Quivira / Etzanoa
The Etzanoa settlement, estimated at 20,000 people, considered by archaeologists as the second-largest — if not the largest — urban center built by Native Americans in North America, was discovered near present-day Arkansas City by Spanish explorers in 1602. The Etzanoans were ancestors of today’s Wichita Nation. They lived along the banks of the lower Walnut River, near its confluence with the Arkansas — from about 1450 to 1715. For decades archaeologists debated the location, size and significance of Etzanoa.
The name "Quivira" is of Spanish origin, given to the region by the Spanish explorer, Coronado, who visited the area in 1541. Instead of gold, treasures and the fabled "Seven Cities of Cibola," Coronado instead found fertile grasslands, abundant wildlife, and small agricultural villages.
The Spaniards were indefatigable explorers. Failure and disappointments seem only to have stimulated them to greater endeavors. Boldly and courageously they pushed into the wilderness interior of the continent, fascinated and beguiled by the hope of discovering new and unknown realms of marvelous wealth and splendor. The Seven Cities of Gold, also known as the Seven Cities of Cibola, is a myth that was popular ... The cities were Hawikuh, Halona, Matsaki, Quivira, Kiakima, Cibola, and Kwakina.
Quivira, especially on account of its great distance from the sea, its inaccessibility and supposed riches, filled the minds of the Spanish adventurers for over a century with visions of wealth. Stories like these filled the hearts of the Spaniards with longing to reach the land of Quivira and to help the people there to take care of its riches.
Early in the 16th century, Spain established a rich colonial empire in the New World. From Mexico to Peru, gold poured into her treasury and new lands were opened for settlement. The northern frontier lay only a few hundred miles north of Mexico City; and beyond that was a land unknown. Tales of unimaginable riches in this land had fired the Spanish imagination ever since the Spanish arrival in the "New World". They lured Hernando Cortéz to Mexico in 1519, followed shortly thereafter by Parfilo de Narváez to Florida and Francisco Pizarro to Peru. Many expeditions ended in failure, but there were enough successes to keep alive the dream that great wealth lay within the grasp of anyone with the opportunity to seize it.
Such was the situation in 1536 when Cabeza de Vaca and three tattered companions, sole survivors of the shipwrecked Narvaez Expedition, arrived in Mexico City after eight years of wandering through what is now the American Southwest. Everyone listened intently to their story of an incredible land to the north comprised of seven "large cities, with streets lined with goldsmith shops, houses of many stories, and doorways studded with emeralds and turquoise!" Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), was anxious to explore this new land to determine if the stories were true. In 1539 he sent Fray Marcos de Niza, accompanied by some guides and Estévan, a Moor who had been with Cabeza de Vaca, to find out. Fray Marcos returned within a year with sad testimony of Estévan's death at the hands of hostile Indians. However, his report also made mention of the "Seven Cities of Cibola."
Though Fray Marcos' report was garbled and exaggerated, Viceroy Mendoza was convinced of the cities' existence. He promptly began planning an official expedition and chose his close friend, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, to lead it. Coronado had come to Mexico in 1535 and through his friendship with the viceroy and past successful missions, rapidly rose in status. After serving as a prominent member of the Mexico City council, he was appointed governor of the northern frontier province of New Galicia. On January 6, 1540, Mendoza commissioned him expedition commander and captain-general of all the lands he might discover and claim for Spain. The viceroy, however, counseled Coronado prior to his departure and cautioned him that the quest was to be a missionary undertaking, not one of military conquest.
The first intimation received by Coronado in regard to this mysterious province was from the Indian named by the Spaniards "The Turk," a native of the country "adjacent to Florida," who had been taken captive by the Indians of Cicuye. The statement of this Indian (who claimed to be a native of Quivira), as recorded by Castafieda,* is as follows:
"This Indian told him (Coronado) that in his country there was a river two leagues wide, in which fish as large as horses were found; canoes which carried twenty oarsmen on each side, which were also driven by sails; that the chiefs of the land were seated in their sterns upon a dais, while a large golden eagle was affixed to their prows. He added that the sovereign of this region took his siesta beneath a large tree to whose branches golden bells were hung which were made to resound by the agitation of the wind. He also declared that the commonest vessels were of sculptured silver; and that the bowls, plates and dishes were of gold. He called gold acochis."
The too credulous Spaniards, blinded by their thirst for gold, believing this wonderful story, determined to seek this country of fabulous wealth.
