Francisco Vazquez de Coronado

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján (Salamanca, 1510 – Mexico City, September 22, 1554), better known simply as Coronado, was a Spanish conquistador. He traveled through New Mexico and other parts of the present United States between 1540 and 1542. He arrived in the Viceroyalty of New Spain accompanying the first viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza.

Discoveries

Second son of Juan Vázquez de Coronado y Sosa de Ulloa, who died in 1532, and who was Lord of Coquilla and La Torre, Corregidor of Segovia and Jerez de la Frontera and Captain General of the Frontera, Prefect of Granada, was at the service of the Catholic Monarchs and Carlos I of Spain, with the latter already as Alderman of Salamanca, he also held various positions in the administration of the recently conquered Emirate of Granada, with Íñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones, its first Christian governor He was the paternal uncle of Juan Vázquez de Coronado y Anaya.

The mother of Juan Vázquez de Coronado was Isabel de Luján, a native of Madrid, who was part of the King's Cohort, being a lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabel I of Castilla la Católica.

Don Juan Vázquez de Coronado y Sosa de Ulloa would establish his mayorazgo on December 16, 1522. The Mayorazgo consisted in the fact that only the legitimate eldest son could inherit all the father's assets, so Coronado was ruled out to receive part of This inheritance, so this family and social position led Coronado to have to seek his fortune and destiny in the New World, which was facilitated thanks to his father's political relations with King Carlos I.

Vázquez de Coronado arrived in New Spain (today Mexico) from Spain in 1535, at the age of 25, in the environment of his first viceroy, the son of his father's employer and his personal friend, to try his luck in New World. He became a trusted man of the viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, and rose rapidly, being named governor of Nueva Galicia in 1537. In 1539 he married Beatriz de Estrada, called la Santa , sister of Leonor de Estrada, a relative of Alvarado and daughter of the treasurer and governor Alonso de Estrada e Hidalgo, lord of Picón, and his wife Marina Flores Gutiérrez de la Caballería, from a family of knights of the Order of calatrava. He inherited through her a large portion of a Mexican encomendera property and they had eight children.

Vázquez de Coronado was also distinguished for his ability to pacify the natives and so in 1538 he was appointed governor of the Audiencia de la Nueva Galicia, replacing the first governor of Nuño de Guzmán province. As governor, he supported Fray Marcos de Niza in exploring the north of New Spain, a mission entrusted to him by Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza.

Background to the expedition

In 1528 an expedition headed by Pánfilo de Narváez was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida. There were four survivors of it, who crossed the current southwestern United States and northern Mexico on foot for eight years until they reached Culiacán, Sinaloa, where they found a Spanish villa. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote an account of that expedition entitled Shipwrecks. In it he describes his adventures and those of his three companions: Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza and a slave named Esteban (Estebanico). The latter was the first man born in Africa to set foot in what is now the United States of America. Estebanico was a Moor of the Berber ethnic group and was born in Azamor (Province of El Jadida, present-day Morocco), on the Atlantic coast of the African continent. These castaways, found in New Spain in 1536, transmitted rumors from the Indians that further north there were cities full of minerals and riches.

With these backgrounds, the friar Marcos de Niza was sent on an exploratory trip in 1539; He returned talking about the riches of seven cities of gold called Cíbola, of which he had heard about on his trip. This aroused the interest of Coronado, who decided to go in search of that mythical city.

The expedition took place in 1540. About 800 Mexican Indians and about 340 Spaniards took part in it, who had contributed their own money to finance the expedition. Vázquez de Coronado mortgaged his wife's possessions and borrowed 71,000 silver pesos to finance the expedition. A worker at that time earned 100 silver pesos a month.In the expedition was a woman, Francisca de Hoces, with her husband, Alonso Sánchez, who was a shoemaker in Mexico City. In the expedition there were 11 captains and several men who had lived with the Indians for 10 years or more. They brought 12 cannons, abundant ammunition, 150 horsemen and 200 foot soldiers, cattle and seeds.

The Great Expedition

Crowned on the northFrederic Remington (1861-1909).

The expedition set out in 1540. It was made up of 340 Spaniards and hundreds of Indian allies, as well as cattle. They were accompanied by Marcos de Niza.

In addition to the expedition that left by land on February 26 from Compostela, Nayarit, in those days the capital of the province called Kingdom of Nueva Galicia, the viceroy sent another expedition to California in parallel, formed by ships that followed them by sea under the command of Fernando de Alarcón. The expedition would leave on May 9, 1540 and would enter along the coast of New Spain in the interior of the Gulf of California, and then continue north to Yuma, in present-day Arizona.

