De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo
Explorers of the Northern Mystery

About this book

American history begins not with the English at Jamestown or the Pilgrims at Plymouth but with Spanish exploration of the border country from Florida to California in the 16th century. This handbook describes the expeditions of three intrepid explorers—De Soto, Coronado, and Cabrillo—their adventures, their encounters with native inhabitants, and the consequences, good and ill, of their journeys. This little-known story is related by David Lavender, author of many books on the American West. His work gives perspective to the several national parks that commemorate the first Spanish explorations.

National Park Handbooks, compact introductions to the natural and historical places administered by the National Park Service, are designed to promote public understanding and enjoyment of the parks. These handbooks are intended to be informative reading and useful guides. More than 100 titles are in print. They are sold at parks and by mail from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lavender, David Sievert, 1910-

De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo: explorers of the northern mystery/by David Lavender.

p. cm.—(Handbook; 144)

1. United States—Discovery and exploration—Spanish.

2. Soto, Hernando, de, ca. 1500-1542.

3. Coronado, Francisco Vásques de, 1510-1554.

4. Cabrillo, Juan Rodrígues, d. 1543.

5. Explorers—United States—History—16th century.

I. Title.

II. Series: Handbook (United States. National Park Service. Division of Publications); 144

E123.L24 1992 973.1—dc20 91-47633

CIP 1992

Prologue 5

The Spanish Entradas 10

David Lavender

The Ways of the Conquerors 13

The Wanderers 21

Journey into Darkness 37

Where the Fables Ended 55

The Seafarers 85

Epilogue 97

A Guide to Sites 98

De Soto National Memorial 102

Coronado National Memorial 104

Pecos National Historical Park 106

Cabrillo National Monument 108

Prologue

A magic date: 1492. The year began with Christopher Columbus watching the Moors surrender the city of Granada, their last stronghold in Spain, to the joint monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. He reminded them of the triumph in a summation he wrote later of what he too had accomplished that year. “I saw the banners of your Highnesses raised on the towers of the Alhambra in the city of Granada, and I saw the Moorish king go out of the gate of the city and kiss the hands of your Highnesses and of my lord the Prince.” Shortly after the victory, he added, “your Highnesses ... determined to send me, Christopher Columbus to the countries of India, so that I might see what they were like, the lands and the people, and might seek out and know the nature of everything that is there....”

This remarkable coincidence—the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and Columbus’s almost simultaneous discovery of the “Indies”—resulted in a burst of explosive expansionism. The following year, 1493, Columbus established Spain’s first colony in the New World on the island of Hispaniola, occupied now by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. By 1515 Cuba had been conquered and its cities of Santiago and Havana established as bases for further exploration. In 1519 Hernán Cortés swept out of Cuba into Mexico and found a new source of wealth for his country, his followers, and himself by looting the Aztec empire of stores of gold and silver the Indians had been accumulating for centuries. A decade later Francisco Pizarro began his dogged and even more lucrative conquest of the Incas of Peru.

Meanwhile, what of the Northern Mystery, as historian Herbert E. Bolton aptly named the unknown lands above Mexico? Was it not logical that similar treasures awaited discovery there? And so the fever for adventure and riches drew three more distance-defying explorers—Hernando de Soto, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, and Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo—into three different parts of what is now the United States. Each reached as far as he did because inside him burned the awesome, often contradictory, but always steel-bright fires of medieval Spain.

Our tangible connection to this age of pathfinding and discovery is a scattering of historic places stretching from Florida to California. They are evidence of Spanish life and color in the old borderlands. This book draws into a whole the stories of several such places. Here are the beginnings of Spanish North America.

Routes of the Explorers

The first Spanish expeditions into the northern borderlands of New Spain sampled the continent’s wondrous diversity. De Soto made his great march across a luxuriant country so stunning and productive that the expedition’s journals are full of admiring description. He encountered complex native societies, which were often organized into powerful chiefdoms—generous in peace but formidable in war. Centuries of settlement has greatly altered this landscape. Not so Coronado’s country. A traveler to the Southwest can still see places evocative of the first Spanish encounters with Indians of the pueblos and Plains. A sailor retracing Cabrillo’s route up the California coast runs past mountains that, in the words of the chronicler, “seem to reach the heavens ... [and are] covered with snow”—mountains he called the Sierra Nevada. They are today’s Santa Lucia range. Cabrillo’s voyage is now best followed in the imagination.

