The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 861: The Defeat of Coronado

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with author Peter Stark. Topics discussed: Peter's brand new book, The Lost Cities of El Norte: Coronado's Quest, the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance; the psychological story of the Coronado Expedition; Coronado's traumatic brain injury; reconnaissance party explorations and first contact with tribes; a foundational moment for indigenous resistance; Coronado's failure; and more.  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Join today by Peter Stark, rejoined by Peter Stark. Author, adventure, here to talk about the insane, insane, almost hallucinogenic. Crazy. Crazy.

Coronado expedition. Yeah. A hallucinogenic quality to the journey was like some of the first conquistadors to push their way up into the American Great Plains, the Texas panhandle, and just the wild things, the wild, violent defeat that befell the Coronado. And part of the reason why it was so wild and crazy and hallucinatory is they had no idea of what was up there. No. Zero. Zero. They called it El Norte Mysterioso, the mysterious north. Yeah. And if you look at the maps from that era, you go north of a little bit north of where Mexico City is now. And it's just, it's literally just blank spaces. And then they kind of sort of shove China in over there on the, on the left side. China's right about somewhere off. And they're thinking that California is some island.

And they say, well, we're thinking like China and greater India are near the island of California. And so these guys are like, you know, talking about going into the unknown. They are utterly clueless. And they have a huge expedition and a huge mission. Yeah. We're going to tell that whole story. Peter's new book. The Lost Cities of El Norte, Coronado's Quest, the Unconquered West, and the birth of

American Indian resistance. And Peter was on before. I'm trying to remember, like, you were on with your, when you, I think it was Young Washington when we did. And we had a, we had a really fun, wide-ranging conversation. It was about my book, Young Washington was about young George Washington in his 20s when he was a real mess up in the, in the wilderness of the Ohio Valley and, you know, accidentally set off the French and Indian War and, you know, stuff like that.

I want to touch on that for a minute. Um, because there's a thing in there that I don't think was relevant at the time. Okay. We talked before the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Oh. We talked before that, right? Yes. I want to tell you a funny story about that.

Um, it has to do with Washington. Okay. But first I want to tell you this, this is a personal thing. I'm not going to embarrass you, but this is a personal story. You can embarrass me all you want. And I've got plenty of counter ammunition, too. Yeah. You do.

I'm not even to make it. mentioned this team before, but like a thing, like we, we were buddies way, like, we were friends long before I had kids. Yeah. So my old was, long before you had a TV show, long before you had, I mean, you were building closets the last I remember. Yeah, working tree, yeah, doing tree work. And doing tree work. Yeah. Stalling closet shelving. This is in in the late 90s, I think. Yep, late 90s. We were buddies. Yeah. You had hunting, hunting. Yeah. So my oldest kid is about turned 16. So way before that, but you had young kids. Like you had young, young kids. And The thing that was so funny, I always wanted to tell you this.

Maybe I have told you this. You'd, like, drop in. You know, we'd be hanging out, different writers and stuff be hanging out. And you'd, like, drop in for a beer. Right? You'd drop in for a beer. And we'd be in for, like, a bunch of beers. But you'd drop in for a beer and, like, race home.

And I always thought, that guy's a lunatic. Oh, tell me about it, dude. Only a little later. Yeah. I was like, well, what in the world would you go home now? It's just five o'clock. Totally unclear to me, Dan. It's like, this guy's got his schedule all whacked out.

You know, you'd be like, got to run. Well, the other one, I used to be like, that dude's got his priorities crooked. On the other one, I don't know if we talked about this on the last time we were here, but, you know, we had this classic crazy hunt on the Missouri breaks. It was the second time you went down there. The first time we went down with Sandy Frazier, and then the next year we went with Fred Hayfley. And remember that just like this incredible Arctic front moved in.

Yeah. And I just remember the first night, the campfire flames were like flat on the ground. You know, there was no heat. They were just flat. And it was a big, like a big campfire. And, you know, that's kind of my standard for campfires that don't work. And then the next day, you know, there was already ice floating in the river that, that first day that we were paddling. and then we camped with a flattened campfire.

And then the next day, or might have been the day after that, we started paddling again and the river was just clogged with ice. I mean, you know, like, you know, like you had to dig your way through it. And I grew up on a frozen lake in Wisconsin. So I've got a lot of experience on what to do and not to do on ice because I've done a lot of things you don't do and, you know, figured it out. And so we were you and, and, and, uh, And Matt were in one canoe and Fred and I were in another canoe.

And we started paddling across and we were planning on going down river, that whole lower stretch of the Missouri, you know, that really remote stretch. It's like once you're in, you're in. And Fred and I got part way out in the river and we're like digging through these ice flows. And I was saying, you know, if we tip over here, we're just dead. I mean, there's like, there's not even a question about it. No, you can't move through it. You can't move through it. You couldn't climb onto it.

couldn't swim through it. And the water is so cold. I mean, I guess you could climb into a swamp canoe, but that would last not very long. And you're not getting that canoe to shore. And so, and so I said to Fred, you know, I don't know about this. This feels really, you know, sketchy to me. And Fred turns back, he's in the box. He says, yeah, we're daddy's now. We shouldn't be doing this stuff. Yeah. Meanwhile, back then, I'm like, I don't know. So if you die, who cares? And then we deliver this to the Ranilla brothers. And they say, oh, we do this all the time. Like on the matter of sand.

You know, another one where it's like you were pre-children, pre-spouses. So, yeah, you know, the standards change. What I wanted to tell you about, I want to dive into Cornell. Because like I said, it's just the most fascinating story. But I found you, so a writer named Selena Zito wrote a book called Bucon, Butler. Oh, she's like very quick, because she's from Pennsylvania. Okay. Okay. Um, she's a columnist and writer. Uh, and after the assassination attempt, she did like a very quick turn book on the assassination attempt called Butler. I mean, it's her backyard, you know. I was talking her on the phone and she was saying, you know, that's the second president to be shot there. I hadn't heard this. Well, I'm like, well, who else? Oh. Oh. What? When Washington, yeah, during the, like, in the lead up to the French and Indian War, like,

General Washington was shot there. Yes, yes, exactly. One of the, one the, it was not a general. He was, no, but he was, he was like a lower. Yeah, he was like a lower ranking English officer sent on a mission and they got in some dispute. No, he wasn't an English officer. He wanted to be a British officer. They wouldn't let him into the British officer rings.

So he was a Virginia, Colonial. Volusia officer. And that was a cause of resentment for the next, I mean, we're still living with it today. And one of the, you tell that story, but it's just funny that like, you know, I'm like messing up every detail. It was funny when she said that to me, like, he was the second one, you know, meaning that it was in that vicinity. Well, and, and I think there, you know, there were several times when he was really shot at. And one was, you know, during the, you know, Braddock's defeat when, you know, the British column under Braddock, General Braddock was marching towards Fort Duquesne, what's now Pittsburgh. And, you know, they're like the might of the British Empire marching through the woods and in columns, like the red quotes and columns and thinking they're invincible until they get close to what's now Pittsburgh.

and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. And they can't even see, they can't even see anyone to shoot at. Because the Indian warriors are so well hidden. And they're also joined by like kind of French guys who are also good woods, fighters. And so they don't even know who to shoot. And Washington is the one who survives that,

that battle, even though he was, he was an aide to camp to Braddock, because Braddock, They wouldn't let him in as an officer, yet he wanted to tag along, you know, that Washington did. And he ended up, Braddock was wounded, mortally wounded, and almost every British officer was killed almost instantly. And the officers, the British officers are wearing really bright uniforms. And I've got to look into this, just the actual color, even though I'm partly colorblind, but the...

It's going to be hard for you to look into it. Yeah, it'd be hard. Well, my wife helps me on this one. A lot. And, and, but the, the officers were really easily recognizable because they had, you know, really scarlet uniforms. And the regular soldiers were red, but not so red. And, and Washington, the, you know, the officers just got wiped out instantly. And, and Washington survived that battle.

And he had, like, four bullet holes through his, like, hat and his coat. And he had, I think, at least two horses shot out from under him. And I'm, I'm pretty sure, this has been some years since I did this research, but I think one of the reasons he wasn't killed instantly is because he wasn't wearing a British royal officer's uniform. And it was more like a, you know, like a like the buff colored thing that they were wearing. Wouldn't that be funny if that's what, if that's like, if you like, you know, you take history and move it down to these like, these like crystalline moments, you know, of like turning points. if that like the fact that he didn't have that bright red coat right yeah that the continental army would have never the continental army would have never won you know and america would not have happened yeah exactly i mean and it was um it's a really interesting moment and now there's a film that's coming out about

young called young washington which you know i think they use my book as a source but it's not like based on my book they didn't license your book yeah it's you know these are historical events but it's the thing I've written about, but I think that's a highlighted moment in the, in the film, just what we're talking about. You know who was there? You know who was there that day? I do. Booned.

Let me tell you what Boone did. Your buddy. As I remember this, he was like a wagon driver, driving a freight wagon, right? I mean, you're the, I defer to you on Boone because you know, you know, he's like a lowly. Yeah. And so he and his buddy, I think his cousin, was also driving a freight wagon. And so they saw what was happening. And I think they just crossed the river, the Monongahela, and when all this chaos broke off.

So they cleverly unhitched their mules from the wagons and turned around and ran with the teams in the other direction. Is that right? I like to imagine that that was deeply influential for Boone and his knowledge of like guerrilla, warfare tactics and like bush war sorry damn it always happens me um but but that was that was that was bush war extraordinaire in that it was so dramatic and yeah i think you're totally right of that that that was a really formative experience with him and he could have you know he could have kept you know uh courageously riding his freight wagon forward and you know it just wouldn't have worked He had better instincts than that.

It was on that trip. Who was Boone? Like, it was on that trip on that campaign that Boone met. Was it John Finley? Yeah. One of the other teamsters had been to Kentucky. It was on that campaign. Yeah.

I remember about, Boone learned about what's over a gap. Like, like, he learned there is a gap to get through to the Kentucky. He learned there's a route through and then set off to find the Cumberland Gap, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, because Finley had been involved in Indian trade down the Ohio River prior to his service as a teamster. And so it was like a campfire story. I believe according to Boone's story, it's like they were sitting around the campfire late at night. And Finley's telling him about what's over the mountains. So if I was going to do a movie about this, I would have Boone and him talk.

about all this, you know, the Cumberland Gap and all that. And I'd have Washington, come on and be like, get it straightened up, man. Do you know what I mean? Like interrupt him, man. That would be a great scene. That would be a great thing. Yeah. Yeah, and it was, Finley, he didn't do any surveying, did he.

