Summary

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján (Salamanca, 1510 - Mexico City, September 22, 1554), better known simply as Coronado, was a Spanish conquistador. He traveled through New Mexico and other parts of the present-day United States between 1540 and 1542. He arrived in the Viceroyalty of New Spain accompanying the first viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza.

Second son of Juan Vázquez de Coronado y Sosa de Ulloa, who died in 1532, and who was Lord of Coquilla and La Torre, Corregidor of Segovia and Jerez de la Frontera and Captain General of the Frontier, Prefect of Granada, he was in the service of the Catholic Monarchs and of Charles I of Spain, with the latter already as Regidor of Salamanca, he also occupied various positions in the administration of the recently conquered Emirate of Granada, with Íñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones, its first Christian governor. He was the paternal uncle of Juan Vázquez de Coronado y Anaya.

The mother of Juan Vázquez de Coronado was Isabel de Luján, a native of Madrid, who was part of the King's Cohort, being lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabella I of Castile the Catholic.

Don Juan Vázquez de Coronado y Sosa de Ulloa founded his entailed estate on December 16, 1522. The Mayorazgo consisted in that only the first-born legitimate son could inherit all the father's property, so Coronado was ruled out to receive part of this inheritance, so this family and social position led to Coronado had to seek fortune and destiny in the New World, which was facilitated by the political relations of his father with King Carlos I.

Vázquez de Coronado arrived in New Spain (now Mexico) from Spain in 1535, at the age of 25, in the entourage of its first viceroy, son of his father's patron and personal friend, to try his luck in the New World. He became a confidant of the viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, and rose quickly. He married in New Spain Beatriz de Estrada, called the Saint, sister of Leonor de Estrada, a relative of Alvarado and daughter of the treasurer and governor Alonso de Estrada e Hidalgo, lord of Picón, and his wife Marina Flores Gutiérrez de la Caballería, from a family of knights of the Order of Calatrava. He inherited through her a large portion of a Mexican encomendero property and they had eight children.

The viceroy appointed him governor of Nueva Galicia, moving there with his wife in 1537.

Vázquez de Coronado distinguished himself for his ability to pacify the natives and in 1538 he was named governor of the Audiencia of New Galicia, replacing the first governor of the province, Nuño de Guzmán. As governor, he supported Fray Marcos de Niza to explore the north of New Spain, a mission entrusted to him by Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza.

In 1528, an expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida. There were four survivors, who crossed on foot and for eight years the current southwest of the United States and northern Mexico until they reached Culiacán, Sinaloa, where they found a Spanish village. Of that expedition, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote an account entitled Naufragios (Shipwrecks). In it he describes his adventures and those of his three companions: Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza and a slave named Esteban (Estebanico). The latter was the first African-born man to set foot in what is now the United States of America. Estebanico was a Moor of the Berber ethnic group and was born in Azamor (Province of El Jadida, present-day Morocco), on the Atlantic coast of the African continent. These castaways, found in New Spain in 1536, transmitted rumors from the Indians that further north there were cities full of minerals and riches.

With this background, Friar Marcos de Niza was sent on an exploratory trip in 1539; he returned speaking of the riches of seven golden cities called Cíbola, which he had heard about on his trip. This aroused the interest of Coronado, who decided to set out in search of this mythical city.

The expedition took place in 1540. Some 800 Mexican Indians and 340 Spaniards who had contributed their own money to finance the expedition took part. Vázquez de Coronado mortgaged his wife's possessions and borrowed 71,000 silver pesos to finance the expedition, a worker at that time earned 100 silver pesos a month. A worker at that time earned 100 silver pesos a month. On the expedition was a woman, Francisca de Hoces, with her husband, Alonso Sánchez, who was a shoemaker in Mexico City. The expedition included 11 captains and several men who had lived with the Indians for 10 years or more. They carried 12 cannons, abundant ammunition, 150 horse soldiers and 200 infantrymen, cattle and seeds.

The expedition set out in 1540. It was composed of 340 Spaniards and hundreds of allied Indians, as well as cattle. They were accompanied by Marcos de Niza.

In addition to the expedition that departed by land on February 26 from Compostela, Nayarit, in those days capital of the province called the kingdom of New Galicia, the viceroy sent another expedition to California, formed by ships that followed them by sea under the command of Fernando de Alarcón. The expedition would leave on May 9, 1540 and would follow the coast of New Spain into the interior of the Gulf of California, and then continue north to Yuma, in present-day Arizona.

A few days after their departure, supplies began to run low and some ten horses died from carrying heavy loads and not receiving enough food to continue. After traveling 150 kilometers, in March, they looked for food in Chametla among the Indians that were there, but the Indians resisted and organized a trap in which Coronado's second in command, Lope de Samaniego, died from an arrow shot. After this Coronado organizes a reprisal against the Indians and eight Indians are captured and executed. Two captains who had gone ahead returned due to the steep terrain and bad weather without having found the city. They continued north along the western coast of New Spain to Culiacán, Sinaloa.

From there a smaller force, under the command of Tristán de Luna y Arellano, continued even further north and took the towns of the Zuñis in July 1540, towns they had been told were the seven golden cities of Cíbola.