A few days after leaving, food began to run low and about ten horses died from carrying heavy loads and not receiving food to continue. After traveling 150 kilometers, in March, they look for food in Chametla among the Indians who were there, but the Indians resist and organize a trap in which Coronado's deputy, Lope de Samaniego, died of a crush. After this Coronado organizes a reprisal against the Indians and they capture eight Indians, who will be executed. Two captains who had gone ahead return due to the steepness of the terrain and bad weather without having found the city. They continued heading north along the western coast of New Spain to Culiacán, Sinaloa.

From there a smaller force, led by Tristán de Luna y Arellano, continued further north and captured the towns of the Zuñis in July 1540, towns they had been told were the seven golden cities of Cíbola.

The Conquest of the Colorado, oil of Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau depicting the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado.

In August 1540 Coronado sends out exploration groups to inform them about everything. To the east he will send his new deputy, García López de Cárdenas, to explore the West, in the area of the Hopi Indians and find the Colorado Canyon. Captain Hernández de Alvarado goes east with a mustachioed indigenous cacique nicknamed "Whiskers," who introduces the Spanish to various tribes along the Rio Grande. Hernando wanted to continue exploring more but Bigotes told them that he was tired and would provide them with a guide. This new guide wore a particular hat, typical of the Pawnee tribe, which reminded the Spanish of an Arab hat, and that is why they nicknamed him "the Turk". They found a town called Tiguex or Tigüez, near the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the banks of the Rio Grande, and Hernando sent a letter to Coronado to set up camp there and meet with them in that spot, near the Rio Grande (River Bravo for the Mexicans), which he did. There the Spaniards needed clothes and other things, and they took them from the Indians, even offering money in exchange, but the Indians refused and this, added to other episodes, caused an uprising of the Tiguex Indians who began to kill the Indians. Spanish horses. The expedition was attacked several times by the natives, but Vázquez de Coronado's forces successfully repelled them. That winter there were several clashes. Some have called these clashes the Tiguex War.

"El turco" spoke of Quivira, a rich country to the northwest. Coronado decided to go in search of Quivira, taking the "Turk" as a guide. He crossed the Llano Estacado, crossed the prairie of the Great Plains, and continued his march north. However, Coronado discovered that the "Turk" was deceiving him, or at least that's what he believed and had him executed. Other guides led him to Quivira, and he found a small town near present-day Lindsborg, Kansas. The disappointment was repeated: the quiviras Indians, later known as Wichitas, had no wealth; their village was made of thatched-roof huts and they didn't even have gold jewelry.

In the spring of 1540, the expedition entered the canyon of Palo Duro, Texas, in search of gold. Coronado left most of his men there and continued on horseback with thirty expedition members in search of another myth, the city de Quivira, supposedly full of wealth.

In 1542 he returned to New Spain by the same route he had used. Only a hundred of his men returned to him. Although the expedition was a failure, he continued as Governor of Nueva Galicia until 1544. He then retired to Mexico City, where he died in 1554.

In the 2014 book Crónicas de Tierra Caliente, the chronicler from Guerrero Alfredo Mundo Fernández says that according to documents from the General Archive of the Nation, and other documents that he cites, in 1538 the viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza granted his Francisco Vázquez de Coronado protected the command of Cutzamala in the Tierra Caliente of today's State of Guerrero, which since its creation in 1528 Hernán Cortés had assigned to Juan de Burgos according to the Archive of the Indies. Don Francisco Vázquez de Coronado had the command of Cutzamala from 1538 to 1554 when he died, and left it as an inheritance to his daughter Doña Isabel de Luján Vázquez de Coronado who married Bernardino Pacheco de Bocanegra who became his new encomendero. By the way, this entrusted the fight to Luis Cortés, son of Hernán Cortés, to Doña Isabel before the Audiencia of Mexico in 1556, arguing that Don Francisco Vázquez de Coronado had fraudulently acquired it from Juan de Burgos for 9,500 pesos in gold from mines and it cost a lot. further. In December 1557, that request was rejected before the evidence presented by the bailiff of the Audiencia of Mexico Pedro Vázquez, the granting by Viceroy Mendoza and two royal warrants from the queen, in addition to a document signed by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado where Juan de Burgos is considered well paid.

The Coronado expedition, 1540–1542.

Legacy

On his trip, García López de Cárdenas (a member of his expedition) discovered the Colorado Canyon, and gathered valuable information about the American Southwest. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado is remembered by some islands, avenues, schools, hotels, urbanizations, shopping centers and thousands of businesses in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, bearing his Coronado surname.

In his hometown, Salamanca, and in a good number of other cities in Spain, there are public roads that bear his name.

His nephew Juan Vázquez de Coronado (1523-1565) carried out the conquest of Costa Rica and distinguished himself for his humanitarian actions. Felipe II granted him in 1565 the hereditary title of Adelantado of Costa Rica, which his descendants held until 1823.

At the movies

In the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, by Steven Spielberg, the young Indiana Jones wants to snatch the Cross of Coronado from some grave robbers, a jewel that Hernán Cortés supposedly gave Coronado as a gift in 1520.

Ancestors