Excerpt from The Real Quivira I shall refer mainly to the Spanish accounts of the explorers themselves, as they appear in the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Tales of gold, silver and great cities north of Mexico had reached that country at various times since its conquest by the Spaniards. Mexican Indians who had gone northward with feathers to trade had brought back gold and silver. These reports were confirmed by Cabeca de Vaca and his two companions, the remnant of the {ill-fated expedition which Narvaez led into Florida. These unfortunate adventurers, suffering incredible hardships, had made their way from Florida to Mexico, arriving there in 1536, and giving to the viceroy an account of some large and powerful villages in the mysterious country north of Mexico. Peru and Mexico had yielded immense quantities of the precious metals to their ruthless Spanish conquerors. Consequently the imagination and avarice of the Spaniards in Mexico were greatly excited, and Mendoca, the Viceroy of Mexico, raised an army for the exploration and conquest of the seven cities of Cibola, and the unknown regions to the north. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was appointed commander of this army. It consisted of about 300 Spaniards, well armed and mounted, and nearly a thousand friendly Indians and servants. Artillery, ammunition, and subsistence, consisting in part of droves of cattle and sheep, were supplied in abundance and taken along with the army for its use. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.