# Ep. 861: The Defeat of Coronado

An episode of [The MeatEater Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/960902903), 13 Apr 2026, 2 h 00 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/63aba8bc-2dc8-4f89-807a-ae280065a7cd/bef749c9-0f36-4385-8ae6-b41d01745f9d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3892b9a1-a960-4f9e-bee7-ae280065a7db

Steven Rinella talks with author Peter Stark. Topics discussed: Peter's brand new book, The Lost Cities of El Norte: Coronado's Quest, the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance; the psychological story of the Coronado Expedition; Coronado's traumatic brain injury; reconnaissance party explorations and first contact with tribes; a foundational moment for indigenous resistance; Coronado's failure; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:08] Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
[0:13] Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast.
[0:18] Speaker 2: You can't predict anything.
[0:20] Speaker 1: Brought to you by first Light. When I'm hunting, I
[0:23] Speaker 1: need gear that won't quit. First Light builds, no compromise,
[0:27] Speaker 1: gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts,
[0:31] Speaker 1: just gear that works. Check it out at first light
[0:35] Speaker 1: dot com.
[0:35] Speaker 3: That's f I R S T L I t E
[0:39] Speaker 3: dot com.
[0:43] Speaker 1: Join today by Peter Stark. Rejoined by Peter Stark, author
[0:48] Speaker 1: Adventure Here to talk about the insane, insane, almost hallucinogenic, crazy,
[0:56] Speaker 1: crazy Coronado Expedition. Yeah, a hallucinogenic quality to the journey
[1:07] Speaker 1: was like some of the first conquis, the doors to
[1:12] Speaker 1: push their way up into the American Great Plains, the
[1:16] Speaker 1: Texas Panhandle and just the wild things, the wild violent
[1:24] Speaker 1: defeat that befell the Coronado Expedition.
[1:28] Speaker 2: And part of the reason why it was so wild
[1:31] Speaker 2: and crazy and hallucinatory is they had no idea of
[1:35] Speaker 2: what was up there, no zero zero. They called it
[1:38] Speaker 2: ill nord date Mesterioso, the Mysterious North, And if you
[1:41] Speaker 2: look at the maps from that era, you go north
[1:45] Speaker 2: of a little bit north of where Mexico City is now,
[1:49] Speaker 2: and it's just it's literally just blank spaces. And then
[1:51] Speaker 2: they kind of sort of shoved China and over there
[1:54] Speaker 2: on the on the left side, like China's right about
[1:58] Speaker 2: somewhere off there, and they're thinking that California some island
[2:02] Speaker 2: and and they say, well, we're thinking, like China and
[2:04] Speaker 2: Greater India are near the island of California. And so
[2:08] Speaker 2: these guys are like, you know, talking about going into
[2:10] Speaker 2: the unknown. They are utterly clueless, and they have a
[2:13] Speaker 2: huge expedition and a huge mission.
[2:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to tell that whole story Peter's new book,
[2:19] Speaker 1: The Lost Cities of Elnorte, Coronado's Quest, the Unconquered West,
[2:24] Speaker 1: and the Birth of American Indian Resistance. And Peter was
[2:29] Speaker 1: on before. I'm trying to remember, like you were on
[2:34] Speaker 1: with you when you.
[2:35] Speaker 2: Was Young Washington when we did and we had a
[2:38] Speaker 2: we had a really fun, wide ranging conversation. It was
[2:40] Speaker 2: about my book Young Washington was about young George Washington
[2:44] Speaker 2: in his twenties when he was a real mess up
[2:46] Speaker 2: in the in the wilderness of the Ohio Valley and
[2:49] Speaker 2: you know, accidentally set off the French and Indian War,
[2:52] Speaker 2: and you know stuff like that.
[2:53] Speaker 1: I want to touch on that for a minute because
[2:56] Speaker 1: there's a thing in there that I don't think was
[2:58] Speaker 1: relevant at the time. Okay, we talked before the assassination
[3:02] Speaker 1: attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Oh, we talked before that, right, Yes,
[3:10] Speaker 1: want me tell you a funny story about that. It
[3:13] Speaker 1: has do with Washington. Okay, But first I want to
[3:16] Speaker 1: tell you this. This is a personal thing. I'm not
[3:18] Speaker 1: going to embarrass you. This is a person.
[3:19] Speaker 2: You're gonna embarrass me all you want. And I've got
[3:21] Speaker 2: plenty of counter ammunition too. I might even have mentioned
[3:25] Speaker 2: this team before.
[3:26] Speaker 1: But like a thing like we were buddies, way like
[3:30] Speaker 1: we were friends long before I had kids. Yeah, so long.
[3:33] Speaker 2: Before you had a TV show, Long before you had
[3:35] Speaker 2: I mean you were building closets. The last I remembering
[3:40] Speaker 2: stone closet shelving.
[3:41] Speaker 1: This is in the late nineties, I think late nineties.
[3:45] Speaker 1: We were buddies. You had hunting, hunting, yeah right, My
[3:48] Speaker 1: oldest kid is about to turn sixteen, so way before that.
[3:51] Speaker 1: But you had young kids, like you had young, young kids,
[3:53] Speaker 1: young young kids. And the thing that was like was
[3:55] Speaker 1: so funny. I always wanted to tell you this. Maybe
[3:57] Speaker 1: I have told you this. You'd like drop in. You know,
[4:00] Speaker 1: we'd be hanging out, different writers and stuff, be hanging out,
[4:03] Speaker 1: and you'd like drop in for a beer, right, you
[4:06] Speaker 1: drop in for a beer, and we'd be in for
[4:09] Speaker 1: like a bunch of beers. But you drop in for
[4:12] Speaker 1: a beer and like race home. And I always thought
[4:14] Speaker 1: that guy's a lunatic. Yeah, what in the world would
[4:23] Speaker 1: you go now? Five o'clock? Totally uncle, It's like this
[4:30] Speaker 1: guy's got his schedule all wacked out. You know, you
[4:33] Speaker 1: gotta run well. I just feel like that dude's got
[4:36] Speaker 1: his priorities crooked. On the other one.
[4:39] Speaker 2: I don't know if we talked about this on the
[4:41] Speaker 2: the last time we were here, but you know, we
[4:43] Speaker 2: had this classic crazy hunt on the Missouri Breaks. It
[4:47] Speaker 2: was a second time you went down there, and the
[4:50] Speaker 2: first time we went down with Sandy Fraser, and then
[4:53] Speaker 2: the next year we went with Fred Aflee. And remember that,
[4:56] Speaker 2: just like this incredible arctic front moved in and I
[5:00] Speaker 2: just remember the first night the campfire flames were like
[5:03] Speaker 2: flat on the ground. You know, there weren't there was
[5:05] Speaker 2: no heat. They were just flat. It was a big,
[5:09] Speaker 2: like a big campfire, and you know, that's kind of
[5:11] Speaker 2: my standard for campfires that don't work.
[5:14] Speaker 1: And then the.
[5:17] Speaker 2: Next day, you know, there was already ice floating in
[5:20] Speaker 2: the river that that first day that we were paddling,
[5:23] Speaker 2: and then we camped with a flat campfire. And then
[5:25] Speaker 2: the next day, or might have been the day after that,
[5:28] Speaker 2: we started paddling again, and the river was just clogged
[5:31] Speaker 2: with ice. I mean, you know, like flowing like like
[5:33] Speaker 2: you had to dig your way through it. And I
[5:36] Speaker 2: grew up on a frozen lake in Wisconsin, so I've
[5:39] Speaker 2: got a lot of experience on what to do and
[5:42] Speaker 2: not to do on ice because I've done a lot
[5:44] Speaker 2: of things you don't do, and you know, figured it out.
[5:48] Speaker 1: And so so.
[5:49] Speaker 2: We were you and and and Matt were in one
[5:54] Speaker 2: canoe and Fred and I were in another canoe, and
[5:56] Speaker 2: we started paddling across and we were planning on going
[6:00] Speaker 2: down river that whole lower stretch of the Missouri, you
[6:04] Speaker 2: know that the really remote stretch.
[6:05] Speaker 1: Its like once you're in, you're in.
[6:07] Speaker 2: And and Fred and I got part way out in
[6:10] Speaker 2: the river and we're like digging through these ice floes,
[6:13] Speaker 2: and I was saying, you know, if we tip over here,
[6:15] Speaker 2: we're just dead. You know, there's like there's there's not
[6:18] Speaker 2: even a question about it. They can't move through it.
[6:21] Speaker 2: You can't move through it. You couldn't climb onto it,
[6:22] Speaker 2: you couldn't swim through it. And and the water is
[6:26] Speaker 2: so cold. I mean, I guess you could climb into
[6:27] Speaker 2: a swamp canoe, but that would last not very long.
[6:31] Speaker 2: And you're not getting that canoe to sure and so
[6:34] Speaker 2: and so I said to Fred, you know, I don't
[6:37] Speaker 2: know about this. This this feels really, you know, sketchy
[6:40] Speaker 2: to me. And Fred turns back. He's in the boxes. Yeah,
[6:43] Speaker 2: we're daddy's now, we shouldn't be doing this stuff.
[6:49] Speaker 1: And then we try. Then I'm like, I don't know,
[6:50] Speaker 1: so if you die, who cares? And then we do.
[6:54] Speaker 2: And then we deliver this to the Ranilla brothers and
[6:57] Speaker 2: they say, we do this all the time, like on
[6:59] Speaker 2: the mass. You know, now it's like you were pre
[7:03] Speaker 2: children spouses. So yeah, you know that's the standards change.
[7:09] Speaker 1: What I wanted to tell you about, I want to
[7:12] Speaker 1: dive into Coronado because, like I said, it's just it's
[7:14] Speaker 1: the most fascinating story. But uh Asani So a writer
[7:20] Speaker 1: named Selena Zito wrote a book called Butler. Oh she's
[7:24] Speaker 1: like very quick because she's from Pennsylvania. Okay, but she's
[7:28] Speaker 1: a calumnist and writer. Uh. And after the assassination attempt,
[7:32] Speaker 1: she did like a very quick turn book on the
[7:35] Speaker 1: assassination attemp called Butler. It's her backyard, you know, on
[7:41] Speaker 1: the phone and she was saying, you know, that's the
[7:43] Speaker 1: second president to be shot there. I hadn't heard this. Well,
[7:50] Speaker 1: I'm like, well, who else Washington? Yeah, during the like
[7:57] Speaker 1: in the lead up to the French and Indian War,
[7:59] Speaker 1: like like General Washington was shot there. Yes, yes, he
[8:06] Speaker 1: was not a general, he was, no, but he was.
[8:08] Speaker 1: He was. He was like a lower he's like a
[8:11] Speaker 1: lower ranking English officer sent on a mission.
[8:14] Speaker 2: And they got in some No, he wasn't an English officer.
[8:17] Speaker 2: He wanted to be a British officer. They wouldn't let
[8:19] Speaker 2: him into the British officer rings. So he was a
[8:22] Speaker 2: Virginia colonial militia officer. And that was a cause of
[8:26] Speaker 2: resentment for the next I mean, we're still living with
[8:28] Speaker 2: it today.
[8:32] Speaker 1: And one of the but you tell that story, but
[8:34] Speaker 1: it's just funny that, like, you know, messing up every detail.
[8:38] Speaker 1: It was funny when she said that to me, like
[8:40] Speaker 1: he was the second one, you know, I meaning that.
[8:42] Speaker 2: It was in that vicinity well, and I think there
[8:45] Speaker 2: you know, there were several times when he was really
[8:48] Speaker 2: shot at, and and one was you know, during the uh,
[8:53] Speaker 2: you know Braddock's defeat, when you know the British column
[8:57] Speaker 2: under Braddock, General Braddock was marching towards Fort Duquine, which
[9:01] Speaker 2: now Pittsburgh, and you know, they're like the might of
[9:05] Speaker 2: the British Empire, marching through the woods and in columns
[9:08] Speaker 2: like the red coats and columns, and thinking they're invincible
[9:12] Speaker 2: until they get close to what's now Pittsburgh, and all
[9:18] Speaker 2: of a sudden, all hell breaks lose and they can't
[9:20] Speaker 2: even see they can't even see anyone to shoot at
[9:24] Speaker 2: because the Indian warriors are so well hidden. And there
[9:29] Speaker 2: they're also joined by like kind of you know, French
[9:31] Speaker 2: guys who are also good woods woods fighters, and so
[9:35] Speaker 2: they don't even know who to shoot. And Washington is
[9:38] Speaker 2: the one who survives that that battle, even though he
[9:42] Speaker 2: was he was an aid to camp to Braddock because Braddock,
[9:46] Speaker 2: they wouldn't let him in as an officer yet he
[9:48] Speaker 2: wanted to tag along, you know that Washington did, and
[9:52] Speaker 2: he ended up Braddock was wounded, mortally wounded, and almost
[9:56] Speaker 2: every British officer was killed almost instantly. And officers, the
[10:00] Speaker 2: British officers are wearing really bright uniforms. And I've got
[10:04] Speaker 2: to look into this just the actual color, even though
[10:08] Speaker 2: I'm partly color blind, but the look into well, my
[10:12] Speaker 2: wife helps me on this a lot. And uh, but
[10:18] Speaker 2: the officers were really easily recognizable because they had, you know,
[10:23] Speaker 2: really scarlet uniforms, and the regular soldiers were red but
[10:27] Speaker 2: not so red. And and and Washington, you know, the
[10:32] Speaker 2: officers just got wiped out instantly. And and Washington survived
[10:37] Speaker 2: that battle. And he had like four bullet holes through
[10:41] Speaker 2: his like haull and his coat, and he had I
[10:43] Speaker 2: think at least two horses shot out from under him.
[10:46] Speaker 2: And I'm pretty sure this has been some years since
[10:49] Speaker 2: I did this research, but I think one of the
[10:51] Speaker 2: reasons he wasn't killed instantly is because he wasn't wearing
[10:54] Speaker 2: a British Royal Officers god uh uniform and it was
[11:01] Speaker 2: more like a you know, like a like the buff
[11:04] Speaker 2: colored thing they were wearing.
[11:05] Speaker 1: Would if that's what if that's like if you like,
[11:08] Speaker 1: you know, you take history and move it down to
[11:10] Speaker 1: these like these like crystalline moments, you know, of like
[11:13] Speaker 1: turning points. If that like the fact that he didn't
[11:16] Speaker 1: have that bright red coat, right, yeah, that the continental
[11:20] Speaker 1: Army would have the army would have never won, you
[11:23] Speaker 1: know in America, would not have happened.
[11:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I mean, and it was. It's a really
[11:29] Speaker 2: interesting moment. And now there's a film that's coming out
[11:32] Speaker 2: about Young called Young Washington, which you know, I think
[11:36] Speaker 2: they used my book as a source, but it's not
[11:38] Speaker 2: like based on my book, license your book. It's you know,
[11:42] Speaker 2: these are historical events, but it's the thing I'm I've
[11:45] Speaker 2: written about. But I think that's a highlighted moment in
[11:47] Speaker 2: the in the film, just what we're talking about.
[11:49] Speaker 1: You know, who was there, you know, it was there
[11:51] Speaker 1: that day. I do boon. Let me tell you what
[11:55] Speaker 1: booned it.
[11:55] Speaker 2: Your buddy, As I remember this, he was like a
[12:00] Speaker 2: wagon driver driving a freight wagon, right, I mean, you're
[12:03] Speaker 2: the I defer to you on boone because he you know,
[12:05] Speaker 2: he was like a lowly Yeah, and he and his buddy,
[12:09] Speaker 2: I think his cousin. It was also driving a freight
[12:12] Speaker 2: wagon and so they saw what was happening. I think
[12:15] Speaker 2: they just crossed the river, the Monongohela, and when all
[12:20] Speaker 2: this chaos broke off, so they cleverly unhitched their mules
[12:25] Speaker 2: from the wagons, turned around and ran with the teams
[12:28] Speaker 2: in the other direction.
[12:30] Speaker 1: Is that right? I like to imagine that that was
[12:33] Speaker 1: that that was deeply influential for Boone and his knowledge
[12:39] Speaker 1: of like gorilla. Yes, warfare attack for sure in like
[12:44] Speaker 1: bush warm Sorry always happens me.
[12:50] Speaker 2: But but that was that was bush war extraordinary and
[12:54] Speaker 2: it was so dramatic And yeah, I think you're totally
[12:58] Speaker 2: right that that that was a really formative experience with him.
[13:01] Speaker 2: And he could have you know, he could have kept
[13:03] Speaker 2: you know, uh courageously riding his freight wagon forward, and
[13:08] Speaker 2: you know, it just wouldn't have worked.
[13:10] Speaker 1: That it was it was on that trip who was Boone?
[13:15] Speaker 1: Like it was on that trip on that campaign the
[13:19] Speaker 1: Boone met was John Finley.
[13:23] Speaker 4: Yeah, one of the other teamsters had been to Kentucky.
[13:27] Speaker 1: It was on that campaign about Boone learned about like
[13:34] Speaker 1: he learned there is a gap to get through to
[13:38] Speaker 1: the Kentucky through and then set off to find the
[13:43] Speaker 1: Cumberland Gap from that.
[13:45] Speaker 4: Yeah, because Finley had been involved in Indian trade down
[13:47] Speaker 4: the Ohio River, Okay, prior to his service as a teamster,
[13:52] Speaker 4: And so it was like a campfire story, I believe,
[13:55] Speaker 4: according to Boone's you know Boone story, It's like there's
[14:00] Speaker 4: sitting around the campfire late at night and Finley's telling
[14:02] Speaker 4: him about what's over the mountains.
[14:04] Speaker 1: So if I was gonna do a movie about this,
[14:07] Speaker 1: I would have Boone and him talking about all this,
[14:10] Speaker 1: you know, the Cumberland Gap and all that, and I'd
[14:13] Speaker 1: have Washington to come on and be like, get it
[14:16] Speaker 1: straighten up, man, you know what I mean, like interrupting
[14:21] Speaker 1: man scene would Yeah.
[14:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was Finley. He didn't do any surveying,
[14:30] Speaker 2: did he. I'm thinking of a different guy.
