The Gilded Man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America

by Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

The subsequent adventures of the four survivors may be described very briefly. Buffeted from one Indian tribe to another, often cruelly treated, participating in the privations to which their savage masters were exposed by their miserable way of living, they arrived in northwestern Mexico, as we have already seen, in the year 1536.

Two facts are officially and indubitably established: that Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were members of the expedition of Pámfilo de Narvaez, which went from Spain in 1527 to Cuba, and in the following year from Cuba to Florida and there vanished; and that they appeared again in the year 1536, in a naked and almost savage condition, in the company of Indians, in the present state of Sinaloa. It is therefore evident that they had wandered during an interval of eight years across the North American continent from east to west, from the peninsula of Florida to the Gulf of California.

It is almost impossible to determine the course they took, or probably took. They remained for a long time with the tribes which periodically inhabited the marshy regions of the Mississippi Delta, and were then conducted westward. The fact is of importance that the tuna, or fruit of the great leaf-cactus (opuntia), constituted a principal food resource during the whole time. This indicates that the first year was mostly spent in the southern parts of the present United States; and the description of the country, as well as the fact that the mesquite tree is mentioned, are evidence that they passed through the present State of Texas. Their course was generally westward, and it may be very clearly inferred from that that they at all events crossed the Rio Grande.

At a considerable distance beyond that river they found permanent dwellings, the inhabitants of which planted beans, melons, and maize. In this part of their wanderings they heard of an animal which Cabeza de Vaca called a cow. It has been concluded from this that the wanderers entered New Mexico and saw there the American bison or buffalo. I cannot agree with this opinion. The casas de asiento were much too far west to be identified with the pueblos. The Pimas of southern Sonora, their northern neighbors the Opatas, and several tribes of the Sierra Madre, lived in permanent houses of clay and stone; and if Cabeza de Vaca and his companions had seen the large, many-storied houses of New Mexico they would not have omitted to describe their remarkable stairlike structure. The dress of the inhabitants of these “permanent dwellings” also agrees rather with the costume of Sonora and Chihuahua than with the recognized dress of the Pueblo Indians. By the word “cow” Cabeza de Vaca probably meant to speak of the hides he saw rather than to describe the animal itself. The untanned hide of the large brown deer (cervus canadensis) is but little smaller than that of a cow; and a description of the striking figure of the bison would not have been wanting in the “Naufragios” if Cabeza de Vaca had actually seen the “hump-backed cow,” as the older Spanish writers called it. It is possible that he heard of the buffalo and perhaps saw some of the robes, but it is not certain; for, in the verbal explanations which he gave at Madrid in 1547 to the historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, he spoke only of “three kinds of deer, one of which was as large as an ox,” but said nothing of “cows.”

The fact that the Spaniards constantly wandered toward the “setting sun,” and that from Texas, and that they did not cross the great waterless plains of that state, excludes the supposition that they entered New Mexico and that the “permanent dwellings” meant the pueblos of the Rio Grande. Further decisive is the declaration that the inhabitants of those permanent houses obtained green stones (turquoise or calcite) in exchange for parrot feathers. There are no species of parrots in New Mexico and Arizona, but the Sierra Madre is the habitat of the large green sittich, the feathers of which I have often seen in the possession of the Pueblo Indians, who had bought them in Sonora. The southern Pimas and the Opatas of Sonora used parrot feathers as decorations in their dances till the middle of the last century; and I have surveyed numerous ruins of the clay and stone houses of the Opatas in the Sierra Madre which, now a solemn, silent wilderness, is covered with lofty pine woods in which the loquacious green sittich flit in the early morning from limb to limb. The Indians of whom Cabeza de Vaca speaks bought the turquoises far in the north, and they told of many great houses in which the people there lived. These statements may refer to New Mexico and Arizona; for turquoises are found in the neighborhood of Santa Fé, where they are called “cerillos,” as well as not far from Zuñi, and in southern New Mexico, at no great distance from the present Silver City.