In August 1540 Coronado sends out scouting parties to report on everything. To the east he sends his new second, García López de Cárdenas, to explore the west, in the area of the Hopi Indians, and he finds the Colorado Canyon. Captain Hernandez de Alvarado goes east with a mustachioed Indian chieftain nicknamed "Bigotes", who introduces the Spaniards to various tribes along the Rio Grande. Hernando wanted to continue exploring further but Bigotes told them he was tired and would provide them with a guide. This new guide wore a particular hat, typical of the Pawnee tribe, which reminded the Spaniards of an Arab hat, and that is why they nicknamed him "the Turk". They found a village called Tiguex or Tigüez, near the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the banks of the Rio Grande, and Hernando sent a letter to Coronado to set up camp there and meet them in that spot, near the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo for the Mexicans), which he did. There the Spaniards needed clothes and other things, and they took them from the Indians, even offering money in exchange, but the Indians refused and, that, added to other episodes, provoked an uprising of the Indians of Tiguex that began to kill the horses of the Spaniards. The expedition was attacked several times by the natives, but the forces of Vázquez de Coronado repelled them successfully. That winter there were several clashes. Some have called these clashes the Tiguex War.

"The Turk" spoke of Quivira, a rich country to the northwest. Coronado decided to go in search of Quivira, taking the "Turk" as his guide. He crossed the Llano Estacado, crossed the grassland of the Great Plains and continued his march northward. However, Coronado discovered that the "Turk" was deceiving him, or so he thought, and had him executed. Other guides led him toward Quivira, and he found a small town near present-day Lindsborg, Kansas. The disillusionment was repeated: the Quivira Indians, later known as Wichitas, had no wealth; their village was made of thatched huts and they did not even have gold jewelry.

In the spring of 1540 the expedition went into the canyon of Palo Duro, Texas, in search of gold, where Coronado left most of his men and continued on horseback with thirty expedition members in search of another myth, the city of Quivira, supposedly full of riches.

In 1542 he returned to New Spain by the same route he had used. Only one hundred of his men returned with him. Although the expedition was a failure, he continued as Governor of New Galicia until 1544. He then retired to Mexico City, where he died in 1554.

In the book Crónicas de Tierra Caliente, 2014, the Guerrero chronicler Alfredo Mundo Fernández says that according to documents from the General Archive of the Nation, and other documents he cites, in 1538 the viceroy Antonio de Mendoza granted his protégé Francisco Vázquez de Coronado the Cutzamala encomienda in the Tierra Caliente of what is now the State of Guerrero, which since its creation in 1528 Hernán Cortés had assigned to Juan de Burgos according to the Archive of the Indies. Don Francisco Vázquez de Coronado had the Cutzamala encomienda from 1538 to 1554 when he died, and left it by inheritance to his daughter Doña Isabel de Luján Vázquez de Coronado who married Bernardino Pacheco de Bocanegra who became his new encomendero. By the way, this encomienda was fought by Luis Cortés, son of Hernán Cortés, against Doña Isabel before the Audiencia of Mexico in 1556, arguing that Don Francisco Vázquez de Coronado had fraudulently acquired it from Juan de Burgos for 9500 pesos in gold from mines and it cost much more. In December 1557 this petition was dismissed in view of the evidence presented by the bailiff of the Audiencia of Mexico, Pedro Vázquez, the granting by Viceroy Mendoza and two royal decrees from the Queen, as well as a document signed by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado where Juan de Burgos considers himself well paid.

On his voyage, García López de Cárdenas (a member of his expedition) discovered the Colorado Canyon, and gathered valuable information about the American Southwest. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado is remembered by some islands, avenues, schools, hotels, housing developments, shopping malls and thousands of businesses in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, bearing his surname Coronado.

In his hometown, Salamanca, and in a good number of other cities in Spain, there are public roads named after him.

His nephew Juan Vázquez de Coronado (1523-1565) carried out the conquest of Costa Rica and distinguished himself for his humanitarian actions. Felipe II granted him in 1565 the hereditary title of Adelantado of Costa Rica, which his descendants held until 1823.

In Steven Spielberg's movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, young Indiana Jones wants to wrest from grave robbers the Cross of Coronado, a jewel that Hernán Cortés supposedly gave to Coronado in 1520.

Sources

1. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado
2. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado
3. ^ Winship. pp. 39–40
4. ^ a b c Winship. p. 38
5. Diego de Guzmán había alcanzado el río Yaqui el 7 de octubre de 1533 llamando al río y al territorio Nuestra Señora del Rosario. Este pasó a conocerse posteriormente como Señora y, como los indios ópata no pronuncian la eñe, se llamó Senora y, de ahí, derivó a Sonora. San Jerónimo de los Corazones fue el primer asentamiento español al norte del río Yaqui.
6. Tony Horwitz: Die wahren Entdecker der Neuen Welt - von den Wikingern bis zu den Pilgervätern. Pieper Verlag, München 2008, ISBN 978-3-492-25462-5, S. 193.
7. Heinz J. Stammel: Indianer, Legende und Wirklichkeit von A bis Z. Orbis, München 1997, ISBN 3-572-00842-5, S. 59.
8. Bajecznie bogatych w złoto i drogie kamienie
9. Paul Horgan, Conquistadors in North American History, Greenwich, Conn. 1965