[14:32] Speaker 4: But but there was the Duke of Cumberland did a
[14:37] Speaker 4: survey I believe, over like in that in that area.
[14:40] Speaker 4: But yeah, I don't think Finley was surveying.
[14:43] Speaker 2: I mean because one of the big problems was that
[14:45] Speaker 2: George Washington and you know, these soon to be founding
[14:49] Speaker 2: fathers were big landholders. Yeah, and the lands over the mountains,
[14:53] Speaker 2: you know, which were really Indian lands and with many
[14:56] Speaker 2: different tribes and that they wanted to survey those lands
[15:02] Speaker 2: and you know, like steak them out. And so in
[15:06] Speaker 2: seventeen seventy four, Washington and other founding would be soon
[15:12] Speaker 2: to be Founding fathers sent a team of surveyors over
[15:16] Speaker 2: the mountains and the Shawneese got really mad and and
[15:21] Speaker 2: you know, pull their equipment off and I think sent
[15:23] Speaker 2: them home.
[15:24] Speaker 1: But that was really the beginning of this of this.
[15:27] Speaker 2: You know, that whole Ohio Valley conflict was those first
[15:31] Speaker 2: surveyors coming in and like staking things out. Yeah, and
[15:35] Speaker 2: so Washington had a big part in that too. Yeah, dude,
[15:38] Speaker 2: mix it up. Let's jump the corner. Ye yeah, talk
[15:40] Speaker 2: about mixing it up back.
[15:41] Speaker 1: In time to we're gonna go over go. So we're
[15:43] Speaker 1: gonna go from seventeen seventy four to fifteen forty Okay,
[15:48] Speaker 1: we're going We're going back a couple hundred years. So
[15:50] Speaker 1: now I want to I want to let you set
[15:55] Speaker 1: the scene here a little bit, but I want to
[15:59] Speaker 1: bring up and then I find interesting about this, and
[16:01] Speaker 1: you can you can set scene like where the New
[16:03] Speaker 1: World was at at this point. But you're you're you're
[16:06] Speaker 1: just always trained like when you're a kid and you're
[16:09] Speaker 1: reading about these early explorers, You're you're always trained a
[16:13] Speaker 1: little bit to like laugh at the I the some
[16:18] Speaker 1: of their notions, the Fountain of Youth, the Cities of Gold,
[16:24] Speaker 1: right right, Oh, how stupid, how silly they thought that
[16:28] Speaker 1: there was these like cities of gold that were up
[16:30] Speaker 1: in New Mexico or Texas. You know, how naive, right,
[16:35] Speaker 1: But they are hauling, like the Spanish are hauling fortunes
[16:43] Speaker 1: exactly out of South America, and like it's like it's
[16:50] Speaker 1: they weren't making stuff up. No, No, I mean, like
[16:53] Speaker 1: they had arrived in cities, they had like legitimately found
[16:58] Speaker 1: cities where they're like these people were loaded and with
[17:01] Speaker 1: the gold.
[17:02] Speaker 2: There were empires, you know, literal empires and emperors, and
[17:07] Speaker 2: so like they ransomed Pizarro ransomed the Incan emperor for
[17:13] Speaker 2: a literal room full of gold, I mean literally, yeah,
[17:16] Speaker 2: and then they killed them and they melted down the
[17:18] Speaker 2: golden bars and you know, shifted.
[17:20] Speaker 1: But so it wasn't insane. It wasn't like there's got
[17:23] Speaker 1: to be more of this out there, you know.
[17:25] Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean that's a really good framing for
[17:27] Speaker 2: the story, because you know, we know the you know,
[17:31] Speaker 2: if we want to, I don't want to go too
[17:32] Speaker 2: far back. But you know, the Portuguese started sending ships
[17:36] Speaker 2: in the fourteen hundreds to India and getting spices and
[17:41] Speaker 2: you know, discovering those were worth a lot, you know,
[17:45] Speaker 2: very very valuable trade. And then the Spanish are saying, wait,
[17:50] Speaker 2: we want to hunk of that action. And then Columbus
[17:53] Speaker 2: comes along and says, comes up with his wacko idea.
[17:57] Speaker 2: It wasn't that wacko, but he said he needed a lot
[17:59] Speaker 2: of more. Need to do it. He said to the
[18:01] Speaker 2: King and Queen of Spain. He convinced them to fund
[18:04] Speaker 2: an expedition to go west to find the Indies. So
[18:07] Speaker 2: you know, we know the story. He runs in to
[18:10] Speaker 2: this unexpected continent, the Americas, and then you know the
[18:14] Speaker 2: spa is the Spanish uh conky stars and explorers work
[18:19] Speaker 2: their way through in very few number of years. And
[18:22] Speaker 2: so in fifteen twenty that's when Cortes, illegally against the
[18:29] Speaker 2: king's orders, marches to Teno cheat Lan which is now
[18:33] Speaker 2: Mexico City, and knox.
[18:34] Speaker 1: Off is that supposed pronounced that? I hope so.
[18:40] Speaker 2: An accident end and and he knocks off the Aztec Empire.
[18:46] Speaker 2: And one of the reasons he can do that with
[18:50] Speaker 2: like a few hundred men. I mean, one, he has
[18:52] Speaker 2: these horses with armor which are like you know, sherman
[18:55] Speaker 2: tanks compared to what the native warriors have. And the
[18:58] Speaker 2: other is he's very lever in he's he finds the
[19:03] Speaker 2: tribes more than triban they're like culture civilizations who are
[19:06] Speaker 2: enemies of the Aztecs. And he says to those guys, hey,
[19:11] Speaker 2: I can to help you knock off the Aztec emperor.
[19:14] Speaker 2: And so that now he has thousands of enemy warriors
[19:19] Speaker 2: and that's how he knocks off the Aztecs so quickly.
[19:24] Speaker 2: And then and that's fifteen twenty, and there's all sorts
[19:26] Speaker 2: of wealth and gold and empires and land and you know, incredible,
[19:30] Speaker 2: as you say, loads of treasure and that that's fifteen twenty.
[19:34] Speaker 2: And then fifteen thirty three, Pizarro finds his way into
[19:39] Speaker 2: the Andes, you know, in west South and South America,
[19:42] Speaker 2: and he finds the Inca Empire and and you know,
[19:46] Speaker 2: and the emperor, and you know, kidnaps the emperor room
[19:50] Speaker 2: full of gold, you know, piles of gold being shipped
[19:53] Speaker 2: out of out of the Inca Empire out of the
[19:56] Speaker 2: Aztec Empire. And then so that's fifteen thirty three, fifteen
[20:01] Speaker 2: thirty six. This rumor comes down that they're more wealthy
[20:08] Speaker 2: empires to the north and nobody knows what's up there, and.
[20:12] Speaker 1: Some of that comes out of like there's that explain that,
[20:18] Speaker 1: like Alvarez Expedition.
[20:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, not Navarez, who was the name Novarez, Okay, but
[20:24] Speaker 2: the Kabeza de Vaca.
[20:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like the Moor, like the dude called like
[20:28] Speaker 1: the Moor and Cabeza d Vodka and those guys have
[20:31] Speaker 1: just that crazy as.
[20:32] Speaker 2: It's so crazy, and that kind of sets the tone.
[20:35] Speaker 2: So that was I have to get the dates right,
[20:38] Speaker 2: but that was the late fifteen twenties, and somewhere in there,
[20:42] Speaker 2: you know, Punce dal Lyon was in there, and you know,
[20:45] Speaker 2: the found a Youth story was emerging. But they were
[20:47] Speaker 2: they were really trying, the Spaniards were really trying to
[20:49] Speaker 2: get onto from from the Caribbean islands like Cuba and
[20:53] Speaker 2: what's now the Dominican Republic, get onto Florida and and
[20:58] Speaker 2: and start colonizing for and you know, make that part
[21:01] Speaker 2: of the Spanish Empire. So that and they were having
[21:06] Speaker 2: a hard time doing it. And so in the late
[21:08] Speaker 2: fifteen twenties there was a huge expedition sent under the
[21:15] Speaker 2: commander was a guy named Navarez, and that essentially this
[21:21] Speaker 2: huge expedition mini ships got completely wiped out by hurricanes
[21:26] Speaker 2: and then by Native warriors. And to make a long
[21:31] Speaker 2: story short, four guys end up surviving, and they managed
[21:35] Speaker 2: to raft their way partly down the Gulf Coast from
[21:40] Speaker 2: from Florida, and some of the main guys make it
[21:42] Speaker 2: that far and then they die. But they raft part
[21:45] Speaker 2: way down the Golf Court coast from Florida, and I
[21:48] Speaker 2: think they get maybe about as far as the Mississippi
[21:51] Speaker 2: River delta and then you know, wor shipwrecks, raft recks, disaster,
[21:55] Speaker 2: and then the four survivors start walking and they know,
[22:00] Speaker 2: like New Spain of some way that somewhere.
[22:02] Speaker 1: That way, dude when you look at him, but it
[22:05] Speaker 1: is the craziest thing. They're like they're on the Golf
[22:08] Speaker 1: coast and they're and they're Mexico City, you know, And
[22:12] Speaker 1: and there are four guys, and then there are dozens
[22:15] Speaker 1: of way inland, and there.
[22:19] Speaker 2: Are dozens and dozens of Indian tribes, you know, and
[22:22] Speaker 2: and these are like four random guys coming up from
[22:24] Speaker 2: the coast, and part of what what saves them is
[22:29] Speaker 2: among the four there is a Moorish slave named Esteban,
[22:35] Speaker 2: and so he has what I was named after. Yeah,
[22:38] Speaker 2: he's a dude. Yeah right, you could probably talk your
[22:42] Speaker 2: way through dozens of tribes thousands of miles to arrive
[22:45] Speaker 2: in Mexico City. And so, so, you know, he had
[22:51] Speaker 2: black skin, and he was really he was like a
[22:54] Speaker 2: good performer. He could sing, and he could dance, and
[22:57] Speaker 2: he had he had like bells on his wrists and
[23:01] Speaker 2: colorful clothing. You know, he's really unlike the Spanish Spaniards dress.
[23:06] Speaker 2: And so it came to be that the that the
[23:10] Speaker 2: native people and in various tribes started coming to him
[23:14] Speaker 2: as a medicine man and respecting him as a medicine man.
[23:18] Speaker 2: And so these four guys managed to sort of get
[23:23] Speaker 2: past tribe to tribe using their their you know, medicine powers,
[23:29] Speaker 2: their spiritual powers to kind of pave the way and
[23:32] Speaker 2: protect them. And it took them seven years to get
[23:37] Speaker 2: to what's now the west coast of Mexico. They got
[23:42] Speaker 2: to basically where the headquarters of the Sinaloa Cartel.
[23:45] Speaker 1: That's what's so crazy making now, like you get a
[23:47] Speaker 1: couple delayed flights and you get somewhere two days day late,
[23:51] Speaker 1: two days late. You're like, dude.
[23:54] Speaker 2: And then when they and then when they show up,
[23:56] Speaker 2: there's another conquista are coming up from the south and
[24:00] Speaker 2: and and taking taking uh Indians as slaves and and
[24:05] Speaker 2: really brutalizing that west coast of Mexico. And so some
[24:10] Speaker 2: of his guys are on a slaving expedition and they
[24:13] Speaker 2: see these four random you know, like wild men walking
[24:17] Speaker 2: out of the bush and they and they're dressed in
[24:20] Speaker 2: animal skins, these guys, you know, and the four guys
[24:24] Speaker 2: and the Spanish slaverskunkyster or slavers, Like who are these guys?
[24:30] Speaker 1: You know, it's like in the in the documents.
[24:36] Speaker 2: They one of them responds in perfect Castilian Spanish. It's
[24:42] Speaker 2: like formal, you know, he's all ragged ye yeah, yeah,
[24:49] Speaker 2: like assumed dead, yeah, assumed seven years. And and then
[24:55] Speaker 2: so then they get back to Mexico City, you know,
[24:57] Speaker 2: then they explain who they are they're brought back to
[25:01] Speaker 2: brought to Mexico City.
[25:02] Speaker 1: Those dudes had to be like, let me get this straight.
[25:04] Speaker 1: You're saying it's such an unbelievable story. And as they're saying,
[25:10] Speaker 1: you walked from.
[25:13] Speaker 2: The like this is where the space alien rumors really start.
[25:21] Speaker 2: So then they get to Mexico City and you know
[25:23] Speaker 2: they're created, like wow, these guys are survivors and they
[25:26] Speaker 2: and they you know, it turns out, you know, maybe
[25:28] Speaker 2: they really did travel all this way. And in Mexico City,
[25:31] Speaker 2: you know which is now it's it's been converting from
[25:35] Speaker 2: an Aztecan empire, you know capital with all the stone pyramids.
[25:39] Speaker 2: They're ripping down the stones and making a big cathedral
[25:43] Speaker 2: and you know, transforming it. Well, they were real they
[25:45] Speaker 2: were repurposing the stones, the bloody stones I like to
[25:49] Speaker 2: think into the you know, the.
[25:51] Speaker 1: Sacostry of the theater. I write about this.
[25:53] Speaker 2: I write about this in some detail actually, and one
[25:56] Speaker 2: of the things they have to do really yeah, yeah,
[25:59] Speaker 2: this is this is like a little side cathedrals out
[26:01] Speaker 2: of those stones, out of those stones. And then one
[26:04] Speaker 2: of the things I had to do is I did
[26:06] Speaker 2: quite a lot of research. I mean, it was really
[26:08] Speaker 2: interesting that the Spaniards in that era, you know, conquering
[26:13] Speaker 2: the South American and Central American empires. You know, there
[26:17] Speaker 2: were very developed religions and the Aztecs were you know,
[26:21] Speaker 2: famous then and now for their their human sacrifice. You know,
[26:26] Speaker 2: it was like they needed they believed that the gods
[26:28] Speaker 2: needed to be fed blood. So there would be sacrifices
[26:31] Speaker 2: all the time on top of these pyramids. And one
[26:34] Speaker 2: was like I can't you know, it was like twenty
[26:36] Speaker 2: stories high or something. And so once the Aztecs are conquered,
[26:40] Speaker 2: then the Spaniards are saying, well, we're going to bring
[26:44] Speaker 2: religion to these people, and so they get workers, I'm
[26:47] Speaker 2: sure many of them are native slaves, to pull the
[26:51] Speaker 2: pyramid down, you know, the many there are seventy of
[26:54] Speaker 2: them in the central Mexico on big Square and start
[26:57] Speaker 2: making a big cathedral. But the Spaniards are really freaked
[27:03] Speaker 2: out about the spirits of the Aztecs and these other religions.
[27:08] Speaker 2: And so whenever they would come across a like a
[27:14] Speaker 2: chamber of worship or any spiritual thing having to do
[27:18] Speaker 2: with these these and with these religions, they would bury it.
[27:23] Speaker 2: They'd seal it underground because they'd have to seal the
[27:26] Speaker 2: spirits in. And so, as I point out in this book,
[27:29] Speaker 2: and I wandered around this area a lot in Mexico,
[27:33] Speaker 2: city where the cathedral is built, and it's been really
[27:35] Speaker 2: cool archaeological work they're done in recent decades.
[27:39] Speaker 1: But they built the cathedral.
[27:41] Speaker 2: It's almost on top of what was called the Tower
[27:44] Speaker 2: of Skulls, and it was like a tower of I've
[27:47] Speaker 2: read about tower and they're pictures of it. It is amazing,
[27:50] Speaker 2: you know, all these skulls. It's like a huge well
[27:54] Speaker 2: with all these skulls on the inside. Bringing pictures of it.
[27:58] Speaker 2: There are pictures of it. Yeah, archaeological photos. It's been excavated.
[28:03] Speaker 1: How many you're in there?
[28:05] Speaker 2: Hundreds and hundreds, I can we could call it well
[28:09] Speaker 2: later we'll see if we can call them up. I
[28:12] Speaker 2: actually have some on my camera because I took.
[28:15] Speaker 1: Phil has something to do over there.
[28:19] Speaker 2: What's it called the Tower of Skulls in Mexico City,
[28:24] Speaker 2: And so they, you know, they built this cathedral on
[28:28] Speaker 2: top of those of those Aztec you know, sacrifice sites,
[28:33] Speaker 2: try to seal everything in the ground. Sure, and you know,
[28:37] Speaker 2: part of my you know, this is sort of a
[28:39] Speaker 2: speculative fun premise is that you know, when Coronado marys
[28:43] Speaker 2: his twelve year old bride in that cathedral, they're like
[28:46] Speaker 2: standing on top of the tower of skulls, and some
[28:49] Speaker 2: of those spirits aren't all that well sealed in there,
[28:51] Speaker 2: and they eventually.
[28:52] Speaker 1: Kind of get into his head. I mean, this is
[28:55] Speaker 1: like a metaphor really.
[28:57] Speaker 2: So then what happens is the the four shipwreck survivors
[29:02] Speaker 2: get to Mexico City, which is being transformed from the
[29:05] Speaker 2: Aztec capital into a into the capital of New Spain,
[29:09] Speaker 2: and you know these the bizarro and oh, there you go.
[29:17] Speaker 2: There's some skulls in the Tower of Skulls. I've got
[29:21] Speaker 2: to I've got a picture on my cell phone. I've
[29:24] Speaker 2: got one that's clearer than that about that. You really see,
[29:27] Speaker 2: it's kind of an outline of skulls.
[29:29] Speaker 4: It's probably too late to redesign the studio.
[29:33] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I mean this is what we're looking at
[29:38] Speaker 2: underground in the center of Mexico City, and it's it's
[29:42] Speaker 2: there have been big excavations there in probably the last
[29:45] Speaker 2: twenty years, and now it's it's really cool because you
[29:48] Speaker 2: can walk down in some of them and they're just
[29:51] Speaker 2: right now part of everything. So the four shipwrecked survivors,
[29:57] Speaker 2: you know, brought to Mexico City. The Cortez has just
[30:01] Speaker 2: knocked off the Aztec empire like twenty five years earlier
[30:05] Speaker 2: or fifteen years earlier, and Pizarro has just knocked off
[30:10] Speaker 2: the Incas three years earlier, and you know, they're all
[30:14] Speaker 2: these like piles of gold coming, you know, being discovered
[30:19] Speaker 2: in these empires in Central and South America. And so
[30:22] Speaker 2: everybody asked these four shipwrecked survivors, hey, do you guys
[30:25] Speaker 2: see any like gold up there?
