When they reached the roof, the captains directed the boy to stand near the ladders: ‘Push them down if any Indians try to climb up.’ And there he stood through a whole day, a night, and most of the next day as his captains fired into the mob below. But without food or water the Spaniards began to tire and might have been forced to surrender had not one of the soldiers below devised a clever tactic: he built a fire on the ground floor of the pueblo, then sprinkled it with water, making a thick smoke. Soon the choking Indians were forced out, making with their forearms a kind of cross and bowing their heads, a most ancient signal for peaceful surrender. It was not binding, however, until the victors also made a cross and bowed their heads, but this Melgosa, López and Garcilaço gladly did. The ugly siege was over.
But Cárdenas, infuriated by the attack on his horses, was so determined to demonstrate the power of the Spanish army that he ordered his other soldiers to surround these men who had honorably surrendered, and then to cut two hundred wooden stakes, each six feet tall, at which the prisoners would be burned alive.
‘No!’ Garcilaço shouted as dry brush was piled about the first victim. ‘We gave our word.’
Cárdenas in his fury would not listen, so Garcilaço appealed to Melgosa and López, who had accepted the truce, but they too refused to support him.
‘Master! No!’ he pleaded, but Cárdenas was obdurate, his face a red mask of hatred, and the burning started.
The Indian men, seeing five of their comrades screaming at the stakes, decided to die fighting, and grabbing whatever they could reach—clubs, stones, the still-unused stakes—they began a furious assault upon the Spaniards, whereupon Cárdenas bellowed: ‘All Spaniards out!’ and after Melgosa and López had rushed Garcilaço to safety, soldiers rimmed the area in which the two hundred had been kept and began pouring shot and arrows into it, killing many.
Those who survived now broke free and began running helter-skelter across open land, whereupon Cárdenas and other cavalry officers spurred their horses, shouting and exulting as they cut down the fleeing Indians, other horsemen lancing them with spears until not one man of that entire group was left alive.
Garcilaço was horrified by what had happened, by the faithlessness of his hero Cárdenas, by the cowardice of his other hero Melgosa, who would not defend the truce he had authorized, and most of all by the burning and chasing and stabbing. He was appalled to find that Coronado did nothing. ‘We taught them not to offend Spanish honor’ was all he would say, and Garcilaço was left to wonder what honor meant. Fray Marcos, he felt certain, would not have permitted such a slaughter had he been in charge of the army’s conscience, and from that moment Garcilaço began to see his father in a much kinder light. Because of his enthusiasm, Marcos may have told many lies, but he was a man who had at least known what honor was. Cárdenas did not.
But for a boy of fourteen to pass moral judgment upon adults is a perilous undertaking, for now that Coronado was injured and confused, Garcilaço saw that it was Cárdenas who proved to be the true leader. It was he who supervised the killing of animals for meat to feed his men. Marching across deserts blazing with heat or swirling in storm, it was Cárdenas who buoyed the spirits of the army, and when brief, explosive battles with Indians became unavoidable, his horse was always in the lead. Like his general, he was driven by a lust for gold and fame, those terrible taskmasters, but in discharging his duty like a true soldier, he recaptured Garcilaço’s reluctant respect.
But now he did a most unsoldierly thing. He broke his arm, and when it refused to mend and the army set forth to conquer the opulent city of Quivira, he had to stay behind.
On the morning that Coronado started his triumphal march east—toward disaster in the drylands if he persisted—he summoned Garcilaço: ‘Son, can you count?’
‘Yes, sir. And I know my letters.’
‘Good. Start now, and count every step you take. When we strike camp, tell me how many. I’ll measure your stride and know how far we’ve come.’
So the boy walked in dust behind the horses, counting ‘Uno, dos, tres, cuatro,’ and whenever he reached a thousand he made a mark on a paper the Franciscans had given him. At the end of that first day it showed twenty-three such marks, and when he presented the paper to Coronado, the general thanked him: ‘Nearly four leagues. Good for a first day.’ And next morning the counting resumed.
After many such days, continuing to count even in his sleep, Garcilaço calculated correctly that considering the distance east from Cíbola, the expedition must have entered the lands traversed by Cabeza de Vaca. He was at last in Tejas, the fabled land of many lands.
