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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
In 1540, a spanish expedition led by Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado ventured out of Mexico into what is now the American Southwest in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola and the mythical Kingdom of Quivira. The Coronado expedition wandered for two years through present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and perhaps as far as Oklahoma and Kansas in search of the elusive cities of gold before returning to Mexico, bitter and disappointed. The Spanish conquistadores had set out to find the fabled treasures of Cibola, where, it was rumored, the houses were studded with jewels and the streets were paved with gold. They found instead the source of the inflated legend-the terraced mud pueblos of the Zuñi Indians. The earlier scout, Fray Marcos, had seen them from a distant hillside glittering in the sun, and his vision had been embellished by tales of riches told by the Indians he encountered en route. Finding mud instead of gold, Coronado and his expedition became seduced by tales of yet another land to the east called Quivira, whose riches were beyond imagination and where gold and silver were as common as prairie dust. The quest for the phantom gold of Quivira led Coronado east across the Rio Grande valley and perhaps as far north as present-day Kansas. He had imagined treasures to surpass even those of the Incas in Peru. What he found was another patch of dusty Indian villages, this time made of straw instead of mud. In 1542, the Coronado venture was considered by its Spanish promoters to have been a costly and somewhat embarrassing failure.
1. For a more complete account of the Coronado Cuarto Centennial observances, see “History of the Coronado Celebrations,” in Hammond, George P., Coronach's Seven Cities (Albuquerque, N.M.: United States Coronado Exposition Commission, 1940), pp. 77–82.Google Scholar
2. The quote is taken from the pamphlet, “Tourist Guide for Kansas,” published by the Kansas Coronado Cuarto Centennial Commission (Lyons, Kans., 1941).Google Scholar
3. Sherman, Eddie, “Coronado Marches Again,” Journal of the National Education Association, 29, No. 5 (05 1940), 142–3.Google Scholar
4. “Kansas History in the Press,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 9, No. 3 (08 1940), 328.Google Scholar
5. Donoghue, David, “Coronado, Onate, and Quivira,” Mid-America: An Historical Review, 17, No. 2 (04 1936), 88–95.Google Scholar See also “Catholic First Things in Kansas,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 8, No. 2 (05 1939), 208.Google Scholar
6. These references to the Coronado observance in Kansas are drawn from various newspaper clippings in a scrapbook compiled by Paul A. Jones, Chairman of the Kansas Coronado Cuarto Centennial Commission. I am grateful to Mrs. Paul A. Jones of Lyons, Kansas, for allowing me to use this scrapbook in my research.
7. Murdock, Victor, “Hosts of Kansans to Find Coronado Show Next Year to Top New Mexican Effort,” Wichita (Evening) Eagle, 7 10 1939.Google Scholar
8. Bailey, Roy F., “‘To the Stars Through Difficulties’: Accomplishments of Kansas Shown by Historical Markers,” Kansas Teacher, 50, No. 9 (05 1942), 28.Google Scholar
9. Bailey, , p. 28.Google Scholar
10. The words are those of Roy Bailey, but they are offered in explanation of Mrs. Ratner's strong support of the new proposal; see Bailey, , p. 28.Google Scholar
11. The debate over the site of Father Padilla's martyrdom is discussed in Fr. Angelico Chavez, O.F.M., Coronado's Friars (Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1968), pp. 85–6.Google Scholar
12. Jones, Paul A., Coronado and Quivira (Lyons, Kans.: The Lyons Publishing Co., 1937), p. 1.Google Scholar
13. See, for example, Marling, Karal Ann, “Of Cherry Trees and Ladies' Teas: Grant Wood Looks at Colonial America,” in The Colonial Revival in America, ed. Axelrod, Allen (New York: W. W. Norton, Winterthur Books, 1985), pp. 294–319.Google ScholarMarling, 's book George Washington Slept HereGoogle Scholar, forthcoming from Harvard University Press, also promises to be an invaluable treatment of this subject.
14. “The Great American Roadside,” Fortune, 10, No. 3 (09 1934) 53–63, 172, 174, 177.Google Scholar For a social history of auto tourism in the 1930s, see Belasco, Warren James, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1979).Google Scholar For an insightful discussion of auto tourism in the Midwest during the 1930s, see Nash, Anedith, “Death on the Ridge Road: Grant Wood and Modernization in the Midwest,” Prospects: The Annual of American Cultural Studies, ed. Salzman, Jack, 8 (New York: Burt Franklin & Company, 1983), pp. 281–301.Google Scholar
15. Paul Jones, as quoted by Wellman, Paul I., “Admiral Paul Jones Brings Coronado Back to Kansas,” Kansas City Star, 18 05 1941, p. 12C.Google Scholar
16. Curry's decision to paint Coronado astride a Palomino aroused a great deal of controversy among Kansas horse breeders because the Palomino was not recognized as a legitimate breed until 1949. They were angered that the painting should depict Coronado mounted on “a scrub pony.” This controversy, and the Coronado phenomenon in general, are discussed at greater length in a book by this author; see Kendall, M. Sue, Rethinking Regionalism: John Steuart Curry and the Kansas Mural Controversy, volume 2 in the New Directions in American Art series (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986).Google Scholar
17. For an analysis of the evolution of heroes, horses, and costumes in Hollywood westerns, see Fenin, George N. and Everson, William K., The Western: From Silents to the Seventies, 2nd ed. (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973), pp. 149–155, 193–225.Google Scholar