[30:27] Speaker 1: Empires? It's so wild, And these guys are like, you
[30:35] Speaker 1: never to run into your empire.
[30:38] Speaker 2: Run you're running in any empire. You're seven years of
[30:42] Speaker 2: ship and these guys are.
[30:46] Speaker 1: Kind of like, oh, well, I'm not sure. We're not
[30:49] Speaker 1: sure about that. But it's all all it takes. It's
[30:52] Speaker 1: like there's just some little rumor that gets started and yeah,
[30:55] Speaker 1: like some dudes told us about whatever, yeah, or they
[30:57] Speaker 1: told it.
[30:58] Speaker 2: I think I think the close thing that actual detail
[31:01] Speaker 2: was that there were they'd heard about seven cities up there.
[31:06] Speaker 2: There were seven cities, and and and that you know,
[31:10] Speaker 2: this is like in the south north of Mexico, whatever's
[31:13] Speaker 2: up there, and you know what's now in the American southwest,
[31:16] Speaker 2: and and that directly feeds in to this old old
[31:22] Speaker 2: Spanish Iberian story that when the Moors conquered the Iberian Peninsula,
[31:29] Speaker 2: like in seven fifty or ad or something, that the
[31:34] Speaker 2: Catholic bishops, seven Catholic bishops took all the wealth and
[31:38] Speaker 2: all the gold from the church, you know, the cathedrals
[31:42] Speaker 2: from seven cathedrals, and the seven bishops took the piles
[31:47] Speaker 2: of wealth and gold and they put them in seven
[31:49] Speaker 2: boats and they sailed west across the ocean and founded
[31:54] Speaker 2: seven wealthy cities across the ocean. So so that became
[32:00] Speaker 2: when when it was heard that there were seven cities
[32:03] Speaker 2: somewhere north of Mexico City, people that, oh, those are
[32:07] Speaker 2: the seven Cities of Gold. You know, this is what
[32:09] Speaker 2: we've been talking about for five hundred years. And there
[32:12] Speaker 2: they are. And so this whole thing just gets cranked up,
[32:16] Speaker 2: and and they send a reconnaissance party up there.
[32:19] Speaker 1: This this isn't like this way, this rumor mill thing
[32:24] Speaker 1: isn't an isolated instant. Because we're talking about in a
[32:29] Speaker 1: project I'm working on right now, we're talking about like
[32:33] Speaker 1: the French upon the Saint Lawrence. Oh, that's a cool story.
[32:36] Speaker 1: And again they like they get they take some indigenous people,
[32:43] Speaker 1: bring them, bring them back to France, and then they
[32:48] Speaker 1: kind of they're grilling them and grilling them and grilling them,
[32:50] Speaker 1: and you can see that they sort of pick up
[32:52] Speaker 1: on what they want to hear. I mean that's exactly.
[32:56] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, way up there is a place like
[33:02] Speaker 1: what you're talking about. But then it gets kind of
[33:03] Speaker 1: like crazier and they're like, oh, and there's people that
[33:06] Speaker 1: that have no anus. Okay, there's there's a people that
[33:12] Speaker 1: are just one legged. It's like all everything is gold,
[33:19] Speaker 1: you know. And then and again they're like legitimately trying
[33:21] Speaker 1: to find it, but you get a sense that the
[33:24] Speaker 1: indigenous people are like, yeah, just kind of play along,
[33:29] Speaker 1: you know.
[33:29] Speaker 2: And they don't really know what these these these Europeans
[33:32] Speaker 2: are talking about.
[33:33] Speaker 1: Asking them and ask them and eventually okay, yeah, sure
[33:37] Speaker 1: the neighbors find whatever you need to the neighbors, because
[33:41] Speaker 1: there's none of that here.
[33:44] Speaker 2: That comes into this Coronado story too, ye big time.
[33:48] Speaker 2: And so and then so they send the the Viceroy Mendoza,
[33:54] Speaker 2: who's that he's like the King's representative in Spain and
[33:57] Speaker 2: he's arrived and just the year before scouting mission. Yeah,
[34:01] Speaker 2: so Mendoza, well, Coronado is a protege of the Vice
[34:05] Speaker 2: Roy Mendoza. Mendoza has been sent to New Spain by
[34:09] Speaker 2: the king to reign in Cortez, because Cortez is like
[34:13] Speaker 2: thinking all of new Spain is his, you know, And
[34:16] Speaker 2: the King of Spain says, Vice you know, Mendoza, my
[34:19] Speaker 2: trusted man, you're my viceroy. You go and reign in Cortez.
[34:23] Speaker 2: And that's how Coronado is. Like a young protege of
[34:26] Speaker 2: Vice Roy Mendoza comes with from Spain to Mexico with
[34:31] Speaker 2: Vice Roy Mendoza. Then the rumors of gold start to
[34:36] Speaker 2: the north, and Vice Roy Mendoza sends a scouts up
[34:40] Speaker 2: to see if they're true. And he sends this dude,
[34:43] Speaker 2: among others, a guy named Fray Marcos, who there's a
[34:46] Speaker 2: long story that I won't go into, but it's you know,
[34:49] Speaker 2: another long traumatic story. And and Fray Marcos comes back,
[34:53] Speaker 2: you know, months later and says, oh, yeah, yeah, I
[34:56] Speaker 2: saw those I saw this, you know, incredible city up there,
[34:59] Speaker 2: and you know, the Golden City's incredible stuff.
[35:02] Speaker 1: He says, he first hand saw it. He said, he's
[35:04] Speaker 1: first hand sought.
[35:06] Speaker 2: And then he gets back to Mexico City and well,
[35:09] Speaker 2: then why is he saying that? That's a question for
[35:13] Speaker 2: the ages people have wondered that. And and then but
[35:19] Speaker 2: he so he gets I mean maybe it's the same thing,
[35:21] Speaker 2: like he's telling people what they want to hear, and
[35:24] Speaker 2: and you know, maybe he didn't tell them exactly that,
[35:28] Speaker 2: but he said, yeah, there are big they're big, tall
[35:30] Speaker 2: cities up up that way, which in fact there were pueblos,
[35:35] Speaker 2: and and so he goes back to Mexico City and
[35:39] Speaker 2: and you know, it comes back, Oh yeah, there's seven
[35:42] Speaker 2: cities up there. And so now it's just like this
[35:45] Speaker 2: frenzy starts in Mexico City. All these people want to
[35:48] Speaker 2: invest in this expedition and and take part in it,
[35:51] Speaker 2: and you know invest in it too, because they know
[35:54] Speaker 2: they're going to find piles of gold north of you know,
[35:58] Speaker 2: in the in the mysterious north. They just know it.
[36:00] Speaker 2: It's you know, it's happened in Mexico, it's happened in
[36:05] Speaker 2: the Andes with the Incas, so it's happening in other
[36:08] Speaker 2: places too in the south. And you know, they're golden
[36:13] Speaker 2: cities and piles of gold. So this it becomes this
[36:17] Speaker 2: massive effort and it's it's now it's believed to be
[36:21] Speaker 2: close to three thousand people. Uh, you know, hundreds of
[36:27] Speaker 2: Spanish Spaniards dressed like conkystadors with armor or with leather armor,
[36:33] Speaker 2: and you know, lances and armored horses, and then thousands
[36:38] Speaker 2: of as Techan warriors accompanying them, and thousands of there
[36:45] Speaker 2: at least a thousand horses with this with these guys,
[36:47] Speaker 2: and there are maybe five thousand sheep, and there are
[36:52] Speaker 2: thousands of cattle that's unclear how many exactly cattle. But
[36:56] Speaker 2: this is all to feed this expedition. You know, you can
[36:59] Speaker 2: imagine like three thousand people that doesn't even include that,
[37:02] Speaker 2: like their wives along, their children along, they're you know,
[37:06] Speaker 2: cobblers and gunsmiths and everything else. So you need all
[37:11] Speaker 2: this food, you know, on the hoof to feed this expedition.
[37:15] Speaker 2: And and and so it heads north in the spring
[37:17] Speaker 2: of fifteen forty and they're going up there to raise Hell,
[37:22] Speaker 2: they're going up there. They're going to go find the
[37:24] Speaker 2: Golden Cities and take it, take it. And yeah, yeah, yeah,
[37:27] Speaker 2: they that's the plan. But there's a whole you know,
[37:35] Speaker 2: other dimension to the story. Well, there are two dimensions.
[37:38] Speaker 2: One that the real wealth, it turned out was, and
[37:43] Speaker 2: they were realizing at the time, was not so much
[37:46] Speaker 2: in the gold which you could you know, take and
[37:49] Speaker 2: then go spend, but was in taking fertile lands and
[37:54] Speaker 2: making those you're in comey, Inda's your your own estates,
[37:58] Speaker 2: and they'd be worked by you know, partially enslaved people
[38:01] Speaker 2: or native labor. And so that's where you could really
[38:05] Speaker 2: make a lot of money by having a big estate
[38:07] Speaker 2: that was you know, fertile estate that produced a lot.
[38:10] Speaker 2: So that was one thing they were looking for in
[38:12] Speaker 2: addition to the Golden Cities. And then the the other
[38:16] Speaker 2: thing that was going on, which i'm spacing out now,
[38:20] Speaker 2: as they're coming north, they they are told by the
[38:26] Speaker 2: King of Spain, and through vice Roy Mendoza, the King
[38:31] Speaker 2: of Spain is saying, We're not going to have it
[38:33] Speaker 2: many more of this brutality stuff that's been going on.
[38:35] Speaker 2: You know, We're not going to go like hacking up
[38:38] Speaker 2: the Aztecs or the native people. We're not going to
[38:41] Speaker 2: go steal their food. We're not going to go hang them.
[38:43] Speaker 2: We're not We're going to be humane. And it's like
[38:46] Speaker 2: it's supposed to be this whole shift in the Spanish
[38:48] Speaker 2: Empire that is going to be humane rather than cruel,
[38:51] Speaker 2: you know, rather than forceful, and so Cornado is under
[38:55] Speaker 2: orders from Vice Roy Mendoza. You have to be kind
[38:58] Speaker 2: with the native people. You can't raise villages, you have
[39:01] Speaker 2: to really have you have to be humanitarian. And so
[39:05] Speaker 2: Cornado now has this you know, uh uh order, but
[39:11] Speaker 2: he didn't stick to that. He tried to for about
[39:15] Speaker 2: a week. I mean that, uh, he tried to, and
[39:21] Speaker 2: and that as he as soon as he got going
[39:26] Speaker 2: north that he had guys with them who were X
[39:30] Speaker 2: you know, X cruel conquistadors, and they started running out
[39:35] Speaker 2: of food. They you know, like their supply trains were
[39:38] Speaker 2: separated and they needed corn rather than just cattle. And
[39:43] Speaker 2: so the ex concystadors go into a village and just
[39:47] Speaker 2: take food, and the native people attack. And one of
[39:52] Speaker 2: the ex conquistadors is trying to flush some native warriors
[39:57] Speaker 2: out of a patch of brush and he forgots for
[40:00] Speaker 2: guests to put down his visor on his helmet. Bam,
[40:03] Speaker 2: an arrow right in the eye kills him dead. And
[40:06] Speaker 2: he's the chief of staff to the whole expedition. So
[40:10] Speaker 2: that causes all his buddies to go up in arms.
[40:13] Speaker 2: You know, sem Diego is the chief of staff now
[40:15] Speaker 2: shot with a native arrow in the eye. So they say, Okay,
[40:18] Speaker 2: we've got to punish these natives shrill the lessons.
[40:20] Speaker 1: So where where is is this in Mexico?
[40:22] Speaker 2: Still it would be it would be like north of well,
[40:26] Speaker 2: far north of Acapulco. But you know where where like
[40:29] Speaker 2: Coolia Khan and Sineloa is in the south of there.
[40:34] Speaker 1: You hit the US months away.
[40:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, and so so they they because their buddy got
[40:41] Speaker 2: hit in the eye with an arrow, you know, the
[40:44] Speaker 2: clunky stord buddy. They hang a bunch of the native
[40:47] Speaker 2: warriors and the native people and you know, kind of
[40:51] Speaker 2: ran they just randomly set snag a bunch and hang them.
[40:55] Speaker 2: And that's sort of like the beginning of this is
[40:59] Speaker 2: not the human expedition that it was cracked out to be.
[41:03] Speaker 2: And but that that that story goes way on to
[41:09] Speaker 2: the north. You pick it up from here. I can,
[41:14] Speaker 2: I can, I can? I can keep going with it.
[41:16] Speaker 2: That that that they spend six months basically, And I
[41:22] Speaker 2: calculated that if you put that all the animals and
[41:26] Speaker 2: people knows the tail in that expedition, it would stretch
[41:29] Speaker 2: for fifteen miles.
[41:32] Speaker 1: And I was thinking, yeah, think of.
[41:33] Speaker 2: All that that that dust and the piles of dung,
[41:38] Speaker 2: and it's track, you know, just Hotter Hill and Hotter Yeah,
[41:43] Speaker 2: and I mean, how do they do that? It's just
[41:46] Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine. But they finally they finally get up.
[41:51] Speaker 2: After months, they finally cross into what's now southern Arizona.
[41:59] Speaker 1: Okay, so they they entered they entered into Arizona. Not
[42:02] Speaker 1: in Mexican, yeah, but just right next to New Mexico.
[42:05] Speaker 1: It'd be south of Phoenix and south of Tucson. Because
[42:08] Speaker 1: people have done a pretty good job of piecing together
[42:10] Speaker 1: what this route is, even though there's like certain questions here,
[42:12] Speaker 1: there are certain ques and just in that that's where
[42:14] Speaker 1: they're real questions, is right in that area. And I
[42:16] Speaker 1: think you've had haven't you had Denny Seymour on here yet? Yeah?
[42:18] Speaker 2: So she's yeah, she's on one's looked at that. She's
[42:22] Speaker 2: really looking at that. And so she has, you know,
[42:25] Speaker 2: she she's done research in one valley and then there's
[42:29] Speaker 2: another valley, and there's discussion in which route was which
[42:33] Speaker 2: and where they both used or how do that all work?
[42:35] Speaker 1: But she's found cool stuff. I mean, it's amazing. She's
[42:37] Speaker 1: done great work. When they when they hit what's now
[42:39] Speaker 1: in the US, did they have a sense of how
[42:42] Speaker 1: far they were, like, what was their comprehension of how
[42:47] Speaker 1: far they were going to go, because I mean they
[42:49] Speaker 1: ultimately make it up into Texas and Kansas, make it
[42:53] Speaker 1: they almost made it. The hour think they were going.
[42:58] Speaker 2: I figured out there were just a few weeks short
[43:00] Speaker 2: of getting to Chicago, which was which was then an
[43:03] Speaker 2: it was it was an Indian portage at that I
[43:05] Speaker 2: mean it was for for thousands of years.
[43:08] Speaker 1: But they were headed that way.
[43:09] Speaker 2: And so so their their aim was to get to
[43:13] Speaker 2: the Seven Cities, and they they knew it was up
[43:16] Speaker 2: there somewhere, and you know, Fray Marcos had reported, yeah,
[43:20] Speaker 2: there's seven cities up there, and there are you know,
[43:22] Speaker 2: one hundred days travel away or eighty days travel or whatever.
[43:25] Speaker 2: And so so then after fray Marcos reports this, and
[43:29] Speaker 2: the expedition starts coming up you know, by sometimes that
[43:33] Speaker 2: by pieces, sometimes huge chunks. It finally crosses what's now
[43:39] Speaker 2: with Coronado. What's now It would be like you know, Phoenix,
[43:44] Speaker 2: you're familiar with Phoenix, And if you look east of Phoenix,
[43:49] Speaker 2: there's big mountain range right there, you know, big deserty
[43:51] Speaker 2: tall mountain ranges called the Superstition Mountains and if you
[43:55] Speaker 2: go on the other side of the Superstition Mountains. I
[43:57] Speaker 2: mean even today you can look at Google Maps, there's
[44:01] Speaker 2: not a whole lot of human presence at all, almost zero.
[44:05] Speaker 2: And you know, desert and rough well, they cross that
[44:09] Speaker 2: and they they call it the Day's Polato because there's
[44:12] Speaker 2: no food for fifteen days and they and people are starving,
[44:16] Speaker 2: and you know, the astec and warriors, you know, they're
[44:19] Speaker 2: they're like the lowest in the in the pyramid, the
[44:23] Speaker 2: food pyramid. There the guys that get you know, they
[44:26] Speaker 2: have to be carrying their own food or they die.
[44:29] Speaker 2: You know, once in a while they'll eat a horse.
[44:32] Speaker 2: Three guys poison themselves by eating plants around a little
[44:36] Speaker 2: spring they found, and you know it's like these luscious,
[44:38] Speaker 2: like really salad looking greens. They're so hungry they just
[44:42] Speaker 2: they just slam them down. Die and they die die. Yeah,
[44:46] Speaker 2: And they finally emerge from the northern end of the
[44:51] Speaker 2: Day's pop Lato, and then they go over some smaller
[44:57] Speaker 2: ranges and they go over a ridge. There's this's the
[45:02] Speaker 2: story is more complicated than this. But they go over
[45:04] Speaker 2: a ridge and they see this pueblo, which is, you know,
[45:10] Speaker 2: a pretty big one seven stories high. But fray Marcos,
[45:15] Speaker 2: who's with him, has been saying these are like golden cities,
[45:20] Speaker 2: and yeah it's pretty high, but it's built of like
[45:23] Speaker 2: a rock and and and you know it's not like
[45:26] Speaker 2: big smooth dungeon walls and gags and everything.
