Documents Of The Coronado Expedition, 1539-1542: "They Were Not Familiar With His Majesty, nor Did They Wish to be His Subjects"

by Richard Flint, Shirley Cushing Flint (Editor)

This volume is the first annotated, dual-language edition of thirty-four original documents from the Coronado expedition. The documents provide a window into the actions and attitudes of members of the expedition and its unwilling hosts in the American Southwest and northwest Mexico. Using the latest historical, archaeological, geographical, and linguistic research, this volume makes available accurate transcriptions and modern English translations of the documents, including seven never before published and seven others never before available in English. It includes a general introduction and explanatory notes at the beginning of each document.

760 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2005

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Reviews

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Virtually all of the pertinent surviving records of the expedition led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado from Nueva España into Tierra Nueva and back again, beginning in early 1540 and concluding in the spring of 1542, were written several years to decades after the events they aim to recall. These written records were assembled from human memory, not from contemporaneous notes or diary entries kept by soldiers participating in the entrada north. For this reason the documents lack all the immediate details of time and geography that would be most useful to those of us who would like nothing more than to construct accurate maps of the routes these soldiers and their accompanying servants and slaves and Indians made through what we now know as the desert southwest of the United States on the way to Texas and Kansas. This source of frustration with imprecision is ever-present whenever one is pouring over this chapter from Spanish/Indian/American history. Still, a wealth of this after-the-fact documentation of the expedition survives: less accurate and precise than desirable, but maybe considerably more than might be expected, and from a process of careful assessment and cross-referencing, certain conclusions can be reached, allowing us with our backward gazes to connect the dots. Certain segments of the narrative remain blurry enough to keep us guessing and investigating to the present day.

The content of these original documents cannot be changed. What can be said without a doubt is that the assembly of these documents by Richard and Shirley Cushing Flint in this glorious tome has produced the best possible compilation of this history into a massive slab for your one-stop browsing pleasure. The footnotes and annotations are extensive and superb.

Is this tome a must-have for anyone preoccupied with the Coronado tale? I can't say for certain: this probably isn't a book you'd frequently return to unless, perhaps, you were writing a thesis or dissertation on the subject. Certainly this is foundational material upon which any more synthetic retelling of the Coronado tale must be securely anchored. I'm grateful to have read through it once and to know it will remain on my shelf in case I wish to return to it later. The colossal and deliberate and scrupulous labors undertaken by the Flint team in its manufacture are obvious and appreciated and indeed deserve celebration. This is a beautiful aggregation of American (among other kinds of) history, and it revitalizes a long dead cast of courageous and heroic characters (regardless of one's response to the political implications) with an immediacy that is otherwise impossible to achieve.