TRANSLATION OF THE REPORT OF HERNANDO DE ALVARADO

ACCOUNT OF WHAT HER­NANDO DE AL­VA­RADO AND FRIAR JUAN DE PA­DIL­LA DIS­COV­ERED GO­ING IN SEARCH OF THE SOUTH SEA.[374]

We set out from Granada on Sunday, the day of the beheading of Saint John the Baptist, the 29th of August, in the year 1540, on the way to Coco.[375] After we had gone 2 leagues, we came to an ancient building like a fortress, and a league beyond this we found another, and yet another a little farther on, and beyond these we found an ancient city, very large, entirely destroyed, although a large part of the wall was standing, which was six times as tall as a man, the wall well made of good worked stone, with gates and gutters like a city in Castile. Half a league or more beyond this, we found another ruined city, the walls of which must have been very fine, built of very large granite blocks, as high as a man and from there up of very good quarried stone. Here two roads separate, one to Chia and the other to Coco; we took this latter, and reached that place, which is one of the strongest places that we have seen, because the city is on a very high rock, with such a rough ascent that we repented having gone up to the place. The houses have three or four stories; the people are the same sort as those of the province of Cibola; they have plenty of food, of corn and beans and fowls like those of New Spain. From here we went to a very good lake or marsh, where there are trees like those of Castile, and from there we went to a river, which we named Our Lady (Nuestra Señora), because we reached it the evening before her day in the month of September.[376] We sent the cross by a guide to the villages in advance, and the next day people came from twelve villages, the chief men and the people in order, those of one village behind those of another, and they approached the tent to the sound of a pipe, and with an old man for spokesman. In this fashion they came into the tent and gave me the food and clothes and skins they had brought, and I gave them some trinkets, and with this they went off.

This river of Our Lady flows through a very wide open plain sowed with corn plants; there are several groves, and there are twelve p595 villages. The houses are of earth, two stories high; the people have a good appearance, more like laborers than a warlike race; they have a large food supply of corn, beans, melons, and fowl in great plenty; they clothe themselves with cotton and the skins of cows and dresses of the feathers of the fowls; they wear their hair short. Those who have the most authority among them are the old men; we regarded them as witches, because they say that they go up into the sky and other things of the same sort. In this province there are seven other villages, depopulated and destroyed by those Indians who paint their eyes, of whom the guides will tell Your Grace; they say that these live in the same region as the cows, and that they have corn and houses of straw.

Here the people from the outlying provinces came to make peace with me, and as Your Grace may see in this memorandum, there are 80 villages there of the same sort as I have described, and among them one which is located on some streams; it is divided into twenty divisions, which is something remarkable; the houses have three stories of mud walls and three others made of small wooden boards, and on the outside of the three stories with the mud wall they have three balconies; it seemed to us that there were nearly 15,000 persons in this village. The country is very cold; they do not raise fowls nor cotton; they worship the sun and water. We found mounds of dirt outside of the place, where they are buried.

In the places where crosses were raised, we saw them worship these. They made offerings to these of their powder and feathers, and some left the blankets they had on. They showed so much zeal that some climbed up on the others to grasp the arms of the cross, to place feathers and flowers there; and others bringing ladders, while some held them, went up to tie strings, so as to fasten the flowers and the feathers.

p596

TESTIMONY CONCERNING THOSE WHO WENT ON THE EXPEDITION WITH FRANCISCO VAZQUEZ CORONADO[377]

At Compostela, on February 21, 1540, Coronado presented a petition to the viceroy Mendoza, declaring that he had observed that certain persons who were not well disposed toward the expedition which was about to start for the newly discovered country had said that many of the inhabitants of the City of Mexico and of the other cities and towns of New Spain, and also of Compostela and other places in this province of New Galicia were going on the expedition at his request or because of inducements offered by him, as a result of which the City of Mexico and New Spain were left deserted, or almost so. Therefore, he asked the viceroy to order that information be obtained, in order that the truth might be known about the citizens of New Spain and of this province who were going to accompany him. He declared that there were very few of these, and that they were not going on account of any attraction or inducement offered by him, but of their own free will, and as there were few of them, there would not be any lack of people in New Spain. And as Gonzalo de Salazar, the factor or royal agent, and Pero Almidez Cherino, the veedor or royal inspector of His Majesty for New Spain, and other citizens of Mexico who knew all the facts and had the necessary information, were present there, Coronado asked His Grace to provide and order that which, would best serve His Majesty’s interests and the welfare and security of New Spain.

The viceroy instructed the licenciate Maldonado, oidor of the royal audiencia,[378] to procure this information. To facilitate the hearing he provided that the said factor and veedor and the regidores, and others who were there, should attend the review of the army, which was to be held on the following day. Nine of the desired witnesses were also commanded by Maldonado to attend the review and observe those whom they knew in the army.

