Ep. 861: The Defeat of Coronado

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with author Peter Stark https://www.peterstarkauthor.com/. Topics discussed: Peter's https://www.peterstarkauthor.com/ brand new book, The Lost Cities of El Norte: Coronado's Quest, the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-lost-cities-of-el-norte-peter-stark?variant=43996179464226; 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 https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 1:05Steven Rinella?

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• 1:50Steven Rinella?

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• 2:17Speaker 05

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case underwearless.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

• 2:26Steven Rinella?

  You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Lite. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Lite builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlite.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Joined today by Peter Stark, rejoined by Peter Stark. Author, adventurer, here to talk about the insane, insane, almost hallucinogenic.

• 3:02Speaker 06

  Crazy.

• 3:04Steven Rinella?

  Coronado expedition. Um, yeah. A hallucinogenic quality to the journey of like the 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 Expedition.

• 3:37Speaker 06

  And part of the reason why it was so wild and crazy and hallucinatory is they had no idea of what was up there.

• 3:44Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 3:45Speaker 06

  Zero, zero. They called it El Norte Misterioso, the mysterious north.

• 3:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 06

  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 shoved China in over there on the, on the left side.

• 4:03Steven Rinella?

  Like China's right about somewhere off.

• 4:07Speaker 06

  And they're thinking that California is some island. And, 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, talk about going into the unknown. They are utterly clueless and they have a huge expedition and a huge mission.

• 4:24Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 4:36Steven Rinella?

  Resistance and Peter was on before. Um, I'm trying to remember like you were on with your when you

• 4:43Speaker 06

  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 twenties, 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.

• 5:02Steven Rinella?

  I want to touch on that for a minute. Um, cause there's a thing in there that I don't think was relevant at the time.

• 5:07Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 5:08Steven Rinella?

  We talked before the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

• 5:17Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 5:17Steven Rinella?

  We talked before that, right?

• 5:18Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 5:19Steven Rinella?

  Well, let me tell you a funny story about that. Um, it has to do with Washington.

• 5:23Speaker 06

  All right.

• 5:23Steven Rinella?

  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

• 5:28Speaker 06

  You can embarrass me all you want. And I've got plenty of counter ammunition too.

• 5:33Steven Rinella?

  I might even mention this to you before, but like a thing like we, we were buddies way like we were friends long before I had kids.

• 5:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:41Steven Rinella?

  So my oldest kid

• 5:41Speaker 06

  Long before you had a TV show, long before you had, I mean, you were building closets. The last I remember.

• 5:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Working tree. Yeah. Doing tree work.

• 5:48Speaker 06

  And doing tree work.

• 5:48Steven Rinella?

  Stalling closet shelving.

• 5:50Speaker 06

  This is in, in the late nineties, I think.

• 5:52Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Late nineties. We were buddies.

• 5:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:55Steven Rinella?

  You had

• 5:55Speaker 06

  Hunting, hunting buddies.

• 5:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So my oldest kid just about turned 16. So way before that, but you had young kids, like you had young, young kids.

• 6:02Speaker 06

  Young, young kids.

• 6:03Steven Rinella?

  And the thing that was like, 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 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.

• 6:26Speaker 06

  Oh, tell me about it, dude.

• 6:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I was like, what in the world would you go home now? It's just five o'clock.

• 6:36Speaker 06

  Totally unclear to me then.

• 6:38Steven Rinella?

  It's like this guy's got his schedule all whacked out. You know, you'd be like, gotta run.

• 6:42Speaker 06

  Well, the

• 6:43Steven Rinella?

  And I used to be like, that dude's got his priorities crooked.

• 6:46Speaker 06

  On the other one, we, I don't know if we talked about this on the, the last time we were here, but you know, we had this classic crazy hunt on the Missouri breaks. It was a Second time you went down there. The first time we went down with Sandy Fraser 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, they weren't, 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, and then the next day, you know, there was already ice floating in the river

• 7:28Speaker 06

  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. Yeah. I mean, you know, like, like, like you had to dig your way through it. And I grew up on a frozen lake in Wisconsin. I, 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 the things you don't do and, you know, figured it out. And so, so we were, you and, and, and, 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

• 8:09Speaker 06

  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, and Fred and I got partway out in the river and we're like digging through these ice floes. And I was saying, you know, if we tip over here, we're just dead. I mean, there's like, there's, there's not even a question about it. You can't move through it. You can't move through it. You couldn't climb onto it. You couldn't swim through it. And, and the water's 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, I, you know, I don't know about this. This, this feels really, you know, sketchy to me. And Fred turns back, he's in the box, says, "Yeah, we're daddies now. We shouldn't be doing this stuff."

• 8:57Steven Rinella?

  Meanwhile, back then, I'm like, I don't know. So if you die, who cares?

• 9:01Speaker 06

  And then we deliver this to the Vanilla Brothers and they say, oh, we do this all the time.

• 9:09Speaker 06

  You know, another one where it's like you were pre children, pre spouses. So yeah, you know, that's the standards change.

• 9:17Steven Rinella?

  What I wanted to tell you about, I want to dive into Cornell because like I said, it's just, it's the most fascinating story. But, uh, I was trying to, so a writer named Selena Zito wrote a book called Butler.

• 9:32Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 9:33Steven Rinella?

  She's like very quick because she's from Pennsylvania. Okay. Um, but 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. It's her backyard, you know?

• 9:49Steven Rinella?

  I was talking to her on the phone and she was saying, you know, that's the second president to be shot there.

• 9:57Speaker 06

  I hadn't heard this.

• 9:58Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'm like, well, who else?

• 10:00Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 10:02Steven Rinella?

  When Washington.

• 10:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:04Steven Rinella?

  During the, like in the lead up to the French and Indian War, like, like General Washington was shot there.

• 10:12Speaker 06

  Yes, yes.

• 10:13Steven Rinella?

  Exactly.

• 10:14Speaker 06

  He was not a general. He was.

• 10:16Steven Rinella?

  No, but he was.

• 10:16Speaker 06

  He was, he was like a, a, a lower.

• 10:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. He's like a lower ranking English officer sent on a mission and they got in some dispute.

• 10:24Speaker 06

  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 militia officer.

• 10:33Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 10:33Speaker 06

  And that was a cause of resentment for the next, I mean, we're still living with it today.

• 10:40Speaker 06

  And one of the.

• 10:42Steven Rinella?

  But you tell that story, but it's just funny that like, even though 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.

• 10:52Speaker 06

  Well, and and I think there, you know, there were several times when he was really shot at. And and one was, you know, during the, um, uh, you know, Braddock's defeat.

• 11:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 06

  When, you know, the the British column under Braddock, General Braddock, was marching towards Fort Duquesne, which is now Pittsburgh. And, you know, they're like the might of the British Empire marching through the woods. And in columns, like the red coats and columns and thinking they're invincible until they they get close to what's now, um, Pittsburgh. And all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose.

• 11:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that was a bloody one.

• 11:29Speaker 06

  They can't even see, they can't even see anyone to shoot at. Because the the Indian warriors are so well hidden. And they're they're also joined by like, kind of, you know, French guys who are also good woods, woods fighters. And so they they don't even know who to who to shoot. And Washington is the one who survives that, um, that battle. Even though he was, he was an aide de camp.

• 11:52Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:53Speaker 06

  To Braddock, because Braddock, they 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 I've got to look into this, just the actual color. Even though I'm partly colorblind, but the the.

• 12:18Steven Rinella?

  It's gonna be hard for you to look into.

• 12:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, it'd be hard. Well, my wife helps me on this. A lot. And and, uh, but the 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 I 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 I, 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

• 13:03Speaker 06

  a British royal officers, uh, god, uh, uniform. And it was more like a. You know, like a like the buff colored thing that they were wearing.

• 13:14Steven Rinella?

  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?

• 13:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:28Steven Rinella?

  That the Continental Army would have never, the Continental Army would have never won, you know, and America would not have happened.

• 13:34Speaker 06

  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.

• 13:48Steven Rinella?

  They didn't license your book.

• 13:49Speaker 06

  It's, you know, these are historical events, but it's the thing I'm I've written about, but I think that's a highlighted moment in the in the film, just what we're talking about.

• 13:58Steven Rinella?

  You know who was there? You know who was there that day?

• 14:00Speaker 06

  Uh, I do. Boone. Let me tell you what Boone did. Your buddy.

• 14:07Speaker 06

  As I remember this, he was like a wagon driver, driving a freight wagon, right? Yeah, I mean, you're the I defer to you on Boone because you're you know.

• 14:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's like, he was like a lowly.

• 14:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so, and he and his buddy, I think his cousin were it 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, turned around and ran with the teams in the other direction. Is that right?

• 14:40Steven Rinella?

  I like to imagine that that was that that was deeply influential for Boone in his knowledge of like guerrilla.

• 14:50Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 14:50Steven Rinella?

  Warfare tactics and like Bush war. Oops, sorry. Always happens to me. Um.

• 14:59Speaker 06

  But but 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.

• 15:18Steven Rinella?

  He had better instincts than that.

• 15:21Steven Rinella?

  It was it was on that trip. Who who was Boone? Like, it was on that trip, on that campaign that Boone met. Was it John Finley?

• 15:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, one of the other Teamsters had been to Kentucky.

• 15:35Steven Rinella?

  It was on that campaign that Boone learned about Boone learned about what's over the gaps. Like, like, he learned there is a gap.

• 15:45Speaker 06

  To get through to the Kentucky.

• 15:47Steven Rinella?

  He learned there's a route through and then set off to find the Cumberland Gap, if I'm not mistaken.

• 15:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, because Finley had been involved in Indian trade down the Ohio River. Okay. Prior to his service as a Teamster. And so it was like a campfire story. I believe according to Boone's, you know, 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.

• 16:13Steven Rinella?

  So if I was gonna do a movie about this, I would have Boone and him talking about all this. You know, Cumberland Gap and all that. And I'd have Washington, come on, be like, get it straightened up, man.

• 16:28Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, interrupt him, man.

• 16:31Speaker 06

  Great scene.

• 16:32Steven Rinella?

  That would be a great.