I'm thinking of a different guy, but, but I know. There was, uh, the Duke of Cumberland did a survey, I believe over, like in that area. But yeah, I don't think Finley was surveying. I mean, because one of the big problems was that George Washington and, you know, these soon to be founding fathers were big landholders. Yeah. And the lands over the mountains, you know, which were really Indian lands.

Yeah. And with many different tribes. And that they wanted to survey those lands and, you know, like, stake them out. And so in 1774, Washington and and other founding would be soon to be founding fathers sent a team of surveyors over the mountains. And the Shawnee's got really mad and, and, you know, pulled their equipment off and I think sent them home. But that was really the beginning of this, of this, you know, that whole Ohio Valley conflict was those first surveyors coming in and like staking things out.

Yeah. And so Washington had a big part in that too. Yeah, dude, mix it up. Let's jump to Coronado. Yeah, talk about mixing it up. Back in time. We're going to go, so we're going to go from 1774 to 1540. Okay. We're going back a couple hundred years.

So now, I want to, uh, I want to let you set the scene here a little bit, but I want to, um, bring up something I find interesting about this. And you can, you can set the scene like where the new world was at at this point. But you're, you're always trained, like when you're a kid and you're, reading about these early explorers, you're, you're always trained a little bit to like laugh at the, the, the some of their notions, the fountain of youth. Yeah. The cities of gold.

Right. Right. Um, how stupid. How silly. They thought that there was these like cities of gold that were up in New Mexico or Texas, you know, how naive, right. But. They are hauling like,

The Spanish are hauling fortunes. Exactly. Out of South America. And Central America. It's like, it's, they weren't making stuff up. No, no. They mean, like, they had arrived in cities. They had like legitimately found cities where they're like, these people are loaded.

And with gold. There were empires, you know, literal empires and emperors. And so, like, They ransomed, uh, Pizarro ransomed the Incan emperor for a literal room full of gold. I mean, literally. Yeah. And then they killed them and they melted down the golden bars and, you know, shipped it. But so it wasn't insane. It wasn't insane that people were like, there's got to be more of this out there, you know? So that, yeah, I mean, that's a really good framing for the story because, you know, we know the, the, the, you know, if we want to, I don't want to go too far back. But, you know, the Portuguese started sending ships in the 1400s, uh, to India.

and getting spices. And, you know, discovering those were worth a lot, you know, it was a very valuable trade. And then the Spanish are saying, wait, we want to hunt to that action. And then Columbus comes along and says, comes up with his wacko idea. It wasn't that wacko, but he said he needed a lot of money to do it. He said to the king and queen of Spain, he convinced them to fund an expedition to go west to find the Indies. So, you know, we know the story. He runs in to this unexpected continent, the Americas.

And then, you know, the Spanish conquistadors and explorers work their way through in very few number of years. And so in 1520, that's when Cortez illegally against the king's orders marches to Tenochitlan, which is now Mexico City. Is that how you supposed to pronounce that? I hope so. one, dude. Tenotee-Lahn, yeah. There's an accident on the end. And, and he knocks off the Aztec Empire. And one of the reasons he can do that with like a few hundred men. I mean, one, he has these horses with armor, which are like, you know, Sherman tanks compared to what the, the native warriors have. And the other is he's very clever in, he's, he finds the tribes, they're more than, I mean,

they're like culture, civilizations who are enemies of the Aztecs. And he says to those guys, hey, I can help you knock off the Aztec emperor. And so now he has thousands of enemy warriors. And that's how he knocks off the Aztecs so quickly. And then that's 1520. And there's all sorts of wealth and gold and empires and land and, you know, incredible, as you say, loads of treasure. And that's 1520. And then 1533, Pizarro finds his way.

into the Andes, you know, way south and South America, and he finds the Inca Empire. And, and, you know, and the emperor and, you know, kidnaps the emperor, roomful of gold, you know, piles of gold being shipped out of the Inca Empire, out of the Aztec Empire. And then, so that's 1533, 1536, this rumor comes down that they're more wealthy empires to the north and nobody knows what's up there. And some of that comes out of, like, there's that, explain that like Alvarez expedition. Yeah, not Navarez. What was his name?

Navarre. Okay, but the Cabez de Vaca. Yeah, yeah. Like, there's like the moor, like the dude called like the Moore and Cabezza de Vaca. And those guys have just that crazy ass. It's so crazy. And that kind of sets the tone. So that was, I have to get the dates right, but that was the late 1520s.

Okay. And somewhere in there, you know, Ponce de Leon was in there and, you know, the found and use story was emerging. But they were, they were really trying, the Spaniards were really trying to get onto, from, from the Caribbean islands like Cuba and what's now the Dominican Republic, get on to Florida and, and start colonizing Florida and, you know, make that part of the Spanish empire. And so that, and they were having a hard time doing it. And so in the late 1520s, there was a huge expedition sent under the commander was a guy named Navarez. And that essentially this huge expedition mini ships got completely wiped out by hurricanes and then by native warriors.

And to make a long story short, four guys end up surviving. And they managed to raft their way partly down the Gulf Coast from. from Florida. And some of the main guys make it that far and then they die. But they raft part way down the Gulf Coast from Florida. And I think they get maybe about as far as the Mississippi River Delta and then, you know, more shipwrecks raft wrecks disaster. And then the four survivors start walking.

And they know like New Spain is somewhere that way. Dude, when you look at a map, but it's a crazy thing. Yeah. But they're like in, they're on the Gulf Coast. Yeah. And they're aiming for Mexico City, you know, and, and they're four guys. And there's dozens and dozens of Indian tribes. It's inland.

And there are dozens and dozens of Indian tribes, you know. And these are like four random guys coming up from the coast. And part of what what saves them is among the four, there is a Moorish slave named Esteban. And so he has, what's, I was named after a mom joke. Yeah, he's a dude. Yeah, that's right. You could probably talk your way through dozens of tribes, thousands of miles to arrive in Mexico City.

And so, so, you know, he had black skin, and he was really, he was like a good performer. He could sing and he could dance and he had, he had like bells on his wrists and colorful clothing. You know, he was really unlike the Spanish, Spaniards dress. And so it came to be. that the native people in various tribes started coming to him as a medicine man and respecting him as a medicine man. And so these four guys managed to sort of get past tribe to tribe using their medicine powers, their spiritual powers to kind of pave the way and protect them.

And it took them seven years to get to what's now. the west coast of Mexico, they got to basically where the headquarters of the Sinaloa cartel. That's what's so crazy, man. And now, like, you get a couple delayed flights and you get somewhere two days late, two days late. You're like, dude. And then when they show up, there's another conquistura coming up from the south and taking Indians as slaves and really brutalizing that west coast of Mexico. And so some of his guys are on a slaving expedition, and they see these four random, you know, like wild men walking out of the bush. And they, and they're dressed in animal skins, these guys, you know, and the four guys and the Spanish slavers, conquistador slavers, like, who are these guys?

They're like, oh, these guys, really? No, it's like in the documents, they, one of them responds in perfect. Castilian Spanish. It's like formal. You know, he's all a ragged animal. Yeah. Like assumed dead. Oh, yeah.

For years. Yeah. Well, you assumed dead for years, seven years. And then, so then they get back to Mexico City. You know, then they explain who they are. They're eventually brought back to, brought to Mexico City. Those dudes had to be like, let me get this straight. You're saying.

It's such an unbelievable story. And as you're saying, you walked. From Florida. Like, this is where the space alien rumors really start. I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind, and now, got my own show.

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Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. So then they get to Mexico City and, you know, they're greeted like, wow, these guys are survivors and they, you know, it turns out, you know, maybe they really did travel all this way. And in Mexico City, you know, which is now, it's, it's been converting from an Aztecan empire, you know, capital with all the stone pyramids. they're ripping down the stones and making a big cathedral and, you know, transforming it. Oh, they were re, they were repurposing the stones. The bloody stones, I like to think, into the, you know, the sack of the theater. I write about this. I write about this in some detail, actually.

And one of the things they have to do. Really? Yeah, yeah, this is like a little side of. Making cathedrals out of those stones. Out of those stones. And then one of the things I had to do, this I did quite a lot of research. I mean, it was really interesting. that the Spaniards in that era, you know, conquering the South American and Central American empires, you know, there were very developed religions and the Aztecs were, you know, famous then and now for their human sacrifice.

You know, it was like they needed, they believed that the gods needed to be fed blood. So there would be sacrifices all the time on top of these pyramids. And one was like, I can't, you know, it was like 20 stories high or something. And so once the Aztecs are conquered, then the the Spaniards are saying, well, we're going to bring religion to these people. And so they get workers, I'm sure many of them are native, you know, slaves to pull the pyramid down. You know, the many pieces, like there are 70 of them in the, in the central Mexico and big square, and start making a big cathedral. And but the Spaniards are really freaked out about the spirits of the Aztecs and these other religions. And so whenever they would come across a, like a chamber of worship or any spiritual

thing having to do with these, these empires, with these religions, they would bury it. They'd seal it underground because they'd have to seal the spirits in. And so as I point out in this book, and I wandered around this area a lot in Mexico City where the cathedral's built. And there's been really cool archaeological work that are done in recent decades. But they built the cathedral. It's almost on top of what was called the Tower of Skulls. And it was like a tower of- I've read about that tower of skulls.

I mean, there are pictures of it. It is amazing, you know. All these skulls, it's like a huge well with all these skulls on the inside. What do you mean pictures of it? There are pictures of it. Photos? Yeah, archaeological photos. It's been excavated.

How many are in there? hundreds and hundreds. I can, we could call, we'll later, we'll see if we can call some up. I actually have some on my camera because I took a, pull that up, Phil. Do you something to do over there? What's it called? The Tower of Skulls. Oh, okay.

Keep going. In Mexico City. And so they, you know, they built this cathedral on top of those, of those Aztec, you know, sacrifice sites, try to seal everything in the ground. Sure. And, you know, part of my, you know, this is sort of speculative fun premise is that, you know, when Coronado marries his 12-year-old bride in that cathedral, they're like standing on top of the Tower of Skulls.

And some of those spirits aren't all that well sealed in there. And they eventually kind of get into his head. I mean, this is like a metaphor, really. Yeah, yeah. So, so then what happens is the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, rip-rek survivors get to Mexico City, which is being transformed from the Aztec capital into a into the capital of New Spain. And, you know, these, the Pizarro and, um, oh, oh, there you go. There's some skulls in the tower of skulls.

