Michener, James A.

by Texas

  'What are you doing?' Melgosa shouted from his tent, and when he ran to the boy with his blanket, all Garcilaco could answer was: 'Cabeza told me he lived for seven years attacked by such winds, and he was naked. I wanted to test him.'

  'Cabeza de Vaca was a liar. Everyone knows that. Come inside.' When Garcilaco sat crouched by the fire, with the others thinking he had drifted toward insanity, he thought of Cabeza: He must have been a liar, for no man could survive such a norther, yet he did. We know he did.

  On a blistering July day in 1541, Coronado and his small band lined up at the southern bank of a miserable arroyo and stared across at Quivira (in what is now Kansas). They saw an indiscriminate collection of low mud huts surrounded by arid fields with few trees and no rich meadowlands. Smoke curled lazily from a few chopped openings in roofs, but there were no chimneys, no doors and no visible furniture. Such men and women as did appear were a scrawny lot, dressed not in expensive furs but in untanned skins.

  Of pearls and gold and turquoises and silver, there was not a sign The Spaniards had wandered nearly three thousand miles, squandering two fortunes, Mendoza's and Coronado's, and had found nothing.

  Garcilaco noted how the leaders reacted to this final disappointment. Coronado was overcome, unable to comprehend it and powerless to issue new orders. One captain raged, then started to prepare his men for the long homeward journey. Melgosa looked at the supposed city of riches and showed his gapped teeth in a disgusted smile: 'I've seen pigsties in Toledo look better than that.'

  It was Melgosa who issued the first order: 'Double the watch on El Turco,' and during the dreadful blazing days the slave who had been the agent of this disaster—but not its cause, for that lay within the cupidity of the captains—sat unconcerned in his chains, humming ancient chants used by his forebears when they knew that all was lost and death was at hand.

  Garcilaco himself was anguished by the magnitude of the defeat, even though he had known it was coming, and he several times spoke with El Turco: 'Why did you deceive us?'

  'You deceived yourselves.'

  'But you lied, always you lied about the gold.'

  i never put gold in your hearts. You put it there.'

  The dark-skinned man laughed, that easy, ingratiating laugh which had so charmed and blinded the Spaniards: 'As a boy, I had a fine life, chasing buffalo. As a young man, I had two good wives, there by the northern rivers. When we were captured by the Zuni, the others were treated badly but I protected myself by talking quickly with the leaders in the pueblos. And with the Spaniards, I had my own horse.' He shook his chains, laughing at the rattling noise they made. Then he ridiculed his captors: 'The Spaniards were such fools. It was so easy for me.' And once more he became the insatiable plotter: 'You're an Indian like me. Help me to escape. I know a city to the north. Much gold.'

  One night Captain Melgosa said to Garcilaco: 'Come, lad. Work to do,' and he took him into El Turco's tent, where they were joined by a huge butcher from Mexico, one Francisco Martin, who kept his hands behind his back.

  'Turco,' Melgosa began, 'each word you've said has been a lie. You led us here to perish.' The Indian smiled. 'And yesterday you tried to persuade the Indians here to massacre us.' Still the great liar showed no remorse, so Melgosa flashed a sign, whereupon Martin brought forward his powerful hands, threw a looped rope about El Turco's neck, and with a twisting stick, drew the noose tighter and tighter until the Indian strangled.

  With Martin's help, Garcilaco dug a grave into which the corpse of this infuriating man was thrown. Had he but once told the truth, he could have become a trusted guide. As it was, he deceived everybody, including himself.

  CORONADO, HEAD BOWED AND GILDED ARMOR DISCARDED BECAUSE

  of the sweltering heat, started his shameful retreat, unaware that history would record him as one of the greatest explorers. Under his guidance, Spanish troops had reached far lands: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas. His men had described a hundred Indian settlements, worked with and fought with a score of different tribes, and identified the difficulties to be faced by later settlers. But because he did not find treasure, he was judged a failure.