[45:29] Speaker 1: Now that thing. I feel like I've read about this,
[45:32] Speaker 1: and I feel like I read some writer historians speculating
[45:36] Speaker 1: that maybe he looked at it from a distance when
[45:40] Speaker 1: it was like lit by the evening sun. Yeah, that's
[45:42] Speaker 1: my theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's like Alpin trying to
[45:46] Speaker 1: like give him some credit to be like, well, maybe
[45:49] Speaker 1: the sun was hitting it in the way that it
[45:51] Speaker 1: looked like it was gold.
[45:53] Speaker 2: Yeah, and it looked like it was well and part
[45:55] Speaker 2: of the story, yeah exactly. That's one of the theories.
[45:58] Speaker 4: Did they just smiths what fray Marco was saying? At
[46:02] Speaker 4: what point did his word not hold any.
[46:04] Speaker 1: When they came over there?
[46:05] Speaker 2: Rich and and the guy one of the chroniclers said,
[46:10] Speaker 2: you would not have been wanted to be there to
[46:12] Speaker 2: hear the words that were thrown on fray Marcos that.
[46:20] Speaker 1: And oh stone it was gold.
[46:27] Speaker 2: And I mean part of that story it's there. There's
[46:29] Speaker 2: so many aspects and details. But the with Fray Marcos's
[46:34] Speaker 2: reconnaissance party, Esteban went and and so, and he was
[46:39] Speaker 2: like a real you know, rugged traveler. It's is Fray
[46:42] Speaker 2: Marco's actually, But so Esteban apparently had a weakness for
[46:48] Speaker 2: Native women and he liked to collect turquoises. And so
[46:52] Speaker 2: by the time he got he was the first guy
[46:54] Speaker 2: to get to this city, the pueblo. But he the
[46:59] Speaker 2: the the Zuni is it it was the pueblo.
[47:03] Speaker 1: I've been yeah, I've been there. Oh yeah, I've been
[47:05] Speaker 1: there with Zuni dudes. And he went to that old
[47:07] Speaker 1: the old pueblo site and then kind of pointing out
[47:10] Speaker 1: the Coronado stuff. Yeah, I mean, like, dude, like it
[47:12] Speaker 1: was yesterday. Though it was like yesterday, you know what
[47:15] Speaker 1: I mean, like the culture that came from there.
[47:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you could be right on. I had
[47:21] Speaker 2: a Zuni guide who who grew up there. He grew
[47:24] Speaker 2: up a mile from that, this this first pueblos called Hawaku.
[47:29] Speaker 2: And he said, well, you see that that patches, you know,
[47:32] Speaker 2: trees over there, that's that's my grandmother's house. That's where
[47:35] Speaker 2: I grew up. And you know, and so we're standing
[47:37] Speaker 2: on the ruins of Hawaku and he's saying, yeah, well
[47:40] Speaker 2: the front gates here, and they would come from that
[47:43] Speaker 2: path over the you know, that pass over there, And
[47:45] Speaker 2: as you say, it was like, yeah, it's like you know,
[47:48] Speaker 2: you're you're going you're walking through the park and you know,
[47:51] Speaker 2: and you're in your local park and he's pointing out this.
[47:53] Speaker 1: It's like us earlier, like like for for us at
[47:56] Speaker 1: our culture, like talking about the American Revolution and stuff
[47:59] Speaker 1: like to the zoom you know, I mean these were
[48:01] Speaker 1: I mean, like to the Zuni today, it's it's like
[48:06] Speaker 1: a major you know, I mean, it's a major event,
[48:08] Speaker 1: and it is a major thing like culturally in the
[48:11] Speaker 1: in the telling, and if there's they have the familiarity
[48:14] Speaker 1: with it that we would have with all the Civil
[48:17] Speaker 1: War and the Revolutionary War. Oh yeah, yeah, it's just
[48:19] Speaker 1: I mean very yes. So that's that's where this happened,
[48:23] Speaker 1: and that's what happened, and it led to this and.
[48:26] Speaker 2: So Esteban and so you know, he ends up at
[48:28] Speaker 2: Hawaku and they and they soon kill him because they
[48:32] Speaker 2: figure out he looks there's some he has some resemblance
[48:35] Speaker 2: to an enemy warrior. They don't like the way he's
[48:37] Speaker 2: treating women or whatever, they kill him. And and so
[48:40] Speaker 2: it's unclear whether fray Marcos makes it all the way
[48:43] Speaker 2: to the pueblo, the Zuni Pueblo Hawaku, or if he's like,
[48:48] Speaker 2: you know, several days in the rear and and and
[48:52] Speaker 2: gets the report of Esteban's death from from native guides
[48:57] Speaker 2: who are kind of like running back and forth. So
[49:00] Speaker 2: it's not clear if Fray Marcos actually laid eyes on
[49:03] Speaker 2: the on the pueblo during the reconnaissance run, but he's
[49:08] Speaker 2: certainly had a He made it very abundantly clear that
[49:12] Speaker 2: these were wealthy cities and the seven Wealthy Cities in
[49:15] Speaker 2: the North. And I you know, so he's an interesting
[49:18] Speaker 2: personality and I've kind of I've described him in my
[49:21] Speaker 2: Lost Cities book as that in a way, he's like
[49:25] Speaker 2: a ah, you know, in a mountain endurance athlete, because
[49:33] Speaker 2: he's been with he was on the Pizarro expedition, and
[49:37] Speaker 2: you know, so he might have witnessed that room full
[49:39] Speaker 2: of gold. And he's also like, you know, these guys
[49:43] Speaker 2: often go barefoot, and you know, he's this frame. Marcus
[49:47] Speaker 2: is like a serious traveler, and I think like as
[49:50] Speaker 2: being this endurance athlete that just can cover you know,
[49:53] Speaker 2: dozens and dozens of miles a day, which I'm sure
[49:56] Speaker 2: he was, because there are reports of how far he'd go.
[49:58] Speaker 2: And I think that he was, you know, invested with
[50:01] Speaker 2: his passion to you know, to collect Indian souls for Christianity.
[50:06] Speaker 2: So I mean that was one way for a friar
[50:12] Speaker 2: to you know, really make a name for himself in
[50:15] Speaker 2: the church and in the eyes of God. You know,
[50:17] Speaker 2: you can say thousands of heathen souls, millions of them.
[50:20] Speaker 2: So I think that was a really a real driving
[50:23] Speaker 2: force for Fray Marcos to like get this whole expedition
[50:26] Speaker 2: up there, because not only were they looking for the
[50:30] Speaker 2: Golden Cities fertile Land, they were also looking for India,
[50:34] Speaker 2: which they thought was just over the mountain. And then
[50:37] Speaker 2: they were also they were charged by the King and
[50:40] Speaker 2: Queen of Spain was saving souls with converting them from
[50:44] Speaker 2: you know, Heathenism to Christianity, so called Heathenism, and and
[50:49] Speaker 2: so that it was I describe it this book, it's
[50:53] Speaker 2: like there's a special unit embedded with this huge cavalcade
[50:57] Speaker 2: and they're these Franciscan priests who are you know, they're
[51:00] Speaker 2: like the spiritual spearhead of the of the of the whole,
[51:04] Speaker 2: and Fray Marcus is one of these guys. And so
[51:07] Speaker 2: so he had kind of a personal interest I think,
[51:10] Speaker 2: in in in in leading, you know, and convincing getting here.
[51:16] Speaker 2: He was he he wasn't there for the gold, he
[51:18] Speaker 2: was there for the souls. And and yeah, so they
[51:20] Speaker 2: come over their riots and there's the alleged city of
[51:24] Speaker 2: Gold and it's like this ship storm comes down on
[51:28] Speaker 2: Fray Marcos and you know, I'm surprised I didn't kill
[51:31] Speaker 2: him on the spot. Well they couldn't because you know,
[51:33] Speaker 2: he's a man of God. That would not That would
[51:35] Speaker 2: not have been good if you were if you were
[51:36] Speaker 2: an ordinary, you know, citizen, he would have he would
[51:39] Speaker 2: have been so dead, probably in the worst ways. And
[51:43] Speaker 2: so then making long story short, not that long. At
[51:49] Speaker 2: this point, they march up to the across the plane
[51:52] Speaker 2: and you I think you probably heard the story some
[51:55] Speaker 2: of it, and towards Hawiku and they stop what's described
[52:03] Speaker 2: as a cross bowl shot away. So that's probably like
[52:07] Speaker 2: three hundred yards four hundred yards when you're the ballistics guys,
[52:10] Speaker 2: And wouldn't you say a quarter mile maybe? And man,
[52:13] Speaker 2: I don't know, with those crossbows, they might have been
[52:17] Speaker 2: really good ones.
[52:18] Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like cocking them with their feet and stuff.
[52:20] Speaker 4: We're also not in the practice of launching arrows this
[52:23] Speaker 4: forty five degree.
[52:25] Speaker 2: Well exactly, and so they but anyway, they're a cross
[52:29] Speaker 2: bow bolt shot away and they stop. And meanwhile, the
[52:34] Speaker 2: like actual squadrons of Zuni warriors have come out, uh
[52:39] Speaker 2: with with what they're called bot priests, the Zuni priests
[52:44] Speaker 2: in the forefront, and the Zuni priests have poured down
[52:47] Speaker 2: a line of corn meal across the plane.
[52:50] Speaker 1: Huh.
[52:51] Speaker 2: And it's very clear what this corn meal line means.
[52:56] Speaker 2: It means do not cross this line.
[52:58] Speaker 1: It's the line of the saying.
[53:02] Speaker 2: And and so at this point I never heard this
[53:05] Speaker 2: detail about the corner mea, oh the court. Yeah, that's
[53:07] Speaker 2: one of the coolest details. And it's happened in other
[53:09] Speaker 2: pueblos as well after this and turned the expedition and
[53:13] Speaker 2: so it was a real thing. And and so then
[53:16] Speaker 2: you know Coronado, you know, these guys aren't horses and
[53:19] Speaker 2: armor and banners, and you know, I'm sure they have
[53:20] Speaker 2: all their finery on. And Cornado has a suit of
[53:23] Speaker 2: gilded armor, gilded helmet, huge plume, you know, armored horses,
[53:29] Speaker 2: and they and they ride up and they stop at
[53:32] Speaker 2: the corn mill line, and they, by requirement of the
[53:37] Speaker 2: King and Queen of Spain, they pull out this document.
[53:41] Speaker 2: It's called the Requerimento, which means like the requirement, And
[53:47] Speaker 2: they're required by the King and Queen of Spain to
[53:49] Speaker 2: read this document to the Zunis three times in Latin.
[53:56] Speaker 1: And this movie needs to be called the requirement.
[54:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so here the requirements go like this. It's
[54:03] Speaker 2: actually I think the requirement. I don't know if it's
[54:06] Speaker 2: a requirement applying to the Zunis or it's a requirement
[54:08] Speaker 2: applying to the conquistadors that they have to read.
[54:11] Speaker 1: The document home. So it's red and Latin thread Latin.
[54:14] Speaker 1: There's no three times. There's no effort to translate.
[54:16] Speaker 2: Well suppose there's supposedly, you know, some accounts say that
[54:20] Speaker 2: there was a one guy on the you know, native
[54:24] Speaker 2: guy on the expedition who knew what he'd have to
[54:27] Speaker 2: know it both Spanish and not Huattel, which is the
[54:30] Speaker 2: aspect language. So it might have been translated as far
[54:34] Speaker 2: as not Wattel, but no farther than that.
[54:38] Speaker 1: Hey, we tried it.
[54:41] Speaker 2: We tried, and so the requerimento severy law. But it
[54:44] Speaker 2: basically goes like this, you know, reading out in Latin. Okay,
[54:49] Speaker 2: you all are children of Adam and Eve and God
[54:52] Speaker 2: creative Adam and Eve and God. Uh embodiment on earth
[55:01] Speaker 2: is the Pope, and the pope power is embodied in
[55:07] Speaker 2: the King and Queen of Spain. Okay, And we are
[55:10] Speaker 2: representatives of the King and Queen of Spain.
[55:13] Speaker 1: So I e.
[55:13] Speaker 2: And according to Middle medieval logic, we're speaking directly from God.
[55:17] Speaker 2: Is kind of the way this this is the preamble,
[55:20] Speaker 2: sort of like the declaration of independence, Like here's where
[55:23] Speaker 2: the power comes from. Yeah, we're representatives of God. And
[55:28] Speaker 2: you have two choices. One you accept us to send
[55:34] Speaker 2: fathers among you and and and show us show you
[55:38] Speaker 2: our ways in religion.
[55:44] Speaker 1: Or two.
[55:46] Speaker 2: And if you do that option one, you'll be treated
[55:50] Speaker 2: with the utmost kindness and generosity and care. Option two
[55:56] Speaker 2: is you refuse to let fathers come among you, and
[56:02] Speaker 2: what will happen is will kill you all and enslave
[56:05] Speaker 2: your women and children. So take your choice one or two.
[56:10] Speaker 2: That's the requirement.
[56:11] Speaker 1: That's the requirement.
[56:14] Speaker 2: And so you know, and they're like literally parked at
[56:18] Speaker 2: the corner meal line and at this point somewhere, you know,
[56:22] Speaker 2: and everybody's getting agitated. I think both the Astec and warriors.
[56:25] Speaker 2: These guys are serious, serious, you know, they're they're like
[56:28] Speaker 2: the Native warriors in the Eastern Woodlands, I mean, you know,
[56:31] Speaker 2: over the planes or any any North American Native warriors,
[56:35] Speaker 2: very serious about warfare and skilled. And they're getting agitated.
[56:40] Speaker 2: And the Zuni warriors they're all, you know, they're all
[56:44] Speaker 2: they all have bows and arrows, and they start like
[56:50] Speaker 2: launching these warning shots towards the Spaniards and their horses.
[56:55] Speaker 2: Oh they do, yeah, And first they're they're at a
[56:58] Speaker 2: distance these warning shots. And the way the Spaniards describe
[57:02] Speaker 2: it is like these guys, these Zuni warriors, you know,
[57:05] Speaker 2: they they were shooting these straight shots that weren't very accurate,
[57:09] Speaker 2: but i mean, you know, like a Native archer, you know,
[57:14] Speaker 2: these guys are described as being able to hit a
[57:18] Speaker 2: rabbit while they are running, the warrior and the rabbit's
[57:23] Speaker 2: running and hit it with an arrow. So these are
[57:25] Speaker 2: not straight shots. These were extremely accurate, but they got
[57:28] Speaker 2: closer and closer, and finally one of the arrows Pierce's
[57:34] Speaker 2: Fray Marcos's wrote, not Fray Marcos, Frey Luis's robe and
[57:38] Speaker 2: pins it to the ground. Okay, at that point all
[57:42] Speaker 2: hell breaks loose, and Coronado says the essentially it's it's
[57:48] Speaker 2: the Spanish charge. It says Santiago Sierra Espana, which means
[57:55] Speaker 2: Saint James. That's the patron saint of Spain, Saint James,
[58:00] Speaker 2: and close Spain like protect us Saint James. We're gonna
[58:04] Speaker 2: go charge. And then they charge on their horses and
[58:06] Speaker 2: they they they they, you know, essentially route these all
[58:10] Speaker 2: these you know, several hundred Zuni warriors who chase back
[58:14] Speaker 2: into the pueblo and some are some are killed by
[58:19] Speaker 2: on the on the plane, but most get back into
[58:21] Speaker 2: the pueblo and they the seventh story Hawaku Pueblo and
[58:26] Speaker 2: they pull up all the ladders and and meanwhile that
[58:33] Speaker 2: so yeah, so they pull up all the ladders, and
[58:36] Speaker 2: so now Cornado's guys are so weak from hunger because
[58:40] Speaker 2: they've gone across this desk Poblado. You know, so they
[58:43] Speaker 2: some of these journals say, yeah, it was that all
[58:47] Speaker 2: we wanted was food. You know, at that point, it
[58:50] Speaker 2: was just food. It was like the gold was almost secondary,
[58:54] Speaker 2: and so they swarm around the pueblo and the the
[58:58] Speaker 2: harkuboose uh arquebusiers you know, you know, the muskets are
[59:04] Speaker 2: like a cannon on a proped on a stick that
[59:07] Speaker 2: are on a stand, the ones we see in the
[59:09] Speaker 2: Remington painting. Those guys are so weak with hunger they
[59:13] Speaker 2: can't stand up to shoot an old real shot that that,
[59:17] Speaker 2: and and so, but you know there's still enough guys,
[59:21] Speaker 2: and and I think especially the as tech and warriors
[59:23] Speaker 2: are playing much more a part of this than than
[59:26] Speaker 2: the span this accounts let on. But you know, they're
[59:30] Speaker 2: they're surrounding the pueblo and they're swarming it. And but
[59:33] Speaker 2: they're these pebbles are built like fortresses. The lower walls
[59:37] Speaker 2: are totally blank by by design, and you know, not
[59:40] Speaker 2: a door, not a window, and they're tall so you
[59:43] Speaker 2: just can't get up them. But there's one ladder and
[59:46] Speaker 2: behind that's hanging down that the Zuni's apparently forgot to
[59:50] Speaker 2: haul up. And the Spaniards find this one ladder and Cornado,
[59:57] Speaker 2: you know, he's the guys like thirty years old, you know,
[1:00:02] Speaker 2: early thirties.
[1:00:03] Speaker 1: Oh he's young like that, he's young.
[1:00:05] Speaker 2: He's borrowed his wife's money to fund the expedition and
[1:00:11] Speaker 2: his team. He married Beatrice when she was twelve, and
[1:00:14] Speaker 2: she was one of the richest women, probably was the
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: richest woman in New Spain. She had all these estates
[1:00:21] Speaker 2: and so and a pretty fierce mother. And so he
[1:00:26] Speaker 2: used her money to fund this expedition. And you know,
[1:00:30] Speaker 2: I was saying, well, he didn't have the money, so
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: he did it in a time honored way. He borrowed
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: his wife's money. And so he's under a lot of pressure,
[1:00:39] Speaker 2: and so he sees his ladder and he wants to
[1:00:41] Speaker 2: be the guy, you know, the warrior, the point, the leader,
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: and so he gets off his horse and he in
[1:00:49] Speaker 2: his golden armor, he starts up this ladder. He does
[1:00:53] Speaker 2: he does personally. There are many accounts of this, and
[1:00:56] Speaker 2: I wouldn't leave from the front leading well for a moment.
