Spanish Conquistador’s Campsite Discovered! (by A Private Citizen - Metal Detector Enthusiast!)

[BMc]

I don't know if anyone has seen this this or not, but I believe it speaks well of the MD community and tends to offer some insight and enlightenment on a variety of interesting subjects. 

 "In 1540 Spanish Conquistador Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado arrived (in what is now NM) from Mexico in search of the fabled Cibola, or Seven Cities of Gold. He claimed the area as the “Kingdom of New Mexico,” a part of the larger empire known as New Spain"

Coronado also wandered through the Panhandle area of Texas and into Kansas searching for the mythical land of Quivira, also (reportedly), a city of gold"

"Coronado’s exact route has long been a matter of debate (and dispute) among Historians and Archaeologist Experts" The following summary taken from news articles, describes the discovery and pinpointing of the exact location of a Coronado campsite in Texas by a metal detector hobbyist and "establishes that the previous estimations of Coronado's route of travel, was off by about 100 miles or more!

"A campsite of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, the first European explorer to wander through West Texas, has been located south of Floydada, Texas in Blanco Canyon. (N/E of Lubbock) An archaeological dig under the direction of Dr. Donald Blakeslee, Professor of Anthropology at Wichita State University in Kansas, is in progress. Dr. Blakeslee believes the site, located on privately owned property, is where Coronado camped for 2 weeks in 1541 before leading a small detachment in search of Quivira, in northeast Kansas"

"An encampment of 300 soldiers, 1,500 Indians and servants, 1,000 horses and thousands of other animals should have left a lot of detritus in two weeks" Dr. Blakeslee reminds us, though, that the Indian trail through the canyon has seen use for 11,000 years. His own dig has found metallic items linked to Indians, Comancheros, Ranald Mackenzie’s army, and pioneer settlers. Thus, a Spanish chainmail gauntlet plowed up in the 1960s in a Floyd County pasture, though persuasive, is not definitive proof of Coronado’s presence; other expeditions could have passed through the region.

However, Dr. Blakeslee states that certain finds are uniquely indicative of the Coronado expedition. The most important are metal points from crossbow bolts. Coronado’s campaign is the only one known to have carried crossbows. The site in Blanco Canyon is called the Jimmy Owens site, to honor the Floydada municipal employee who discovered the site and spent much of his spare time exploring it with a metal detector. Of the 40 bolt points that have been recovered, Owens found most of them in only one afternoon, and many of those were found near the surface. Dr. Blakeslee had given a talk in the Panhandle region, stressing the search for Coronado and the idea that crossbow bolt points might be found. Jimmie Owens in Floydada, influenced by the talk, began his metal detector forays into Blanco Canyon and began turning up unusual copper and iron points. Owens, an avid metal-detector buff who first reported the metal points, described the canyon in his laconic style: "It's like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates down there. You never know what you're going to get." Owens came forward with his points and Dr. Blakeslee confirmed that the points fit the general pattern of those from a confirmed Coronado encampment in Albuquerque.

Unlike many collectors, Owens had the courage to come forward and show his material to archaeologists, which led to the recognition of the site. Owens died a few years after the discovery, but was hailed as the key player, a metal-detector buff credited with being the first person to have located evidence, (crossbow points) resulting in positive confirmation of an additional Coronado camp site, and significantly altering the previously accepted Coronado exploration route. As a result, the site was was named for him.

At the beginning of the dig, the archaeologists were being informed that the crossbow points had been coming from about 10 inches down in the soil. In other words, If there was a site there, it was buried under sediment that had accumulated on the canyon floor. The problem was, NO artifacts were being found by the so called experts, the archaeologists!

“Astonishingly, the metal artifacts were only being found by the talented metal detector buffs (Owens and fellow Artiste)’’

At lunch, the concerned archaeologists pointed out that not a single archaeologist had witnessed a cross bow bolt head come out of the ground. Could the whole thing be a fraud?

About that time Jimmy Owens came by with his metal detector, and went over an area where he had found a concentration of metal objects from various periods, and while we were standing there, he detected and dug up an iron awl of a type made in Europe and traded in the area, probably in the early 1800s. No doubt, there was a native village site in the canyon, and it clearly seemed to have been a gathering spot in ancient times. And, after another day or so, all suspicion was removed when the metal detector artistes starting turning up a few more copper crossbow bolt heads in the presence of the archaeologists. The experts were forced to admit that "Artiste" was no exaggeration. Amidst the many signals of ranch debris in the valley, Jimmy Owens could guess with accuracy whether he had a bolt head, whether it was copper or iron, and how far down it was!

All of the recovered artifacts have been donated to the Floyd County Historical Museum.

Date(s) of discovery 1993-1995.

 

[JCR]

Very interesting.

Thanks,

[GB_Amateur]

Good story.  I didn't notice a reference.  Where did you get this?

[Tom_in_CA]

This subject, and I believe the same source/link, came up here :

 

http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=294750&highlight=Coronado

 

And I put my thoughts on that one.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Or ..... wait ..... maybe a different story ?

[Gold Seeker]

7 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Good story.  I didn't notice a reference.  Where did you get this?

I found a few sources on this subject matter doing a web search, here's a link to one of them.

https://www.psi.edu/about/staff/hartmann/coronado/campsite.html

[BMc]

10 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Good story.  I didn't notice a reference.  Where did you get this?

As you may have discovered from internet research, and/or member comments there is considerable source material on the subject matter. I reviewed several print news publications in researching the story. Thanks for reading.