Timeline

First Expeditions North

The Spanish Entradas

The Ways of the Conquerors

An estimated 3,000 battles wracked the Iberian Peninsula between AD 711, when Moors from Africa invaded what became Spain, and 1492, when they were finally expelled. Nor were battles against the Moors the only ones. The Christian leaders of the peninsula’s several principalities fought each other and their recalcitrant nobles in a constant quest for power, until finally Ferdinand and Isabella welded together, by marriage, all the units except Portugal.

Centralization of power in the hands of national governments was one of the characteristics that marked the slow emergence in Europe of what history calls the modern world. The reasons are manifold. A central government supported by a rising middle class of merchants and bankers was able to create big armies of professional soldiers and equip them with newly introduced gunpowder, a capability quite beyond the reach of the old feudal nobles. Concurrently, the new governments consolidated economic power, partly through nationwide taxation. New industries were encouraged. Feelings of nationalism swelled; people took pride in considering themselves Spaniards rather than just Castillians.

International trade assumed new importance, especially trade with the Orient, whose extraordinary wealth had been revealed by the adventures of the Venetian family of Polo as recounted by Marco, the youngest of the group. Land caravans to the fabled East were difficult, however, and limited by interruptions and tributes imposed by Moslem middlemen. So why not travel to the Orient by water, either by circling the southern tip of Africa or sailing due west across the Atlantic?

The most logical place in Europe for starting the endeavor was the Iberian Peninsula, which dipped down toward Africa and all but closed off the western end of the Mediterranean Sea. The exploration of Africa was launched during the middle of the 15th century by Prince Henry the Navigator of tiny Portugal. His success and that of the Portuguese rulers who followed him was so astounding that Ferdinand and Isabella at last agreed to support Columbus in a competitive transatlantic attempt. The point is vital. Spain’s feudal nobles probably could not have financed the expedition; the central government of newly unified Spain did.

Columbus took the risk because he believed, as had the ancient Greeks, that the circumference of the world was much smaller than it actually was. He also believed, as had Marco Polo, that Asia extended farther east than it does. When he found land at approximately the longitude that he expected to, he assumed joyfully that he was close to Cathay (China) and the islands of India. From that misapprehension comes, of course, the name West Indies for the islands of the Caribbean and Indians for their inhabitants, a term that quickly spread throughout the hemisphere.

The islands and the eastern coasts of Central America and the northwestern part of South America that he and Amerigo Vespucci (hence the name America) skirted on separate expeditions during the following decade were disappointing—no teeming cities crowned with exotic architecture, no kings and queens dressed in flowing silk and laden with precious gems, no warehouses bulging with expensive spices. To a less energetic nation than Spain, the failure of expectations might have ended further activity. But emerging Spain saw opportunities in the wilderness. Some gold could be taken from the placer mines on the island of Hispaniola. Plantations worked by enslaved Indians could be developed on Cuba and Puerto Rico. Those Indians—all Indians—had a greater attraction than just as laborers, however. Alone of all European nations, Spain was committed to incorporating the native Americans into the empire as loyal, taxpaying subjects. Priests accompanied exploring expeditions. After the entradas were completed, missionaries settled among the tribes and began the civilizing process, as civilization was defined by the conquerors.

The Spaniards saw themselves as particularly fitted for carrying out this God-given program. Eight centuries of war against the Moors had brought a strong sense of unity to the peninsula’s extraordinary mix of bloodlines—descendants of ancient Greeks, Romans, Carthegenians, and Celts as well as indigenous Iberians. Contests with Muslims and attacks on Jews through the Inquisition (Jews were also expelled from Spain in 1492) had spread a crusading religious fervor throughout the nation. Many a Spaniard felt in his bones what was in fact the truth: Spain was poised in the 16th century for a great leap forward that would, for a time, make her the dominant power in Europe. Supreme confidence generated in many Spaniards a pride that unfriendly nations such as England regarded as arrogance.

