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252 introduction m odern study of the coronado expedition owes a great debt to the sixteenth-century venetian collector and publisher Giovanni Battista ramusio. 1 four documents included in the present volume are known today only from ramusio’s italian translations, the spanish originals having disappeared centuries ago. 2 the last of the four such documents now being published is a lengthy excerpt from a letter (perhaps nearly the totality of it) written by vázquez de coronado to viceroy mendoza from cíbola in early August 1540, less than a month after its capture by the expedition’s advance guard. 3 the letter, as we have it, is one of thinly veiled bitterness over marcos de niza’s written report of August 1539 and oral statements he evidently made both before and after that date. repeatedly, vázquez de coronado punctuates the letter with the refrain, “everything the friar had said was found [to be] the opposite.” 4 finally, his anger overflows, and he writes bluntly that fray marcos “has not spoken the truth in anything he said.” 5 As a result, the captain general, though he has just reached the edge of tierra nueva, already foresees the fruitlessness of the remainder of the expedition and contemplates “abandoning this enterprise.” 6 there had already been intimations of loss of confidence in the friar earlier. melchior Díaz and Juan de Zaldívar had been sent north late in 1539 to confirm fray marcos’s reports. prevented from reaching cíbola by heavy winter snow, they turned back south and met the northward-trekking expedition at chiametla in the spring of 1540. their ensuing report resulted in “poor expectations that were held about cíbola.” 7 As pedro de castañeda de nájera later put it, “the bad news was soon rumored.” 8 And thereafter, testified Diego López, “it was publicly known and widely held that fray marcos had not seen things previously that he had pretended to.” 9 nevertheless, the captain general wrote that he “tried to lift [the expeditionaries’] spirits the best i could.” 10 He evidently remained unconvinced himself. within weeks of dispatching the August letter from cíbola, however, vázquez de coronado received news from captain Hernando de Alvarado that moderated his pessimism . stories told to Alvarado by a plains indian called el turco reopened the possibility that large populations of wealthy and sophisticated people existed in tierra nueva. for nearly another year and a half, then, that possibility glimmered, though with decreasing likelihood. in August 1540, as the captain general wrote to the viceroy, before receiving reports of people far to the east who ate off golden dishes, vázquez de coronado was profoundly disheartened. in his letter he ticks off, one by one, his disappointments . first, there was the abra, the wide valley off to one side of the main route north, where marcos said he had been told there were “many very grand settlements in which there are people who wear cotton clothing” and use gold. 11 in evident disgust, the captain general reports to mendoza that instead of “grand settlements,” melchior Díaz found “two or Document 19 Vázquez de Coronado’s Letter to the Viceroy, August 3, 1540 History Library, museum of new mexico, santa fe ramusio, Terzo volume delle navigationi et viaggi, 1556, fols. 359v–363r Vázquez de Coronado to Viceroy, August 3, 1540 253 three impoverished little settlements with twenty or thirty rude shelters each.” 12 Vázquez de Coronado follows that disillusioning item with similarly dismal news about the reportedly easy route north, the vaunted ciudades of Cíbola, and other reputedly marvelous polities named Totonteac, Marata, and Acus. It is noteworthy that the captain general’s focus is on population centers, and it is those that he appraises in his letter. Despite his mention of gold and silver as having been found at Cíbola, Vázquez de Coronado gives no indication that “those who understand mining” have gone out prospecting or that they may in the future. Instead, he laments that he has “been unable to extract from these people where they dug it up.” And he expresses the hope that the people of Cíbola will relent and disclose the location of a source of precious metals. 13 The captain general devotes no space in his letter to appraisal of ore samples or sites deemed promising for mines. His interest is manifestly not in mining, but rather in locating people...

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