Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

The American West was explored by white men half a century before the first colonists set foot on Virginia’s beaches, but it went virtually uninhabited by whites for another three hundred years. In 1539, Don Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, a nobleman who had married rich and been appointed governor of Guadalajara by the Spanish king, set out on horseback from Mexico with a couple of hundred men, driving into the uncharted north. Coronado was a far kinder conquistador than his ruthless contemporaries Pizarro and De Soto, but he was equally obsessed with gold. His objective was a place called Cibola, seven cities where, legend had it, houses and streets were veneered with gold and silver. All he found, somewhere in northwestern Arizona, were some savage people living in earthen hovels, perhaps descendants of the great Hohokam culture, which had thrived in central Arizona until about 1400, when it mysteriously disappeared. Crestfallen, but afraid of disgracing the Spanish crown, Coronado pushed on. Tusayan, Cicuye, Tiguex, Quivira—no gold. His fruitless expedition took him from the baking desert canyons of south-central Arizona up to the cool ponderosa highlands of the Mogollon Rim, then down again into the vast, flat, treeless plains of West Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas. He returned, miraculously, a couple of years later, having lost half his men and some of his sanity when his horse stepped on his skull as he was exercising it.