Came Men on Horses

The Conquistador Expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate

Stan Hoig

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781646423767, 9781607321941
• eBook ISBN: 9781607322061
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

Guided by myths of golden cities and worldly rewards, policy makers, conquistador leaders, and expeditionary aspirants alike came to the new world in the sixteenth century and left it a changed land. Came Men on Horses follows two conquistadors—Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate—on their journey across the southwest.

Driven by their search for gold and silver, both Coronado and Oñate committed atrocious acts of violence against the Native Americans, and fell out of favor with the Spanish monarchy. Examining the legacy of these two conquistadors Hoig attempts to balance their brutal acts and selfish motivations with the historical significance and personal sacrifice of their expeditions. Rich human details and superb story-telling make Came Men on Horses a captivating narrative scholars and general readers alike will appreciate.

Part 1

The Coronado Expedition

Today, archaeologists are scouring historic sites in the Southwest and Central Plains searching for clues to the drama of our Indian past and the conquistador era. Ever so gradually, more and more revelations are coming to light. It is with the discovery of an outline of a prehistoric Indian pit house, a piece of chain mail, a rusted knife blade, or a copper arrowhead once employed by a Spanish crossbow that more truths about the past emerge.

But we have been rewarded in another very significant way. The Spanish were the first Europeans known to enter the American Southwest. As it emerged into a world power, the Spanish Empire of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries featured literate men and written works. Reports, narratives, letters, testimonies, and other writings left behind from their era of exploration and discovery provide the details of the Spaniards’ adventures in America.

We can almost imagine that the persons who penned these historical documents blew the ink on them dry and handed them to us to read—except that would be slighting the scholars who uncovered them yellowed with the ages from distant archives, poured over their antique script, and translated them for further study.

Through these documents we discover that within the gilded romance of the Spanish conquistador lies embedded not only bravery and resolve but some other less admirable traits as well. America’s history of record begins here.

1

Of Myths and Men

The inhabitants [of Topira] wear gold, emeralds, and other precious stones and serve [meals] on silver and gold, [with] which they cover their houses. The principales wear heavy, well-worked chains of gold around their necks.

Coronado’s Myth¹

When the Spanish conquistadors came to America to conduct their conquests for the Spanish Empire, they were inspired and guided to an indefinable but significant extent by popular myths that featured fabulous cities of golden wealth or other worldly rewards. Because the ethic of recorded history requires tangible, provable fact, the concrete influence of elusive, popularly propagated myths has generally been slighted. Conversely, however, few historical studies, especially nationalistic ones, avoid dependence to some degree on mythical input relative to either events or personalities.

It may seem spurious to give myths such strong responsibility in as important an event as exploration of the New World. But, in truth, these societal delusions played an influential role throughout the period of Spanish exploration of the Americas. Their tangible effect is difficult to deny. Many were born as infectious Old World mythologies that, fostered by fanciful delusion, flowed through folk legend and early literature from the Old World westward through Europe and on to the Antilles (the West Indies). From there they were carried onward to the American continents by aspiring conquistadors. Throughout the period of Spanish discovery, myths influenced the actions of policy-makers, conquistador leaders, and expeditionary aspirants alike.

In his study of the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest, Books of the Brave, Irving Albert Leonard tells how these ancient legends were spread by the development of printing and the production of romantic novels. Rumor-filled travel histories provided by the Italian Marco Polo, Englishman Sir John Mandeville, and Spaniard Pedro Tafur were read avidly by those who could do so.²

The seeds for many of the enduring fantasies of New World explorations took root during the Moorish-Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in the early eighth century. A Portuguese archbishop was said to have fled by ship out into the little sailed and scantly explored Atlantic Ocean. He was joined by six other bishops and their Christian followers with all their goods and livestock, disappearing from the known world of Europe.³

Over time, a legend—a very potent one—developed, taking in part from Plato that the bishops had established “seven cities” on an island called Antilia. The idea that the lost cities were resplendent with gold developed mysteriously over the years. Occasional sightings of the fabled island were reported by ocean navigators who may have long been at sea:

Plato spoke of the mysterious civilization of Atlantis and the island of Antilia, or the Seven Cities, located beyond the Pillars of Hercules. These accounts wound their way through Western Civilization, accumulating other ancient myths such as lands inhabited by Amazons, valiant women warriors who cut off their left breasts in order to use bow and arrow, lands of gold and jewels, fountains of youth, and Christian communities isolated from the rest of Christendom.⁴

These fanciful myths of antiquity spread to Spain and Portugal, where they flourished. Spain in particular, with its background of Christian versus Muslim wars, became steeped in a tradition of mythology befitting its age of knighthood and chivalry. These traditions “had most of the ancient myths enveloped with a patina of historical fact.”⁵ Thence from Europe the legends were carried across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas by a generation of determined adventurers.

Spanish explorers were not alone in hearing the legends of golden cities. The English explorer John Cabot, on his 1497 voyage to Newfoundland, thought he had discovered the “isles of Brazil and the Seven Cities of Antilia.”⁶

Myth creation, however, did not end with Old World concoctions. A curious phenomenon developed in the New World of the Americas. With far more intellect than has been recognized, the Indian natives played upon the avaricious invaders with their own fanciful variations of cities of gold, beautiful women, and promises of eternal youth. It is not known whether the Indian tales were adaptations of the myths they had heard from the Spaniards or were simply fantasies extended from passions the conquistadors exhibited. Some authors have suggested that at times American Indians concocted their own tales of wondrous rewards to be found simply to amuse themselves with the myth-cultivated Europeans. At other times, apparently, a more sinister motive was involved—the Indians were cleverly inveigling their unwanted guests into going elsewhere.

But always there existed the troublesome barrier of language. The Spaniards had to depend on native translators, and the nuance of meaning was often lost. Hand signs were fallible. The myth-influenced Spaniards often pointed to some gold or gold-colored object to obtain verification of the metal elsewhere. They then read more into native replies than was there and enlarged upon them to match their own aspirations.

Skeptics of today should understand that, for the human intellect of the early centuries, much of world existence was yet unknown. Under such conditions, imaginations were much freer to conceive fantasies now seen as improbable or impossible. Of the conquistador, Leonard wrote, “The marvelous exploits and fantastic accounts of persons and places thus brought to the eyes and ears of the conquerors now encamped in the midst of an unknown continent could not fail to stimulate their already fevered imaginations and easily prepared their minds to accept avidly the wildest rumors of riches which were forever luring them on.”⁷

The advent of the Turks conquering Constantinople in 1453 had cut Europe off from the silks and spices obtained in trade with China, Japan, and India. This led Spain to look for another route of Far East trade by way of the Atlantic and gave Queen Isabella reason to support the voyage of Christopher Columbus. In addition, Spain badly needed gold, and Columbus was eager to find it for her. He had, after all, read Marco Polo’s story of an island (probably Japan) where temples and palaces were roofe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Came Men on Horses
• Introduction: For Riches Yet Unfound
• Part 1: The Coronado Expedition
• Part 2: Post-Coronado Incursions
• Part 3: The Oñate Expedition
• Appendix A. Coronado’s March: As the Spaniards Tried to Tell Us
• Appendix B. Oñate’s Family
• Appendix C. A New Look at Oñate’s Route
• Appendix D. The Oñate Maps
• Appendix E. The Sword and the Stone: Conquistador Artifacts?
• Bibliography
• Index