CORONADO

I’m gonna read you a couple pages from a book called Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains, by historian Herbert E. Bolton, okay? Bear with me.

Don Francisco was in many ways a typical Spanish adven­turer in the New World. He had come to Mexico at the age of twenty-five as one of the gentlemen in the train of Viceroy Men­doza, to whom he had been favorably known at Court in Old Spain. A native of Salamanca, he was a younger son in a family of lesser nobles, a position not always enviable. Don Fran­cisco’s father, as corregidor of Burgos, was wealthy enough to found an entailed estate (mayorazgo) by which his eldest son, Gonzalo, inherited the bulk of the family patrimony. Two sis­ters, with ‘suitable endowments,’ were sent to convents to be­come nuns and thus removed from the matrimonial market.

The rule of primogeniture had consequences not intended, for its results were not wholly conservative. By it, younger sons were driven to initiative - even to revolution.

The younger Coronado brothers - Don Juan and Don Francisco - came to America to seek their fortunes, as did hundreds of other younger sons of noble families, for the New World was already the land of opportunity. Juan became an official in Costa Rica, there made a good name for himself, and there his descendants still live. Francisco cast his lot with Viceroy Mendoza, and with him entered Mexico City in 1535...

Coronado rose rapidly ... and ... enjoyed the viceroy’s favor.... Francisco’s prestige was vastly enhanced when, within two years after his arrival, he married Doña Beatríz, daughter and heiress of wealthy Alonso de Estrada, deceased treasurer of New Spain and a reputed son of King Ferdinand - on the wrong side of the blanket. In this left-handed way, Coronado was now linked with royalty.... The wedding gift from Señora Estrada, the American mother-in-law, was ‘half of Tlapa,’ a large and profitable hacienda south of Mexico City. To make life pleasant for daughter and son-in-law, Doña Marina moved out of her city mansion, and the newly-weds moved in.

Seeing Coronado perform well at tasks Mendoza had given him, Mendoza next appointed Coronado, now age 28, governor of Nueva Galicia, a northern frontier province. A governor’s salary was 1000 ducats per year.

Bolton, p.53:

[The expedition to the Seven Cities of Cibola was financed in the main by Viceroy] Mendoza, Coronado, and individual members of the army…. Mendoza is said to have contributed sixty thousand ducats ...; Coronado put in fifty thousand, raised chiefly by Doña Beatríz, ... her property being mortgaged for the purpose. Some of the well-to-do adventurers provided their own outfits, regarding it as a good investment, among them being ... the son of former Governor Pérez de la Torre, who spent more than four thousand pesos ...

Doña Beatríz’s 50,000 ducats equates to about seven and a quarter million U.S. dollars in year 2000 currency. For perspective, Coronado’s salary as Governor was worth about $145,000 in the year 2000.

The Coronado expedition mustered assembled on February 22, 1540 at Compostela, and Coronado returned to Mexico City to report to Viceroy Mendoza in the spring of 1542. Thus, Coronado and the rest of the expedition were gone about two years.

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