The Establishment of the Exterior Borders of the Great State of Texas Part One

 

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, before his ill-fated journey.

 

 
       No discussion of Texas borders can begin without considering Mexico, and Mexico cannot be discussed without touching upon its relationship with Spain.  The Mexican people speak a variation of the Spanish language, and many carry Spanish blood in their veins.

     For seven hundred years, the Moors ruled Spain, until 1492, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella's army finally managed to drive them out by conquering the Muslim stronghold at Granada.  That same year the queen sponsored an Italian sailor named Columbus in a silly attempt to discover a shorter route to India by sailing west.  It was a good year for Spain, except, after the Moors were defeated, a lot of soldiers were left with nothing to do.

     Leftover soldiers are typically young, ambitious, unattached, and looking for adventure, wealth, and female companionship, not necessarily in that order.  Many of them headed west to the mysterious, newly discovered continents in search of fame and fortune.  For the next several generations, the Spanish explored, conquered, claimed, and otherwise acquired new territories in the name of the King of Spain and the Holy Church of Rome.

     Spanish soldiers-of-fortune became known as Conquistadors (conquerors) and explored and conquered new lands, primarily in search of gold, with the secondary purpose of saving the souls of the local populace and leading them to truth, light and involuntary servitude through the Holy Church of Rome.  The Conquistadors were brutal, ruthless, driven men with no mercy for the people they conquered, or the troops they commanded.  Thousands of natives died during this period, many in battle, and many more from exposure to European disease.  In my youth, I studied about these conquerors, but failed to realize their relationship to each other, and did not understand the timing of their journeys.  The Texas we know and love evolved from their efforts.

     A talented leftover soldier named Juan Ponce de Leon accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to the Americas in 1493, and was so attracted to Puerto Rico that he returned and established residence there.  He “discovered” and named Florida in April of 1513, and immediately claimed it for the King of Spain and the Holy Church of Rome. (No mention of his search for the Fountain of Youth occurs until long after his death, when a historian surmised De Leon was looking for the “Waters of Bimini” to cure his aging. This idea is a bit troublesome--de Leon was thirty-nine at the time, and the island of Bimini is east of Florida in the Bahamas.)

     Six months after the discovery of Florida, in late September of 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa “discovered” the South Sea and claimed it and all the land it touched for the King of Spain and the Holy Church of Rome.  He called it the South Sea because he crossed what became Panama by heading due south.  Balboa, a smooth talker who stowed away on a freighter to escape debt collectors in Santa Domingo, had a talented young officer in his company named Francisco Pizarro, a distant cousin of Hernan Cortes who conquered the Aztecs.  Pizarro moved up in the ranks by arresting his former commander and turning him over to political enemies.   Balboa was tried, convicted, and beheaded in January of 1519.  Spain kept its claim to the South Sea which Magellan explored in 1520, re-naming it the Pacific Ocean.

     Meanwhile, Francisco Pizarro was busy in what would become South America, conquering native people, enslaving them, and forcing them to mine gold and silver.  In 1535 he established a Spanish capital city in Peru, named it Lima and began shipping tons of gold and silver back to Spain. One of Pizarro’s young captains, Hernando de Soto became wealthy with his share of precious metals liberated from the locals. He returned to Spain and sought permission to explore and colonize North America, in the name of the King of Spain and the Holy Church of Rome.

     In 1539 de Soto landed on the west coast of Florida with 620 men and tons of armor and provisions.  For the next three years he and his men wandered through the future states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas.  They crossed the Mississippi River near present day Memphis, and, or course, claimed it, its drainage area, and everything else they saw for the King of Spain and the Holy Church of Rome, including the sacred American Indian site known as the Valley of the Vapors—now called Hot Springs, Arkansas.

      De Soto died of fever in May of 1542, on the west side of the Mississippi River in present day Arkansas or Louisiana.  His troops buried him in an unmarked grave and tried, unsuccessfully, to go back to Mexico City overland, through Texas.  After much hardship, the few that survived returned to the Mississippi River, cut down trees, built boats, and made their way back to Mexico by sailing down the river and along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

     At the same time de Soto was tramping through the piney woods of the Deep South, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was following a dark-skinned Indian guide called “Turk” across the Llano Estacado in search of the Seven Cities of Gold.

A depiction by Fredrick Remington of Coronado's Expedition, following the Turk across the Llano Estacado

 

     Coronado and his soldiers entered unexplored territory north of Mexico along the present Arizona/New Mexico line in 1540 and made their way north to the Acoma Pueblo, which, at that time, had been home to the Zunis for over five hundred years.  The soldier’s first view of the pueblo on the mesa was from the west, and the setting sun gave the mesa and the mud huts on top a golden glow.  It is said that an Indian guide pointed and said, “See. The City of Gold.” Coronado, expecting streets of gold and lacking a sense of humor, had the man’s head chopped off.

     Coronado sent patrols in all directions to explore while he recuperated from an injury suffered as he slaughtered Zuni Indians for refusing to share their meager food.  His men were the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon and they explored what would become Arizona and parts of the Colorado River.   During the winter of 1540-41, they moved east to the Rio Grande River where they wiped out the Tiguex pueblos and a tribe of uncooperative Navajo, and set up a base of operations near present day Bernalillo, New Mexico.  From this camp, they explored the Rio Grande upriver to the Taos Pueblo, and downstream to the vicinity of present day Las Cruces. Of course they claimed everything they saw for the King of Spain and the Holy Church of Rome.

     In the spring of 1541, Coronado’s lust for gold led him to follow the Turk (so named because of his dark complexion) across the Llano Estacado and on to Kansas.  Coronado and his men were nervous and uneasy on the high plains—absolutely flat terrain, no trees, no landmarks, no rivers—it was as if they had been swallowed up by a sea of grass. The expedition moved into what would become central Kansas before Coronado lost patience and had the Turk choked to death.  They returned to winter in their base camp on the Rio Grande, and started back to Mexico in April of 1542.  Two priests were left to minister to the Indians, but otherwise the expedition accomplished little of value, except to strengthen Spain’s claim to territory in the New World.

     Because they found no gold, Coronado was ruined financially, and he and his field master were charged with war crimes committed during the expedition.  Coronado, penniless, remained in Mexico City and died of an infection in 1554.

To be continued…..