On the 23d of April, 1541, Coronado and his army marched away from the Rio Grande valley, guided by the Turk and by another Indian from the same region, whom they called Isopete. For thirty-five days they traveled out upon the high plains. These were so nearly level they could look as far as the eye would pierce and see no hill. They found great herds of buffalo, or "humpbacked cows" as they called them, on these plains, and Indians who traveled around among these cows, killing them for their flesh and skins — eating the flesh raw and making the skins into tents and clothing. The Indians had dogs to pull their tents from place to place, and had never seen horses until the Spaniards came. The Spanish army saw for the first time the American buffalo. None of these Indians who hunted the cows had ever heard of the rich land of Quivira with its gold and silver, its great canoes, and its king. Here the two guides began to tell different stories, and confessed that the houses in Quivira were not quite so large as they had said, and the people not so rich.
Coronado says in his letter to the King of Spain, "Where I reached Quivira it was in the fortieth degree (of latitude)." The fortieth degree forms the state line between Nebraska and Kansas. This would make Quivira in the Republican valley. Coronado found no gold, no silver, no bells tinkling from the trees, no fishes big as horses, and no boats with golden prows. He found Indians living in grass huts, growing corn and beans and melons, eating raw buffalo meat and cutting it with stone knives. There were twenty-five of these grass hut villages, and the only metal seen in them was a piece of copper worn by a chief around his neck. He reached a province in which he expected to find a city containing remarkable houses and stores of gold, but which turned out to be only the abode of very wild Indians, who lived in miserable wigwams, and knew nothing about gold.
Here their guide known as the Turk, confessed he had lied to the Spaniards about the riches of Quivira in order to lead the army off on the trackless plains where it would perish. "We strangled him that night so that he never waked up," is the way one of the Spaniards tells the story of what happened to the Turk. Whether deceived by a treacherous Indian guide, as they assert, or having not understood what the Indians meant, which is quite probable, the Spaniards then marched away, in the month of August 1541.
Francisco Leiva Bonilla and Juan de Humana, in 1594, moved by the current reports, started from Nuevo Viscaya on an expedition to Quivira. This enterprise was denounced as illegal and traitorous, but this did not stop the adventurers. Out on the plains Bonilla and Humana quarreled. Bonilla was killed, and Humana then assumed the command of the filibusteros. Not long afterward he came to great settlements, and passing through these he reached a broad river which he crossed on rafts.
Near the close of the century, the Spanish government began to consider plans for colonizing New Mexico and exploiting the Pueblo Indians. Near the close of the century, the Spanish government began to consider plans for colonizing New Mexico and exploiting the Pueblo Indians. Don Juan de Oñate went forth from Mexico in the year 1596, taking in his train ten priests of St. Francis, men of great spirit and letters. Don Juan de Oñate took out with him from this New Spain, for this journey, more than 700 men, the flower of the soldiery of the Chichimecs and other persons of account. But as in such occasions there lack not envious men and of evil intent, they managed to disturb this journey, from which came great trouble and loss to the property of this cavalier, and great harm to that land ; since on account of the delay in the Visita (43) that they kept him waiting three months for, when he was all ready, more than 200 men turned back, and many of them married ones. For in so long waiting, they destroyed and ate up all they had ; and so they remained behind.
Omitting long accounts, Don Juan de Oñate entered that country [New Mexico] with more than 400 men, of whom 130 were married and took along their families. Having traveled 400 leagues directly north, toward the arctic pole, in latitude 37, they reached the valley of the Tehua Indians, who are settled on the banks of the river which the Spaniards call del Norte, since its currents flow from that direction. He established his camp between this river and that of Zama, on a site very much to his purpose.
The Adelantado, Don Juan de Oñate, set forth from the town of New Mexico [the only town, San Gabriel] to discover the great city of Quivira, in the year 1599. Don Juan de Oñate entered through the Buffalo Plains, where no one can die of hunger, for the immense herd of buffalo that is there. These are plains so extensive that no one has seen their end and conclusion. They traveled to the east-north-east. They saw great grazing grounds, beautiful fields, many waters, lands fertile for planting, a good climate. Afterward they went up toward the northeast. They went, according to their count, 200 leagues in these goings up and down, but not in a direct line. They reached a land of promise in fertility, where the fields of themselves, without any cultivation, produce grapes, plums in great abundance, and many other fruits. On these plains, though there are Indians, they are not settled. They have some hovels of straw. These were called the Vaqueros, because they support themselves on this herd. They do not sow nor harvest food. They dress hides, and take them to the settlements to sell, and get in exchange cornmeal, and thus support themselves.
According to Spanish records, they encountered a tribe called the Escanxaques, who told of a large city nearby. The Indians called it Etzanoa. The "Escanjaques" were then at war with the "Quivirans." The Indians were always engaged in war with each other The Spaniards were always looking for gold, and they measured the value of a country solely by the gold they found in it; hence they always at least heard of gold. After several months Onate returned, reporting that he had found no gold, no silver, but that he had heard rumors that the precious metals were plentiful in the interior of the country farther away.