On February 26[379] the licentiate Maldonado took the oaths of the witnesses in proper form, and they testified to the following effect:

LXXXI. A Native of Pecos

Hernand Perez de Bocanegra, a citizen of Mexico, stated that he had been present on the preceding Sunday, at the review of the force which the viceroy was sending for the pacification of the country recently discovered by the father provincial, Fray Marcos de Niza, and that he p597 had taken note of the force as the men passed before him; and at his request he had also been allowed to see the list of names of those who were enrolled in the army; and he declared that in all the said force he did not recognize any other citizens of Mexico who were going except Domingo Martin, a married man, whom he had sometimes seen living in Mexico, and provided him with messengers; and one Alonso Sanchez, who was going with his wife and a son, and who was formerly a shoemaker; and a young man, son of the bachiller Alonso Perez, who had come only a few days before from Salamanca, and who had been sent to the war by his father on account of his restlessness; and two or three other workmen or tradespeople whom he had seen at work in Mexico, although he did not know whether they were citizens there; and on his oath he did not see in the whole army anyone else who was a citizen of Mexico, although for about fourteen years he had been a citizen and inhabitant of that city, unless it was the captain-general, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, and Lopez de Samaniego the army-master; and, moreover, he declared that he felt certain that those above mentioned were going of their own free will, like all the rest.

Antonio Serrano de Cardona, one of the magistrates of Mexico, who was present from beginning to end of the review of the preceding Sunday, testified in similar form. He said that Alonso Sanchez had formerly been a citizen of Mexico, but that for a long time his house had been empty and he had traveled as a trader, and that he was going in search of something to live on; and one Domingo Martin was also going, who formerly lived in Mexico, and whose residence he had not known likewise for a long time, nor did he think that he had one, because he had not seen him living in Mexico. He did not think it would have been possible for any citizens of Mexico to have been there whom he did not know, because he had lived in Mexico during the twenty years since he came to Mexico, and ever since the city was established by Christians, and besides, he had been a magistrate for fifteen years. And besides, all those whom he did see who were going, were the most contented of any men he had ever seen in this country starting off for conquests. After the force left the City of Mexico, he had been there, and had noticed that it was full of people and that there did not seem to be any scarcity on account of those who had started on this expedition.

Gonzalo de Salazar, His Majesty’s factor for New Spain, and also a magistrate of the City of Mexico, declared that the only person on the expedition who possessed a repartimiento or estate in New Spain was the captain-general, Vazquez de Coronado, and that he had noticed one other citizen who did not have a repartimiento. He had not seen any other citizen of Mexico, nor of New Spain, although one of the greatest benefits that could have been done New Spain would have been to draw off the young and vicious people who were in that city and all over New Spain. p598

Pedro Almidez Cherino, His Majesty’s veedor in New Spain, had, among other things, noted the horses and arms of those who were going, during the review. He had noticed Coronado and Samaniego, and Alonso Sanchez and his wife, whom he did not know to be a citizen, and Domingo Martin, who was away from Mexico during most of the year. All the rest of the force were people without settled residences, who had recently come to the country in search of a living. It seemed to him that it was a very fortunate thing for Mexico that the people who were going were about to do so because they had been injuring the citizens there. They had been for the most part vicious young gentlemen, who did not have anything to do in the city nor in the country. They were all going of their own free will, and were very ready to help pacify the new country, and it seemed to him that if the said country had not been discovered, almost all of these people would have gone back to Castile, or would have gone to Peru or other places in search of a living.

Servan Bejarano, who had been in business among the inhabitants of Mexico ever since he came to that city, added the information that he knew Alonso Sanchez to be a provision dealer, buying at wholesale and selling at retail, and that he was in very great need, having nothing on which to live, and that he was going to that country in search of a living. He was also very sure that it was a great advantage to Mexico and to its citizens to have many of the unmarried men go away, because they had no occupation there and were bad characters, and were for the most part gentlemen and persons who did not hold any property, nor any repartimientos of Indians, without any income, and lazy, and who would have been obliged to go to Peru or some other region.

Cristobal de Oñate had been in the country about sixteen years, a trifle more or less, and was now His Majesty’s veedor for New Galicia. He knew the citizens of Mexico, and also declared that not a citizen of Compostela was going on the expedition. Two citizens of Guadalajara were going, one of whom was married to an Indian, and the other was single. As for the many young gentlemen and the others who were going, who lived in Mexico and in other parts of New Spain, it seemed to him that their departure was a benefit rather than a disadvantage, because they were leading vicious lives and had nothing with which to support themselves.

When these statements and depositions had all been duly received, signed, and attested, and had been shown to his most illustrious lordship, the viceroy, he ordered an authorized copy to be taken, which was made by Joan de Leon, clerk of Their Majesties’ court and of the royal audiencia of New Spain, the 27th of February, 1540, witnessed by the secretary, Antonio de Almaguer, and sent to His Majesty, to be laid before the lords of the council, that they might provide and order that which should be most serviceable to their interests.

p599

A LIST OF WORKS USEFUL TO THE STUDENT OF THE CORONADO EXPEDITION

The following list contains the titles of the books and documents which have been found useful during the preparation of the preceding memoir on the Coronado expedition of 1540–1542. The works cited have helped, in one way or another, toward the formation of the opinions expressed in the Historical Introduction, and in them may be found the authority for the statements made in the introduction and in the notes to the translations of the Spanish narratives. It is hoped that no source of information of prime importance has been overlooked. The comments on the various books, essays, and documents are such as suggested themselves in the course of the examination of the works in question.