• 16:34Speaker 06

  Well, and, um, yeah, and it was Finley, he didn't do any surveying, did he? I'm thinking of a different guy, but, but I know.

• 16:42Speaker 07

  There was, uh, the Duke of Cumberland did a survey, I believe, over like in that.

• 16:48Speaker 06

  In that area.

• 16:49Speaker 07

  But yeah, I don't think Finley was surveying.

• 16:51Speaker 06

  I mean, because one of the big problems was that George Washington and, you know, these soon to be founding fathers were big landholders.

• 16:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 06

  And then lands over the mountains, um, you know, which were really Indian lands and with many different tribes. And that they wanted to survey those lands and, you know, like stake them out. And so in, in 1774, Washington and, and other founding would be soon to be founding fathers, sent a team of surveyors over the mountains and the Seanys 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.

• 17:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 06

  And so Washington had a big part in that, too.

• 17:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, dude, mix it up. Let's jump to Coronado.

• 17:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, talk about mixing it up.

• 17:49Speaker 07

  Back in time.

• 17:50Steven Rinella?

  We're gonna go, so we're gonna go from seventeen seventy-four to

• 17:55Speaker 06

  fifteen forty.

• 17:56Steven Rinella?

  Okay, we're going, we're going back a couple hundred years. So now, I wanna, uh,

• 18:03Steven Rinella?

  I wanna let you set the scene here a little bit, but I wanna, um,

• 18:08Steven Rinella?

  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, I, the, some of their notions. The fountain of youth.

• 18:29Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:30Steven Rinella?

  The cities of gold.

• 18:32Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 18:33Steven Rinella?

  Um, oh, 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.

• 18:52Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 18:53Steven Rinella?

  Out of South America.

• 18:55Speaker 06

  And, and Central America.

• 18:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, it, they weren't making stuff up.

• 19:00Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 19:01Steven Rinella?

  I mean, like, they had arrived in cities, they had like legitimately found cities where they're like, these people are loaded.

• 19:09Speaker 06

  And with gold. There were empires, you know, it literal empires and emperors and, um, so, uh, like, they ransomed, uh, Pizarro ransomed the Incan emperor for a literal room full of gold. I mean, literally.

• 19:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:25Speaker 06

  And then they killed him and they melted down the golden bars and, you know, shipped it.

• 19:28Steven Rinella?

  But so it wasn't insane. It wasn't insane that people were like, there's gotta be more of this out there, you know?

• 19:34Speaker 06

  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 to India and getting spices and, you know, discovering those were worth a lot, you know, very valuable trade. And then the, uh, the Spanish are saying, wait, we went a hunk to that action. And then Columbus comes along and says, um, comes up with this wacko idea. It wasn't that wacko, but he said, uh, 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.

• 20:17Speaker 06

  He runs in to this unexpected continent, the Americas. And then, you know, the Spain is the Spanish, uh, conquistadors and explorers worked their way through in very, in very few number of years. And so in 1520, that's when Cortez illegally, against the king's orders, marches to Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City and knocks off.

• 20:43Steven Rinella?

  Is that how you're supposed to pronounce that?

• 20:45Speaker 06

  I, I, I hope so.

• 20:48Speaker 06

  Tenochtitlan, yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 06

  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 tribe. 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 that now he has thousands of, of enemy warriors. And that's how he knocks off the Aztecs so quickly.

• 21:32Speaker 06

  And then, and 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, that's 1520 and then 1533 Pizarro finds his way into the Andes, you know, way south in South America. And he finds the Inca empire and, and, you know, and the emperor and, you know, kidnaps the emperor room full of gold. You know, piles of gold being shipped out of, out of the Inca empire, out of the, the Aztec empire. And then. So that's 1533, 1536, this rumor comes down that there are more wealthy empires to the north.

• 22:17Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:18Speaker 06

  And nobody knows what's up there.

• 22:19Steven Rinella?

  And some of that comes out of, like, there's that, explain that, like Alvarez Expedition?

• 22:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, not Navarez.

• 22:30Steven Rinella?

  What was his name?

• 22:31Speaker 06

  Navarez.

• 22:31Steven Rinella?

  Okay, but the Cabeza de Vaca, like the dude called like the Moor and Cabeza de Vaca, and those guys have just that crazy ass.

• 22:40Speaker 06

  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. And somewhere in there, you know, Ponce de Leon was in there and, you know, the Fountain of Youth 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, 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, the commander was

• 23:24Speaker 06

  a guy named Navarez. And that essentially, this huge expedition, many 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, they rafted partway 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.

• 24:04Speaker 06

  And then the four survivors start walking and they know, like, New Spain is some way that, somewhere that way.

• 24:12Steven Rinella?

  Dude, when you look at a map, it is the craziest thing. Yeah, but they're like, they're on the Gulf Coast.

• 24:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:17Steven Rinella?

  And they're, and they just know that-

• 24:19Speaker 06

  They're aiming for Mexico City, you know, and, and they're four guys. And there're dozens and dozens of Indian tribes.

• 24:25Steven Rinella?

  It's inland.

• 24:27Speaker 06

  And there're dozens and dozens of Indian tribes, you know, and, 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, a Moorish slave named Esteban. And so he has-

• 24:46Steven Rinella?

  I was named after him, I'm joking.

• 24:47Speaker 06

  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.

• 24:57Speaker 06

  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, that the native people in various tribes started coming to him as a medicine man and respecting him as a medicine man. And so the, these four guys managed to sort of get past tribe to tribe using their, their, you know, medicine powers, their spiritual powers to kind of pave the way and protect them.

• 25:42Speaker 06

  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-

• 25:54Steven Rinella?

  That's what's so crazy, man. And now like you get a couple of delayed flights and you get somewhere two days- Day late, two days late, you're like, dude.

• 26:03Speaker 06

  And then when they, and then when they show up, there's a, another conquistador coming up from the south and, and, and taking, taking Indians as slaves and, and really brutalizing that west coast of Mexico.

• 26:17Speaker 06

  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, the four guys and those Spanish slavers, conquistador slavers, like, who are these guys? You know? They're like, oh, no, they, it's like in the, in the documents, they, one of them responds in perfect Castilian Spanish. It's like formal. You know, he's all in ragged.

• 26:55Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. Like, yeah, yeah, like assumed dead.

• 26:58Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:59Steven Rinella?

  For years.

• 27:00Speaker 06

  Assumed dead for years, seven years. And, and then, so then they get back to Mexico City, you know, then they explain who they are. They're eventually brought back, brought to Mexico City.

• 27:10Steven Rinella?

  Those dudes had to be like, let me get this straight.

• 27:12Speaker 06

  You're saying? It's such an unbelievable story.

• 27:17Steven Rinella?

  And as you're saying, you walked from floor to air.

• 27:23Speaker 06

  Like, this is where the space alien rumors really start.

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• 29:19Speaker 06

  So then they get to Mexico City and you know, they're greeted like, wow, these guys are survivors. And they, 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 a 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.

• 29:43Steven Rinella?

  They were, they were repurposing the stones?

• 29:46Speaker 06

  The bloody stones, I like to think into the, you know, the sacristory of the, I write about this. I write about this in some detail, actually. And one of the things they have to do.

• 29:56Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 29:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, this is, this is like a little.

• 29:58Steven Rinella?

  Making cathedrals out of those stones?

• 30:00Speaker 06

  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 this, the Spaniards in that era, you know, conquering the, the, the South American and Central American empires, you know, there were very developed religions and the Aztecs were, you know, famous then and, and now for their, their, 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, the Spaniards are saying, well, we're going to bring religion to these people.

• 30:44Speaker 06

  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, there are 70 of them in the, in the central Mexico on 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, a, uh, like a chamber of worship or any spiritual thing having to do with these, these, and with these religions. They would bury it. They'd seal it underground because they'd have to seal the spirits in.

• 31:26Speaker 06

  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-

• 31:45Steven Rinella?

  I've read about that tower of skulls.

• 31:47Speaker 06

  And 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.

• 31:55Steven Rinella?

  What do you mean, pictures of it?

• 31:56Speaker 06

  There, there are pictures of it.

• 31:58Steven Rinella?

  Photos?

• 31:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, archaeological photos. It's been excavated.

• 32:01Steven Rinella?

  How many are in there?

• 32:04Speaker 06

  Hundreds and hundreds. I, I can, we could, well, later, we'll see if we can call some up. Um, I actually have some on my camera because I took a-

• 32:13Steven Rinella?

  Pull that up, Phil. Give something to do over there. What's it called?

• 32:19Speaker 06

  The Tower of Skulls.

• 32:20Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay. Keep going.

• 32:21Speaker 06

  In, 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.

• 32:33Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 32:34Speaker 06

  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.

• 32:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  So, so then what happens is the, the, the, the four shipwreck survivors get to Mexico City, which is being transformed from the Aztec capital into a, into the, uh, capital of New Spain. And, you know, these, the Pizarro and, um-

• 33:13Speaker 06

  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 cellphone. Um, I've got one that's clearer than that about, that you really see it's kind of an outline of, of skulls.

• 33:28Speaker 07

  It's probably too late to redesign the studio.

• 33:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 06

  I mean, this is what we're looking at underground in, in the center of, of Mexico City and it's, it's, there've 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, um, they're just right in the heart of everything. Um, 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, uh, 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.

• 34:19Speaker 06

  And so everybody asks these four shipwreck survivors, hey, did you guys see any like gold up there or empires?

• 34:31Speaker 06

  It's so wild. And, and these guys are like.

• 34:33Speaker 07

  You'd happen to run into an empire.

• 34:37Speaker 06

  Did you run into any empire in your seven years of shipwreck wandering? And these guys are kind of like, wow, well, I'm not sure. We're not sure about that. But it's all, all it takes is like, there's just some little rumor that gets started.

• 34:53Speaker 07

  Yeah. Like some dudes told us about whatever.

• 34:55Speaker 06

  Yeah. Or they told, I think, I think the, the closest thing than actual detail was that, uh, that there were, they'd heard about seven cities up there. 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 known the American Southwest. And, and that directly feeds in to this old, old Spanish Iberian story that when the Moors conquered the Iberian Peninsula, like in seven fifty A.D. or something, that the Catholic bishops, seven Catholic bishops, took all the wealth and all the gold from the church, you know, the cathedrals,

• 35:41Speaker 06

  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.

