CORONADO

de Nizza’s report  (lyrics) to the Viceroy is partly fact, partly wishful thinking, partly falsehood. Clearly, even the clergy understood their duty to include claiming the real estate and the souls living there for God and Country.

Frey Marcos de Nizza, ”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), pp 228-231:

"I came within sight of Cibola.… The houses are built in order, according as the Indians told me, all made of stone with (divers stories, and flat roofs, as far as I could discern from a mountain, whither I ascended to view the city.…Their weapons are bows, they have Emeralds and other jewels, although they esteem none so much as turquoise wherewith they adorn the walls of the porches of their houses, and their apparel and vessels, and they use them instead of money through all the Country. Their apparel is of cotton and Ox hides, and this is their most commendable and honourable apparel. They use vessels of gold and silver, for they have no other metal, where-of there is greater use and more abundance then in Peru, and they buy the same for turquoise in the province of the Pintados, where there are said to be mines of great abundance.…And when I told the chief men what a goodly city Cibola seemed to me, they answered that it was the least of the seven cities, and that Totonteac is the greatest.…

"…So I made a great heap of stones by the help of the Indians, and on the top I set up a small slender cross … and said that I set up that cross and heap in the name of the most honourable Lord Don Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy and Captain general of Nueva Espanna, for the Enmperor our Lord, in token of possession, according to mine instruction. Which possession I said that I took in that place of all the seven cities, and of the Kingdoms of Totonteac, of Acus, and of Marata.

…I had passed the second desert. And though I were in fear, yet I determined to go to the great plain, whereof I said before, that I had information, … and in that place I understood, that this plain is inhabited for many days journey toward the east.…At the entrance of this plain I saw but seven Towns, only one of a reasonable bigness, which were a far off in a low valley being very green and a most fruitful soil, out of which ran many Rivers. I was informed that there was much gold in this valley, and that the inhabitants work it into vessels and thin plates, wherewith they strike and take off their sweat, and that they are people that will not suffer those of the other side of the plain to traffic with them, and they could not tell me the cause thereof. Here I set up two crosses, and took possession of the plain and valley in like sort and order.…

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