Spanish explorations and discoveries inland U.S.

Versión en español

Much of the southern United States had already been explored by Hispanics in the mid-16th century. However, colonization did not begin until the end of that century. Over the next two hundred years, exploration, colonization and also the defense of territories ranging from Florida to Alta California continued. A summary of what happened can be found in the following lines.

As we said earlier, only five people survived Pánfilo de Narváez’ expedition. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Captains Alonso del Castillo Maldonado and Andrés Dorantes de Carranza and the latter’s slave, Estebanico, were four of them. Led by Cabeza de Vaca, they traveled on foot through territories unknown to the Spanish in southern Texas and the southwestern United States, between 1528 and 1536. After their very long journey, they came across conquistador Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán in Nueva Galicia (western Mexico) thanks to whom they managed to reach the capital of the newly created Viceroyalty of New Spain. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca is an exceptional figure, a Spanish captain who survived as a slave, servant, healer and also as a friend of the natives. In 1542, he published the account of his odyssey in the book Naufragios y Comentarios [Shipwrecks and Commentary].

Hernando de Soto's expedition traveled through southeastern North America between 1539 and 1543. They left from Florida, where they met Juan Ortiz, the fifth survivor of Pánfilo de Narváez’ expedition, who served as interpreter and guide until his death in 1541. They crossed the present-day states of Georgia and the Carolinas, crossed the Appalachian Mountains and continued through Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, arriving in 1541 at the river of that name. De Soto is considered the first European to sight the course of the Mississippi, although Álvarez de Pineda had discovered the mouth of the river in 1519. They crossed it with some difficulty and continued through Arkansas and Louisiana, where they again came across the great river. Hernando de Soto died on its west bank in 1542.

Luis Moscoso de Alvarado assumed command and led the expedition to western Louisiana and southwest Texas, until it was decided to return to the Mississippi. They sailed downstream to the mouth and sailed along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the Panuco River, where there already was a Spanish presence. Although the route followed over the four years of the expedition is not known with complete accuracy, it is certain that they crossed at least nine of the current states of the Union.

A small group commanded by Friar Marcos de Niza kicked off the exploration of the Southwest with a reconnaissance made in 1539. It traveled through parts of Arizona and New Mexico. The group included Estebanico, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza’s slave who had accompanied Cabeza de Vaca.

Given the prospects of finding precious metals that Niza generated, first Viceroy of New Spain Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco signed capitulaciones with Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to organize a new, well-equipped expedition. It was composed of about 400 Spaniards and between 800 and 2000 friendly Indians, mainly Tlaxcalans. It took place from 1540 to 1542 and traveled through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

Several detachments explored places that were not along the main group’s route. Melchor Díaz led one of them. It crossed Arizona and reached the confluence of the Colorado and Yuma Rivers. There he managed to recover the supplies left buried for them by a flotilla under the command of Hernando de Alarcón sent by Viceroy Mendoza. Alarcón was the first European to sail upstream on the Colorado River. He was also the first to set foot in Alta California, which he did in 1540, before Cabrillo.

Another detachment, commanded by García López de Cárdenas, arrived at the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, being the first Europeans to see it, as Herbert Eugene Bolton points out in his classic work on Coronado.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, long before any other Old-World nation, the Spanish had travelled through virtually all of the southern United States and accumulated a great deal of knowledge about its geography and ethnography.

Coronado’s Expedition. Painting by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau.

New Mexico was the target of several small expeditions that traveled through this state, reaching Texas, Kansas and Arizona: those of Rodríguez and Chamuscado (1581), Antonio de Espejo (1582-1583), Gaspar Castaño de Sosa (1590) and that of Francisco Leyba de Bonilla and Antonio Gutiérrez de Umaña (1594).

