Coronado and Aesop Fable and Violence on the Sixteenth-Century Plains

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 2009 Coronado and Aesop Fable and Violence on the Sixteenth-Century Plains Daryl W. Palmer Regis University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Palmer, Daryl W., "Coronado and Aesop Fable and Violence on the Sixteenth-Century Plains" (2009). Great Plains Quarterly. 1203. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1203 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. CORONADO AND AESOP FABLE AND VIOLENCE ON THE SIXTEENTH~CENTURY PLAINS DARYL W. PALMER In the spring of 1540, Francisco Vazquez de the killing of this guide for granted, the vio Coronado led an entrada from present-day lence was far from straightforward. Indeed, Mexico into the region we call New Mexico, the expeditionaries' actions were embedded where the expedition spent a violent winter in sixteenth-century Spanish culture, a milieu among pueblo peoples. The following year, that can still reward study by historians of the after a long march across the Great Plains, Great Plains. Working within this context, I Coronado led an elite group of his men north explore the ways in which Aesop, the classical into present-day Kansas where, among other master of the fable, may have informed the activities, they strangled their principal Indian Spaniards' actions on the Kansas plains. guide, a man they called El Turco. In the pages that follow, I focus on the events leading up CONQUISTADORS AND STORYTELLERS to and including the execution of this Indian guide. Although Coronado, his chroniclers, The notion that fierce conquistadors could and modern historians have tended to take have any interest in fables of foxes and tortoises will strike many people as improbable. With good reason, David Lavender explains that "Los conquistadores were tough, disciplined, and as Key Words: Cfbola, Conquistador, Kansas, New ruthless as circumstances required."l To be sure, Mexico, Quivira. they were violent men in search of great wealth, but simple portraits do not capture their com Daryl W. Palmer is an associate professor of English plexity. Simon A. Barton offers more detail: at Regis University. He is the author of Hospitable Performances: Dramatic Genre and Cultural Most were young single men aged between Practices in Early Modern England and Writing 14 and 30; a quarter were of hidalgo stock, Russia in the Age of Shakespeare. many of them impoverished segundones, or younger sons, who were denied any prospect [GPQ 29 (Spring 2009): 129-40) of an inheritance at home by the system of 129 130 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2009 entail; the rest were mostly labourers, arti number of Europeans brought along their wives sans, traders and soldiers of limited means. and children. African slaves marched with the Imbued with the militant Catholicism of party. Wagons filled with supplies and arma the Reconquest and inspired by the tales of ments rattled along. Sheep, goats, and dogs chivalry then much in vogue, what all these made their own slow way at the back of the determined and supremely self-confident caravan. men had in common was a burning sense Like many before them, Coronado and his of loyalty, to Crown and Church, and an European comrades had been inspired by a unquenchable thirst to acquire wealth, mix of legend, literature, and rumor. Myths status and power.2 of El Dorado, the seven Portuguese bishops, Antillia, the Hesperides, and Solomon's mines This description supplements Lavender's sum merged with rumors of Indian kingdoms to the mary by recognizing a range of conquistadorial north and the stories ofCabeza de Vaca.lO Tales inspirations and motives. Alluding to "the of chivalry such as Amadfs de Gaula mingled tales of chivalry," Barton acknowledges that a with this discourse of speculation. Whether surprising number of the conquistadors were such stories really motivated any Europeans to literate and, to a certain extent, aware of the risk life and limb is open to debate, but such literary culture around them.3 After describing fictions inflected their aspirations and their this co~nection in detail, Irving Leonard offers perceptions.!! For instance, as Richard Flint an even more surprising portrait of the con explains, quistador: "His emotional responses to stimuli of every sort were quick and warm, moving Spaniards came to the Western Hemisphere him to heroic action and intense ·enthusiasm.''4 already primed with popular stories of In ways too numerous to mention here, the treacherous guides, often Turks, so they conquistador was a complex product of his age. anticipated and might have projected that As J. H. Elliott once pointed out, in a discus possibility onto American natives. The sion of