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Narrative of the Coronado Expedition
This 421 page Lakeside Press Classic is a first person narrative of the Coronado Expedition of 1540 to 1542 through what are now the Spanish and American states of Sinaloa, Sonora, Jaja, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. A full index is included and is illustrated with twelve color plates, color maps and several black and white illustrations.
- GenresHistory
421 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1896
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About the author
Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera
13 books1 followerPedro de Castañeda, a member and chronicler of the Coronado expedition, was a native of Nájera, a town in the state of Vizcaya in northern Spain. At the time of the organization of the Coronado expedition, Castañeda was at a Spanish outpost at Culiacán, in northwestern Mexico. He was married and had at least eight children. Castañeda's original account, Relación de la jornada de Cíbola compuesta por Pedro de Castañeda de Nácera donde se trata de todas aquellos poblados y ritos, y costumbres, la cual fué el año de 1540, has been lost, but a copy made in 1596 is in the Lenox Library in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 1, 2018
The re-print sucks. There were missing pages and pages out of order throughout the book. I found a digital copy of both the untranslated and English versions and printed the full text. Between the three versions I was able to sort out the above problems. This is (and reads) like any military field report, so it's not a page turner. One must also keep in mind that the expedition was a total failure and this field report is Coronado's legal defense for that failure, had he returned to Spain as Cárdenas had, he would probably have been convicted as well. Either way, the adventure ruined him and brought on a early death. Bottom line here is, there are no Seven Cities of Gold to be found in Kansas, but following the Coronado Expedition trail is a lot of fun and I do recommend stopping in Amarillo at the The Big Texan Steak Ranch and Brewer (check out the 72 oz steak challenge when you go). I'm sure Coronado would of loved to find a place like this.
July 26, 2020
The primary document, the journal by Castaneda, translated in the book is amazing. A detailed first contact, first person narrative. The secondary material by Winship is poor. It fails to address the trial Coronado faced upon returning to New Spain. It matter-of-factly accepts Coronado's poor treatment of the people he encountered. Winship is an apologist to a war criminal.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 31, 2019
Great story but somewhat hard to follow.
Could be a movie though.
Could be a movie though.
February 17, 2015
When I was younger, all I really knew of Coronado was that young Indiana Jones found a gold cross from his expedition inside a cave, which was promptly stolen by some random bad(ass) dude. ("Ya lost today, kid. But that doesn't mean you have to like it...") Then a few years ago, when taking a tour of the southwest, I visited some Coronado historical sites and really became interested in this expedition, especially as it related to the Spanish conquest of New Spain. As such, I was super excited to read Castanedo's firsthand account of the disastrous two-year march.
For the past two months, I've been delving into the first-hand narratives of Spanish New World explorers. These accounts have been as exciting as any fictional adventure story (or even more so). It feels as if I'm piecing together a huge multifaceted narrative piece-by-piece, with events, people, and locations popping up in the most amazing places. This Coronado narrative connects to many of the others. We have Estevanico from the Cabeza chronicle appearing at the beginning (indeed, his wanderings become the inspiration for the Coronado expedition), as well as an extension of Cortes' story in Mexico City as the Spanish colony in the south continues to expand northward. We also have de Soto's expedition coming oh-so-close to running into the beleaguered Coronado crew in the central US. We have interactions with native tribes who would go on to become major players in the US westward expansion (Navajo and Apache), riding the horses that Spaniards first brought from Europe. (Horses that, as the wonderful introduction to the Lakeside edition informs us, were originally native to North America thousands of years earlier before becoming extinct on this continent--but not before some crossed the land bridge to Asia, where those animals would make their way to Europe.)
Castanedo gives us short, straightforward chapters that get across the bare bones facts. His descriptions of bison are very accurate, which lends a great deal of credibility to the rest of his writing (despite the weird mistake of being one year off with his dates throughout the text). While more specific than the Cabeza narrative, Castanedo doesn't utilize anywhere near the detail or flourish of Bernal Diaz's account of Cortes. His inclusion of the scouting expedition to the Grand Canyon and Melchor Diaz's tragic death were highlights.
This Lakeside edition contained beautiful artwork and helpful maps, as well as extensive historical scholarship in the endnotes and introduction. Overall, it was a worthwhile reading experience to be taken along on Coronado's trek, which ended up being much more interesting than fiction.
For the past two months, I've been delving into the first-hand narratives of Spanish New World explorers. These accounts have been as exciting as any fictional adventure story (or even more so). It feels as if I'm piecing together a huge multifaceted narrative piece-by-piece, with events, people, and locations popping up in the most amazing places. This Coronado narrative connects to many of the others. We have Estevanico from the Cabeza chronicle appearing at the beginning (indeed, his wanderings become the inspiration for the Coronado expedition), as well as an extension of Cortes' story in Mexico City as the Spanish colony in the south continues to expand northward. We also have de Soto's expedition coming oh-so-close to running into the beleaguered Coronado crew in the central US. We have interactions with native tribes who would go on to become major players in the US westward expansion (Navajo and Apache), riding the horses that Spaniards first brought from Europe. (Horses that, as the wonderful introduction to the Lakeside edition informs us, were originally native to North America thousands of years earlier before becoming extinct on this continent--but not before some crossed the land bridge to Asia, where those animals would make their way to Europe.)
