William Elsey Connelley

“ With Quivira Kansas made her first manifestation. She broke on the world with a radiant flash as a recompense to Coronado for Cibola and the pueblos of the Rio Grande—the mummy villages of the dead deserts. While she was not appreciated and was left to her “brutish people” and her rolling herds of wild oxen for some centuries, it is a source of satisfaction to know that the Kansas plains were ridden over by mailed knights generations before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock were planted on our eastern shores. ”

“ Now, if the Coronado-Quivira towns were not on the Kansas River, nor near it, the Escanjaques were not the Kansas Indians. The Kansas Indians would not go so far south to hunt the buffalo. For it is conceded that they lived then on the banks of the Missouri, and north of the Kansas River. There were buffalo in their own country at that time, but probably not in such numbers as on the plains. It is doubtful if the Caddoan people, the Pawnees and Wichitas, would have permitted them to cross Quivira to hunt the buffalo, even if the Coronado-Quivira country was on the Kansas River. ”

“ Humana The Coronado expedition gave the Spaniards the first claim, the prior right and title to the Great Plains. The discovery, together with the exploration of the country by De Soto, should have given the great interior valley in the heart of the continent to Spain. This it would have done had that country shown energy and persistency in its conquest and settlement. But the unusual success of Cortez and Pizarro had over-wrought the Spanish common mind. ”

“ In Quivira, Penalosa found the great city of Taracari. It was within eight leagues of “a very high and insuperable ridge,” which was the end of Quivira. It does not appear that the Spaniards tarried at Taracari. They passed on, coming finally to a river called, by the Indians, the Mischipi. There they found the Escanjaques Indians, to the number of three thousand, assembled and armed to invade Quivira and attack its first city. The Mischipi was reached in June. The prairies were beautiful. One crop of corn was no sooner gathered than another was planted in that fertile land. ”

“ Apache Indians were encountered and found to be friendly. The river led the Spaniards out onto the buffalo plains. Sometimes the bluffs made it necessary for them to bear away from the river. Other bands of Apaches were met, but “no Indian became impertinent.” The great abundance of wild plums pleased the men much. Early in August herds of buffalo appeared, and their habits are well described. Coming down from the Great Staked Plain, sand-hills turned them away from the river, and they bore north to two streams supposed now to be Beaver Creek and the Cimarron. ”

“ Most writers now draw a straight north-and-south line across the map, with a ruler, from Texas to a point on the Arkansas River just west of its turn to make the Great Bend, for this march of Coronado from the Cona towns to the borders of Quivira. The authority for this is the accidental phrase “by the needle” used in describing the march.
When we come to drive down a stake and say—“To this point came Coronado”—we find it quite impossible. The information which would enable us to do this does not exist. Writers find themselves unable to agree when it comes to fixing these definite locations. ”

“ Indeed, he then stood on the borders of Quivira, but the settlements were some leagues beyond. It was a country inhabited by just such Indians as were found on the plains of Kansas and Nebraska two centuries later. They planted a little corn, but they lived chiefly by hunting the buffalo. They had no gold nor anything else a civilized man would covet. Coronado spent twenty-five days in Quivira, traversing the whole width of the land. Then he returned to Tiguex, using a shorter route, probably the ancient road later known as the Old Santa Fe Trail. ”

“ About these towns there were extensive fields of corn. Three days beyond them to the north on the road which led Coronado to the Nebraska border he was murdered by Humana, who usurped command of the filibusteros. On that day a buffalo herd was seen which seemed to cover all the plains. After this the herds were not so large, and on the tenth day out from the Quivira towns on the Arkansas, a river was reached which was a quarter of a league wide, as remembered by the man who described the journey. It was possibly the Platte. There six Indians deserted and started back to New Mexico. ”

“ On the 23d of April, 1541, Coronado set out from Tiguex to find the rich land of Quivira. The Turk was the guide, and once upon the way, there remained no doubt of his knowledge of the country to be traversed. Coronado went by Cicuye, but did not stop there. He was impatient to reach the golden settlements and held steadily to the eastward. In nine days from Cicuye the army emerged on the Great Plains and saw the buffalo, then just beginning the annual migration to the north. ”

“ On that river many people dwelt. The Humana party had been murdered a long distance from there—“Eighteen days' journey from here.” Large settlements of Indians were to be found both above and below this town, and the river at that point runs east. The Indians advised the Spaniards to stop and go no further, saying the people who had deserted their homes had gone to assemble their friends to attack the intruders and would destroy them. But the Spaniards pushed on, starting the following day. They traveled three leagues through a well settled country, and could see houses still beyond. ”

“ This march occupied about a month. The army left Culican on the 22d of April, and its general direction was northeast. Coronado, with a select company, went on in advance. The route led them into that land embraced in Eastern Arizona, as we know the country. The Indians were alarmed at the approach of so large a force of strangers, and gave battle. They were defeated, and the Spaniards took possession of the Zuni villages on the 7th day of July, 1540. How different the reality from the golden stories which had stirred New Spain! ”

“ Quivira Coronado The conquest of the continent of North America by the Spaniards was for the most part conducted from Cuba. The expedition of Cortez to conquer Mexico sailed from Havana. In 1520 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon was granted a royal license to explore the coasts of Florida. In pursuance of this order he sent his lieutenant Gordilla to make a preliminary voyage, whose reports were so favorable that Ayllon carried them to Spain, where he secured a royal cedula to explore and settle eight hundred leagues of the Florida coasts. ”

