These Men And The Care Of The New Settlement
Were Left To Melchior Diaz, With Orders To Protect The Road Between Cibola
And New Spain, And Also To Attempt To Find Some Means Of Communicating With
The Vessels Under Alarcon.
Diaz, with twenty-five selected men, started for
the seacoast, went to the Gulf, across to the coast, back again up the
river, where he found Alarcon's cross, and eventually returned to San
Hieronimo, there to meet with death by an accident.
Owing to the habit of
the Indians at the lower portion of the river of warming themselves in
cold weather with a burning stick, Diaz called the river El Rio del Tizon
- the River of the Firebrand.
Disaster Comes to the Spaniards. Disappointed at what he had found at
Cibola and Tiguex, Coronado now decided to go with his whole army to a
place which had been described to him in most glowing terms by an Indian.
He told of a place of fabulous wealth named Quivera, and, says the ancient
historian: "He gave such a clear account of what he told, as if it was
true and he had seen it, that it seemed plain afterward that the devil was
speaking in him." Carried away by these glowing visions of wealth, Coronado
sent Tovar back to San Hieronimo. Melchior Diaz was dead, and the little
settlement was in an excitement, because one of the soldiers had just been
killed by a poisoned arrow, shot by one of the natives.
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