The return of the priest, his remarkable experiences, and the stories which he brought from the far north attracted the highest degree of attention from the officers and people of Mexico. Nobody doubted the truth of the statements of Fray Marcos. He had not found gold and silver, but he had discovered settled tribes and a fertile country. The notion of great wealth in metals readily associated itself with these two elements, and it was not difficult to obtain help in men and means for the organization of a campaign on a larger scale into those regions. Don Antonio de Mendoza therefore did not hesitate, after the discovery had been made and the way pointed out, to proceed to conquest. For this he found a ready and willing instrument in Francisco Vasquez Coronado.
CHAPTER III.
FRANCISCO VASQUEZ CORONADO.
Although still young, Coronado had filled offices of no little importance in Mexico. He was born in Salamanca, Spain, and had married the daughter of Alonzo de Estrada, royal treasurer in Mexico. Nuño de Guzman had persecuted and imprisoned Estrada because he would not connive at the robbery of the royal chest of 9000 pesos. After the inquisitorial judge, Diego Perez de la Torre, who had put Guzman in prison, died in 1538 at Guadalajara, Cristóbal de Oñate, father of the future conqueror of New Mexico, succeeded him as governor in New Galicia, and Coronado was appointed by a royal decree of April 15, 1539, to conduct the usual examination of the administration of the deceased. He exchanged this position of juez de residencia in the same year for the higher one of governor of the province, with which Oñate had been only provisionally invested. When Fray Marcos returned to the City of Mexico Coronado was there. He asked of the viceroy Mendoza the privilege of attempting at his own expense the conquest and colonization of the newly discovered lands in the north. The viceroy had always regarded and treated Coronado as a favorite and readily accepted his offer, which would save him all material expenditure, and as readily agreed to another condition: to the preparation of an expedition by sea from Natividad, in the present state of Guadalajara, to explore the coast toward the north and the interior of the Gulf of California,[73] but principally to keep along the coast in touch with Coronado’s land expedition. A comrade of Coronado’s, Pedro Casteñeda, writes of the object of this cruise: “When the soldiers had all left Mexico, the viceroy ordered Don Pedro de Alarcon to sail with two ships from Natividad to the coast of the Southern Sea and proceed to Jalisco, in order to take on board the things which the soldiers could not carry. He was then to sail along the coast, following the march of the army, for it was believed, according to the reports, that it would not be far away, and could easily keep in communication with the ships by means of the rivers. But matters turned out differently, as we shall see further along, and the effects were lost, at least [Casteñeda grimly adds] to those to whom they belonged.”
The cost of the fitting out of these two expeditions amounted, according to Herrera, to 60,000 ducats, a sum at that time equivalent to more than a quarter of a million dollars of our currency. Coronado was therefore deeply in debt, when he, on February 1, 1540, left Compostella, whither the viceroy had accompanied him, to march with his land “army” toward the north. The force consisted, according to Casteñeda, of 300 Spaniards and 800 Indians. Mota-Padilla says definitely that Coronado had 260 horse and 60 foot, with more than a thousand Indians, and that he took with him six swivel-guns, more than a thousand spare horses and other horses carrying freight and ammunition. According to Herrera, the train was accompanied by large numbers of live sheep and swine. The Spaniards were divided into eight companies, which were commanded by the captains Diego de Guzman, Rodrigo Maldonado, and other officers. Lopez de Samaniego was master of the ordnance (maestro de campo) and Pedro de Tobar ensign. Four priests of the Franciscan order went along with the battalion: Fray Marcos (who had in the meantime become provincial), Fray Juan de Padilla, Fray Juan de la Cruz, and Fray Luis de Ubeda. Another priest and a lay brother seem to have afterward joined the force. Don Antonio de Mendoza took so much part in the expedition as to choose and appoint the higher officers. Pablo de Melgosa commanded the infantry and Hernando de Alvarado the small artillery force. Nothing was forgotten that could give the expedition splendor of equipment, the most effective leaders, and the largest provision. Coronado himself enjoyed general confidence, but he left behind him, says his morose subaltern Casteñeda, “great wealth and a young, noble, and lovely wife.”
