Heart of Darkness

Eighty years before the Mayflower touched the east coast, European explorers had already reached the middle of America. The summer of 1541 burned dark. Two rival Spanish expeditions got within a few hundred miles of each other in present-day Kansas and Arkansas. Though the entradas had started thousands of miles apart, they followed haunted paths to the same bitter end.

The sixteenth century Spanish worldview still clung to stories of monsters and marvels. Miracles were real. Great wealth waited off the map’s edge. The conquistadors’ experiences in central Mexico and South America fueled these visions further.

By the late 1530s, the northern territory of New Spain beckoned as the last mystery to the European newcomers. Men jockeyed for the political standing to exploit the expected riches of this terra incognita. They coveted the glory of earlier conquests. The first attempts to illuminate these Northern Mysteries ended in disaster, but new fortune-seekers came forward.

Hernando de Soto, a participant in Pizarro’s Incan conquest, extracted the right to explore La Florida from the Spanish king. He could locate and govern any part of his choosing. Meanwhile, viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and his young protégé Francisco Vásquez de Coronado made their own plans to capture the wealth of the northern borderlands.

In 1539, de Soto landed in central Florida with around 700 men, most providing their own arms and armor. At the same time, Mendoza dispatched Friar Marcos de Niza north toward present-day New Mexico. De Niza returned with the tale of the Golden City of Cíbola. The following year, Coronado set out in command of a vast overland expedition, with several hundred soldiers at its core. More than a thousand allies, slaves, and followers also joined the long and dusty trek.

Coronado's March, Frederic Remington, 1898

As Coronado made his way northward, de Soto carved a bloody path through the South. His eastern expedition first made its way north into the Carolinas, fighting, raiding, and taking captives the entire way. In 1540 they turned westward, continuing to search in vain for the mountains of gold they desired.

In the west, Coronado reached the cities of Cíbola. They were not made of gold. After capturing the first of the Zuni pueblos, he sent exploring parties out in all directions. One of these reached the high plains and heard of another golden kingdom further east: Quivira. The expedition moved into the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico to prepare for this new goal.

In the spring of 1541 Coronado left the mountains, and a ruined set of towns, behind. He found the vast plains of the continent’s interior arrayed before him. At the same time, de Soto crossed the Mississippi River.

As they worked toward the center, the two rival expeditions took the form of desperate wanderings in the wilderness. Journeys of madness, drawn inexorably toward the middle of the unknown. The Heart of Darkness. And blinded by that darkness, they followed their chimerical magnets to their doom.

By the summer, Coronado reached his fabled Quivira in central Kansas, with no gold in sight. At the same time, and unknown to each other, de Soto battled his way through northern Arkansas only a few hundred miles away. He too found only bitterness.

Dejected and aimless, both parties retreated, then made plans to leave the northern wastelands. De Soto didn’t make it. He died in 1542, still in the Arkansas area. Coronado almost met the same fate after falling from a horse around the same time in New Mexico. Less than half of de Soto’s original expedition made it back to Spanish civilization.

Coronado fared better, but he never recovered what he lost out there on the Plains. He survived the war crimes charges brought against him on his return, but his star dwindled. The loss of his physical health, financial capital, and political standing hounded him to the end of his life only twelve years later.

The first Europeans to reach the middle of America also became the first to have their dreams crushed by it. They entered the Heart of Darkness, and it consumed them.

Routes of the Explorers, De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo, Explorers of the Northern Mystery, National Park Service, 1992. De Soto's likely route is in red, while Coronado's potential route is in blue. They converge toward the center of the continent.