Came Men on Horses: The Conquistador Expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate

Appendix E: The Sword and the Stone: Conquistador Artifacts?

315 appendix E The Sword and the Stone Conquistador artifacts? By any measure, the passage of the Spanish conquistadors across the American Southwest was a colorful and exciting adventure of discovering worlds yet unknown to literate man.Yet beyond even that,the expeditions of Coronado in 1541 and Oñate in 1601 left behind intriguing mysteries and buried clues as to precisely where the Spanish conquistadors marched over a landscape now dotted with cities and crossed by fenced roadways. The tracks of the conquistadors across Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas have long since been covered over by the sands of time. But it was inevitable that the two expeditions of discovery would leave behind lasting evidence of their presence: a spur, a piece of mail, some discarded or lost weapon, a crossbow point, the charred remnants of a campsite or its accouterments, perhaps even a legend chiseled in stone with a message to the ages. Few things are more fascinating than unsolved mysteries of the past. 316 A p p e n d i x e Archaeological crews work long, hard, and patiently in the heat and dust to search for historical evidence, and their work is both essential and admirable. Still, many important artifact remnants have been discovered happenstance by early residents of the plains. Some of these finds are clearly authentic relics (Spanish mail, for instance), while others have proven to be frauds. It is crucial that artifacts be verified as the real thing; it is equally crucial that items not be discarded until their historical value is determined with absolute certainty. In 1885,a wrought-iron bit thought to be of Spanish origin was found in western Kansas and eventually turned over to the Kansas Historical Museum.1 The bit is still held by the museum and is accepted as evidence of conquistador presence in Kansas. Other Spanish items include chain mail found on the Smoky Hill River, a piece of chain armor uncovered near Lindsborg, and a lead bar carrying a Spanish brand discovered in McPherson County.2 In 1886, an especially intriguing artifact was discovered in western Kansas. An early-day Kansan, John T. Clark, came upon a double-edged sword blade, minus its hilt nomenclature, protruding from a clump of buffalo grass thirty miles northwest of Cimarron, Kansas. When the disfigured blade was scoured with brick dust, the commonly inscribed legend could be read as “No Me Saques Sin Razon; No Me Embaines Sin Honor” (Draw me not without reason, sheath me not without honor). Another inscription, it was first believed, spelled out the name “Gallego.”3 The discovery site on the headwaters of Pawnee Fork lies west and north of where Coronado is believed to have struck the Arkansas on his march from the Texas Panhandle to Quivira and which he passed by again on his return to New Mexico. This location fostered the theory that perhaps Captain Juan Gallego of the Coronado Expedition lost the sword during a buffalo hunt to secure meat for the advance party.The muster roll for Coronado’s expedition identifies Gallego’s equipment simply as “a coat of mail, breeches of mail, buckskin jacket, crossbow, other arms of Castile and of the country, and seven horses.”4 In 1902, the blade was sent to ethnologist F.W. Hodge at the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington,DC,to examine.Hodge expressed his opinion that it was a significant relic that deserved institutional supervision.5 Eventually, the sword found its way to the Kansas Historical Society, where it was acclaimed to be true evidence of Coronado’s expedition in present Kansas. 317 T h e S w o r d a n d T h e S T o n e During the 1980s, however, new questions about the sword emerged. Upon careful examination, the difficult-to-read inscription, thought originally to be “Gallego,” was determined to be “Solingen”—the name of a highly reputed sword maker in Germany whose wares were vended throughout Europe.6 Double-edged swords, designed to cut armor, had fallen out of military favor during the first half of the sixteenth century when defensive armor became obsolete; their manufacture had been largely discontinued . Still, modern-day sword experts proclaimed that the blade was an eighteenth- rather than a sixteenth-century weapon. Because the sword had no hilt, some concluded that perhaps it was a trade item lost from a Santa Fe Trail caravan...