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Mendoza decided to send a small explo-
ratory expedition north before investing heav-
ily in the project. On March 7, 1539, the group
left Culiacán, near the west-central coast of
Mexico. Its official leader was Franciscan friar
Marcos de Niza, a veteran of expeditions in
Peru and Central America. The real leader,
however, was Estéban, the experienced sur-
vivor of the Narváez and Cabeza de Vaca expe-
ditions. Estéban retraced the Indian roads by
which he had earlier come south through the
Sonora Valley. Two months later the expedi-
tion reached the present Sonora-Arizona bor-
der. Niza sent Estéban ahead, with instructions
to report any significant discoveries. It was a
logical strategy, for the region’s Indians
remembered Estéban and got along well with
him. He soon outpaced the main party and
was more than 200 miles ahead of it when he
reached the outskirts of Cíbola.
Several tales relate what may have hap-
pened when Estéban arrived at the first of the
“Seven Cities,” but every story ends with his
death. One legend says that Estéban sent the
leaders of Cíbola a ceremonial gourd, which
hehad successfully used in the past as a peace
sign. At Cíbola, however, red feathers attached
to the gourd wereinterpreted as a threat of
war, amisunderstanding that cost Estéban his
life. Another story holds that the elders of
Cíbola, who were irritated by Estéban’s
demands for turquoise and women, killed him
on suspicion that he was a spy.
News of Estéban’s violent death terrified
Fray Niza, who fled back to Mexico City.
Despite his hasty retreat, however, Niza
reported to Mendoza that he had seen Cíbola
from a distance. His hints at the existence of
a great civilization provoked even wilder
rumors than those created by Cabeza de
Vaca’s austere accounts of Indian life three
years earlier. Rodrigo de Albornoz, treasurer
ofNew Spain, described in a letter what Niza
claimed to have learned of the people of the
Seven Cities:They have houses built of stone and lime,
being of three stories, and with great quan-
tity of turquoises set in doors and windows.
Of animals there are camels and elephants
and cattle of our kind as well as wild ones,
hunted by the natives, and a great number
of sheep like those of Peru, also other ani-
mals with a single horn reaching to their
feet, for which reason they must feed side-
ways.The Spanish lords of Mexico soon learned that
such tales of the architecture and wildlife of
the American Southwest were more fiction
than fact.CORONADO STARTS
NORTH
Confident that Niza was telling the truth,
Mendoza appointed Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado to lead a full-scale expedition
north. An aristocrat by birth whom historians
customarily identify as Coronado rather than
by his Spanish family name, Vásquez, Coron-
ado was governor of Nueva Galicia, the north-
ernmost province of New Spain. He and most
of the volunteers he enlisted were not experi-
enced, battle-hardened conquistadores like
their contemporaries Cortés and de Soto.
Unlike the ruthless Pizarro, Coronado was
also under strict orders from Mendoza to
avoid mistreating any Indians he might
encounter. The expedition grew to become an
armed force of 336 Europeans, mostly
Spaniards, and hundreds of Mexican “Indian
allies,” as well as six Franciscan friars, 1,000
Indian laborers, and more than 1,500 horses
and pack animals. Fray Niza was appointed to
guide the group.(^108) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
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