One side effect of all this was the creation of a large class of professional soldiers who scorned all other callings. Success in battle brought them a living of sorts; victors, for example, could force Muslims to work patches of ground for them. A man could become an hidalgo, entitled to use the word Don in front of his name and pass it on, generation after generation, to his sons. The first-born of these families picked up the nation’s plums. They were appointed to prestigious places in the army, the church, or the royal bureaucracy. For the rest there was little but their swords and a readiness for adventure.

The New World opened new opportunities for these younger sons and their followers. They could join small private armies that went, with the monarch’s permission, into the Americas to spread the gospel among the “heathens” while simultaneously looting the defeated Indians’ storehouses of treasure and taking their lands. Prime examples of this grasping for treasure are furnished by some of the conquistadores who hailed from the harsh, barren lands of the Extremadura region of Castile—names that still ring triumphantly throughout most of the New World: Hernán Cortés, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the brothers Pizarro, and Hernando de Soto.

The crown gave little except permission and titles—adelantado (“he who leads the way”) and governor—to men such as these. But if the risks were great, so too at times were the rewards. As already indicated, there might be riches to divide after the king had taken his 20 percent share. There were plantations to be founded and tended by Indians who gave their labor, however willingly, in exchange for being taught the ways of Christians. The size of each man’s share in these gains depended partly on his initial investment in the expedition. Money wasn’t all. The contribution could be—and this was a crucial point—energy, ability, intense patriotism, religious zeal, and often ruthlessness.

Each man took with him to the New World what he had. Apparently there were few full suits of armor, though Francisco Vásquez de Coronado did possess one that was handsomely gilded to look like the gold he was searching for.

Partial suits—coats of mail made of small, interlinked rings of metal or cuirasses of plate armor that protected the wearer’s front and sides—were more numerous. Most cuirasses were made with a ridge running down the front and curved in such a way that a lance point striking the metal would, it was hoped, glance off without penetrating. It was hoped, too, that arrows would be similarly deflected. The chronicles tell, however, of Indian bows driving arrows entirely through plate armor and of cane arrows splintering on striking chain mail. The needle-sharp pieces then passed through the metal rings, inflicting puncture wounds that festered. Jackets made of quilted padding or even of tough bullhide were probably as effective against arrows as metal.

Footmen, who constituted the greater part of every New World expedition, carried pikes or halberds, crossbows or arquebuses, and sometimes maces or battle axes. A crossbow, whose string was pulled tight by a crank, propelled iron darts with great force and accuracy from grooves in the weapon’s stock. An arquebus was a primitive musket about 3 feet in length but lacked accuracy at distances greater than 75 yards or so. Indians, it turned out, could shoot several arrows in the time the handler of a crossbow or arquebus could fire once.

Cavalrymen, the elite of the force, were armed with lances, swords for slashing, and daggers. Long lances were generally couched against the rider’s body, as in tournaments or charges against similarly equipped European adversaries. A lance driven through an Indian’s body, however, would sometimes hang up and pull the rider from his saddle. Accordingly, shorter weapons held in an upraised hand were preferred in the New World. They could be hurled or held and directed at the enemy’s face—an enemy on foot, for the native Americans did not yet have horses.

The conquistadores were as superb horsemen as the world has seen. Their animals were loved and pampered. During the early years in the Americas they were relatively rare and expensive (few survived the tempestuous sea journey from Europe to become breeding stock), and just the sight of them terrified Indians. The fearful impact of a cavalry charge, lances flying or thrusting, swords slashing, and wardogs sometimes racing beside the horses, goes far to explain how small groups of Spaniards were able to triumph over great numerical odds. Pedro de Casteñada, one of the historians of the Coronado expedition, put it thus: “after God, we owed the victory to the horses.”

Desperation also played a part. The adventurers often found themselves hundreds of miles from any possibility of help. Stamina in the face of hunger and hardship, courage and energy in opposition to attack and fear were the basic elements of salvation. Of necessity the men adopted whatever methods promised to carry them to their goals. Religious fanaticism was another motive. To Cortés’s men, the Aztecs, who regularly offered human sacrifices to a heathen god, were an abomination and deserved to be annihilated, or at least enslaved, if they did not accept the Christian salvation held out to them. This attitude carried over, in somewhat lesser degree, to all Indians, even though Spain’s rulers constantly exhorted gentleness, and missionaries went with every major group to offer heaven to souls lost in darkness. That is, if Indians had souls, which many Europeans of the time sincerely doubted.

