So great was the disappointment over this result and so absorbed were the men of New Spain by the new mineral discoveries in Nueva Vizcaya, as well as by the confusion produced by the Mixton War, that forty years passed before there was another successful attempt to penetrate the northern country. Such sporadic raids as took place in this interval were either personal adventures of individual Spaniards or slave-hunting forays to fill the shortage of laborers at the mines. These adventurers had little interest in true exploration of the country they crossed while the slave-catching aroused fear in the native mind and made further _entradas_ more difficult. A new generation of Spanish explorers and settlers had arisen, to whom Cíbola and Ácuco and Quivira were practically myths, before any fresh interest was aroused to explore the wilderness beyond. Four decades after Coronado’s exploration, a party of adventurous spirits made a fresh attempt to penetrate the northern wilderness. They were only twenty-eight in number, counting soldiers, three friars and Indian servants. They were organized by a lay brother of St. Francis, Fray Augustin Rodríguez. Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado commanded the soldiers. On the whole, they met little opposition from the native peoples and on their side appear also to have dealt considerately with them. Curiosity concerning these strange white invaders was mingled with fear born of the earlier forays made to capture slaves who were taken back to the mines. So soon as Fray Rodríguez made evident that he asked no more than fish and maize in exchange for such merchandise as had been brought along for this purpose, the people showed a child-like interest and pointed out the way to the north. In the Tigua country, more hostility was encountered. One of the priests, Fray Santa María, determined, against the protests of soldiers and padres, to return to beg additional help from the viceroy. “Children of the Sun,” the Spaniards had called themselves to these worshippers of the great Sun-Deity, and Santa María seems to have relied on the belief they had engendered hitherto in their invulnerability to attack. His departure excited the suspicion of the natives and, as he was entirely alone, he was easily killed within two days “while sleeping, by having a large stone placed upon him and left to die of suffocation.” Thus did the savages learn that Spaniards could be put to death like other men, and this knowledge proved a serious obstacle to the future progress of the invaders.