nothing here except a piece of copper hanging from the neck of a chief, and a piece of gold which one of the Spaniards was suspected of having given to the natives, which gave any promise of mineral wealth, and so Coronado determined to rejoin his main force. Although they had found no treasures, the explorers were fully aware of the agricultural advantages of this country, and of the possibilities for profitable farming, if only some market for the produce could be found.
Students of the Coronado expedition have very generally accepted the location of Quivira proposed by General Simpson, who put the northern point reached by Coronado somewhere in the eastern half of the border country of Kansas and Nebraska. If we take into account the expeditions which visited the outer limits of the Quivira settlements, this is not inconsistent with Bandelier's location of the main seat of these Indians "in northeastern Kansas, beyond the Arkansas river, and more than 100 miles northeast of Great Bend."[1]
It is impossible to ignore the question of the route taken by Coronado across the great plains, although the details chiefly concern local historians. The Spanish travelers spent the summer of 1541 on the prairies west of the Mississippi and south of the Missouri. They left descriptions of these plains, and of the people and animals inhabiting them, which are of as great interest and value as any which have since been written. Fortunately it is not of especial importance for us to know the exact section of the prairies to which various parts of the descriptions refer.
From Cicuye, the Pecos pueblo, Coronado marched northeast until he crossed Canadian river, probably a little to the east of the present river and settlement of Mora.[2] This was about the 1st of May, 1541. From this point General Simpson, whose intimate knowledge of the surface of the country thirty-five years ago makes his map of the route across the plains most valuable, carried the line of march nearly north, to a point halfway between Canadian and Arkansas rivers. Then it turned east, or a trifle north of east, until it reached one of the tributaries of the Arkansas, about 50 miles or so west of Wichita, Kansas. The army returned by a direct route to Cicuye or Pecos river, striking that stream nearly east of Bernalillo-Tiguex, while Coronado proceeded due north to Quivira on the Kansas-Nebraska boundary, Mr Bandelier has traced a route for the march across the plains which corresponds with the statements of the contemporary narratives somewhat more closely than does that of General Simpson.[3] Crossing
- ↑ Final Report, vol. i, p. 170.
- ↑ Ibid., vol. 1, p. 178.
- ↑ Bandelier's best discussion of the route is in his article on Fray Juan de Padilla, in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, vol. xv, p. 551. The Gilded Man also contains an outline of the probable route. An element in his calculation, to which lie gives much prominence, is the tendency of one who is lost to wander always toward the right. This is strongly emphasized in the Gilded Man; but It can, I think, hardly merit the importance which he gives to it. The emphasis appears, however, much more in Bandelier's words than in his results. I can not see that there is anything to show that the Indian guides ever really lost their reckoning.