What a massive disappointment it was, for Coronado, always obedient to the urging of El Turco, had entered those bleak lands at the headwaters of what would later be called, in Spanish, El Río Colorado de Tejas. Distraught by the lack of any sign of civilization, he then angrily turned north, only to find himself locked in a series of deep canyons of a river of some size, El Río de Los Brazos de Dios, The River of the Arms of God. Here, surrounded by dark cliffs, the Spaniards had to face the fact that they had been led not to gold-encrusted Quivira but into a barren wilderness where they stood a good chance of dying. Sensible men would have abandoned the enterprise right there, but Coronado and his captains were Spanish gentlemen, and a tougher breed was never born. ‘We’ll go on to the real Quivira,’ Coronado said. ‘Wherever it is.’
In this extremity, on 26 May 1541, the expedition had been campaigning for more than four hundred and fifty strenuous days without capturing one item of value or finding any kingdom worthy of conquest, so the leaders knew that their venture would be judged by what they accomplished at Quivira, and this powerful obligation made them believe that gold still waited. In a council there in the ravines, Coronado decided that he, with thirty of his ablest horsemen, six sturdy foot soldiers and the Franciscans, would make a last-ditch sortie to the north, relying on the gold they would surely find there to salvage the reputation of his expedition. The bulk of the army would return to familiar territory and there await the triumphant return of the adventurers.
But now the Spaniards were confronted by a quandary best expressed by Captain Melgosa: ‘Where in hell is Quivira?’ Fortunately, Coronado’s group contained two scouts of the Tejas tribe, and they spoke the truth: ‘General, Quivira lies there’—and they indicated true north—‘but when you reach it you will find nothing.’
‘How can you say that?’ Coronado thundered, and they replied: ‘Because we have hunted at Quivira. Nothing.’ Such discouraging information Coronado refused to accept, so the frenzied search for gold continued.
About this time an extraordinary act of Garcilaço’s caused much amusement. Late one summer afternoon, when he saw the northern horizon turn blue and felt the temperature begin to drop, he supposed he was about to experience what Cabeza had so often spoken of with fear and respect. ‘It may soon be winter!’ he warned the Spaniards, but they laughed: ‘Lad, it’s July!’ However, within the hour a bitter wind was roaring across the empty spaces, and in the midst of this sudden storm, while others were huddling inside their blankets, Garcilaço threw off his clothes to stand naked in the wind.
‘What are you doing?’ Melgosa shouted from his tent, and when he ran to the boy with his blanket, all Garcilaço could answer was: ‘Cabeza told me he lived for seven years attacked by such winds, and he was naked. I wanted to test him.’
‘Cabeza de Vaca was a liar. Everyone knows that. Come inside.’ When Garcilaço sat crouched by the fire, with the others thinking he had drifted toward insanity, he thought of Cabeza: He must have been a liar, for no man could survive such a norther, yet he did. We know he did.
On a blistering July day in 1541, Coronado and his small band lined up at the southern bank of a miserable arroyo and stared across at Quivira (in what is now Kansas). They saw an indiscriminate collection of low mud huts surrounded by arid fields with few trees and no rich meadowlands. Smoke curled lazily from a few chopped openings i
n roofs, but there were no chimneys, no doors and no visible furniture. Such men and women as did appear were a scrawny lot, dressed not in expensive furs but in untanned skins. Of pearls and gold and turquoises and silver, there was not a sign. The Spaniards had wandered nearly three thousand miles, squandering two fortunes, Mendoza’s and Coronado’s, and had found nothing.
Garcilaço noted how the leaders reacted to this final disappointment. Coronado was overcome, unable to comprehend it and powerless to issue new orders. One captain raged, then started to prepare his men for the long homeward journey. Melgosa looked at the supposed city of riches and showed his gapped teeth in a disgusted smile: ‘I’ve seen pigsties in Toledo look better than that.’
It was Melgosa who issued the first order: ‘Double the watch on El Turco,’ and during the dreadful blazing days the slave who had been the agent of this disaster—but not its cause, for that lay within the cupidity of the captains—sat unconcerned in his chains, humming ancient chants used by his forebears when they knew that all was lost and death was at hand.