The viceroy, while setting in operation the preparations for this miniature massing of forces, had made a farther step toward the exploration of the north. With the caution that attended every important transaction of the Spanish officers, he had already taken measures to test upon the spot the trustworthiness of the representations of Fray Marcos. Not so much from suspicion as from prudence, based on a knowledge of the honest weaknesses of human nature, Don Antonio de Mendoza had ordered Captain Melchior Diaz to follow from Culiacan the route of the Franciscan toward the north, and approach as near Cibola as possible. Diaz started out with fifteen horsemen on November 17, 1539. On the 20th of March, 1540, the viceroy received a letter from him from Culiacan, whither he had returned with his task so far unaccomplished that he had not succeeded in getting farther north than “Chichiltic-calli.” Beyond that point lay an uninhabited region at the end of which was Cibola. “When one has passed the great desert,”[74] wrote Diaz, “he will find seven cities which are about a day’s journey from one another. All together are called Civola.” Diaz received this information and a description of the houses of Cibola which was extraordinarily accurate from the Indians between Chichiltic-calli and Culiacan. There was much snow in the former region and the country began to be again mountainous there. He consequently returned, convinced that he could not go farther with his small means.
The name “Chichiltic-calli” is derived from the Nahuatl language of Central Mexico, and means literally “red house.” It therefore probably came from the Indians who went with Fray Marcos on his first journey, among whom were some who spoke the Nahuatl language. The word has now disappeared as the name of a place. The position of Chichiltic-calli is thus an object of careful search, the more so because the determination of its location will afford an important aid in the identification of Cibola.
General Simpson and several writers following him have expressed the opinion that the ruins of “Casa Grande,” which the Pimas call Civano-qi, on the southern bank of the Gila River and about eighty-five miles northwest of Tucson in Arizona, represent Chichiltic-calli. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan has very pertinently objected to this supposition that no single ruin on the Rio Gila corresponds with the description which Coronado’s contemporaries have left us of the “red house.” At the risk of anticipating the course of historical events, I shall examine this question more closely.
Casteñeda says definitely that Chichiltic-calli was 220 leagues, or about 550 English miles, north or northeast of Culiacan, and 80 leagues, or 216 miles, south or southwest of Cibola. The distance and direction point to southeastern Arizona, near the western line of New Mexico, and not to the region of Casa Grande, which is situated rather west of north from Culiacan. Although the measurements as well as the statements of direction of the itineraries of the sixteenth century cannot be implicitly relied upon, still the fact that the companions of Coronado—Casteñeda, Diaz, and Juan Jaramillo—agree in respect to the direction is important. Of still more decisive significance are the descriptions of the country, the account of the building at Chichiltic-calli, and the itinerary itself.
Melchior Diaz, who first saw the “red house,” does not mention the ruins. Juan Jaramillo, without speaking of the building, mentions a chain of mountains that was called Chichiltic-calli. Casteñeda, on the other hand, is very circumstantial. He says first, explicitly, that the unpopulated region begins there, and that “the land ceases to be covered with thorny trees and the aspect of the country changes. The Gulf [of California] terminates there, the coast turns, the mountains follow the same direction, and one has to climb over them to get into the plains again.... The soil of this region is red.... The rest of the country is uninhabited, and is covered with forests of fir, the fruits of which tree are found in abundance.... There is a kind of oak there, the acorns of which ... are as sweet as sugar. Watercresses are found in the springs, rosebushes, pulegium, and marjoram.” In the vicinity he saw flocks of wild sheep, very large, with long horns and long hair. Finally, he describes the inhabitants as belonging to the wildest tribe which they had met in that country. They dwelt in isolated huts and lived solely by hunting. The ruin was roofless, extensive, and had been built of red earth.
A later writer, Matias de la Mota-Padilla, who was born at Guadalajara in 1688 and died there in 1766, gives a very detailed description of Chichiltic-calli. It is not probable that he had access to the manuscript of Casteñeda, for he was never away from Spanish America.[75] He borrows nothing either in his account of the “red house” from Herrera, who copied Jaramillo. His statements are, then, derived from some still unknown source, and are therefore doubly interesting. He says: “They went through a narrow defile (portezuela) which was named Chichiltic-calli (which means ‘red house,’ because there was a house there plastered on the outside with red earth, called almagre). There they found fir-trees with fir-cones full of good meat. On the top of a rock lay skulls of rams with large horns, and some said they had seen three or four of these sheep, which were very swift-footed.”