Cortes, the conquistador embodied the deceptive guide was a staple of the wildly "ideals and aspirations of his society."5 If this popular chivalric romances of the day in more complex invader turns out to be guilty Spain. Many expeditionaries were precondi of atrocities, perhaps we should look to the tioned to expect attempts at deception.!2 European culture that produced him. Leonard puts the matter bluntly: "The study of con Expecting deceit, Coronado and company tried temporary Europe reveals plainly the universal to take charge of their fortunes by turning pattern of cruelty, intolerance, and inhuman "authorial."13 ity."6 Although this sort of acknowledgment It is possible to study this scripting in first can never excuse the conquistadors' violence, hand accounts of the expedition by Coronado, it does help us approach the personnel of the Pedro Castaneda de Najera, Juan de Jaramillo, Coronado expedition with greater precision. and the anonymous author of Relaci6n del We know, for instance, that Coronado led Suceso.!4 Arranged side by side, these relaci6nes about four hundred Europeans and thirteen clearly agree on many aspects of the expedi hundred Indian allies.7 G. Douglas Inglis has tion. In unison, they point to landmarks and pointed out that "[o]nly 28.9% of the men of rehearse turning points. Nevertheless, personal Cfbola had participated in a previous conquest. and professional biases emerge as the writers Even the Captain General was a novice con attempt to explain New World experiences quistador having served only in pacificaciones through Old World frames of reference. Where of areas already conquered."8 Instead of shining the anonymous author emphasizes measure armor, many of the Europeans wore pieces of ments, Jaramillo concentrates on bison and Indian armor they called armas de la tierra.9 A pasture. In the longest account of the expedi- CORONADO AND AESOP 131 tion, Castaneda likes to explore the literary canoes with more than twenty rowers on possibilities of the material. He sets scenes and each side, which also carried sails. The lords pauses to rehearse little inset stories, like the traveled on the poop, seated [54r] beneath one about awnings. On the prow [there was] a large eagle of gold. He said further that the lord a young man-at-arms called Trujillo [who] of that land slept during siesta under a great pretended to have had a prophetic vision tree on which a great number of golden bells while bathing in the river and defecat hung. In the breeze they gave him pleasure. ing. With his appearance altered, he was Further, he said that generally everyone's brought before the general, at which point serving dishes were worked silver. And the he explained that the devil had told him pitchers, plates, and small bowls were [made] that he [Trujillo] would kill the general and of gold. (400) marry his wife, dona Beatriz, and that she would give him great treasures. (392) Castaneda and his fellow chroniclers devote a great deal of speculation to this story because, Readers of Renaissance literature will recog needless to say, the tale of Quivira did not nize the spirit of Boccaccio, Lazarillo, and La seem to match their experience of Quivira. Celestina in this tale as the writer explains how Following these chroniclers, many modern a frightened Coronado sent Trujillo home historians have dubbed EI Turco a prevarica which is what the man craved all along. In keep tor, but other interpretations are possibleP ing with the satiric spirit of the aforementioned Although Europeans in the New World liked works, Castaneda mocks the captain-general. to assume that they could communicate clearly Elsewhere in the narrative, he heightens this with native peoples, the reality was always mood as he tells how Coronado was knocked more fraught. With this in mind, one arche to the ground during the attack on Cfbola and ologist has suggested that the Indian was really how an expeditionary raped a woman at one of describing Mississippian tribes and their watery the pueblos in New Mexico while her husband worlds.18 Perhaps Coronado and his captains unwittingly held the attacker's horse. simply misunderstood an honest report. It is I suggest that Castaneda's investment in also possible that, minus a few garbled details, storytelling says as much about his comrades the description accurately depicts the abun as it does about him, and this hunger for nar dance of Quiviran life along the Arkansas rative is acutely apparent at the end of that River.19 first long and bloody summer in 1540. The What we know for sure is that the expedi expeditionaries felt like failures. With no tionaries responded to the tale with violence gold to show for their actions, they paid close and invention.

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