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Hello and welcome to the Explorers Podcast.

Today is the second day and final part in our series on Francisco Vesca's day Coronado

in the Seven Cities of Gold.

Quick note, there is a map of Coronado's exploration route on our website, ExplorersPodcast.com.

And with that, notes are done.

Let's get going.

We left the Coronado expedition in the T-West region of the Rio Grande Valley, which is

around modern-day Albuquerque in Santa Fe, as the winter of 1540-41 came to a close.

The winter months had been brutal ones on the native T-Wap people.

The Spanish had come into the area, seized food, clothing, shelter, and women.

And when the T-Wap people fought back, a war began, called the T-West War,

which is the first name war between Europeans and Native Americans.

The Spanish had burned to death dozens of men in one village, seized a bunch of Pueblos,

and conducted a months-long siege of the region's Mesa Stronghold, Mojo, eventually starving out the surviving population.

It was so brutal, one of the Spanish commanders, Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, was actually convicted of war crimes.

I mean, if the Spanish thought that guy went too far, then you know it was really bad.

Honestly, Vesca's date Coronado and his army played out the campaign in a way that was like the worst stereotype of a wandering army in the new world.

They came looking for gold.

They took what they wanted, when they wanted, with little regard for the native people.

They raped, killed, and savaged those who resisted them.

In the descriptions of the expedition, there is an almost casual acknowledgement about the violence.

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