[Sidenote:  Coronado sets out from Mexico, 1540.]

[Sidenote:  The pueblo Indians. Source Book, 6.]

13.  Coronado in the Southwest, 1540-42.—­In 1540 Coronado set out from the Spanish towns on the Gulf of California to seek for more gold and silver.  For seventy-three days he journeyed northward until he came to the pueblos (pweb’-lo) of the Southwest.  These pueblos were huge buildings of stone and sun-dried clay.  Some of them were large enough to shelter three hundred Indian families.  Pueblos are still to be seen in Arizona and New Mexico, and the Indians living in them even to this day tell stories of Coronado’s coming and of his cruelty.  There was hardly any gold and silver in these “cities,” so a great grief fell upon Coronado and his comrades.

[Illustration:  By permission of the Bureau of Ethnology. THE PUEBLO OF ZUNI (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH).]

[Sidenote:  Coronado finds the Great Plains.]

14.  The Great Plains.—­Soon, however, a new hope came to the Spaniards, for an Indian told them that far away in the north there really was a golden land.  Onward rode Coronado and a body of picked men.  They crossed vast plains where there were no mountains to guide them.  For more than a thousand miles they rode on until they reached eastern Kansas.  Everywhere they found great herds of buffaloes, or wild cows, as they called them.  They also met the Indians of the Plains.  Unlike the Indians of the pueblos, these Indians lived in tents made of buffalo hides stretched upon poles.  Everywhere there were plains, buffaloes, and Indians.  Nowhere was there gold or silver.  Broken hearted, Coronado and his men rode southward to their old homes in Mexico.

[Sidenote:  De Soto in Florida, 1539. Explorers, 119-138.]

[Sidenote:  De Soto crosses the Mississippi.]

15.  De Soto in the Southeast, 1539-43.—­In 1539 a Spanish army landed at Tampa Bay, on the western coast of Florida.  The leader of this army was De Soto, one of the conquerors of Peru.  He “was very fond of the sport of killing Indians” and was also greedy for gold and silver.  From Tampa he marched northward to South Carolina and then marched southwestward to Mobile Bay.  There he had a dreadful time; for the Indians burned his camp and stores and killed many of his men.  From Mobile he wandered northwestward until he came to a great river.  It was the Mississippi, and was so wide that a man standing on one bank could not see a man standing on the opposite bank.  Some of De Soto’s men penetrated westward nearly to the line of Coronado’s march.  But the two bands did not meet.  De Soto died and was buried in the Mississippi.  Those of his men who still lived built a few boats and managed to reach the Spanish settlements in Mexico.

[Sidenote:  Other Spanish explorers.]

[Sidenote:  Attempts at settlement.]