Michener, James A. (11 page)

Of pearls and gold and turquoises and silver, there was not a sign The Spaniards had wandered nearly three thousand miles, squandering two fortunes, Mendoza's and Coronado's, and had found nothing.

Garcilaco noted how the leaders reacted to this final disappointment. Coronado was overcome, unable to comprehend it and powerless to issue new orders. One captain raged, then started to prepare his men for the long homeward journey. Melgosa looked at the supposed city of riches and showed his gapped teeth in a disgusted smile: 'I've seen pigsties in Toledo look better than that.'

It was Melgosa who issued the first order: 'Double the watch on El Turco,' and during the dreadful blazing days the slave who had been the agent of this disaster—but not its cause, for that lay within the cupidity of the captains—sat unconcerned in his chains, humming ancient chants used by his forebears when they knew that all was lost and death was at hand.

Garcilaco himself was anguished by the magnitude of the defeat, even though he had known it was coming, and he several times spoke with El Turco: 'Why did you deceive us?'

'You deceived yourselves.'

'But you lied, always you lied about the gold.'

i never put gold in your hearts. You put it there.'

The dark-skinned man laughed, that easy, ingratiating laugh which had so charmed and blinded the Spaniards: 'As a boy, I had a fine life, chasing buffalo. As a young man, I had two good wives, there by the northern rivers. When we were captured by the Zuni, the others were treated badly but I protected myself by talking quickly with the leaders in the pueblos. And with the Spaniards, I had my own horse.' He shook his chains, laughing at the rattling noise they made. Then he ridiculed his captors: 'The Spaniards were such fools. It was so easy for me.' And once more he became the insatiable plotter: 'You're an Indian like me. Help me to escape. I know a city to the north. Much gold.'

One night Captain Melgosa said to Garcilaco: 'Come, lad. Work to do,' and he took him into El Turco's tent, where they were joined by a huge butcher from Mexico, one Francisco Martin, who kept his hands behind his back.

'Turco,' Melgosa began, 'each word you've said has been a lie. You led us here to perish.' The Indian smiled. 'And yesterday you tried to persuade the Indians here to massacre us.' Still the great liar showed no remorse, so Melgosa flashed a sign, whereupon Martin brought forward his powerful hands, threw a looped rope about El Turco's neck, and with a twisting stick, drew the noose tighter and tighter until the Indian strangled.

With Martin's help, Garcilaco dug a grave into which the corpse of this infuriating man was thrown. Had he but once told the truth, he could have become a trusted guide. As it was, he deceived everybody, including himself.

CORONADO, HEAD BOWED AND GILDED ARMOR DISCARDED BECAUSE

of the sweltering heat, started his shameful retreat, unaware that history would record him as one of the greatest explorers. Under his guidance, Spanish troops had reached far lands: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas. His men had described a hundred Indian settlements, worked with and fought with a score of different tribes, and identified the difficulties to be faced by later settlers. But because he did not find treasure, he was judged a failure.

One member of the expedition did find success, although of a temporary nature. One morning a messenger posted north from Mexico with an exciting letter drafted by the emperor, Carlos Quinto, in Madrid:

Captain-General Coronado. Greetings and God's Blessing You have in your command a Captain of Cavalry, Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas of the noble family of that name. Inform the Captain that his brother in Spain who inherited the noble title and all wealth and properties pertaining to it has unfortunately died. Said Captain Cardenas is to return by fastest route to Madrid, where he will be invested with the title now belonging to him and be handed the substantial properties to which he is entitled. By order of His Majesty' the King.

When Infantry-Captain Melgosa heard this news he grinned, spat through his gapped teeth, and told Garcilaco: 'See! It always happens this way. It's cavalry officers who get messages from the emperor.' Then he burst into gusts of laughter, clapping Cardenas on the back: 'Infuriating! The only man in the whole army who gets any gold is this damned cavalry officer.' AncT they got drunk on wine Melgosa had saved in expectation of celebrating the capture of Quivira's gold.

How ironic it seemed to Garcilaco that of all who set forth on this glorious expedition, the only one who profited when it ended in disaster was the badly flawed Cardenas. The rest earned only bitterness.

But the boy need not have envied the apparent good fortune of Cardenas, for although the army-master was awarded both the title and fortune when he reached Spain, he was then accused of having burned Indians alive. He was in and out of jail for seven years, fined

eight-hundred gold ducats and sentenced to serve the king without pay for thirty-three months at the dismal post of Oran in North Africa. But because the king liked him, this was reduced to two hundred ducats and twelve months' service at the kindlier post of Velez Malaga, where he prepared for further adventures in new lands.