I've got a, I've got a picture on my cell phone. Um, I've got one that's clearer than that about that you really see it's kind of an outline of of skulls. It's probably too late to redesign the studio. Yeah. I mean, this is what we're looking at underground in the center of Mexico City. And it's, it's, there have been big excavations there in probably the last 20 years. And, and now it's, it's really cool because you can walk down and some of them. And they're just right not part of everything.

So the four shipwreck survivors, you know, brought to Mexico City. the Cortez has just knocked off the Aztec empire like 25 years earlier or 15 years earlier and Pizarro has just knocked off the Incas three years earlier and you know they're all these like piles of gold coming you know being discovered in these empires in central and South America and so everybody asked these four shipwrecked survivors hey do you guys see any like gold up there or empires? I mean, it's so wild. And these guys are like,

you didn't have to run into an empire. Did you run into the empire in your seven years of shipwrecked? And these guys are kind of like, wow, well, I'm not sure. We're not sure about that. But it's all it takes is like there's just some little rumor that gets started. Yeah, like some dudes told us about whatever. Yeah, or they told it, I think. I think the closest thing to an actual detail was that, uh, that there were,

they'd heard about seven cities up there. Mm. There were seven cities. And, and, and that, you know, this is like in the south, north of Mexico, whatever's up there and the, you know, what was now in the American Southwest. And, and that directly feeds in to this old, old, um, Spanish, Iberian story that when, uh, the moors conquered the Iberian, peninsula, like in 750 AD or something, that the Catholic bishops, seven Catholic bishops took

all the wealth and all the gold from the church, you know, the cathedral's from seven cathedrals. And the seven bishops took the piles of wealth and gold and they put them in seven boats. And they sailed west across the ocean and founded seven wealthy cities across the ocean. Yeah. So that became when it was heard that there were seven cities, somewhere north of Mexico city, people that, oh, those are the seven cities of gold. You know, this is what we've been talking about for 500 years. And there they are. And so this whole thing just gets cranked up.

And they send a reconnaissance party up there. This isn't like this way, this rumor mill thing. Yeah. Isn't an isolated incident. because we're talking about in a project I'm working on right now, we're talking about like the French upon the St. Lawrence. Oh, that's a cool story. And again, they like, they get, they take some indigenous people,

bring them, bring them back to France. And then they're grilling them and grilling them and grilling them. And you can see that they sort of pick up on what they want to hear. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly. They're like, oh. Yeah. Way up.

Yeah, way up. There is a place like what you're talking about. But then it gets kind of like crazy and they're like, oh, and there's people that, that have no anus. Oh, okay. There's a people that are just one-legged. The far as you're a single place that's like all, everything is gold. You know? And again, they're like legitimately trying to find it.

But you get a sense that the indigenous people are like. yeah, just kind of play along. Yeah, and they don't really know what these, these, these Europeans are talking about. Yeah, they're like asking them and ask them and eventually. They're like, okay, yeah, sure, whatever. The neighbors. You'll find whatever you need. Go talk to the neighbors because there's none of that here.

That comes into this Coronado story too. Yeah. Big time. And so, and then, so they send the, the vice-roy Mendoza, who's, he's like the king's representative in New Spain. And he's arrived in just the year before. This is the scouting mission. Yeah. So Mendoza, well, Coronado is a protege of the vice-roy Mendoza. Mendoza has been sent to New Spain by the king to reign in Cortez because Cortez is like thinking all of New Spain is his, you know? Okay. And the king of Spain says, you know, Mendoza, my trusted man, you're my vice-roy, you go and

reign in Cortez. And that's how Coronado is like a young, Protégé of Vice Roy Mendoza comes with from Spain to Mexico with Vice Roy Mendoza. Then the rumors of gold start to the north and Vice Roy Mendoza sends scouts up to see if they're true. And he sends this dude among others, a guy named Frey Marcos. Okay. Who there's a long story that I won't go into, but it's a, you know, another long traumatic story.

And, and Frey Marcos comes back, you know, months later and says, oh, yeah, Yeah, yeah, I saw those, I saw this, you know, incredible city up there. And, you know, the golden city's incredible stuff. He says he first hand saw it. He said he's first hand saw it. And then he gets back to Mexico City. And well, then. Why is he saying that?

That's a question for the ages. People have wondered that. Yeah. And, and then, but he, so he gets, I mean, maybe it's the same thing. Like, he's telling people what they want to hear. And, and, you know, maybe he didn't tell them. exactly that, but he said, yeah, they're big, they're big tall cities up, up that way, which, in fact, there were. The Pueblos, yeah.

The Pueblos. And, and so he goes back to Mexico City and, and, you know, it comes back, oh, yeah, there are seven cities up there. And so now it's just like this frenzy starts in Mexico City. All these people want to invest in this expedition and take part in it and, you know, invest in it to, because they know they're going to find piles of gold north of you know in the in the mysterious north they just know it it's you know it's happened in in in mexico it's happened in the andes with the incas so it's happening in other places too in the south and you know they're golden cities and piles of gold so this it becomes this massive effort and it's it's now it's believed to be close to

3,000 people. You know, hundreds of Spanish, Spaniards dressed like conquistadors with armor or with leather armor and, you know, lances and armored horses and then thousands of, of Aztecan warriors accompanying them. And thousands of, there are at least a thousand horses with this, with these guys. And there are maybe 5,000 sheep. and there are thousands of cattle. That's unclear how many exactly cattle.

But this is all to feed this expedition. You can imagine like 3,000 people. That doesn't even include their wives along, their children along, their, you know, cobblers and gunsmiths and everything else. So you need all this food, you know, on the hoof to feed this expedition. And it so it heads north in the spring of 1540.

And they're going up there to raise. hell they're going up there they're going to go find the golden cities and take and take it yeah yeah they that's the plan and but there's a whole you know other dimension to the story well there are two dimensions one the the the real wealth it would it turned out was and they were realizing at the time was not so much in the gold which you could you know take and then go spend but was in taking fertile lands and making those your in comiendas, your own estates, and they'd be worked by, you know, partially enslaved people or native labor. And so that's where you could really make a lot of money by having a big estate that was,

you know, fertile estate that produced a lot. So that was one thing they were looking for in addition to the golden cities. And then the other thing that was going on, which I'm spacing out now, as they're kind of coming north, they are told by the king of Spain and through Vice Roy Mendoza, the king of Spain is saying, we're not going to have any more of this brutality stuff that's been going on. You know, we're not going to go like hacking up the Aztecs or the native people. We're not going to go steal their food. We're not going to go hang them.

We're going to be humane. And it's like there's supposed to be this whole shift in the Spanish empire that it's going to be humane rather than cruel, you know, rather than forceful. And so Coronado is under orders from Viceroy Mendoza. You have to be kind with the native people. You can't raid villages. You have to really? Yes. You have to be humanitarian. And so Coronado now has this, you know, uh, uh, order. But he didn't stick to that. He tried to for about a week. Okay. I mean that, uh, he tried to, uh, he tried to. And, and, um, that as he, as soon as he got going north, that he had guys with them who were ex, you know, ex cruel conquistadors. And they started running out of food.

They, you know, like their supply trains were separated and they needed corn rather than just cattle. And so the ex conquistadors go into a village and just take food and the, the, native people attack and one of the ex-conquistadors was trying to flush some native warriors out of a patch of brush and he forgets to put down his visor on his helmet bam an arrow right in the eye kills him dead okay and he's the chief of staff to the whole expedition so that causes all his buddies to go up in arms you know samuego's the chief of staff now shot with a native arrow in the eye so they say okay we've got a pun these natives show them a lesson so where is this in mexico yeah it would be it would be like north of uh well far north of aqua polico but you know where we're like culea con and siniloa is yeah it would be in south of their okay so they haven't hit the u.s no they're out there's months away yeah and so they they uh because their buddy got hit in the eye with an arrow you know the the conquist toward buddy they hang a bunch of the native warriors and the native people and you know kind of ran they just randomly

say snag a bunch and hang them and that's sort of like the beginning of this is not the humane expedition that it was cracked out to be and um but that that that story goes way on to the north um you pick it up from here i can i can i can keep going with that that that they spend six months basically. And I calculated that if you put all the animals and people, those to tail on that expedition, it would stretch for 15 miles. Oh, you kidding. And I was thinking, yeah, think of all that, that, that, uh, dust and the piles of dung

in its track, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, yeah. And I mean, how, how do they do that? I can, it's just, it's hard to imagine. But they finally. they finally get up after months.

They finally cross into what's now southern Arizona. Okay. So they entered, they entered into Arizona, not in Mexico. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but just right next to New Mexico. Yeah. It would be south of Phoenix and south of Tucson. Because people have done a pretty good job of piecing together what this route is,

even though there's like certain questions here. There are certain, and that just in that, that's where the real questions is right in that area. And I think you've had, haven't you had Denny Seymour on here? Yeah. Yeah, so she's, yeah, she's one of us going to look at that question. She's really looking at that. And so she has, you know, she, she's done research in one valley and then there's another valley and there's discussion, which route was which and were they both used or how did that all work? But she's found cool stuff.

I mean, it's amazing. She's done great work. When they, when they hit what's now the U.S., did they have a sense of how far they were, like, what was their comprehension of how far they were going to go? Because, I mean, they ultimately make it up into Texas and Kansas. They almost make it to Iowa. You know, I was, like, where did they think they were going? I figured out they were just a few weeks short of getting to Chicago, which was, which was then an Indian portage at that. I mean, it was for, for thousands of years.

But they were headed that way. And so, so their, their aim was to get to the seven cities. And they, they knew it was up there somewhere. And, you know, Frey Marcos had reported, yeah, there are seven cities up there and they're, you know, a hundred days travel away or 80 days travel or whatever. And so, so then after Frey Marcos reports this and the expedition starts coming up, you know, by sometimes by pieces, sometimes huge chunks, it finally crosses what's now with Coronado, what's now, it would be like, you know, Phoenix? Yeah. You're familiar with Phoenix? And if you look east of Phoenix, there's this big mountain range right there, you know, big,

desert, tall mountain range. It's called the superstition mountains. Yep. And if you go on the other side of the superstition mountains, I mean, even today, you can look at Google Maps, there is just not a whole lot of human presence at all. I mean, I'm almost zero and, you know, desert and rough. Well, they cross that and they, and they, they call it the days poblado because there's no food for 15 days.

