Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539–1542

They Were Not Familiar with His Majesty, nor Did They Wish to Be His Subjects

Richard Flint, Shirley Cushing Flint, Richard Flint, Shirley Cushing Flint

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780826351340
• eBook ISBN: 9780826351357
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This volume is the first annotated, dual-language edition of thirty-four original documents from the Coronado expedition. Using the latest historical, archaeological, geographical, and linguistic research, historians and paleographers Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint make available accurate transcriptions and modern English translations of the documents, including seven never before published and seven others never before available in English. The volume includes a general introduction and explanatory notes at the beginning of each document.

Document 1

Letter of Vázquez de Coronado
to the King, December 15, 1538

AGI, Guadalajara, 5, R.1, N.5

INTRODUCTION

When he arrived in the New World in 1535 in the company of the newly appointed viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, young Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was already a rising star. What led to Mendoza’s patronage of the young native of Salamanca is not altogether clear. It seems likely that the service of Juan Vázquez de Coronado, Francisco’s father, as corregidor in Granada during 1515 and 1516 and as prefecto, or chief administrator, there led to a close relationship with the Mendoza family, especially with Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, the Conde de Tendilla and Marqués de Mondéjar, the viceroy’s older brother, who was captain general in Granada from 1512 until 1564, and perhaps also with Antonio de Mendoza himself.¹

In 1537 Vázquez de Coronado received the first assignments on record from the viceroy. Mendoza sent him to investigate an uprising of black slaves and Indians at the mines of Amatepeque, southwest of the Ciudad de México. A group of Blacks confessed to fomenting the uprising; they were drawn and quartered in punishment. Mendoza was pleased with Vázquez de Coronado’s discharge of the assignment and wrote as much to the king.² The same year, Vázquez de Coronado was sent as visitador to look into reported mistreatment of Indians working in the mines at Sultepec, in the same general area as Amatepeque.³

In 1536 Vázquez de Coronado had married Beatriz de Estrada, daughter of the deceased former royal treasurer in Nueva España, Alonso de Estrada, and Marina Gutiérrez Flores de la Caballería.⁴ One of the significant consequences of that marriage was the bridegroom’s receipt as dowry of one-half of the encomienda of Tlapa, the third largest ncomienda in Nueva España, which provided financial leverage that he lacked as the second son of Juan Vázquez de Coronado, comendador⁵ of Cubillas and former corregidor of Granada.⁶ That resource permitted the couple two years later to invest in the expedition to Tierra Nueva.

The career of the viceroy’s young criado surged ahead in 1538. In June he and his brother-in-law Juan Alonso de Sosa were both made regidores of the cabildo of the Ciudad de México, an office Vázquez de Coronado held until within three months of his death in September 1554, at about age 43.⁷ The most momentous change in his political status within the viceroyalty came in August 1538, when the viceroy named him governor and residencia judge of Nueva Galicia, on the northwest fringe of Spain’s dominion in North America.⁸ By November he was on his way to take up his duties in that west coast provincia.⁹

Vázquez de Coronado did not travel alone. In his entourage were two Franciscans, fray Marcos de Niza and fray Onorato, as well as the slave Esteban de Dorantes. They had been dispatched by the viceroy to verify the 1536 reports of wealthy and populous places far to the north that had been made by the four sole survivors of the 1528 Narváez expedition to La Florida. The possibility of a subsequent major expedition toward the north was already in the air, though actual recruiting might not yet have begun.

Even with that prospect looming, the new governor’s first priority was ongoing threats to the continued Spanish settlement of Nueva Galicia. The letter published here represents Vázquez de Coronado’s first report to King Carlos I (Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V) on the state of affairs in Nueva Galicia. It exhibits his preoccupation with the safety of the provincia. In 1939 Arthur Aiton wrote of the letter: “It is an honest, straightforward description of the obvious deficiencies of the administration of a newly conquered region. Its author shows no unusual grasp of underlying causes, applies superficial routine remedies, and displays a lack of initiative.”¹⁰