[1:01:02] Speaker 2: And he's part way up the ladder when like this
[1:01:05] Speaker 2: entire avalanche of boulders comes down on him, and you know,
[1:01:08] Speaker 2: it was like a like a trap, a booby trap,
[1:01:11] Speaker 2: and he just got crushed to the ground and including
[1:01:14] Speaker 2: a huge slab hit him on the directly on the helmet,
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: and he would have died right there, except he had
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: some of his his uh key captains who are also
[1:01:26] Speaker 2: armored through their bodies, on top of him to protect
[1:01:29] Speaker 2: them from the you know, this complete.
[1:01:30] Speaker 1: Pummeling of rocks.
[1:01:32] Speaker 2: And then they managed to drag him away and he
[1:01:34] Speaker 2: was very seriously uh head injured, and you know, it
[1:01:39] Speaker 2: was out for hours, if not longer, and he awoke
[1:01:45] Speaker 2: and he was in some tent off to the side
[1:01:47] Speaker 2: of the field. Knocked him out good though.
[1:01:48] Speaker 1: They knocked him out really good.
[1:01:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean you can imagine a slab of
[1:01:52] Speaker 2: stone on a metal helmet. It was like, you know,
[1:01:55] Speaker 2: you're talking about the NFL hits to the head on
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: a helmet like this is a big, huge blow. And
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: so then when he awakes, he's learned that as men
[1:02:07] Speaker 2: have taken the pueblo, which is kind of right, but
[1:02:12] Speaker 2: kind of not because basically the Zuni warriors just fled
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: out the back and through this they'd already cleared out
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: all the women and children and anything of value. And
[1:02:20] Speaker 2: one of the really cool parts of this story, I think,
[1:02:24] Speaker 2: having to do with the whole all the all those
[1:02:26] Speaker 2: pueblo areas. I mean, there are many different pueblos through
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: that whole region, you know, each is a different society community,
[1:02:32] Speaker 2: and many of them have a place of refuge. I mean,
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: I think they're all And so the Zuni have this
[1:02:40] Speaker 2: really cool place of refuge. It's called daway Ylane, which
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: is or corn Mountain or thunder Mountain, and it's this
[1:02:48] Speaker 2: huge mesa that's several hundred feet high, you know, unscalable
[1:02:54] Speaker 2: unless you know exactly what you're doing. And it gets
[1:02:57] Speaker 2: enough rainfall and there's enough soil that they can grow
[1:02:59] Speaker 2: cross up there, and they have villages and wells, and
[1:03:02] Speaker 2: they're totally self they can be totally self sustaining up there,
[1:03:06] Speaker 2: and you know, I describe it like having a spaceship
[1:03:09] Speaker 2: just hovering over the Zuni Valley where they can hang
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: out indefinitely. And so that's where the people from Habaku
[1:03:17] Speaker 2: and the warriors and eventually most of the people in
[1:03:19] Speaker 2: the Zuni Valley end up on the top of Dawa
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: Lani and so you know, it's like they're in no
[1:03:28] Speaker 2: hurry to come down, and you know, Coronado and his
[1:03:32] Speaker 2: guys are looking around, like how can we get at
[1:03:34] Speaker 2: these people?
[1:03:35] Speaker 1: You know, it's like we can't even get a hold
[1:03:37] Speaker 1: of one of them, Like they still want to get them.
[1:03:39] Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean they're looking for the sols to
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: save in gold to take and so you know, and
[1:03:46] Speaker 2: finally the Zuni send like an emissaries to Coronado and
[1:03:54] Speaker 2: and they meet peacefully, and that the Zunis. At this point,
[1:04:00] Speaker 2: Cornado and his guys have like a few little gems
[1:04:04] Speaker 2: and like a little pebble of gold, and they hold
[1:04:07] Speaker 2: it up to the Zunis and say, do you guys
[1:04:10] Speaker 2: have any of this? And there's more dimension of the story,
[1:04:15] Speaker 2: but essentially it goes like this, do you guys have
[1:04:17] Speaker 2: any of this? And the Zunis say, oh that that,
[1:04:22] Speaker 2: Oh no, we don't have any of that.
[1:04:24] Speaker 1: But if you keep going that way, you'll find a
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: whole lot of Yeah, the neighbors.
[1:04:31] Speaker 2: In fact, we'll give you guides to get there. So,
[1:04:35] Speaker 2: making a long story short, that's how they almost end
[1:04:37] Speaker 2: up in Chicago, and and that that they're they're really
[1:04:41] Speaker 2: cool close.
[1:04:43] Speaker 1: Like I've read about this this move they do, and
[1:04:48] Speaker 1: it seems like historians recognize that it really is manipulation. Yeah,
[1:04:57] Speaker 1: they are legitimately taking the pressure off and just getting
[1:05:01] Speaker 1: them some getting them out of here.
[1:05:03] Speaker 2: Well, you know, yes, I mean there are some historians
[1:05:07] Speaker 2: who have said, no, I don't think that's right, but
[1:05:10] Speaker 2: others have said, yeah, that they were deceived. I mean
[1:05:13] Speaker 2: that there was a conscious deception. And I'm and I
[1:05:17] Speaker 2: think that's kind of almost the common wisdom these days,
[1:05:19] Speaker 2: the common take on it. And I you know, I
[1:05:21] Speaker 2: really went into this in great depth for several years
[1:05:25] Speaker 2: and read every kind of possible account of what went on.
[1:05:30] Speaker 1: Don't they eventually get when they give them a guide
[1:05:34] Speaker 1: who's supposed to take them? Don't they eventually get fed
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: up with that guy? Yeah? Yeah, So what happens is
[1:05:40] Speaker 1: that there's the Zunie. What you have to realize. I
[1:05:45] Speaker 1: address this quite a lot in the book. So, like
[1:05:47] Speaker 1: the Zunis have all these different communities, but they're separate,
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: and yet they're they're interrelated, and they're actually, you know,
[1:05:55] Speaker 1: some are enemies with each other, but mostly not. And
[1:05:58] Speaker 1: they're interrelated, you know, and they're they're close culturally. They
[1:06:03] Speaker 1: have different languages and their religions are somewhat different, but
[1:06:07] Speaker 1: they're each one has like a council of elders, and
[1:06:10] Speaker 1: these council of elders are it's it's like a non
[1:06:13] Speaker 1: hierarchical system of governance. It's you know, there's no like king,
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: there's no one chief. And so partly what happens is
[1:06:25] Speaker 1: the Spaniards, like they get to Hawaku or the Zuni
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: Valley and they say, like, you know, where's the king's house,
[1:06:30] Speaker 1: where's the castle? And they keep asking it over and
[1:06:33] Speaker 1: over they can't find it because there there isn't one.
[1:06:36] Speaker 1: And that was one of the reasons that the Aztec
[1:06:39] Speaker 1: and the Incas were so easy to knock off, I
[1:06:41] Speaker 1: mean relatively so, because they're looking for like they're looking
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: for the head of the.
[1:06:44] Speaker 2: Snake, the head of the snake, and and that's that's
[1:06:47] Speaker 2: what worked for them in those in the South American empires,
[1:06:50] Speaker 2: in the Pueblo culture and in the Pueblo cultures. You know,
[1:06:53] Speaker 2: I describe it as like this huge interwoven fabric, and
[1:06:57] Speaker 2: you know, Corneatto could come up there and slash at
[1:06:59] Speaker 2: it all they wanted, but it's not you know, it's
[1:07:01] Speaker 2: not going to really make much of it, cous and.
[1:07:03] Speaker 1: So you're not going to get them to capitulate because
[1:07:06] Speaker 1: you capture some specific feature.
[1:07:09] Speaker 2: They've been it is not their first rodeo, and they
[1:07:12] Speaker 2: have these refuges where they can just disappear and in
[1:07:18] Speaker 2: these mountain refuges in the in the Spaniards, their enemies
[1:07:21] Speaker 2: just can't get at them. So they're they're very resilient,
[1:07:24] Speaker 2: you know, to to attack in in many fashions. And
[1:07:29] Speaker 2: then but what happens is the zoonies. So there, you
[1:07:33] Speaker 2: know you've been there. Like it's very remote. I mean
[1:07:35] Speaker 2: even today it's you know, western New Mexico and the Zoonies,
[1:07:42] Speaker 2: you know, put out word I think on they're very
[1:07:44] Speaker 2: established trading trails, including all the way to the coast
[1:07:47] Speaker 2: and way inland and down to Mexico City. The Zunis
[1:07:51] Speaker 2: send out messengers uh to the east to now to
[1:07:56] Speaker 2: what's now you know where Santa Fe is and Albuquerque.
[1:08:00] Speaker 2: You know the Rio grand Valley which is several hundred
[1:08:02] Speaker 2: miles to the east of Zuni. And if you go
[1:08:07] Speaker 2: just beyond the Rio Grande Valley, there's a it's like
[1:08:09] Speaker 2: an a southern part of the Sangreda Christian range where
[1:08:14] Speaker 2: it's like a divide where rivers flow down to the
[1:08:16] Speaker 2: plains on one side and into the Rio Grande on
[1:08:20] Speaker 2: the other side. So it's it's it's like a natural
[1:08:23] Speaker 2: kind of subcontinental divide almost and on top of that
[1:08:27] Speaker 2: divide is a very elaborate pueblo called k because it's
[1:08:34] Speaker 2: known today as Pecos and it's a it's a National
[1:08:36] Speaker 2: Historic site, the ruins of it. And this is a massive,
[1:08:40] Speaker 2: highly developed pueblo that's been at the epicenter of like
[1:08:44] Speaker 2: almost cross continental trade for centuries. And the so the
[1:08:49] Speaker 2: people of Pequye trade with the people of the plains
[1:08:54] Speaker 2: with you know, buffalo, buffalo hides and meat and other things.
[1:08:58] Speaker 2: And they have worn from the pueblos to the east,
[1:09:02] Speaker 2: and seashells from the coast and macaw feathers from the
[1:09:06] Speaker 2: real Yeah. Yeah, the macaffe is a huge deal. And
[1:09:09] Speaker 2: so this this Pekos is like this international emporium of trade,
[1:09:15] Speaker 2: you know, would be very cliently fifteen miles southeast of
[1:09:20] Speaker 2: Santa Fe today. And they so the Zunis send send
[1:09:27] Speaker 2: their messengers to the Pecos and and you know it's
[1:09:32] Speaker 2: like they collaborate.
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: What are we going to do about these guys?
[1:09:35] Speaker 2: And so the there's a the leaders that some of
[1:09:40] Speaker 2: the elders, they're actually younger guys, once older ones, younger
[1:09:45] Speaker 2: from Pekos come to the Zunis and meet Coronado and
[1:09:52] Speaker 2: say and tell them about you know, Coronado's asking, well,
[1:09:56] Speaker 2: like what's out there, blah blah blah, you know, and
[1:09:59] Speaker 2: they have and they said, well, yeah, I mean they
[1:10:00] Speaker 2: are these like these big planes with more animals than
[1:10:04] Speaker 2: you can ever imagine. And in fact, there's a tattoo
[1:10:08] Speaker 2: of one of these big animals, meaning a bison on
[1:10:11] Speaker 2: one of the on one of the Pekos guys. Really yeah,
[1:10:16] Speaker 2: and so and so they point to the Pekos guys,
[1:10:18] Speaker 2: the diplomats from Peko's point, Yeah, see that there. It
[1:10:23] Speaker 2: looks like an ocean full of these things. And and
[1:10:25] Speaker 2: the Spaniards are, oh, that sounds pretty cool. Let's let's
[1:10:28] Speaker 2: check it out. So that's when Coronado he's in Zuni,
[1:10:32] Speaker 2: you know, Hawaku, and he's set up like a like
[1:10:35] Speaker 2: a court, you know, like a throne with an aunting
[1:10:36] Speaker 2: and you know, he's like the king of whatever deserted
[1:10:40] Speaker 2: pueblo and and so you know, he's he's smart about it,
[1:10:46] Speaker 2: he's you know, he's a well organized guy. And so
[1:10:50] Speaker 2: he sends he decides to send out reconnaissance parties and
[1:10:53] Speaker 2: one goes from Zuni to the east towards Queka, Pekos
[1:10:58] Speaker 2: and then aiming for the buffet low plains, and one
[1:11:03] Speaker 2: to the west where they hear there's a big river
[1:11:06] Speaker 2: and they think maybe they're going to hit China or
[1:11:10] Speaker 2: or something. You know, they think China is over there.
[1:11:12] Speaker 2: They've heard there's a big river. I think another one
[1:11:15] Speaker 2: is maybe going to the southwest, but you know, looking
[1:11:17] Speaker 2: for the ocean. Yeah, the other guys looking for the ocean.
[1:11:22] Speaker 2: So the expedition that the reconnaissance party that's sent to
[1:11:26] Speaker 2: the east gets to Peikos and they the diplomats and
[1:11:32] Speaker 2: Pekos say yeah, well we'll give you, uh see, how
[1:11:38] Speaker 2: does this work. We'll give you guides to take you
[1:11:41] Speaker 2: farther east and out onto the plains. And so this
[1:11:46] Speaker 2: party goes out onto the plains, you know, it's a
[1:11:48] Speaker 2: smaller reconnaissance party, and and and they see buffalo, you know,
[1:11:53] Speaker 2: and it's like this is amazing. And then and the
[1:11:57] Speaker 2: one of the guides, you know, like figures out there
[1:12:00] Speaker 2: looking for gold and he says, oh, well, we actually
[1:12:07] Speaker 2: there's a lot of gold, but we got to go
[1:12:08] Speaker 2: farther for it. And the Spaniards say, like, are you
[1:12:11] Speaker 2: sure there's gold?
[1:12:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, there's gold.
[1:12:13] Speaker 2: You know, my buddy Bigota's back in Pekos has a
[1:12:17] Speaker 2: golden bracelet, and so you can imagine that suddenly that
[1:12:21] Speaker 2: reconnaissance party spins around, goes back to Pekos.
[1:12:24] Speaker 1: Oh see the bracelet.
[1:12:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, see the bracelet, and the Goodes is like, I
[1:12:27] Speaker 2: don't know. So you know, they end up torturing pagodas
[1:12:30] Speaker 2: to try to get the bracelet, and you know, relations
[1:12:34] Speaker 2: go south at this point, Oh my god.
[1:12:37] Speaker 1: And so.
[1:12:39] Speaker 2: That they they essentially regroup because winter is coming on.
[1:12:46] Speaker 2: They regroup in the in the pueblos which are north
[1:12:51] Speaker 2: of Albuquerque, like between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. There are
[1:12:54] Speaker 2: a lot it's a very populated pueblo in area and
[1:12:58] Speaker 2: you know, really good agricultural and real grand And meanwhile
[1:13:05] Speaker 2: that as part of this whole thing. I mean, this
[1:13:07] Speaker 2: story is so crazy. I can just go on and
[1:13:09] Speaker 2: on because there's so many different dimensions. But one of
[1:13:12] Speaker 2: the crazier ones is that Vice Roy Mendoza doesn't want
[1:13:18] Speaker 2: these guys raiding villages for food. So Vice Roy Mendoza
[1:13:24] Speaker 2: is going to have a convoy of ships supplying them
[1:13:27] Speaker 2: with more food and warm clothing and more ammo and
[1:13:31] Speaker 2: all these things, and it's going to go off the
[1:13:33] Speaker 2: west coast of Mexico. And everybody's thinking well, the Coronado
[1:13:38] Speaker 2: rod is going to be up the west coast of Mexico.
[1:13:41] Speaker 1: And so this.
[1:13:44] Speaker 2: Big flotilla under Captain al Ercan, who's a cool guy
[1:13:48] Speaker 2: and leaves great journals, starts going up the coast of
[1:13:52] Speaker 2: Mexico and goes into every little bay and inlet, you know,
[1:13:55] Speaker 2: sticks down across and looks for Cornado and the expedition,
[1:13:58] Speaker 2: and it's like.
[1:14:00] Speaker 1: They're not they're not saying that. And meanwhile the coast
[1:14:03] Speaker 1: is let's see, I'll do it your away.
[1:14:05] Speaker 2: But you know, it's like, you know, here's Baja, and
[1:14:08] Speaker 2: here's the you know, Sea of Cortes, and here's Mexico.
[1:14:11] Speaker 2: And so Coronado starts on the coast, but he goes
[1:14:14] Speaker 2: straight north and so meanwhile the coast is veering like that,
[1:14:18] Speaker 2: and the ships are going up like this, and they
[1:14:21] Speaker 2: they get, you know, towards towards the head of the gulf,
[1:14:25] Speaker 2: and and then Coronado is looking for the ships, and
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: the ships are looking for Cornado. But there's like four
[1:14:31] Speaker 2: hundred miles of desert between them, and so this is
[1:14:38] Speaker 2: a problem. And the ships have the warm clothes and
[1:14:43] Speaker 2: they the Aztecan warriors and plus the Spaniards. You know,
[1:14:49] Speaker 2: they're all from like these really subtropical or temperate clothes,
[1:14:53] Speaker 2: and they're in the high elevation, yeah, like Zunia, I
[1:14:56] Speaker 2: think is seven thousand feet and you know it's high,
[1:14:59] Speaker 2: high mountain, high desert, and they're getting hit by blizzards
[1:15:02] Speaker 2: and they're you know, just about dying. And they they
[1:15:07] Speaker 2: finally established a winter quarters over in a pueblo near
[1:15:13] Speaker 2: what's now Albuquerque, in the Rio Grande, and they it
[1:15:16] Speaker 2: seems they forcefully take it from the pueblo and people,
[1:15:20] Speaker 2: even though they say they we just moved in, they borrowed.
[1:15:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they borrowed it.
