The Coronado Expedition

In 1540 Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, the governor of Nueva Galicia in western Mexico, led an expedition of reconnaissance and expansion to a place called Cíbola, far to the north in what is now New Mexico. The essays collected in this book bring multidisciplinary expertise to the study of that expedition. Although scholars have been examining the Coronado expedition for over 460 years, it left a rich documentary record that still offers myriad research opportunities from a variety of approaches. Volume contributors are from a range of disciplines including history, archaeology, Latin American studies, anthropology, astronomy, and geology. Each addresses as aspect of the Coronado Expedition from the perspectives of his/her field, examining topics that include analyses of Spanish material culture in the New World; historical documentation of finances, provisioning, and muster rolls; Spanish exploration in the Borderlands; Native American contact with Spanish explorers; and determining the geographic routes of the Expedition.

The Coronado Expedition to Tierra Nueva is an engaging record of key research by archaeologists, ethnographers, historians, and geographers concerning the first organized European entrance into what is now the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico. In search of where the expedition went and what peoples it encountered, this volume explores the fertile valleys of Sonora, the basins and ranges of southern Arizona, the Zuni pueblos and the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, and the Llano Estacado of the Texas panhandle. The twenty-one contributors to the volume have pursued some of the most significant lines of research in the field in the last fifty years; their techniques range from documentary analysis and recording traditional stories to detailed examination of the landscape and excavation of campsites and Indian towns. With more confidence than ever before, researchers are closing in on the route of the conquistadors.

Winner of the 2020 Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez Award from the Historical Society of New Mexico This magisterial volume unveils Richard and Shirley Flint's deep research into the Latin American and Spanish archives in an effort to track down the history of the participants who came north with the Coronado Expedition in 1540. Through their investigation into thousands of baptismal records, proofs of service, letters, journals, and other primary materials, they provide social and cultural documentation on the backgrounds of hundreds of the individuals who embarked on the Coronado expedition. The resulting data reveal patterns that shed decisive new light on the core reasons behind the Coronado expedition to Tierra Nueva, revealing, most importantly, that the expedition to Tierra Nueva was part of a complex plan to finally complete the Columbian project--that is, to locate a direct, westward route from Spain to the Asian sources of silks, porcelains, spices, and dyes. Along the way the Flints show us, in far greater detail than ever before, the individuals who made up the expedition--members of the upper echelons of Spanish society to thousands of Nahuatl-speaking Natives of Nueva España and largely anonymous slaves, servants, and women who made the enterprise possible and kept it running, with a course set for Asia by land.

Originally published: Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005.

Only two years after Coronado’s expedition to what is now New Mexico, Spanish officials conducted an inquiry into the effects of the expedition on the native people Coronado encountered. The documents that record that investigation are at the heart of this book. These depositions are as fresh as today’s news. Published both in the original Spanish and in English translation, they provide an unparalleled wealth of information about the Indians’ responses to the Europeans and the attitudes of the Europeans toward the native peoples.

Originally published as a hardback in 2003.