• 35:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 06

  So, so that became, when, when it was heard that there were seven cities somewhere north of Mexico City, people thought, 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, and they send a reconnaissance party up there.

• 36:18Steven Rinella?

  This, this isn't, like, this way, this rumor mill thing

• 36:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:23Steven Rinella?

  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 up on the St. Lawrence.

• 36:34Speaker 06

  Oh, that's a cool story.

• 36:35Steven Rinella?

  And again, they like, they get, they take some indigenous people, bring them, bring them back to France, and then they kind, they're grilling them and grilling them and grilling them. And you can see that they, they sort of pick up on what they want to hear.

• 36:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, that's

• 36:54Steven Rinella?

  Exactly. They're like, oh.

• 36:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, way up, there is a place like, where 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.

• 37:08Speaker 06

  Oh, okay.

• 37:09Steven Rinella?

  There's, there's a people that are just one-legged.

• 37:12Speaker 06

  The farther

• 37:13Steven Rinella?

  There's also a place that's like, all, everything is gold, you know? And, and again, they're like legitimately trying to find it, but you get a sense that, that the indigenous people are like, yeah, just kind of play along.

• 37:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, and they don't really know what these, these, these Europeans are talking about.

• 37:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they're like asking them and asking them and eventually they're like, okay.

• 37:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure.

• 37:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, you'll find whatever you need.

• 37:38Steven Rinella?

  Go talk to the neighbors, because there's none of that here.

• 37:42Speaker 06

  Exactly. That comes into this Coronado story too.

• 37:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 37:45Speaker 06

  Big time. Um, and so, and then, so they send the, um, the viceroy Mendoza, who's, he's like the king's representative of New Spain, and he's arrived in, just the year before.

• 37:58Steven Rinella?

  This is the scouting mission.

• 37:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, so Mendoza, well Coronado is a protege of the viceroy Mendoza. Mendoza has been sent to New Spain by the king to rein in Cortez, because Cortez is like thinking all of New Spain is his, you know?

• 38:13Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 38:14Speaker 06

  And, and the king of Spain says, viceroy, you know, Mendoza, my trusted man, you're my viceroy, you go and rein in Cortez. And that's how Coronado is like a young protege of viceroy Mendoza, comes with, from Spain to Mexico with viceroy Mendoza. Then, the, the rumors of gold start to the north, and viceroy Mendoza sends scouts up to see if they're true. And he sends this dude, among others, a guy named Frey Marcos.

• 38:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 06

  Who, there's a long story that I won't go into, but it's, you know, another long traumatic story. And, and Frey Marcos comes back, you know, months later and says, oh yeah, yeah, I saw those, I saw this, you know, incredible city up there. You know, the golden cities, incredible stuff.

• 39:00Steven Rinella?

  He says he firsthand saw it.

• 39:02Speaker 06

  He said he firsthand saw it. And then he gets back to Mexico City, and, well, then.

• 39:08Steven Rinella?

  Why is he saying that?

• 39:10Speaker 06

  That's a question for the ages.

• 39:12Steven Rinella?

  People have wondered that?

• 39:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. And, and then, um, but he, so he gets, I mean, maybe it's the same thing, like, he's telling people what they want to hear.

• 39:21Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 39:22Speaker 06

  And, and, you know, maybe he didn't tell them exactly that, but he said, yeah, they're a big, they're big tall cities up, up that way. Which, in fact, there were.

• 39:32Steven Rinella?

  The Pueblos, yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 06

  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 just like this frenzy starts in Mexico City. All these people want to invest in this expedition and, and take part in it and, you know, invest in it to, because they know they're gonna find piles of gold. North of, you know, in the, in the mysterious north. They just know it. It's, you know, it's happening in, in Mexico, it's happening in the Andes with the Incas. So, and 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.

• 40:18Speaker 06

  And it's, it's now it's believed to be close to 3,000 people. Um, uh, you know, hundreds of Spanish, Spaniards dressed like conquistadores with armor or with leather armor and, you know, lances and armored horses. And then thousands of, of Aztec and 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. It, it's, that's unclear how many exactly cattle. But thi- this is all to feed this expedition, you know? You can imagine like 3,000 people. That doesn't even include the, like, their wives along, their children along, their,

• 41:03Speaker 06

  you know, cobblers and gunsmiths and everything else. So you need all this food, you know, on the hoof to feed this expedition. And, uh, and it sort of heads north in the spring of 1540.

• 41:18Steven Rinella?

  And they're going up there to raise hell.

• 41:20Speaker 06

  They're going up there to, they're gonna go find the golden cities.

• 41:23Steven Rinella?

  And take it.

• 41:24Speaker 06

  And, yeah, yeah, they, yeah, they. That's the plan. And, but, there's a whole, you know, other dimension to this story. Well, there are two dimensions. One, the, the, the real wealth, it would, it turned out was, and, and they were realizing at the time, was not so much in the gold, which you could, you know. Take and then go spend, um, but was in taking fertile lands and making those your in comiendas, your, 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.

• 42:09Speaker 06

  So that was one thing they were looking for in addition to the Golden Cities. And then the, the other thing that was going on, which I'm spacing out now, as they're coming north, they, um, they are told by the king of Spain and, and through Vice, 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 not, we're going to be humane. And it's like, there's supposed to be this whole shift in the Spanish empire that we're, it's going to be humane rather than cruel, you know, rather than forceful.

• 42:51Speaker 06

  And so Coronado is under orders from Vice Roy Mendoza. You have to be kind with the native people. You can't raid villages. You have to. Really? Yep, 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 and, and, um, that as he, as soon as he got going north, that he had guys with him who were ex, you know, ex cruel conquistadors. And they started running out of food.

• 43:34Speaker 06

  They, you know, like their supply trains were separated and they needed corn rather than just cattle. Mm-hmm. And so the ex conquistadors go into a village and just take food and the native people attack and one of the ex conquistadors is trying to flush.

• 43:54Speaker 06

  Some native warriors out of a patch of brush. Yeah. And he forgot, 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, Sami goes, the chief of staff now shot with a native arrow in the eye. So they say, okay, we've got to punish these natives, throw them a lesson. So. And where, where is, is this in Mexico still? Yeah, it was near, it would be, it would be like north of, uh, well, far north of Acapulco, but you know, where, uh, where like Culiacan and Sinaloa is. Yeah, yeah. It would be in, in south of there. Okay, so they haven't even hit the US yet? No, they're, they're months away. Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 06

  And so, so they, they, uh, because their buddy got hit in the eye with an arrow, you know, the, the conquistador's buddy. They hang a bunch of the native warriors and, uh, the native people. And, you know, kind of ran, they just randomly set, snag a bunch and hang them. And that's sort of like the beginning of this is not the humane expedition. Yeah. That it was cracked out to be. And, um, but that, that, that story goes way on to the north.

• 45:12Speaker 06

  You pick it up from here. I can, I can, I can, I can keep going with that, that, that, that they spend six months, basically. And I calculated that if you put the, all the animals and people nose to tail on that expedition. It would stretch for 15 miles. Oh, you're kidding me. And, and I was thinking, yeah, think of all that, that, that, uh, dust and the piles of dung and its track, you know? Oh, yeah. Hotter than hell? And hotter, yeah. And I mean, how, how do they do that? I, I, it's just, uh, it's hard to imagine. But they finally, they finally get up, um, after months.

• 45:52Speaker 06

  They finally cross into what's now southern Arizona.

• 45:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so they entered, they entered into Arizona, not New Mexico.

• 46:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, but just right next to New Mexico, you know, it'd be south of Phoenix and south of Tucson.

• 46:06Steven Rinella?

  Cause people have done a pretty good job of piecing together what this route is, even though there's like certain questions here.

• 46:11Speaker 06

  There are certain, and that, just in that, that's where the real questions is right in that area. And I, I think you've had, haven't you had Denny Seymour on here? Yeah, yeah, so she's, yeah, she's one of those.

• 46:19Steven Rinella?

  She's looked at that question.

• 46:20Speaker 06

  She's really looking at that. And, and so she has, you know, she, she's done research in a, in, in one valley and then there's another valley. And there's discussion which route was which, and were they both used or how, how did that all work? But she's found cool stuff. I mean, it's amazing. She's done great work.

• 46:36Steven Rinella?

  When they, when they hit what's now the US, did they have a sense of how far?

• 46:43Steven Rinella?

  They were like, what was their comprehension of how far they were gonna go? Because I mean, they ultimately they make it up into Texas and Kansas.

• 46:51Speaker 06

  They make it, they almost made it to Iowa.

• 46:54Steven Rinella?

  Where did they think, like, where did they think they were going?

• 46:57Speaker 06

  I figured out they were just a few weeks short of getting to Chicago, which was, which was then an Indian.

• 47:01Steven Rinella?

  Are you serious?

• 47:02Speaker 06

  It was 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, but sometimes it by pieces, sometimes huge chunks. It finally crosses what's now, uh, with Coronado, what's now, um, would be like, you know, Phoenix? Are you familiar with Phoenix? And if you look.

• 47:46Speaker 06

  East of Phoenix, there's this big mountain range right there, you know, big, deserty, tall mountain ranges. It's called the Superstition Mountains.

• 47:52Steven Rinella?

  Yup.

• 47:53Speaker 06

  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.

• 48:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 48:02Speaker 06

  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.

• 48:12Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 48:13Speaker 06

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

• 48:39Steven Rinella?

  They're hungry, yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 06

  They're so hungry, they just, they just slam them down, die.

• 48:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh, die?

• 48:44Speaker 06

  Die, yeah. And, and they finally, um, emerge from the, the, the northern end of the Days Poblado. And then they go over some smaller ranges.

• 48:58Speaker 06

  And they go over a ridge. There's, the, 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 Frey Marcos, who's with them, has been saying, these are like golden cities. And yeah, it's pretty high, but it's built of like rock and, and, and, you know, it's not like big, smooth dungeon walls and caves and everything.

