legacy. An official tribunal investigated Coron-
ado’s management of the expedition, includ-
ing his mistreatment of Indians. Coronado
was cleared of the charges and died in Mexico
City in 1554. His subordinate Cárdenas, how-
ever, had returned to Spain, where he was
convicted of crimes against the Indians and
heavily fined.
Considering the scope of what Coronado
had discovered, his expedition had surpris-
ingly little impact on contemporary explo-
ration. Viceroy Mendoza, safeguarding his
monopoly on any future wealth that might
be found in the region, ordered members of
the expedition to say nothing about what
they had experienced. The public heard
and cared little about the expedition, which
was seen merely as a failed commercial
venture.
When fresh rumors of great civilizations
in the region reached south to Mexico in the
1580s, the expedition had been forgotten so
completely that an entirely new wave of for-
tune seekers rushed to the Spanish court,
pleading for permission to “discover” the
same lands Coronado and his men had jour-
neyed across.
Yet old soldiers like Casteñeda, Jaramillo,
and the author of the Relación del Suceso
recorded their memories, which lay undis-
turbed in Spanish archives for centuries.
Historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y
Valdés included an account of Coronado’s
travels in La Historia general de las Indias,
but Oviedo’s completed work was not pub-
lished until the mid-1850s, 200 years after
the expedition. Coronado’s entradawas dis-
missed and forgotten in his lifetime, but his-
tory later revealed it to be one of the great
epics of exploring the Americas.Coronado and the Seven Cities B 119