CORONADO

Passing the eastern-most point Alarcon had reached earlier at the east end of the green line, the massive group Coronado was leading continued east on the red line. This line is red because this trek soon became a source of great embarrassment and frustration for Coronado and his followers. It is red also because it was a near victory for the red slave the Spanish called the “Turk” – The Turk had seen how things had gone so badly at Alcanfor and sought to spare his people the same by pointing Coronado to a land in which he must surely get lost and starve.

Unbeknownst to Coronado and company, the Turk whom they were relying on as a guide was actually coaching Indians in the forward path of the expedition to confirm what he had been telling Alvarado and Coronado all along about the riches ahead. Following him to what is currently Vega had brought the Spanish into the vast flat expanse of the Texas Panhandle, the Llano Estacdo, filled with Buffalo and nomadic Querechos Indians. At the onset of the expedition from Alcanfor, the Turk had pooh-poohed Coronado’s taking along 35 days of supplies on the grounds that there would be such riches to haul back that they would need every available horse for the job. After three weeks since leaving the green line, their food supplies were nearly gone.

The Turk’s tempting Coronado and company into the vast flat grasslands of west Texas as a way of seeing them “get lost” was a stroke of genius. Had the Spanish not had naval technology (the compass) unknown to the Indians, the plot might have worked.

A Franciscan with the expedition, writing to fellow clergy in New Spain, probably from Tiguex on the Rio Grande during the summer/fall of 1541, described the experience.

“Relación…,” trans. George Parker Winship, The Coronado Expedition 1540-1542, (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896), p. 578:

. . . It was so dangerous to travel or to go away from the camp in these plains, that it is as if one was traveling on the sea, since the only roads are those of the cows, and they are so level and have no mountain or prominent landmark, that if one went out of sight of it, he was lost, and in this way we lost one man, and others who went hunting wandered around two or three days lost . . .

It was at about this time near Tule Canyon that a group of Coronado’s troops hunting Buffalo for the first time to replenish their food stocks came upon a group of Teyas Indians. These enemies of the Querechos (whom the Turk had been coaching) led them to a large Teyas settlement in the canyon. Without the coaching the Turk had provided earlier, this group claimed that the area to the north was not a land of stone buildings like those of Cibola and Tiguex as the Turk claimed, but grass huts. And no words were needed to indicate that the homes of the Teyas here were teepees made of poles and buffalo hides.

“Turk’s” lie to the Spanish was exposed, and on May 26, 1541, Coronado with the counsel of his troops decided that the bulk of the expedition should return to Tiguex under Arellano, and that he with just 30 men would travel north to Quivira in the direction both the Teyas group and the other slave to the Cicúique representatives had been all along been saying to be Quivira.

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 Cicuicue in the plot.

It is still possible to experience being lost in the native tall grasses of the midwest prairie if you go to the Prairie Center southwest of Kansas City, Kansas. Three hundred acres of native tall grass reach their full height of 12 feet each summer (but there are paths to keep you from getting lost):Prairie Center, 26235 W. 135th St. at Cedar Niles Road, in west Olathe, Kansas. Daily. (913) 209-0207. There’s a link with info about it in the print version of this note.

There is some disagreement among scholars about Coronado’s exact routing and destinations in Texas. This is not surprising, since Coronado himself didn’t know exactly where he was, and was in fact lost for three weeks. The red and yellow lines on the map are the best guess of historian Eugene Bolton, and one modern argument for leaving them that way is that the very excellent outdoor historic drama “TEXAS” plays summers in Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo. 806-655-2181 Not only do you see another slice of history, you also experience the beauty of this canyon which Bolton claims is the “second barranca” (camp) Coronado made in what he calls the “deep canyon.”

For more on alternate views that have Coronado actually traveling as far south as near where deVaca and Esteban walked earlier, click this link that’s at the end of the text version of this note.