Coronado and La Gran Quivira, 1537-1544
Coronado in Palo Dttro Canyon. The expedition was now approaching Palo Duro Canyon. A scouting party under Don Rodrigo Maldonado was sent ahead to reconnoiter. He traveled four days and came to "a large ravine, like those of Colima, in the bottom of which he found a large settlement of people." Here they met an old, blind Indian with beard, who told them through signs that he had made the acquaintance of four other men like them a long time ago, in a place nearer to New Spain. "We concluded," says Jaramillo, "that they must have been Dorantes, Cabeza de Vaca, and the others who went with them." 50 That these Indians knew Cabeza de Vaca and his companions is borne out by the incident related by Castaneda of their behavior. "They presented," he tells us, "Don Rodrigo with a pile of tanned skins and other things, and a tent as big as a house ... When the general came up with the army and saw the great quantity of skins, he thought he would divide them among the men." The Indians, particularly the women, were very much disappointed, and actually wept, when the Spaniards took the gifts "because they thought that the strangers were not going to take any- thing, but would bless them as Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes had done." 51 Significant, indeed, is the phrase describing this ravine by comparing it to those of Colima. "Palo Duro Canyon," says Donoghue, "is about seventy miles in length, has a maximum depth of about- a thousand feet, and varies from a half mile to fifteen miles [in width]. Its sides are precipitous, and its appearance in this regard caused Castaneda to say it was like the barrancas of Colima. One is at its brink before the chasm is noticed." 52 There can be little doubt that the ravine, where the blind Indian was found, was the Palo Duro Canyon in present Swisher County in West Texas. The distance, the time consumed in marching, and the general direction, which was almost due east after crossing at Santa Rosa, place them in the canyon described. While traveling for a stretch along Palo Duro Canyon, they came in contact with groups of Indians who called themselves Teyas, evidently the Tejas, who may have roamed this area in the sixteenth century, but who had their regular habitat in East Texas, when La Salle and De Leon encountered them. "While lost in the plains," Coronado explains, "certain horsemen, who went out to hunt, met some Indians who were also out 50 Jaramillo, "Relacion," in Coleccio11 Documentos de Florida. SlWinship, Coronado, 505-506. 52 Donoghue, David, "The Route of the Coronado Expedition in Texas," Quar- terly, XXXII, I 89.
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