[10] From that point forward, De Soto's fortunes were to steadily worsen.

Coronado was to suffer perhaps a more frustrating disappointment after his long trek up the coast of Mexico into our southwest. In his letter to the Viceroy, Coronado completely repudiates Fray Marcos' early assertion concerning the Cíbola:

It now remains for me to tell about this city and kingdom and province, of which the father provincial gave Your Lordship an account. In brief, I can assure you that in reality he (Fray Marcos) has not told the truth in a single thing that he said, but everything is the reverse of what he said, except the name of the city and the large stone houses. [11]

What a shock it must have been for the travel- weary Conquistadors when at last Cíbola was in sight. Instead of a great city, the tired treasure-seekers saw before them "on an eminence a little pueblo 'all crumpled together.'" According to Bolton, when the soldiers beheld it, and realized what it was, "such were the curses which some of them hurled at Fray Marcos," one of the expedition's chroniclers wrote, "that I pray God to protect him from them."[12]

As previously mentioned, both Conquistadors were not to be discouraged. De Soto, in the face of a completely demoralizing situation rallied his men through sheer leadership ability. Coronado was motivated by yet another unrealistic venture - the quest for Quivira, a legendary place of riches. According to an Indian the Spanish called "The Turk" the "lord of that country took his afternoon nap under a great tree on which there hung a great number of little gold bells, which put him to sleep as they swung in the air." [13] (Coronado, true to form, believed this legend as well.) When it became apparent that the story of Quivira was another exaggeration, "The Turk" was not let off so easy as Fray Marcos. Coronado ordered the Indian's death by garroting.

The Role of the horse. The greatest strength of the Conquistadors was their horses. The sight and sound of a charging phalanx of mounted Conquistadors must have been a truly terrifying thing to the Indians they encountered. One historian, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, wrote in 1855 that "the Indians looked upon those animals as if they had been lions or tigers, and feared them mightily."[14]

There were no horses in the New World until reintroduced by the Spaniards, who bred them in Cuba for sale to Conquistadors going to the wars, both in Peru and Mexico. The horses were descended from the famous, extinct breed of Córdoba and were said to have been of Arab origin.[15]

The horse proved to be the greatest physical and psychological edge owned by the Spanish in the Americas. One historian called them the "tanks of the Conquest."[16] The maneuverability and resulting tactical advantage the Spanish had over their pedestrian and poorly armed foes made the Spanish Conquistadors the most formidable soldiers of their time.

De Soto's challenge in Florida was to prove more difficult than Coronado. It was fortunate that De Soto had so many in reserve (he brought over 300). In fact, right to the end of his expedition, De Soto's horses provided meat, hides for rough clothing for his soldiers and linings for their homemade boats for fording streams. In one attack by the Chickasaw Indians in March of 1541, the Spaniards were surprised in their camp. Most historians agree that De Soto and his men would have been massacred had not "panicked horses broken their halters and stampeded out of town, creating the false impression that the cavalry was charging."[17]

Coronado was likewise well equipped with horses. Bolton in his well-documented work reports that the total number of horses listed in Coronado's muster roll from its start at Compostela was 559.[18] In his battle with the Zuni Indians, Coronado massed a cavalry charge and cut down the defenders of Hawikuh, which fell after a stiff defense.

Treatment of the Native Americans. The 16^th century Spanish attitude towards Native Indians was that the American continent provided a fresh supply of infidels, the Moors having only just been vanquished. They believed that "persons radically unlike themselves, who neither held Christian beliefs nor lived like Christians were inferior human beings, perhaps even bestial, deserving of slavery or whatever other ills might befall them."[19]

De Soto displayed an especially aggressive and cruel attitude towards the Indians he encountered. He helped himself to their stores, kidnapped high ranking hostages to serve as guides and to ensure good behavior towards his group, and he conscripted porters for his expedition. His treatment of his captives was cruel and punishment for misbehavior included mutilation (chopped off noses and limbs, for example.)

Coronado, on the other hand, was under orders by the Viceroy not to mistreat the Indians on his route and in his entourage. His pack train included presents for the natives he encountered for bartering for provisions.[20]

Coronado, like De Soto, did make war on tribes he encountered during his trek north and east. After his battle with the Zunis, Coronado toured the province of Cíbola in an effort to make peace with the pueblo dwellers. Like De Soto, Coronado quickly became an unwelcome guest in those parts as his ravenous cattle, hundreds of Spaniards and Mexican Indians strained the resources of the Pueblo farmers. In the ensuing rebellion, Coronado's forces destroyed perhaps "as many as thirteen villages."[21]

A vast geography and some firsts. De Soto covered an enormous amount of territory in their search for riches. His expedition traveled most of the southeast entering near Tampa Bay through present-day Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana. He may have been the first European to see the Mississippi River, his eventual burial place.

Coronado's entourage marched an enormous distance northward through much of the west coast of Mexico towards northern New Mexico, a distance of well over 1,000 miles. A side expedition by one of his lieutenants, García López de Cárdenas, in search of the expedition's supply ships, resulted in the first European sighting of the Grand Canyon's south rim. Additionally, Coronado made a side trip to present-day Kansas in search of legendary Quivira. His group were probably the first white men to hunt the American bison.

