Page:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu/67

 lands. Friar Marcos was not a liar, but it is impossible to ignore the charges against him quite as easily as Mr Bandelier has done.

Pedro Castaneda makes some very damaging statements, which are not conclusive proof of the facts. Like the statements of Suarez de Peralta, they represent the popular estimation of the father provincial, and they repeat the stories which passed current regarding him, when the later explorations had destroyed the vision that had been raised by the reports of the friar's exploration. The accusations made by Cortes deserve more careful consideration. Cortes returned to Spain about the time that the preparations for the Coronado expedition were definitely begun. Soon after his arrival at court, June 25, 1540, he addressed a formal memorial to the King, setting forth in detail the ill treatment which he had received from Mendoza. In this he declared that after the viceroy had ordered him to withdraw his men from their station on the coast of the mainland toward the north—where they were engaged in making ready for extended inland explorations—he had a talk with Friar Marcos. "And I gave him," says Cortes, "an account of this said country and of its discovery, because I had determined to send him in my ships to follow up the said northern coast and conquer that country, because he seemed to understand something about matters of navigation. The said friar communicated this to the said viceroy, and he says that, with his permission, he went by land in search of the same coast and country as that which I had discovered, and which it was and is my right to conquer. And since his return, the said friar has published the statement that he came within sight of the said country, which I deny that he has either seen or discovered; but instead, in all that the said friar reports that he has seen, he only repeats the account I had given him regarding the information which I obtained from the Indians of the said country of Santa Cruz, because everything which the said friar says that he discovered is just the same as what these said Indians had told me: and in enlarging upon this and in pretending to report what he neither saw nor learned, the said Friar Marcos does nothing new, because he has done this many other times, and this was his regular habit, as is notorious in the provinces of Peru and Guatemala; and sufficient evidence regarding this will be given to the court whenever it is necessary."

This is a serious charge, but so far as is known it was never substantiated. Cortes was anxious to enforce his point, and he was not always scrupulous in regard to the exact truth. The important point is that such charges were made by a man who was in the position to learn all