Friar Marcos de Niza was selected as the leader of the little party which was to find out what the viceroy wanted to know. Aside from his reconnoitering trip to Cibola, very little is known about this friar. Born in Nice, then a part of Savoy, he was called by his contemporaries a Frenchman. He had been with Pizarro in Peru, and had witnessed the death of Atahualpa. Returning to Central America, very likely with Pedro de Alvarado, he had walked from there barefooted, as was his custom, up to Mexico. He seems to have been somewhere in the northwestern provinces of New Spain, when Cabeza de Vaca appeared there after his wanderings. A member of the Franciscan brotherhood, he had already attained to some standing in the order, for he signs his report or personal narration of his explorations, as vice-commissary of the Franciscans. The father provincial of the order, Friar Antonio de Ciudad-Rodrigo, on August 26, 1539,[21] certified to the high esteem in which Friar Marcos was held, and stated that he was skilled in cosmography and in the arts of the sea, as well as in theology. This choice of a leader was beyond question an excellent one, and Mendoza had every reason to feel confidence in the success of his undertaking. The viceroy drew up a set of instructions for Friar Marcos, which directed that the Indians whom he met on the way should receive the best of treatment, and provided for the scientific observations which all Spanish explorers were expected to record. Letters were to be left wherever it seemed advisable, in order to communicate with a possible sea expedition, and information of the progress of the party was to be sent back to the viceroy at convenient intervals. These instructions are a model of careful and explicit directions, and show the characteristic interest taken by Mendoza in the details of everything with which he was concerned. They supply to some extent, [p355] also, the loss of the similar instructions which Coronado must have received when he started on his journey in the following February.[22]