This document summarizes the early Spanish explorations of North America led by Cabeza de Vaca, Hernando de Soto, and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Cabeza de Vaca was lost for 8 years in North America, during which he was enslaved and came to be seen as a healer among Native Americans. Hernando de Soto led an expedition through Florida and the Southeast US in search of gold and new lands to conquer, often violently exploiting Native populations. Francisco Coronado also led a large expedition across northern Mexico and the Southwest US in pursuit of gold, attacking Native towns and finding no gold, only further angering diverse autonomous groups.

1. The Spanish Frontier

2. Cabeza de Vaca
• Had been lost in North America for 8 years, went from
conquistador to slave to sacred healer
• He was pressured to become a priest, as the natives believed
that only westerners can cure the new diseases they brought
with them
• His companions and he were traded from Indian band to
band, and he travelled from Florida to New Mexico
• After being taken back to Spain, he took time to reintegrate,
refusing to wear European garb or sleep on a bed
• Still heavily religious, de Vaca insisted to the crown that they
use good treatment to Christianize the natives, that no other
way would do it.

3. Hernando de Soto
• Hernando de Soto led the first expedition to Florida, and
later to northern Florida in search of his own Aztec
society to conquer
• His 600 men went as far west as Texas and as far north as
the Carolinas
• Known to have a sadistic streak, Soto would hunt down
natives on horseback
• Soto fed his men on stolen food from Native populations
he would encounter
• Unable to find any gold among the villages, Soto died in
1542 from sickness

4. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
• The Spanish assumed that all native groups controlled large
gold deposits, like the Aztecs
• Coronado led 1700 men and 1500 horses and pack animals
across northern Mexico to a Puebla called Hawikuh
• When denied access, Coronado and his men stormed the
town, killing hundreds, and finding only corn and beans but
no gold
• Coronado visited town after town in search of gold, lumping
all of the Puebla together despite sixty autonomous groups
being conjoined