• 49:28Steven Rinella?

  Now that they, I, I feel like I've read about this and I feel like I've read some writer, historian speculating that maybe he looked at it from a distance. When it was like lit by the evening sun.

• 49:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's one theory. Yeah.

• 49:43Steven Rinella?

  It's Alpenkohl. Trying to like, give him some credit to be like, well, maybe the sun was hitting it in a way that it looked like it was gold.

• 49:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, it looked like it was gold. And well, and part of the story, yeah, exactly. That's one of the theories.

• 49:56Speaker 07

  At what point did they just dismiss what Frey Marco was saying? At what point did his word not hold any?

• 50:03Speaker 06

  When they came over there, Rich. And the guy, one of the chroniclers said, you would not have been, wanted to be there to hear the words that were thrown on Frey Marcos.

• 50:16Steven Rinella?

  How humiliating, man. And I'm like, oh, stone. See, I thought it was gold.

• 50:25Speaker 06

  And I mean, part of that story, it's, there, there's so many aspects and details, but the, the, with Frey Marcos's reconnaissance party, Esteban went. And, and so, and he was like a real, you know, rugged traveler. So was Frey Marcos, actually. But so Esteban, apparently had a weakness for native women.

• 50:47Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 50:48Speaker 06

  And he liked to collect turquoise's. And so by the time he got, he was the first guy to get to this city.

• 50:56Speaker 06

  The pueblo, but he, the, the, the, the Zuni, is it, it was the Zuni Pueblos?

• 51:01Steven Rinella?

  I've been, yeah.

• 51:02Speaker 06

  Have you been there?

• 51:03Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, I've been there with Zuni dudes. And we went to that old, the, the old pueblo site and them kind of pointing out the Coronado stuff.

• 51:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:10Steven Rinella?

  I mean, like, dude, like it was yesterday, though.

• 51:11Speaker 06

  It was like yesterday.

• 51:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And they're, you know what I mean? Like, in their culture, it's like, oh, no, this is where.

• 51:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 06

  And, 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 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.

• 51:34Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 51:34Speaker 06

  And, you know, and so we're standing on the ruins of Hawaku and he's saying, yeah, well, the front gate's here. And they, 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, you're going, you're walking through the park and, you know, in your, your local park. And he's pointing out the site.

• 51:52Steven Rinella?

  It's like us earlier, like, like, for, for us in 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.

• 52:05Steven Rinella?

  A major, you know, I mean,

• 52:06Speaker 06

  It's a major event.

• 52:07Steven Rinella?

  It's a major thing like culturally in the telling. And if there's, they have the familiarity with it that we would have with all the civil war and the revolutionary war.

• 52:17Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's just, I mean, very, yes.

• 52:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. For them, it's like, well, no, that's, that's where this happened. And that's what happened and led to this.

• 52:24Speaker 01

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• 52:53Steven Rinella?

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• 53:38Steven Rinella?

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• 54:00Speaker 04

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• 54:15Speaker 06

  So Esteban, so you know, he ends up at Hawa Koo and they and they soon kill him. Because they figure out he he looks, there's some, he has some resemblance to an enemy warrior. They don't like the way he's treating the women or whatever, they kill him. And and so it's unclear whether Frey Marcos makes it all the way to the pueblo, the Zuni pueblo, Hawa Koo, or if he's like, 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.

• 54:56Speaker 06

  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 described him in my Lost Cities book as that in a way he's like a, a, you know, in 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 Frey Marcos is like a serious traveler.

• 55:37Speaker 06

  And I think of him 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 there are 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 it. So, I mean, that was one way for 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 Frey Marcos to like get this whole expedition up there because not only were they looking for the golden cities.

• 56:20Speaker 06

  Fertile land. They were also looking for India, which they thought was just over the mountain.

• 56:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 56:25Speaker 06

  And, and then they were also, they were charged by the king and queen of Spain with 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, of the whole operation. And Frey Marcos is one of these guys. And so, um, so he had kind of a personal interest, I think, in, in, in, in leading, you know, and convincing.

• 57:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, he was not there for the gold.

• 57:04Speaker 06

  He wa- he, no, he wasn't there for the gold. He was there for the souls. And, and yeah, so they come over the horizon. There's the alleged city of gold and it's like, this shitstorm comes down on Frey Marcos. And, you know, I'm surprised they didn't kill him on the spot. Well, they couldn't because, you know, he's a man of God. That would not.

• 57:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 06

  That would not have been good. If you were, if you 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 a long story short, not that long at this point. They march up to the, across the plain and you, I think you probably heard the story, some of it.

• 57:46Speaker 06

  And, um, towards Hawaku 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?

• 58:01Speaker 07

  And, man, I don't know.

• 58:02Speaker 06

  You haven't.

• 58:03Speaker 07

  With those crossbows.

• 58:05Speaker 06

  They might've been really good ones.

• 58:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, they were like cocking them with their feet and stuff.

• 58:10Speaker 07

  We're also not in the practice of launching arrows at 45 degree angles.

• 58:14Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, 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.

• 58:27Speaker 06

  Uh, with, with what they're called bow priests, the, the Zuni priests.

• 58:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 58:32Speaker 06

  In the forefront. And the Zuni priests have poured down a line of cornmeal across the plain.

• 58:39Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 58:40Speaker 06

  And it's very clear what this cornmeal line means. It means do not cross this line.

• 58:47Steven Rinella?

  It's a line in the sand, dude.

• 58:48Speaker 06

  The line is in the sand.

• 58:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 58:50Speaker 06

  And, and so at this point.

• 58:52Steven Rinella?

  I've never heard this detail about the cornmeal.

• 58:54Speaker 06

  Oh, the, yeah, that's one of the coolest details. And it's happened at other Pueblos as well after this, um, during the expedition. And so it was a real thing. And, 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, a suit of gilded armor, gilded helmet, huge plume, um, you know, armored horses. And they, 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 a requerimento, which is means like the requirement.

• 59:34Speaker 06

  And they're required by the king and queen of Spain to read this document to the Zunis three times in Latin.

• 59:44Speaker 06

  And.

• 59:45Steven Rinella?

  This, this movie needs to be called The Requirement.

• 59:47Speaker 06

  The Requirement. Yeah, well, so here, the requirements go like this. It's actually, I think the requirement, I don't know if it's a requirement applying to the Zunis or it's a requirement applying to the conquistadors that they have to read the document.

• 1:00:00Steven Rinella?

  Homie, so it's read in Latin?

• 1:00:02Speaker 06

  It's read in Latin.

• 1:00:03Steven Rinella?

  There's no, three times? There's no effort to translate?

• 1:00:05Speaker 06

  Well, suppose there's supposedly, you know, some accounts say that there was a one guy on the, you know, native guy on the expedition who knew, well, he'd have to know both Spanish and Nahuahtl, which is the Aztec language. So it might've been translated as far as Nahuahtl.

• 1:00:24Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:25Speaker 06

  But no farther than that.

• 1:00:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, hey, we tried.

• 1:00:29Speaker 06

  It was like, we tried. And so the requerimento, 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, uh, uh, embodiment on earth is the Pope.

• 1:00:51Speaker 06

  And the Pope's power is embodied in the King and Queen of Spain. Good. And we are representatives of the King and Queen of Spain. So, i.e. 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 show us, show you our ways in religion.

• 1:01:32Speaker 06

  Or two, and if you do that, option one, you'll be treated with the utmost kindness and generosity and care.

• 1:01:43Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:01:58Speaker 06

  That's the requirement. That's the requirement.

• 1:02:02Speaker 06

  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. And the Aztecan 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.

• 1:02:44Speaker 06

  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 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 Frei Marcos's robe, not Frei Marcos, Frei Luis's robe, and pins it to the ground. Okay.

• 1:03:29Speaker 06

  At that point, all hell breaks loose, and Coronado says, essentially, it's the Spanish charge. It says, Santiago y sierra España, which means, Saint James, that's the patron saint of Spain, Saint James and close, Spain, like, protect us, Saint James, we're gonna go charge. And then they charge on their horses, and they, they, they, you know, essentially rout these, all these, you know, several hundred Zuni warriors, who chase back into the pueblo, and some are, some are killed, but, on the, on the plain, but most get back into the

• 1:04:10Speaker 06

  pueblo, and they, the seven-story Habacú pueblo, and they, they pull up all the ladders. And, and meanwhile, the, 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 this des poblado, you know, so, they, some of these journalists 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 harkabus, harkabusiers, you

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  know, you know, the muskets are like a cannon on a, propped on a stick, that, or on a stand, the ones we see in the Remington painting. Those guys are so weak with hunger, they can't stand up to shoot an accurate shot. Oh, really? That bad? That bad. And, and so, but, you know, there's still enough guys, and, and I think especially the Aztecan warriors play much more a part of this than, than the Spanish accounts let on. But you know, they're surrounding the pueblo and they're swarming it and but they're these pueblos are built like fortresses. 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

• 1:05:32Speaker 06

  them. Um, but there's one ladder in behind that's hanging down that the Zunis apparently forgot to haul up. And the Spaniards find this one ladder. And Coronado, you know, he's the guy, he's like thirty years old, you know, early thirties. Oh, he's young like that. He's young. He's borrowed his wife's money to fund the expedition. And his his he married Beatrice when she was twelve, and she was one of the richest women, probably was the richest woman in New Spain. She had all these estates. And so, and a pretty fierce mother. And so he used her money to fund this expedition.

• 1:06:17Speaker 06

  Mm hmm. 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. Mm hmm. And so, 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 the the point, um, the leader. And so he gets off his horse and he, in his golden armor, he starts up this ladder. He does. He does, personally. There are many accounts of this. He does. Eyewitness. Leading from the front, man. Leading from the, well, for a moment. Yeah. And he's partway up this ladder, when like this entire avalanche of boulders comes down on him. And, you know, it was like a like a trap, a booby trap. And he just got

• 1:07:01Speaker 06

  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 threw their bodies on top of him to protect him from the, you know, this complete pummeling of rocks. Hmm. And then they managed to drag him away. And he was very seriously, uh, head injured and, you know, was in, out for hours, if not longer. Um, and he awoke and he was in some tent off to the side of the field. Knocked.

