He never overtook Estéban. According to his report to Mendoza, he and his retinue of Indians had been toiling for 12 days across a despoblado (uninhabited region) and were within three days’ march of the city of Cíbola when one of the black’s erstwhile companions met them and said, weeping, that the Cíbolans had slain Estéban out of fear that he had come as a spy for would-be conquerors—as, in fact, he had. Two days later, the tale was confirmed by other Indians who had fled from Cíbola “covered with blood and many wounds.”
Convinced they were walking to their deaths, all but a handful of Marcos’s followers deserted him. With those few, he wrote later, he went cautiously forward until he glimpsed the city. It rose before his eyes more magnificent “than the city of Mexico.” And equally wealthy kingdoms lay beyond.
Deciding to rename Cíbola St. Francis after the patron saint of his order, Marcos erected a heap of stones, placed a cross atop it, and announced to the air that he was taking possession for Spain. Then back he hastened, “more satiated with fear than food.” So he said.
Skeptics have long argued that Fray Marcos never got anywhere near Cíbola. They point to the vagueness of his report, which nowhere describes topographical features, vegetation, or soil types, although his instructions had directed him to study all those things. They also insist that he could not have tarried in Indian towns and have made side trips searching for the coast, as he claimed he did, and still have reached and returned from Cíbola in the time known to have elapsed. And how could he have mistaken a relatively small, mud-plastered pueblo for a metropolis grander than Mexico City?
Supporters of the friar, unwilling to believe a man of the cloth could be an out-and-out liar, juggle time figures their own way and suggest that his impression of the pueblo was an optical illusion produced by slanting rays of morning sunlight and made more vivid by the mixture of weariness, excitement, hope, and fear with which he regarded his goal. They also point out that when a full-scale expedition marched north to take possession of the country, he went along. Would he have done that if his statements were lies that would inevitably be exposed?
It seems likely that he did turn back immediately after learning, at some distance from Cíbola, of Estéban’s death. But vanity and fear of consequences would not let him admit the truth to the Viceroy and the governor. So he concocted a tale out of the descriptions he had heard from Indians along the way—descriptions he believed, reasonably enough, were accurate and would bear scrutiny later on.
His temporal superiors accepted his statements partly out of an eager credulity of their own and partly because they were in a hurry to complete their claims to the Seven Cities. (De Soto was already in Florida; three ships outfitted by Cortés and commanded by Francisco de Ulloa were tacking north along the coast looking for sea approaches to the new kingdoms.) It has even been charged that the Viceroy, Mendoza, may have suggested some of the glowing details that were incorporated into Marcos’s report. Most certainly he rewarded the friar by pressuring the Order of St. Francis to make him, rather than candidates who had been around much longer, the father-provincial of the Franciscans in Mexico. As a result, pulpits began resounding with homilies on the work that awaited the pious—and, by implication, the enterprising—in the north. This of course stimulated recruiting, not only of idle hidalgos but of solid men with money enough to equip themselves and their followers for an extensive journey.
Mendoza reputedly put 60,000 ducats into the venture. Coronado added 50,000 that he raised by mortgaging his wife’s property. But they were not completely reckless. They ordered Melchior Díaz, mayor of Culiacán, to go north with soldiers and Indians and gather specifics about geography that Marcos had neglected to describe (not having seen it) but that an army on the march would find useful.
By February 22, 1540, less than seven months after Marcos’s return, Mendoza and Coronado had gathered the bulk of their army at Nueva Galicia’s drab capital, Compostela, some 525 miles west of Mexico City. For the place and times it was a brave show: about 225 cavalrymen, 62 foot soldiers, an unrecorded number of black slaves, and upwards of 700 variously painted Indians. The group’s equipment, like that of De Soto’s army, was a melange. There were a few suits of armor, including Coronado’s gilded one, some cuirasses, coats of mail, and plumed helmets but far more jackets of buckskin and padded cotton, high boots, and leather shields.
The Indians were camptenders, stockherders, and warriors, but not bearers, for unlike De Soto, Mendoza and Coronado meant to enforce royal orders that forbade turning natives into beasts of burden. Some of the Indians had wives and children along, as did three Spaniards, in spite of edicts against camp followers. Hardly noticeable in the throng were five gray-robed friars, including Marcos, who probably should not have left his new job as Father Superior so soon. Yet he, too, had a big stake in this trip.