The chronicler calls it the "City of Quivira." But, it is evident that when he calls it a "great settlement," he gives us a correct idea of what he really means and saw. It undoubtedly was a populous Indian settlement, extending for many miles. From these settlements numerous paths led to the hunting grounds in the prairies and into the hills. Here the Indians, unharmed by the buffalo, "plant twice a year, as some fields were ready to harvest and others were planting." It is in the rich alluvial bottoms of northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri, along the Mississippi. The first quarter of the seventeenth century was occupied largely in Christianizing the Pueblo Indians and planting Spanish settlements among them; but at the same time it initiated the expansion policy which was to give direction to the zeal of priest and military leader during the remainder of the century. Though part of this expansive energy was expended in a northeastward search for Gran Quivira, whose mystic hoards of wealth had lured the soldier of fortune since the days of Coronado.
The most noteworthy expeditions of the period were three missionary journeys of Father Juan de Salas and other religious, between 1611 and 1632, to the Jumano country, variously estimated at from one hundred and twelve to two hundred leagues to the southeast, on the Rio de las Nueces, or Colorado River, of Texas; the military expedition of Alonso Vaca in search of Quivira, about 1634; the military expedition of Captains Martin and Castillo to the Jumano country in 1650; and the exploring party of Guadalajara to the Jumano country.
Don Diego de Penalosa came to Santa Fe to be governor and captain general of New Mexico in the year 1660. He longed to make a great name for himself as did Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. It was a hundred and twenty years since Coronado marched to Quivira and found there nothing but straw houses and naked savages. Still the old story of a kingdom full of gold and silver beyond the great plains persisted. Still the mystery of the great unknown region in the north stirred the Spanish love of conquest.
It was on March 6, 1662, that Don Diego de Penalosa left the province of New Mexico to find and conquer this fabled land of riches. With him there marched eighty Spanish knights and a thousand Indian allies, while six cannon, eight hundred horses, three hundred mules and thirty-six wagons bore their baggage. Don Diego marched north two hundred leagues, nearly seven hundred miles, and came upon a great city in a vast level plain. There were thousands of houses, some two, some three, some four stories high, well built of hard wood resembling walnut. The city extended for leagues westward along the plain to where another clear flowing stream came from the north to join the broad river along which they marched. Seventy chiefs came from this city to greet Penalosa, bringing rich presents of fur robes, pumpkins, corn and beans and fresh fish for food. A great council was held and peace proposed.
That night the warriors of the Escanzaque tribe stole away from the Spanish camp and raided the city of Quivira, killing, plundering, and burning. In the morning it was in ashes and thousands of its peaceful people dead or dying. Among its blackened ruins the Spanish commander sought in vain for chiefs who met him in friendly council the day before. The great city was destroyed never to be rebu It and its few survivors scattered never to return. On June 11, 1662, Don Diego de Penalosa with his great train marched sadly back to the Rio Grande there to relate the destruction of the great city of Quivira.
The legend of Penalosa is too wonderful to be true. It is now known to be a fiction. There was a Governor Don Diego de Penalosa of New Mexico but no such army as related was led by him across the plains and there certainly was no great city of Quivira with houses three and four stories high covering the plain. French explorers arrived a century later but found nothing. Disease likely wiped out Etzanoa, leaving it to recede into legend.
In 1959, the renowned archaeologist Waldo Wedel wrote in his classic book, “An Introduction to Kansas Archeology,” that the valley floor and bluffs here “were littered with sherds, flints, and other detritus” that went on for miles. In 1994, thousands of relics were unearthed during road construction in the area.
The location, size and significance of Etzanoa — or the “Great Settlement,” as Spanish explorers labeled it after their 1601 expedition there — had become lost in the mists of time. For many decades, archaeologists debated these issues. But in recent years, , archaeologist Dr. Don Blakeslee, a Wichita State University anthropology and archaeology professor, became convinced that the town inhabited by 20,000 ancestral Wichita Indians — the second-largest, or perhaps even the largest, settlement in North America in the early 1600s — was hidden in plain sight. It was in the present location of Arkansas City, Kansas.
Blakeslee may have located Etzanoa, home to perhaps 20,000 people between 1450 and 1700. Blakeslee became intrigued by Etzanoa after scholars at UC Berkeley retranslated in 2013 the often muddled accounts by conquistadors of forays into what is now Kansas. The new versions are more cogent, precise and vivid. Using these freshly translated documents and high tech equipment, Blakeslee believes that he has identified the location of the thatched, beehive-shaped houses that ran for at least five miles along the bluffs and banks of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers. Blakeslee says the site was the second-largest settlement in the country after Cahokia in Illinois. Blakeslee has published his findings in Plains Anthropologist.
The Wichita Nation, based three hours south in Anadarko, OK, is watching all of this carefully. They believe the Etzanoans were their ancestors.
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