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.

Originally published as a hardback in 2003.

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 legal cases, financial records, proofs of service, letters, journals, and other primary materials, they provide social and cultural documentation on the backgrounds of hundreds of individuals who made up the Coronado expedition and show that the expedition was the first phase of a three-phase effort to complete the Columbian project: to delineate a westward route to Asia from Spain.

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

Guided by myths of golden cities and worldly rewards, policy makers, conquistador leaders, and expeditionary aspirants alike came to the new world in the sixteenth century and left it a changed land. Came Men on Horses follows two conquistadors—Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate—on their journey across the southwest. Driven by their search for gold and silver, both Coronado and Oñate committed atrocious acts of violence against the Native Americans, and fell out of favor with the Spanish monarchy. Examining the legacy of these two conquistadors Hoig attempts to balance their brutal acts and selfish motivations with the historical significance and personal sacrifice of their expeditions. Rich human details and superb story-telling make Came Men on Horses a captivating narrative scholars and general readers alike will appreciate.

Presents the biography of the Spanish explorer who visited the Southwestern United States.

Between 1539 and 1542, two thousand indigenous Mexicans, led by Spanish explorers, made an armed reconnaissance of what is now the American Southwest. The Spaniards’ goal was to seize control of the people of the region and convert them to the religion, economy, and way of life of sixteenth-century Spain. The new followers were expected to recognize don Francisco Vázquez de Coronado as their leader. The area’s unfamiliar terrain and hostile natives doomed the expedition. The surviving Spaniards returned to Nueva España, disillusioned and heavily in debt with a trail of destruction left in their wake that would set the stage for Spain’s conflicts in the future. Flint incorporates recent archaeological and documentary discoveries to offer a new interpretation of how Spaniards attempted to conquer the New World and insight into those who resisted conquest.

Like Cortés and Pizarro, Coronado Sought to Conquer a Native American Empire of the Southwest Winner of Two Colorado Book Awards The historic 1540-1542 expedition of Captain-General Francisco Vasquez de Coronado is popularly remembered as a luckless party of exploration which wandered the American Southwest and then blundered onto the central Great Plains of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The expedition, as historian John M. Hutchins relates in Coronado's Well-Equipped Army: The Spanish Invasion of the American Southwest, was a military force of about 1,500 individuals, made up of Spanish soldiers, Indian warrior allies, and camp followers. Despite the hopes for a peaceful conquest of new lands--including those of a legendary kingdom of Cibola--the expedition was obliged to fight a series of battles with the natives in present-day Sonora, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The final phase of the invasion was less warlike, as the members of the expedition searched the Great Plains in vain for a wealthy civilization called Quivira.While much has been written about the march of Coronado and his men, this is the first book to address the endeavor as a military campaign of potential conquest like those conducted by other conquistadors. This helps to explain many of the previously misunderstood activities of the expedition. In addition, new light is cast on the non-Spanish participants, including Mexican Indian allies and African retainers, as well as the important roles of women.