• 1:07:36Steven Rinella?

  Knocked him out good though.

• 1:07:37Speaker 06

  Knocked him out really good, yeah. And I mean, you can imagine a slab of stone on a metal helmet.

• 1:07:43Speaker 06

  You know, you talk 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 kinda right, but kinda not because basically the Zuni warriors just fled out the back and so through 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 the whole, 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.

• 1:08:26Speaker 06

  And so the Zuni have this really cool place of refuge. It's called Dawayalani. Which is or Corn Mountain or Thunder Mountain and it's this huge mesa that's several hundred feet high. You know, un- 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. And they have villages and wells and they're, 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 they can hang out indefinitely. And so that's where the, the, the people from Habaku and the warriors and eventually most of the people in the Zuni Valley end up on the top of Dawayalani.

• 1:09:12Speaker 06

  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, how can we get at these people, you know? It's like, we can't even get a hold of one.

• 1:09:26Steven Rinella?

  Like they still want to get them.

• 1:09:28Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, I mean, they're looking for the. So else to save and gold to to take. And so, you know, finally, the Zuni send like an emissaries to um to Coronado. And and they meet peacefully. And that 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 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.

• 1:10:13Speaker 06

  But if you keep going that way, you'll find a whole lot of it.

• 1:10:18Steven Rinella?

  Again, the neighbors.

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  In fact, we'll give you guides to get there. So so making a long story short, that's how they almost end up in Chicago. And

• 1:10:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Speaker 06

  And that that they're they're really cool.

• 1:10:30Steven Rinella?

  But this like like I've I've read about this. This move they do. And it seems like historians recognize that it really is manipulation.

• 1:10:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, some.

• 1:10:44Steven Rinella?

  Some say they legitimately taking the pressure off and just getting them some getting them out of here.

• 1:10:52Speaker 06

  Well, you know, I really I. Yes, I mean, there are some historians who have said, no, I don't think that's right.

• 1:10:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:10:57Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:11:19Steven Rinella?

  Don't they eventually get? When they give them a guide who's supposed to take them, don't they eventually get fed up with that guy?

• 1:11:26Speaker 06

  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 Zunis have all these different communities, but they're separate. And, and yet they're, 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.

• 1:12:11Speaker 06

  And so what, partly what happens is the Spaniards, like they get to Hawa Kua or the Zuni Valley and they say like, 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, 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.

• 1:12:30Steven Rinella?

  Oh, because they're looking for like, they're looking for the head of the snake.

• 1:12:33Speaker 06

  The head of the snake.

• 1:12:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Speaker 06

  And, and that's, that's what worked for them in those, in the South American empires.

• 1:12:38Steven Rinella?

  But in the pueblo culture was.

• 1:12:40Speaker 06

  In the pueblo cultures, I, you know, I describe it as like this huge interwoven fabric. And, you know, Coronado could come up there and slash at it all they want, but it's not, you know, it's not going to really make much of a difference. And so.

• 1:12:52Steven Rinella?

  But you're not going to get them to capitulate because you capture some specific feature.

• 1:12:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like they've been, this is not their first rodeo, so to speak.

• 1:13:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:00Speaker 06

  And, 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, to, to attack in, in, in, in many fashions. And then, but what happens is the Zunis, so they're, you know, you've been there, it's like, it's very remote. I mean, even today, it's, you know, western New Mexico.

• 1:13:28Speaker 06

  And the Zoonies, 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 Zoonies send out messengers to the east, 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 Zooni. And if you go just beyond the Rio Grande Valley, there's a, it's like a southern part of the Sangre de Cristo range, where it's like a divide, where rivers flow down to the plains on one side and into the Rio Grande on the other side.

• 1:14:10Speaker 06

  So it's like a natural kind of subcontinental divide, almost. And on top of that divide is a very elaborate pueblo called Que Cuyé. It's known today as Pecos, 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 crosscontinental trade for centuries. And so the people of Que Cuyé trade with the people of the plains, with, you know, buffalo hides and meat and other things. And they have corn from the pueblos to the east, and seashells from the coast, and macaw feathers from the... Oh, really?

• 1:14:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, the macaw feathers, a huge deal. And so this Pecos is like this international emporium of trade, you know, would be very climbing, fifteen miles southeast of Santa Fe today. And so the Zoonies send their messengers to the Pecos. And, you know, it's like, they collaborate, what are we gonna do about these guys? And so the there's a the leaders, some of the elders are they're actually younger guys, one's older, one's younger, from Pecos come to the Zunis and meet Coronado. Mm hmm.

• 1:15:39Speaker 06

  And say, and tell them about, you know, Coronado's asking like, what's out there, blah, blah, blah, you know, and they have, and they said, well, yeah, I mean, there are these like these big plains 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 Pecos guys. Oh, really? Yeah. And so, and so they point to the, the Pecos guys, the diplomats from Pecos, 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

• 1:16:24Speaker 06

  know, like a throne with an awning. And, you know, he's like the king of whatever deserted pueblo. King of something.

• 1:16:32Speaker 06

  And, and so, you know, he's, he's, he's smart about it. He's, you know, he's a well organized guy. And so he sends, he decides to send out reconnaissance parties. And one goes from Zuni to the east towards Pecos, and then aiming for the buffalo plains. Mm hmm. And one to the west, where they hear there's a big river, and they think maybe they're going to hit China, or, and something, you know, they think China is over there. They've heard there's a big river. I think another one is maybe going to the southwest, but, you know, looking for the ocean. Yeah, there are other guys looking for the ocean.

• 1:17:16Steven Rinella?

  OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trust pilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter.

• 1:17:59Steven Rinella?

  You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're going to be happy you did it. And check this out, American made floor liners and cargo liners. Okay. They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weather tech.com. Okay. So buying a new car or a new home starts by building credit, right? So how do you start building credit? It's easy. With one pays builder card. There's no credit check and no monthly or annual fees, just a card that helps you build credit to reach goals like buying a car or home. Download the one pay app or visit one pay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

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• 1:18:58Speaker 06

  So the, the expedition that the reconnaissance party that's sent to the east gets to Pecos and they, the diplomats in Pecos say, um, yeah, we'll, 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 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, actually.

• 1:19:44Speaker 06

  There's a lot of gold, but we gotta go farther for it. And the Spaniards say like, are you sure there's gold? Yeah, there's gold. You know, my buddy Bagotes back in, uh, Pecos has a golden bracelet. And so you can imagine that suddenly the reconnaissance party spins around, goes back to Pecos.

• 1:20:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, to see the bracelet?

• 1:20:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, see the bracelet. And Bagotes is like, I don't know. So, you know, they end up torturing Bagotes to try to get the bracelet. And, um, you know, relations go south at this point.

• 1:20:12Steven Rinella?

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 1:20:14Speaker 06

  And so, um, that, uh, they, they essentially, um, regroup. Cause winter's coming on. They regroup in the, in the Pueblos, which are, uh, north of, of Albuquerque, like between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. There are a lot, it's a very populated, um, Puebloan area and, you know, really good agriculture along the Rio Grande. Um, and the, meanwhile, that as part of this whole thing, I mean, this, this 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, Viceroy Mendoza doesn't want these guys raiding villages for food.

• 1:20:58Speaker 06

  So Viceroy 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 route's going to be up the west coast of Mexico. And so this, this big flotilla under Captain Alarcon, who's a cool guy and leaves great journals, starts going up the coast of Mexico and goes into every little bay and inlet, you know, sticks down a cross and looks for Coronado on his expedition. And it's like, they're not, they're not seeing it.

• 1:21:38Speaker 06

  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, you know, 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.

• 1:21:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 06

  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 them.

• 1:22:12Speaker 06

  And so this is a problem. And the ships have the warm clothes. And they um. The the the Aztecan warriors and plus the Spaniards, you know, they're all from like these really subtropical or temperate. Oh, yeah, they're in the winter now, man. And they're in the and you know. High elevations. 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 um. They um they finally establish a winter quarters over. In at a pueblo near uh what's now Albuquerque in the Rio Grande and they.

• 1:22:53Speaker 06

  It seems they forcefully take it from the the the Puebloan 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 Spaniards are freezing their butts off and. They noticed that the the Puebloans have robes, I'd love to have one, made of turkey feathers. I mean, it's like the original down coat. 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 in. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:38Speaker 06

  Subtropics. And so the Spaniards sent an expedition to a pueblo. A neighboring pueblo to collect. Feather capes and buffalo. Uh feather capes and buffalo capes. And the Puebloans don't want to give them over the. 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, 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?

• 1:24:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Speaker 06

  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 Spaniards, you know, with 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?

• 1:24:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:39Speaker 06

  Horses disappeared from North America, like, I can't remember, thousands and thousands.

• 1:24:44Steven Rinella?

  Twelve thousand years earlier.

• 1:24:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, Ice Age, right, yeah.

• 1:24:48Speaker 06

  And, and so then, then, so now their horses are gone, and the Coronado sends out his right-hand man to go find, like, what, what's, what's happened to the horses? And he finds a lot of them in like a fenced-in area near one of the pueblos, and, like, inside the pueblo walls. And the, the pueblos are shooting arrows at the horses to see how easily it is to kill these guys.

• 1:25:14Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:25:15Speaker 06

  And the horses are running around. And, and so he reports back to Coronado, this is what they're doing, and Coronado says, go take that pueblo.

• 1:25:26Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:25:26Speaker 06

  And that ends up being this bloody massacre, and the pueblos 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 him to stakes and burns him at the stake, and, you know, just essentially murders him.

• 1:25:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Speaker 06

  And after that, things really go south, and so now.

• 1:25:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because then they get like sadistic, man, like, they're like cutting people's hands off.

• 1:25:56Speaker 06

  Well, that, that comes later, that's with Onyate, but, I mean, that, that, he was famously did that in Akama, that's like.

