CORONADO

The way historian Herbert Bolton tells it:

Herbert E. Bolton, Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains, (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1949), p. 57:

"Several hundred Indians went with the army to serve as scouts, sappers, servants, herdsmen, horse wranglers, camp cooks, or in other occupations. They were enlisted in Mexico City and in the pueblos along the road to Compostela [the muster point]…. Mendoza gave strict instructions that only volunteer Indians should be taken, but of these there was no dearth. Many more than were needed begged permission to go. Indeed, they told Coronado that if the viceroy would permit them, ‘more than ten thousand’ would join the march, for natives as well as Spaniards had taken the Cibola fever.

"Mendozá ordered Coronado to show the Indian allies the greatest consideration, something which had not been done by all conquistadores. They must be dealt with as freemen, and permitted to turn back at any time they might wish, ‘rich and contented,’ supplied with provisions for the return march, and, if necessary, with an escort of horsemen for their protection. This promise was carried out to the letter.

Some of the Indians took their wives and children with them on the long march. Families left behind, Mendoza decreed, must be provided with what was necessary for their sustenance until the husband should return.

During the expedition’s return to Mexico, the frustration Coronado felt at trying to implement an ethic of regard for the Indians is evident in his remark that any soldier found mistreating Indians henceforth would be hanged. The soldier who noted this surmised Coronado was reeling from a head injury sustained shortly before he called a halt to the expedition. It’s also possible the injury helped him say what he really felt.

Alarcon also tried to carry out Mendoza’s instructions.

Though it could be argued that as a sailor and leader he had seen everything, it might also be argued that though he might come across as a poker face, the way he wrote his reports may have been occasioned not only by the need to survive, but also by an attempt to be considerate of Indians’ ways. After all, he was the spearhead of the culture that gave us “macho” and of a dogmatic religion as well. Yet he reported his observations to Viceroy Mendoza matter-of-factly:

Sex and fashion in the New World

Alarcon and his crew ventured up the river they had not yet named the Buena Gia (which we know now as the Colorado). They were entering a new world presumably devoid of European, African, or any other non(un?)-American influences. And what did they find? Alarcon starts with a description of the natives’ attire at one stop along the river:

Hernando de Alarcón, “Relatione … ,” Narratives of the Coronado Expedition 1540-1542, trans. George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey from the Italian in Ramusio, “Viaggi,” 1556 ed., III, fols. 363-370 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1940), pp. 129 – 130:

"These Indians were adorned in different ways. Some had streaks covering their faces almost entirely. Others had their faces half covered, all blackened with soot. Each one was painted according to his fancy. Some wore masks of the same color, shaped like their faces. On their heads they wore a deerskin about two spans in size, worn like a helmet, and on it a small crest with some feathers. The weapons of these natives were bows and arrows of hard wood, and two or three types of maces of wood hardened in the fire. These people were large and well formed, without being fat. They have their noses pierced, and from them hung some pendants, while others wore shells. They have their ears pierced with many holes in which they place beads and shells. All of them, both small and large, wear a multicolored sash about the waist; tied in the middle is a round bundle of feathers which hangs in the back like a tail. Likewise, around the muscles of their arms, they wear a narrow band wound around so many times that it extends the width of a hand. They wear some small blades of deer bones, tied around one arm, with which they wipe their sweat. From the other hang some reed canes. They wear also a sort of bag a span long, tied to their left arm, using it as an arm band for the bow, filled with some seed from which they make a kind of beverage. Their bodies are branded by fire. Their hair is cut in front, and in the back it hangs to the waist. The women go about naked. They wear a large bunch of feathers, painted and glued, tied in front and behind. They wear their hair like the men. There were among these Indians three or four men dressed like women.

pp. 147-148

"At [another] place the old man showed me something amazing, a son of his dressed as a woman and used as such. I asked him how many such men there were among them. He replied that there were four, and when one died, a search was made for all the pregnant women in the land, and the first boy born was chosen to exercise the function of women. The women dressed them in their clothes, saying that if they were to act as such he should wear their clothes. These men could not have carnal relations with women at all, but they themselves could be used by all marriageable youths of the land. They received no compensation for this work from the people in the region, al­though they were free to take from any house what they needed for their living.

I noticed also some women who associated brazenly with men. I asked the old man if they were married women. He said no, that they were prostitutes who lived apart from the married women.

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