If you want to find out who is really haunting the lands in North America. Look no farther than the millions of Indigenous people that perished at the hands of explorers. They are in your yard. They’re in your house. There are long Creek beds. They are in the parks our children play. The original. North Americans. Are the ghosts. Of our land.
The Spanish hit the jackpot when they discovered Mexico. The Indians there …like the Aztecs, had gold and silver, jewels etc. The Spaniards headed North anticipating just such wealth.
In 1528 the Spanish government sent a group of men, on a ship to explore Florida. Two of these men were Cabeza de Vaca and Este’ban, a slave. Unfortunately, they experienced a shipwreck off the coast of Galveston, were captured by Indians and held hostage for six years, before managing to escape. They then wandered around the Southwest for two years before stumbling upon a small group of Spanish soldiers. While reuniting with the Spaniards, the survivors mentioned hearing the Indians tell of a city made of gold, called Cibola, in the yet to be charted land to the North. So the Spaniards sent Este’ban back with a group of soldiers. When they arrived at Cibola, Estéban decided to approach the city wearing bells and carrying a rattle in an attempt to appear a Shaman like. His prior Indian captors had treated him well because they thought he was a shaman.
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Apparently all Indians aren’t the same, because they killed him when he entered the city.
This disturbed the soldiers who were watching and waiting from behind some bushes. They decided to go back to Mexico and get a bigger army. Before leaving, though, they did get a good look at the city, from a distance, and yes, in fact, that in fact the houses did appear to shine like gold in the sun.
After five long months of arduous travel, during which time starvation was constantly imminent, the group was back in Mexico.
In 1540 Francisco Coronado led an expedition again to find this city of Cibola. His was a costly expedition. Hundreds of Indian guides, slaves, soldiers, horses, cattle, sheep and much more, joined the journey. Coronado did try to enter the city in peace but he was Spanish, and they we not particularly great communicators, so battles ensued and the city was over taken. They found pueblos and the Zuni that lived in them, but no gold, or silver for that matter. He did discover why the city acquired the name “The City of Gold.” As he rode away from the destroyed city the sun was waning in the evening sky. It cast a golden hue on the golden sand of the desert.
A group of Indians noticed Coronado’s frustration and told him not to worry, because if he traveled about 500 miles North, the center of Kansas today, he would find a town, Quivira, so full of wealth that gold bells hung on the trees. So, off went Coronado and his hundreds of traveling companions only to find Quivira an ordinary Indian village at which point the explorers returned to Mexico.
Coronado who was in a bad mood the whole trip and later his traveling companions accused him of gambling, misappropriating funds, and “great cruelty to natives.” He was tried, and the charges dismissed. The Spanish government did, though, remove him from his position as governor.
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