  One member of the expedition did find success, although of a temporary nature. One morning a messenger posted north from Mexico with an exciting letter drafted by the emperor, Carlos Quinto, in Madrid:

  Captain-General Coronado. Greetings and God's Blessing You have in your command a Captain of Cavalry, Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas of the noble family of that name. Inform the Captain that his brother in Spain who inherited the noble title and all wealth and properties pertaining to it has unfortunately died. Said Captain Cardenas is to return by fastest route to Madrid, where he will be invested with the title now belonging to him and be handed the substantial properties to which he is entitled. By order of His Majesty' the King.

  When Infantry-Captain Melgosa heard this news he grinned, spat through his gapped teeth, and told Garcilaco: 'See! It always happens this way. It's cavalry officers who get messages from the emperor.' Then he burst into gusts of laughter, clapping Cardenas on the back: 'Infuriating! The only man in the whole army who gets any gold is this damned cavalry officer.' AncT they got drunk on wine Melgosa had saved in expectation of celebrating the capture of Quivira's gold.

  How ironic it seemed to Garcilaco that of all who set forth on this glorious expedition, the only one who profited when it ended in disaster was the badly flawed Cardenas. The rest earned only bitterness.

  But the boy need not have envied the apparent good fortune of Cardenas, for although the army-master was awarded both the title and fortune when he reached Spain, he was then accused of having burned Indians alive. He was in and out of jail for seven years, fined

  eight-hundred gold ducats and sentenced to serve the king without pay for thirty-three months at the dismal post of Oran in North Africa. But because the king liked him, this was reduced to two hundred ducats and twelve months' service at the kindlier post of Velez Malaga, where he prepared for further adventures in new lands.

  Coronado's heroic aspirations ended in confusion, for when he issued his reluctant order 'March south!' some sixty of his braver underlings announced that they intended to remain permanently among the pueblos of what would become New Mexico. Coronado flew into a rage to think that they were willing to chance a new life in a new land while he had the doleful task of returning to Mexico to report his failure.

  One of the would-be settlers wrote some years later: 'He said we had to go back with him, and he threatened to have us hanged if we refused or said anything more about it.' So the settlement which could have justified the expedition was aborted.

  However, three other members of a much different type also asked to remain behind, and they posed a more difficult problem. They were Franciscan friars—Fray Padilla, an ordained priest, and two who had taken only minor orders. In robes already tattered, they came before Coronado to say: 'We will stay here.'

  'Why?' the general asked, almost pleading with them to drop their foolishness, and they said: 'Because we must bring Jesus into pagan hearts.'

  Officers, common soldiers, even some of the Mexican Indians tried to dissuade them from what appeared to be certain martyrdom, but the advisers were powerless, for God had whispered to the three, and finally Coronado had to give them permission to remain.

  One of the minor friars set up his mission near Cibola, while the other sought to convert the local Indians along the Rio Pecos, and they marched off to their extraordinary duties.

  As for Fray Padilla, Garcilaco would remember always that final morning when the friar started his long walk back to Quivira, whose Indians he dreamed of bringing into the Holy Faith. He did not go alone or lacking goods, for when Coronado accepted the fact that the friar could not be dissuaded, he provided him with so many people and so much goods that Padilla looked as if he were heading a minor expedition: a Portuguese soldier, two Indian oblate brothers who had taken no orders but whose lives were dedic
ated to religious service, a mestizo workman, a black translator, a train of mules well laden, a horse, a substantial flock of sheep,

  a full set of instruments for the Mass, and the six young Quivira Indians who had guided Coronado back from that settlement.

  It was a fumbling attempt to Christianize a vast new land, and when Garcilaco, still avid to learn what honor was, watched the little procession depart, he asked himself: 'Why would men volunteer for such a fatal assignment?' But as the words hung in the air he realized that honor included not only physical and moral courage but also a daring commitment to central beliefs, and for a moment he wished that he might one day march in the footsteps of that friar.

  As Padilla moved off toward sure death he grew smaller and smaller in the eyes of Garcilaco, but larger and larger in the eyes of God.

  Years later a Franciscan gathered reports from all who had known the friar and wrote: The Portuguese soldier and the two oblate brothers were traveling with Fray Padilla one day when hostile Indians attacked. Insisting that his friends escape with the only horse, he knelt in prayer and was transfixed by arrows.'