In 1583, the Royal Decree authorizing the northward expansion of the Viceroyalty of New Spain had been published with the objectives of conquering, populating, finding riches and converting the natives to Christianity. It was not until 1595 that this enterprise was awarded to wealthy Zacatecas-born miner Juan de Oñate Salazar who, after signing capitulaciones with the viceroy, organized it at his own expense. They finally left in March 1598. Soldier and chronicler Gaspar de Villagrá says that 80 carts and several thousand heads of big and small cattle formed a large caravan including about 500 settlers, of which only 120 were men-at-arms, and an indeterminate number of Tlaxcalan allies.

On the left bank of the Rio Grande, Oñate established the capital of the new province, which he called San Juan de los Caballeros (since 2005, Ohkay Owingeh). He moved it to the right bank just a few months later, calling it San Gabriel. Governor Pedro de Peralta sited the capital for the third and definitive time by founding Santa Fe in 1610. It is currently the oldest state capital in the United States.

In 1601, Oñate organized an expedition from New Mexico to the Great Plains in search of Quivira, a mythical City of Gold that Vázquez de Coronado had already tried to find. The route followed is not well known, but it is believed that they reached Texas, Oklahoma and perhaps Kansas.

In 1604, another expedition set out, westward this time. It crossed Arizona and reached the Colorado River, following its course to its mouth at the Gulf of California. They were looking for a possible port through which they could receive supplies more easily than overland from Mexico.

Since the late seventeenth century, faced with the French advance from Canada southward following the course of the Mississippi, Spain organized several expeditions from Santa Fe to assess and stop that advance and also that of a tribe that had recently appeared on the Great Plains, the Comanches. In 1720, Pedro de Villasur’s expedition went as far as Nebraska, but it was massacred along the Platte River, in the geographic center of the United States, by Pawnee Indians equipped with French firearms.

The Gallic threat forced Spain to expand through southern Texas to block their way to the heart of New Spain. After a few failed attempts at the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth century, it was achieved in the second decade of the eighteenth century. In 1718, the San Antonio de Valero Mission, the San Antonio de Béxar Presidio and the town of San Antonio were founded along the San Antonio River. But it was not until 1721 that the expedition of the Marquis de Aguayo managed to reoccupy East Texas, leaving behind several missions and presidios. Los Adaes, the easternmost settlement, was the capital of the province between 1729 and 1770. The arrival of a few settlers and cattle were the beginning of the permanent Hispanic presence in that territory.

The term presidio was used for the posts and forts that defended the imprecise northern border of the viceroyalty, which included the southern United States. Soldiers garrisoned there were known as presidiales and also as soldados de cuera [leather-clad soldiers], or simply cueras, because of the long leather vest they wore to protect themselves from arrows and knives.

Patrol of Cuera (leather jacket) Soldiers.
Fragment of an unfinished painting by Miguel Morales Palacios.

We saw before that California, like Texas, had to be occupied and colonized to stop the advance of a foreign power. Alta California was far from other provinces of New Spain and access to it was difficult. By sea, the same currents that helped the Manila galleons made it difficult to navigate north from Mexican ports on the Pacific. By land, semideserts had to be crossed. But in 1769, the expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá and Friar Junípero Serra marked the beginning of the Spanish presence in that region, which developed with remarkable success.

Many more Spaniards traveled through other remote areas of the dominions of the Hispanic Monarchy. Missionaries such as Jesuit Eusebio Kino and Franciscans Francisco Garcés, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez or Silvestre Vélez de Escalante; French explorers in the service of Spain such as Atanasio de Mézières and Pedro Vial; and military men such as the Anzas (father and son), comancheros and ciboleros both, made great voyages through places in the current United States far from any European settlement. They crossed the Great Plains and reached Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Oregon or Montana.

During the eighteenth century, military engineers such as Francisco Álvarez Barreiro, Nicolás de Lafora, José de Urrutia, Juan José Pagazaurtundua and Miguel de Constanzó, or militias captain Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, generated an important series of maps. They were the first maps of much of North America.

Interior of the Tucson Presidio (Arizona). Mural by Bill Singleton.

Text extracted from The Hispanic Roots of the United States by courtesy of Asociación Cultural Héroes de Cavite.