CORONADO

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, “La Relación… ,” trans. Fanny Bandelier, The Journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his Companions from Florida to the Pacific, 1528-1536,” (New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, 1905), p.63:

"[On what they called ‘The Island of Ill Fate’, the group de Vaca was part of]…agreed that four men, who were the most able-bodied, should go to Pánuco [on the Gulf coast east of Mexico City], which we believed to be nearby …. They were all good swimmers and took with them an Indian from the island.

Cabeza deVaca, p. 86:

[Later,] … Figueroa [one of the four sent to Pánuco], spoke to Esquival …, and he entreated him to go in his company towards Pánuco. But Esquival refused, saying he had heard from the monks [also in the original expedition to Florida] that Pánuco was in their rear [to the east] ….

Much later, after the survivors numbered only four and had reached what they called the “village of the hearts” (because the Indians there fed them dear heart),

Cabeza deVaca, pp 161-2:

"… Castillo saw, on the neck of an Indian, a little buckle from a swordbelt, and in it was sewed a horseshoe nail. He took it from the Indian, and we asked ... what it was; they said it had come from Heaven. We further asked who had brought it, and they answered that some men, with beards like ours, had come from Heaven to that river; that they had horses, lances and swords, and had lanced two of them.

As cautiously as possible, we then inquired what had become of those men; and they replied they had gone to sea, putting their lances into the water and going into it themselves, and that afterwards they saw them on top of the waves moving towards sunset.

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