Canadian river by a bridge, just south of where Mora river enters it, the Spaniards, according to Bandolier, marched toward the northeast for ten days, until they met the first of the plains Indians, the Querecho or Toukawa. Thence they turned almost directly toward the rising sun. Bandelier thinks that they very soon found out that the guides had lost their reckoning, which presumably means that it became evident that there was some difference of opinion among the Indians. After marching eastward for thirty-five days or so, the Spaniards halted on the banks of a stream which flowed in the bottom of a broad and deep ravine. Here it was computed that they had already traveled 250 leagues—650 miles—from Tiguex. They had crossed no other large river since leaving the bridge over the Canadian, and as the route had been south of east, as is distinctly stated by one member of the force, they had probably reached the Canadian again. There is a reference to crossing what may have been the North Fork of the Canadian, in which case the army would now be on the north bank of the main river, below the junction of the two forks, in the eastern part of Indian Territory. Here they divided. The Teya guides conducted the main force directly back to the Rio Grande settlements. Coronado went due north, and a month later he reached a larger river. He crossed to the north bank of this stream, and then followed its course for several days, the direction being northeast. This river, manifestly, must be the Arkansas, which makes a sharp turn toward the northeast at the Great Bend, east of Fort Dodge, flowing in that direction for 75 miles. Jaramillo states that they followed the current of the river. As he approached the settled country, Coronado turned toward the north and found Quivira, in northeastern Kansas, not far south of the Nebraska boundary.[1]
The two texts of the Relacion del Suceso differ on a vital point;[2] but in spite of this fact, I am inclined to accept the evidence of this anonymous document as the most reliable testimony concerning the direction of the army's march. According to this, the Spaniards traveled
- ↑ Bandelier accounts for sixty-seven days of short marches and occasional delays between the separation of the force on Canadian river and the arrival at Quivira. It may be that the seventy-seven days of desert marching which Coronado mentions in his letter of October 20, 1541, refers to this part of the journey, instead of to the whole of the journey from the bridge (near Mora on the Canadian) to Quivira. But the number sixty-seven originated in a blunder of Ternaux-Compans, who substituted it for seventy-seven, in translating this letter. The mistake evidently influenced Bandelier to extend the journey over more time than it really took. But this need not affect his results materially, if we extend the amount of ground covered by each day's march and omit numerous halts, which were very unlikely, considering the condition of his party and the desire to solve the mystery of Quivira. If the Spaniards crossed the Arkansas somewhere below Fort Dodge, and followed it until the river turns toward the southeast, Quivira can hardly have been east of the middle part of the state of Kansas. It was much more probably somewhere between the main forks of Kansas river, in the central part of that state. Bandelier seems to have abandoned his documents as he approached the goal, and t« have transported Coronado across several branches of Kansas river, in order to fill out his sixty-seven days—which should have been seventy-seven—and perhaps to reach the region fixed on by previous conceptions of the limit of exploration. He may have realized that the difficulty in his explanation of the route was that it required a reduction of about one-fourth of the distance covered by the army in the eastward march, as plotted by General Simpson. This can be accounted for by the wandering path which the army followed.
- ↑ See the note at the end of the translation.