Castanedo gives us short, straightforward chapters that get across the bare bones facts. His descriptions of bison are very accurate, which lends a great deal of credibility to the rest of his writing (despite the weird mistake of being one year off with his dates throughout the text). While more specific than the Cabeza narrative, Castanedo doesn't utilize anywhere near the detail or flourish of Bernal Diaz's account of Cortes. His inclusion of the scouting expedition to the Grand Canyon and Melchor Diaz's tragic death were highlights.
This Lakeside edition contained beautiful artwork and helpful maps, as well as extensive historical scholarship in the endnotes and introduction. Overall, it was a worthwhile reading experience to be taken along on Coronado's trek, which ended up being much more interesting than fiction.
February 22, 2012
One might not expect a 460 year old travelogue to be viciously damning and borderline salacious. If so, one has not considered Pedro de Castañeda of Najera and his account of the disastrous entrada of Franciso Vázquez de Coronado and his futile search for the “Seven Golden Cities of Cibola.”
De Castañeda offers no apologies for his dismissive contempt of the inept, disingenuous, and preposterous Coronado. The vainglorious captain-general and his erstwhile patron, Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza, dreamed of surpassing their contemporaries, Hernandez Cortés and Francisco Pizzaro, in the search for gold, slaves, and converts (in that order). In the process, Coronado lost his army, his honor, and the respect of his subordinates. Time and again Coronado made poor choices, perhaps the most spectacular of which was the fruitless search for Quivera, in present-day Kansas. Coronado foolishly accepted the word of a deceitful Indian, called the “Turk” (because he “looked like one,” Castañada reminds the reader again and again), who promised gold cups and plates in Quivera. In fact, the “Turk,” an Indian slave, was probably granted his freedom by the Cicuye Indians in return for leading the Spaniards astray. Once the deceit was discovered, Coronado vented his humiliating frustration by having the “Turk” garroted.
The Spaniards were as vile, deceitful, and vicious as they were stupid. Before journey’s end, Coronado’s forces committed one of the greatest slaughters of Indians in the history of the New World, the siege of Tiguex, midway between today’s Albuquerque and Santa Fé. More than anybody else, Coronado ruined whatever possibility of cooperation between Indians and whites that might have been attainable and, in some ways, that still poisons relations among the races of the American southwest today. Not that the English helped matters, which they certainly did not.
Along with the chronicle of stupidity and violence of the Spaniards, Casteñada carefully records the practices of the several Indian tribes encountered by the Coronado party. Suffice it to say that some of those practices described by Casteñeda would make Caligula blush.
This book will appeal mainly to serious students of the American southwest who are interested in understanding how everything went so very wrong there. The book has the special attraction of being an eyewitness account with what I assume to be an excellent translation. It is a good reminder that England was not the only heavy-handed and duplicitous imperial power.
July 24, 2014
“I have always noticed, and it is a fact, that often when we have something valuable in our possession and handle it freely, we do not esteem or appreciate it in all its worth, as we would if we could realize how much we would miss it if we were to lose it. Thus we gradually belittle its value, but once we have lost it and miss its benefits, we feel it in our heart and are forever moody, thinking of ways and means to retrieve it. This, it seems to me, happened to all or most of those who went on that expedition, which Francisco Vasquez Coronado led in search of the Seven Cities, in the year of our Savior, Jesus Christ, 1540.”
The Coronado expedition was like a story out of legend, a half-medieval army marching into an unknown wilderness to chase rumors of The Seven Cities of Gold. But it was not a myth, and they found nothing of the sort. In fact, the record of their contacts with the peoples of the American southwest is filled with deceit, coercion, and violence. The Spanish – or at least their leaders – never tried to understand the world they stumbled into. They only understood gold. Quoted above, Castaneda, himself a member of the army, appears to have been more thoughtful. His memoir, written twenty years later, is haunted with wonder and longing for the strange lands he saw (his descriptions of buffalo herds and the Great Plains are among the earliest by any European), but also by regret.
The Coronado expedition was like a story out of legend, a half-medieval army marching into an unknown wilderness to chase rumors of The Seven Cities of Gold. But it was not a myth, and they found nothing of the sort. In fact, the record of their contacts with the peoples of the American southwest is filled with deceit, coercion, and violence. The Spanish – or at least their leaders – never tried to understand the world they stumbled into. They only understood gold. Quoted above, Castaneda, himself a member of the army, appears to have been more thoughtful. His memoir, written twenty years later, is haunted with wonder and longing for the strange lands he saw (his descriptions of buffalo herds and the Great Plains are among the earliest by any European), but also by regret.
May 4, 2011
I share Coronado's disappointment, because his failure to find the seven cities of gold makes his story pretty dull. The accounts written by soldiers with Cortez or Pizarro were much more interesting to read, because they found much more interesting stuff. Parts of this were good, but mostly it's a lot of empty landscape and mud huts. He writes, "I wish I had better news to write to Your Lordship, but I must give you the truth, and...advise you of the good as well as the bad. But you may be assured that if there had been all the riches and treasures of the world, I could not have done more in His Majesty's service and in that of Your Lordship than I have done...Nor do I think of stopping until my death, if it serves His Majesty or Your Lordship to have it so." Good effort, Coronado.
January 6, 2013
A narrative of the expedition led by Coronado through Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico and up to Kansass in the search for the 7 cities of Cibola and gold. They didn't find riches, but this is a fascinating account of travel and among the first written records describing a world not yet written. The footnotes are good too, and don't varnish the horrors of conquest the way the narrative does...
July 10, 2013
Librivox version audio book.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews