Note 425 — Chapter 21

For additional details respecting the route pursued by Coronado after the main army was sent back, consult the narrative of Jaramillo, the Relacion del Suceso, and other documents pertaining to the expedition, in Winship's Coronado Expedition (1896) and Journey of Coronado (1904), and in connection therewith a discussion of the route by F. W. Hodge, in J. V. Brower's Memoirs of Explorations in the Basin of the Mississippi, II. (St. Paul, 1899). Continuing due north from the upper waters of the Rio Colorado of Texas, Coronado's immediate force in thirty days' march, according to the Relacion del Suceso (or "more than thirty days' march, although not long marches," according to Jaramillo), reached the river of St. Peter and St. Paul the last of June, 1541. This was the "river of Quivira" of the Relacion del Suceso, the present Arkansas River in Kansas, which was crossed at its southern bend, just east of the present Dodge City. The party continued thence northeast, downstream, and in thirty leagues, or six or seven days' march, reached the first of the Quivira settlements. This was at or near the present Great Bend, Kansas, before reaching the site of which the Turk was "made an example of." That the inhabitants of Quivira were the Wichita Indians there can be no reasonable doubt. The Quivira people lived in grass or straw lodges, according to the Spaniards, a fact that was true of the Wichitas only of all the northern plains tribes. The habitations of their congeners and northern neighbors, the Pawnee (who may be regarded as the inhabitants of the province of Harahey), were earth lodges. The word acochis, mentioned by Castañeda as the Quivira term for "gold," is merely the Spanish adaptation of hakwichis, which signifies "metal," for of gold our Indians knew nothing until after the advent of the white man. After exploring Quivira for twenty-five leagues, Coronado sent "captains and men in many directions," but they failed to find that of which they went in search. There is no reason to suppose that Coronado's party went beyond the limits of the present state of Kansas.