And they, and people are starving and, you know, the Aztecan warriors, you know, they're like the, the lowest in the pyramid, the food pyramid. They're the guys who get, you know, they have to be carrying their own food or they die. You know, once in a while they'll eat a horse. Three guys poison themselves by eating plants around a little spring they found. And, you know, it's like these luscious, like really salad looking greens. Oh, they're that hungry. Yeah. They're so hungry, they just, they just slam them down.

die and they die die yeah and and they finally emerge from the the northern end of the day's poplado and then they go over some smaller ranges and they go over a ridge there's this the story is more complicated than this but they go over a ridge and they see this pueblo which is You know, a pretty big one, seven stories high. But Fray Marcos, who's with him, has been saying these are like golden cities. And, yeah, it's pretty high, but it's built of like a rock. And, you know, it's not like big smooth dungeon walls and gates and everything. Now that I feel like I've read about this, and I feel like I've read some writer, historians, speculating that maybe he looked at it from a distance when it was,

like lit by the evening sun. Yeah, that's one theory. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or like, Alpinco. Trying to like give him some credit to be like, well, maybe the sun was hitting it in the way that it looked like it was gold. Yeah. It looked like it was gold. And part of the story. Yeah, exactly. That's one of the theories. At what point did they just dismiss what Fray Marco was saying? At what point did his word not hold any? When they came over, they were rich. And one of the chroniclers said,

you would not have been wanted to be there to hear the words that were thrown on fray marcos that would humiliating man and i'm like oh stone see i thought it was gold and and i mean part of that story it's there there's so many aspects and details but the the with fray marcos's reconnaissance party um estabin went and and so and he's and he's he's he's he's he's he's he He was like a real, you know, rugged traveler. So was Fray Marcos, actually. But so Estabon apparently had a weakness for, uh, made of women. Yeah.

And he liked to collect turquises. And so by the time he got, he was the first guy to get to this city. Mm-hmm. The Pueblo, but he, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Zuni is it, it was a, the Zuni Pueblo. I've been, yeah. Have you been there? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, I've been there with Zuni dudes. I mean, went to that old, the old Pueblo site. And them kind of pointing out the Coronado stuff. Yeah. I mean, like, dude, like it was yesterday, though. It was like yesterday. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like, oh, my God. Their culture's like, oh, no, this is where. Yeah. Yeah. And you could be right on, I had a, a Zuni guide who, who grew up there. He grew up a mile from that, the, this, this first Pueblo was called a Hawaku. And he said, well, you see that, that patch of, you know, trees over there. That's, that's my grandmother's house.

That's where I grew up. Yep. And, you know, and so we're standing on the ruins of Havakou. And he's saying, yeah, well, the front gate's here. And they could, they would come from that path over the, you know, that pass over there. And as you say, it was like, yeah, it was like, you know, you're going, you're walking through the park and, you know, in your local park. And he's pointing out the site. It's like us earlier, like, like, for, for us and our culture, like, talking about the American Revolution and stuff.

Like to the Zuni, you know, I mean, these were, I mean, like to the Zuni today, it's, it's like a major, you know, I mean. It's a major event. It's a major thing like culturally in the telling. They have the familiarity with it that we would have with all the Civil War and the Revolutionary War. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's just, I mean, very much a part of that. No, that's where this happened and that's what happened and it led to this.

I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind and now got my own show. So if you're tired of lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies, available on all TSN platforms in the IHeartRadio app. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road.

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I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, I Heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Esteban, so, you know, he ends up at Hawakou and they soon kill him because they figure out he looks, he has some resemblance to an enemy warrior. They don't like the way he's treating women or whatever. Oh, okay. And so it's unclear whether Frey Marcos makes it all the way.

to the Pueblo, the Zuni Pueblo, Hawaku, or if he's like saying, you know, several days in the rear and, and, and gets the report of Esteban's death from, from native guides who are kind of like running back and forth. So it's not clear if Frey Marcos actually laid eyes on the, on the Pueblo during the reconnaissance run. Got it. But he's certainly had a, he made it very abundantly clear that these were wealthy, cities and then seven wealthy cities in the north. And I, you know, so he's an interesting personality. And I, I've, I've described him in my Lost Cities book as that in a way, he's like a, you know, a mountain endurance athlete. He, because he's been with, he was on the Pizarro expedition. And, you know, so he might have witnessed that room full of gold. And he's also like you know these guys often go barefoot and you know he's this fray marcos is like a serious traveler

and i think of them like as being this endurance athlete that just can cover you know dozens dozens of miles a day which i'm sure he was because they're the reports of how far he'd go and i think that he was you know invested with his passion to you know to collect indian souls for christianity got so i mean that was one way for a for a for a a a friar to, you know, really make a name for himself in the church and in the eyes of God, you know, you could save thousands of heathen souls, millions of them. So I think that was a really, a real driving force for Fray Marcos to like get this whole expedition up there because not only were they looking for the golden cities fertile land, they were also looking for India, which they thought

was just over the mountain, you know, and, and then they were also, they were charged by the King Queen of Spain was saving souls with converting them from, you know, heathenism to Christianity, so-called heathenism. And and so that it was, I describe it in this book, it's like, there's a special unit embedded with this huge cavalcade and there are these Franciscan priests who are, you know, they're like the spiritual spearhead of the, of the whole operation. And Freemarchas is one of these guys. And so, um, so he had kind of a personal interest, I think, in, and, in in in leading you know and convincing and getting he wasn't out there for the gold he was he he wasn't there for the gold he was there for the souls and yeah and yeah so they come over the

rise and there's the alleged city of gold and it's like just shit storm comes down on fray marcos and you know i'm surprised i didn't kill him on the spot well they couldn't because you know he's a man of god that would not you know that would not have been good if you were if he were an ordinary you know citizen he would have he would have been so dead um probably in the worst ways and so then making long story short not that long at this point they march up to the across the plane and you i think you probably heard this story some of it and um towards hauuk and they stop what's described as a crossbow shot away so that's probably like 300 yards I think 400 yards when you're the ballistics guys.

And wouldn't you say a quarter mile maybe? Man, I don't know. With those crossbows. Yeah. They might have been really good ones. Yeah, they were like cocking them with their feet and stuff. We're also not in the practice of launching arrows at 45 degree. Yeah.

Well, exactly. And and so they, but anyway, they're a crossbow bolt shot away and they stop. And meanwhile, this like actual squadrons of Zuni warriors have come out. with what they're called bow priests, the Zuni priests in the forefront. And the Zuni priests have poured down a line of cornmeal across the plane. Huh.

And it's very clear what this cornmeal line means. It means, do not cross this line. It's a line of the sand, dude. The line is in the sand. And so at this point... I never heard this detail about the cornmeal. Oh, the core. Yeah.

That's one of the cool. those details. And it's happened at other Pueblos as well after this during the expedition. And so it was a real thing. And so then, you know, Coronado, you know, these guys are in horses and armor and banners. And, you know, I'm sure they have all their finery on. And Coronado has a suit of gilded armor, gilded helmet, huge plume, you know, armored horses. And they ride up and they stop at the cornmeal line. And they, by requirement of the king and queen of Spain they pull out this document. It's called the requirimento, which this means like the requirement. And they're required by the king and queen of Spain to read this document to the Zunis

three times in Latin. And this, this movie needs be called the requirement. Requirements. Yeah, well, so here the requirements go like this. Actually, I think the requirement, I don't know, it's a requirement applying to the Zunis or it's a requirement applying to the conquistadors that they have to read the document. Holmett. So it's red and Latin. It's red and Latin. There's no, three times.

There's no effort to translate. Well, supposedly, you know, some accounts say that there was a one guy on the, you know, native guy on the expedition who knew what he'd have to know, suppose Spanish and Nahwatel, which is the Aztecan language. So it might have been translated as far as Nahwatel, but no farther than that. Hey, we tried. It was like, we tried. And so the requirimento, it's not very long,

but it basically goes like this, you know, reading out in Latin. Okay, you all are children of Adam and Eve, and God created Adam and Eve. And God's embodiment on earth is the Pope. And the Pope's power is embodied in the King and Queen in Spain. Okay. And we are representatives of the king and queen of Spain. So, i.e., and according to medieval logic, we're speaking directly from God.

It's kind of the way this. Yeah. This is the preamble, sort of like the Declaration of Independence. Like, here's where the power comes from. Yeah, we're representatives of God. And you have two choices. One, you accept us to send fathers among you and, and show us, show you our way. ways in religion. Or two, and if you do that, option one, you'll be treated with the utmost kindness and generosity and care.

Option two is you refuse to let fathers come among you, and what will happen is we'll kill you all and enslave your women and children. So take your choice, one or two. That's the requirement. That's the requirement. And so, you know, and they're like literally parked at the cornmeal line. And at this point, somewhere, you know, and everybody's getting agitated, I think, the Aztec and warriors, these guys are serious, serious, you know, they're like the native

warriors in the eastern woodlands, I mean, you know, or the plains or any, any North American native warriors, very serious about warfare and skilled. And they're getting agitated. And the Zuni warriors, they're all, you know, they're all, they all have bows and arrows. And they start like launching these warning shots towards the Spaniards and their horses. Oh, they do. Yeah. And first they're, they're at a distance, you know, these warning shots.

And the way the Spaniards describe it is like these guys, these Zuni warriors, you know, they, they were shooting these stray shots that weren't very accurate. but I mean you know like a native archer you know these guys they're described as being able to hit hit a rabbit while they are running the warrior and the rabbit's running and hit it with an arrow so these were not stray shots these were extremely accurate but they got closer and closer and finally one of the arrows pierces fray marcos's roe not fray luis's robe and pins it to the ground At that point, all hell breaks loose. And Coronado says, essentially it's the Spanish charge.

It says Santiago is Sierra, Spain, which means St. James, that's the patron saint of Spain. St. James enclose Spain, like protect us St. James. We're going to go charge. And then they charge on their horses and they, they, you know, essentially route these all these you know several hundred zuni warriors who chase back into the pueblo and some are some are killed by on the on the plane but most get back into the pueblo and they the seven story haucoopue pueblo and they they pull up all the ladders and um and meanwhile that um so yeah so okay they they pull up all the ladders and so now coronado's guys are so

weak from hunger because they've gone across as des poblado you know so they some of these journals say yeah it was that all we wanted was food you know at that point it was just food it was like the gold was almost secondary yeah and so they swarm around the pueblo and the the harcabuse um harcabousiers you know the you know the muskets are like a cannon on a prop on a stick that are on a stand, the ones we see in the Remington painting. Um, those guys are so weak with hunger, they can't stand up to shoot a Oh, really? That's bad.

