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

Introduction: For Riches Yet Unfound

1 introduction For Riches Yet Unfound There might still be large treasures which the Aztecs had hidden to spite their foes . . . The search continued: houses were again ransacked, gardens upturned, cellars and passages examined, and graves were opened and the lake was dragged. Bancroft1 It may seem curious to debate the question of what brought the Spanish conquistador to North America.Those who have read early accounts of the conquistador would likely answer the question in a single word—“gold.” Authoritative studies such as Rivers of Gold (2003), by the accomplished British scholar Hugh Thomas, provide solid evidence of the impetus gold gave to Spanish exploration from the famous first voyage of Columbus forward. Other reputable historians today dispute this, however. They charge that historians and popular writers of the past have wrongly portrayed the conquistadors as so single-minded in their search for gold as to be “lustful.” As an example, they point to the way journalist Paul Wellman described the conquistadors in his 1954 book Glory, God, and Gold. “Every Spaniard,” Wellman wrote, “would plunge his arms elbow-deep in gold ingots before he returned.”2 2 I n t r o d u c t I o n Wellman’s description was an improbable exaggeration designed to emphasize a point and was not intended to be taken as a literal fact. Indeed, it may be difficult to prove that conquistador leaders or their expedition members were inordinately “lustful”in their search for gold. It is also difficult to prove that they weren’t. Hernando Cortés, the most prominent of the conquistadors—who knew if anyone did—once spoke about the matter to the Aztec leader Montezuma. “The Spaniards,” Cortés confessed, employing his own improbable exaggeration, “had a disease of the heart that only gold could cure.”3 Bartolomé de las Casas, the censorious Catholic clergyman ,declared more directly: “Their [the conquistadors’] whole end was to acquire gold and riches in the shortest time so that they might rise to lofty positions out of all proportion to their wealth.”4 “For Spaniards,” current historian David J. Weber concurs, “the accumulation of gold and silver was not merely a means to an end, but an end in itself.”5 All of the European nations in the sixteenth century, in fact, were desperate for gold. Spanish author Jean Descola addressed this matter: “Europe lacked gold.What was looted from Turkish coffers, the few nuggets brought back from Africa by Portuguese explorers, and the melting down of gold plate had increased the reserves of metal very little . . . Localized for a long time to the land routes of Oriental caravans and the sea routes along the African coasts, the battle for gold was soon to spread to the Dark Sea. Where could gold be found, indeed, if not in the Indies?”6 It is entirely true, however, that past literature in America was prone to emphasize the conquistadors’desire to find gold to the exclusion of other significant goals. Earlier scholars and writers had good cause to be one-sided on this issue, given the enormous witness by sixteenthcentury literature and art to the extent the early conquistadors would go to obtain gold. The essential fact is that obtaining gold abetted all other ambitions of Spanish conquest. In many instances, and this was true of both Coronado and Oñate, gold was not the ultimate objective of a conquistador expedition . The hope of finding it, however, was the principal avenue of achieving other objectives. But on a personal level, there can be little doubt that such hope excited the passions of those who enlisted in conquistador expeditions. Further, what is missing from this argument over the importance of gold is recognition of the difference between the first generation of 3 I n t r o d u c t I o n conquistadors that flourished during the early sixteenth century and the ensuing second- and third-generation conquistadors such as Coronado and Oñate. In No Settlement, No Conquest, Richard Flint lists 132 major Spanish-led expeditions.7 The Conquistador Period lasted essentially from Columbus in 1492 past Oñate in 1598, providing more than a full century in which generations, and world conditions with them, changed. These first expeditions embarked from Europe largely to explore, discover , and conquer land and seek gold but not principally to colonize or Christianize. In the main, the head conquistadors were out...