• 1:26:04Speaker 06

  Was that fifteen ninety-nine, I think, but but they were doing, yeah, they they were putting dogs on guys, you know, chaining, you know, chaining people up and setting war dogs on on the on the Pueblo and people to, you know, torture them and get information out of them. And then, um, so they 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

• 1:26:45Speaker 06

  canoes and these chiefs sleep under trees with golden bells jingling in the in the wind. And so they they they aim for this thing, for this these eastern empires, and they are given two guides, and the guides, this is what you're referring to, one is one is a, uh, you know, there were slaves who were taken in from the eastern tribes in combat. And so these slaves are they're like guide slaves and guide captives, and they start leading Coronado in 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

• 1:27:29Speaker 06

  they finally start veering where the real treasure is supposed to be northeast. And that's where they get to Kansas.

• 1:27:36Steven Rinella?

  One of my favorite details out of this, and we've we've talked about it and wrote about it, is, um, when they're on the Texas Panhandle.

• 1:27:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:46Steven Rinella?

  And they start.

• 1:27:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, it's the cattle.

• 1:27:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, when they start finding the the the the like the buffalo people, the nomads.

• 1:27:54Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:27:54Steven Rinella?

  Someone remarks on that they pressure flake their stone knives with their teeth.

• 1:27:59Speaker 06

  Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, I believe it.

• 1:28:01Steven Rinella?

  That's such a detail, though, dude, you know what I mean?

• 1:28:04Speaker 06

  Imagine that.

• 1:28:05Steven Rinella?

  That would, could you do that?

• 1:28:07Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:28:07Steven Rinella?

  No, they pressure, yeah, he says they sharpen their blades up with their teeth.

• 1:28:11Speaker 07

  And he says, he also describes like the the teepees, and he says they have, you know, they live like Arabs.

• 1:28:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and he makes this connection between.

• 1:28:22Speaker 06

  Nomadic.

• 1:28:23Steven Rinella?

  Nomadic, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:24Speaker 06

  And I, I think that's a really interesting point, too, that, um, that, you know, again, Coronado, it couldn't attack these people because he'd move into attack and they'd just like pack up in the night and move.

• 1:28:36Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:36Speaker 06

  And they could probably move faster than he could. And so, you know, the, 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 took, tried to take possession of something like the people who lived there, just like, okay, we're out of here.

• 1:28:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, sure, we'll just move.

• 1:28:57Speaker 06

  Whatever you want. That's your patch.

• 1:29:00Steven Rinella?

  What a, talk about this for a minute is, uh,

• 1:29:06Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:29:24Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:29:35Speaker 06

  That, so he, you know, he gets whanged on the head by, literally it's called, described as a slab of rock and then going up that ladder the first time. And then they, he and his, you know, in this first stab out into the plains, they go through the Texas plant panhandle, they get up to Kansas and that land starts getting really good up there. But it starts turning to winter, you know, gets, it's getting into fall and they don't want to get caught in winter on the plains. This is the, so this would be the winter of, uh, it would be fall 1541. And so Coronado says, okay, let's go back for 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

• 1:30:17Speaker 06

  way in the spring, you know, with our full force. These lands are getting more fertile, that, the, 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, you know, 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 Tewash War it's now known as. And in the spring, they're about to launch again. And, you know, nice day and

• 1:30:58Speaker 06

  people are in high spirits. And Coronado and his, one of his main captain, go and have a horse race against each other. And as they're galloping along this plain, the saddle girth on Coronado's horse breaks. And it's the, the people on the expedition thinks this because they've been stored for so long. You know, they're new saddle girths, 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.

• 1:31:31Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:31:32Speaker 06

  He's out for like, three weeks in a coma. I mean, way out.

• 1:31:35Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:31:36Speaker 06

  Way out, yes.

• 1:31:36Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I didn't know it was that bad.

• 1:31:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, totally gone.

• 1:31:39Steven Rinella?

  Totally different than the rock hitting him in the head.

• 1:31:41Speaker 06

  Totally different. I mean, that was not good, but the

• 1:31:43Steven Rinella?

  This is worse.

• 1:31:44Speaker 06

  This is like, near, near death. You know, everybody's saying he's, he's near death.

• 1:31:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Speaker 06

  And, and so then, when he finally 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, um, he's, you know, trying to gear himself up for this next phase, but it's clear that he, 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.

• 1:32:31Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:32Speaker 06

  Where they've tried to establish a midway station.

• 1:32:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35Speaker 06

  So the way back to Mexico City is cut. There's no hope of resupply.

• 1:32:40Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 1:32:40Speaker 06

  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. And

• 1:32:51Steven Rinella?

  Like it was all for nothing. So he's recognizing that this whole thing is.

• 1:32:56Speaker 06

  He doesn't want to go back, you know, he could still go farther up towards Kansas and, you know, get to Iowa.

• 1:33:02Steven Rinella?

  If he goes back, he's.

• 1:33:03Speaker 06

  Oh, he goes back. Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:04Steven Rinella?

  He's shamed.

• 1:33:05Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. Total unbelievable shame, humiliation, failure. Spent all his wife's money, his mother-in-law's money, Vice Raymond Doza's money. Um, and, and the, the guys on his expedition have invested in, in the expedition themselves. Um, and so he's in this situation where it's like,

• 1:33:30Speaker 06

  I just, what, what happens that this is in one of the journals, that when he was in this condition, which really sounds like, and I've dealt with depression and really, it feels so, uh, true, the way the brain thinks in these circumstances. 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.

• 1:34:11Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:12Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:34:29Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 1:34:30Speaker 06

  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. Um, he, he said, I just want to go back and die in the arms of my Beatrice

• 1:34:44Speaker 06

  in Mexico City. And so now he has to figure out, how is he going to turn like two, 2,000 or 3,000 gold hungry. Spaniards and Aztecs around.

• 1:34:58Speaker 06

  And and he's he kind of lays a plot to do it. I mean, he's clear enough to do that that he um and he probably has help, but he he manages to get 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

• 1:35:34Steven Rinella?

  you you you just met in that move.

• 1:35:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:35:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:51Steven Rinella?

  I kind of forgot that like like some like a lot of these guys.

• 1:35:54Speaker 06

  A lot of guys. Yeah.

• 1:35:54Steven Rinella?

  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 the the failure.

• 1:36:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:36:07Steven Rinella?

  But there's people, you know, lower ranking individuals that are also screwed.

• 1:36:13Speaker 06

  Exactly. And 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, he's a second son, seeking a fortune. And they don't have one at home, but there, you know, there are a lot of opportunities, you know, knockoffs, empire in the new world. And one of the great quotes that I didn't end up in the book is 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

• 1:36:56Speaker 06

  because they're a bunch of like no goods floating around like corks and water.

• 1:37:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's it's because like you could picture that if you were just like enlisted men, you know?

• 1:37:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:08Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:37:27Speaker 06

  Who are literally invested.

• 1:37:28Steven Rinella?

  Like invested in the success, probably even down to the Aztec warriors. Like they're planning on getting something out of this.

• 1:37:34Speaker 06

  They're planning on getting, yeah. And I've never been able to get a figure.

• 1:37:36Steven Rinella?

  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?

• 1:37:43Speaker 06

  We are.

• 1:37:44Steven Rinella?

  We have not.

• 1:37:45Speaker 06

  A huge contingent.

• 1:37:46Steven Rinella?

  We have not done.

• 1:37:47Speaker 06

  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, the, they rebelled. They said, no, we're not going to do this. Yeah, we'll go back up to, you know, up to Iowa, up to the, looking for Harahay, the, the, the, the next promised land. You can go home, 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 talking about going home, I'm going to have hung, hanged. And so it was.

• 1:38:25Steven Rinella?

  Anybody who resisted going home.

• 1:38:26Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so.

• 1:38:28Steven Rinella?

  Really? So he, okay.

• 1:38:30Speaker 06

  So he was, and, and there was a, there was a couple from Mexico City and like he was a, you know, he was 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, this is like land of opportunity. And he said, you talk like that again, you're going to be strung up by a rope. And so it, I mean, this is testimony that came out literally in an inquisition afterwards. You know, this is a direct word.

• 1:38:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. Because they investigated.

• 1:38:56Speaker 06

  They investigated, yeah. Like whether he abused the Indians.

• 1:38:58Steven Rinella?

  So he's like, I'm going home. Everybody's going home.

• 1:39:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:02Steven Rinella?

  We're done.

• 1:39:03Speaker 06

  We're done. And the only people that stay.

• 1:39:05Steven Rinella?

  Sounds like my wife on a fishing trip.

• 1:39:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:07Steven Rinella?

  Everybody's going home.

• 1:39:09Speaker 06

  Steve, you are not staying, just to make that clear.

• 1:39:15Steven Rinella?

  This visit trip is over.

• 1:39:19Speaker 06

  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 start, you know, to, you know, save souls. And so I think almost all of them stayed.

• 1:39:38Speaker 06

  And I think about 95% were soon dispatched by.

• 1:39:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I can imagine, yeah. That doesn't sound like.

• 1:39:44Speaker 06

  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, they call it the land that they were searching. Uh, the first big one up there was called Quevera.

• 1:40:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:10Speaker 06

  So you've heard of that. I mean, that's a Quevera. It's like, you know, the mythical land of treasure. And so when Coronado was turning around, um, Frey Padilla said, well, I want to go back to the land of Quevera and start a mission. And Coronado said, okay, yeah, you're gonna have some mules, you're gonna have this, you're gonna have that, you're gonna 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 hopeful golden land, Hare. And that it's described that, um,

• 1:40:45Speaker 06

  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 goes, he gets down in the path or the road, and he starts praying to God. Next thing that happens is he's a pincushion that tips over. And now there's a cross up there, a huge cross.

• 1:41:12Steven Rinella?

  So when, like, in, in the title of your book, in, in the subtitle, you say, in the birth of the American Indian resistance. I mean, this really, it's kind of like an interesting.

• 1:41:25Steven Rinella?

  If we're talking about like what became the United States, right?

• 1:41:29Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:41:30Steven Rinella?

  This is like an interesting case where you had these invading conquerors. They were, I mean, they were defeated and sent packing.

• 1:41:41Speaker 06

  They were, that's, it's a remarkable story and, and in that sense, and I, you know, 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 Indians. Called, it's called the Tigux 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

• 1:42:10Steven Rinella?