And, and so, but, you know, there's still enough guys and, and I think especially the Aztecan warriors or play much more a part of this than the span as accounts let on, but they, you know, they're surrounding the Pueblo and they're swarming it. And, but they're, these Pueblos are built like fortresses, the, the, the, the lower walls are totally blank by by design and you know not a door not a window and they're tall so you just can't get up them um but there's one ladder in behind that's hanging down that the zuni's apparently forgot to haul up and the spaniers find this one ladder and coronado you know he's the guy is like 30 years old you know early 30s oh he's young like that he's young

Yeah. He's borrowed his wife's money to fund the expedition. And as his team, he married Beatrice when she was 12 and she was one of the richest women, probably was the richest woman in New Spain, she had all these estates. And so, Anna, a pretty fierce mother. And so he used her money to fund this expedition. And, you know, I was saying, well, he didn't have the money. So he did it in a time honored way.

He borrowed his wife's money. And so he's under a lot of pressure. And so he sees this ladder. And he wants to be the guy, you know, the warrior, the point, the leader. And so he gets off his horse and he, in his golden armor, he starts up this ladder. He does. He does. He does.

He does. He does. Leading from the front, man. Leading from the, well, for a moment. And he's part way up this ladder when, like, this entire avalanche of boulders comes down on him. And, you know, it was like a trap, a booby trap. And he just got crushed to the ground, including a huge slab hit him on the,

directly on the helmet. And he would have died right there, except he had, um, some of his, his, uh, key captains who were also armored through their bodies on top of him to protect him from the, you know, this complete pummeling of rocks. And then they managed to drag him away. And he was very seriously head injured and, you know, was in out for hours, if not longer. And he awoke and he was in some tent off to the side of the field. Knocked him out good, though.

Knocked him out really good. Yeah. And, I mean, you can imagine a slab of stone on a metal helmet. Oh, yeah. You know, you're talking about the NFL hits to the head on a helmet. Like, this is, you know, big, huge blow. And so then when he awakes, he's learned that his men have taken the Pueblo, which is kind of right, but kind of not, because basically the Zuni warriors just fled out the back and so screw this. And they'd already cleared out all the women and children and anything of value.

And one of the really cool parts of this story, I think, having to do with all the all those, the Pueblo areas. I mean, there are many different Pueblos through that whole region, you know, each is a different society, community. And many of them have a place of refuge. I mean, I think they all do. And so the Zuni have this really cool place of refuge. It's called Dawa Yelani, which is, or corn mountain or Thunder Mountain. And it's this huge mesa that's several hundred feet high, you know, unscalable, unless you know exactly what you're doing. And it gets enough rainfall and there's enough soil that they can grow crops up there.

Okay. And they have villages and wells and they're totally self they can be totally self-sustaining up there. And you know, I describe it like having a spaceship just hovering over the Zuni valley where you can hang out indefinitely. And so that's where the the people from Hawaku and the warriors and eventually most of the people in the Zuni valley end up on the top of Dawa Yilani. And so, you know, it's like, there are no hurry to come down. And, you know, Coronado and his guys are looking around like, how can we get at these people? You know, it's like we can't even get a hold of one of them. Like they still want to get them.

Well, yeah. I mean, they're looking for the so well as to save and gold to take. And so, you know, and finally the Zuni send like an emissaries to, um, to Coronado. Uh, and and they meet peacefully. And that the, the, the, the Zunis. at this point. Coronado and his guys have like a few little gems and like a little pebble of gold. And they hold it up to the Zunis and say, do you guys have any of this?

And there's more dimension to the story, but essentially it goes like this. Do you guys have any of this? And the Zunis say, oh, that, that. Oh, no, we don't have any of that. But if you keep going that way, you'll find a whole lot of it. again, the neighbors. In fact, we'll give you guides to get there. So they're making a long story short.

That's how they almost end up in Chicago. And they're really cool, cultural dimension. But this, like, like, I've read about this, this move they do. And it seems like historians recognize that it really is manipulation. Yeah. Some are legitimately taking the pressure off and just getting them some getting them out of here. Well, you know, I really, I, yes. I mean, there's some historians who I've said, no, I don't think that's right.

Okay. But others have said, yeah, that they were deceived. I mean, that there was a conscious deception. And I'm, and I think that's kind of almost the common wisdom these days, the common take on it. And I, you know, I really went into this in great depth for, several years and read every kind of possible account of what went on. Don't they eventually get, when they give him a guide who's supposed to take them, don't they eventually get fed up with that guy?

Yeah. So what happens is that there's the Zuni, what you have to realize, and I address this quite a lot in the book. So like the Zoonies have all these different communities, but they're separate. And yet they're interrelated. And they're actually, you know, some are enemies with each other, but mostly not. And they're interrelated, you know, and they're, they're close culturally. They have different languages and their religions are somewhat different.

But they're, each one has like a council of elders. And these council of elders are, it's, it's like a non-hierarchical, um, system of governance. It's, you know, there's no like king. There's no one chief. And so what, partly what happened is. is the Spaniards, like they get to Hawakou or the Zuni Valley, and they say, like, oh, you know, where's the king's house?

Where's the castle? And they keep asking it over and over. They can't find it because there isn't one. And that was one of the reasons that the Aztec and the Incas were so easy to knock off, I mean, relatively speaking. Oh, because they're looking for like, they're looking for the head of the snake. The head of the snake. And that's what worked for them in those, in the South American empires.

But in the Pueblo culture. And in the Pueblo culture, you know, I describe it as like this huge, huge. interwoven fabric. And, you know, Coronado could come up there and slash at it all I wanted, but it's not, you know, it's not going to really make much of a difference. And so. But you're not going to get them to capitulate because you capture some specific feature. Yeah.

Yeah. They've been, this is not their first rodeo, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. And they have these refuges where, um, they can just disappear and in, in these mountain refuges and the, and the Spaniards, their enemies just can't get at them. So they're, they're very resilient, you know, know, to, to attack in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in many fashions. And then, but what happens is the zunis. So there, you know, you've been there. It's like, it's very remote. I mean,

even today, it's, you know, western new Mexico. Um, and the zunis, you know, put out word, I think on, they're very established trading trails, including all the way to the coast and way inland and down to Mexico City. The zunis send out messengers, uh, to the zunis, uh, to the, uh, to the zunies send out. east to not to what's now you know where santa fe is and albuquerque you know the rio grande valley which is several hundred miles to the east of zuni and if you go just beyond the rio grande valley there's a it's like a southern part of the sangrida christo range where it's like a divide where rivers flow down to the plains on one side and and into the real grand on the other side So it's it's like a natural kind of subcontinental divide almost.

And on top of that divide is a very elaborate Pueblo called Kikuyu. It's known today as Pekos and it's a national historic site, the ruins of it. And this is a massive, highly developed Pueblo that's been at the epicenter of like almost cross-continental trade for centuries. And the, so the people of Pecuii, trade with the people of the plains with you know buffalo buffalo hides and meat and other things and they have corn from the pueblos to the east and seashells from the coast and macafeathers from the oh really okay yeah yeah the macafeathers a huge deal and so this this paco's is like this international emporium of trade um you know would be very clagely 15 miles south east of

Santa Fe today. And they, so the Zunis send, send their messengers to the Pekos. And, and, you know, it's like they collaborate. What are we going to do about these guys? And so the, there's a, the leaders that some of the elders are, they're actually younger guys. One's older and one's younger from Pekos come to the Zunis and meet Coronado. and say and tell them about, you know, Coronado's asking, well, like, what's out there, blah, blah, blah, you know. And they have, and they said, well, yeah, I mean, they're these, like these big planes with more animals than you can ever imagine.

And in fact, there's a tattoo of one of these big animals, meaning a bison on, on one of the, on one of the, the Pekos guys. Oh, really? Yeah. And so he, and so they point to the, the Pekos guys, the diplomats from Pekos, point yeah see that there it looks like an ocean full of these things and and the spaniards are oh that sounds pretty cool let's uh let's check it out so that's when coronado he's in zuni you know howaku and he's set up like a like a court you know like a throne with an awning and you know he's like the king of whatever deserted pueblo and and so you know he's he's smart about it he's you know he's a well-organized

guy and so he's he's he's a well-organized guy and so he's sends he decides to send out reconnaissance parties and one goes from zuni to the east towards paco paco and then aiming for the buffalo plains and one to the west where they hear there's a big river and they think maybe they're going to hit china or or something you know they think china is over there they've heard there's a big river i think another one that may be going to the southwest but you know looking for the ocean yeah there are other guys looking for the ocean I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind, and now, I've got my own show.

So if you're tired of lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies, available on all TSN platforms in the IHeartRadio app. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed, and there was a full of blood. Oh my God. He doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors.

Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person.

He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the expedition, the reconnaissance party that's sent to the, East gets to Pecos and they the the diplomats and Pecos say yeah well we'll give you uh let's see how does this work we'll give you guides to take you farther east and out onto the plains and so this party goes

out onto the plains you know it's a smaller reconnaissance party and and and and they see buffalo you know And it's like, this is amazing. And then, um, and the one of the guides, you know, like figures out they're looking for gold. And he says, oh, well, well, actually, there's a lot of gold, but we got to go farther for it. And the Spaniards say like, are you sure there's gold? Yeah, there's gold. You know, my buddy Begote's back in, uh, Pecos has a golden bracelet. And so you can imagine that.

Suddenly the reconnaissance party spins around goes back to Pecos. See the bracelet. Yeah, see the bracelet. And Bogotas is like, I don't know. So, you know, they end up torturing pagodas to try to get the bracelet. And, um, you know, relations go south at this point. Oh my God. Yeah.

And so, um, that, they, they essentially, um, regroup, because winter's coming on, they regroup in the, in the, in the pueblos, which are, uh, north of, of Albuquerque, like between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. a lot it's a very populated um puebloan area and you know really good agricultural along Rio grand um and the meanwhile that as part of this whole thing i mean this the story is so crazy it's i can just go on and on because there's so many different dimensions but one of the crazier ones is that uh vice roy mendoza doesn't want these guys raiding villages for food so vice Roy Mendoza is going to have a convoy of ships supplying them with more food and warm clothing and more ammo and all these things.

And it's going to go up the west coast of Mexico. And everybody's thinking, well, the Coronado Rod is going to be up the west coast of Mexico. And so this big flotilla under Captain Alricon, who's a cool guy and leaves great journals, starts going up the coast of Mexico and goes into every little bay and inlet sticks down across and looks for Coronado on an expedition. And it's like,

they're not seeing it as they're like. And meanwhile, the coast is, let's see, I'll do it your way, but, you know, it's like, you know, here's Baja and here's the Sea of Cortez and here's Mexico. And so Coronado starts on the coast, but he goes straight north.

And so meanwhile, the coast is veering like that. Yeah, yeah. And the ships are going, up like this and they they get you know towards towards the head of the gulf and and then coronado is looking for the ships and the ships are looking for coronado but there's like 400 miles of desert between and so this is a problem and the ships have the warm clothes and the um the the the the Aztecan warriors and plus the Spaniards you know they're all from like these really subtropical or temperate clans. Oh yeah. They're in the winter now man. And they're in the high elevation. Yeah like Zuni I think is 7,000 feet. And you know, it's high, high mountain, high desert. And they're getting hit by blizzards and they're, you know, just about dying. And they, um, they finally established a winter quarters over in, in a pueblo near, uh, what's now Albuquerque in the Rio Grande. And they, um, they,

It seems they forcefully take it from the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, people, even though they say they, we just moved in. They borrowed it. Yeah, they borrowed it. And so there ends up being, even the account, the Spanish accounts don't point to a lot of violence at first, but, um, it soon becomes violent. And including when the, the, the, the, the Spaniards are freezing their butts off. And they, you know,

that the Puebloans have robes. I'd love to have one made of turkey feathers. I mean, it's like the original downcoat. Oh, wow. And they have bison robes, you know, really warm. And the Spaniards are like in their, you know, summer jogging clothes from down and, you know, subtropics. And so the Spaniards sent an expedition to a Pueblo, a neighboring Pueblo to collect feathered capes and buffalo capes. And that Puebloans don't want to give them over the capes.

So the Spaniards just grab them and then one guy rapes a woman and then Puebloans start getting really pissed. They one night they run they run the Spaniards horses out of the corral. You know, it's like it really feels like they kind of figured out how do we get to the weak point of these guys? Yeah. And you know, what's the I could just imagine this council of elders like chewing this over, many councils of elders they have so much power you know the the the Spaniards you know with their their their their steel and their horses but if we could just get at those horses we could really undercut them and so they they stampede the

horses out of a corral and they've never seen horses you know horses disappeared from North America like I can't remember thousands and thousands of 12,000 years earlier yeah ice age right yeah and and so that that that Then, so now their horses are gone and the Coronado sends out his right-hand man to go find, like, what's, what's happening in the horses. And he finds a lot of him in like a fenced-in area near one of the Pueblos and, like, inside the Pueblo walls. And the Puebloans are shooting arrows at the horses to see how easily it is to kill these guys. Oh, really? And the horses are running around.

And, and, uh, so. he reports back to Coronado this is what they're doing and Coronado says go take that pueblo. Okay. And that ends up being this bloody massacre and the Puebloans eventually surrender, you know, they're supposed to hold up, make the sign of the cross to surrender and they surrender. But this guy that Coronado's right hand man pulls him out and ties them to stakes and burns them at the stake and, you know, just essentially murders them.

Yeah. And after that thing. really go south and so now yeah because then they get like sadistic man like they're like cutting people's hands off well that that comes later that's with oeniote but i mean that he was famously did that in akama that's like what was that 1599 i think but but they were doing yeah they they they were putting dogs on guys you know chaining guys you know chaining people up and setting war dogs on on the on the on the on the pebloan people to you know torture them and get information out of them and then And so they, they end up regrouping that, that winter.

And then in the spring, they launched this big expedition to go find the gold, like these alleged golden empires where there are giant canoes on these rivers and there are golden bells hanging on these canoes and these chiefs sleep under trees with golden bells jingling in the wind and so they they they aim for this thing for this these eastern empires and they have given two guides and the guides that this is what you're referring to one is one is a you know there were slaves who were taken in in from the eastern tribes in combat and so these slaves are they're like guide slaves and it guide captives and they start leading corn out on all the wrong direction and then Coronado what one of the guides start contradicting each other and

that ends up being a mess between these guides and they finally start veering where the real treasure is supposed to be northeast and that's where they get to Kansas um one of my favorite details out of this and we've we've talked about it wrote about it is um when they're on the texas panhandle yeah and they start yeah no estacado yeah yeah when they start finding the the the the the the the like the buffalo people the nomads right someone remarks on that they pressure flake their stone knives with their teeth oh really oh I didn't know that yeah I believe it though I totally detail though dude you know imagine that that would could you do that no no they pressure yeah he says they

sharpen their blades up with the and he says he they also describes like the the the teepees and he says they have you know they live like Arabs Yeah. And he makes this connection between nomadic people. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a really interesting point, too, that, um, that, you know, again, Coronado, they couldn't attack these people because he'd move into attack and they'd just, like, pack up in the night and move.

And they could probably move faster than he could. And so, you know, the lack of actual settlements was a real detriment to what he was trying to achieve, this, you know, this idea of conquest and taking possession. because every time he tried to take possession of something, like the people who lived there, just like, okay, we're out of here. Yeah, sure. We'll just move. Whatever you want.

That's your patch. What a talk about this for a minute is, tell me about this idea that, that as the expedition starts to fall apart and Coronado's getting duped and things seem more and more kind of tenuous and a little more chaotic, that he um that he's losing his mind yeah i'm you know i'm really firmly convinced of this and i i haven't seen any interpretations like this partly because the science is so new um that so he you know he gets wang down the head by literally it's called described as a slab of rock on that going up that ladder

the first time and then they he and it's you know in this first stab out into the plane they go through the Texas panhandle, they get up to Kansas, and the land starts getting really good up there. But it starts turning to winter, you know, it's getting into fall. And they don't want to get caught in winter on the plains. So this would be the winter of, it would be fall 1541. And so Coronado says, okay, let's go back to our winter quarters in the Rio Grande Valley, where it's a little bit warmer.

And we'll regroup there. And then we'll come up this way in the spring, you know, with our full force, these lands are getting more fertile. The guides are saying, you know, the big empire is just over that way, that golden empire. So we're going to regroup and come back the next spring. So they go back to their winter quarters in the Rio Grande near Albuquerque and they're holed up there. And the relations with the natives are really tense. It's come to be called the Teahuish War that's now known as.

And in the spring, they're about to launch again. And, you know, a nice day and people are in high spirits. And Coronado and his, his one of his main captain, go and have a horse race against each other. And as they're galloping along this plane, the saddle girth on Coronado's horse breaks. And it's the people on the expedition thinks it's because they've been stored for so long. You know, they're new saddlewaters, but they've rotted. and his saddle girth breaks, the saddle spins, he falls off, he lands underneath the other guy's horse. The other guy's horse at full gallop kicks him in the head.

He's out for like three weeks in a coma. I mean, way out. Really? Way out, yes. Oh, I didn't know it was that bad. Yeah, yeah, totally gone. Totally different than the rock hitting him in the head. Totally different.

I mean, that was not good, but this is like near death. You know, everybody's saying he's near death. Yeah. And and so then when he finally comes starts coming out of that coma, he's like, you know, strange and he's really paranoid and he doesn't want anybody, you know, kind of he he he wants to be protected himself from his men. And he's, you know, trying to gear himself up for this next phase. but it's clear that he's like really wanged out and then the news comes in that there's been a a native uprising down near that Arizona border where they've tried to establish a midway station yeah so the way back to Mexico City is cut there's no hope of resupply

essentially they're trapped out here and and it's like Coronado it's just he kind of goes into depression, not kind of. He goes, he literally goes into depression and, and paranoia. Like it was all for nothing. So, I mean, he's recognizing that this whole thing is, he doesn't want to go back, you know, he could still go farther up towards Kansas and, you know, get to Iowa. But if he goes back, he's, he's shamed. Oh, yeah. He's shamed. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. Total, unbelievable shame, humiliation, failure. And spent all his wife's money, his mother-in-law's money, vice Roy Mendoza's money. Um, and, and the, the guys on his expedition, I've invested in, in the expedition themselves.

Um, and so he's in this situation where it's like, I just, what happens that this is in one of the journals, that when he was in this condition, which really sounds like, you know, I've dealt with depression and it really, it feels so, uh, true the way the brain thinks in these circumstances, you know, the depressed circumstances. And so he's coming out of this coma. He's, you know, in this Pueblo room, you know, and it's like winter and he's closed in. And he, he comes out of the coma and he, and then he remembers that when he was a young man in Salamanca, that a math, mathematical friend of his, and mathematical on this case means like astrological friend, told him that he would he would go away and he would become famous in foreign lands and then he would take a big fall and die and this convinces him that he's about to die right here and he says he says you know these are according to like the literal journals written by guys who were who were there at the time

he says, I just want to go back and die in the arms of my Beatrice in Mexico City. And so now he has to figure out, how is he going to turn like 2000 or $3,000 gold-hungry Spaniards and Aztecs around? And he kind of lays a plot to do it. I mean, he's clear enough to do that, that he probably has help, but he, he, he, he, he's, He manages to start a little rebellion among the soldiers among the little group who convinced their officers to like sign on with something and they convince somebody else and somebody else until he gets this like packet of signed papers from the officers, which which don't say like we're going back. They're kind of noncommittal, but they're these signed papers. And he locks them up.

And he said, well, I got all your signatures saying that you want to go back. So now we're going back. and you just met in that move yeah you mentioned a thing a minute ago that kind of informs that move and I forgot about when I'd read about this is that guys on the expedition kicked in money yeah I kind of forgot that like some like a lot of these guys yeah they're like yeah I'll throw in with you and I'll throw in my own investment and so not only is he not only is like Coronado got to face this, right? The failure.

Yeah. But there's people, you know, lower ranking individuals that are also screwed. Exactly. And not only lower ranking, that a lot of these guys are aristocrats, but they're second sons. And, and so they've come to the new world, as Coronado has, is a second son, seeking a fortune. And they don't have one at home, but they're, you know, there are a lot of opportunities, you know, knockoff an empire in the new world. And one of the great quotes that I didn't end up in the book because I saw it after after I'd finished the draft is that one of the one of the like the clerics in Mexico City in 15

late 1530s when this expedition is mounting up says like well it's a good thing it's a good thing Coronado took all these guys these young aristocrats out of out of Mexico City because there are a bunch of like no goods floating around like corks on water Yeah, it's because like you could picture that if you were just like enlisted men, you know, yeah. And you go on this trip as like as you imagine a contemporary soldier under a command structure. And then you realize it's a fool's errand. You might be relieved when someone says, I screwed up.

Let's go home. But in this case, you got a lot of people who are like really invested in literally invested in the success, probably even down to the Aztec warriors. Like they're planning on getting something. They're planning on getting, yeah. And I've never been able to figure. Some of them, a bunch of these people are probably going to be like, yeah, it's time to go home. But there's going to be a big contingent that is like, what are you talking about?

