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Updated: June 14, 2025
A treacherous guide who had hoped to take Coronado into the waterless plain and lose him, but who first lost his own head, had told him a tale of the Quivira, a tribe that had much gold. So far from having gold these Indians did not know the stuff, but the myth that they had hoarded quantities of it has survived to this day and has caused waste of lives and money.
Of a sudden the lights were extinguished and the crowd came out with a rush, and silently they stole away in the darkness. "Now, amigo," said Reyes, "let me tell you something, which may haply serve you well. Knowing that an American accomplishes things which a Mexican like myself must let alone, I advise you to try for the hidden treasure of La Gran Quivira.
"So the Turk caused himself to be taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and talked among them, until it was finally brought to the Captain-General's ears that in the Turk's country of Quivira, the people ate off plates of gold, and the Chief of that country took his afternoon nap under a tree hung with golden bells that rung him to sleep.
For more than three centuries, a period extending from 1541 to 1851, historians believed, and so announced to the literary world, that Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the celebrated Spanish explorer, in his search for the Seven Cities of Cibola and the Kingdom of Quivira, was the first European to travel over the intra-continent region of North America.
There were seven villages each of Cibola, Tusayan, Quivira, and Hemes, and twelve of Tiguex; it would give an average of about fourteen hundred and fifty persons to each village.
Not being willing, therefore, to return empty-handed to Mexico, they went to the town of Acuco, where they heard of Axa and Quivira, the king of which was reported to worship a golden cross, and the picture of the Queen of Heaven, or the blessed Virgin.
It is no wonder that such treatment drove the Indians into rebellion, and that Coronado was obliged to carry on a cruel war of reconquest and revenge. THE TALE OF QUIVIRA. An Indian slave in one of the villages cheered Coronado and his followers with a fabulous tale about a wonderful city, many days' journey across the plains to the northeast, which he called Quivira.
This land of gold some had located in New Biscay or New Mexico; others, in the pretended kingdoms of Sonora and Quivira; then, after several ineffectual attempts, the possibility of reaching it was denied; learned men, from the various academies of Europe, proved that the Eldorado was not a country, but a dream; on this subject the Old World laughed at the New; the Argonauts became discouraged, and during a century the subject was named only to be ridiculed.
They gave the Spaniards food and proved to them that it was much farther to the cities of the Missisippu than the Turk had said. "By that time Coronado had himself begun to suspect that he should never find the golden bells of Quivira, but with the King and Dona Beatris behind him, there was nothing for him to do but go forward.
For six weeks they marched onward, crossing at the end of thirty days a wide stream, which is thought to have been the Arkansas River, and at last reached Quivira, which seems to have lain in the present State of Kansas.
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