With the stories of permanent settlements, of natives clothed in cotton, and of turquoises found in the far north, which Cabeza de Vaca and his companions told their countrymen, were associated speculations concerning great metallic riches in the northern regions. The wanderers brought no definite statements on this subject, nor could they present visible evidence in the shape of mineral specimens of the existence of the metals; but the thirst for the precious metals was quite as intense in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth, and the credulity of the gold-seekers of that time was not less ready than that of the “prospectors” of to-day. It could, however, have hardly been greater. As soon, therefore, as Melchior Diaz heard the marvellous story of the new-comers, he sent an account of it, not to Guzman, but to Mexico, to Don Antonio de Mendoza, who had arrived there in the year 1554 as the first viceroy of New Spain, and had superseded the provisional government of the bishop of Santo Domingo. Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were invited to Mexico, were well received there, and with the exception of the negro and Maldonado, who remained in Mexico, were sent to Spain. The subsequent fortunes of Cabeza de Vaca are of no further interest in connection with the purpose of this sketch, and we need only say that his adventurous career did not terminate with his wanderings in North America, but that other sufferings as great but of different character awaited him in South America and in Spain, and misfortune pursued him till the end of his life.

Stories like those which came to Mexico through Cabeza de Vaca could not fail to direct the attention of the government to the northwest. Nuño de Guzman was succeeded as provisional governor of New Galicia[65] by the licentiate Diego Perez de la Torre, and when he died, in 1538, his place was taken by a young noble of Salamanca, Francisco Vasquez Coronado, who had married the daughter of the former treasurer, Alonzo de Estrada. As royal visitador he had already travelled over a large part of Mexico, and enjoyed in a high degree the confidence of the viceroy. Young and energetic, disposed, according to the fashion of the time, toward a knight’s career, he was a most suitable person to direct the further progress of the exploration of the northwest.

The stories of Cabeza de Vaca appear still to have been received with some distrust. Without wholly rejecting them, people hesitated to follow the first impulse, which would prompt them to send an expedition to the north at once. Antonio de Mendoza was a sagacious, quiet, careful statesman, and he preferred to reconnoitre before taking decisive steps. In his reconnoissance he received the assistance of the Church.

Among the Franciscan monks in Mexico was a Sardinian brother named Marcus, who, having been born in Nice, was known as Fray Marcos de Nizza. As he figures in history under this designation, I shall continue to call him Fray Marcos. His real name and the date of his birth are still unknown. He came to America in the year 1551 in the service of his order and went to Peru, whence he proceeded with Pedro de Alvarado to Guatemala, and finally to Mexico. He had distinguished himself by his intelligence, capacity, and devotion, and was respected by the brethren of his order. Fray Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo, father provincial in Mexico, proposed in the interest of the mission to detail one or more Franciscan monks on the contemplated reconnoissance. It is not improbable that Fray Marcos voluntarily offered himself for the service. His long experience among the natives especially fitted him for the work; and, whether by his own free will or out of obedience and a sense of duty to his order, he undertook the arduous and dangerous task.

A few historians, among whom are Torquemada and Arricivita, suppose that a preliminary expedition was sent out in 1538, in which, according to some, Fray Marcos did, according to others did not, take part. We have no official reports of such an expedition, and it is possible that these accounts originated in a mistake. The instructions which Don Antonio de Mendoza sent to Fray Marcos, and the receipt of which he acknowledged from New Galicia on November 25, 1538, do not agree with the supposition of such a preliminary reconnoissance. In those instructions the monk is advised to insist upon good treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards of Sinaloa, to protect them against every attempt to reduce them to slavery, and to promise them all support and help in the name of the Crown. He was then ordered to proceed into the interior with all possible precautions, carefully to observe land and people, to avoid all personal danger, and should he find himself on the coast of the “Southern Sea”[66] he was to bury written reports at the foot of a tree distinguished by its size, and to cut a cross in the bark of the tree, so that in case a ship was sent along the coast, its crew might know how to identify it by that mark. Finally Estévanico, the negro who had made the perilous journey with Cabeza de Vaca from Florida to the coast of the Pacific Ocean, was assigned to him as leader and attendant; and in case any of the Indians who had come with those men and their companions to Sinaloa could be of use to him, Francisco Vasquez Coronado, the new governor of Culiacan, was instructed to engage them to accompany Fray Marcos and the negro. The negro was to be subordinate to the monk in every point.