The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542.: Excerpted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, Part 1.Winship, George Parker
History
The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542.: Excerpted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, Part 1.
Winship, George Parker
Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, 1510-1554; Southwest, New -- Description and travel
The rest collected on the roofs of the village and the
captain returned to his camp.
After this affair the general ordered the army to go and surround
the village. He set out with his men in good order, one day, with
several scaling ladders. When he reached the village, he encamped his
force near by, and then began the siege; but as the enemy had had
several days to provide themselves with stores, they threw down such
quantities of rocks upon our men that many of them were laid out, and
they wounded nearly a hundred with arrows, several of whom afterward
died on account of the bad treatment by an unskillful surgeon who was
with the army. The siege lasted fifty days, during which time several
[p499] assaults were made. The lack of water was what troubled the
Indians most. They dug a very deep well inside the village, but were
not able to get water, and while they were making it, it fell in and
killed 30 persons. Two hundred of the besieged died in the fights.
One day when there was a hard fight, they killed Francisco de Obando,
a captain who had been army-master all the time that Don Garcia Lopez
de Cardenas was away making the discoveries already described, and
also Francisco Pobares, a fine gentleman. Our men were unable to
prevent them from carrying Francisco de Obando inside the village,
which was regretted not a little, because he was a distinguished
person, besides being honored on his own account, affable and much
beloved, which was noticeable.[156] One day, before the capture was
completed, they asked to speak to us, and said that, since they knew
we would not harm the women and children, they wished to surrender
their women and sons, because they were using up their water. It was
impossible to persuade them to make peace, as they said that the
Spaniards would not keep an agreement made with them. So they gave up
about a hundred persons, women and boys, who did not want to leave
them. Don Lope de Urrea[157] rode up in front of the town without
his helmet and received the boys and girls in his arms, and when all
of these had been surrendered, Don Lope begged them to make peace,
giving them the strongest promises for their safety. They told him to
go away, as they did not wish to trust themselves to people who had
no regard for friendship or their own word which they had pledged. As
he seemed unwilling to go away, one of them put an arrow in his bow
ready to shoot, and threatened to shoot him with it unless he went
off, and they warned him to put on his helmet, but he was unwilling
to do so, saying that they would not hurt him as long as he stayed
there. When the Indian saw that he did not want to go away, he shot
and planted his arrow between the fore feet of the horse, and then
put another arrow in his bow and repeated that if he did not go away
he would really shoot him. Don Lope put on his helmet and slowly rode
back to where the horsemen were, without receiving any harm from
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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