References are given to the location of the more important documents, so far as these are available in the various collections of printed documents. The value of these sources has been discussed in the preceding pages, and these opinions are not repeated in this list. The titles of the printed books are quoted from the editions which came nearest to the authors’ manuscripts, so far as these editions could be consulted. Reference is made also to the most available later editions, and to the English and French translations of Spanish, Italian, and Latin works. With hardly an exception, the titles are quoted from the volumes themselves, as they were found in the Harvard College Library or in the John Carter Brown Library of Providence. The Lenox Library of New York supplied such volumes as were not to be found in Cambridge, Boston, or Providence.

Dr Justin Winsor and Mr F.W. Hodge have rendered very material assistance in giving this list such completeness as it possesses. To Mr Hodge especially are due many of the titles which relate to the ethnological and archeological aspects of the subject.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

This book is excerpted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892–93, by J. W. Powell, Director; Publication Date 1896. Original scanned images are available from archive.org, search for annualreportofbu19293smit.

Original printed spelling and grammar are retained, with a few exceptions noted below. ¶ The transcriber created the cover image, and hereby assigns it to the public domain. Illustrations have been moved from their original locations to nearby places between paragraphs. The Plates are shown herein in their original printed order, but notice that Plates LXXXII to LXXXIV are located between Plates LIV and LV. Many of the Plates are linked to larger, better resolved images via the glyph ◊ located in the caption. These larger images are available only in the html edition. ¶ Footnotes have been renumbered 1–379, and changed to endnotes. ¶ The original index included references to other material located on pp i–328 of the Fourteenth Annual Report Part 1. The entries that reference pages 329–613 (The Coronado Expedition) have been excerpted and inserted [herein] after the endnotes.

to [Table of Contents]

There are five accented letters in the printed version that have no Unicode equivalents. These are shown as images herein: “

”—latin small r with macron; “

”—latin small q with tilde above; “

”—latin small q with macron; “

”—latin small r with tilde above; and “

”—latin small p with tilde above. These glyphs, and words containing them, will not be found by a simple search in a browser. The spanish section is full of macrons and tildes, and it was sometimes difficult to distinguish them in the scanned images available to the transcribers; some mistakes of transcription are likely.

Page [380]. Full stop was changed to comma in this phrase: “A month later. September 7, 1538, the representative”.

Page [396]. Full stop was removed from the phrase “to select 30 of the best equipped horsemen. who should go”.

Page [407]. Changed obaining to obtaining, in “without obaining any news, he was”.

Page [444]. Changed “bio entre aquellag ente” to “bio entre aquella gente”.

Page [465]. In “querido se sepan tambien las que agora dire”, the que assumed herein was not printed clearly.

Page [523] first [footnote]. In “former name of the pueblo was Aquiu”, a smudge atop the A might have hidden an accent mark. There was also a big smudge atop the G in “Gilded Man”.

Page [564]. The first footnote had no anchor in the printed text, but probably should be anchored to the chapter title—as shown herein.

Page [570]. There was a missing phrase between “the third about” and “These three are like”. Nine spaces are included herein to indicate this, as in the printed version.

Page [601], under heading Barcia, Andres Gonzales. The phrase “1512 hasta 1722, escrito por Don Gabriel de Cardenas z Cano.—Madrid, CI

I

CCXXIII” in­cludes a scarce­ly sup­port­ed glyph, U+2183 ROMAN NUMERAL REVERSED ONE HUNDRED—rendered herein as an image.

Page [609]. The phrase “November, 1895, and Febuary, 1896” was changed to “November, 1895, and February, 1896”.

Page [627]. Index entry “MATYATA, forioer New Mexican pueblo” was retained despite the obvious spelling issue. In the entry “MENOOZA, ANTONIO DE, Cabeza de Vaca entertained by”, “MENOOZA” was changed to “MENDOZA”.

Page [628]. Two consecutive entries read

“MONTCALM, Menomini at fall of … 16

MONTEJO, —, feats of, in Tabasco … 540”

The first entry pertains to an essay outside the scope of this book, but has been retained so that the em dash in the second entry may be interpreted properly. The transcriber hopes that the reader of this book makes better sense of it than the transcriber has. Likewise, the em dash in “MUÑOZ, —, copy of Alvarado's report by … 594” does not seem to make sense. Again, on page [629], the meaning of the em dash is not clear in “NAVARRETE, —, cited on date”.

Page [636]. “TUTHEA-NÂY” was changed to “TUTHEA-UÂY” to agree with the reference in the note on page 492; the last A has been rendered with a circumflex, but this is not clear in the scanned pages.