Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539–1542: "They Were Not Familiar with His Majesty, nor Did They Wish to Be His Subjects"

Document 13: Record of Mexican Indians Participating in the Expedition, 1576

164 introduction A s we pointed out in the introduction to the february 1540 muster roll of the coronado expedition (Document 12), the great majority of persons who participated in the entrada are missing from that official record. most glaringly absent are the at least 1,300 natives of central and western mexico, the so-called indios amigos, who made up the mass of the expedition and outnumbered the european contingent by about three to one. this overwhelmingly indian majority of members of the expedition is visible in the documentary record only rarely. embedded in the documents of the coronado expedition, though, is the story of a group of conquistadores far larger and much more diverse than the one that stands out in the narratives of the old world participants themselves. this group was a huge and fearsome company of warriors, fully supported by slaves and servants, sometimes accompanied by wives and other female companions. it was not the small troop of spaniards pitted against indigenous multitudes that much of the documentary record might suggest, but instead a legion of spanish-led mexican indians accompanying a corps of europeans with their servants and black slaves, supported by huge herds of livestock, overmatching native communities generally only a fraction of its size. 1 in his relación, written in the 1560s, pedro castañeda de nájera wrote about the recruiting of expedition members that took place in the ciudad de méxico in 1539. in just a few days, he wrote, “more than 300 spaniards were assembled , and about 800 indians native to nueva españa.” 2 the chronicler’s figure for the european (mostly spanish) members of the expedition is in approximate agreement with the 358 that is our own current count. 3 so the claim that 800 indian allies from what is today central mexico were also present on the entrada is perhaps generally accurate as well. roughly another 500 indian conquistadores evidently joined the expedition as it passed through the modern mexican states of michoacán, Jalisco, and nayarit, bringing the total to the 1,300 reported by vázquez de coronado himself. 4 castañeda de nájera had a considerable amount to say about the roles played by the indios amigos in the course of the two-year entrada. to begin with, he revealed that when vázquez de coronado selected “fifty horsemen and a few footmen” to travel as an advance guard to cíbola, he also took along “most of the [native] allies.” 5 thus, when the advance guard arrived at cíbola/Hawikku, it may have numbered 1,000 or more, principally indians. the expedition’s former captain general testified in 1544 that when he had arrived near cíbola, he had sent “two nahua indians” to the first pueblo, ahead of the advance guard, with a cross as a sign of peace. However, “when the accused [vázquez de coronado] had gotten three leagues from cíbola, he found there the nahuas whom he had sent and they told him that the pueblo and provincia were at war and refused to come to peace.” 6 After subsequent demands that the cíbolans surrender, which they rejected, vázquez Document 13 Record of Mexican Indians Participating in the Expedition, 1576 Codex Aubin, “chronicle of mexican History to 1576, continued to 1607,” Add mss 31219, Library of the British museum, fols. 46v and 47r Mexican Indians in the Expedition 165 de coronado ordered the pueblo attacked. the existence of the large corps of mexican warriors in the spanish-led force easily explains why it so quickly overran the pueblo. two months after the capture of cíbola the captain general “sent don García López and some [indian] allies, with indians from cíbola, to establish the camp and erect shelter where fray Juan [de padilla] suggested.” 7 in another of their fleeting appearances in the documents, a party of indian allies is reported by castañeda de nájera as having accompanied captain melchior Díaz in what proved to be a long, unsuccessful attempt to rendezvous with the ships of Hernando de Alarcón. 8 the chronicler also repeats the information provided by earlier documents that some of the indian allies served as guards for the expedition’s horse herd. indeed, after quarters for the winter of 1540–41 had been established at tiguex on the rio Grande, one or more of the allies were killed in a pueblo raid...