Well, the family is gathering around the Thanksgiving dinner feast and often the story of the first 'Thanksgiving in the "New World" comes up. Here is a true story to tell while enjoying Thanksgiving and thinking about the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock eating Turkey with the natives in 1620. William Bradford getting off the Mayflower as the first arrivals in a New World in what is now the adjacent 48 states. This is what our children are taught in school. Hold your horses, amigo! There was an earlier visit to my state of Arizona and four other western states to the New World 100 years before the Pilgrims were even born.
Pilgrims in 1620 were not even born when Coronado explored 5 interor States in 1540
Yes, it was a momentous occasion in Massachusetts. However, I hate to burst your bubble. The Spanish explorers led by Francisco Coronado were in Arizona in 1540, 80 years earlier. Coronado let a mighty expedition on the Coronado Trail from Arizona to what is now Kansas. The Pilgrims were not even born yet, let alone boarding the Mayflower. The Pilgrims never left Massachusetts and barely in a wooded forest region had a enough to eat. The 1,000 men in the Coronado Expedition traveled mightily through the interior of the now United States through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas and then back again to their colonial headquarters in Sonora. They had many days of Thanksgiving and set up missions throughout the great desert southwest.
Per the ArizonaExperience.org, on the Coronado Expedition, "Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led an expedition through Arizona in 1540 in search of transportable riches, rumored to be in the Seven Cities of Cibola. His trek through the area that today forms Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas began over 500 years ago.
Before any significant European settlements appeared on the Atlantic Coast of North America, men in Coronado’s expedition were seeing the Grand Canyon and gazing at pueblo villages built by the Hopi and Zuni Indians. A Spanish nobleman from Salamanca, Spain, Coronado went to the Spanish colony of Mexico (then New Spain) in 1535, at the age of 25, as an assistant to New Spain’s first viceroy, Andiono de Mendoza. By 1538 he had married the daughter of a wealthy colonial treasurer and become the governor of the province of New Galicia....
Coronado Expedition...The Journey Begins in 1540
Coronado was appointed leader of a major expedition to conquer the area to the north of New Spain in January, 1540, upon the return of Fray Marcos de Niza and his reports of cities of vast wealth. The ambitious Conquistador quickly amassed soldiers and supplies. The quest was funded largely by Viceroy Mendoza and Coronado's wife. Several others invested their fortunes, hoping for a return of jewels and precious metal. By February, 1540, a thousand men and hundreds of horses, mules, cattle, sheep gathered at Compostela, west of Mexico City near the Pacific Coast, in preparation for the journey north. The expedition party included approximately 240 mounted soldiers, 60 additional foot soldiers, and about 800 Indians and slaves. Fray de Niza traveled as a guide. Two ships, commanded by Hernando de Alarcón, would carry the bulk of supplies up the Guadalupe River. An advance guard of 100 men set out from Culiacán on April 22, 1540 following de Niza's route north through Sinaloa and Sonora.
The party traveled to the Spanish outpost of Corazones, located near present day Ures, Sonora on the river now known as the Rio Sonora. Coronado established a large camp and moved north up the river. The expedition is probably responsible for the name place name "Sonora." The explorers used the name ”Señora” for the part of a river just upstream from Corazones. Some scholars believe that this word was an early version of “Sonora.” The army marched a few days from the “Señora Valley” to a north flowing stream, believed to be the present-day San Pedro River. After a few days on the river, they camped at the base of some mountains at a ruin then known as Chichiticale. This ruin is an American mystery! No archaeologists have found its location, but Coronado’s travel logs mention it extensively. It is thought to be a pueblo built by an ancient American Indian tribe and abandoned by 1400. It is believed to be about thirty miles west of the present town of Safford on the edge of the Apache Reservation. The search for the ruin continues today. From Chichiticale, it is likely that Coronado took an advance guard north to the pine forests of the White Mountains. He then headed northeast to the Zuni pueblo of Hawikuh, located approximately five miles east of the modern day border between Arizona and New Mexico near Zuni Pueblo. The grand pueblo was supposedly one of seven Zuni pueblos in the area."
Yes, all of this occured before, before the Pilgrims were even born.
Explore the Coronado Trail in Arizona
Explore the
Coronado Trail" in Arizona along route 191 in Safford Arizona, about 100 miles east of Phoenix.
When you come to visit Arizona and fall in love with the beauty of the great desert southwest, let me help you buy a home and visit me at Arizona Homes and Land.
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