CORONADO

Castañeda, who was one of Coronado’s troops, noted that:

Pedro de Castañeda, “Relación de la jornada de Cíbola … ,” Nacera, ~1562, trans. George Parker Winship, The Coronado Expedition 1540-1542, (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896), p. 479-80:

After the viceroy Don Antonio left them [at the Pacific Mexican settlement of Compostela], the army continued its march [north towards the promised land of Cibola]. Each man was obliged to transport his own baggage and as all did not know how to fasten the packs, and as the horses started off fat and plump, they had a good deal of difficulty and labor during the first few days …. In the end necessity … made them skillful, so that one could see many gentlemen become carriers, and anybody who despised this work was not considered a man.

So those Spaniards who did not have horses carried their own baggage. They were not allowed to make Indians on the expedition do it for them.

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