XLVI. Mercator’s Interior of New Spain, 1589 [◊]

There had been few attractions to draw these adventurers away from Mexico, the metropolis of the mainland, for some time previous to 1539. Peru still offered excitement for those who had nothing to gain or lose, but the purely personal struggle going on there between Pizarro and Almagro could not arouse the energies of those who were in search of glory as well as of employment. A considerable part of the rabble which followed Nuño de Guzman during the conquest of New Galicia went to Peru after their chief had been superseded by the Licentiate de la Torre, so that one town is said to have disappeared entirely from this cause; but among these there were few men of good birth and spirit. Mendoza had been able, at first, to accommodate and employ those who accompanied him from Spain, like Vazquez Coronado, “being chiefly young gentlemen.” But every vessel coming from home brought some companion or friend of those who were already in New Spain, and after Cabeza de Vaca carried the reports of his discoveries to the Spanish court, an increasing number came each season to join the already burdensome body of useless members of the viceregal household. The viceroy recognized the necessity of relieving the community of this burden very soon after he had established himself in Mexico, and he was continually on the watch for some suitable means of freeing himself from these guests. By 1539 the problem of looking after these young gentlemen—whose number is determined quite accurately by the two hundred and fifty or three hundred “gentlemen on horseback” who left New Spain with Coronado in the p377 spring of 1540—had become a serious one to the viceroy. The most desirable employment for all this idle energy would be, of course, the exploration and conquest of new country, or the opening of the border territory for permanent settlement. But no mere work for work’s sake, no wild-goose chase, would do. These young gentlemen had many friends near to Charles V, who would have resented any abuse of privilege or of confidence. A suitable expedition could be undertaken only at considerable expense, and unless the cost could all be made good to the accountants in Spain, complaints were sure to be preferred against even the best of viceroys. So Mendoza entertained his guests as best he could, while they loafed about his court or visited his stock farms, and he anxiously watched the reports which came from the officials of the northwestern province of New Galicia and from the priests who were wandering and working among the outlying Indian tribes. When, late in the summer of 1539, Friar Marcos returned from the north, bringing the assurance that Cibola was a desirable field for conquest, the viceroy quickly improved the opportunity for which he had been waiting. Within a month and a half Mendoza had begun to organize the force which was to conquer this new country.

Compostela, on the Pacific coast, was announced as the place at which the force should assemble. The viceroy desired to have the army begin its march so soon as the roads were passable in the spring, and he wished also to relieve the Indians living in the districts between Mexico and the coast from as much as possible of the annoyance and loss which would be inevitable if the army started from Mexico and marched through this territory in a body. How much this forethought for the Indians was needed appears from Mendoza’s reply to the accusations against him filed during the visita of 1547, which showed that all his care had not saved the Indians of Michoacan from needless injury at the hands of those who were on their way to join the gathering at Compostela. Incidentally, this arrangement also gave the capital city an earlier relief from its unwelcome guests.

Popular as was the expedition to the Seven Cities, there was a little opposition to the undertaking. When it became evident that a large force was about to leave the country, some of those who were to remain behind complained that all New Spain was being depopulated, and that no one would be left to defend the country in case of an Indian uprising. When Mendoza reached Compostela, by the middle of February, 1540, Coronado asked him to make an official investigation of these complaints. The formal request is dated February 21, and on the following day, Sunday, the viceroy held a grand review of the whole array, with everyone ready equipped for the march. As the men passed before the viceregal party the secretaries made an exact count and description of the force, but this document is not now known. Its loss is partly supplied by the sworn testimony of the officials who were best acquainted with the inhabitants of all parts of New Spain, p378 recorded a few days after the departure of the expedition. They declare that in the whole army there were only two or three men who had ever been settled residents in the country; that these few were men who had failed to make a living as settlers, and that, in short, the whole force was a good riddance.[52]

The men who assembled at Compostela to start for the Seven Cities numbered, Mendoza stated at the time of the visita in 1547, “about two hundred and fifty Spaniards on horseback, . . . and about three hundred Indians, a few more or less.” Mota Padilla, who must have used documents of the very best authority, nearly all of which have since disappeared, gives the number of the force as “two hundred and sixty horsemen, . . seventy footmen, . . and more than a thousand friendly Indians and Indian servants.” Herrera, who used official documents, says that there were one hundred and fifty horsemen and two hundred footmen. Mendoza’s statement of the number of Indians may be explained, if we suppose him to have referred only to the friendly Indians who went on the expedition as native allies. His statement is made in the course of a defense of his administration, when he was naturally desirous of giving as small a number as possible. Castañeda says that there were three hundred horsemen, and this number occurs in other early narratives.

