Note 14 — AN INQUIRY INTO THE SOURCES OF TREASURE LEGENDS OF TEXAS

When the seekers did not find it, always the treasure was más allá, on beyond. The search for La Ciudad Encantada de los Cesares,14 inspired by the fabrication of an Indian, was but the duplication of the sublime and ridiculous El Dorado error. And so was Cabeza de Vaca’s quest for the legended wealth of Florida15—a quest that had its ironic conclusion on the other side of the continent in Coronado’s expedition. So, too, were the fabled Palace of Cubanacan in Cuba;16 the mythical wealth of the mythical Amazons;17 the Laguna de Oro in New Mexico;18 the Pueblos del Rey Coronado of the West;19 the Cerro de la Plata,20 which was perhaps Los Almagres of Texas;21 the Concho River, bedded with pearls richer than those of the Indies or of the Gulf of California;22 the “Peak of Gold,”23 in either Texas or New Mexico; the nebulous treasures of a Casa del Sol;24 and the Gran Paytiti, or Gran Moxo,25 again in South America. Always beyond and beyond, lured by the talk of whatever chance savage, the Spanish quested. Thus the tale of a captive Indian, who wanted to get back eastward, led Coronado from the empty pueblos of the Zuñi in Arizona, whither he had been guided by an ignorant negro in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola, to make his astounding march on eastward all the way to Kansas in quest of the Gran Quivira26—a place that never existed, a people that wandered naked at the heels of the drifting buffalo.