Some 1,500 saddle and pack animals, both horses and mules, had been gathered to provide transportation. Many of the cavalrymen had more than one mount; Coronado took along 23. Each soldier was responsible for his personal gear, and since few hidalgos had the least idea of how to pack a horse, many impromptu rodeos occurred. But “in the end,” wrote chronicler Pedro de Castañeda, “necessity, which is all-powerful, made them skillful ... and anybody who despised this work was not considered a man.” In addition to the horse herd, there was a movable larder of about a thousand cattle, sheep, and goats.
Though Mendoza had planned to lead the expedition, the demands of his office prevented it, and he turned command over to Coronado, then aged 30. The next day the confused, dusty march began, over high hills and through vales full of thickets. Trouble awaited at Chiametla, where once Cortés and Guzmán had confronted each other over a ship. Resentful Indians attacked a foraging party led by Coronado’s second-in-command, killed him, and wounded five or six others. On top of that, in came Melchoir Díaz with discouraging reports of what he had learned during his scouting trip. Though heavy snow had kept him from entering the mountains north of Arizona’s Gila River, he had interviewed several Indian traders who supposedly knew Cíbola, and they had led him to believe there was little, if any, silver or gold in the area. And the road there, which Marcos had said was good, was very bad.
Rumors of the report leaked out and upset the soldiers. Marcos quieted them during one of his sermons: Díaz hadn’t gone far enough. A preacher’s word against that of a frontier roughneck. Coronado, at least, was placated: why let go of either his credulity or his investment this early in the game? But he was worried about dragging the whole cumbersome army over a bad trail into a despoblado lacking in supplies. So he decided to go ahead with a vanguard of 80 horsemen, 30 or so footmen, an unknown number of Indians, some livestock, and the expedition’s five friars. He placed the main army under; Tristan de Arellano, told him to stay in Culiacán for 20 more days and then advance to the Indian town of Corazones in the heart of Sonora, where further instructions would be sent him.
It took Coronado’s vanguard from April 22 to July 7, 1540—eleven weeks, counting rest stops—to cover the thousand miles that separated Culiacán from Cíbola. (During those same weeks De Soto’s hungry men were marching through Georgia into the city of pearls and on across the Appalachians into Alabama.) Hard weeks on rough trails. Contrary to what Marcos had said, they were veering farther and farther from the coast. Yet at that very time, Hernando de Alarcón was sailing northward with three ships loaded with supplies for him. How were they to make contact?
As events developed, they never did, and the vanguard crossed the shimmering San Pedro plains into what was to be the United States with an increasing apprehension that all gates were shutting behind them. They followed the tree-shaded San Pedro River north to the vicinity of Benson, Arizona, and then, with Melchior Díaz pointing the way, left it and worked on through a series of broad-bottomed, mountain-bracketed valleys to the Gila River, reaching it where Mt. Turnbull bulks huge against the sky. An enormity of space and remoteness. One can still feel it, for unlike the southeastern United States, where De Soto marched, this land has been but little scarred by man’s devouring technologies.
First Blood at Cíbola
At Cíbola, Coronado had his first encounter with the Pueblo world. His army was six months into the expedition and worn down from crossing a wilderness. Food was short, his porters (blacks) and Indians were deserting, horses were dying of exhaustion.
The first sight of Cíbola—the legendary kingdom of the north—dismayed the Spaniards. They found not a shining city of gold but only mud huts stacked one atop another and a crowd of armed warriors. This was Háwikuh, western-most of a cluster of Zuñi towns, now a ruin a few miles south of the present pueblo of the same name.
Wanting food, Coronado sent forward a party with an interpreter, friars, and cavalry. This is the moment illustrated by artist Louis S. Glanzman. The interpreter tells Háwikuh’s war leaders that the Spaniards have come to claim the country for King and Savior and wish them no harm. The Indians pay this no attention. An elder draws a line of sacred corn meal in the sand. The Spaniards hesitate. Arrows fly. The army storms the village. Soon a dozen Indians lie dead while the rest flee. The famished soldiers break into the stores. Peace follows and this pueblo becomes Coronado’s base camp for the next few months.
They climbed the rough Gila Mountains, found relief in high, open meadows, but then had to scramble over the Natanes Plateau and pitch down a steep Indian trail into the Black River gorge. On beyond that they came to a more difficult crossing of the barranca, as they called the canyon, of the White River. The water was so deep they had to build rafts to get across. Then on through more pines and meadows whose beauty they scarcely noticed. They were so hungry that at one camp they ate lush-looking plants—perhaps wild parsnip, perhaps water hemlocks—that twisted them with cramps; one Spaniard and two blacks perished.
Two days later, amidst bare, rolling hills, they passed the Little Colorado and started up Zuñi Creek. Knowing that Cíbola and its food supplies were near, the men wanted to hurry, but Coronado, ever cautious, sent out scouts under tough Garcia López de Cárdenas, and kept the main force moving slowly behind. Near midnight, Indians attacked the reconnoitering group and stampeded some of its horses. Quelling a brief panic, the invaders swept the Indians aside, but the portent was clear. The Cíbolans were going to defend their homes.