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The Sonora-Arizona Connection he single most important leg of the expedition is that from Compostela through Sonora. Without a fundamental understanding of that portion of the route it is impossible to determine exactly where the expedition entered present Arizona and what direction it took beyond that point. The literature suggests two viable points through which the expedition passed upon entering present Arizona: the San Pedro and San Bernardino River Valleys. Because the route from Compostela to either of those two points is vague, a third line of march, one farther east, is possible. A fourth alternative, a western route through the Santa Cruz Valley, has been discounted in recent years by scholars. In any case, finding the location of the expedition’s entry into the present United States depends wholly on determining the route taken through Sonora. Although Herbert Bolton and A. Grove Day presented a route through Sonora based on observation and analogy of their readings of the documents and what they perceived to be on the ground, Charles Di Peso approached the problem by utilizing available archeological data and pertinent historical documentation. The historical problem lay in part with the lack of identity of rivers in Sonora for the early Spanish period. Di Peso wrote, “when modern historians attempt to correlate present-day Compostela to Cíbola C H A P T E R 8 A Historiography of the Route of the Expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado JOSEPH P. SÁNCHEZ 115 JOSEPH P. SÁNCHEZ 116 names, such as Yaqui or Sonora River, with names used by early explorers, who had no maps and often were inconvenienced by a lack of interpreters and who used such terms as Yaqui and Señora, then distances and travel times are sacrificed and misconceptions are bound to arise. As mentioned, a league was accepted as being a specific distance, and wherever possible was used to determine distances between points” (Di Peso et al. 1974: 37). By comparing the accounts from various expeditions , Di Peso arrived at a certain determination of place names in Sonora. For example, he determined that the first river crossed by Vázquez de Coronado was the Río Evora de Mocorito. Using the Villa de San Miguel de Culiacán as the beginning point, his methodology involved comparing terminology and distances or time of travel reported by Diego de Guzmán, nephew of Beltrán Nuño de Guzmán (1533); Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1536); Marcos de Niza (1539); Vázquez de Coronado (1540); and Francisco de Ibarra (1565); sources that agreed on the sixteenth-century location of Culiacán and on the historic name of the Río Evora de Mocorito. Testing his hypothesis to determine that the first river was indeed the Mocorito, Di Peso discovered that Vázquez de Coronado’s Río Petatlán, the first river north of Culiacán, matched with Guzmán’s Petatla and Marcos’s Petatlán. So too, he determined, the Río Petatlán had been renamed Río San Sebastián de Ebora during Ibarra’s time. Hence evolved the modern name Río Evora de Mocorito. Next, following the same methodology, Di Peso concluded that the second river crossed by the expedition was the Río Sinaloa, for Vázquez knew it by Guzmán’s old name “Río Cinaloa.” But here Di Peso noted a discrepancy that he resolved by accepting Guzmán’s and Vázquez de Coronado’s “Río Cinaloa.” Guzmán also referred to the Río Sinaloa as the Río Santiago and Ibarra called it the Río Petatlán. The third river, the Río del Fuerte, was known by Guzmán as the Río San Miguel as well as the Río Mayomo; by Vázquez de Coronado as Arroyo de los Cedros; and by Ibarra as the Río Cinaro. The variations, explained Di Peso, were inconsequential because their singular locations were determined by Indian settlements along them, and their names were constant. Besides, he argued, the distance between them was a controlling factor, for the explorers had given estimated figures of time taken to travel between them and/or measurements in leagues. Vázquez de Coronado went so far as to have a man count the steps between the expedition’s daily campsites (Hammond and Rey 1940: 240). For Di Peso, locations of Indian settlements along the rivers or their tributaries were of paramount...

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