AURA

Coronado is letting me use this item he did for our Map as the intro to my tour to the Hopi, since what he describes here is the first impression Europeans had of their life and of how they responded to the first contact they had with the Spanish.

CORONADO

A week after taking Háwikuh, Coronado dispatched Captain Pedro de Tovar westward to investigate Cibolan reports concerning the province of seven Tusayán communities. Maybe this was what they were looking for! He left July 15, 1540 with orders to return within 30 days. With him went seventeen mounted Spaniards and a few more on foot. After an initial skirmish with some Hopi followed by exchange of goods and information, he returned to Hawikuh to report, Coronado having authorized him to go only so far as Tusayán. So in mid-August Coronado heard most interesting news: Though Tusayán appeared to be much like Hawikuh, there was also news of a great river farther west, with very tall people living several days downstream. Not yet having received the supplies Alarcon was bringing, Coronado had to check out this river as an avenue to them.

Thus Coronado appointed his right-hand man to follow-up: Captain Don García López de Cárdenas Starting August 25th with twenty-five horsemen, he was given 80 days to follow the same path Zuni guides had led Tovar along and to do what he could at the river.

Thus he bypassed the badlands of the Petrified Forest and revisited the Hopi villages, which include Oraibi (adjacent to this map marker).

AURA

Oraibi, like Acoma to the east, has also been said to be the oldest continuously lived-in community in the present U.S.A. (but then again there has been competition between the Hopis and the Zunis before). As both towns are visually and culturally much unchanged since Coronado’s time, they are of equal interest to those of us who wonder about the past and other cultures.

CORONADO

Right. With now Hopi guides leading the way, Cárdenas’ expedition proceeded through what is now the ruin of Tusayán (just west of the east entry to Grand Canyon National Park via Arizona State Hwy. 64 known as East Rim Drive in the Park, Tusayán road markers visible on-site) and Grand View Point, also in the Park and marked on this map with a blue drop. It was here that Cárdenas’ party were the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon. They found they could not climb down to it in any reasonable amount of time, and, being short of water, traveled henceforth parallel to the Canyon about a mile or two south of it where springs were available. At best, they may have reached the brink of Havasupai Canyon to the west, though Castañeda makes no mention of a descent to the Havasupai village at the bottom.

Aura made sure Sine made Cárdenas’ trek on our map red in honor of the Hopi, the Zuni and other red men of the southwest who coped as best they could with the European incursion into their life. Also because it was quite embarrassing for Cardenas to not find the object of this quest, not even the sustenance Alarcon’s ships had transported to help it along.