Coronado's heroic aspirations ended in confusion, for when he issued his reluctant order 'March south!' some sixty of his braver underlings announced that they intended to remain permanently among the pueblos of what would become New Mexico. Coronado flew into a rage to think that they were willing to chance a new life in a new land while he had the doleful task of returning to Mexico to report his failure.

One of the would-be settlers wrote some years later: 'He said we had to go back with him, and he threatened to have us hanged if we refused or said anything more about it.' So the settlement which could have justified the expedition was aborted.

However, three other members of a much different type also asked to remain behind, and they posed a more difficult problem. They were Franciscan friars—Fray Padilla, an ordained priest, and two who had taken only minor orders. In robes already tattered, they came before Coronado to say: 'We will stay here.'

'Why?' the general asked, almost pleading with them to drop their foolishness, and they said: 'Because we must bring Jesus into pagan hearts.'

Officers, common soldiers, even some of the Mexican Indians tried to dissuade them from what appeared to be certain martyrdom, but the advisers were powerless, for God had whispered to the three, and finally Coronado had to give them permission to remain.

One of the minor friars set up his mission near Cibola, while the other sought to convert the local Indians along the Rio Pecos, and they marched off to their extraordinary duties.

As for Fray Padilla, Garcilaco would remember always that final morning when the friar started his long walk back to Quivira, whose Indians he dreamed of bringing into the Holy Faith. He did not go alone or lacking goods, for when Coronado accepted the fact that the friar could not be dissuaded, he provided him with so many people and so much goods that Padilla looked as if he were heading a minor expedition: a Portuguese soldier, two Indian oblate brothers who had taken no orders but whose lives were dedicated to religious service, a mestizo workman, a black translator, a train of mules well laden, a horse, a substantial flock of sheep,

a full set of instruments for the Mass, and the six young Quivira Indians who had guided Coronado back from that settlement.

It was a fumbling attempt to Christianize a vast new land, and when Garcilaco, still avid to learn what honor was, watched the little procession depart, he asked himself: 'Why would men volunteer for such a fatal assignment?' But as the words hung in the air he realized that honor included not only physical and moral courage but also a daring commitment to central beliefs, and for a moment he wished that he might one day march in the footsteps of that friar.

As Padilla moved off toward sure death he grew smaller and smaller in the eyes of Garcilaco, but larger and larger in the eyes of God.

Years later a Franciscan gathered reports from all who had known the friar and wrote: The Portuguese soldier and the two oblate brothers were traveling with Fray Padilla one day when hostile Indians attacked. Insisting that his friends escape with the only horse, he knelt in prayer and was transfixed by arrows.'

Imperial Spain was neither generous nor understanding with her unsuccessful conquistadores. When Coronado returned with no gold, he was charged with numerous malfeasances and crimes. The great explorer was for many years abused by officials dispatched from Spain with portfolios of charges made by his suspicious king. When Coronado's case ground to a halt, Viceroy Mendoza was similarly charged and harassed. Captain Melgosa received nothing for his many acts of heroism, and the mestizo Garcilaco was treated worst of all.

Even though of the meanest birth, he had striven throughout this long and dangerous expedition to conduct himself according to his understanding of honor. He had been first to sight the deep canyon, but he did not shout: 'See what I have found!' He had saved his commander's life when the stones fell, but he did not cry: 'How brave I am!' And he had fought for two days on the roof, an incident whose aftermath he tried to forgive, because he felt that no man of honor would kill so wantonly.

But at the end of his journey he was dismissed with no pay, no job and no honors, for he was judged to be 'merely another Indian.'

He was mustered out in 1 542, and lacking funds with which to buy enough animals to work the profitable Vera Cruz-Mexico City route, he had to be content with that portion of El Camino Real, the Royal Road, which ran from Guadalajara to Culiacan, with an occasional side trip delivering mining gear to the new silver

eo

- mines at Zacatecas. Occasionally he would come upon a cargo destined for Mexico City, and one day in 1558, overworked and

• disheartened, he was engaged on such a trip when he was accosted

• on the streets of the capital by a tonsured monk who asked: 'Are you the Garcilaco who once knew Fray Marcos?' When he nod-

: ded, the monk said: 'You must come with me/ and he led the way to a small Franciscan monastery, where a very old cleric came i unsteadily forward to say in a weak voice: 'My son, why have you not come to me for help?'

It was Fray Marcos, and in succeeding days this frail old man spoke often with Garcilaco, reviewing the evil things that had happened to him and complaining of how his enemies never allowed the world to forget that it had been his misleading information which had tricked Coronado's army into its disasters. 'Son, it's impossible to determine what is truth and what falsehood. I cannot now remember whether I saw the Seven Cities in reality or in a dream . . . but that's no matter, for I did see them.'