Garcilaço himself was anguished by the magnitude of the defeat, even though he had known it was coming, and he several times spoke with El Turco: ‘Why did you deceive us?’
‘You deceived yourselves.’
‘But you lied, always you lied about the gold.’
‘I never put gold in your hearts. You put it there.’
The dark-skinned man laughed, that easy, ingratiating laugh which had so charmed and blinded the Spaniards: ‘As a boy, I had a fine life, chasing buffalo. As a young man, I had two good wives, there by the northern rivers. When we were captured by the Zuñi, the others were treated badly but I protected myself by talking quickly with the leaders in the pueblos. And with the Spaniards, I had my own horse.’ He shook his chains, laughing at the rattling noise they made. Then he ridiculed his captors: ‘The Spaniards were such fools. It was so easy for me.’ And once more he became the insatiable plotter: ‘You’re an Indian like me. Help me to escape. I know a city to the north. Much gold.’
One night Captain Melgosa said to Garcilaço: ‘Come, lad. Work to do,’ and he took him into El Turco’s tent, where they were joined by a huge butcher from Mexico, one Francisco Martín, who kept his hands behind his back.
‘Turco,’ Melgosa began, ‘each word you’ve said has been a lie. You led us here to perish.’ The Indian smiled. ‘And yesterday you tried to persuade the Indians here to massacre us.’ Still the great liar showed no remorse, so Melgosa flashed a sign, whereupon Martín brought forward his powerful hands, threw a looped rope about El Turco’s neck, and with a twisting stick, drew the noose tighter and tighter until the Indian strangled.
With Martín’s help, Garcilaço dug a grave into which the corpse of this infuriating man was thrown. Had he but once told the truth, he could have become a trusted guide. As it was, he deceived everybody, including himself.
Coronado, head bowed and gilded armor discarded because of the sweltering heat, started his shameful retreat, unaware that history would record him as one of the greatest explorers. Under his guidance, Spanish troops had reached far lands: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas. His men had described a hundred Indian settlements, worked with and fought with a score of different tribes, and identified the difficulties to be faced by later settlers. But because he did not find treasure, he was judged a failure.
One member of the expedition did find success, although of a temporary nature. One morning a messenger posted north from Mexico with an exciting letter drafted by the emperor, Carlos Quinto, in Madrid:
Captain-General Coronado, Greetings and God’s Blessing. You have in your command a Captain of Cavalry, Don García López de Cárdenas of the noble family of that name. Inform the Captain that his brother in Spain who inherited the noble title and all wealth and properties pertaining to it has unfortunately died. Said Captain Cárdenas is to return by fastest route to Madrid, where he will be invested with the title now belonging to him and be handed the substantial properties to which he is entitled. By order of His Majesty the King.
When Infantry-Captain Melgosa heard this news he grinned, spat through his gapped teeth, and told Garcilaço: ‘See! It always happens this way. It’s cavalry officers who get messages from the emperor.’ Then he burst into gusts of laughter, clapping Cárdenas on the back: ‘Infuriating! The only man in the whole army who gets any gold is this damned cavalry officer.’ And they got drunk on wine Melgosa had saved in expectation of celebrating the capture of Quivira’s gold.
How ironic it seemed to Garcilaço that of all who set forth on this glorious expedition, the only one who profited when it ended in disaster was the badly flawed Cárdenas. The rest earned only bitterness.
But the boy need not have envied the apparent good fortune of Cárdenas, for although the army-master was awarded both the title and fortune when he reached Spain, he was then accused of having burned Indians alive. He was in and out of jail for seven years, fined eight-hundred gold ducats and sentenced to serve the king without pay for thirty-three months at the dismal post of Oran in North Africa. But because the king liked him, this was reduced to two hundred ducats and twelve months’ service at the kindlier post of Vélez Málaga, where he prepared for further adventures in new lands.
Coronado’s heroic aspirations ended in confusion, for when he issued his reluctant order ‘March south!’ some sixty of his braver underlings announced that they intended to remain permanently among the pueblos of what would become New Mexico. Coronado flew into a rage to think that they were willing to chance a new life in a new land while he had the doleful task of returning to Mexico to report his failure.
