Great Cruelties Have Been Reported: The 1544 Investigation of the Coronado Expedition

CHAPTER 16 ALONSO ÁLVAREZ, THE FOURTEENTH DE OFICIO WlTNESS

Chapter 16 * Alonso AlvareZy the Fourteenth de Oficio Witness The Standard Bearer I uring the expedition to Tierra Nueva Alonso Álvarez de Valle served aspaje deguión or standard bearer for Vázquez de Coronado and was a member of the captain general s household until the siege of theTiguex pueblos during the winter of 1540-1541.Why he did not continué as standard bearer is unknown, but he was not quartered even in the same camp with Vázquez de Coronado during the expedition s second winter inTiguex.1 Whether therewere hard feelings between the captain general and Álvarez over this separation can only be guessed.The standard bearersjúnior status as a dependent of Vázquez de Coronado at the time the expedition set off in February 1540 is attested by the fact that he took no horses with him.2 A native of Villanueva de Barcarrota in Badajoz in Spain,3 he was in his middle teens at the time4 and had arrived in Nueva España in 1537 or 1538 on the same ship that brought Cristóbal de Escobar, another of the de oficio witnesses called byTejada in 1544. Less than a year before the Tejada investigation , Álvarez and another fellow witness, Domingo Martín, had testified on behalfof Escobar in a formal statement of his service to the king.5 D AlonsoAlvarez 313 Álvarez returned to México City with the expedition, but then backtracked to Nueva Galicia sometime between November 1543 and September 1544, being questioned there, in Guadalajara, by Tejada on September 5, 1544, the final witness called by the oidor. In 1576, when he testified on behalf of two other expedition members, Alonso Rodríguez and Juan Rodríguez Parra, he was a vecino of San Sebastián6 in the Cópala district of what had been part of Nueva Galicia and had recentiy been annexed to Nueva Vizcaya. During his brief testimony before licenciado Tejada, Alvarez made few excuses for Vázquez de Coronado, though one is left with no feeling of outrage or accusation. On manypoints he contradicted the testimony of the captain general and portrayed him as fully aware of violence against Indians and having condoned or even ordered it. Alvarez, for example, told matter-offactly that the captain general ordered that Tiguex Indians whose hands and noses had been cut off after their capture be conducted to their pueblos, so that the people there might seewhat punishment had been inflicted on them. And he stated that he believed Vázquez de Coronado ordered the burning of Indians at Pueblo del Arenal and the killing of others by dogs at Pueblo del Cerco. Furthermore, he claimed to have been present when the captain general ordered Rodrigo Maldonado to burn and dismande Tiguex pueblos. Alvarez was most voluble in expressing his opinions about the causes of the uprising in Tiguex, among which he put the gathering of clothing for the men-at-arms, which was done very clumsily and against the will of the natives, and the rape of an Indian woman by Juan de Villegas, brother of Pedro de Villegas, who served with Vázquez de Coronado as regidor of the cabildo of México City. Alvarezs testimony is some of the most damaging to the former captain general and damning of the expedition as a whole. It was evidendy dismissed or overlooked by the audiencia in reaching its decisión in the case. 314 Chapter 16 FIGURE 12. ~~ Facsímile of Cortaron manos e narizes or they cut offhands and noses, AGÍ,Justicia, 267, N.3, fol. 122r AlonsoAtoare* 315 A TRANSLATION OF THE TESTIMONY Final de Oficio Witness (Alonso Aharez)1 [118r cont'd] After the aforesaid in the city of Guadalajara on the fifth day of the month of September in the year one thousand five hundred and forty-four, the lord licenciado Tejada ordered Alonso Alvarez, a vecino of this city, to appear before him for this investigation, and he received his oath in the form required by law. He promised to tell and state the truth and was asked the following questions. [1] He was asked whether he knows Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, Hernando [118v] de Alvarado, and don García López de Cárdenas, and whether he knows about the provinces of Cíbola, Tiguex, and Cicuique and the exploration and conquest that were carried out in that...