Garcilaco was now a grown man of thirty-three, who worked hard and to whom a crust of bread was either firmly in hand or was not, and he was not disposed to tolerate philosophical niceties: 'You were never on the hill. And if you had been, you couldn't have seen the Cities. Not from where we were.'

'The hill has nothing to do with it. You do not judge a man by whether he climbed a hill or not. I saw the Cities. When I preach about the City of God that awaits us in its glory, do I climb some hill to see it? No, it exists because God wants it to exist. And the Seven Cities of Cibola exist in the same way. They will be found one day because men like Esteban and me will always seek them.'

At this mention of the dancing black man, Marcos fell to weeping, and after some moments, said softly: i was not generous with him, Garcilaco. I deplored his way with women. But in the long view of history, what are a few women, more or less?'

This rhetorical question brought a most unexpected consequence. 'Garcilaco, my son, I have been most eager to find you. I sent that friar to seek you out. When the last viceroy took his j Spanish soldiers home with him, one of them left behind a daughter. Ten years old . . . we could find no mother.' He fell to coughing, then said: 'I took her in. She works in our kitchen . . . Maria Victoria. But she's getting old enough now that people are beginning to talk, to say ugly things about me—the usual charges you heard when you were her age.' He brought his hands together under his chin and stared at his son: 'It's time that girl found a husband.'

He led the way into the kitchen, where Maria Victoria, a gold-

en-skinned mestizo girl of fifteen, proved so attractive that Gar cilaco asked in honest bewilderment: 'Why would she be inter ested in me?' and Marcos said: 'Because I've been telling her al these years how brave you were in the north, how you provec yourself to be a man of honor.'

He grasped Maria Victoria's right hand and placed it in Gar cilaco's: i give you my daughter.' He kissed them both, then saidl 'My children, in this life honor is everything. It is the soul of Spain. Some cabelleros have it, most do not. You Indians can earn it too, and if you do, it adorns life.' Tears came to his eyes as he added: 'I've always tried to preserve my honor, and have done nothing of which I am ashamed.'

He himself conducted the wedding ceremony, and shortly thereafter, died. For some years chroniclers, when summarizing his life, belabored the infamous role he had played in lying about Cibola, but now his scandals have been forgiven and forgotten.

Maria Victoria and Garcilaco did not forget him, and for good reason. Fray Marcos had been a Franciscan pledged to poverty, but as a prudent man he had always managed to sequester his share of the gold coins which passed his way in either governmental or religious activity. 'It wasn't really stealing, children,' he assured them two days before he died. 'A man of honor never steals, but he can put a few coins aside.'

When Garcilaco asked: 'Where's the gold hidden?' Marcos merely smiled, but some days after the friar's funeral Maria took her husband to where she used to sleep, and hidden in a wall behind her cot he found a substantial hoard. 'Fray Marcos knew that the father-provincial liked to make surprise visits,' she whispered, 'to make sure his friars kept obedient to their vows of poverty. Father could always guess when the old inspector was coming, and then he gave me his gold to hide.'

The windfall enabled the newlyweds to purchase land, build a house, hire Indians to drive the family mules down to Vera Cruz, and buy a black tutor from Cuba to educate them. Many years later, when it became customary for well-to-do mestizos to take surnames, the viceroy bestowed Garza upon them, and it became a tradition in the family that their progenitor had been a Spanish sailor of that name.

. . . TASK FORCE

At our organizing meeting in January we had agreed that our

[young assistants would assume responsibility for inviting to each

of our formal session's some respected scholar who would address

us for about forty minutes on whatever aspect of Texas history we

[might be concentrating upon at that time. Their first offering

provided a lucky coincidence.

In conformance with the governor's desire that we hold our meetings in various cities across the state so as to attract maximum attention to our work, our February meeting, which would emphasize Hispanic factors in Texas history, was to be held in Corpus Chnsti, that beautiful, civilized town on the Gulf. It was appropriate that we meet there, because Corpus was already more than i sixty-percent Hispanic, with every indication that the percentage would increase.

When I started to make plans as to how we would get there, 11 learned how convenient it was to work with really rich Texans, ; for Rusk had three airplanes to whisk him to and from his oil and banking ventures, while Quimper had two for his distant ranches. Since each had a Lear Jet for longer distances and a King Air for shorter, we had our choice, and in this time-saving way we covered much of Texas, for as Quimper told us: 'When you have interests in a nation as big as Texas, stands to reason you got to have planes.'