  And 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.

• 1:42:21Speaker 06

  Outlandish.

• 1:42:21Steven Rinella?

  Just seems like, like insurmountable, like, like, like a god.

• 1:42:25Speaker 06

  Like, yeah, I mean, like, like outer space people.

• 1:42:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And then you figure it out. You figure it out. They go away. And then a long time passes.

• 1:42:35Speaker 06

  Decades before.

• 1:42:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it probably felt like, oh, we won.

• 1:42:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they're, the Spaniards didn't send a serious expedition for another, I think it was 60 years.

• 1:42:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And you would, and even then, for a long time, for a generation.

• 1:42:49Speaker 06

  Or at least.

• 1:42:50Steven Rinella?

  Would have felt like they beat.

• 1:42:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, there's

• 1:42:54Steven Rinella?

  They repelled invading people and the invading people went away.

• 1:42:57Speaker 06

  They, 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 the, those, especially the Puebloans, you know, they wove themselves together in this, in this real net that, 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, and the Puebloans understood how to survive in that climate way better and, and, and how to get food. The Spaniards were, I mean, they were utterly helpless without, without this Puebloan corn. They, you know, they were

• 1:43:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:35Speaker 06

  Or the buffalo on the

• 1:43:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, it, it, you know, learning, recognizing that, that the landscape plays in your favor. It has elements of like an insurgency.

• 1:43:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:46Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, like you, 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.

• 1:43:58Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:43:58Steven Rinella?

  You pick your moments.

• 1:43:59Speaker 06

  You pick your moment. I mean, Washington did that a lot in the Revolutionary War. You know, we tried to avoid, you know.

• 1:44:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:04Speaker 06

  March around avoiding the.

• 1:44:05Steven Rinella?

  The way to win is not fight.

• 1:44:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:08Steven Rinella?

  Keep the army.

• 1:44:09Speaker 07

  Or also just the individual, like the individual acts of, oh, it's, 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.

• 1:44:21Speaker 06

  A larger, yeah.

• 1:44:22Speaker 07

  Individual acts of, of working for one's own self-interest and.

• 1:44:27Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:44:39Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. And the tendency for, the tendency for so long is to, to, to ignore that, that, that people had a, like the indigenous people had like a strategic awareness and, you know what I mean?

• 1:44:51Speaker 06

  Or even communicated with each other over, over, you know, a hundred miles. It's like, oh, they're in one campfire over there and one campfire over there. And there's no connection between the two.

• 1:45:00Steven Rinella?

  And again, man, it's not, you know, you look at these other areas, it's, it's like, it's not an isolated strategy.

• 1:45:06Speaker 06

  No, not at all.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

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• 1:46:22Steven Rinella?

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• 1:47:22Speaker 06

  And in this case, Randall, as you were saying, that misleading them. So one of the cool things about the misleading was that, you know, when they first had like the slave guides, the captive guides, and they're leaving Pecos, you know, which is now the Sangre de Cristo range and going towards the Buffalo Plains, the guides lead them towards, you know, like towards Texas to the southeast. 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 turns out that the, like, the real settlements, they eventually learn that the

• 1:48:05Speaker 06

  one guide rats on the other guide, the real settlements are up to the northeast at, you know, Cuivira, where the land is way richer than it is down on the Texas Panhandle. But the, 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, sending them into a, into a, into a arid, deserted, desert area.

• 1:48:45Steven Rinella?

  So what, uh, last question for you is what, um, what comes to Coronado?

• 1:48:52Speaker 06

  That's, yeah, and.

• 1:48:54Steven Rinella?

  What happens to him?

• 1:48:55Speaker 06

  Well, you know, the way I frame this is he starts out the spring of fifteen forty at the head of the grandest cavalcade the new world has ever seen, you know, two thousand 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 one hundred followers kind of stumbling behind. And Vice Roy Mendoza, the accounts go, greet him very coldly.

• 1:49:25Steven Rinella?

  And his wife, you want to talk about pissed off wife too?

• 1:49:28Speaker 06

  The mother in law as a whole, she's, I mean, she took Cortez on mano a mano in, 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. 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 Vallarta. And, and then the word comes out that he abused the Indians. And so then he gets hauled into Mexico City and there's like several years of an inquiry into what he did.

• 1:50:11Speaker 06

  And there's, you know, the testimony that, that, you know, books of the testimony that come out. And he ends up being acquitted. One of his, his like right hand man, his main captain, cardinus, gets convicted. Ends up doing like, after much, you know, legal turmoil, ends up doing some, uh, community work and on the Mediterranean coast and near Malaga.

• 1:50:41Speaker 06

  That's how all the punishment came down for that's only person who, who was tried, convicted for abusing the natives. And then, but Coronado stayed in Mexico City, you know, and had, I can't remember, they had six or seven kids.

• 1:50:56Speaker 06

  And, and I, and he, he served in some capacity on the civil council, a, 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.

• 1:51:12Speaker 06

  Reporting on Coronado after he'd come back.

• 1:51:15Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:51:16Speaker 06

  And this letter in Spanish, you know, written in fifteen forty-four or something. Said, uh, or the report, I think the viceroy or the king said.

• 1:51:26Speaker 06

  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 has never been the same.

• 1:51:35Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:51:37Speaker 06

  It's in.

• 1:51:37Steven Rinella?

  It was acknowledged at the time.

• 1:51:39Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it's funny, I've only seen that in one book and I, I, I didn't.

• 1:51:43Steven Rinella?

  Well, you found it.

• 1:51:44Speaker 06

  I saw it later, but I found it. I came across it in these archives and it was like, oh, that is amazing.

• 1:51:48Steven Rinella?

  The connection was made at the time.

• 1:51:50Speaker 06

  It was made at the time. Yeah. He's, he was never the same. And he, he, oh, you, you know what's, it's like, he's more. He's like being kept at home with his wife and children.

• 1:52:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:04Speaker 06

  And his, his home's like on the, on the square, you know, it's like kitty cornered at Cortez's palace. And, um, so he's being kept in his, in his wife's house, his wife's family's man, stone mansion. And they, and this letter says, and at this point. He is more fit to be governed than governed.

• 1:52:25Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:52:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, I mean, that's just like.

• 1:52:29Steven Rinella?

  At the time.

• 1:52:30Speaker 06

  At the time.

• 1:52:30Steven Rinella?

  Oh, wow, man.

• 1:52:31Speaker 06

  And, and so, and so that's one of the things that, which I, I, 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 twenty years or so.

• 1:52:53Steven Rinella?

  They were, they were like a long ways away from identifying that.

• 1:52:57Speaker 06

  Until really, I mean, just in the last few decades when, you know, now we're talking about so many, you know, NFL football players. And twenty years ago was not even mentioned, I don't think.

• 1:53:07Steven Rinella?

  And it's a, it's an interesting pursuit, like a historian thing would be that.

• 1:53:15Steven Rinella?

  That you would track down that in history, you would track down individuals that had that had behavioral patterns.

• 1:53:27Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:53:28Steven Rinella?

  Relate, you know what I mean?

• 1:53:28Speaker 06

  That you can recognize now.

• 1:53:30Steven Rinella?

  I wonder if you would find more like these, these inexplicable figures in history. Or whatever that you might find more things of like that, that like more cases where, where someone might have suffered.

• 1:53:43Speaker 06

  That from traumatic brain injuries. Yeah, I mean, well, just think about how many, you know, for million, thousand, hundreds of thousands of years, humans at war have been bashing each other on the head.

• 1:53:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:55Speaker 06

  And that's one of the things I've, another fun research for this book, 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. 10% of the males have had what's called trepanation. That's when it's, it was known a medical procedure.

• 1:54:15Steven Rinella?

  Relieving brain pressure.

• 1:54:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, you drill a hole in the head and relieve brain pressure. And, and that believes, it relieves evil spirits, basically depression. And so this has been something that's, that humans have been living with for, for since the beginning.

• 1:54:32Steven Rinella?

  That's a crazy thing, man.

• 1:54:33Speaker 06

  It, there's another aspect of all this that, that just to, 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,

• 1:54:50Speaker 06

  they managed to thwart Spanish settlement in what's now the West. You know, 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 in the line.

• 1:55:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:06Speaker 06

  And so the, the Spaniards, you know, they, they like on the map, they claimed all the way up to, you know, what'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, for, you know, they established Santa Fe in like sixteen oh nine or ten or something like that.

• 1:55:35Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55:35Speaker 06

  And then, so, and then, once the US westward movement started, you know, we can go back to, to Daniel Boone. Those guys come over the mountains in like seventeen seventy-four, right? And they start settling the Kentucky Valley. And it, it took British than American, you know, residents, citizens.

• 1:55:59Speaker 06

  Two hundred years to get from the Atlantic coast.

• 1:56:02Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:03Speaker 06

  To the Mississippi River.

• 1:56:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Speaker 06

  Settlement. And it took them less than fifty 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.

• 1:56:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:18Speaker 06

  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, the Puebloan, you know, blockade, I call it, kept the, what's now the Western U- US in something of a power vacuum in terms of European powers.

• 1:56:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:44Speaker 06

  So then, when the US came, pushed west in the westward movement, it just rolled through.

• 1:56:49Steven Rinella?

  You know, this is a theme I've touched on a lot in American history, i- is particularly in the West, but it, it's applicable in other parts of the country too, is that, that looking at it now, your tendency is to, to compress the timelines.

• 1:57:04Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:57:05Steven Rinella?

  That it was like, the European powers hit the coast and just.

• 1:57:12Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, right, right.

• 1:57:13Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:57:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, but it's just a, it's like you assumed, it was like preordained.

• 1:57:18Steven Rinella?

  A steady, it's progress. Yeah, it seems, it just seems so right, that it like, that it hit and happened.

• 1:57:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Steven Rinella?

  But you imagine, Randall and I just finished a, a project about the buffalo hide hunters and a lot of that project takes place post-Civil War. Okay, so eighteen seventies on the Texas.

• 1:57:36Speaker 06

  On the plains.

• 1:57:37Steven Rinella?

  On, on the Yano Estacado.

• 1:57:39Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:57:39Steven Rinella?