“ They were at war with another tribe living some twenty-five miles beyond in the interior. The Escanjaques said it was their enemies who had killed Humana and his men. They supposed the Spaniards had come for the purpose of avenging those murders, and they requested permission to guide the strangers to those villages. This permission was granted, and the whites were taken seven leagues to a river with wonderful banks, and in some places so deep that vessels might have sailed on it with ease. The land was fertile and densely wooded along the river, which is now supposed to be the Arkansas. ”

“ We know that the Pawnees lived on the Big Blue River. One of their oldest villages was on the site of the present Blue Springs, in Gage County, Nebraska. In Coronado's time they ranged almost to the Missouri. Du Tisne found them on the Neosho in 1719. And we may well believe they roamed to the western limits of the buffalo plains. The Kansas did not ascend the Kansas River at all until long after Coronado's day. The theorists make the Pawnees the inhabitants of Harahey, a country to the north of Quivira. ”

“ In the spring of 1662, Penalosa gathered his forces for the march eastward to find Quivira, the location of which remained an enigma to some extent even to the New Mexican Spanish, notwithstanding the many explorations they made to that land. The expedition consisted of eighty Spanish soldiers, with six three-pounder cannon, and thirty-six carts to carry the ammunition. There were one thousand Indians, by which we may suppose there was possibly one-fifth of that number. ”

“ From the Red River Coronado went straight north on the 101st Meridian-180 leagues, which brought him to the Platte River, which is just 175 leagues or 460 miles. This allows 5 leagues or 13 miles for detours and deviations in the journey north. The Platte is St. Peter & St. Paul's River. It is in reason to believe that the Arkansas Indians, the Arkanse, came up the Arkansas River to the buffalo plains. Their location would warrant their doing that. They were found on the south side of the Arkansas River. That river must have been the south boundary of Quivira. ”

“ He was a very intelligent man, and it is proper to regard his statements as fairly accurate. He says the first villages coming up the river from Mexico were one hundred leagues south of Taos. They were Qualcu and Senecu. This is apparently the same point at which Onate placed his first villages forty-one leagues above El Paso. Fifteen leagues up the river from Senecu was Sevilleta. Then there was a blank of seven leagues. Then came the Teoas villages, evidently identical with the Tiguex of Coronado and the Tiguas of Espejo. ”

“ This priest is usually spoken of as Fray Juan Padilla, and it is said that he was a native of Andalusia. He remained on the Rio Grande when Coronado returned to Mexico. And Fray Juan de la Cruz, a Portuguese soldier of fortune named Andres del Campo, a negro, and a half-blood negro named Louis and Sebastian respectively, and some Indians from New Spain stopped with Fray Padilla at the pueblos on the Rio Grande. In the summer of 1542 Padilla prepared to return to Quivira as a missionary to that country. ”

“ There was no white witness to the murder of the friar except possibly the Portuguese and the attendants. They are said to have observed it from a hill. It is not safe to depend on such testimony. They were fleeing for life. It is doubtful if they turned to look back while in view of the Indians. In truth, they might have themselves murdered Padilla. The account contains no sufficient motive for his murder by the Indians. The assertion that they committed the murder to secure his ornaments can not be taken seriously. ”

“ This pueblo has been by many identified with the ruins of Pecos. If we accept Mr. Dellenbaugh's location of Tiguex, the village of Cicuye was far south of the Pecos ruin. The direction from Cicuye was to the east by south, coming out on the Llano Estacado, where the buffalo herds were found in such numbers. Following the buffalo were found two plains tribes, the Querechos and the Teyas, now supposed to have been the Tonkawas of West-central Texas, and the Comanches. The Turk was put forward always to speak first to these wanderers. ”

“ Their fears were well founded, for those treacherous Indians crossed in the night and attacked the Quivirans, killing all they could and burning the city. The Spaniards crossed the river and entered the burning city shortly after sunrise, but the Quivirans had fled, believing the whites in treacherous league with the Escanjaques. The soldiers spent most of the day in arresting the conflagration and restraining their self-imposed allies. The next morning Penalosa marched two leagues through the settlement and counted thousands of houses. ”

“ How many survivors of the expedition suffered this shipwreck we do not know. Four finally reached the Spanish settlements. They were rescued on the coast of the Gulf of California in April, 1536. They had wandered in the wilds of Texas and the deserts and mountains of Northern Mexico, as we know those regions, for more than seven years. The leader of the band was Cabeza de Vaca, and the others were Maldonado, Dorantes, and a negro slave named Estevan. The route passed over by these wanderers can not now be established. How they had escaped and managed to survive they did not themselves know. ”

“ Narvaez made preparations for the immediate conquest of Florida. He sailed from Spain on the 17th of June, 1527. His course carried him to Cuba, where he overhauled his fleet, to which he added a vessel to replace one lost on the voyage. He then set sail for the Texas coast, but on the 15th of April he landed at Apalache Bay, having been driven from his course by a storm and the force of heavy currents. ”

“ His location of Tiguex, it seems to me, can not be disproven, and is much lower down the Rio Grande than the generally accepted site at Bernalillo. [2]
The information which has come down to us in insufficient. By it we can not trace the old routes with certainty. Archaeology and a full knowledge of the modern geography of the Southwest and Mexico may aid us much. With all this, however, in neither the desert regions nor on the Great Plains can the trails passed over by Coronado be surely identified. ”

“ The Spaniards were driven from the field, though they claimed to have slain many of the Indians. They freed some Indian women, but retained one man and some boys. They then returned to their camp to sleep, almost all of them being slightly wounded. ”

“ They determined to build boats in which to quit those inhospitable shores, and to keep the sea to the westward. Late in 1528, a forge was set up, and such metal as their equipment afforded was made into tools and nails. ”