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Augmented Reflections is a multi-year research project funded by the 2018 UCCS College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences’ Innovative Research Initiative. Our endeavor reshapes interpretation, understanding, and knowledge by generating virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality worlds (AR, interactive digital projections placed over the real world). We are creating an interpretive digital experience that places participants within the narratives of Spanish conquest and exploration, Pueblo and Plains Indian life, Indian-Spanish interchange, and the Hispano settlement of New Mexico and Colorado. We are presently creating three virtual worlds (using the Unity game engine and SketchUp Pro) to evaluate:
- Spanish conquistador Coronado’s mid-1500s exploration of New Mexico and Colorado.
- Spanish-Pueblo Indian interchange in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the 1700s.
- Spanish-Plains Indian colonial relations in El Pueblo, Colorado.
THE CORONADO MUSTER ROLL OF FEBRUARY 22, 1540 CE
PLAYER EXPLORATION OF WORLD
WHAT WAS THE MUSTER ROLL?
On February 22, 1540, Spanish conquistador Francisco Vazquez de Coronado assembled 289 Spanish soldiers and in excess of 1,500 indigenous warriors (indios amigos) to pursue the exploration present-day New Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Gold (Cibola).
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Often the Spanish exploration, conquest, and settlement of the Americas is presented in overly simplistic ways that do not take into account indigenous peoples roles as collaborators and partners of the Spanish. Through events like the muster roll we can better understand the dynamic relationships that connected these peoples.
WHAT WAS THE CONTEXT OF THE MUSTER ROLL?
By the year 1535, less than half a century after Columbus arrived in America; Spain had established its control over a large part of the continent from their bases in the Caribbean. In 1521 Hernán Cortés completed the capture of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire in Central Mexico, and gained control over the territory the Spanish called New Spain. In South America, 1532, Francisco Pizarro had taken Cusco, capital of the Inca Empire in Peru, a conquest that had produced enormous quantities of gold and silver for the Spanish coffers. These actions, together with the promise of riches and land and the opportunity to climb the ladder of the Spanish social hierarchy attracted innumerable adventurers willing to join the emperor’s army and reap the benefits of the Spanish exploitation of the land and its inhabitants. Despite fierce resistance, the Spanish continued to advance through terra incognita (unknown lands).
In western New Spain, the collapse of the Tarascan kingdom gave Spain control of the Pacific coastline north, into the present state of Nayarit, rich agricultural land where the Spanish established villages and continued to push norward into modern day Sinaloa, gaining control of the town of Culiacan, a beachhead from which they sent expeditions farther north to capture indigenous people to be sold as slaves. It was during one of these slave raids that, in 1536, Diego de Guzmán encountered the sole four survivors of an expedition lost in Florida 8 years earlier. The four men, led by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, had wandered westward along the Gulf Coast and into the territory of current Texas and Arizona trying to return to Mexico, and had lived among numerous groups of indigenous people. They told stories of a rich land to the Northeast of Culiacán where people lived in large villages with tall houses and traded emeralds and turquoise for tropical birds and feathers. Coming at a time when the conquest of gold-rich Peru was fresh in the mind of the Spanish, and as increased trade also brought wealth to the administrators of the Spanish colonies, New Spain´s viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, organized an expedition to the north.
Mendoza sent a Franciscan Friar into the unknown territory. With him went Mustafa Azemmouri, also known as Esteban Dorantes, Estevanico, an African slave who was one of the four survivors of the Cabeza de Vaca expedition. De Niza returned confirming the stories of seven wealthy cities, including Cibola, what today are known to be the pueblos around Zuni, in Northwestern New Mexico. Mendoza then designated Antonio Vazquez de Coronado, the young governor of the province of New Galicia, to lead a large expedition to this Tierra Nueva, New Land, and settle the territory. This is the story of that expedition that invaded and settled what we know today as New Mexico. It begins in Compostela de Indias, formerly and later known as Tepic, the capital of Nueva Galicia, where the forces of the expedition are arriving from Mexico City. It’s February, 1540.
WHAT DOES IT REVEAL ABOUT THE PAST?
The muster roll reveals the diversity within indigenous and Spanish communities — not just how to two communities differed from one another. For example, the indigenous warriors participating in the exploration of northern Mexico and New Mexico vastly outnumbered their Spanish counterparts. This detail offers a much more complex and nuanced image of how broadly diverse indigenous peoples reacted or responded to, and even embraced and cooperated with the Europeans. Similar in complexity, the Spanish were not a uniform community and drew from high and lower-status communities from Spain. Some were nominal Catholics (converts to Christianity) and others even secret-Jews evading Spain’s inquisition. Others, those of lower status, did not even have their own Spanish weapons and instead wore indigenous cotton armor and used obsidian battle axes. The Muster Roll is an important snapshot because it reveals depth, dimension, and shades of meaning more complex than the simplistic conquest narrative. Within the grander currents, human beings lived; the Muster Roll shows some ways that some persons went about contending with those currents.