When we landed at the airport in Corpus, we were met by Dr. Placido Navarro Padilla, an elderly Mexican scholar from the cathedral city of Saltillo, which lay two hundred and sixty miles south of the Rio Grande. During the hectic decade 1824-1833, Saltillo had served as the capital of Coahuila-y-Tejas, so that a natural affinity existed between it and Austin, our present capital.

He was a dapper man, with neatly trimmed gray mustache and silver-rimmed eyeglasses, and had the easy grace which marks so many Spanish scholars. He could disarm those with whom he argued by flashing a congenial smile and an apologetic bow of his head, but in debate he could be fierce. When our staff member from SMU introduced him, she explained: 'Dr. Padilla has specialized in Mexican-Texan relations . . .'

'Excuse me,' the doctor interrupted in excellent English. 'My name is Navarro.'

'But it says in our report,' Ransom Rusk countered, 'that your name is Padilla.'

dreamer who in your Texas vernacular "put his money where hij mouth was," he risked all and lost all, but in doing so, gained immortality. The history of Texas is filled with his kind, the great gamblers, the men whose eyes were fixed beyond the horizon. Like him they try, they fail, but do not complain. I would like to fail the way Francisco Vasquez de Coronado failed.'

After recommending that we not drop these noble Spaniards from our curriculum, he came to the heart of his challenging talk, which I will abbreviate, using only his words:

'I beg you, as you work at laying the foundations of historical education in Texas, not to fall prey to The Black Legend. This is a historical aberration promulgated by devout Dutch and English Protestants in the sixteenth century. It is a distortion of history, but it has taken root, I am sorry to say, in many quarters of American historical writing. Its main tenets are clearly defined and easily spotted. Do please try to avoid their errors.'

'What are they?' Quimper asked, and Navarro gave a concise summary.

'The Black Legend claims that everything bad which happened in Spanish history was due to the Spanish Catholic church. The phrase seems to have originated from the black cloth worn by Phillip II and his priests. It claims that insidious popes from Rome dominated Spanish civil government. That priests tyrannized Spanish society. That the Inquisition ran rampant through Spanish society. That Catholic domination caused the end of Spanish culture and inhibited Spanish learning. That priestly domination caused the weakening and decline of Spanish power, both at home and in the colonies.'

In our meetings Ransom Rusk always struggled for clarification of ideas, and now, even though he had a strong bias against Mexicans, he labored to understand the point Navarro was trying to make: 'I was taught in college that Spain was backward because of its religion. Where's the error?'

For the moment, Dr. Navarro ignored this interruption, for he wished to nail down an important point: 'So long as The Black Legend muddied only theological waters it could be tolerated, but when it began to influence international relations, it became a menace, for then it claimed that Catholicism, under the baleful guidance of its black-robed priests, sought to undermine and destroy Protestant governments as well as Protestant churches.'

Tve always believed that,' Rusk said, whereupon Navarro looked at him with a forgiving smile: i almost believed it, too, when I was a student at Harvard, because that was all they taught. So you can be forgiven, Mr. Rusk.'

'Thank you. Now I'd certainly like to hear your whitewash of : the situation.'

'That is what 1 am noted for in Mexican intellectual circles. Whitewashing The Black Legend.'

He proceeded with an insightful analysis of the baleful influences of The Black Legend: 'It obstructed serious American study of Spain's influence because it offered such a ready-made explanation for anything that went wrong. Did Spanish power in Europe ■and the New World wane? "See 7 The Black Legend was right!" Did Spain mismanage her colonies in America, much as England mismanaged hers? "The malignant influence of the Catholic church!" Did things go contrary to the way Protestants wanted? "Blame it on The Black Legend "

Quimper interrupted: 'But Spam did decline. It did fall behind. We all know that.'

Navarro surprised me by agreeing heartily with what Lorenzo had said: 'Of course Spain declined. So has France declined And certainly England has. But they all declined for the same reasons that the United States will one day decline. The inevitable movement of history, the inescapable consequences of change. Not because either England or Spam was nefarious, or unusually cruel, or blinded by religion.'

This was too much for Rusk's stalwart Baptist heart: 'But damn it all, your Inquisition did burn people!' to which Navarro replied without even pausing for breath: Let us say about the same number that English Protestants hanged or burned for being witches. And some fanatics argue that your killings were more reprehensible because they came so late, after a social conscience had been formed.' I seemed to remember that the last auto-da-fe in Mexico occurred in 1815, when the great revolutionary leader Father Jose Maria Morelos was condemned by the Inquisition and shot by soldiers. But Navarro's obvious skill at polemics so intimidated me that I remained silent.

