Chapter IV: Part 4

For more information about the park and its programs, write:

Superintendent
De Soto National Memorial
P.O. Box 15390
Bradenton, FL 34280

Coronado National Memorial, Arizona

Following an ancient Indian trade path up the San Pedro valley, the
Coronado expedition crossed the present Mexico-United States border
just east of this park. Hikers on the Coronado Peak Trail looking down
Montezuma Canyon can see in the far distance cottonwood trees that
mark Coronado’s line of march.

The national memorial was established in 1941, 400th anniversary of
the expedition. Its setting high in the Huachuca Mountains is a
fitting place to recall the first major Spanish _entrada_ into the
American Southwest in all its color and fire: the gathering of the
army at Compostela, arduous marches across wilderness, encounters with
native cultures of great subtlety and art, discovery of a land of vast
expanse and power, and above all the record of where they had been and
what they had seen.

This is a park to see on foot. Trails lead to good viewing points and
connect with others in Coronado National Forest, which surrounds the
park.

For information about the park and its programs, write:

Superintendent
Coronado National Memorial
4104 E. Montezuma Canyon
Road, Hereford AZ 85615

Pecos National Historical Park, New Mexico

The ruins of Pecos Pueblo and Spanish missions of the 17th- and 18th-centuries crown a small ridge overlooking the Pecos Valley in upper New Mexico. At the time of the Coronado _entrada_, the pueblo was a giant apartment house, several stories high, with a central plaza, 600 rooms, and many kivas—home to 2,000 souls. The village prospered because it commanded the trade path between Pueblo farmers of the Rio Grande and buffalo hunters of the Plains. Pecos was a crossroads of commerce and culture, and its people grew adept at trade and war. The arrival of Franciscan priests in the 1600s with Spanish custom, religion, law inexorably altered Pueblo life. The Spaniards built a spacious mission church on the south end of the ridge, and a second but smaller one when the first church was destroyed in the Pueblo revolt of 1680. Pecos continued as a mission for more than a century. Disease and Comanche raids spelt decline in the late 18th century. The last inhabitants—fewer than 20—drifted away in 1838.

The park is 25 miles southeast of Santa Fe. Among its features are the ruins of the ancient pueblo, two restored kivas, and adobe mission walls. For information on the park and its programs, write:

Superintendent
Pecos National Historical
Park
P.O. Drawer 418
Pecos NM 87552-0418

Cabrillo National Monument, California

This park honors the man who led the first European exploring
expedition along the California coast. Sailing under a Spanish flag,
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo departed on 27 June 1542 from the port of
Navidad on Mexico’s west coast. He commanded the ship _San Salvador_
(with a crew of 60); with him was _Victoria_, and another smaller
vessel. His objective: “to discover the coast of New Spain.” Three
months later he hove to in “a very good enclosed port”—San Diego Bay.
This was the mariner’s first landfall north of Baja peninsula.
Cabrillo himself died and was buried in the Channel Islands. His crew
went on to explore as far north as Oregon, seeing new landmarks and
new peoples, not all friendly.

The park is located on Point Loma, within the city of San Diego.
Features include a heroic statue of Cabrillo, dramatic views of the
Pacific and San Diego Bay, and Old Point Loma Lighthouse, a 1850s
structure. In winter, the point is a good place to see the annual
migration of the gray whale.

For information about the park and its programs, write:

Superintendent
Cabrillo National Memorial
P.O. Box 6670
San Diego CA 92166

Essay on Sources

If any of the leading _conquistadores_ who march through these pages kept a running account of his adventures, the journal has been lost. Except for occasional letters, the closest we can come to firsthand information are reminiscences written or dictated by lesser participants many years after the events described. Some supplementary material also comes from court testimony. More immediacy is lost by the fact that most English readers must depend on translations of varying accuracy and fluency. There are several translations of all main documents.

The first of the New World adventurers to reminisce in print was Cabeza de Vaca. His _Relación ..._ appeared in 1542. Buckingham Smith’s English translation, first printed in 1855, was later included with several other documents in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528-1543_, edited by Frederick Hodge and Theodore Lewis (New York, 1907).

The same work also contains Smith’s translation of _Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto_ by an anonymous Hidalgo (gentleman or knight) of Elvas, Portugal, first published in Portugal in 1557 by a survivor of the long march. Smith’s translation, somewhat modified, reappeared in Gaylord Bourne’s two-volume _Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto_ (New York, 1904). Bourne’s volumes also contain reminiscences by Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto’s secretary, and Luis de Biedma, the latter a spare account. The longest and lushest of the De Soto tales is _The Florida of the Inca_, the Inca being Garcilaso de la Vega, son of a Spanish father and an Incan mother. He drew his information from the oral accounts of three of De Soto’s soldiers and used his active imagination to embellish what he heard. The first complete English translation, by John and Jeannette Varner, appeared in 1951 (reprinted by University of Texas Press, 1980). Miguel Albornoz has published a novelized biography, _Hernando de Soto, Knight of the Americas_, translated by Bruce Boeglin (New York, 1986).