[1:15:28] Speaker 2: And so there ends up being even the account and
[1:15:30] Speaker 2: the Spanish accounts don't point to a lot of violence
[1:15:33] Speaker 2: at first, but it soon becomes violent, and including when
[1:15:39] Speaker 2: the Spaniards are freezing their butts off and they noticed
[1:15:46] Speaker 2: that the Puebloans have robes. I'd love to have one
[1:15:49] Speaker 2: made of turkey feathers. I mean it's like the original
[1:15:52] Speaker 2: down coat. And they have bison robes, you know, really warm,
[1:15:56] Speaker 2: and the Spaniards are like in their you know, summer
[1:15:59] Speaker 2: jogging clothes them down and you know, subtropics, and so
[1:16:03] Speaker 2: the Spaniards sent an expedition to a Pueblo, a neighbor
[1:16:07] Speaker 2: in Pueblo to collect feather capes and buffalo feather capes
[1:16:12] Speaker 2: and buffalo capes. And the Puebloans don't want to give
[1:16:16] Speaker 2: them over the the capes, so the Spaniards just grab them,
[1:16:21] Speaker 2: and then one guy rapes a woman, and then the
[1:16:24] Speaker 2: Puebloans start getting really pissed. They one night they run,
[1:16:29] Speaker 2: they run the Spaniards horses out of the corral. You know,
[1:16:33] Speaker 2: it's like it really feels like they kind of figured out,
[1:16:36] Speaker 2: how do we get to the weak point of these guys,
[1:16:39] Speaker 2: And you know, what's the I could just imagine this
[1:16:41] Speaker 2: council of elders like chewing this over many councils of elders.
[1:16:45] Speaker 2: They have so much power, you know, the Spaniards, you know,
[1:16:48] Speaker 2: with their their their steel and their horses. But if
[1:16:54] Speaker 2: we could just get at those horses, we could really
[1:16:56] Speaker 2: undercut them. And so they they stampede the horses out
[1:17:00] Speaker 2: of a corral and they've never seen horses, you know,
[1:17:02] Speaker 2: horses disappeared from North America, like I can't remember thousands
[1:17:06] Speaker 2: and thousands, right, and and so then then so now
[1:17:14] Speaker 2: the horses are gone, and the Coronado sends out his
[1:17:18] Speaker 2: right hand man to go find like what's what's happening
[1:17:21] Speaker 2: to the horses, and he finds a lot of them
[1:17:24] Speaker 2: in like a fenced in area near one of the
[1:17:27] Speaker 2: pueblos and like inside the pueblo walls, and the Puebloans
[1:17:32] Speaker 2: are shooting arrows at the horses to see how easily
[1:17:35] Speaker 2: it is to kill these guys.
[1:17:38] Speaker 1: Running around, And.
[1:17:42] Speaker 2: So he reports back to Cornado this is what they're doing,
[1:17:47] Speaker 2: and Coronado says, go take that pueblo and that ends
[1:17:50] Speaker 2: up being this bloody massacre, and the Puebloans eventually surrender,
[1:17:55] Speaker 2: you know, they're supposed to hold up make the sign
[1:17:57] Speaker 2: of the cross to surrender, and they render, but this
[1:18:01] Speaker 2: guy that Cordano's right hand man pulls him out and
[1:18:05] Speaker 2: ties them to steaks and burns them at the steak
[1:18:07] Speaker 2: and you know, just essentially murders them. Yeah, and after
[1:18:12] Speaker 2: that things really go south.
[1:18:14] Speaker 1: And so now, yeah, then they get like sadistic man
[1:18:17] Speaker 1: like they're like cutting people's hands.
[1:18:19] Speaker 2: Well that comes later, that's what Boniate, but I mean
[1:18:22] Speaker 2: he was famously did that in Akama.
[1:18:24] Speaker 1: That's like.
[1:18:27] Speaker 2: What was that fifteen ninety nine anything. But they were doing, yeah,
[1:18:30] Speaker 2: they were putting dogs on guys, you know, chaining guy
[1:18:33] Speaker 2: you know, chaining people up, and setting war dogs on
[1:18:37] Speaker 2: the on the Puebloan people to you know, torture them
[1:18:40] Speaker 2: and get information out of them.
[1:18:43] Speaker 1: And then.
[1:18:45] Speaker 2: So they they end up regrouping that winter, and then
[1:18:50] Speaker 2: in the spring they launched this big expedition to go
[1:18:55] Speaker 2: find the gold, like these alleged Golden empires where there
[1:19:03] Speaker 2: are giant canoes on these rivers and their golden bells
[1:19:07] Speaker 2: hanging on these canoes, and these chiefs sleep under trees
[1:19:11] Speaker 2: with golden bells jingling in the wind. And so they
[1:19:17] Speaker 2: they they aim for this thing, for this these Eastern empires,
[1:19:21] Speaker 2: and they have given two guides, and the guides this
[1:19:25] Speaker 2: is what you're referring to. One is one is a uh.
[1:19:29] Speaker 2: You know, there were slaves who were taken in from
[1:19:31] Speaker 2: the eastern tribes in combat, and so these slaves are
[1:19:35] Speaker 2: they're like guide slaves and guide captives. And they start
[1:19:40] Speaker 2: leading Cornad in all the wrong direction. And then Cornado,
[1:19:46] Speaker 2: one of the guides, start contradicting each other and that
[1:19:50] Speaker 2: ends up being a mess between these guides, and they
[1:19:52] Speaker 2: finally start veering where the real treasure is supposed to
[1:19:55] Speaker 2: be northeast, and that's where they get to Kansas.
[1:20:01] Speaker 1: One of my favorite details out of this, and we've
[1:20:03] Speaker 1: we've talked about it and wrote about it is when
[1:20:07] Speaker 1: they're on the Texas Payanhandle and they start, yeah, when
[1:20:11] Speaker 1: they start finding the the the like the buffalo people,
[1:20:16] Speaker 1: the nomads. Someone remarks on that they pressure flake their
[1:20:20] Speaker 1: stone knives with their teeth. Oh really, I didn't know that.
[1:20:24] Speaker 1: I believe it. I mean that could you do that? No,
[1:20:31] Speaker 1: they pressure he says, they sharpened their blades under their teeth.
[1:20:34] Speaker 4: And he says he also describes like the the teepees
[1:20:39] Speaker 4: and he says they have you know, they live like Arabs,
[1:20:42] Speaker 4: and he makes this connection between.
[1:20:45] Speaker 2: Nomadic Yeah, And I think that's a really interesting point too,
[1:20:50] Speaker 2: that that you know, again corn Oto, it couldn't attack
[1:20:55] Speaker 2: these people because he move into attack and they just
[1:20:57] Speaker 2: like pack up and the night and move and they
[1:21:00] Speaker 2: could probably move faster than he could. And so, you know,
[1:21:03] Speaker 2: the lack of actual settlements was a real detriment to
[1:21:07] Speaker 2: what he was trying to achieve. This, you know, this
[1:21:09] Speaker 2: idea of conquest and taking possession. Because every time he
[1:21:13] Speaker 2: took tried to take possession of something like that. People
[1:21:16] Speaker 2: who lived there just like, Okay, we're out of here.
[1:21:19] Speaker 2: Yeah that's your patch. What a talk about this for
[1:21:26] Speaker 2: a minute, is.
[1:21:29] Speaker 1: Tell me about this idea that that as the expedition
[1:21:33] Speaker 1: starts to fall apart and Coronado's getting duped and things
[1:21:37] Speaker 1: seem more and more kind of tenuous and a little
[1:21:41] Speaker 1: more chaotic, that he he's losing his mind.
[1:21:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm you know, I'm really firmly convinced of this,
[1:21:50] Speaker 2: and I haven't seen any interpretations like this, partly because
[1:21:55] Speaker 2: the science is so new that so he you know,
[1:21:59] Speaker 2: he wang down the head by literally it's described as
[1:22:02] Speaker 2: a slab of rock, and then going up that ladder
[1:22:05] Speaker 2: the first time, and then they he and it's you know,
[1:22:10] Speaker 2: in this first stab out into the plains, they go
[1:22:14] Speaker 2: through the Texas plant panhandle, they get up to Kansas
[1:22:16] Speaker 2: and the land starts getting really good up there, but
[1:22:19] Speaker 2: it starts turning to winter. You know, it's getting into fall,
[1:22:22] Speaker 2: and they don't want to get caught in winter on
[1:22:24] Speaker 2: the plains. This is the so this would be the
[1:22:26] Speaker 2: winter of it would be fall fifteen forty one, and
[1:22:31] Speaker 2: so Cornado says, Okay, let's go back to our winter
[1:22:34] Speaker 2: quarters in the Rio Grande valley where it's a little
[1:22:37] Speaker 2: bit warmer, and we'll regroup there and then we'll come
[1:22:40] Speaker 2: up this way in the spring. You know, with our
[1:22:43] Speaker 2: full force. These lands are getting more fertile. The guides
[1:22:48] Speaker 2: are saying, you know, the big empire is just over
[1:22:52] Speaker 2: that way, that Golden Empire. So we're in a regroup
[1:22:55] Speaker 2: and come back the next, you know, the next spring.
[1:22:57] Speaker 2: So they go back to their winter quarters in the
[1:23:00] Speaker 2: Rio grand near Albuquerque, and they're holed up there and
[1:23:04] Speaker 2: the relations with the natives are really tense. It's come
[1:23:09] Speaker 2: to be called the Tea Wish War that's now known
[1:23:12] Speaker 2: as And in the spring they're about to launch again,
[1:23:18] Speaker 2: and you know, nice day and people are in high
[1:23:21] Speaker 2: spirits and Coronado and his one of his main captain
[1:23:27] Speaker 2: go and have a horse race against each other. And
[1:23:30] Speaker 2: as they're galloping along this plane, the salad garth and
[1:23:34] Speaker 2: Coronado's horse breaks and it's the people on the expedition
[1:23:38] Speaker 2: thinks it's because they've been stored for so long, you know,
[1:23:41] Speaker 2: they're new satelegers, but they've rotted. And his salad earth breaks.
[1:23:45] Speaker 2: The saddle spins, he falls off, he lands underneath the
[1:23:49] Speaker 2: other guy's horse. The other guy's horse at full gallop,
[1:23:53] Speaker 2: kicks him in the head. Ok, he's out for like
[1:23:55] Speaker 2: three weeks in a coma. I mean way out, real,
[1:23:59] Speaker 2: way out.
[1:24:00] Speaker 1: I know that. Yeah, yeah, totally gone. Totally different than
[1:24:03] Speaker 1: the rock hitting him in the head.
[1:24:04] Speaker 2: Totally different. I mean that was not good. But this
[1:24:07] Speaker 2: is this is like near death. You know, everybody's saying
[1:24:11] Speaker 2: he's near death. And and so then when he finally
[1:24:17] Speaker 2: come starts coming out of that coma, he's like, you know, strange,
[1:24:23] Speaker 2: and he's really paranoid and he doesn't want anybody, you know,
[1:24:27] Speaker 2: kind of he wants to be protected himself from his men,
[1:24:34] Speaker 2: and he's you know, trying to gear himself up for
[1:24:39] Speaker 2: this next phase. But it's clear that he's like really
[1:24:44] Speaker 2: wanged out. And then the news comes in that there's
[1:24:50] Speaker 2: been a native uprising down near that Arizona border where
[1:24:55] Speaker 2: they've tried to establish a midway station, so the way
[1:24:59] Speaker 2: back to Mexico City he's cut. There's no hope of resupply. Essentially,
[1:25:04] Speaker 2: they're trapped out here, and it's like Cornado, it's just
[1:25:08] Speaker 2: he kind of goes into depression, and not kind of
[1:25:10] Speaker 2: he goes he literally goes into depression and paranoia and like.
[1:25:14] Speaker 1: It was all for nothing. So he's recognizing that this
[1:25:18] Speaker 1: whole thing is.
[1:25:19] Speaker 2: He doesn't want to go back. You know, he could
[1:25:22] Speaker 2: still go farther up towards Kansas and you know, get
[1:25:24] Speaker 2: to Iowa.
[1:25:25] Speaker 1: But if he goes back, he's going to be shamed.
[1:25:28] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally yeah, total unbelievable shame, humiliation, failure, and
[1:25:34] Speaker 2: spent all his wife's money, his mother in law's money,
[1:25:37] Speaker 2: Vice Roymond Doze's money, and the guys on his expedition
[1:25:42] Speaker 2: have invested in the expedition themselves. And so he's in
[1:25:49] Speaker 2: this situation where it's like, I just what happens that
[1:25:55] Speaker 2: this is in one of the journals that when he
[1:25:58] Speaker 2: was in this condition, which really sounds it's like, and
[1:26:00] Speaker 2: I've dealt with depression, and it really it feels so
[1:26:05] Speaker 2: true the way the brain thinks in these circumstances, that
[1:26:09] Speaker 2: depressed circumstances. And so he's coming out of this coma.
[1:26:13] Speaker 2: He's you know, in this pueblo room, you know, and
[1:26:16] Speaker 2: it's like winter and he's closed in and he comes
[1:26:21] Speaker 2: out of the coma and he and then he remembers
[1:26:24] Speaker 2: that when he was a young man in Salamanca that
[1:26:28] Speaker 2: a mathematical friend of his, and mathematical in this case
[1:26:32] Speaker 2: means like astrological friend told him that he would he
[1:26:38] Speaker 2: would go away and he would become famous in foreign lands,
[1:26:44] Speaker 2: and then he would take a big fall and die.
[1:26:48] Speaker 2: And this convinces him that he's about to die right here,
[1:26:53] Speaker 2: and he says, he says, you know, these are according
[1:26:55] Speaker 2: to that, like the literal journals written by the guys
[1:26:57] Speaker 2: who were there at the time. He says, I just
[1:27:01] Speaker 2: want to go back and die in the arms of
[1:27:04] Speaker 2: my beatrice in Mexico City. And so now he has
[1:27:10] Speaker 2: to figure out how is he going to turn like
[1:27:12] Speaker 2: two thousand and three thousand gold hungry Spandards and Aztecs around,
[1:27:21] Speaker 2: And he kind of lays a plot to do it.
[1:27:24] Speaker 2: I mean, he's clear enough to do that that he
[1:27:27] Speaker 2: and he probably has help. But he manages to start
[1:27:30] Speaker 2: a little rebellion among the soldiers, among the little group
[1:27:34] Speaker 2: who convinced their officers to like sign on with something,
[1:27:38] Speaker 2: and they convince somebody else and somebody else until he
[1:27:41] Speaker 2: gets this packet of signed papers from the officers which
[1:27:47] Speaker 2: don't say like we're going back. They're kind of noncommittal,
[1:27:50] Speaker 2: but they're these signed papers and he locks them up
[1:27:52] Speaker 2: and he said, well, I got all your signatures saying
[1:27:54] Speaker 2: that you want to.
[1:27:55] Speaker 1: Go back, So now we're going back. And you in
[1:28:00] Speaker 1: that move, you mentioned the thing a minute ago that
[1:28:03] Speaker 1: kind of informs that move. And I forgot about when
[1:28:05] Speaker 1: i'd read about this, is that guys on the expedition
[1:28:11] Speaker 1: kicked in money. Yeah, I kind of forgot that, like
[1:28:15] Speaker 1: some like a lot of these guys guys, Yeah, they're like, yeah,
[1:28:18] Speaker 1: I'll throw in with you, and I'll throw in my
[1:28:20] Speaker 1: own investment. And so not only is he not only
[1:28:24] Speaker 1: has like Coronado got to face this right the failure,
[1:28:30] Speaker 1: but there's people, you know, lower ranking individuals that are also.
[1:28:35] Speaker 2: Screwed exactly, and not only lower ranking that a lot
[1:28:38] Speaker 2: of these guys are aristocrats, but they're second sons, and
[1:28:42] Speaker 2: and so they've come to the New World, as Coronado has,
[1:28:45] Speaker 2: as a second son, seeking a fortune and they don't
[1:28:48] Speaker 2: have one at home. But there, you know, there are
[1:28:50] Speaker 2: a lot of opportunities, you know, knock off the empire
[1:28:53] Speaker 2: in the New World. And one of the great quotes
[1:28:56] Speaker 2: that I didn't end up in that book because I
[1:28:57] Speaker 2: saw it after after I'd finished the AFT. Is that
[1:29:01] Speaker 2: one of the one of the like the clerics in
[1:29:04] Speaker 2: Mexico City and fifteen, like fifteen thirties, when this expedition
[1:29:08] Speaker 2: is mounting up, says like, well, it's a good thing.
[1:29:13] Speaker 2: It's a good thing. Coronado took all these guys, these
[1:29:16] Speaker 2: young aristocrats out of out of Mexico City because there
[1:29:20] Speaker 2: are a bunch of like no goods floating around like
[1:29:22] Speaker 2: quirks and water.
[1:29:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's because like you could picture that if you
[1:29:28] Speaker 1: were just like enlisted men, you know, and you go
[1:29:32] Speaker 1: on this trip as like as as you imagined a
[1:29:34] Speaker 1: contemporary soldier under a command structure, and then you realize
[1:29:38] Speaker 1: it's a fool's errand you might be relieved when someone says,
[1:29:44] Speaker 1: I screwed up, let's go home. But in this case,
[1:29:48] Speaker 1: you got a lot of people who are like really
[1:29:49] Speaker 1: invested and literally invested in the success, probably even down
[1:29:53] Speaker 1: to the Aztec warriors, like they're planning on getting some yeah,
[1:29:57] Speaker 1: and I better some of them. A bunch of the
[1:30:00] Speaker 1: people are probably going to be like, yeah, it's time
[1:30:02] Speaker 1: to go home, But there's gonna be a big contingent
[1:30:05] Speaker 1: that is, like, what are you talking about? A huge
[1:30:08] Speaker 1: we have not. And so there was a huge rebellion.
[1:30:10] Speaker 2: I mean his guys, I mean the real knights, you know,
[1:30:12] Speaker 2: the guys who were the higher st up the you know,
[1:30:14] Speaker 2: the mounted guys with armor and everything else. They rebelled.
[1:30:19] Speaker 2: They said, no, we're not going to do this. We'll
[1:30:22] Speaker 2: go back up to you know, up to Iowa, up
[1:30:27] Speaker 2: to the looking for Harrah Hay, the the next promised land.
[1:30:35] Speaker 2: You could go home, you know, we'll keep going. And
[1:30:38] Speaker 2: he wouldn't let them do that. And you know, and
[1:30:42] Speaker 2: then he started saying, anybody's talking about going home, I'm
[1:30:44] Speaker 2: gonna have hung hanged. And so it was anybody who
[1:30:48] Speaker 2: resisted going home. Yeah, and so so he so he was.
