McoEE] EARLIEST EXPLORATIONS — 1540 53 



neighboriug island of Angel de la Guarda in terms tliat would be 

 applicable to the Seri. 



On Monday, February 23, 1540, according to Winsbip,' Captain- 

 General Francisco Vazquez Coronado set out on his ambitious and 

 memorable expedition to the Seven Cities of Cibola. His course lay 

 from Compostela along the coast of Cnliacan, and thence northward 

 through what is now Sinaloa and Sonora. On May 0-20, 1540, Her- 

 nando de Alarcou set sail on the ancillary expedition by sea; he fol- 

 lowed the coast from Acapulco to Colorado river, and although he 

 undoubtedly saw and was the first to name Tiburon,' and claimed to 

 have "discouered other very good hauens for the ships whereof Captaine 

 Francis de Vllua was General, for the Marquesse de Valle neither sawe 

 nor found them",' he made no specific record of any of the features of 

 Seriland or of contact with the Seri Indians. Meantime Coronado's 

 forces were divided, a considerable part of the army falling behind the 

 leader; and some time during the early summer the belated army, under 

 Don Tristan de Arellano, founded the town of San Hieronimo de los 

 Corazones, which in the following year (1541) was transferred to a place 

 in Seiiora (Sonora) not now identifiable. From Corazones Don Kodrigo 

 Maldonado went down to the seacoast to seek the ships, and brought 

 back with him "an Indian so large and tall that the best man in the 

 army reached only to his chest", with reports of still taller Indians 

 along the coast.^ It is impossible to locate Maldonado's route with close 

 accuracy, but in view of geographic and other conditions it is evident 

 (as recently shown by Hodge^) that he must have descended Eio Sonora 

 and approached or reached the co^st over the broad delta-plain of that 

 stream south of Sierra Seri, and thus within Seri territory. The re- 

 ported gigantic stature practically identifies the Indians visited by him 

 with the Seri, since no other gigantic tribes were consistently reported 

 by explorers of western North America, and since the 6-foot Seri 

 warriors, with their frequent Sauls of greater stature, are in fact gigan- 

 tic in comparison with the average Spanish soldiery of earlier centuries. 

 There are indications that the fame of these giants of the Southern 

 sea spread to Europe and filtered slowly throughout the intellectual 

 world, and that the fancy-clothed colossi grew with their travels, after 

 the manner of their kind — indeed, there is no slender reason for opining 

 that these half mythical islanders were the real originals of Jonathan 

 Swift's Brobdinguagians,'^ despite his location of their fabled laud a 



' The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542, Fourteenth Annual Report of tlie Bureau of Ethnology, 1896, 

 p. 382. 



*Aa a harbor or anchorage marked "del Tibixron " on the map of " Domingo del Castillo, Piloto", 

 drawn in 1541, and reproduct-d in Historia de Nueva-Eapaiia, escrita por su esclarecido Conquistador 

 Herniin Cortrs, auinentaila con otras documentos, y notas, por el ilustriasimo Seiior Don Francisco 

 Antonio Loreuzana, Arzobispo de Mexico; Mexico. 1770, p. 328. 



^Tlie Voyages of the English Nation to America, vol. iv, p. 6. 



■"Win.shiji. op. cit.. p. 484. 



^(.'oronadu's Marcii to (Juivira, in J. V. Brower, Harahey (Memoirs of Explorations in the Basin 

 ofthe Mississippi, vol. ll), 1899, p. 36. 



^ Cf. The History of Oregon, California, and the other Territories on the Northwest Coast of North 

 America, by Robert Greenhow, 1845, p. 97; History of Califoruia, by Theodore H. Hittell, 1898, vol.1, 

 p. 149. 



