MAY 24:

 May 24, 1539: Mexican Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza has decided to send an expedition to search for wealthy cities north of Mexico. On March 7, 1539, Friar Marcos de Niza started the expedition from Culiacan. According to Niza's journal, he finally sees Cibola, although he never sets foot in the pueblo. His report will lead to future expeditions looking for the "Seven Cities of Gold."
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/NN/fni9.html
 

NIZA, MARCOS DE (?-1558?). Marcos de Niza, a controversial Franciscan
explorer, may have led the first European expedition to explore purposefully
what is today the American Southwest. His report of having seen one of the
Seven Cities of Cíbola in 1539 launched the first large-scale Spanish exploration of the interior of North America. Considered a Frenchmen by his contemporaries and apparently born in Nice (hence "de Niza"), Fray Marcos had served in Central America and in Peru before settling in Mexico City in 1537. In the autumn of 1538 Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza entrusted him with investigating rumors of wealth beyond the northern frontiers of New Spain-rumors fueled by the recent return of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. To guide Fray Marcos, Mendoza sent Estevanico, a black slave who had been with Cabeza de Vaca. Niza set out in the spring of 1539. Before the year was out he had returned to Mexico City, claiming to have seen a place called Cíbola, believed by modern scholars to have been one of the Zuni villages. Fray Marcos did not, however, claim to have entered Cíbola. Fearing that he might meet the same fate as Estevanico, whom the Cibolanos had killed, he observed the city from a prudent distance and pronounced it "bigger than the city of Mexico."

Largely on the strength of Fray Marcos's favorable report, Viceroy Mendoza launched one of the most significant of Spain's reconnaissances of the interior of North America, that of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, Niza traveled to Cíbola with Coronado. When the expedition reached the Zuni villages in July 1540, a disappointed Coronado pronounced Fray Marcos a liar. Only temporarily disgraced, Fray Marcos returned to Mexico City where, for a time, he apparently held the highest local office in the Franciscans, that of provincial. According to one source, he died on March 25, 1558, after suffering bad health for over a decade. Since the sixteenth century, scholars have been divided as to whether or not Fray Marcos saw Cíbola on his 1539 journey or even came close to it. Those who have charged him with lying have offered several explanations. He has been accused of turning back in order to avoid meeting the same fate as Estevanico and then of fabricating his report in order to avoid displeasing the viceroy. He has also been accused of conspiring with Mendoza to strengthen the viceroy's case for exploring in the north. Others, more charitably, have suggested that his imagination played tricks on him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cleve Hallenbeck, The Journey of Fray Marcos de Niza (Dallas: University Press, 1949; new ed., Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1987). Carroll L. Riley, "Road to Hawikuh: Trade and Trade Routes to Cibola-Zuni during Late Prehistoric and Early Historic Times," Kiva 41 (Winter 1975). Madeleine T. Rodack, ed. and trans., Adolph F. Bandelier's The Discovery of New Mexico by the Franciscan Monk, Friar Marcos de Niza, in 1539 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981). Carl O. Sauer, "Discovery of New Mexico Reconsidered," New Mexico Historical Review 12 (July 1937). David J. Weber
 

*****
 

Excerpts from  http://www.psi.edu/coronado/journeyofmarcosdeniza.html
 

Marcos de Niza was the first explorer to report the Seven Cities of Cibola, and his report launched the Coronado expedition.

Marcos de Niza was a priest who was sent north from Mexico City by Viceroy Mendoza in 1538-39 to search for wealthy cities that were rumored to be somewhere north of the frontier of New Spain. In early 1539 he left the frontier at Compostela and journeyed north into the unknown for several months. In the summer of 1539 he returned and wrote a report saying he had discovered the cities - in a province called Cibola (the present-day native American pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico). He said he reached the first city and saw it from a distance, but because his companion had been killed there, he returned without entering it.

Most popular writers claim Marcos reported gold in Cibola, but his original report says nothing about gold. Nonetheless, conquistadors in Mexico city were exited by his news and assumed Cibola would be as wealthy as the conquered Aztec empire. Marcos led Coronado's army back to Cibola the next year, in 1540, but he became the scapegoat when Cibola turned out to have no gold, and the soldiers said he was a liar.

The big mystery about Marcos is whether he told the truth. Historians have argued for centuries about whether Marcos - a priest with a good reputation - simply interviewed some natives near the present border, and turned back without seeing Cibola. Also at issue: did he promote the rumors that Cibola was full of gold? Several prominent 20th century historians concluded Marcos did not have time to reach Cibola in 1539. They said he made up a fraudulent report as part of a conspiracy with Viceroy Mendoza to encourage the conquest of the north. Other historians have defended him.

Read What Marcos Himself Said

The Relación, or Report, that Marcos submitted about his explorations is still in print. The best modern edition and commentary is by Cleve Hallenbeck, published in 1949 by Southern Methodist University Press in a handsome edition, reprinted in 1987 by the same publisher. The original Spanish is presented as well as an English translation and a detailed commentary. Hallenbeck's was one of the scholars who believed Marcos lied about the journey, and his commentary about "the lying Monk," as he calls him, makes entertaining and provocative reading.

... The Mysterious Journey of Marcos de Niza

The route of Marcos in 1539 is known in very rough outline, but scholars have grand arguments over the details. Remember that Marcos led the Coronado army over more or less the same route in 1540. Thus, it is an exciting game of modern archaeological sleuthing to try to reconstruct his path from his statements. He started in Culiacan on March 7, 1539. By early April he was in a native village called Vacapa, where the people had not heard of the Spanish Christians, and where he spent some days. He stated he left there April 7. Some weeks after that, he departed from the main Cibola route to investigate the coast, correctly reporting that the coastline did not turn inland toward Cibola, but rather turned sharply west. The other specific date he reported is May 9, when he entered the final, 15-day "despoblado," or unpopulated stretch, prior to reaching Cibola. This would place him at or near Cibola around May 24.

...Origin of the Name "Cibola"

Marcos de Niza was the first person to record the name Cibola, reported to him by Estevan the Moor, who learned it from native informants. The term probably comes from a native term for buffalo, and refers to the vigorous trade in buffalo hides and other buffalo products, conducted from Cibola. As Marcos recorded from numerous interviews of natives in central and northern Sonora, the natives of that area made numerous trade trips, 20 to 30 days' journey north along the well-established Cibola trail, to work or trade at Cibola in return for buffalo hides, turquoise, and other materials. These facts give interesting insight into daily life of prehistoric peoples of southwest North America at the time the Europeans arrived.

......Starting on April 7, Marcos left Vacapa and soon encountered the region where the natives knew of Cibola. He interviewed them carefully, always gathering consistent and increasingly glowing reports of the northern city. In the central Sonoran villages where Marcos traveled, the natives had only small brush huts and possibly some one-floor, one-room structures of adobe-like material. But Cibola had multi-story permanent buildings! Marcos wrote in an engaging style about what he learned:
 

These people had as much knowledge of Cíbola as in New Spain we have of Mexico City, or in Peru they have of Cuzco.
 

They particularly described the style of the houses, streets, and plazas in Cíbola, like people who had been there many times.... I remarked that houses of the style they described, several stories high, seemed impossible. To make me understand, they took soil and ashes and mixed them with water, and showed me how they placed the stones, and how the edifice was built up, placing stones and mortar until it reached the required height. I asked them if the men of that country had wings to reach the upper stories; they laughed and explained the concept of ladders to me as well as I could explain it. They took a stick and placed it over their heads, saying this was the height, from one story to the next....