Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
(1510-1554)
From the time of the earliest Spanish voyages to the New World, the soils of
Texas have inspired a continuous flow of legends and searches for deposits of
gold, silver and other treasures. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was among the
very first of this long line of fortune seekers in Texas.
Coronado was born at Salamanca, Spain in 1510. At the
age of twenty-five, he sailed to the New World, and settled in Mexico City.
There, he married, started a family, and was appointed in 1538 as governor of
the province of Nueva Galicia.
In response to reports of riches at the fabled Seven
Cities of Cibola, Coronado led an expedition into what is now the southwestern
United States and northern Texas. The expedition totaling nearly one thousand
men left Mexico in 1540. After months of searching, however, the expedition
found no trace of treasure. Most of the party returned to Mexico the following
year, but Coronado and a smaller force continued the search. They finally
returned to Mexico City, with their saddlebags still empty, in the spring of
1542.
Although Coronado lost considerable credibility during
the expedition, he regained his post as city councilman on his return to Mexico
City, and remained in that position until his death on September 22, 1554.
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Postscript:
Although Coronado's expedition failed to produce gold,
it marked the beginning of an endless stream of tales of lost mines and buried
treasure in Texas. These legends, some documented and others passed down only by
word of mouth, inspired countless searches into the sun-baked expanses of
Central and West Texas.
Rather than fade with time, the legends seemed to grow
with each new wave of immigrants to the new land. By the early nineteenth
century, no less notable Texan than Jim Bowie tried his luck at tracking down
some of these reported treasures. Still later, in the late 1850's, when west
Texas was occupied chiefly by Apache Indians, 90-100 man expeditions continued
the search for buried treasures.