[1:30:53] Speaker 2: And there was a there was a couple from Mexico
[1:30:56] Speaker 2: City and like he was, you know, he's like a
[1:30:58] Speaker 2: cobbler or something, and she was his wife and they
[1:31:00] Speaker 2: were kind of little entrepreneurs, and you know, she was saying, yeah,
[1:31:04] Speaker 2: I want to stay here. You know, there's like land
[1:31:06] Speaker 2: of opportunity. And he said, you talk like that again,
[1:31:08] Speaker 2: you're gonna be strung up by a rope. And so
[1:31:11] Speaker 2: I mean this is a testimony that came out literally
[1:31:14] Speaker 2: in an inquisition afterwards. You know, this is a direct word.
[1:31:18] Speaker 2: They investigated investigator like whether he abused the Indians.
[1:31:21] Speaker 1: So he's like, I'm going home. Everybody's going on, we're done,
[1:31:26] Speaker 1: We're done, and they'll only people get my wife on
[1:31:29] Speaker 1: a fishing trip. Everybody's going see, you are not staying
[1:31:35] Speaker 1: just to make this business trip is over.
[1:31:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, So it was kind of yeah, it was very
[1:31:44] Speaker 2: much like that. And then but the people he did
[1:31:47] Speaker 2: allow to stay were the where the friars because you know,
[1:31:50] Speaker 2: it's going to be their mission to start, you know,
[1:31:53] Speaker 2: to you know, save souls. And so I think almost
[1:31:58] Speaker 2: all of them stayed, uh, and I think about ninety
[1:32:02] Speaker 2: five percent were soon dispatched by Oh yeah, that doesn't
[1:32:07] Speaker 2: sound like And there's there's a big cross up and
[1:32:10] Speaker 2: in like central Kansas, almost northern Kansas. Huge, you know,
[1:32:14] Speaker 2: like thirty feet high, and it's uh, it's a cross
[1:32:18] Speaker 2: that marks the spot of the martyrdom of Frey Padilla
[1:32:22] Speaker 2: because he was trying to start a mission up there
[1:32:25] Speaker 2: in they call it the land that they were searching.
[1:32:30] Speaker 2: The first big one up there was called Queverra. Oh yeah,
[1:32:33] Speaker 2: so you've heard that. I mean, that's a Quivera. It's like,
[1:32:35] Speaker 2: you know, the mythical land of treasure. And so when
[1:32:39] Speaker 2: Coronado was turning around, Frey Padilla said, well, I want
[1:32:43] Speaker 2: to go back to the land of Quevea and start
[1:32:45] Speaker 2: a mission. And Cornado said, okay, yeah, you're gonna have
[1:32:48] Speaker 2: some mules. You can have this, you can have that,
[1:32:49] Speaker 2: you can have some servants. And so Frey Padilla went
[1:32:52] Speaker 2: up there and started a mission. And then it's not
[1:32:55] Speaker 2: entirely clear what happened, but he might have started to
[1:32:58] Speaker 2: try to go farther east to find the name Golden Land,
[1:33:01] Speaker 2: you know, the next hope for a golden land, hoay,
[1:33:04] Speaker 2: and that it's described that one day he was I
[1:33:09] Speaker 2: think he was walking maybe east or whatever, and he
[1:33:12] Speaker 2: was approached on the other way all these native warriors
[1:33:16] Speaker 2: with bows and arrows raised. And the story goes that
[1:33:20] Speaker 2: he gets down in the path or the road and
[1:33:23] Speaker 2: he starts praying to God. Next thing happens. He's a
[1:33:28] Speaker 2: pincushion that tips over and now there's a cross up there,
[1:33:32] Speaker 2: huge cross for there.
[1:33:33] Speaker 1: Yeah. So when like in the title of your book,
[1:33:38] Speaker 1: in the subtitle, you say, in the Birth of the
[1:33:42] Speaker 1: American Indian resistance. I mean this really it's kind of
[1:33:45] Speaker 1: like an interesting if we're talking about like what became
[1:33:50] Speaker 1: the United States, right, right, this is like an interesting
[1:33:55] Speaker 1: case where you had these invading conquerors there were I mean,
[1:34:02] Speaker 1: they were defeated and sent packing. They were that's it's
[1:34:05] Speaker 1: a remarkable story.
[1:34:06] Speaker 2: And and in that sense, and I you know, it's
[1:34:10] Speaker 2: it's become known, it's it's it's known as the first
[1:34:13] Speaker 2: named war in what's now the United States between Europeans
[1:34:18] Speaker 2: and called it's called the Tea Wish War t I
[1:34:21] Speaker 2: g U e X. And that, Yeah, the Spaniards were
[1:34:27] Speaker 2: thoroughly defeated, sent back, thwarted, you know, in some ways crushed, and.
[1:34:33] Speaker 3: That like for a long time though, because that's the
[1:34:35] Speaker 3: weird like picture from the picture from the native perspective
[1:34:40] Speaker 3: at that time would be like this just outlandish thing
[1:34:43] Speaker 3: shows up.
[1:34:44] Speaker 1: Outlandish. It just seems like like insurmountable, like like like a.
[1:34:47] Speaker 2: God like yeah, I mean like like outer space people.
[1:34:51] Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you figured out, you figured out they
[1:34:55] Speaker 1: go away. And then a long time passed decades before
[1:35:00] Speaker 1: probably felt like oh we won, yeah yeah, and you know.
[1:35:03] Speaker 2: There the Spaniards didn't send a serious expedition for another
[1:35:07] Speaker 2: I think it was sixty years.
[1:35:08] Speaker 1: Yeah, and even then for a long time, for a generation.
[1:35:12] Speaker 2: Or at least, like they beat exactly, yeah, repelled and
[1:35:18] Speaker 2: invading people.
[1:35:19] Speaker 1: And the invading people went.
[1:35:20] Speaker 2: Away, they went away, they went away. And and you know,
[1:35:23] Speaker 2: that's the subtitle is the Birth of American Indian Resistance,
[1:35:28] Speaker 2: because it was like that, especially the Puebloans, you know,
[1:35:31] Speaker 2: they wove themselves together in this in this real net
[1:35:36] Speaker 2: that that didn't really have to confront the Spaniards directly
[1:35:42] Speaker 2: in terms of warfare, but really just outsmarted them in
[1:35:45] Speaker 2: a lot of ways. And and the Port Bloans understood
[1:35:48] Speaker 2: how to survive in that climate way better, and and
[1:35:51] Speaker 2: and how to get.
[1:35:52] Speaker 1: Who the Spaniards were.
[1:35:53] Speaker 2: I mean they were utterly helpless without without the Puebloan
[1:35:56] Speaker 2: corn they you know they were, or the buffalo on.
[1:35:58] Speaker 1: The Yeah, it's like you know, learning recognizing that the
[1:36:03] Speaker 1: landscape plays in your favor. It has elements of like
[1:36:07] Speaker 1: an insurgency. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean,
[1:36:10] Speaker 1: Like like you you create, you create a structure that's
[1:36:13] Speaker 1: hard to sort of like decapitate. You find a way
[1:36:18] Speaker 1: to like not confront in big battles. Right, you pick
[1:36:22] Speaker 1: your moments, You.
[1:36:23] Speaker 2: Pick your moment. I've in Washington did that a lot
[1:36:24] Speaker 2: in the Revolutionary War. You know, you tried to avoid
[1:36:26] Speaker 2: you know, yeah, avoiding them.
[1:36:28] Speaker 1: The way to win is not fight keeping.
[1:36:32] Speaker 4: And also just an individual like the individual acts of
[1:36:36] Speaker 4: oh it's it's over there, it's not here, is what
[1:36:39] Speaker 4: you're looking for, Like all these little individual you know,
[1:36:43] Speaker 4: there's a larger political resistance, a large individual acts of
[1:36:48] Speaker 4: working for one's own self interest.
[1:36:50] Speaker 2: And and and it feels so much like it's coordinated.
[1:36:52] Speaker 2: I mean, that's you know, and you know, I think
[1:36:55] Speaker 2: some historians initially didn't believe that, but you know, if
[1:36:58] Speaker 2: you really look at the documentation, there's more coming out more.
[1:37:02] Speaker 1: Oh yeah. And the tendency, for the tendency for so
[1:37:05] Speaker 1: long is to ignore that that that people had a
[1:37:10] Speaker 1: like indigenous people had like a strategic awareness and right,
[1:37:14] Speaker 1: you know, I mean or even communicated with each other
[1:37:16] Speaker 1: over over you know, one hundred miles.
[1:37:18] Speaker 2: It's like, oh, they're in one campfire over there, in
[1:37:20] Speaker 2: one campfire over there, and there's no connection between the two.
[1:37:23] Speaker 1: And again, man, it's not you know, you look at
[1:37:25] Speaker 1: these other areas, it's it's like it's not an isolated strategy. No,
[1:37:29] Speaker 1: not at all.
[1:37:31] Speaker 2: And in this case, rendald As, you were saying that,
[1:37:34] Speaker 2: you know, misleading them. So one of the cool things
[1:37:37] Speaker 2: about the misleading was that, you know, when they first
[1:37:40] Speaker 2: had the like the slave guides, the captive guides, and
[1:37:44] Speaker 2: they're leaving Pekoas you know, which is now the sound
[1:37:48] Speaker 2: Great Cristo Range and going towards the buffalo planes. The
[1:37:52] Speaker 2: guides lead them towards you know, like towards Texas, to
[1:37:56] Speaker 2: the to the south east, and they get to a
[1:38:01] Speaker 2: place where they're you know, they're just like they're lost
[1:38:05] Speaker 2: on the buffalo planes. They don't know what to do,
[1:38:08] Speaker 2: and it turns out that they're like the real settlements.
[1:38:13] Speaker 2: They eventually learned that the one guide rats on the
[1:38:16] Speaker 2: other guide. The real settlements are up to the northeast
[1:38:19] Speaker 2: at you know, Quavera, where their land is way richer
[1:38:22] Speaker 2: than it is down on the on the Texas Panhandle.
[1:38:25] Speaker 2: But the the thinking is, i mean, one notion is
[1:38:29] Speaker 2: that the guides and the Puebloans who told the GUIDs
[1:38:34] Speaker 2: to do this, we're leading the Spaniards and this you know, huge,
[1:38:38] Speaker 2: huge party that's massively hungry all the time out into
[1:38:42] Speaker 2: these barren regions where there were there was just not
[1:38:45] Speaker 2: enough food to sustain, and so it was like they're
[1:38:48] Speaker 2: going to starve them out by sending them, sending them
[1:38:50] Speaker 2: into into a into an era deserted, era desert area.
[1:38:54] Speaker 1: So what uh, last question for you is what what
[1:38:59] Speaker 1: comes the ornato?
[1:39:01] Speaker 2: That's yeah, and well, hen well, you know the way
[1:39:06] Speaker 2: I frame this is he starts out the spring of
[1:39:08] Speaker 2: fifteen forty at the head of the grandest cavalcade the
[1:39:11] Speaker 2: New World has ever seen, you know, two thousand guys
[1:39:13] Speaker 2: and banners, blah blah blah. And he comes back two
[1:39:16] Speaker 2: and a half years later, carried on a litter, a
[1:39:20] Speaker 2: broken man, depressed, with one hundred followers kind of stumbling behind.
[1:39:26] Speaker 2: And Vice Roy Mendoza, the accounts go greet him very coldly.
[1:39:34] Speaker 1: And his wife.
[1:39:35] Speaker 2: You want to the mother in law as a whole,
[1:39:39] Speaker 2: she's a I mean, she took Cortes on mono almano
[1:39:42] Speaker 2: in legal lawsuits. She was a real battle you know,
[1:39:46] Speaker 2: ready to battle. And so so then but Vice Roy Mendoza,
[1:39:50] Speaker 2: you know, this is his young his protege that he's
[1:39:52] Speaker 2: bringing along for decades. He said, you know, okay, I'll
[1:39:56] Speaker 2: give you this kind of side job. You know, he's
[1:39:59] Speaker 2: like on the city council. I think he also gets
[1:40:02] Speaker 2: to be the governor of Nueva Galicia, which is up
[1:40:05] Speaker 2: near what's now Pert de viert And and then the
[1:40:10] Speaker 2: word comes out that he abused the Indians, and so
[1:40:15] Speaker 2: then he gets hauled into Mexico City, and there's like
[1:40:17] Speaker 2: several years of an inquiry into what he did, and
[1:40:21] Speaker 2: there's you know, the testimony that you know, books of
[1:40:24] Speaker 2: the testimony that come out, and he ends up being acquitted.
[1:40:29] Speaker 2: One of his his like right hand man, his main captain, Cardinists,
[1:40:34] Speaker 2: gets convicted, ends up doing like after much you know,
[1:40:41] Speaker 2: legal turmoil, ends up doing some community work and on
[1:40:45] Speaker 2: the Mediterranean coast and normaloga. That's how all the punishment
[1:40:51] Speaker 2: came down for this the only person who's who was
[1:40:55] Speaker 2: tried convicted for abusing the natives. And then but Cornado
[1:40:59] Speaker 2: State in Mexico City, you know, and had I can't remember.
[1:41:02] Speaker 2: They had six or seven kids, and and he he
[1:41:08] Speaker 2: served in some capacity on the civil council, a city council.
[1:41:13] Speaker 2: But I came across this letter and I later found
[1:41:15] Speaker 2: it and quote it in one book. But in the
[1:41:17] Speaker 2: archives in Mexico City, reporting on Cornado after he'd come back,
[1:41:25] Speaker 2: and this letter in Spanish, you know, written in fifteen
[1:41:27] Speaker 2: forty four or something said or the report I think
[1:41:32] Speaker 2: the viceroy of the king said, you know, ever since
[1:41:36] Speaker 2: he came back from that expedition, he hasn't been the
[1:41:39] Speaker 2: same person. They say he took a fall from a horse,
[1:41:43] Speaker 2: and it's never been the same.
[1:41:45] Speaker 1: Really, it was now death Chile. Yeah, it's funny.
[1:41:49] Speaker 2: I've only seen that in one book, and I didn't
[1:41:52] Speaker 2: I saw it later, but I found built. I came
[1:41:54] Speaker 2: across it in these archives and it was like, oh.
[1:41:57] Speaker 1: That is the connection was made at the time.
[1:41:59] Speaker 2: It was made at the time. Yeah, he was never
[1:42:01] Speaker 2: the same. And you know what's It's like, he's more
[1:42:07] Speaker 2: he's like being kept at home with his wife and children,
[1:42:13] Speaker 2: and his homes like on the on the square, you know,
[1:42:16] Speaker 2: it's like kitty corner to Cortesa's palace, and so he's
[1:42:20] Speaker 2: being kept in his wife's house and his wife's family's
[1:42:25] Speaker 2: stone mansion and they and this letter says and at
[1:42:30] Speaker 2: this point he is more fit to be governed than
[1:42:33] Speaker 2: governed really, So I mean that's just like, that's the
[1:42:38] Speaker 2: time at the time and so and so that's one
[1:42:42] Speaker 2: of the things that which I bring up to some
[1:42:46] Speaker 2: degree in this book. It's like, you know, here's a
[1:42:49] Speaker 2: case of like brain damage. I mean, it's really clear.
[1:42:52] Speaker 2: It's really clear if you know anything about CTE, which
[1:42:55] Speaker 2: I my father I think had it. So I followed
[1:42:58] Speaker 2: it for years and it's it's only and studied seriously
[1:43:01] Speaker 2: for like twenty years.
[1:43:02] Speaker 5: They were they were like a long ways away from
[1:43:05] Speaker 5: identifying that really, I mean just in the last few
[1:43:08] Speaker 5: decades when you know, now we're talking about so many
[1:43:11] Speaker 5: you know, NFL football players, and twenty years ago it
[1:43:14] Speaker 5: was not even mentioned, I don't think.
[1:43:16] Speaker 1: And it's a it's an interesting pursuit, like a historian
[1:43:20] Speaker 1: thing would be that that you would track down that
[1:43:28] Speaker 1: in history, you would track down individuals that had that
[1:43:33] Speaker 1: had behavioral patterns. Oh really, you know what I mean
[1:43:37] Speaker 1: that you can I wonder if you would find more
[1:43:41] Speaker 1: like these these inexplicable figures in history or whatever, that
[1:43:46] Speaker 1: you might find more things of like that, like more
[1:43:49] Speaker 1: cases where where someone might have suffered that from traumatic
[1:43:53] Speaker 1: brain interests.
[1:43:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, well just think about how many you know,
[1:43:57] Speaker 2: for a million, thousands of thousands, of years, humans at
[1:44:01] Speaker 2: war have been bashing each other on the head and
[1:44:04] Speaker 2: that's one of the things I've another fun research for
[1:44:06] Speaker 2: this book dug into this that I think it's something
[1:44:11] Speaker 2: like ten percent and it might is it. I think
[1:44:13] Speaker 2: it's Neanderthals or very early people. Ten percent of the
[1:44:18] Speaker 2: males have had what's called prep pannation. That's when it's
[1:44:23] Speaker 2: it was known to medical procedure pressure. Yeah, you drill
[1:44:26] Speaker 2: a hole in the head and relieve brain pressure, and
[1:44:29] Speaker 2: that believes it relieves evil spirits, basically depression.
[1:44:34] Speaker 1: And so this has been something that's that humans have
[1:44:38] Speaker 1: been living with for since the beginning. That's crazy thing, man.
