New World

CORONADO, KNIGHT OF PUEBLOS AND PLAINS (491 pp.)--Herbert E. Bolfon--Whlttlesey House ($6).

One summer day in 1539 a young friar named Marcos eased himself into a barber's chair in Mexico City, unburdened himself of the biggest piece of news his barber had heard all summer. As almost everybody in Mexico City knew, Fray Marcos de Niza had just returned from a four-month trip into the unexplored country to the north, in search of the legendary "Seven Cities of Antilia." What he said while his whiskers were coming off took his story dramatically out of the reach of expedition yarns. North of the Gila, he said, there was a fabulously wealthy country called Cibola, with "many walled cities." In Cibola, added the friar, even the women's belts were made of gold.

Before the summer was out, Fray Marcos' barber had peddled the news as far east as Cuba. The viceroy at Mexico City was quick to act. He decided to send an expedition up the Pacific coast to take possession of Cibola and its neighboring kingdoms. To head the expedition the viceroy chose 30-year-old Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, who helped finance it with a million dollars of his wife's fortune.

Glittering Cibola. Coronado, the second son of a Spanish nobleman, had no money of his own. The law of primogeniture had sent him packing to the New World in search of his fortune. Five years before, in 1535, he had arrived in Mexico City at the side of the viceroy; an "attractive and popular" man, he had been made governor of Nueva Galicia, the province just northwest of the capital.

Recruiting for the expedition after the wealth of Cibola was brisk, and the viceroy was pleased. Most of the noblemen who signed up furnished their own horses and equipment and paid their own way, but many of the enlisted men had to be financed. In the end the caravan was made up of more than 300 soldiers, "several hundred Indians who went as servants, hostlers or herdsmen," more than a thousand horses and mules, and a flock of sheep. On Feb. 22, 1540, Coronado's cumbersome, armor-clad host headed northward up the western coast of Mexico, with Fray Marcos in the vanguard.

Friar's Secret. Before they had gone far, Coronado's men began to distrust everything Fray Marcos had told them. Instead of the one "small hill" that he had reported between them and Cibola, they found almost impassable mountains. Machetes had to be used to hack a way along roads he had called "good." But Marcos remained cheerful. What seemed like outrageous hardship to the tenderfoot caballeros was easy going for the hardy friar, veteran of long treks through Peru and Central America. Besides, he had his secret. The royal road to riches he had talked about back in Mexico City had been only a come-on to hasten the expedition. What Fray Marcos sought was the rich "harvest of souls" he expected to find in the north.

Five months later, Coronado's hungry army was trudging across the Arizona desert and following the Zu'ni River toward Cibola. When at last the legendary kingdom came in view, the army started in bewilderment. Fray Marcos' "great city sparkling with jewels" was only a miserble little pueblo "all crumpled together." Wrote one member of the expedition later: "Such were the curses which some of them hurled at Fray Marcos that I pray God to protect him from them."

Look at the Buffalo. Fray Marcos, who "did not consider it safe to remain at Cibola," turned homeward while disillusioned Coronado cast about for a new direction and food for his troops. One lieutenant, Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, who reconnoitered westward, stumbled on the Grand Canyon. Meanwhile Coronado was replacing Fray Marcos' visions of gold-studded kingdoms with those of an Indian slave called the Turk (because he looked like one). After a fretful winter on the Rio Grande, the young general took part of his army and struck out northward toward Quivira, a country rich in "gold, silver and fabrics" and "abundant and fruitful in everything"--according to the lying Turk, who went along as guide. All Coronado got for his trouble was an awe-inspiring look at Kansas plains black with buffalo, and a Quivira inhabited by "dark-skinned, tattooed, and nearly naked Wichita Indians." After executing the Turk (who confessed he had deliberately led the Spaniards on a wild goose chase), Coronado's vanguard of 30 horsemen rejoined their companions in central Arizona. In April 1542, more than two years after their departure from Mexico, the lackluster little army slugged along homeward under a hail of poison arrows. They had vied with De Soto in exploring a continent; they had found no gold at all.

The University of California's scholarly Professor Bolton (Outpost of Empire, Rim of Christendom) has ferreted out the facts of Coronado's adventure with new research and firsthand, mile-by-mile retracing of the Coronado trail. A lot of readers who wince at his ingenuous, neo-Rotarian style ("Here is a challenge to some young historian!") will have to admit that it supports a solid baggage of succulent anecdote. Few who start out with Bolton's Coronado will want to turn back until the last Indian is sighted and the last El Dorado tracked down.

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