Ahead of Fray Marcos, to Cíbola

Estevanico · 1539 CE · Earth

Scout the road north from Culiacán to the populous towns Cabeza de Vaca had heard of, and report back by messenger.

Historical context

Cabeza de Vaca’s report of populous towns to the north reached Mexico City at the moment when Pizarro’s plunder of Peru had made every conquistador in New Spain certain that another Cuzco lay just beyond the desert. Viceroy Mendoza wanted the country scouted before Hernán Cortés or Hernando de Soto could claim it, and he wanted it done cheaply, so he sent a friar and a man he owned. Estevanico went ahead because he could talk to anyone on the road; Fray Marcos followed at a safe distance, and it was the friar who came home.

The voyage, step by step

1. Leaving Culiacán

   March 1539

   A friar, an enslaved guide and a column of Sonoran companions start north in March.

2. The Sinaloa valleys

   1539 CE

   Villages come out to meet them with food and arches of green branches.

3. Vacapa and the crosses

   1539 CE

   The friar halts for Easter and sends his guide ahead with an agreed signal.

4. The despoblado

   1539 CE

   Fifteen waterless days of creosote and lava between the last farms and the first pueblos.

5. The first Zuni messengers

   1539 CE

   Word runs ahead to the towns that a black man with a rattle is coming with many followers.

6. Hawikuh, May 1539

   May 1539

   He is kept outside the walls overnight, and killed at dawn as the party tries to leave.

7. The friar’s distant sight

   1539 CE

   Fray Marcos claims to have climbed a rise, seen Cíbola from afar, raised a cairn and fled south.

Outcome

Reached Hawikuh in the Zuni country in May 1539, the first person from outside the Americas to do so, and was killed there; Fray Marcos turned back and reported a city of gold.

Estevanico

Enslaved North African who crossed the continent with Cabeza de Vaca and then guided the first expedition from Mexico to the Pueblo towns, where he was killed at Hawikuh in 1539.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Esteban de Dorantes — Wikipedia
• Crossing the Continent 1527–1540: The Story of the First African-American Explorer of the American SouthRobert Goodwin · Harper, New York · 2008
• Relación del descubrimiento de las siete ciudades, Patronato 20, N.5, R.10Fray Marcos de Niza · Archivo General de Indias, Seville · 1539

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