Yeah. We have not. Huge contention. We have not done. And so there was a huge rebellion. I mean, his guys, I mean, the real knights, you know, the guys who were the higher stuff. The, you know, the mounted guys with armor and everything else. They rebelled.

They said, no, we're not going to do this. We'll go back. up to, you know, up to Iowa, up to the, looking for Harahaye, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, we'll, we'll keep going. And he, he wouldn't let them do that. And, you know, and then he started saying anybody's talking about going home, I'm going to have hung, hanged. And so it was, anybody who resisted going home. Yeah. And so. Really. So he, okay. So he was. So he was. And there was a couple from Mexico City. And he was a, you know, he's like a cobbler or something.

And she was his wife and they were kind of little entrepreneurs. And, you know, she was saying, yeah, I want to stay here. You know, there's like land of opportunity. And he said, you talk like that again. And you're going to be strung up by a rope. And so, I mean, this is a testimony that came out literally in an inquisition afterwards. You know, this is a direct word. Oh, yeah, because they investigated.

They investigated. Yeah, like whether he abused the Indians. So he's like, I'm going home. home, everybody's going home. We're done. We're done. And the only people are going to stay. It sounds like my wife on a fishing trip.

Everybody's going home. Steve, you are not staying. Just to make that clear. This business trip is over. Yeah, so it was kind of, yeah, it was very much like that. And then, but the people he did allow to stay were the, were the friars. Because, you know, it was going to be their mission to stay to stay. start, you know, to, you know, save souls. And so I think almost all of them stayed. Uh, and I think about

95% were soon dispatched by. Oh, I can imagine. Yeah. That doesn't sound like a good. And there's, there's a big cross up in, in like central Kansas, almost northern Kansas, huge, you know, like 30 feet high. And it's, uh, it's a cross that marks the spot of the martyrdom of Frey Padilla. because he was trying to start a mission up there in in in that they call it the land that they were searching uh the first big one up there was called quivera oh yeah yeah so you've heard of that i mean that's like you know the mythical land of treasure and so when coronado was turning around um fray padilla said well i want to go back to the land of quivera and start a mission and cornano said okay yeah you can have some mules you can have this you can have that you can have

I have some servants. And so Frey Padilla went up there and started a mission. And then it's not entirely clear what happened, but he might have started to try to go farther east to find the next golden land, you know, the next hope for golden land, hooray. And that it's described that one day he was, I think he was walking maybe east or whatever. And he was approached on the other way, all these native warriors with bows and arrows raised. And the story. where he goes, he gets down in the path or the road, and he starts praying to God. Next thing happens is he's a pincushion that tips over. And now there's a cross up there, a huge cross. Is that right? Yeah. So when, like in the title of your book and in the subtitle, you say in the birth of the American Indian Resistance, I mean, this really, it's kind of like an interesting, if we're talking about like what became the United States.

right right this is like an interesting case where you had these invading conquerors they were i mean they were defeated and sent packing they were to that's it's a remarkable story and and and i you know it's it's it's become known it's it's it's known as the first named war in what's now the united states between europeans and it's called it's called a teahish war T-I-G-U-E-X. And that, yeah, the Spaniards were thoroughly defeated, sent back, thwarted, you know, in some ways crushed. And that, like, for a long time, though, because that's the weird, like, picture from the, picture from the native perspective at that time would be like this just outlandish thing shows up.

Outlandish. Just seems like, like insurmountable, like, like a god. Like, yeah. I mean, like, like outer space people. Yeah. And then you figured out, you figure it out, they go away. And then a long time passes. Decades before.

Yeah. And it probably felt like, oh, we won. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the Spaniards didn't send a serious expedition for another, I think it was 60 years. Yeah. And even men. For a long time, for a generation, or at least it would have felt like they beat.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They repelled invading people. And the invading people went away. They went away. They went away. And, and, you know, that's, the subtitle is the birth of American Indian resistance because

it was like those, especially the Puebloans, you know, they wove themselves together in this, in this real net that didn't really have to confront the Spaniards directly in terms of warfare, but really just outsmarted them in a lot of ways. And the Puebloans understood how to survive in that climate way better. and how to get food. The Spaniards were, I mean, they were utterly helpless without,

without the, pueblo and corn. They, you know, they were done or the buffalo on the, yeah, it's like, you know,

learning, recognizing that, that the landscape plays in your favor. It has elements of like an insurgency. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like, like you create, you create a structure that's hard to sort of like decapitate. You find a way to like not confront in big battles. Right. Right. You pick your moments. You pick your moment. I mean, Washington did that a lot in the Revolutionary War. You know, he tried to avoid, you know, much around avoiding the way to win is not fight.

Yeah. Keep the army in the tank. Also just the individual, like the individual acts of, oh, it's over there. It's not here is what you're looking for. Like all these little individual, you know, there's a larger political resistance. A larger, yeah. But also these individual acts of working for one's own self-interest and. And it feels so much like it's coordinated.

I mean, that's, you know, and, you know, I think some historians initially didn't believe that. But, you know, if you really look at the documentation, there's more coming out and more. Oh, yeah. And the tendency for so long is to, to, to ignore that the, the, the, that people had a, like, the indigenous people had like a strategic awareness and, you know, I mean. Or even communicated with each other over, over, you know, a hundred miles. So it's like, oh, they're in one campfire over there and one campfire over there and there's no connection between the two. And again, man, it's not, you know, you look at these other areas.

It's like it's not an isolated strategy. No, not at all. I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind and now got my own show. So if you're tired of lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies available on all TSN platforms in the IHeartRadio app.

On Blood Trails, the Stories Don't End. when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors.

Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And in this case, Randall, as you were saying, that, you know, misleading them. So one of the cool things about the misleading was that, you know, when they first had the, like, the slave guides, the captive guides, and they're leaving Pekos, you know, which is now the Sangraeta-Cristo range and going towards the Buffalo Plains, the guides lead them towards, you know, like towards Texas. to the to the south east. And they get to a place where they're,

you know, they're just like they're lost on the Buffalo plains. They don't know what to do. And it, it turns out that the, like the real settlements, they eventually learn that the one guide rats on the other guide. The real settlements are up to the northeast at, you know, Quivera where the land is way richer than it is down on the, on the Texas panhandle. But the thinking is, I mean, one notion is that the guides and the Puebloans who told the guides to do this were leading the Spaniards and this, you know, huge, huge party that's massively hungry all the time out into these barren regions where there was just not enough food to sustain.

And so it was like they're going to starve them out by sending them into an arid, deserted area, desert area. So what last question for you is what um what comes to coronado? That's yeah and what he gets him? Well, you know, the way I frame this is he starts out the spring of 1540 at the head of the grandest cavalcade the new world has ever seen, you know, 2,000 guys and banners, blah, blah, blah. And he comes back two and a half years later carried on a litter, a broken man, depressed with 100,000. followers kind of stumbling behind. And Vice Roy Mendoza, the accounts go greet him very coldly. Man, his wife, you want to talk about a pissed-off wife too. The mother-in-law is a whole. She's a, I mean, she took Cortez on mono-a-mano in legal lawsuits. She was a real battle,

you know, ready to battle. And so, so then, but Vice Roy Mendoza, you know, this is his, you know, his protege that he's been bringing along for decades. I said, you know, okay, I'll give you this kind of side job. You know, he's like on the city council. Um, I think he also gets to be the governor of Nueva Galicia, which is up near what's now Puerto Vallerta. Okay. And, and then the word comes out that he abused the Indians. Mm. And so then he gets hauled into Mexico City and there's like several years of an inquiry into what he did. And there's, you know, testimony that thick, you know, books of the testimony that come out. And he ends up being acquitted. One of his, his, his like, right-hand man, his main captain Cardenas gets convicted,

ends up doing like, after much, you know, legal turmoil, ends up doing some, uh, community work in on the Mediterranean coast and Normaaga. That's how all the punishment came down for that's the only person who was tried or convicted of using the natives. And then, but Coronado stayed in Mexico City, you know, and had, I can't remember they had six or seven kids. And, and, and he, he served in some capacity on the civil council, a city council, but I came across this letter and I later found it and quoted in one book, but in the archives in Mexico City. courting on Coronado after he'd come back. And this letter in Spanish, you know, written in 1544 or something said, or the report, I think the vice-roy or the king said, you know, ever since he came back from that expedition,

he hasn't been the same person. They say he took a fall from a horse and it's never been the same. Really? It's in, it was acknowledged at the time. It's acknowledged. Yeah. It's funny. I've only seen that in one book.

And I didn't, I saw it later, but I found it, though. I came across it in these archives and it was like, oh, that is amazing. The connection was made at the time. It was made at the time. Yeah, he was never the same. And he, you know, it's like he's more, he's like being kept at home with his wife and children. Yeah. And his home's like on the, on the square, you know, it's like kitty cornered at Cortez's

palace. And so he's being. kept in his wife's house, his wife's family's stone mansion. And they, and this letter says, and at this point, he is more fit to be governed than governed. Really? So, I mean, that's just like at the time. At the time. And so, and so that's one of the things that, which I bring up to some degree in this book.

It's like, you know, here's a case of like brain damage. I mean, it's really clear. It's really clear if you know anything about CTE, which I, my father, I think, had it. So I followed it for years. And it's, it's only been studied seriously for like 20 years or so. They were, they were like a long ways away from identifying that. Until really, I mean, just in the last few decades. So when, you know, now we're talking about so many, you know, NFL football players.

And 20 years ago was not even mentioned, I don't think. And it's, it's an interesting pursuit, like a historian thing. would be that you would track down that in history you would track down individuals that had that had behavioral patterns really you know I mean

that you can recognize you wonder if you would find more like these these inexplicable figures in history or whatever that you might find more things of like that like more cases where where someone might have suffered from traumatic brain injuries. Yeah.

I mean, well, just think about how many, you know, for millions, thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, humans at war have been bashing each other on the head.

Yeah. And that's one of the things I've, another fun research for this book, uh, dug into this, that I think it's something like 10% and it might, is it, I think it's Neanderthals or,

or very early people. Um, 10% of the males have had what's called prepination. That's, It was known a medical procedure. Relieving brain pressure. Yeah, you drill a hole in the head and relieve brain pressure. And that relieves evil spirits, basically, depression.

