70 CHAPTER 3 THE CONQUEST OF AMERICA
inspired the conquistador Hernando de Soto, a vet-
eran of the conquest of Peru, to try his fortune in La
Florida. In 1542, after three years of unprofi table
wanderings and struggles with peoples indigenous
to the great area between modern-day South Caro-
lina and Arkansas, de Soto died in the wilderness
of a fever.
The strange tales told by Cabeza de Vaca and his
three companions on their arrival in Mexico in 1536,
and the even stranger story told by a certain Fray
Marcos, who claimed to have seen in the far north
one of the Seven Cities of the mythical golden realm
of Cibola, persuaded Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza in
1540 to send an expedition northward commanded
by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. For two years,
Spanish knights in armor pursued the elusive realm
of gold through the future states of Arizona, New
Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and possibly
Nebraska. Disillusioned by the humble reality of the
Zuñi pueblos of Arizona, the apparent source of the
Cibola myth, Coronado pushed east in search of still
another El Dorado, this time called Quivira. Intrud-
ers who left no trace of their passage, the Spaniards
were repelled by the immensity of the Great Plains
and returned home bitterly disappointed with their
failure to fi nd treasure.In this mural, Cuauhtémoc contra el mito, David Alfaro Siqueiros immortalizes Cuauh-
témoc, the last Aztec emperor to die resisting the Spanish conquest. For many Mexi-
cans, Cuauhtémoc became a symbol of rebellion and national resistance to foreign
intervention and oppression. [Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth, 1944. Mural on Teepan Union Hous-
ing Project, Tlateco, Mexico. © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP/Mexico City/
Schalkwijk, Art Resource, NY]