One of the would-be settlers wrote some years later: ‘He said we had to go back with him, and he threatened to have us hanged if we refused or said anything more about it.’ So the settlement which could have justified the expedition was aborted.
However, three other members of a much different type also asked to remain behind, and they posed a more difficult problem. They were Franciscan friars—Fray Padilla, an ordained priest, and two who had taken only minor orders. In robes already tattered, they came before Coronado to say: ‘We will stay here.’
‘Why?’ the general asked, almost pleading with them to drop their foolishness, and they said: ‘Because we must bring Jesus into pagan hearts.’
Officers, common soldiers, even some of the Mexican Indians tried to dissuade them from what appeared to be certain martyrdom, but the advisers were powerless, for God had whispered to the three, and finally Coronado had to give them permission to remain.
One of the minor friars set up his mission near Cíbola, while the other sought to convert the local Indians along the Río Pecos, and they marched off to their extraordinary duties.
As for Fray Padilla, Garcilaço would remember always that final morning when the friar started his long walk back to Quivira, whose Indians he dreamed of bringing into the Holy Faith. He did not go alone or lacking goods, for when Coronado accepted the fact that the friar could not be dissuaded, he provided him with so many people and so much goods that Padilla looked as if he were heading a minor expedition: a Portuguese soldier, two Indian oblate brothers who had taken no orders but whose lives were dedicated to religious service, a mestizo workman, a black translator, a train of mules well laden, a horse, a substantial flock of sheep, a full set of instruments for the Mass, and the six young Quivira Indians who had guided Coronado back from that settlement.
It was a fumbling attempt to Christianize a vast new land, and when Garcilaço, still avid to learn what honor was, watched the little procession depart, he asked himself: ‘Why would men volunteer for such a fatal assignment?’ But as the words hung in the air he realized that honor included not only physical and moral courage but also a daring commitment to central beliefs, and for a moment he wished that he might one day march in the footsteps of that friar.
As Padilla moved off toward sure death he grew smaller and smaller in th
e eyes of Garcilaço, but larger and larger in the eyes of God.
Years later a Franciscan gathered reports from all who had known the friar and wrote: ‘The Portuguese soldier and the two oblate brothers were traveling with Fray Padilla one day when hostile Indians attacked. Insisting that his friends escape with the only horse, he knelt in prayer and was transfixed by arrows.’
Imperial Spain was neither generous nor understanding with her unsuccessful conquistadores. When Coronado returned with no gold, he was charged with numerous malfeasances and crimes. The great explorer was for many years abused by officials dispatched from Spain with portfolios of charges made by his suspicious king. When Coronado’s case ground to a halt, Viceroy Mendoza was similarly charged and harassed. Captain Melgosa received nothing for his many acts of heroism, and the mestizo Garcilaço was treated worst of all.
Even though of the meanest birth, he had striven throughout this long and dangerous expedition to conduct himself according to his understanding of honor. He had been first to sight the deep canyon, but he did not shout: ‘See what I have found!’ He had saved his commander’s life when the stones fell, but he did not cry: ‘How brave I am!’ And he had fought for two days on the roof, an incident whose aftermath he tried to forgive, because he felt that no man of honor would kill so wantonly.
But at the end of his journey he was dismissed with no pay, no job and no honors, for he was judged to be ‘merely another Indian.’
He was mustered out in 1542, and lacking funds with which to buy enough animals to work the profitable Vera Cruz-Mexico City route, he had to be content with that portion of El Camino Real, the Royal Road, which ran from Guadalajara to Culiacán, with an occasional side trip delivering mining gear to the new silver mines at Zacatecas. Occasionally he would come upon a cargo destined for Mexico City, and one day in 1558, overworked and disheartened, he was engaged on such a trip when he was accosted on the streets of the capital by a tonsured monk who asked: ‘Are you the Garcilaço who once knew Fray Marcos?’ When he nodded, the monk said: ‘You must come with me,’ and he led the way to a small Franciscan monastery, where a very old cleric came unsteadily forward to say in a weak voice: ‘My son, why have you not come to me for help?’