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Updated: June 14, 2025
From Cicuye they went to Quivira, which after their account is almost three hundred leagues distant, through mighty plains, and sandy heaths so smooth and wearisome, and bare of wood that they made heaps of ox-dung, for want of stones and trees, that they might not lose themselves at their return: for three horses were lost on that plain, and one Spaniard which went from his company on hunting.... All that way of plains are as full of crooked-back oxen as the mountain Serrena in Spain is of sheep, but there is no such people as keep those cattle.... They were a great succour for the hunger and the want of bread, which our party stood in need of....
Little did he dream that Quivira would yet become the central region of one of the greatest civilized nations of the world, and rich in productions beyond his most avaricious vision.
Yet each decade since witnesses a revival of a wonderful story of the buried treasures of the Grand Quivira. The myth originated in New Mexico in 1540. Antonio de Mendoza was the viceroy of New Spain. Having practically conquered the New World, the adventurers who formed his court, having no fighting to do with common enemies, began to hack each other.
From Cicuic they went to Quivira, a distance of 200 leagues in their estimation, the whole way being in a level country; and they marked their route by means of small hillocks of cow dung, that they might be the better able to find their way back. At one time they had a storm of hail, the hailstones being as large as oranges.
He perhaps made it as enticing as he could in order to lead the strangers away to perish in the pathless plains where water would be scarce and corn unknown. THE SEARCH FOR QUIVIRA. The slave's story deceived the Spaniards. Coronado grasped eagerly at the only hope left of finding a rich country and marched away in search of Quivira. He traveled to the northeast for seventy-seven days.
Thirty miles from Cuarac, to the southeast, lies Tabiri, the "Grand Quivira." Huddled on the projecting slopes of the rounded ridges, access to it is a weary, dreary march. The nearest water is forty miles away. Toiling through sand ankle-deep, the traveler plods across the edge of the plains, through troughlike valleys, and up the wooded slope of the Mesa de los Jumanos.
I consoled Dona Josefita somewhat with the promise that I would return some day and find her the treasure of La Gran Quivira. Don Juan Mestal, the freighter, seemed as reluctant to leave as I was; something was always turning up to delay our start. But at last we were off.
It is a condensed report that had reached Mexico after Coronado had left for Quivira and before his return had become known. Its allusion to the Rio Grande Pueblos and to Pecos is not without value, although it adds little to what is contained in the sources previously mentioned. On the Indians of the Plains it is, comparatively speaking, more explicit.
Coronado, not wishing to subject all his companions to suffering, but eager still to reach the fabled Quivira, at length sent all his followers back except thirty horsemen and six foot-soldiers, with whom he continued his journey to the north, the bisons supplying them with abundance of food.
After wintering in the villages of the Tiguas, which the Spaniards had assailed and taken, they set out in the following April in search of Quivira, the land of gold, which El Turco had painted in such enticing colors.
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