At Guadalajara Vázquez de Coronado found his predecessor dead from injuries suffered in a fall from a horse while on campaign against native people.¹¹ Advancing to the seat of his jurisdiction, Compostela, the governor found both that ciudad and the farthest outpost of Spanish control, Culiacán, threatened with abandonment.¹² He identified the principal leader of assaults on Spaniards by Indians as a man named Ayapín.¹³

The settlers of Nueva Galicia, where the natives had been overrun in the early 1530s by forces led by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, had a dismal reputation for their treatment of the resident Indians. Vázquez de Coronado, acting under the viceroy’s directives, looked into charges of abuse of natives and the levels of tribute they were being assessed. The findings he reports here are generally favorable to the settlers.¹⁴ In an effort to ameliorate some of the settlers’ distress, the governor agrees that the ciudad of Compostela should be moved, which it subsequently was.¹⁵

These and other matters of administration are the subjects of the letter dated December 15 (Julian) from Compostela, two manuscript copies of which survive in the Archivo General de Indias in Sevilla under the signatura, or catalog number, AGI, Guadalajara, 5, R.1, N.5. Both are signed by Vázquez de Coronado, though they are written in the hand of an escribano, perhaps Hernando Martín Bermejo, the governor’s secretary.¹⁶ Hernando and his cousin Juan Martín Bermejo, like Vázquez de Coronado, had come to the New World in Viceroy Mendoza’s entourage in 1535.¹⁷ Both were also members of the Coronado expedition.¹⁸ Hernando prepared the originals of the papers incident to the death of Juan Jiménez at Tiguex in 1542, which are published from a later copy as Document 27 in this volume. By the 1560s, with Vázquez de Coronado now dead, licenciado Hernando Bermejo was living in Guatemala, where he was associated with the viceroy’s former secretary Juan de León.¹⁹

Numerous, mostly minor differences exist between the two extant copies of the December 1538 letter. One more significant difference exists as well, even though the two copies were prepared by the same escribano, probably within hours or days of each other. In this case, the word pacíficos is substituted for conquistados, considerably altering the meaning of the sentence in which the words appear.²⁰ Other differences between the two copies include the existence on Copy 1²¹ of postiles, or marginal notes, probably added by an official of the Consejo de Indias in Spain, which is where a letter addressed to the king would have ended up.²² The postiles include both verbal comments and organizational markers in the form of crosses {+}.

Arthur Aiton published the only previous transcription of this letter in 1939. George Hammond and Agapito Rey published the first (and only previous) English translation the following year.²³ In preparing and editing the new transcription and translation that follow, we relied on both of the manuscript copies in the AGI and consulted both previous printed editions. Significant differences between the current work and that of the earlier scholars are pointed out in the annotations.

TRANSLATION

[1r]

Holy Catholic Imperial Majesty

{1538 Nueva Galicia}²⁴

The viceroy of Nueva España delivered to me a royal commission from Your Majesty by which Your Majesty orders me to come to this provincia of Nueva Galicia to assume authority over it and to take the residencia of licenciado [Diego Pérez] de la Torre,²⁵ who was residencia judge here.

In fulfillment of what Your Majesty orders me, as soon as Your Majesty’s commission was given to me, I departed from the Ciudad de México.²⁶ When I arrived in this jurisdiction, I found that licenciado de la Torre (whose residencia Your Majesty orders me to take) [had] died in the villa of Guadalajara in this provincia,²⁷ wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• General Introduction
• Document 1
• Document 2
• Document 3
• Document 4
• Document 5
• Document 6
• Document 7
• Document 8
• Document 9
• Document 10
• Document 11
• Document 12
• Document 13
• Document 14
• Document 15
• Document 16
• Document 17
• Document 18
• Document 19
• Document 20
• Document 21
• Document 22
• Document 23
• Document 24
• Document 25
• Document 26
• Document 27
• Document 28
• Document 29
• Document 30
• Document 31
• Document 32
• Document 33
• Document 34
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations Used in the Appendixes, Notes, and References
• Appendix 1. Biographical Data
• Appendix 2. Geographical Data
• Appendix 3. Known Members of the Coronado Expedition
• Appendix 4. Requerimiento
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index