Especially Texan: The Seven Cities and Quivira

[joe817]

"Promises of riches led to the search for fabled cities in early Spanish Texas. Continue reading to discover more about these supposed golden cities.

Among the myths that propelled Spaniards into the far reaches of northern New Spain was the legend of the Seven Cities. That myth was an outgrowth of the Muslim conquest of Portugal in the early eighth century.

Allegedly, in 714 seven Catholic bishops and their faithful followers had fled across the Atlantic to a land known as Antilia, the name of which, incidentally, was the source of the name Antilles, which was initially applied to the West Indian islands of the Caribbean. The Antilian islands failed to produce large quantities of gold and silver, and by 1539 lands reported on by Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were believed to contain an El Dorado known as Cíbola.

In that year, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza dispatched Fray Marcos de Niza and the African Estevanico on a reconnoitering expedition. This exploration cost the life of Estevanico at Háwikuh, the southernmost of the Zuñi pueblos in western New Mexico. On his return to New Spain, Fray Marcos reported seeing golden cities, the smallest of which was larger than Mexico City.

In 1540 the follow-up expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado captured Háwikuh and learned the true nature of it as well as other nearby pueblos. In the following year, disappointment over the Seven Cities of Cíbola prompted Coronado to launch a futile search for Quivira-an undertaking that crossed the Panhandle.

Quivira was a legendary Indian province first mentioned to Hernando de Alvarado and Coronado in the fall of 1540 by the Pawnee captive El Turco. According to the Turk's stories, Quivira lay far to the east of the New Mexico pueblos somewhere on the Buffalo Plains. The region was said to contain a large population with much gold and silver. However, when the Spaniards reached the supposed site of Quivira in 1541, they found only villages of grass huts and a partly agricultural, partly bison-hunting economy.

El Turco, after confessing that he had told his stories to lure the conquistadors away from the pueblos, was garroted. Nevertheless, the legend of Quivira remained strong; the unsuccessful expedition of Francisco Leyva de Bonilla and Antonio Gutiérrez de Humaña in 1595 and that of Juan de Oñate in 1601 also visited Quivira, with the same disappointing results. Fray Juan de Padilla, who had accompanied the Coronado expedition, was martyred there after attempting to establish mission work among the Indians of Quivira.

Quivira has been identified with the Indians later known as Wichita. Frederick Webb Hodge stated that the name was possibly a Spanish corruption of the term Kidikwius, or Kirikurus, the Wichitas' name for themselves, or of Kirikuruks, the Pawnee name for the Wichitas.

The actual location of Quivira has been a source of controversy and speculation among historians, ethnologists, and archeologists alike. Some, like Carlos E. Castañeda and David Donoghue, conclude from Spanish journals that Coronado and Oñate never went beyond the Panhandle of Texas or that of Oklahoma; they thus place the Indian villages above the South Canadian River in what is Hutchinson or Roberts County, or above the North Canadian (Beaver) River, in what is now Beaver County, Oklahoma.

However, archeological evidence more readily points toward Hodge's conclusion that the fabled provincia was actually located north of the Arkansas River, somewhere between present Great Bend and Wichita, Kansas. Prominent Borderlands historians Herbert Eugene Bolton, George P. Hammond, and Agapito Rey also demonstrate the plausibility of the Kansas location in their writings."

Content courtesy of the Handbook of Texas

[clarionite]

Great read.

[joe817]

Thanks! I get these in emails, and pass them on as soon as I get them.