Fray Marcos de Niza

 

 

 

Mendoza chose Fray Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan friar in his 40s, to head a scouting party north before sending the bulk of the expedition. His superior noted that Marcos was a pious priest, familiar with cosmography and navigation, and, having been present at Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Empire, possessed the fortitude to lead an exploratory expedition. The Viceroy appointed Esteban, an enslaved African who did not have the power that the free Spaniards had to refuse the Viceroy, to guide Fray Marcos. Esteban was chosen because he was the fourth survivor of the Cabeza de Vaca Expedition, so he was familiar with the area’s Indian cultures and languages.

On March 7, 1539, Marcos left the northern outpost of Culiacán with Esteban and over 100 natives. When they reached the town of Vacapa, Marcos sent Esteban to scout ahead, giving him instructions to send back crosses indicating he had found something important, with the size of the cross corresponding to the importance of the find. When Esteban soon sent back a cross as large as a man, Marcos hurried to see what the excitement was about.

In late May, however, two of the Indians who had gone with Esteban returned to Marcos, bloody and distraught. They reported that Esteban and many of his Indian companions had been killed at the Zuni pueblo of Háwikuh, the reputed site of one of the Seven Cities of Gold. Scholars have been debating what happened next ever since.

Marcos claimed that he continued his journey and viewed Háwikuh from a distance but that he did not approach and try to enter it. While he did not mention gold in his report, he nonetheless described the village in glowing terms, twice referring to its ‘excellence’, calling it the “grandest and best of all discovered”, and saying it was as big as Mexico City. Crucially, once he returned to Mexico City and gave the Viceroy his report, he also did nothing to quell—and may even have played a part in starting—rumors that there was gold at Háwikuh.

His report was enough to provide the impetus for Coronado’s expedition the following year, and Fray Marcos was tasked with guiding it. However, as the journey went on, Coronado and the others found increasing discrepancies between Marcos’s description of the land they were marching through and the reality. Finally, when they reached Háwikuh and found that it was neither a huge metropolis nor wealthy, they became enraged at Marcos. Coronado sent him back to Mexico City under an escort for having lied to them—a punishment which probably also saved Marcos from the wrath of the other expeditionaries. When he returned to Mexico City, he obtained a high position in the Franciscan order, but his expeditionary days were over. He died in 1558.

Did Marcos lie in his report to the Viceroy? Scholars have been debating this question ever since, with some claiming he did in fact see Háwikuh from a distance as he claimed, while others believe he never came anywhere near it. Whichever the case, his report clearly generated a lot of interest in Mexico City for sending the Coronado Expedition in 1540 to find (and presumably conquer) the Seven Cities of Gold.