Our Catltolic Heritage in T eza.s
JOO
of students of history for more than half a century. Slowly but surely the light of careful and painstaking investigation has revealed that the early routes assigned to this expedition were too ambitious even for such hardy men as the Spanish conquerors. The chief reason for taking Coro- nado far beyond the actual point reached has been his unfortunate and equally baseless statement that Quivira was in the fortieth degree of lati- tude. The last portion of his wearisome journey over the endless plains "so vast," as he himself admits to the king, "that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I traveled over them more than three hundred leagues"~ 5 was undertaken with only thirty men. What instruments they had to determine with any accuracy the latitude at the end of their fruitless journey, or who among them had experience in this work is not revealed. None of the accounts available today even record that an observation was taken. Coronado alone is the only one who gives the latitude. It is customary in the diaries and accounts of other expeditions to note where observations are taken in giving the findings. Coronado, however, must have had some basis for his statement, but how vague or unreliable will never be known. There is, therefore, no valid reason for maintaining that the location of Quivira was in forty degrees of latitude, when incontrovertible evidence seems to point to an error in Coronado's latitudinal conjectures. Before following his route in order to determine as far as possible the goal reached, it is necessary to disabuse our minds of the long sus- tained theory that he reached forty degrees of north latitude in his march. Instead, let us follow him carefully and note all the evidence, meager and confusing in many instances as to the Indians met, the distances traveled, and the directions followed, but uniformly consistent as to the physical characteristics of the country over which the men marched. Let us keep in mind that the Indians have disappeared, that we have no means of determining with any certainty the accuracy of the dis- tances traveled, and much less the direction followed in their often aimless wanderings in the great plains. Only the physical characteristics remain the same. The geologic formations of the area over which they traveled are the same today as when Coronado first saw them. Con- sequently, since the physical aspects of the country over which Coronado and his men traveled and which they noted in the various accounts with that accuracy and precision that characterizes the records of all Spanish
45Coronado to the King, October 20, 1541, in Documentos lneditos III, 363-364.
Powered by FlippingBook