After crossing the Great Smokies, De Soto in August 1540 entered the territory of a rich chiefdom called Coosa. It dominated an area from the French Broad River in North Carolina into central Alabama. De Soto’s chronicler described this country as “Thickly settled in numerous and large towns, with fields between, extending from one to another, [it] was pleasant and had a rich soil and fair river margins.”
One of the subject towns was Piachi (the King Site to archeologists), on the banks of the Coosa River in northwest Georgia. De Soto and his expedition spent a day here in early September 1540. The chronicles are silent on the visit, but from the archeological work of David Hally and others, as interpreted by artist L. Kenneth Townsend, we have a good idea of life here.
Piachi was about 5 acres in extent, protected by a palisade and ditch. Inside were about 50 domestic structures and a central plaza with several larger buildings perhaps used for ceremony. Nearby were several tall poles, from which scalps or war trophies probably hung. About 350 persons lived here, less than half the number of the main town of Coosa or the substantial village of Itaba (Etowah Indian Mounds State Historic Site to the north). A good part of the villagers’ living came from growing corn, which they stored in cribs. As the Spaniards traveled from village to village, they expected the Indians to yield up food, guides, porters, and women. Without this sustenance, the expedition could not have covered the territory that it did.
Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, visited by the Coronado expedition in 1540. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States.
Where the Fables Ended
Like De Soto, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado[3] was a younger son who improved his minimal prospects for worldly success by attaching himself to a patron—in this case it was the king’s fabulously wealthy viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza—and going with him to the New World. They arrived in 1535, when Coronado was 25.
Because of Mendoza’s position and character, Coronado’s rise was faster and more genteel than De Soto’s. Two years after settling in Mexico City (originally Tenochtitlán), he married Beatriz de Estrada, an heiress whose father had been the illegitimate son of Spain’s first king, Ferdinand. About the same time Mendoza arranged for his appointment to Mexico City’s governing council and shortly thereafter named him governor of the far northern province of Nueva Galicia. (The position was open because Nuño de Guzmán had been arrested for slave-hunting, and his successor had been killed while fighting Indians.) The only battling Coronado did during those years was putting down a revolt of black slaves in the mining district of Amatepeque. Though he had the rebel leaders drawn and quartered, a standard punishment of the times, he seems to have been more humane than many of his contemporaries.
Even before Coronado’s appointment was officially announced, De Soto’s agents in Mexico notified him that their employer had become adelantado of Florida. In other words, hands off ... a bluff, since the limits of De Soto’s jurisdiction had not been established. But the very fact of the warning shows that De Soto and his people were suspicious of how the winds might be blowing in Mexico.
They had reason to be. Mendoza had finally put together a reconnoitering party whose early entrance into the desirable area would give him a prior claim over either De Soto or Cortés. Take-off point for the group was to be Culiacán, an outpost on the western fringe of Nueva Galicia, 800 miles from Mexico City, that Guzmán had founded a few years earlier. The explorers were hurried across those rough miles by Nueva Galicia’s new governor, Francisco de Coronado, and a retinue of restless young blades looking for something to do. From Culiacán on, the scouts were guided by the black, Estéban, who had traversed part of the country with his owner, Andrés de Dorantes, and Cabeza de Vaca. (Mendoza had purchased Estéban from Dorantes after the three whites of the party had turned down the viceroy’s request that they take over the work.) Indians of the north—some of them had come to Mexico City with Cabeza de Vaca—acted as porters. Leader of this belatedly assembled group was a Franciscan friar, Marcos of Niza, assisted by a friend, Fray Onorato.
Fray Marcos, a native of Nice, France, spoke Spanish clumsily, even though he had spent time with Pedro de Alvarado’s forces in Guatemala and Pizarro’s in Peru, where he had become familiar with the astonishing wealth of the Incas. He is said to have been a good cartographer and to have written learned papers about the Indians, none of which has come to light. He penned such an entrancing letter about Peru to Mexico’s Archbishop, Juan de Zumárraga, that the prelate invited him to visit Mexico City and housed him after his arrival early in 1537. The impression he made led the archbishop to arrange his appointment to an important office in the Franciscan order in New Spain, and the Viceroy to make him leader of the search for the cities of the north.