What was coronado looking for?

Podcast: Play in new window Download. An African slave named Estevanico was brought before the Viceroy of New Spain and kneeled in supplication.

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He had come to the newly conquered lands from the comfort of his station as a minor noble in Spain to seek his personal fortune and on this day in Mendoza felt as if he could become richer than the king of Spain himself. The kneeling slave before him recounted a tale of an odyssey lasting nearly nine years that went from the coast of Florida, through Texas and the present-day American Southwest and through most of northern Mexico.

A key component of this tale was a rumor. The rumor told of seven cities in the north whose buildings were covered in gold and whose rulers were some of the wealthiest people on earth.

Where was estevanico born

As the second son of a wealthy Spanish count who had no right to inherit himself, Mendoza listened with wide eyes at the stories of what would henceforth be known as the Seven Cities of Gold. His course of action was clear: he would sponsor a massive expedition north to find these cities and to conquer them for the Spanish Crown, thus becoming wealthy in the process and making a name for himself in the New World.

The story of the Seven Cities of Gold begins in when the aforementioned slave Estavanico was sold in a Morocco slave market to a minor Spanish nobleman named Andres Dorantes de Carranza. The fleet encountered a very bad storm south of Cuba which caused them to lose 2 ships. The remaining tattered ships and demoralized the crew finally made it to the coast of Florida over 9 months later and many men deserted the expedition when they made landfall.

After they landed near Tampa Bay they immediately pressed into the northern interior of Florida. What had originally started out as a man expedition was reduced to at the time of the encounter with the powerful Apalachee Indians in late The remaining two rafts made landfall somewhere near Galveston Island in September of The remaining survivors were taken into captivity by local natives and stayed on the Gulf Coast until when the last 4 of the expedition who were still alive made their escape.