Finally, every conquistador was stirred to action by his own credulity. The Church had brought him up to believe implicitly in miracles. A large part of his education consisted of peopling the unknown world with marvels and monsters. A favorite tale, though by no means the only one, dealt with seven Catholic bishops and their congregations who fled from the invading Moors to the island of Antilia. There they burned their ships and diligently built seven glorious cities, for naturally Christian settlements would be more dazzling than pagan ones. Mas allá: there is more beyond. A wondrous dream, Spanish-style. It carried, in succession, Pánfilo Narváez, Hernando de Soto, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, and Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo into what became the United States. There reality at last took command.

Los Conquistadores

Cavalryman in armor

Pikeman

Arquebusier, c. 1540

Crossbowman arming his weapon

Wardogs

Swordsman

With a few thousand soldiers Spain conquered the Americas. Most of the soldiers were unemployed veterans of an army tempered by long campaigns against the Moors in Iberia and the French in North Italy. They came to America, wrote an eyewitness, “to serve God and His Majesty, to give light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as all men desire to do.”

Los conquistadores were tough, disciplined, and as ruthless as circumstances required. Their weapons—evolved in the formal battle of Europe—were the matchlock musket (sometimes called an arquebus), the crossbow, pikes, lances (carried by cavalry), swords, cannon, and above all the horse, which Indians universally regarded as a supernatural being. This weaponry served well against organized armies in Central America and Peru that fought in formations mostly with clubs, spears, and slings. But in North America, the Spaniards faced skilled and elusive archers who could drive an arrow through armor. The crossbow and musket soon proved useless. Far more effective were sword-wielding cavalry and infantry and (for De Soto) wardogs. In the one battle Southeast Indians had a chance of winning (Mabila, 18 October 1540), De Soto against great odds slaughtered his antagonists. Thousands died against only 18 or so Spaniards. Foreshadowing things to come, this battle demonstrated that Indians fighting with Stone Age weapons were no match against European arms and tactics.

An infantryman armed his crossbow by pushing the bowspring back with a lever, engaging the trigger catch, and inserting a metal-tipped dart. This weapon was effective in Europe against formations and armor but less useful against a foe who quite sensibly soon learned to fight by stealth and avoid open combat.

Lever for arming the bow

Stock

Trigger

Bowstring

The Spanish sword at its best was a superb piece of craftsmanship. About 41 inches long, it was double-edged, razor sharp, and flexible. A fine Toledo blade could be bent into a semi-circle and withstand a hard strike against steel. At hand-to-hand combat, Spanish swordsmen were unexcelled in either Europe or the New World.

The Wanderers

Redheaded Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca—Cabeza de Vaca translates as Cow’s Head—was a man of considerable pride and, apparently, some wry humor. In 1483, about three years after his birth, its exact date unknown, his paternal grandfather, Pedro de Vera, conquered the Grand Canary Island off the northwest coast of Africa for Spain, a feat that brought a glow, in court circles, to the name de Vera. And then there was his mother’s name, Teresa Cabeza de Vaca. Legend avers that back in 1212 her ancestor, a shepherd, had used the skull of a cow to mark a mountain pass that let a Christian army surprise and defeat its Mohammedan enemy. The shepherd’s sovereign thereupon bestowed the name Cabeza de Vaca on the family. Young Alvar Nuñez must have enjoyed the story, for he adopted his mother’s surname rather than his father’s, a not unusual custom in Spain.

He fought in several battles for Ferdinand and Isabella and for their grandson, Charles V, and was severely wounded at least once. In 1526, when he was about 46, Charles appointed him royal treasurer of a large expedition Pánfilo de Narváez proposed to lead into Florida, a name that then covered a huge region stretching from the peninsula around the dimly known north Gulf Coast to the Rio de las Palmas in northeastern Mexico.[1] If treasure was found—and treasure was Narváez’s goal—it would be up to Cabeza de Vaca to make sure the king received his 20 percent share. Other financial duties were involved, so that altogether it seemed a promising appointment for a middle-aged ex-soldier and able administrator. As events turned out, Vaca could hardly have suffered a greater misfortune.