Some secondary material, which uses anthropological, archeological, and geographic research to shed light on the early explorations, should be mentioned. One instance: _Final Report of the United States De Soto Commission_, John R. Swanton, chairman (Washington, D.C., 1939). The commission sought to retrace De Soto’s zigzagging route. Jeffery P. Brain’s new edition of the _Final Report_ for the Smithsonian Press (Washington, D.C., 1985) revises Swanton’s conclusions in many places. Another interesting formulation is “De Soto Trail: National Historic Trail Study, Draft Report” (NPS, 1990). In an appendix Charles Hudson offers a new reconstruction of De Soto’s route. The articles in _First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570_, Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Milanich, eds., (Gainesville. 1989), fill out our understanding of New World societies during the first decades of exploration.

Still the best introduction to Coronado and his expedition is Herbert E. Bolton’s classic biography, _Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains_ (1949). George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey have brought together in _Narratives of the Coronado Expedition_ (Albuquerque, 1940) all the primary documents, including testimony from Coronado’s trial, that anyone except specialists needs to know about the first Spanish _entrada_ into the American Southwest. The chief items are the _Relacións_ of Juan de Jaramillo and Pedro de Castañeda. Castañeda’s _Relación_ also appears in Hodges and Lewis.

A sampling of the historical dispute over Friar Marcos’s doings in the Southwest can be found in articles by Henry Wagner and Carl Sauer in the _New Mexico Historical Review_, April 1937, July 1937, and July 1941. See also Cleve Hallenbeck, _The Journey of Fray Marcos de Niza_ (Dallas 1949). The place of the religious in the Coronado expedition is examined by Fr. Angelico Chavez of New Mexico in _Coronado’s Friars_ (Academy of American Franciscan History, Washington, D.C., 1968). John L. Kessell’s _Kiva, Cross, and Crown_ (National Park Service, Washington, D.C., 1979) looks at the relationships between the Coronado expedition and the key pueblo of Pecos. Albert H. Schroeder has analyzed Coronado’s route across the Plains in _Plains Anthropologist_, February 1962. Carroll L. Riley, in the _New Mexico Historical Review_, October 1971, and _The Kiva_, winter 1975, shows that in Coronado’s time long trade routes and hence a rudimentary system of verbal communications, fortified by signs, linked Cíbola (Háwikuh) and the Indians of Mexico. Other trade trails carried goods and knowledge from the interior across the Colorado River to the Pacific and out onto the Plains. A new account of Coronado’s march is Stewart L. Udall, _To the Inland Empire_ (New York, 1987).

The principal sources on Cabrillo (Juan Paez’s “Summary Log” and court testimony about Cabrillo’s accomplishments) were published by the Cabrillo Historical Association in _The Cabrillo Era and His Voyage of Discovery_ (San Diego, 1982). The best biography, Harry Kelsey’s _Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo_ (The Huntington Library, 1986), is based on extensive new research in sources.

★GPO: 1992—312-246/40005

Footnotes

[1]Paul Horgan in _Great River_ identifies Rio de las Palmas with
today’s Rio Grande. Other historians favor Soto la Marina, about 30
miles north of Tampico, formerly Pánuco.

[2]Such is the conclusion of the U.S. De Soto Commission headed by John
R. Swanton (_Final Report_, Washington, D.C., 1939), which was
appointed by President Roosevelt to study the explorer’s route to
commemorate the 400th anniversary of the landing, an opinion
affirmed by two other scholars, Charles Hudson and Jerald T.
Milanich. For a contrary opinion that favors the Fort Myers area,
see R.F. Schell, _De Soto Didn’t Land at Tampa_, Fort Myers Beach,
1966. Jeffery P. Brain in a new edition of the report for the
Smithsonian Press (1985) concludes that the most we can now say is
that De Soto landed somewhere along the central Florida gulf coast,
“between the Caloosahatchie River to south and the vicinity of Tampa
Bay to the north.” It is conceivable that future archeological
studies will narrow down the landing site.

[3]Because Vásquez was the family name of the _conquistador_, the young
man should properly be called Vásquez. This account, however, will
follow established American custom and call him Coronado.

