[1] From Coronado’s letter to Mendoza, dated August 3, 1540, Mendoza being Viceroy of Mexico, by whom Coronado had been sent out.  Coronado’s expedition was a great disappointment to all concerned in it, inasmuch as it resulted in failure to find the fabled “seven cities of Cibola.”  He had 300 Spaniards with him and 800 Indians.  Instead of finding great towns, as promised by Marcos and others, he discovered only a poor village of 200 people, situated on a rocky eminence.  The expedition, however, in spite of this failure, remains one of the most important exploring expeditions ever undertaken in America.  Opinions differ as to how far north Coronado went, some maintaining that he reached a point north of the boundary line between Kansas and Nebraska.  His letter was printed by Hakluyt in Volume III of his “Voyages,” and may be found in the “Old South Leaflets.”  Mr. Thwaites says of the expedition: 

“Disappointed, but still hoping to find the country of gold, Coronado’s gallant little army, frequently thinned by death and desertion, for three years beat up and down the southwestern wilderness:  now thirsting in the deserts, now penned up in gloomy canons, now crawling over pathless mountains, suffering the horrors of starvation and of despair, but following this will-o’-the-wisp with a melancholy perseverance seldom seen in man save when searching for some mysterious treasure.  Coronado apparently twice crossed the State of Kansas.  ’Through mighty plains and sandy heaths,’ says the chronicler of the expedition, ’smooth and wearisome and bare of wood.  All that way the plains are as full of crookback oxen (buffaloes) as the mountain Serena in Spain is of sheep.  They were a great succor for the hunger and want of bread which our people stood in.  One day it rained in that plain a great shower of hail as big as oranges, which caused many tears, weaknesses, and vows.’  The wanderer ventured as far as the Missouri, and would have gone still farther eastward but for his inability to cross the swollen river.  Cooperating parties explored the upper valleys of the Rio Grande and Gila, ascended the Colorado for two hundred and forty miles above its mouth, and visited the Grand Canon of the same river.  Coronado at last returned, satisfied that he had been victimized by the idle tales of travelers.  He was rewarded with contumely and lost his place as governor of New Galicia; but his romantic march stands in history as one of the most remarkable exploring expeditions of modern times.”

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was born at Salamanca, in Spain, about 1500, and died in Mexico some time after 1542.  He is believed to have gone to Mexico in 1535 with Mendoza, the viceroy, who, in 1539, made him governor of a province.

    [2] Marcos is here referred to.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI BY DE SOTO

(1541)