DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Now, if you ever wanted a story about ambition, wilderness, and a trail that historians have been arguing over for centuries, pull up a chair — or keep both hands on the wheel — because this one starts in 1540 and it ends right here in Floyd County. From 1540 to 1542, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado led what the marker calls the first organized European exploration of the southwest.
And he wasn't exactly travelin' light. We're talking more than a thousand men and women. Thousands of horses and mules.
Cattle. Sheep. This wasn't a scouting party — it was a moving city, and it was moving in search of the fabled cities of gold.
Coronado trekked north from Culiacan, Mexico, pushing through land that would one day become Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Indian guides led the Spaniards between Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico and the Arkansas River in Kansas. Exactly which way they went has been a subject of debate among historians for a long, long time.
The surviving documents — and there are some — are brief, vague, and occasionally contradictory. Not exactly a GPS track log. But here's where the story gets interesting.
Twice in the spring of 1541, the company camped long enough to leave behind what archeologists call detectable evidence. The first time, they chose the site of a Teya Indian camp. And then a hailstorm struck — destroying most, if not all, of their pottery.
You can almost feel the mood of that camp. The second time, they stayed two weeks. Two whole weeks, in a canyon described in the surviving records as being a league wide.
A league wide. Now that's a canyon worth remembering. Fast forward to the 1950s and 1960s.
Local ranchers out here in and near Blanco Canyon turn up two pieces of chain mail. Chain mail. Just sitting there in the dirt and the grass like they'd been waitin' on somebody to notice.
Then, since 1993, a series of other objects — both European and from other parts of the southwest — have been found in the same area. Among them: projectile points similar to those used on crossbow arrows. And here's the detail that makes the archeologists sit up straight.
Crossbows were obsolete after Coronado's expedition. The marker says flatly they are unlikely to have been used by any other group of significant size. So when you find crossbow points in Blanco Canyon, you're not exactly left with a long list of suspects.
In the late 1990s, archeologists got to work in earnest, trying to confirm this area as the location of one of Coronado's camps. The evidence and artifacts they recovered supported the theory. Coronado passed through Blanco Canyon.
A thousand people and thousands of animals, crossbows and chain mail, a hailstorm that shattered their pottery, a canyon a league wide — and five hundred years later, the ground out here finally gave up enough to point a finger and say: yes. Right here. They were right here.
What the marker says
From 1540 to 1542, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado led the first organized European exploration of the southwest in search of the fabled "cities of gold." With a company of more than a thousand men and women and thousands of horses and mules, cattle and sheep, Coronado trekked north from Culiacan, Mexico, through land that became Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. The exact route along which their Indian guides led the Spaniards between Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico and the Arkansas River in Kansas has long been a subject of debate among historians. Surviving documents are brief, vague and occasionally contradictory. Twice in the spring of 1541, the company camped long enough to have created detectable archeological evidence; the first time, they chose the site of a Teya Indian camp. A hailstorm struck, destroying most, if not all, of their pottery. They occupied a second camp for two weeks in a canyon that was described as being "a league wide." In the 1950s and 1960s, two pieces of chain mail were discovered by local ranchers in and near Blanco Canyon. Since 1993, a series of other objects, both European and from other parts of the southwest, have been found in the same area. They include projectile points similar to those used on crossbow arrows. Crossbows were obsolete after this expedition and are unlikely to have been used by any other group of significant size. In the late 1990s, archeologists began the task of confirming this area as the location of one of Coronado's camps. Evidence and artifacts recovered supported the theory that Coronado passed through Blanco Canyon. (2000)