Gold's Fool and God's Country: The Coronado Craze of 1940–1941

Abstract

In 1540, a spanish expedition led by Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado ventured out of Mexico into what is now the American Southwest in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola and the mythical Kingdom of Quivira. The Coronado expedition wandered for two years through present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and perhaps as far as Oklahoma and Kansas in search of the elusive cities of gold before returning to Mexico, bitter and disappointed. The Spanish conquistadores had set out to find the fabled treasures of Cibola, where, it was rumored, the houses were studded with jewels and the streets were paved with gold. They found instead the source of the inflated legend-the terraced mud pueblos of the Zuñi Indians. The earlier scout, Fray Marcos, had seen them from a distant hillside glittering in the sun, and his vision had been embellished by tales of riches told by the Indians he encountered en route. Finding mud instead of gold, Coronado and his expedition became seduced by tales of yet another land to the east called Quivira, whose riches were beyond imagination and where gold and silver were as common as prairie dust. The quest for the phantom gold of Quivira led Coronado east across the Rio Grande valley and perhaps as far north as present-day Kansas. He had imagined treasures to surpass even those of the Incas in Peru. What he found was another patch of dusty Indian villages, this time made of straw instead of mud. In 1542, the Coronado venture was considered by its Spanish promoters to have been a costly and somewhat embarrassing failure.