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

CHAPTER 5 JUAN GÓMEZ DE PARADINAS, THE THIRD DE OFICIO WITNESS

Chapter 5 Juan Gómez de Paradinas, the Thirdde Oficio Witness ATailor, Alguacil, andBilleting Officer Í wo days after Francisca de Hozes and Alonso Sánchez testified, Juan Gómez de Paradinas was summoned to answerTejadas questions . In his late teens to around twenty when the expedition to Tierra Nueva left Compostela, Gómez was accompanied by his wife María Maldonado. She was remembered years later as having tirelessly nursed the sick and wounded of the expedition, and her service figured heavily in the award of a small grant to Gómez in 1560. During the expedition Gómez, a tailor by trade, served as alguacil mayor or chief constable and billeting officer.1 He was a horseman in Diego Gutiérrez de la Caballerías company, Gutiérrez being either an únele or cousin of Beatriz de Estrada, Vázquez de Coronados wife. Gómez took with him 5 horses, a coat of chain mail, a helmet, and native arms and armor, again very much more than the typical expedition member.2 His service in the Gutiérrez company points to a link with the Vázquez de Coronado-Estrada family. That possibility is further strengthened by his place of origin, the town of Paradinas under the jurisdiction of Salamanca, the seat of the Vázquez de Coronado family. In addition, Gómez stated that he T 76 Chapter5 had left for Cíbola in 1538, which, if truc, would mean that he was among those who made part of the reconnaissance with fray Marcos de Niza and would probably make him a member of either Vázquez de Coronado s or Mendozas entourage assigned to accompany the friar, at least as far as Culiac án, if not farther. When the full-fledged expedition got underway in 1540 he was always in the vanguard, again associating him closelywith the captain general. When he departed for Cíbola he left a house behind him in México City, to which he apparently returned in 1542. Just over a month before he testified in the pesquisa of 1544, Juan Gómez, described as a cortador or cloth cutter, was granted one and a half solares in México City by the cabildo.3 He must have been a vecino of the city by then and certainly was called so by 1544. In the late 1540s he was said to be unfit to work because of a fall he had suffered.4 As six of his former expeditionary companions testified in 1560, Gómez had outfitted himself very well for the journey to Tierra Nueva and as a result had spent a great deal of money.Even eighteen years after the expeditions return he was still impoverished and in debt because of it. It was not until long after the expedition that he received compensation for his expenditures, being characterized in the late 1540s as "a setder without Indians [in encomienda]."5 In 1560 the viceroy and audiencia recommended that he be given either a corregimiento or a caballería. His family had been associated with the earliest Spanish conquest of Nueva Galicia, his father Pedro Gómez de Paradinas having accompanied Ñuño Beltrán de Guzmán in his entrada in 1530. And Pedro Gómez died there. For years after the expedition to Tierra Nueva,Juan Gómez de Paradinas remained in contact with other participants, especially those hailing from the province of Salamanca such as Gaspar de Salamanca and Pedro de Ledesma, the latter also awitness in the pesquisa of 1544.6 Gómez de Paradinas was still living in México City as late as 1591, when he testified for fellow expedition member Francisco de Santillana.7 Gómezs testimony during Tejadas pesquisa was mosdy hearsay and conjecture , but like all of the remaining de oficio witnesses he made several state- Juan Gómezde Paradinas 77 mentsjustifying the Spaniards' actions, explicidy referring to those of Vázquez de Coronado. Nevertheless, by presuming that the captain general gave permission for the burning of Indians at Pueblo del Arenal, he made an indirect and perhaps inadvertent accusation against him. Although he thought violent actions of the expeditíon justifiable, Gómez de Paradinas also provided information on the scope of those acts. For example, he reported that 17 or 20 pueblos were burned and dismanded, that up to 150Indian prisoners were tied to stakes and burned, and...