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.