[4]Among the 30 riders was Juan de Zaldívar. As a consequence, Zaldívar
had to leave behind a captive Indian woman he had picked up in
Tiguex. Rather than return there she fled down a fork of the Brazos
River that rises in the Staked Plains. Somewhere near present Waco,
Texas, she perhaps met the survivors of De Soto’s party as they were
trying to reach Pánuco, Mexico, by land. See page 50 above. If true,
and it seems likely, it was the only contact between the two groups,
who at one point were within 300 to 400 miles of each other.

[5]Too few records have survived for anyone to say with certainty where
Cabrillo was born or grew up. Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, a
Spanish chronicler, identified him in 1615 as Portuguese. Set
against this is the testimony of the explorer’s grandson in 1617
that “My paternal grandfather, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo came [to the
New World] from the Kingdoms of Spain....” The NPS has adopted the
view that Cabrillo was Portuguese. Many historians, including
Cabrillo’s most recent biographer Harry Kelsey, aver that he was
Spanish. David Lavender believes that the question is both elusive
and unimportant. What is certain, Lavender points out, is that like
many adventurers from other countries Cabrillo spent a good part of
his life in the service of Spain and opened new lands to Spanish
settlement. _Ed._

[6]Recent scholarship has shown that accounts which say Cabrillo
commanded two ships on his northern journey, as most accounts do,
were following mistakes made by the first Spanish historians of the
expedition. Unfortunately, Cabrillo’s own log has disappeared and is
known only through an often vague, chronologically mixed-up summary
attributed to a Juan Páez, of whom little is known. Better sources
are the testimony given by witnesses in legal actions brought by
Cabrillo’s heirs to recover property taken from his estate after his
death. For details see Harry Kelsey’s biography, _Juan Rodríguez
Cabrillo_ (1986). and the Cabrillo Historical Association’s 1982
publication, _The Cabrillo Era and His Voyage of Discovery_,
especially articles by Kelsey and James R. Moriarty, III.

National Park Service

_Sources_

Alabama Museum of Natural History 51 (palette stone)
Andersen, Roy 68-69; 82
Batchelor, John 90-91, 92, 93
Bell, Fred 100
Cook, Kathleen Norris 84
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection 28 (bottom)
Florida Division of Historical Resources 43 (all except olive jar)
Florida Museum of Natural History 43 (olive jar)
Glanzman, Louis S. 16; 18-19; 34-35; 44; 64-65; 94 (Chumash Indian)
Gnass, Jeff 104; 108 (lighthouse)
Gray, Tom Back cover (upper left); 36; 102-3
Harrington, Marshall 108-9 (San Diego, gray whale)
Hudson, Charles 46-47 (route information)
Huey, George H. H. 107
Huntington Library 57
Jacka, Jerry Back cover (upper right); 58-59; 73; 79; 80; 106
Lanza, Patricia 77
Library of Congress 4 (De Bry woodcut); 23 (from _Das Trachtenbuch des
Christian Weiditz_); 31 (from Gomara’s _History_); 38; 94
(right)
Mang, Fred 96
Muench, David 54; 98-99
Museo Civico Navale di Genova-Pegli 15 (portrait)
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon 14
National Geographic Society 24 (artist, Felipe Davalos); 26-27
(Michael A. Hampshire)
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich 88
Odyssey Productions (R. Frerck) 20; 22; 28 (top)
Palazzo Tursi, Genoa 15 (coat-of-arms)
Parkin Archeological State Park, Arkansas 48
Peabody Museum, Harvard University 50
Smithsonian Institution 51 (stone axe)
Till, Tom 105
Townsend, L. Kenneth 54-55, 74-75
University of California, Berkeley, Lowie Museum of Anthropology 95
Westlight (Bill Ross) Back cover, lower left; 109

U.S. Department of the Interior

As the Nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has responsibility for most of our nationally owned public lands and natural and cultural resources. This includes fostering wise use of our land and water resources, protecting our fish and wildlife, preserving the environmental and cultural values of our national parks and historical places, and providing for the enjoyment of life through outdoor recreation. The Department assesses our energy and mineral resources and works to assure that their development is in the best interest of all our people. The Department also promotes the goals of the Take Pride in America campaign by encouraging stewardship and citizen responsibility for the public lands and promoting citizen participation in their care. The Department also has a major responsibility for American Indian reservation communities and for people who live in Island Territories under U.S. Administration.

De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo
Explorers of the _Northern Mystery_

_Here is the story of the first explorations of North America. _De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo: Explorers of the Northern Mystery_ traces in graceful text and illustration the journeys of three captains of discovery into New Spain’s northern frontier between 1539 and 1543. Their encounters with a new land and its native peoples mark the beginnings of American history._

Transcriber’s Notes

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.

—Relocated all image captions to be immediately under the corresponding
images, removing redundant references like ”preceding page”.

—Inverted the Timeline to better fit a vertical flow model.

—Silently corrected a few palpable typos.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo, by David Lavender