And so this has been something that humans have been living with for, for, for. Yeah. That's a crazy thing, man. There's another aspect of all this that, that just in the big picture to bring up, and then we can, you know, take it wherever. but that you know part of my thesis is that thanks to the Puebloans they managed to thwart Spanish settlement in what's now the West you know that and and later there were the Apaches and the Comanches but the Puebloans were really the first line and they and they

kept their cultures remarkably intact to this day and a line and so the the Spaniards you know they they like on the map they claimed all the way up to you know what it's now Canada and that they said this is Spain and it was like just a joke because they had they had Santa Fe they had a settlement at Santa Fe and that was kind of it they had a few scattered settlements but they had a very light colonial presence and and for you know they established Santa Fe in like 1609 or 10 or something like that and then so and then once the u.s westward movement started you know we can go back to to daniel boone those guys come over the mountains in like 1774 right and they start settling the kentucky valley and it it took british than american

you know residents citizens 200 years to get from the atlantic coast to the mississippi river yeah settlement and it took them less than 50 years to get from the mississippi river to the pacific coast. And one of the reasons is there was no, I mean, of course, there were Indian tribes, but there were, there was no colonial presence. There was no empire hanging on to that. The Spain said, yeah, that's ours. But I mean, it was, there was no sign or sight of Spain at all. And so that's part of my thesis is that that this, this, this, this, the Puebloan, you know, blockade, I call it, kept the, what's now the Western U.S. in the, this, this, this, this, the Puebloan, you know, something of a power vacuum in terms of European powers.

Yeah. So then when the U.S. came pushed west and the westward movement, it just rolled through. You know, this is a theme I've touched on a lot in American history, it's particularly in the West, but it's applicable in other parts of the country, too, is that looking at it now, your tendency is to compress the timelines. Right. That it was like, the European powers hit the coast and just, oh, yeah, right, right.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. But it's just a, it's like, you assumed it was like preordained it. A steady way. It seems, it just seems so complex that it like, did it hit and happen? But you imagine, Reynold and I just finished a project about the Buffalo Hyde hunters, and a lot of that project takes place post-Civil War. Okay, so 1870s.

on the Texas. On the planes. On the Yano Estacado. Okay. And it has a, that's where we talk about Coronado, but it has a very frontier feel. They're getting killed by Comanches. Okay. They're like, post-Sivil war you're talking.

Post-Sivil War. They're getting killed by Comanches. They're looking at maps that have big holes in the maps. And it's been 300. years. Isn't that wow? 300 years and there were other Europeans

messing around there. It's so crazy. And you take like where we're sitting now, right? And you start going back. So we're going to go from now and we're going to go back 300 years. Right? To try to get like,

what does that mean? It's like it's where you're sitting now and you're going back to like the American Revolution. Before the French and Indian War. Yeah. It's like that is the distance. What separates you now from the French and Indian War or whatever, which you can't even fathom,

was separating those buffalo hide hunters on the planes. Post-Civil War buffalo hunters who felt like they were on a frontier. They're getting killed by Comanches. That distance separates them from the first people that showed up there and got killed by native people. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it was a long, long, it was longer than the history of our own country. was like, yes, true. They were like, still.

That they were in conflict with European. With European people. Yeah. Yeah. It's bizarre. And it just doesn't enter our consciousness. No. And that's one of the reasons I wrote this.

You think about like it just happened. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like the, the Christopher Columbus to the American Revolution is a shorter period of time than Coronado to the U.S. claiming all that country. Mm-hmm. like Guadalupe Hidalgo. Right, right.

I mean, that's 306 years or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's three centuries. Yeah. And, you know, I make that point. It's like three, it thwarted, you know, European expansion into the West, the Puebloans and other, you know, especially the Puebloans, thwarted European expansion into the West for three centuries before it really came in,

with the, with a westward movement. Yeah. It's in terms of our historical perspective, it's just, we have such an orientation in our American history with, you know, with good reason, a lot of ways, but it's, it's focused on the Atlantic coast, you know, like that's the epicenter. And then everything flows out from there. But in fact, the Spaniards were way earlier coming from the south. I had one guy, I was doing a radio call in show. Those are I was really productive. You've been there, right? Always glad I did those. And but one guy, you know, and I was talking about this Coronado story and one guy, I mean, people are really interested in this history.

But one guy called in and said, well, it was like, oh, that kind of radio. I thought you remember where you got to do those call-ins where you got to do like, they'll set you up and you got to call 13 morning shows. Oh, oh, I've done. And the morning shows have no idea of what you're calling about. They call it a radio, a radio tour. Yeah. Like some guy's like,

uh, some guy, uh, Peter, I don't know, roll some kind of, but what's going on this morning? Exactly.

Like, I wrote a book. All right, Peter, we gotta go. And then sometimes, what I've had sometimes, I'm sure you've been done this.

It's like I've had, you got an AM station, an FM station back to back. And then it's like on an AM station. Yeah, yeah, it was going away. I was going to go.

And then you get to the FM station. Okay, now we're going to look at this history. very seriously. So I had this, it was a call in. Yeah. Dudes are calling in to ask questions.

Yeah, KGBO, actually, it's a pretty, it's a pretty big, uh, known one. And they're screening the calls? What's it?

They're screening the calls. No, they come, they come flying in. So this guy's like, what's the drunkest you've ever been? Or whatever, you know. Anyways,

gets your story. I'm sorry. Well, that'd be good. too. So anyway, this guy calls in. You know, it's really, I'm telling this sort of, you know, Coronado story and early American history and the Spanish, you know,

coming up from the South. And he said, well, yeah. So it's like, you know, it was like the, the Spanish did an end run around, you know, North America and around the British and North American history. And I said, no, the Spanish wouldn't call it an end run. They'd call it going right up the middle. Yeah. Yeah.

Because it was 100 years earlier. Well, man, it's been great. Once again, Peter Stark, new book, The Lost Cities of El Norte, Coronado's Quest, the unconquered West, and the birth of American Indian resistance. Peter, thanks for coming on, man. That was really fun, Steve.

One last question. Do you got one more in you? You got two more in you? Poison arrow? No, no, no, books. Oh. You can do another? Yeah, I'm thinking, you know, I'm going to have to pick your brain.

What's like, you must have spirit book projects lying around. Oh, I got some, I got some handful. But at some point, I'm just going to fish, man. But yeah, so I'm thinking, you know, more along these early exploration. And I, you know, I wrote this book, Astoria that's done really well. I'm still doing really well. And this book has some of the kind of that rock and roll feeling, like this craziness. Astoria has, these two are very similar.

And so I'm, I'm, I'm kind of looking for something, uh, along those lines. And it's probably, you know, west, towards the west. And I, I have something in mind. I won't go into it exactly. You don't need to, yeah. But, um, another thing is that cannibalism is always a good seller. Yeah. People like to read about cannibalism.

They do. It stirs you up. Um, I, I do, I'll give you one hot tip and I, I, I, I, I'll give you one hot tip. And I would have warned you, though, I gave the same, David Grand, he was kicking around his next book. Oh, really? And after the show, I didn't care of that guy. He's, you know, after the show, I said, here's a hot tip for you. Okay. And I'd lay it out a book for him. What was that? I don't know. Maybe he's halfway done with it. He acted like he was honestly interested. What I can tell you? Oh, you can't tell me. Well, not now. I mean, Phil's got got turned the equipment off. Oh, okay. I should. You know what I was telling him. I was telling him, what his next book ought to be. Yeah.

Okay, well, I'll tell you too. No, I got a David Grant story. I got a David Grant story. So when I was researching that young Washington book, so that came on 2018, so there's like 2015, 2016. Yeah. And, you know, I always keep kind of a file of possible book ideas. Okay.

And I was researching that and George's young wife, George Washington's young life, sorry, and his older brother had been, you know, kind of cut his teeth in the war of Jenkins' ear. as a young royal navy officer and war of jenkins here that's pretty interesting so i dove into and then well and then there was this like crazy story growing out of the war of jenkins ear about this british navy fleet that went around the coast of south of uh tip of south america and shipwrecked on the western coast of south america and ended up you know cannibalizing each other and that ended up and then i pitched it to my agent You know?

No, I was about to pitch it to my agent. Like, this is kind of a wild story. And then I have this, my agent's voice, this is a Stuart, my agent's voice. No, that's about British. You want to write about Americans. And so then it turns out, then, you know, some years, it's the wager. Yeah. Didn't slow him down.

I didn't slow him down. Anyway, well, we can talk about Poison heroes after. But, you know, Warner's Herzog's poison arrow that he said not to touch. Yeah. These Opata native warriors and what's now Sonora, Mexico, had these arrows that were tipped with, with the Spanish called called it, called it Yerba de la Fletcha, you know, leaf of the arrow that they dipped their tips in. And the Spanish were terrified of it because if it, it seems like if it hit you directly,

you'd like kind of fall over dead. But they had armor on, so, you know, they wouldn't really get a hit much. But it turns out if you just got a little nick from that arrow, like one guy, his arm just started deteriorating and falling off like a piece of well done pot roast. And so it would it would deteriorate your body. And the, the journals say that like, yeah, 17 of these guys, Spaniards, like, they died from the poison arrows were the most. horrible stench and painful death. And so this is the, uh, the flesh eating poison. What do they think is made out of it? Well, I've really looked into that. It's, it's, it's from a, um, you know, euphobia. Uh, it's a, it's a plant. They're, like, it's so

complicated. And I've asked like three different biochemists about it that, um, there's so many different species that are, that are related and a lot of them have, have toxins of various types in them, yeah, various combinations. But I'm thinking that these arrows, they might have been, um, there might have been two different types of poison. One on the arrow tip or more, one that was a quick acting one and that got in your bloodstream. And another one that was a slow acting rot the flesh, you know, combination. So it's like when the Spaniards came to Opa, I said, well, you know, let's check our pharmaceutical shelf here and see what we can and how we can, how we can, you know,

incur the most pain on these people. Yeah, yeah. And so it's, it's wild. I mean, they're really sophisticated. Yes, it's, that's cool because you don't think of, you know, you always think of the aerotoxins in Africa, South America. You know, a lot of people don't think about aerotoxins. Yeah, I mean, there's like a high desert plant or, you know, desert shrubs.

I was going to walk away from this conversation with your larger point about Indian agency in the Southwest. Now, all I can think about is describing necrosis is a well-down. pot roast. So that's my Okay, well, I'm sorry to footnote it with a discussion. It's great. It's great. You know, a vivid image about this is why

the colonial powers didn't establish a very strong presence in the Southwest because they were like being turned into pot roast. All right, boy, check it out. There's so many, I mean, obviously we didn't even scratch the surface, man. Peter Starks, the lost cities of El Norte, Cornaddles quest, the Unconquered West,

and the birth of American Indian resistance. Peter Stark, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks, Steve. Thanks for him. Really fun. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in there. He's sleeping back. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God. He doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scared.

and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together.

not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.