  Imperial Spain was neither generous nor understanding with her unsuccessful conquistadores. When Coronado returned with no gold, he was charged with numerous malfeasances and crimes. The great explorer was for many years abused by officials dispatched from Spain with portfolios of charges made by his suspicious king. When Coronado's case ground to a halt, Viceroy Mendoza was similarly charged and harassed. Captain Melgosa received nothing for his many acts of heroism, and the mestizo Garcilaco was treated worst of all.

  Even though of the meanest birth, he had striven throughout this long and dangerous expedition to conduct himself according to his understanding of honor. He had been first to sight the deep canyon, but he did not shout: 'See what I have found!' He had saved his commander's life when the stones fell, but he did not cry: 'How brave I am!' And he had fought for two days on the roof, an incident whose aftermath he tried to forgive, because he felt that no man of honor would kill so wantonly.

  But at the end of his journey he was dismissed with no pay, no job and no honors, for he was judged to be 'merely another Indian.'

  He was mustered out in 1 542, and lacking funds with which to buy enough animals to work the profitable Vera Cruz-Mexico City route, he had to be content with that portion of El Camino Real, the Royal Road, which ran from Guadalajara to Culiacan, with an occasional side trip delivering mining gear to the new silver

  eo

  - mines at Zacatecas. Occasionally he would come upon a cargo destined for Mexico City, and one day in 1558, overworked and

  • disheartened, he was engaged on such a trip when he was accosted

  • on the streets of the capital by a tonsured monk who asked: 'Are you the Garcilaco who once knew Fray Marcos?' When he nod-

  : ded, the monk said: 'You must come with me/ and he led the way to a small Franciscan monastery, where a very old cleric came i unsteadily forward to say in a weak voice: 'My son, why have you not come to me for help?'

  It was Fray Marcos, and in succeeding days this frail old man spoke often with Garcilaco, reviewing the evil things that had happened to him and complaining of how his enemies never allowed the world to forget that it had been his misleading information which had tricked Coronado's army into its disasters. 'Son, it's impossible to determine what is truth and what falsehood. I cannot now remember whether I saw the Seven Cities in reality or in a dream . . . but that's no matter, for I did see them.'

  Garcilaco was now a grown man of thirty-three, who worked hard and to whom a crust of bread was either firmly in hand or was not, and he was not disposed to tolerate philosophical niceties: 'You were never on the hill. And if you had been, you couldn't have seen the Cities. Not from where we were.'

  'The hill has nothing to do with it. You do not judge a man by whether he climbed a hill or not. I saw the Cities. When I preach about the City of God that awaits us in its glory, do I climb some hill to see it? No, it exists because God wants it to exist. And the Seven Cities of Cibola exist in the same way. They will be found one day because men like Esteban and me will always seek them.'

  At this mention of the dancing black man, Marcos fell to weeping, and after some moments, said softly: i was not generous with him, Garcilaco. I deplored his way with women. But in the long view of history, what are a few women, more or less?'

  This rhetorical question brought a most unexpected consequence. 'Garcilaco, my son, I have been most eager to find you. I sent that friar to seek you out. When the last viceroy took his j Spanish soldiers home with him, one of them left behind a daughter. Ten years old . . . we could find no mother.' He fell to coughing, then said: 'I took her in. She works in our kitchen . . . Maria Victoria. But she's getting old enough now that people are beginning to talk, to say ugly things about me—the usual charges you heard when you were her age.' He brought his hands together under his chin and stared at his son: 'It's time that girl found a husband.'

  He led the way into the kitchen, where Maria Victoria, a gold-

  en-skinned mestizo girl of fifteen, proved so attractive that Gar cilaco asked in honest bewilderment: 'Why would she be inter ested in me?' and Marcos said: 'Because I've been telling her al these years how brave you were in the north, how you provec yourself to be a man of honor.'

