The Moor seems to have regarded this as a great opportunity. His journey through the mountains of Sonora was a triumphal procession. The natives, delighted to see one of the great healers return, thronged around, offering him the customary gifts of food, feathers, fine skins, turquoises, and beautiful women. He strode proudly among the villagers, speaking with them in their own languages, laying his hands on their sick, and receiving their homage.

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Fray Marcos was annoyed to find himself–a man of God and titular leader of this enterprise–relegated to a secondary role. When the party reached the desert beyond the mountains, he suggested that Estévanico go ahead with a few of his men and send back word of his progress.

Estévanico gladly agreed. ‘He thought he could get all the reputation and honor himself,’ reported Pedro de Casteñeda, chronicler of Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s later expedition, ‘and that if he should discover those settlements . . . he would be considered bold and courageous.’ Estévanico pressed rapidly ahead, making arrangements along the way for Marcos and the other friars to be housed and fed as they came behind him. Within a month, the Moor had reached the adobe walls of the town that, his followers assured him, was the legendary city of Cíbola.

Hawikuh, the southernmost of the Seven Cities, was an unprepossessing place, a simple mud-walled pueblo on a small hill above a dry river. But Estévanico was not deterred. After sending word back to Fray Marcos that he had arrived at Cíbola, he dispatched one of his men into the town with his ceremonial mace to inform the Zuñi inhabitants that he was the representative of a great white king from across the sea, to whom Cíbola would now be subject and whose God they would henceforth worship. He had come, he said, to receive their tribute.

The Cibolans were not impressed. Having had no contact with the armies of Spain, they did not fear them. When they met with Estévanico, they thought it ‘unreasonable to say that the people were white in the country from which he came and that he was sent by them, he being black.’ And they suspected that he might be a spy for some invading army–perhaps from Chichilticalle, the land just south of the desert from which many members of Estévanico’s escort came.

It was later rumored that those followers had proved his undoing. At some point on the journey, it was said, he had killed a Chichilticalle woman, and while his reputation as a great healer prevented her relatives from taking their revenge directly, they had no objection to allowing strangers to risk heaven’s anger by treating him as a mere mortal. They informed the Zuñis that he was an evil man, who assaulted their women. The Zuñis locked Estévanico in a hut while they debated what to do with him.

The chroniclers received conflicting stories of what happened next. Perhaps Estévanico panicked; apparently he tried to escape. However it came about, the would-be conquistador died ignobly, felled by the Zuñis’ arrows as he ran from the pueblo.

All of Estévanico’s escort–except for one boy, the Moor’s closest friend, who remained behind as a hostage–were permitted to leave the town in relative safety. They rushed back to Fray Marcos with a frantic tale of Estévanico’s murder and their own near brush with death. Some of them were bleeding; all were in a great state of excitement. Their story so alarmed the friar that he turned around immediately and headed back to Mexico. He gave all of his trade goods to the native escort, whom he feared might otherwise turn against him.

Fray Marcos, who had caught only a distant glimpse of Cíbola, related to the viceroy the reports he had received indicating that the city was every bit as wealthy as had been rumored. In 1540, Marcos accompanied Coronado when he led a large armed force to conquer the fabled city. Coronado’s men took the pueblo with ease, its stout walls and valiant defenders not withstanding. They were shocked, however, to discover that the city’s wealth was limited to corn and beans.

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