Coronado's side trip was an expedition of 30 of his troupe and provides an interesting footnote to his journey. On a northeasterly trek and through over 500 miles of the flatlands of the great plains, it was a somewhat disorienting experience. Pedro de Castañeda wrote of the experiences of some of the men who wandered away from the main body:

Wandering about the country as if they were crazy, in one direction or another, not knowing how to get back where they started from...Every night they took account of who was missing, fired guns and blew trumpets and beat drums and built great fires, but yet some of them went off so far and wandered about so much that all this did not give them any help.[22]

Summary and conclusions. From the perspective of their original goals, both expeditions failed. De Soto's expedition was productive to the extent that it provides a picture of the American south before the British arrived. Ted Morgan sums it up nicely: "The enslavement of men and women, the many pitched battles, the destruction of villages...and the epidemics destroyed a social system that had been thriving...Fifty years later, the world of the chiefdoms...had vanished."[23]

Coronado spent every peso he had without finding anything. He headed for home in 1542. His main contribution to the Spanish Empire was simply to determine its limits in North America. The Spaniards would never cross the Great Plains.

Neither did they result in extensive Spanish settlement in North America. The Spanish did establish settlements in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1610. However, the settlement in St. Augustine on Florida's east coast was mainly an effort to protect the Spanish treasure ship routes from the Caribbean back to the mother country. When Spain's wealth and power declined, so did the importance of St. Augustine. Santa Fe was never more than an unprofitable expense to the Spanish monarchy, a northern spur of Spain's empire and had to be supplied by land from Mexico.

It is understandable, therefore, that historians regard the Spanish colonial experience in America as having a lesser impact on this country's future. We became an English-speaking country settled by colonists, and our British mother country eventually expelled the French. The descendants of those colonists, in the name of Manifest Destiny, expanded west and south into the areas originally plundered by the conquistadors.

It could be argued, therefore, that the legacy of the Conquistadors - exploration, conquest, exploitation - was not lost on our English-speaking ancestors who, having run out of space in the East, spread west. The Indians who may have remembered their ancestors' earlier tales of the first white visitors - the Spanish -- must have ruefully said to each other, "Here we go again."

Works Cited

Bolton, Herbert Eugene. Coronado - Knight of Pueblos and Plains. New York: McGraw Hill, 1949

Chávez, Thomas E. Quest for Quivira, Spanish Explorers on the Great Plains. Tuscon, Arizona: Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, 1992

de Casteneda, Pedro. "The Journey of Coronado - 1596" Archives of the West Internet Site, accessed June , 21, 1998/available from http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/wpages/wpgs610/corona1.htm

Cumming, William P., R.A. Skelton, David B. Quinn. The Discovery of North America. New York: American Heritage Press 1971

Graham, Robert B. The Horses of the Conquest, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949

Innes, Hammond. The Conquistadors. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969

Meyer, Michael C. and William L. Sherman. The Course of Mexican History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995

Morgan, Ted. Wilderness at Dawn - The Settling of the North American Continent. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993

Morris, John Miller. From Coronado to Escalante: The Explorers of the Spanish Southwest. New York - Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1992.

Sheppard, Donnald E., "Spanish Conquest of Native America" Native America Conquest Corporation Internet Site, accessed June 21, 1998/available from http://www.floridahistory.com/inset11.html

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992

Whitman, Sylvia. Hernando de Soto and the Explorers of the American South. New York - Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

"Coronado's Report to Viceroy Mendoza," Sent from Cibola, August 3, 1540: Archives of the West Internet Site, accessed June 21, 1998/available from http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/wpages/wpgs610/corona8.htm

End notes
[1] John Miller Morris. From Coronado to Escalante: The Explorers of the Spanish Southwest. (New York - Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publisher, 1992) 79.

[2] Sylvia Whitman. Hernando de Soto and the Explorers of the American South. (New York - Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991) 81

[3] Ted Morgan. Wilderness at dawn - The Settling of the North American Continent (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) 88

[4] Hammond Innes. The Conquistadors (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969) 12

[5]Ibid.

[6] Michael C. Meyer and William L. Sherman. The Course of Mexican History. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 125

[7] Donnald E. Sheppard, "Spanish Conquest of Native America" Native America Conquest Corporation Internet Site, accessed June 21, 1998/available from http://www.floridahistory.com/inset11.html

[8] Herbert Eugene Bolton. Coronodo - Knight of Pueblos and Plains. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1949), 36

[9]William P. Cumming., R.A. Skelton, David B. Quinn. The Discovery of North America. (New York: American Heritage Press 1971), 98

[10] Sylvia Whitman. Hernando de Soto and the Explorers of the American South. (New York - Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991) 85

[11] "Coronado's Report to Viceroy Mendoza," Sent from Cibola, August 3, 1540: Archives of the West Internet Site, accessed June 21, 1998/available from http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/wpages/wpgs610/corona8.htm

[12] Herbert Eugene Bolton. Coronodo - Knight of Pueblos and Plains. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1949), 118

[13] John Miller Morris. From Coronado to Escalante: The Explorers of the Spanish Southwest. (New York - Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1992) 69

[14] Robert B. Graham. The Horses of the Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949) 79

[15]Ibid, 77

[16] Sylvia Whitman. Hernando de Soto and the Explorers of the American South. (New York - Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991) 54

[17]Ibid, 88

[18] Herbert Eugene Bolton. Coronodo - Knight of Pueblos and Plains. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1949), 69

[19] David J Weber. The Spanish Frontier in North America. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 21

[20] Herbert Eugene Bolton. Coronodo - Knight of Pueblos and Plains. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1949), 58

[21]Ibid. 48

[22] Thomas E. Chávez. Quest for Quivira, Spanish Explorers on the Great Plains. (Tuscon, Arizona: Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, 1992),6

[23] Ted Morgan. Wilderness at Dawn - The Settling of the North American Continent. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) 75