The problem, which merits a digression, was Pánfilo de Narváez, the expedition’s leader. About the same age as Cabeza de Vaca, he was tall, courtly, and deep voiced, qualities that helped marvelously in advancing his career. He had prospered as a pioneer settler in Jamaica, and between 1511 and 1515 had aided Diego Velásquez in the conquest of Cuba, a feat which had elevated Velásquez to the governorship of the island. Both men added to their riches by using enforced Indian labor to exploit the island’s shallow placer mines and embryonic plantations. And although both could easily have retired to comfortable estates, each wanted more money, a common itch.

As chief administrator of Cuba, Velásquez was allowed by the government in Spain to authorize explorations of the Caribbean. In 1517 and 1518 he exercised this right by licensing seafarers to explore and trade along the coasts of Yucatan and Mexico, capture Indian slaves, and scout out the country for booty. In return for the licenses, Velásquez would share in whatever gains resulted.

Of his searchers for new wealth, the one whose name would ring down through history was Hernán Cortés. Cocky, crafty, reckless, and adept with the ladies, Cortés had come to Cuba as Velásquez’s private secretary at the same time Narváez had. He, too, had prospered, but unlike Narváez he had quarreled sharply with his former boss. Though a reconciliation had been effected, it was touchy. Still, Cortés had money and was willing to spend it on risky adventures, and so, in 1518, he was authorized to explore Mexico’s eastern coast. He assembled a fleet of 11 ships, 16 precious horses, and prodigious stores of armaments. People grew so excited about his prospects that he easily recruited 500 or so soldiers and 100 sailors—nearly half of Cuba’s male population.

While he was preparing his expedition, some of Velásquez’s other scouts returned with rumors of a fabulous empire of Aztec Indians and their capital city, Tenochtitlán, built on an island in a shallow lake that filled most of a high mountain valley in Mexico. Growing suddenly nervous about Cortés—how loyal would he be with treasure in front of him and an army at his back?—Velásquez in February 1519 revoked Cortés’s commission. Defying him, Cortés slipped away and disappeared.

One of the world’s most fabulous adventures followed. Landing on the Yucatan coast, Cortés rescued a survivor of one of Velásquez’s earlier expeditions—a man who in his captivity had learned the Mayan language. Employing the one-time prisoner as an interpreter, Cortés turned his fleet northward, probing the coast. Such resistance as developed among the Indians was quickly crushed by the terrifying aspect of the expedition’s few horses. During one of those aborted battles, Cortés rescued yet another captive, a woman named Malinche whom the priest with the expedition baptized and named Marina.

Marina was a Nahua, or Aztec. While in captivity she too had learned the Mayan tongue and could converse with the rescued Spaniard. Through this linguistic conduit, the conquistadores received exciting information about Tenochtitlán, the glittering city of the Aztecs, predecessor of today’s Mexico City. A dazzling prize! And why, Cortés surely wondered, should he share any of it with Diego Velásquez, sitting safely at home in Cuba?

On April 21, 1519, the fleet dropped anchor at the sea end of a trail leading to the city. There Cortés laid the foundations of a port that he named Vera Cruz (today Veracruz). Calling his men together—they, too, were excited about prospects—he prevailed on the majority to elect him captain-general of the expedition, a move that in Cortés’s mind freed him of his obligations to Velásquez and made him answerable only to King Charles V. Simultaneously, he sent emissaries to Moctezuma, emperor of the Aztecs, asking for an audience.

The timing could hardly have been more propitious. The Aztec rule was harsh; subject nations seethed with discontent; Tenochtitlán itself was torn with dissensions. Fearful that the strangers might be able to capitalize on the undercurrents of the rebellion—and fearful, too, that the newcomers might somehow be descendants of the ancient serpent-god, Quetzalcoatl—Moctezuma tried to buy off the Spaniards. Down to Veracruz went five noble diplomats accompanied by 100 porters laden with treasure. All of it was breathtaking, but what really dumbfounded the Spaniards were two metal disks the size of cartwheels. One, representing the Sun God, was of solid gold. The other, dedicated to the Moon, was of silver.

