[
40e]
till in May, 1536, they drew near the
Pacific Ocean at
the village of
San Miguel in
Sonora.
From that place they were escorted by Spanish soldiers to
Compostella; and all the way to the city of
Mexico, they were entertained as public guests.
In 1530 an Indian slave had told wonders of the seven cities of
Cibola, the Land of Buffaloes, that lay at the north between the oceans and beyond the desert, and abounded in
silver and
gold.
The rumor had stimulated Nuño
de Guzman, when president of New Spain, to advance colonization as far as
Compostella and Guadalaxara, but the
Indian story teller died;
Guzman was superseded; and the seven rich cities remained hid.
To the government of New Galicia,
Antonio de Mendoza, the new viceroy, had named
Francisco Vasquez Coronado.
On the arrival of the four pioneers,
he hastened to Culiacan, taking with him Estevanico and Franciscan friars, one of whom was
Marcus de Niza, and on the seventh of March, 1539, he de-
spatched them under special instructions from
Mendoza to find
Cibola.
The negro, having rapidly hurried on before the party, provoked the natives by insolent demands, and was killed.
On the twentysecond of the following September,
Niza was again at
Mexico, where he boasted that he had been as far as
Cibola, though he had not dared to enter within its walls; that, with its terraced stone houses of many stories, it was larger and richer than
Mexico; that his Indian guides gave him accounts of still more opulent towns.
The priests promulgated in their sermons his dazzling report; the Spaniards in New Spain, trusting implicitly in its truth, burned to subdue the vaunted provinces; the wise and prudent
Coronado,