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This magisterial volume unveils Richard and Shirley Flint’s deep research into the Latin American and Spanish archives in an effort to track down the history of the participants who came north with the Coronado expedition in 1540. Through their investigation into thousands of legal cases, financial records, proofs of service, letters, journals, and other primary materials, they provide social and cultural documentation on the backgrounds of hundreds of individuals who made up the Coronado expedition and show that the expedition was the first phase of a three-phase effort to complete the Columbian project: to delineate a westward route to Asia from Spain.
While the Spanish conquistadors have been stereotyped as rapacious treasure seekers, many firstcomers to the New World realized that its greatest wealth lay in the native populations whose labor could be harnessed to build a new Spain. Hence, the early arrivals in Mexico sought encomiendas—"a grant of the Indians of a prescribed indigenous polity, who were to provide the grantee (the encomendero) tribute in the form of commoditiesand service in return for protection and religious instruction." This study profiles the 506 known encomenderos in New Spain (present-day Mexico) during the years 1521-1555, using their life histories to chart the rise, florescence, and decline of the encomienda system. The first part draws general conclusions about the actual workings of the encomienda system. The second part provides concise biographies of the encomenderos themselves.