CORONADO

Palo Duro Canyon in Texas marks what some chroniclers called the “First Barranca” where Coronado changed directions after deciding to follow the directions of the Indian Ysopete instead of the Turk's, who, he concluded, had successfully almost ruined his expedition. Palo Duro Canyon State Park, about 20 miles south of Amarillo, is also the performance site of “Texas,” an outdoor musical depicting Texas life in the 1880s, which is recent enough for old timers to harken back to their parents and childhood memories, but not old enough to depict Coronado’s experience. That’s why you’re hearing from me, and now I’m going to tell you how Coronado got into the jam that just about put an early end to him and his expedition. (The musical play about 1880s pioneer life runs summers, by the way.) Nothing to do with me or Coronado. Click the link if you’re interested.

● Texas - Outdoor musical historic drama in Palo Duro Canyon State Park

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This next part I’m calling

Coronado’s Excursion to Texas or A Kansas Indian’s Near Success at Killing Off the First European Expedition to the American Southwest

As to how Coronado and company wound up in Palo Duro Canyon, now hear this (although former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall differs on some of the details: This account is drawn from

Herbert E. Bolton, Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1949):

Upon establishing a headquarters at Hawikuh, the first Cibolan town he conquered [in New Mexico], Coronado invited visits from residents of surrounding communities. Among those responding were two natives of Cicúique (predecessor of present day Pecos, New Mexico. Pecos National Historical Park (which is 25 miles southeast of Santa Fe via U.S. 25) preserves the ruins of two Spanish mission churches which sit above the unexcavated ruins of Cicúique, a multi-story communal pueblo dwelling once housing 2,000 and which, when still visible, was a landmark on the Santa Fe Trail.)

The Spanish dubbed the two Indians Bigotes (Whiskers) and Cacique (Chief). With these two Indians for guides, Coronado sent a force of twenty under Hernando de Alvarado to the guides’ home town.

There, Alvarado saw the residents, including two Kansas prairies Indians that Bigotes and Cacique had captured for slaves. One of these (whom the Spanish dubbed “The Turk, because he looked like one,” confided to Alvarado that Bigotes had a golden bracelet of his that he had brought from Quivira (Kansas). When Alvarado considered the prospect of what the golden bracelet implied, he proceeded to become ensnared in Bigotes’ plot to rid his land of the Spanish. He told Coronado of the alleged golden bracelet from Kansas. Coronado responded by setting his army on the path to the promised land of Quivira.

By relying on the Turk for directions, Coronado and his troops ended up walking to Tejas (Texas), not Quivira (Kansas). (There was no gold in either, I might add.) Before leaving, Coronado equipped the army for thirty days, and fortunately for him, did not listen to the Turk’s proposal that this was unnecessary as the horses would become tired “and unable to bring back all the gold and silver they would find” and that, anyway, food was plentiful on the way.

Unfortunately for Coronado, he also did not listen to the other Quiviran slave, Ysopete, who, soon after the expedition left for Quivira, kept insisting they were going the wrong way. Not until they reached Tule Canyon in Texas did Coronado give Ysopete a serious hearing. Only then did he allow Ysopete to lead him and a small force of thirty to Quivira (Kansas), having sent the rest of the expedition back to their starting point of Alcanfor (Albuquerque) guided by Tejas Indians met in Texas. For having led them to Quivira, Coronado released a now free Ysopete in his home land.

Though Coronado thought the Turk more useful alive than dead, at the insistence of his troops he had him killed after the Turk confessed, implicating natives of Ciciiique in the plot.

Coronado summed things up in a letter to the King.

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, “… al emperador …,” trans. George Parker Winship, The Coronado Expedition 1540-1542, (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896), p. 583:

... what I am sure of is that there is not any gold nor any other metal in all that country, and the other things of which they had told me are nothing but little villages, and in many of these they do not plant anything and do not have any houses except of skins and sticks, and they wander around with the cows [buffalo]; so that the account they gave me was false, because they wanted to persuade me to go there with the whole force, believing that as the way through such uninhabited deserts, and from the lack of water, they would get us where we and our horses would die of hunger. And the guides confessed this, and said they had done it by the advice and orders of the natives of these provinces.

In all, Coronado and company had marched a little shy of 2000 miles on the round trip from Pecos to Texas and Kansas. Though they had many experiences and saw many new things they chronicled along the way and afterwards, they did not find the gold they sought.

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