CORONADO

When Coronado came within sight of Hawikuh, only men remained. Two or three hundred outside the town walls drew lines in the ground indicating that the Spanish should not proceed.

Coronado again sent Cardenas with a small group including armed men to present the Requerimiento through an interpretor. The Cibolan response was to shoot arrows. Coronado continues the story in his letter to Mendoza of August 3, 1540:

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, “… al Signor Antonio de Mendoza …,” trans. George Parker Winship, The Coronado Expedition 1540-1542, (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896), p. 556:

In obedience to the orders of Your Lordship and of the marquis, I did not wish my company, who were begging me for permission, to attack them, telling them that they ought not to offend them, and that what the enemy was doing was nothing, and that so few people ought not to be insulted. On the other hand, when the Indians saw that we did not move, they took greater courage, and grew so bold that they came up almost to the heels of our horses to shoot their arrows. On this account I saw that it was no longer time to hesitate, and as the priests approved the action, I charged them.

After the Spanish had killed about twenty Cibolans without sustaining fatalities themselves, the group outside the city retreated to the safety of Hawikuh to continue the defense. Spanish troops tell the rest:

“Relación…,” trans. George Parker Winship, p 573:

We had to withdraw, on account of the great damage they did us [with stones hurled] from the flat roofs [of the fortified apartment house that was Hawikuh,] and we began to assault them from a distance with the artillery and muskets .... Francisco Vazquez came out of it badly hurt by some stones.

“Relación…,” trans. George Parker Winship, p 565:

[After an hour of battle], ...when the Indians saw that his grace was deter­mined to enter the city, then they abandoned it, since they let them go with their lives. We found in it what we needed more than gold and silver, and that was much corn and beans and fowls, better than those of New Spain ...

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