[1:44:43] Speaker 2: There's another aspect of all this that that just in
[1:44:46] Speaker 2: the big picture to bring up and then we can
[1:44:50] Speaker 2: you know, take it wherever. But that you know, part
[1:44:53] Speaker 2: of my thesis is that thanks to the Puebloans, they
[1:44:59] Speaker 2: managed to thwart Spanish settlement in what's now the West,
[1:45:04] Speaker 2: you know. And later there were the Apaches and the Commanchees,
[1:45:07] Speaker 2: but the Puebloans were really the first line and they
[1:45:10] Speaker 2: and they kept their cultures remarkably intact to this day
[1:45:14] Speaker 2: and a lot. Yeah, and so the Spaniards, you know,
[1:45:17] Speaker 2: they like on the map they claimed all the way
[1:45:20] Speaker 2: up to you know what's now Canada and that they said,
[1:45:23] Speaker 2: this is been. And it was like just a joke
[1:45:27] Speaker 2: because they had they had Santa Fe. They had a
[1:45:30] Speaker 2: settlement at Santa Fe, and that was kind of it.
[1:45:33] Speaker 2: They had a few scattered settlements, but they had a
[1:45:36] Speaker 2: very light colonial presence, and for you know, they established
[1:45:41] Speaker 2: Santa Fe in like sixteen oh nine or ten or
[1:45:43] Speaker 2: something like that. And then so and then once the
[1:45:48] Speaker 2: US westward movement started, you know, we can go back
[1:45:51] Speaker 2: to Daniel Boone. Those guys come over the mountains in
[1:45:55] Speaker 2: like seventeen seventy four, right, and they start settling in
[1:45:59] Speaker 2: the Kentucky Valley. And it took British that American you know,
[1:46:05] Speaker 2: resident citizens two hundred years to get from the Atlantic
[1:46:11] Speaker 2: coast to the Mississippi River settlement. And it took them
[1:46:16] Speaker 2: less than fifty years to get from the Mississippi River
[1:46:18] Speaker 2: to the Pacific coast. And one of the reasons is
[1:46:21] Speaker 2: there was no of course, there were Indian tribes, but
[1:46:23] Speaker 2: there were there was no colonial presence. There was no
[1:46:26] Speaker 2: empire hanging on to that. The Spain said, yeah, that's ours,
[1:46:30] Speaker 2: but I mean, it was there was no sign or
[1:46:34] Speaker 2: sight of Spain at all. And so that's part of
[1:46:36] Speaker 2: my thesis is that that this this the Puebloan you
[1:46:41] Speaker 2: know blockade I call it, kept the what's now the
[1:46:47] Speaker 2: western US and something of a power vacuum in terms
[1:46:52] Speaker 2: of European powers, so that when the US came pushed
[1:46:55] Speaker 2: west and westward movement, it just rolled through.
[1:46:58] Speaker 1: You know, this is the theme I've touched on a
[1:47:01] Speaker 1: lot in American history. It is particularly in the West,
[1:47:04] Speaker 1: but it's applicable in other parts of the country too.
[1:47:06] Speaker 1: Is that looking at it now, your tendency is to
[1:47:11] Speaker 1: compress the timelines, right that it was like European powers
[1:47:17] Speaker 1: hit the coast and just oh yeah, right, right, do
[1:47:22] Speaker 1: you know what I mean? But it's just it's like
[1:47:24] Speaker 1: you assume it was like preordainedous progress. Yeah, it seems
[1:47:30] Speaker 1: it just seems like that it hit and happened. But
[1:47:34] Speaker 1: you imagine Ryanda and I ha just finished a project
[1:47:37] Speaker 1: about the Buffalo Hide hunters, and a lot of that
[1:47:39] Speaker 1: project takes place post Civil War. Okay, so eighteen seventies
[1:47:45] Speaker 1: on the test on the planes on Theano Esticado, and
[1:47:48] Speaker 1: it has it has a that's when we talk about Coronado,
[1:47:53] Speaker 1: but it has a very frontier feel. They're getting killed
[1:47:58] Speaker 1: by comanches. Okay, they're like, they're just post shovel warrior
[1:48:02] Speaker 1: tying post Civil war. They're getting killed by comanches. They're
[1:48:06] Speaker 1: looking at maps that have big holes in the maps,
[1:48:10] Speaker 1: and it's been three hundred years is that? Wow? Three
[1:48:17] Speaker 1: hundred years and there were other Europeans messing around there.
[1:48:21] Speaker 1: It's so crazy. And you take like where we're sitting now, right,
[1:48:26] Speaker 1: and you start going back. So we're gonna go from
[1:48:29] Speaker 1: now and we're gonna go back three hundred years right
[1:48:34] Speaker 1: to try to get like what does that mean. It's like,
[1:48:36] Speaker 1: it's where you're sitting now and you're going back to
[1:48:39] Speaker 1: like the American Revolution before the French and Indian. Yeah,
[1:48:42] Speaker 1: it's like that is the distance what separates you now
[1:48:47] Speaker 1: from the French and Indian War or whatever, which you
[1:48:50] Speaker 1: can't even fathom was separating Like those buffalo hide hunters
[1:48:54] Speaker 1: on the plane post war Buffalo post Civil war buffalo
[1:48:57] Speaker 1: hide hunters who felt like they were on a frontier.
[1:49:00] Speaker 1: They're getting killed by comanches. That distance separates them from
[1:49:04] Speaker 1: the first people that showed up there. It got killed
[1:49:06] Speaker 1: by exactly. Yeah, I mean it was a long long
[1:49:11] Speaker 1: it was longer than the history of our own country.
[1:49:15] Speaker 1: They were like still that they were in conflict with Europeans,
[1:49:19] Speaker 1: with European people. Yeah.
[1:49:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's bizarre and it just doesn't enter our conscious
[1:49:24] Speaker 2: and that's one of the reasons I run like.
[1:49:26] Speaker 1: It just happened. Yeah, I mean, like the.
[1:49:30] Speaker 4: Christopher Columbus to the American Revolution is a shorter period
[1:49:37] Speaker 4: of time than Coronado to the US claiming all that
[1:49:43] Speaker 4: country like Guadaloup bead dollgo right, right, I mean that's
[1:49:48] Speaker 4: three hundred and six years or whatever.
[1:49:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's three centuries. Yeah, And you
[1:49:54] Speaker 2: know I make that point, it's like three it thwarted,
[1:49:58] Speaker 2: you know, European expansion into the West. The Puebloans and
[1:50:02] Speaker 2: you know, especially the Puebloans thwarted European expansion into the
[1:50:05] Speaker 2: West for three centuries before it really came in went
[1:50:10] Speaker 2: with with a westward movement. Yeah, it's in terms of
[1:50:15] Speaker 2: our historical perspective, it's just we have such an orientation
[1:50:21] Speaker 2: in our American history with you know, with good reason
[1:50:25] Speaker 2: a lot of ways, but it's it's focused on the
[1:50:27] Speaker 2: Atlantic coast, you know, like that's the epicenter and then
[1:50:31] Speaker 2: everything flows out from there. But in fact, the Spaniards
[1:50:36] Speaker 2: were way earlier, coming from the south. So I had
[1:50:40] Speaker 2: one guy I was doing a radio call in show.
[1:50:43] Speaker 2: I was really productive.
[1:50:47] Speaker 1: You've been there, right, And I'm always glad I did those,
[1:50:52] Speaker 1: and but.
[1:50:53] Speaker 2: One guy, you know, and I was talking about this
[1:50:54] Speaker 2: Coronado story, and one guy we feel are really interested
[1:50:57] Speaker 2: in this history. But one guy called in and said, well,
[1:51:00] Speaker 2: it was like.
[1:51:01] Speaker 1: Oh that kind of reading. I think you remember. You
[1:51:02] Speaker 1: got to do those call in where you got to
[1:51:04] Speaker 1: do like they'll set you up and you got to
[1:51:05] Speaker 1: call thirteen morning shows. No idea of what you're calling
[1:51:11] Speaker 1: a radio radio tour. Yeah, like some guys like duh,
[1:51:15] Speaker 1: some guy, uh, Peter, I don't know, roll some kind
[1:51:18] Speaker 1: But what's going on, Peter, I'm going this morning exactly,
[1:51:24] Speaker 1: wrote the book, Peter. We gotta go. And then and
[1:51:26] Speaker 1: then sometimes when I've had sometimes I'm sure you'ven done this,
[1:51:29] Speaker 1: it's like I've had you got an AM station and
[1:51:32] Speaker 1: FM station back to back, and then it's like an
[1:51:35] Speaker 1: AM station. Yeah, yeah, I was going I was going
[1:51:37] Speaker 1: up tomorrow's all caffinated, ready to go. And then you
[1:51:39] Speaker 1: get to the f M station.
[1:51:40] Speaker 2: Okay, now we're going to look at this history very seriously.
[1:51:47] Speaker 2: It was a call in, yeah, question yeah, kgv Oh
[1:51:51] Speaker 2: Actually it's a it's pretty it's a pretty.
[1:51:52] Speaker 1: Big known one. And they're screening the calls. They're screening
[1:51:59] Speaker 1: the calls. No, they come, they come sign guys like
[1:52:02] Speaker 1: what's the drunkest you've ever been?
[1:52:07] Speaker 2: Always gets your stories there, so that'd be good too.
[1:52:15] Speaker 2: So so anyway, this this call, this guy call hs in.
[1:52:18] Speaker 2: You know, it's really I'm telling this sort of you
[1:52:19] Speaker 2: know Cornado story and early American history in the Spanish,
[1:52:23] Speaker 2: you know, coming up from the south. And and he said, well, yeah,
[1:52:27] Speaker 2: so it's like, you know, it was like the the
[1:52:31] Speaker 2: Spanish did an end run around you know, North America
[1:52:34] Speaker 2: and around the British and North American history. And I said, no,
[1:52:37] Speaker 2: the Spanish wouldn't call it an end run. They'd call
[1:52:39] Speaker 2: it one right up the middle. It was one hundred
[1:52:45] Speaker 2: years earlier.
[1:52:47] Speaker 1: Well man, it's been great. Uh once once again, Peter
[1:52:50] Speaker 1: Stark new book, The Lost Cities of Ilonorte, Coronadle's Quest,
[1:52:55] Speaker 1: the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance. Peter,
[1:53:01] Speaker 1: thanks for coming on man, it was really fun. Steve
[1:53:04] Speaker 1: last you got one more in you? You got two more
[1:53:07] Speaker 1: in you? Poison arrow No no, no books? Oh you
[1:53:12] Speaker 1: do one? Yeah.
[1:53:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking, I'm you know, I'm gonna have to
[1:53:16] Speaker 2: pick your brain, which like you must have spirit book
[1:53:18] Speaker 2: projects lying around.
[1:53:20] Speaker 1: I got some, I got some handful, but at some
[1:53:22] Speaker 1: point I'm just gonna fish man.
[1:53:26] Speaker 2: But yeah, so I'm I'm thinking, you know, more along
[1:53:30] Speaker 2: these early exploration.
[1:53:32] Speaker 1: Uh.
[1:53:33] Speaker 2: And I you know, I wrote this book of Storia.
[1:53:34] Speaker 2: That's that's done really well. I'm still doing really well.
[1:53:37] Speaker 2: And this this book has some of the kind of
[1:53:39] Speaker 2: that rock and roll feeling, like this craziness the Historia has.
[1:53:43] Speaker 2: These two are very similar. And so I'm I'm I'm
[1:53:45] Speaker 2: kind of looking for something along those lines. And it's
[1:53:50] Speaker 2: probably you know, west towards the west, and I have
[1:53:54] Speaker 2: something in mind. I won't go into it exactly. But
[1:54:00] Speaker 2: another thing is a cannibalism. So I was a good seller.
[1:54:03] Speaker 2: Ye people like to read about cannibalism.
[1:54:06] Speaker 1: They do it stirs you up. I do. I'll give
[1:54:10] Speaker 1: you one hot tip and I had to warn you
[1:54:12] Speaker 1: though I gave the same David Grant, he was kicking
[1:54:15] Speaker 1: around his next book, and oh yeah, scare of that
[1:54:17] Speaker 1: guy hit. You know, he's that here's a hot tip
[1:54:20] Speaker 1: for you, okay, And I'd lay it out a book
[1:54:22] Speaker 1: for him. What was that? Maybe he's halfway done with it.
[1:54:26] Speaker 1: He acted like he was honestly interested. Was a book
[1:54:30] Speaker 1: about tell you no, you can't tell me? Well not
[1:54:32] Speaker 1: now I meet Phil's gotta turned the equipment off. Oh okay,
[1:54:36] Speaker 1: I took the world. I was telling him what his
[1:54:39] Speaker 1: next book ought to be. Yeah, okay, I'll tell you.
[1:54:41] Speaker 1: You know, I just I got a David Grand story.
[1:54:43] Speaker 1: I got a David Grand story.
[1:54:44] Speaker 2: So when I was researching that Young Washington book, so
[1:54:48] Speaker 2: that came out in twenty eighteen, so there's like twenty fifteen,
[1:54:51] Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, and you know, I always keep kind of
[1:54:53] Speaker 2: a file of possible book ideas. And I was researching
[1:54:59] Speaker 2: that and and uh, George's young wife, George Washington's young life, sorry,
[1:55:04] Speaker 2: and his older brother had been uh, you know, kind
[1:55:08] Speaker 2: of cut his teeth in the War of Jenkins Ear
[1:55:10] Speaker 2: as a young Royal Navy officer and War of Jenkins Ear.
[1:55:15] Speaker 2: That's pretty interesting. So I dove into the and then well,
[1:55:19] Speaker 2: and then there was this like crazy story growing out
[1:55:21] Speaker 2: of the War of Jenkins. Ear about this British navy
[1:55:25] Speaker 2: fleet that went around the coast of South Tip of
[1:55:28] Speaker 2: South America and shipwrecked on the western coast of South
[1:55:32] Speaker 2: America and ended up, you know, cannibalizing each other and
[1:55:37] Speaker 2: that ended up. And then I pitched it to my agent,
[1:55:40] Speaker 2: you know, you know, I was about to pitch it
[1:55:43] Speaker 2: to my agent, like this is kind of a wild story,
[1:55:46] Speaker 2: and then I have this my agent's voice as a stewart,
[1:55:49] Speaker 2: my agent's voice, No, that's about British. You want to
[1:55:53] Speaker 2: write about Americans. And so then it turns out then
[1:55:57] Speaker 2: you know it's the wager.
[1:55:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, slow him down.
[1:56:07] Speaker 2: Anyway, Well we didn't talk about poison arrows after, but
[1:56:10] Speaker 2: you know, warners hurt Sid's poison arrow that he said
[1:56:13] Speaker 2: not to touch these Opata native warriors and what's now Sonora,
[1:56:19] Speaker 2: Mexico had these arrows that were tipped with and with
[1:56:23] Speaker 2: the Spanish called called a year but dey la flecha,
[1:56:26] Speaker 2: you know, flee for the arrow that they dipped their
[1:56:30] Speaker 2: tips in. And the Spanish were terrified of it because
[1:56:34] Speaker 2: if it seems like if it hit you directly, you'd
[1:56:36] Speaker 2: like kind of fall over dead. But they had armor on,
[1:56:39] Speaker 2: so you know, they wouldn't really get hit much. But
[1:56:43] Speaker 2: it turns out if you just got a little nick
[1:56:45] Speaker 2: from that arrow, like one guy, his arm just started
[1:56:50] Speaker 2: deteriorating and falling off like a piece of well done
[1:56:53] Speaker 2: pot roast, and so it would it would deteriorate your body.
[1:56:57] Speaker 2: And the the the journals say that like, yeah, seventeen
[1:57:02] Speaker 2: of these guys Spaniards like they died from the poison.
[1:57:07] Speaker 2: Arrows were the most horrible stench and painful death. And
[1:57:12] Speaker 2: so this is the the flesh eating poison.
[1:57:15] Speaker 1: What do they think it was made out of? It?
[1:57:17] Speaker 2: Well, I've really looked into that. It's it's it's from
[1:57:19] Speaker 2: a you know, euphobia, it's a it's a plant. They're like,
[1:57:24] Speaker 2: it's so complicated, and I've asked like three different biochemists
[1:57:27] Speaker 2: about it. That there's so many different species that are
[1:57:31] Speaker 2: that are related, and a lot of them have have
[1:57:34] Speaker 2: toxins of various types in them, various combinations. But I'm
[1:57:38] Speaker 2: thinking that these arrows, they might have been there might
[1:57:43] Speaker 2: have been two different types of poison, one on the
[1:57:46] Speaker 2: arrow or more one that was a quick acting one
[1:57:49] Speaker 2: and that that got in your bloodstream and another one
[1:57:52] Speaker 2: that was a slow acting rot the flesh, you know, combination.
[1:57:57] Speaker 2: So it's like when the Spaniards came the Hope. But
[1:58:00] Speaker 2: I said, well, you know, let's check our pharma pharmaceutical
[1:58:04] Speaker 2: shelf here and see what we can and how we
[1:58:07] Speaker 2: can incur the most pain on these people. Yeah, it's
[1:58:11] Speaker 2: always it's wild. I mean, they're really sophisticated.
[1:58:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's cool because you don't think of you know,
[1:58:17] Speaker 1: you always think of the aerotoxins in Africa, South America.
[1:58:22] Speaker 2: You know, a lot of people don't think about aerotoxins.
[1:58:24] Speaker 2: I mean it's like a high desert plant or you know,
[1:58:26] Speaker 2: desert shrubs.
[1:58:27] Speaker 4: I was going to walk away from this conversation with
[1:58:30] Speaker 4: your larger point about Indian agency in the Southwest. Now
[1:58:35] Speaker 4: all I can think about is describing necrosis as a
[1:58:38] Speaker 4: well done pot roast.
[1:58:39] Speaker 1: So that's my Okay, Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
[1:58:47] Speaker 2: You know, a vivid image about this is this is
[1:58:50] Speaker 2: why the the colonial powers didn't establish a very strong
[1:58:55] Speaker 2: presence in the Southwest. But they were like being turned
[1:58:58] Speaker 2: into pot roads.
[1:59:00] Speaker 1: All right, boy, check it out. There's so many I mean,
[1:59:03] Speaker 1: obviously we didn't even scratch the surface. Man, Peter Stark's
[1:59:06] Speaker 1: The Lost Cities of Eleonorte, Coronidle's Quest, the Unconquered West,
[1:59:10] Speaker 1: and the birth of American Indian Resistance. Peter Stark, thanks
[1:59:14] Speaker 1: for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks Steve. Thanks. N's
[1:59:16] Speaker 1: really fun.

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