Mendoza spared neither pains nor expense to insure the success of the expedition. Arms, horses, and supplies were furnished in abundance; money was advanced from the royal chest to any who had debts to pay before they could depart, and provision was made for the support of those who were about to be left behind by fathers, brothers, or husbands. The equipment of the force was all that the viceroy could desire. Arms and military supplies had been among the things greatly needed in New Spain when Mendoza reported its condition in his first letters to the home government. In 1537 he repeated his request for these supplies with increased insistence. The subject is not again mentioned in his letters, and we may fairly suppose that he had received the weapons and munitions of war, fresh from the royal arsenals of Spain, with which he equipped the expedition on whose success he had staked so much. It was a splendid array as it passed in review before Mendoza and the officials who helped and watched him govern New Spain, on this Sunday in February, 1540. The young cavaliers curbed the picked horses from the large stock farms of the viceroy, each resplendent in long blankets flowing to the ground. Each rider held his lance erect, while his sword and other weapons hung in their proper places at his side. Some were arrayed in coats of mail, polished to shine like that of their general, whose gilded armor with its brilliant trappings was to bring him many hard blows a few months later. Others wore iron helmets or vizored headpieces of the tough bullhide for which the country p379 has ever been famous. The footmen carried crossbows and harquebuses, while some of them were armed with sword and shield. Looking on at these white men with their weapons of European warfare was the crowd of native allies in their paint and holiday attire, armed with the club and the bow of an Indian warrior. When all these started off next morning, in duly ordered companies, with their banners flying, upward of a thousand servants and followers, black men and red men, went with them, leading the spare horses, driving the pack animals, bearing the extra baggage of their masters, or herding the large droves of “big and little cattle,” of oxen and cows, sheep, and, maybe, swine,[53] which had been collected by the viceroy to assure fresh food for the army on its march. There were more than a thousand horses in the train of the force, besides the mules, loaded with camp supplies and provisions, and carrying half a dozen pieces of light artillery—the pedreros, or swivel guns of the period.

After the review, the army assembled before the viceroy, who addressed to them an exhortation befitting the occasion. Each man, whether captain or foot soldier, then swore obedience to his commander and officers, and promised to prove himself a loyal and faithful vassal to his Lord the King. During the preceding week the viceroy had divided the force into companies, and now he assigned to each its captain, as Castañeda relates, and announced the other officers of the army.

Francisco Vazquez Coronado—de Coronado it is sometimes written—was captain-general of the whole force. “Who he is, what he has already done, and his personal qualities and abilities, which may be made useful in the various affairs which arise in these parts of the Indies, I have already written to Your Majesty,” writes Mendoza to the Emperor, in the letter of December 10, 1537. This previous letter is not known to exist, and there is very little to supply the place of its description of the character and antecedents of Vazquez Coronado. His home was in Salamanca,[54] and he came to America in the retinue of Mendoza in 1535. His relations with his patron, the viceroy, previous to the return of the expedition from Cibola, appear always to have been most cordial and intimate. In 1537 Coronado married Beatrice de Estrada, a cousin by blood, if gossip was true, of the Emperor, Charles V. Her father, Alonso, had been royal treasurer of New Spain. From his mother-in-law Coronado received as a marriage gift a considerable estate, “the half of Tlapa,” which was confirmed to him by a royal grant. Cortez complained that the income from this estate was worth more than 3,000 ducados, and that it had been unduly and inconsiderately alienated from the Crown. Coronado obtained also the estate of one Juan de Búrgos, apparently one of those who forfeited p380 their land because they persisted in the unmarried state. This arrangement likewise received the royal approval.[55] When, however, “the new laws and ordinances for the Indies” came out from Spain in 1544,[56] after Coronado’s return from the northern expedition, one of the sections expressly ordered an investigation into the extent and value of the estates held by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, since it had been reported to the King that the number of Indians held to service on these estates was very excessive. Mendoza had to answer the same charge at his visita in 1547.

Mendoza sent Coronado, in 1537, to the mines at Amatepeque, where the negroes had revolted and “elected a king,” and where they threatened to cause considerable trouble. The revolt was quelled, after some fighting, with the help of the Indians of the district. A couple of dozen of the rebels were hung and quartered at the mines or in the City of Mexico.[57]