  He grasped Maria Victoria's right hand and placed it in Gar cilaco's: i give you my daughter.' He kissed them both, then saidl 'My children, in this life honor is everything. It is the soul of Spain. Some cabelleros have it, most do not. You Indians can earn it too, and if you do, it adorns life.' Tears came to his eyes as he added: 'I've always tried to preserve my honor, and have done nothing of which I am ashamed.'

  He himself conducted the wedding ceremony, and shortly thereafter, died. For some years chroniclers, when summarizing his life, belabored the infamous role he had played in lying about Cibola, but now his scandals have been forgiven and forgotten.

  Maria Victoria and Garcilaco did not forget him, and for good reason. Fray Marcos had been a Franciscan pledged to poverty, but as a prudent man he had always managed to sequester his share of the gold coins which passed his way in either governmental or religious activity. 'It wasn't really stealing, children,' he assured them two days before he died. 'A man of honor never steals, but he can put a few coins aside.'

  When Garcilaco asked: 'Where's the gold hidden?' Marcos merely smiled, but some days after the friar's funeral Maria took her husband to where she used to sleep, and hidden in a wall behind her cot he found a substantial hoard. 'Fray Marcos knew that the father-provincial liked to make surprise visits,' she whispered, 'to make sure his friars kept obedient to their vows of poverty. Father could always guess when the old inspector was coming, and then he gave me his gold to hide.'

  The windfall enabled the newlyweds to purchase land, build a house, hire Indians to drive the family mules down to Vera Cruz, and buy a black tutor from Cuba to educate them. Many years later, when it became customary for well-to-do mestizos to take surnames, the viceroy bestowed Garza upon them, and it became a tradition in the family that their progenitor had been a Spanish sailor of that name.

  . . . TASK FORCE

  At our organizing meeting in January we had agreed that our

  [young assistants would assume responsibility for inviting to each

  of our formal session's some respected scholar who would address

  us for about forty minutes on whatever aspect of Texas history we

  [might be concentrating upon at that time. Their first offering

  provided a lucky coincidence.

  In conformance with the governor's desire that we hold our meetings in various cities across the state so as to attract maximum attention to our work, our February meeting, which would emphasize Hispanic factors in Texas history, was to be held in Corpus Chnsti, that beautiful, civilized town on the Gulf. It was appropriate that we meet there, because Corpus was already more than i sixty-percent Hispa
nic, with every indication that the percentage would increase.

  When I started to make plans as to how we would get there, 11 learned how convenient it was to work with really rich Texans, ; for Rusk had three airplanes to whisk him to and from his oil and banking ventures, while Quimper had two for his distant ranches. Since each had a Lear Jet for longer distances and a King Air for shorter, we had our choice, and in this time-saving way we covered much of Texas, for as Quimper told us: 'When you have interests in a nation as big as Texas, stands to reason you got to have planes.'

  When we landed at the airport in Corpus, we were met by Dr. Placido Navarro Padilla, an elderly Mexican scholar from the cathedral city of Saltillo, which lay two hundred and sixty miles south of the Rio Grande. During the hectic decade 1824-1833, Saltillo had served as the capital of Coahuila-y-Tejas, so that a natural affinity existed between it and Austin, our present capital.

  He was a dapper man, with neatly trimmed gray mustache and silver-rimmed eyeglasses, and had the easy grace which marks so many Spanish scholars. He could disarm those with whom he argued by flashing a congenial smile and an apologetic bow of his head, but in debate he could be fierce. When our staff member from SMU introduced him, she explained: 'Dr. Padilla has specialized in Mexican-Texan relations . . .'

  'Excuse me,' the doctor interrupted in excellent English. 'My name is Navarro.'

  'But it says in our report,' Ransom Rusk countered, 'that your name is Padilla.'

  dreamer who in your Texas vernacular "put his money where hij mouth was," he risked all and lost all, but in doing so, gained immortality. The history of Texas is filled with his kind, the great gamblers, the men whose eyes were fixed beyond the horizon. Like him they try, they fail, but do not complain. I would like to fail the way Francisco Vasquez de Coronado failed.'

  After recommending that we not drop these noble Spaniards from our curriculum, he came to the heart of his challenging talk, which I will abbreviate, using only his words: