Some ambiguity surrounds Coronado’s part in these and other suppressions of “revolt.” Though he was the army’s commanding general, he apparently was never in the field during the moments of greatest carnage. He later testified he never authorized the burning of settlements or the use of dogs in battle. He personally took old Cacique back to Cicuyé and handed him over to his people, promising to release Bigotes as well when the army went through on its way to golden Quivira.
There was a practical side to the generosity, of course. He did not want a hostile fort astride his back trail when he made his final advance. Emphasize final. He badly needed a triumph to save himself from bankruptcy and to make the king’s audiencia understand that what seemed atrocities had been necessary steps on the way to treasure for the empire.
Coronado’s search for Quivira took him as far east as central Kansas. Fragments of chain mail armor found at several sites point to a Spanish presence in the 16th century. Coronado’s men very likely saw country like this near Lindsborg, Kansas.
The eastern advance began April 23, 1541. (Fifteen days later De Soto, heading west, sighted the Mississippi.) Bedlam marked much of the Spaniards’ travel, especially during the daily making and breaking of camp. There were about 300 white soldiers, other hundreds of Mexican Indian allies, some with women and children, a herd of a thousand horses, 500 beef cattle, and 5,000 sheep—or so says Castañeda, possibly with exaggeration. The people of Cicuyé, seeing the mass advancing under a shroud of dust and remembering the fate of Arenal and Moho, became friendly again. They received Bigotes with rejoicing and heaped supplies on his one-time captors—anything to get the invaders moving on.
For many miles the Turk led the army east toward the Canadian River, along the path he had shown Alvarado. They saw so many buffalo—charging bulls killed a few horses—that Coronado would not venture guessing at the numbers. They fell in with a meticulously described, to the joy of future anthropologists, band of nomad Querechos, perhaps forerunners of the Apaches. As spring waned, they found themselves in the Texas Panhandle, atop the featureless immensity of the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains.
At that point, the Turk, who the previous fall had told Alvarado that Quivira lay northeast, turned southeast. Why? Was he heading toward the lower Mississippi and the kind of civilization he thought the Spanish wanted? Or had he, during the pause in Cicuyé, agreed with the people there to lead the invaders into a trackless part of the plains where they would become lost and, deprived of maize, would starve.
Ysopete, who seems to have developed an acute antipathy for the Turk and who was anxious to reach his home in Kansas, warned Coronado he was being misled. Alvarado voiced suspicions. Coronado, however, clung to his necessary faith in the Turk until they reached a point where the abrupt eastern escarpment of the Staked Plains drops into almost impassable badlands. There at last he put the Turk in irons and turned the piloting over to Ysopete, assisted by some local Teyas Indians.
All this had taken precious time. To speed things along and to make food easier to procure, Coronado ordered the main army to return to Tiguex while he and 30 picked riders, 6 foot soldiers, Juan de Padilla, and a few mule packers scouted out Quivira.[4]
Traveling light and sparing their mounts, Coronado’s group rode northeast for a month. They reached the River of Quivira (now the Arkansas) not far below present-day Dodge City, Kansas, and followed it, still northeast, to its Great Bend, where they left it. A little farther on they found the first Quivira (Wichita) village, a cluster of domed huts built of stout frameworks of logs overlaid with grass, so that they looked like haystacks. The surrounding land, rolling and fertile, produced fine corn, pumpkins, and tobacco. But no gold.