Francisco Vazquez de Coronado

Among the many who joined and traveled with the Coronado Expedition, the entrada's namesake and leader is the most well known. However, the Captain General of the expedition that would bear his name was only a cog in the wheel of a much larger force. Huge numbers of enslaved people, Aztec/Mexica allies, servants, herders, tailors, cobblers, cooks, European soldiers, journeymen, and many others streamed into the indigenous villages of northern Mexico, the Southwest US, and the plains of the Midwest. The collective impact the group had on the region is palpable, especially with the benefit of 500 years of hindsight.

Regardless, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was the designated leader of the expedition and with this responsibility came decisions that would effect the outcome of the entrada. Therefore, it is important to know the man who took the helm of this expedition into the northern reaches of contemporary Nueva España.

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján was born to a noble family in Salamanca, Spain. His early history is somewhat uncertain, but he was thought to have been born in 1510. In 1535, Vázquez de Coronado - later to be referred to in English as Coronado - left Spain for Mesoamerica. He traveled with the entourage for Antonio de Mendoza, the new Viceroy, or governor, of New Spain.

Vázquez de Coronado acquired an enormous estate from his marriage to Dona Beatiz, the daughter of colonial treasurer Alonso de Estrada, and was governor of Nueva Galicia by 1538. Despite his great fortune and status in Mexico, Vázquez de Coronado wanted to follow in the footsteps of other Spanish conquistadores, such as Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro González, both of whom conquered large civilizations (Aztec and Incan empires respectively).

When the Franciscan Priest, fray Marcos de Niza, returned from an exploratory mission north (what is now northern New Mexico) with tales of wealthy and populous cities, Viceroy Mendoza began assembling an expedition to conquer and claim the civilization for Spain. The civilization was thought to be the rumored "Seven Cities of Gold", later referred to as Cíbola. When Mendoza commissioned Vázquez de Coronado to command the expedition to Cíbola, he accepted the mission, and on February 23, 1540, Vázquez de Coronado and the large expedition under his command pushed north from Compostela on Mexico’s west coast en route to the fabled golden cities.

Learn more about the Coronado Expedition to Cíbola and beyond

The expedition was ultimately deemed a failure because it never found the Cities of Gold. Vázquez de Coronado, his dreams of fame and fortune shattered, finally returned to Mexico City in the spring of 1542. Although publicly scorned and discredited, he again resumed his position of governor of Nueva Galicia. He and his captains were subsequently called in to account for their actions during the quest, including the maltreatment of indigenous peoples. Ten years after his return, at the age of 42, he died in relative obscurity. In the wake of Coronado’s failure to find the Seven Cities of Gold, Spanish interest in the region dropped off. However, when it picked up 150 years later, the knowledge of the people and land that his expedition brought back set the template for later Spanish exploration and settlement of the Southwest. As the Eurafrican and native cultures met in the 1540s, they experienced not only conflict but also produced a new cultural fusion unique to the Southwest. As people from the Old and New Worlds were exposed to different religious beliefs and practices, languages and cultural values, agricultural products and cultivation, land tenure systems, and diseases these forces would profoundly change how they lived and died. All these life-changing events began with Coronado’s expedition through the Southwest nearly 500 years ago.