Out yonder, the Turk told him, was a wide river full of fish as big as horses. The canoes on the river held 20 or more rowers to a side, and their lords sat in the sterns under brilliant awnings. This tale corresponds with what the Gentleman of Elvas said about the canoes De Soto saw on reaching the Mississippi half a year later. So maybe El Turco had witnessed, during his wanderings, the Indian flotillas of the lower Mississippi and the fish as well—gar can reach 10 feet in length. The chiefs of the canoe tribes, he went on, were lulled to sleep by little bells of gold (acochis) tinkling in the breeze. They ate (a standard fantasy) from dishes molded out of acochis. But acochis, it developed years later, was a Spanish rendering of hawichis, a generic Pawnee term for any metal. Copper, perhaps? It was rare on the Plains and in the Southwest, but there was some and it was displayed conspicuously by important men.
That may be all the Turk said at first. But it was not all that Padilla and the rest of Alvarado’s explorers heard. They harassed the Indian for proof that he was telling the truth. Frightened, eager to get them off his back, and desirous, possibly, of causing trouble for Bigotes, whom he may not have liked, El Turco said he had once owned a bit of acochis, but that Whiskers had taken it from him. The Spaniards understood that the object was a bracelet.
By then the autumn days were growing cold, and it was time for Alvarado to rejoin the army assembling in the Rio Grande Valley. On his way back through Cicuyé, he confronted Bigotes and Cacique with El Turco’s charge. They said they know nothing about the matter. Reluctant to set himself up as judge without Coronado’s authorization, Alvarado seized the pair, put them in chains—as he later did the Turk and Ysopete when the one-time guides sought to disappear—and hurried out of the pueblo through a shower of curses and arrows hurled after him by the outraged inhabitants.
In Tiguex, too, affability had vanished. To provide shelter for the main army, which was moving eastward in sections, an advance group under hard-fisted Garcia López de Cárdenas had turned the people of Alcanfor pueblo out of their homes to find whatever refuge they could in neighboring towns. Coronado, who had taken a portion of the troops on a swing through the pueblos northwest of Tiguex, had just moved into the new quarters when Alvarado appeared with his captives. Immeasurably relieved by the thought that the costly expedition still might succeed, the general told Padilla, aflame with visions of the Seven Cities, and Alvarado to get the truth from Bigotes however they could. The inquisitors took him into a snowy field and set a war dog on him. Partly it was bluff; the victim was scarred but not disabled. Cacique, too, was attacked by a dog but less severely because of his age. Throughout the ordeal, which created deep resentment along the Rio Grande, both men persistently denied all knowledge of gold.
No dogs were set on the Turk. Though he, along with Ysopete, was also kept in chains so that he would be on hand when needed in the spring, his veracity was not questioned. For if the Turk was not believed, the expedition lost its meaning.
Until spring did arrive, survival was the goal. At first the Spaniards paid for the blankets, warm clothing, and food they requisitioned. Later, when the Indians, who had little surplus, held back, foraging parties roamed far and wide, taking what they desired without recompense, including in at least one case, a Puebloan’s wife.
Restored kiva of Kuaua pueblo, now preserved at Coronado State Park, Bernillilo, N.M. This village was long thought to be the Alcanfor pueblo that Cárdenas occupied. Though excavations in the 1930s failed to prove the speculation, the diggers did find these extraordinary kiva murals.
Sensing correctly that the horses were the Spaniards’ main strength, the Indians struck at one part of the herd, killing two dozen or so animals and stampeding many others. Such attacks could portend disaster. With Coronado’s blessing, Cárdenas stormed Arenal, the center of resistance. After breaching the walls with battering rams, the Europeans lighted smudge fires around the houses. As the gasping Indians fled into the open, making signs of peace, mounted horsemen struck down many. Others were tied to stakes and burned alive—a scene the Turk, Ysopete, and Bigotes were forced to watch so that they could tell the people of their villages what happened to rebels.
The episode occurred in December 1540. Shortly afterwards, the main part of the army appeared, worn out by forced marches through heavy snowstorms, but excited by rumors of gold, for the Turk, who by then knew more about the lusts of the invaders than they knew about him, was elaborating on his tales. With little to talk about but warm weather and wealth, the force lost its hold on reality and, like De Soto’s, disintegrated into a kind of insensate organism responding only to the dynamics of survival. When a new center of resistance developed at a pueblo called Moho, the Spaniards burned the town after a long siege, killed many of the men who tried to flee, and made captives (as the requerimiento threatened) of more than a hundred women and children.