  And it has, 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-

• 1:57:52Speaker 06

  This is post-Civil War, you're talking-

• 1:57:53Steven Rinella?

  Post-Civil War. They're getting killed by Comanches. They're looking at maps that have big holes in the maps.

• 1:58:01Steven Rinella?

  And it's been 300 years.

• 1:58:06Speaker 06

  Isn't that wild?

• 1:58:07Steven Rinella?

  300 years. And there were other Europeans messing around there.

• 1:58:12Speaker 06

  It's so crazy.

• 1:58:13Steven Rinella?

  And you take, like, where we're sitting now, right? And you start going back. So we're gonna go from now, and we're gonna go back 300 years. Right? To try to get, like, what does that mean? This, like, it's where you're sitting now, and you're going back to, like, the American Revolution.

• 1:58:31Speaker 06

  I mean, like, before the French and Indian War.

• 1:58:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like, 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, like, those buffalo hide hunters on the plains.

• 1:58:45Speaker 06

  Post-Civil War buffalo hide hunters.

• 1:58:47Steven Rinella?

  Post-Civil War buffalo hide 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.

• 1:58:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean-

• 1:58:59Steven Rinella?

  It was a long, long, it was longer than the history of our own country.

• 1:59:05Speaker 06

  It was, yes, true.

• 1:59:06Steven Rinella?

  They were like-

• 1:59:06Speaker 06

  Still.

• 1:59:07Steven Rinella?

  That they were in conflict-

• 1:59:09Speaker 06

  With Europeans.

• 1:59:10Steven Rinella?

  With European people.

• 1:59:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. It's bizarre. And it just doesn't enter our consciousness.

• 1:59:15Steven Rinella?

  No, and that's one of the reasons I wrote this.

• 1:59:17Speaker 06

  You think of it like it just happened. Yeah.

• 1:59:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, like, the, the Christopher Columbus to the American Revolution is a shorter period of time than, uh, Coronado to the US claiming all that country. Like Guadalupe Adalgo.

• 1:59:37Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 1:59:38Speaker 07

  I mean, that's 306 years or whatever.

• 1:59:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's three centuries.

• 1:59:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:59:45Speaker 06

  And, you know, I, 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-

• 2:00:00Speaker 06

  Came in with the with the westward movement. Um, yeah, it's in terms of our historical perspective. It's just, um, 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.

• 2:00:33Steven Rinella?

  Those were always really productive.

• 2:00:35Speaker 06

  You've been there, right?

• 2:00:40Steven Rinella?

  Always glad I did those.

• 2:00:43Speaker 06

  And, uh, but one guy, you know, and I was talking about this Coronado story and and one guy, I mean, people are really interested in this history, but one guy called in and said, well, it was like.

• 2:00:51Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that kind of radio. I thought you remember 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.

• 2:00:58Speaker 06

  Oh, oh, I've done those too.

• 2:00:59Steven Rinella?

  And the morning show dudes have no idea what you're calling about.

• 2:01:02Speaker 06

  They call it a radio, a radio tour.

• 2:01:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like some guys like, ah, some guy, uh, Peter, I don't know, wrote some kind of, what's going on, Peter?

• 2:01:10Speaker 06

  How's it going this morning? Exactly.

• 2:01:14Steven Rinella?

  Like, I wrote a book, all right, Peter, we gotta go.

• 2:01:17Speaker 06

  And then, 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 and FM station back to back. And then it's like on the AM station, yeah, yeah, I was going to, I was going to, tomorrow's all caffeinated, ready 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.

• 2:01:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, dudes are calling and asking questions.

• 2:01:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, KTV, oh, actually, it's a, it's pretty, it's a pretty big, uh, known one. Um, and.

• 2:01:47Steven Rinella?

  They're screening the calls? They're screening the calls?

• 2:01:51Speaker 06

  No, they come, they come flying in.

• 2:01:52Steven Rinella?

  So this guy's like, what's the drunkest you've ever been?

• 2:01:57Steven Rinella?

  Anyways, get to your story, I'm sorry.

• 2:02:02Speaker 06

  Well, that'd be good, too.

• 2:02:06Speaker 06

  So, 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, and he said, well, yeah, so it's like, you know, it was like the, 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.

• 2:02:35Speaker 06

  Cause it was a hundred years earlier.

• 2:02:38Steven Rinella?

  Well, man, it's been great. Uh, once, 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.

• 2:02:54Speaker 06

  Uh, it was really fun, Steve.

• 2:02:55Steven Rinella?

  One last question. You got one more in you? You got two more in you?

• 2:02:58Speaker 06

  Poison Arrow?

• 2:02:59Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, books.

• 2:03:00Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 2:03:03Steven Rinella?

  You can do another one?

• 2:03:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, yeah, I'm, I'm thinking, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm gonna have to pick your brain. What's like, you must have spirit book projects lying around.

• 2:03:10Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I got it. No, I got some, I got some handful, but at some point, I'm just gonna fish, man.

• 2:03:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking, you know, more along these early exploration.

• 2:03:24Speaker 06

  And I, you know, I wrote this book, Astoria, that's, that's done really well. I'm still doing really well. And, and this, 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.

• 2:03:48Steven Rinella?

  You don't need to, yeah.

• 2:03:49Speaker 06

  But, um, another thing is that cannibalism is always a good seller.

• 2:03:56Speaker 06

  People like to read about cannibalism.

• 2:03:57Steven Rinella?

  They do. It stirs you up. Um, I, I, I do. I'll give you one hot tip and I, I would have warned you though. I gave the same, I, David Grand, he was kicking around his next book.

• 2:04:07Speaker 06

  Oh, really?

• 2:04:07Steven Rinella?

  And after the show.

• 2:04:08Speaker 06

  Scared of that guy. He, you know.

• 2:04:09Steven Rinella?

  After the show, I said, here's a hot tip for you.

• 2:04:11Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 2:04:12Steven Rinella?

  And I'd lay it out a book for him.

• 2:04:13Speaker 06

  What was that?

• 2:04:14Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. Maybe he's halfway done with it. He acted like he was honestly interested.

• 2:04:19Speaker 06

  With, with a, a book about.

• 2:04:21Steven Rinella?

  Tell you.

• 2:04:22Speaker 06

  Oh, you can't tell me?

• 2:04:23Steven Rinella?

  Well, not now. I mean, get, Phil's got to turn the equipment off.

• 2:04:26Speaker 06

  Oh, okay. I see.

• 2:04:27Steven Rinella?

  You don't want to announce it to the world. I was telling him what his next book ought to be.

• 2:04:30Speaker 06

  Yeah. Okay.

• 2:04:31Steven Rinella?

  I'll just tell you too.

• 2:04:32Speaker 06

  I have to tell, I got a David Grant story. I got a David Grant story. So, um, when I was researching that Young Washington book, so that came out in 2018. So it was like 2015, 2016.

• 2:04:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:43Speaker 06

  And, uh, you know, I always keep kind of a file of, of possible book ideas.

• 2:04:47Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 2:04:47Speaker 06

  And I was researching that and, and, uh, George's young wife, George Washington's young life, sorry. And his older brother had been, uh, you know, kind of cut his teeth in the war of Jenkins' ear as a young royal, uh, Navy officer. And, uh, war of Jenkins' ear. That's pretty interesting. So I dove into that.

• 2:05:08Steven Rinella?

  Never heard of it.

• 2:05:09Speaker 06

  And then, well, and then there was this like crazy story growing out of the war of Jenkins' ear about this British, uh, Navy fleet that went around the coast of South, 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, 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 Stuart, um, 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.

• 2:05:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:52Steven Rinella?

  Didn't slow him down.

• 2:05:56Speaker 06

  Didn't slow him down. Anyway, well, we can talk about poison arrows after, but you know, Warner's Herzog's poison arrow that he said not to touch.

• 2:06:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:06Speaker 06

  These Opatá native warriors and what's now Sonora, Mexico, had these arrows that were tipped with with the the Spanish called it called a hierba de la flecha, you know, leaf of the arrow that they dipped their tips in and the Spanish were terrified of it because if it 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 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.

• 2:06:45Speaker 06

  And so it would it would deteriorate your body and the the the journals say that like, yeah, seventeen of these guys, Spaniards, like they died from the poison arrows were the most horrible stench and painful death. And so this is the the flesh eating poison.

• 2:07:06Steven Rinella?

  What do they think it was made out of?

• 2:07:08Speaker 06

  Well, I really looked into that. It's it's it's from a, you know, euphorbia. It's a it's a plant. They're like, it's so complicated. I've asked like three different biochemists about it that there are so many different species that are that are related and a lot of them have have toxins of various types in them and various combinations. But I I'm thinking that these arrows, they they might have been, there might have been two different types of poison, one on the arrow tip or or more, one that was a quick acting one and that that got in your bloodstream and another one that was a slow acting rot the flesh, you know.

• 2:07:46Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:07:47Speaker 06

  Combination. So it's like when the Spaniards came to Opatá, I said, well, you know, let's check our pharma pharmaceutical shelf here and see what we can and how we can incur the most pain on these people.

• 2:08:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:01Speaker 06

  And so it's it's wild. I mean, they're really sophisticated.

• 2:08:05Steven Rinella?

  Yes, it's that's cool because you don't think of, you know, you always think of the arrow toxins in Africa, South America.

• 2:08:13Steven Rinella?

  You know, a lot of people don't think about aerotoxins.

• 2:08:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, is it like high desert plant or, you know, desert shrubs?

• 2:08:18Speaker 07

  I was gonna walk away from this conversation with your larger point about Indian agency in the Southwest. Now, all I can think about is describing necrosis as a well-done pot roast. So that's my.

• 2:08:33Speaker 06

  Okay, well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to footnote it with a discussion with, 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 roasters.

• 2:08:51Steven Rinella?

  All right, boy, check it out. There's so many. I mean, obviously, we didn't even scratch the surface, man. Peter Stark's The Lost Cities of El Norte, Corn Idol's Quest, The Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance. Peter Stark, thanks for coming on the show.

• 2:09:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me. Really fun.

• 2:09:35Steven Rinella?

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