Page:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu/90

 recorded a few days after the departure of the expedition. They declare that in the whole array there were only two or three men who had ever been settled residents in the country; that these few were men who had failed to make a living as settlers, and that, in short, the whole force was a good riddance.

The men who assembled at Compostela to start for the Seven Cities numbered, Mendoza stated at the time of the visita in 1547, "about two hundred and fifty Spaniards on horseback, . . . and about three hundred Indians, a few more or less." Mota Padilla, who must have used documents of the very best authority, nearly all of which have since disappeared, gives the number of the force as "two hundred and sixty horsemen, . . seventy footmen, . . . and more than a thousand friendly Indians and Indian servants." Herrera, who used official documents, says that there were one hundred and fifty horsemen and two hundred footmen. Mendoza's statement of the number of Indians may be explained, if we suppose him to have referred only to the friendly Indians who went on the expedition as native allies. His statement is made in the course of a defense of his administration, when he was naturally desirous of giving as small a number as possible. Castañeda says that there were three hundred horsemen, and this number occurs, in other early narratives.

Mendoza spared neither pains nor expense to insure the success of the expedition. Arms, horses, and supplies were furnished in abundance; money was advanced from the royal chest to any who had debts to pay before they could depart, and provision was made for the support of those who were about to be left behind by fathers, brothers, or husbands. The equipment of the force was all that the viceroy could desire. Arms and military supplies had been among the things greatly needed in New Spain when Mendoza reported its condition in his first letters to the home government. In 1537 he repeated his request for these supplies with increased insistence. The subject is not again mentioned in his letters, and we may fairly suppose that he had received the weapons and munitions of war, fresh from the royal arsenals of Spain, with which he equipped the expedition on whose success he had staked so much. It was a splendid array as it passed in review before Mendoza and the officials who helped and watched him govern New Spain, on this Sunday in February, 1540. The young cavaliers curbed the picked horses from the large stock farms of the viceroy, each resplendent in long blankets flowing to the ground. Each rider held his lance erect, while his sword and other weapons hung in their proper places at his side. Some were arrayed in coats of mail, polished to shine like that of their general, whose gilded armor with its brilliant trappings was to bring him many hard blows a few months later. Others wore iron helmets or vizored headpieces of the tough bullhide for which the country