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In the late 1980s, Congress directed the National Park Service to determine whether the route followed by the Coronado expedition could be designated as a National Historic Trail. See map...
After two years of study, the Park Service concluded it could not, because the precise route of the expedition was very poorly known, and some stretches were not really known at all. One of those undefined segments was the long one between what is now central Sonora in Mexico and the pueblos of Zuni in west-central New Mexico.
That is not to say there have not been many suggestions about where the expedition traveled in that region. The earliest guess, by General J.H. Simpson in 1869, had the expedition entering today's United States by way of the Santa Cruz River in what is now south-central Arizona.
According to this hypothesis, the expedition then moved northward to Chichilticale, a landmark ruin in 1540, which Simpson identified as Casa Grande. From there, in Simpson's view, the expedition angled northeastward across mountainous central Arizona to Zuni.
By the time eminent historian Dr. Herbert E. Bolton of the University of California at Berkeley, published his own theory in 1949, the Santa Cruz River route had been largely discounted.
Bolton, instead, imagined that the Coronado entrada came into what is now the United States along the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona. His reconstruction had the expedition crossing the Gila River near modern Bylas, Ariz., and then angling northeast, again across the rugged mountains and Mogollon Rim of east-central Arizona.
Then, in the 1970s, archaeologist Dr. Charles DiPeso suggested Bolton was wrong and the expedition had come out of what is now Mexico even farther east, by way of the San Bernardino and San Simon valleys in extreme southeastern Arizona.
DiPeso then had the expedition zigzagging back and forth across the Arizona-New Mexico state line, all the way north to Zuni.
In more recent years, a contemporary of DiPeso's, an ethnohistorian named Dr. Carroll Riley, has suggested a combination of the Bolton and DiPeso routes might better fit the documentary evidence. Riley has argued that, indeed, the Coronado expedition traveled downstream (north) along the San Pedro River (as Bolton would have it), but then turned eastward or northeastward for some days, crossing into modern New Mexico along the Gila River and moving cross country to the San Francisco River.
Riley has posited that the expedition followed the San Francisco upstream until crossing back into Arizona to the upper reaches of the Little Colorado River and finally the Zuni River.
Our own involvement in this particular issue regarding the Coronado expedition's route has come only in the past 10 years or so. It began with our friendship with Dr. William Hartmann, planetary scientist and avocational historian from Tucson, and archaeologist Gayle Hartmann, his wife.
The Hartmanns have been instrumental in reviving interest in archaeological evidence that could be brought to bear on the question of the expedition's route in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
They have made an invaluable contribution by seeing that past archaeological work that has been conducted in Arizona's Sulfur Springs Valley has finally been reported, shedding light on possible candidates for Chichilticale.
Their work has been complemented by the effort of John Madsen, an archaeologist from the Arizona State Museum, who for more than 10 years has been soliciting information from local residents that might help define the route.
Beginning about four years ago, we undertook the research and writing required to publish the most comprehensive edition of documents deriving from the expedition.
The volume, titled Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539 42: They Were Not Familiar with His Majesty, Nor Did They Wish To Be his Subjects, is to be issued later this year from Southern Methodist University Press.
In the course of that work, we reexamined, transcribed, and translated all of the standard 16th century manuscript sources concerning the expedition, and many more besides. What that showed us was the earlier published versions of documents contained many errors and overlooked information that bears on the expedition's route.
Regarding the leg of the route between Sonora and Zuni, there were three pertinent factors:
- The native communities called los Corazones and Se- ora by the members of the expedition seem to match the archaeology of the R' o Sonora (that leads naturally to the San Pedro), which appears to support either Bolton's or Riley's route reconstruction.
- A member of the expedition named Pedro de Casta- eda de N jera wrote in a long narrative some 20 years after the entrada that the last 80 leagues (about 210 miles) of travel to Zuni had been through a land that was "covered by great pine forests. There are huge quantities of pi- on nuts. The pines there are spreading (and) from two to three estados (12 to 18 feet) tall. There are oak forests with sweet acorns and juniper trees . . ."
This description makes it pretty clear the expedition did not traverse the great ponderosa pine forest of the White Mountains and Mogollon Rim country in Arizona, with its very much taller trees. So Bolton's route doesn't match well, leaving perhaps Riley's.
- The third bit of evidence adds further credence to Riley's route, or a variant of it. Another expedition member, Juan Jaramillo, wrote that from the R' o Nexpa (probably the San Pedro) the expedition traveled "to the right" for two days to "the foot of the mountain range," where they found "a deep arroyo and canyon."
This description seems to match best what is now known as Apache Pass at the north end of the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona. From there, according to Jaramillo, the expedition went "nearly to the northeast . . . to a river we named San Juan."
This seems most likely today's Gila River, near Virden, New Mexico.
To put all of the various route hypotheses to the test archaeologically, we are now participating in a project put together by the Center for Desert Archaeology in Tucson.
The idea is one of public outreach. We are informing residents of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico about the Coronado expedition and the sorts of artifacts it probably left behind and encouraging them to bring any that they may have to be identified and photographed at a series of public events that are called "Coronado Road Shows."
We are not asking for the objects themselves, but only the knowledge of their existence and approximately where they were found. If enough objects are brought to the Road Shows, they may reveal a pattern across the area that could finally define the expedition's route.
The project, called "In Search of the Coronado Trail," will begin in earnest Aug. 1, 2004, with mailing of a free video to area residents. That will be accompanied by a formal invitation to attend one of four Road Shows in early October (at Willcox and Springerville in Arizona and at Lordsburg and Reserve in New Mexico).
The mailing will be followed by free public lectures in September. We will be giving three of them (Sept. 13 in Silver City, Sept. 14 in Lordsburg, and Sept 16 in Reserve).
Full information and a schedule of events is already available at the Center for Desert Archaeology's website: www.cdarc.org A toll-free telephone number has also been established, so that people can call the Center to ask questions or provide information about artifacts they may have. That number is (800) 557-8353.
Then, in October, we will serve on the panel of experts, who will be charged with identifying artifacts brought to the Road Shows. The schedule for the Road Shows will be as follows: Oct.1 Willcox; Oct. 2 Lordsburg; Oct. 15 Springerville; and Oct. 16 Reserve.
The "In Search of the Coronado Trail" project holds out the best hope there has been in many years for determining which way the Coronado expedition went across southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico by taking advantage of the knowledge of the residents of the area themselves.
Richard Flint, Ph.D.
Shirley Cushing Flint, MA
Co-Directors
Documents of the Coronado Expedition Project
EDITOR'S NOTE: Richard and Shirley Cushing Flint are historians who have been researching the Coronado expedition for some 24 years. While their major work is with 16th century manuscripts from archives in Spain, Mexico, and the United States, they also have and continue to be involved in archaeological projects related to the expedition. They have written many articles and several books about the expedition, including The Coronado Expedition to Tierra Nueva: the 1540-1542 Route across the Southwest. This book brings together the papers from a conference the Flints organized and directed in 1992 at New Mexico Highlands University.
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