Cortés declined to respond as expected. He loaded the treasure onto one of his ships and ordered the captain to sail directly to Spain, where he would use the booty to win the approval of Charles V. The rest of the ships he burned so that none of the men in the command who were still loyal to Velásquez could return to Cuba and stir up trouble there. As for his own men, they too would fight harder if they knew that no ships were waiting to evacuate them if they were defeated.

In November 1519, Tenochtitlán capitulated after a short, hard fight. Cortés took Moctezuma hostage and then paused to contemplate his enormous prize.

Unknown to the victors, the captain of the ship bound for Spain did pause in Cuba to check on some land he owned there. It was a short stay but long enough for the sailors to talk. Astounded couriers sped the word to Velásquez. The governor was outraged. He was already at work gathering a strong force of 900 men equipped with 80 horses and 13 ships to pursue Cortés and arrest him for defying orders. Doubly furious at what seemed to him Cortés’s latest treachery, he put Pánfilo de Narváez in charge of a punitive force to bring the disloyal conquistador back to Cuba in chains!

Warnings from Veracruz reached Cortés at the Aztec capital. He reacted with characteristic boldness. Leaving two hundred men at Tenochtitlán, he marched the rest swiftly to the coast. No one there anticipated him so soon. Late at night, when most of his would-be captors were asleep, he waded his men across a swollen stream and attacked without warning. During the chaos that followed, a lance point put out one of Narváez’s eyes. By dawn the field was in Cortés’s hands. Most of Narváez’s men, hearing of the riches of Tenochtitlán, deserted their commander and swore fealty to the victor.

While Narváez remained under guard at Veracruz, nursing his wound, Cortés marched back to rejoin the rest of his men at Tenochtitlán. The Aztecs let the returning soldiers reach the palace compound and then attacked in waves of thousands. The hostage emperor, Moctezuma, was stoned to death by his own people while pleading for peace. Trying once again to use the night as cover, Cortés on June 30, 1520, led hundreds of Spaniards and several thousand Indian allies onto one of the stone-and-earth causeways that connected the island city to the mainland. Aztecs swarmed after them in canoes. On that famed noche triste—night of sorrows—850 Spaniards and upwards of 4,000 of their allies died.

Fortune shifted quickly, however. Wheeling around on the plains outside the city and making adroit use of his few horses and guns, Cortés defeated the army pursuing him. Doggedly then he put together a fresh army of Indians who hated the Aztecs and of whites who were dribbling into Mexico to see what was going on. The next year, on August 13, 1521, he recaptured Tenochtitlán, again at heavy cost. By twisting logic only a little, he could have blamed all these troubles on Narváez’s inept interference. He did not. He treated the man kindly and then sent him home to Spain with, so it is said, a bagful of golden artifacts.

In Spain Narváez intrigued against the nation’s hero, as Cortés then was, as best he could. He also yearned for a conquest in which he could redeem himself. When the governorship of Florida fell open, he applied for the position and won. His plan was to establish his first colony at Río de las Palmas, north of Pánuco, on Mexico’s northeast coast, where Cortés had already placed a defensive outpost. From there he could put pressure on his enemy, who many of the king’s council thought was growing too big for his boots. He could also search for the treasure that he was sure lay somewhere in the north, in the land from which he supposed the Aztecs had originally come—land where the fabled Seven Cities might lie.

Six hundred soldiers, sailors, and would-be settlers, a few of whom had their wives with them, left Spain aboard five ships in June 1527. One of the adventurers was Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, making his first trip to the New World. It was a hard journey—desertions, groundings, a deadly hurricane, and finally a series of adverse storms that drove the little fleet off its intended course for the Río de las Palmas to a landing on the west coast of the Florida peninsula, probably opposite the head of Tampa Bay.

In view of the peninsula’s nearness to Cuba, remarkably little was known about it. Beginning with Alonso Alvarez de Pineda in 1519, a few sea explorers had groped along its western coast on their way to Mexico. Occasional traders and slave hunters had poked into some of its lovely bays—and had often taken severe trouncings from the Indians for their pains. Juan Ponce de León, the only man to try to establish a colony there, was mortally wounded during the attempt.

Tenochtitlán, Capital of the Aztec Empire