FRANCISCO VASQUEZ DE

CORONADO (c. 1500-c. 1545)  , Spanish explorer of the south-western part of the United States of America . He accompanied Antonio de Mendoza to New Spain in 1535; by a brilliant marriage, became a leading grandee, and in 1539 was appointed governor of the province of New Galicia . The report presented by Fray Marcos de Niza concerning the " Seven cities of Cibola " (now identified almost certainly with the Zuni pueblos of New Mexico) aroused great interest in Mexico; Melchior Diaz was sent late in 1539 to retrace Fray Marcos's route and report on his story; and an expedition under Coronado left Compostela for the " Seven Cities " in February 1540 . This expedition consisted of a provision train and droves of live-stock; several hundred friendly Indians, Spanish footmen, and more than 250 horsemen . Coronado, with a part of this force, captured the " Seven Cities." The fabled wealth, however, was not there . In the autumn (1540) Coronado was joined by the rest of his army . Meanwhile exploring parties were sent out: Tusayan, the Hopi or Moki (Moqui) country of north-eastern Arizona, was visited; Garcia Lopez de Cardenas discovered and described the Grand Canyon of the Colorado; and expeditions were sent along the Rio Grande (Tuguez), where the army wintered . The Indians revolted but were put down . The army, reinspirited by the tales of a plains-Indian slave about vast herds of cows (bison) on the plains, and about an Eldorado called " Quivira " far to the N.E., started thither in April 1541, and, with a few horsemen, penetrated at least to what is now central Kansas . Here Coronado found a few permanent settlements of Indians; in October he was again on the Rio Grande; and in the spring of 1542 he led his followers home . Thereafter he practically disappears from history . The first description of the bison and the prairie plains, the first trustworthy account of the Zuni pueblos, the discovery of the Grand Canyon, a vast increase of the nominal dominion of Spain and Christianity (the priests did not return from Cibola), and a notable addition to geographical knowledge, which, however, was long forgotten, were the results of this expedition; which is, besides, for its duration and the vast. distance covered, over mountains, desert and plains, one of the most remarkable expeditions in the history of American discovery .

In connexion with it, in 1540, Hernando de

Alarcon ascended the Gulf of California to its head and the Colorado riv9r for a long distance above its mouth . 1 He was later killed for deception, and confessed that the Pecos Indians induced him to lure Coronado to destruction.185 All the essential sources with a critical narrative are available in G . P . Winship's The Coronado Expedition (in the 14th Report of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, for 1892-1893, Washington, 1896), except the Tratado del descubrimiento de las Yndias y sa conquesta of Juan Suarez de Peralta (written in the last third of the 16th century, republished at Madrid, 1878) . See also especiall} Justo Zaragoza, Noticias historical de la Nueva Espana (Madrid, 1878), the various writings of A . F . A . Bandelier (q.v.) ; General J . H . Simpson in Smithsonian Institution Report (Washington, 1869), with an excellent map; and Winship for a full bibliography . H . H .

Bancroft's account in his Pacific States (vols . 5, 10, 12) is less authoritative .