But now he changed tactics, becoming even eager to acknowledge each weakness of Spain or her church, and he even conceded that The Black Legend might have contributed some good in that it had driven Spanish historians to a more careful analysis of their culture in their determination to defend it In the end we respected him for his unrelenting defense of things Spanish.

'You must never let prejudice blind you to the fact that in the years when Spain first explored and took possession of Texas, it was the foremost empire on earth, excelling even China. It dominated the continent of Europe, much of the Americas, trade and the exchange of ideas. It was majestic in its power and glorious in its

culture. It controlled far more completely then than either the United States or Russia does today. Its influence permeated what would become the future Texas, and to teach students otherwise would be to turn one's back upon the spiritual history of Texas.'

}ust as I began to fear that he was trying to make too strong a case for Spanish and Catholic influence, he broke into a wide, conciliator} smile: 'You must remember one fundamental fact about your great state of Texas. If we date its beginning in 1519 with the Pineda exploration, or 1528 with the marooning of Cabeza de Vaca on Galveston Island, it was about two hundred and fifty years before the first Protestant stepped foot on Texas soil. Of course, Mr. Rusk, when the rascal finally appeared his boots made a deep impression.'

He then turned to one of the most difficult problems: The glory and the power! You simply must believe that when Coronado ventured into what is now the Texas Panhandle in 1540 he was impelled by two forces of precisely equal importance, spiritual desire to spread Christianity and temporal hunger for gold and the power it would bring. I have read a hundred accounts of those stirring days, and I have done everything possible to discount the bombast and the speeches made for public consumption, but in the end I stand convinced that men like Coronado really did believe they were doing God's work when they proposed to subdue heathen lands in northern New Spain. I can cite a score of instances in which the conquistadores placed the rights of the church above those of the state, and they did so because they saw themselves first as God's servants, discharging His commands. Gold and power the conquistadores did not find in Texas, but they did find human hearts into which they could instill the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. I have always felt that Texas started as a God-fearing state and that from the first moment it was Christian.'

In a more subdued tone he proceeded to discuss the matter of Spanish power in Texas, and his analyses were refreshingly sophisticated: 'Texas was so far from Mexico City and so infinitely far from Madrid that power was never transmitted effectively. To tell the truth, when I study those two hundred and fifty years of rather futile Spanish dominance I find myself wondering: Why did not Spain send fifty men like Escandon to settle Texas? They'd have altered the entire picture.'

'Who was Escandon?' Quimper asked, and Navarro replied: 'Jose de Escandon? The wisest and perhaps the best man Spain ever sent to the Rio Grande. Arrived in 1747. Please teach your children about him.' He broke into a disarming chuckle. 'Mr.

Rusk, with five hundred like Escandon we might have worked our way clear to the Canadian border. We came this close'—and he pinched two fingers together—'to making you speak Spanish.'

The scholarly chuckle turned into a laugh. 'But history and the moral will power of commanders determine outcomes. It was destined, perhaps from the start, that Texas would not be adequately settled by the Spaniards. The men like Escandon were never forthcoming. They could not be found . . . they had no one in Madrid pressing their cause. Spain edged up to the immortal challenge, then turned aside.'

Now our speaker became a true professor: 'I trust that in any published materials for school or college you will, out of respect for your heritage, use proper Spanish spelling. Avoid rude barbarisms like Mexico City. It's La Ciudad de Mexico. It's not the Rio Grande, it's El Rio Bravo del Norte. And because in Mexican Spanish / and x are so often interchangeable, please differentiate between Bexar, the original name for what you now call San Antonio, and Bejar, its later name. Same with Texas, then Tejas. And do keep the accents.'

Rusk and Quimper looked aghast at this pedantry and I was afraid they were going to protest, but Professor Garza saved the day: 'Of course, in our scholarly publications we are meticulous in respecting Spanish usage. I'm especially demanding of my students. But in general writing for our newspapers and schools, custom requires Mexico City, the Rio Grande and Bexar. Up here, most accents have vanished.'

'Ah! But I notice from your nameplate that you keep Efrain.'

Garza smiled and said: 'I do that to please my father,' whereupon Navarro asked with an almost childish sweetness: 'Could you not do the same with La Ciudad de Mexico? To honor those of Spanish heritage?' and Garza said: 'Texas honors its Spanish heritage in a thousand ways.'

Navarro bowed politely, then addressed us as a committee: 'When you draft your recommendations you are not required to alter a single item in the American portion of your history. It is sacred. All national histories are. But in the long run, I am convinced that the Spanish heritage of Texas will manifest itself in powerful ways. It will produce results you and I cannot envisage, perhaps a whole new civilization here along the Rio Grande.'