Juan Vázquez held various positions in the administration of the recently captured Emirate of Granada under Íñigo López de Mendoza, its first Christian governor.

One component carried the bulk of the expedition's supplies, traveling via the Guadalupe River and Gulf of California under the leadership of Hernando de Alarcón.

Mendoza appointed Vázquez de Coronado the commander of the expedition, with the mission to find the mythical Seven Cities of Gold.

He followed the Sinaloan coast northward, keeping the Gulf of California on his left to the west until he reached the northernmost Spanish settlement in Mexico, San Miguel de Culiacán, about March 28, 1540, whereupon he rested his expedition before they began trekking the inland trail.

Vázquez de Coronado, therefore, decided to divide his expedition into small groups and time their departures so that grazing lands and water holes along the trail could recover.

At intervals along the trail, Vázquez de Coronado established camps and stationed garrisons of soldiers to keep the supply route open.

For example, in September 1540, Melchior Díaz, along with "seventy or eighty of the weakest and least reliable men" in Vázquez de Coronado's army, remained at the town of San Jerónimo, in the valley of Corazones, or "Hearts".

After leaving Culiacán on April 22, 1540, Vázquez de Coronado followed the coast, "bearing off to the left", as Mota Padilla says, by an extremely rough way, to the Sinaloa River.

Materially, Hopi territory was just as poor as that of the Zuni in precious metals, but the Spaniards did learn that a large river (the Colorado) lay to the west.

Alarcón's fleet was tasked to carry supplies and to establish contact with the main body of Vázquez de Coronado's expedition but was unable to do so because of the extreme distance to Cibola.

The supplies were retrieved, and the note stated that Alarcón's men had rowed up the river as far as they could, searching in vain for the Vázquez de Coronado expedition.

Members of Cárdenas's party eventually reached the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where they could see the Colorado River thousands of feet below, becoming the first non-Native Americans to do so.

After this, the main body of the expedition began its journey to the next populated center of pueblos, along another large river to the east, the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

Vázquez de Coronado had one commandeered for his winter quarters, Coofor, which is across the river from present-day Bernalillo near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Turk was probably either Wichita or Pawnee and his intention seems to have been to lead Vázquez de Coronado astray and hope that he got lost in the Great Plains.

[16] With the Turk guiding him, Vázquez de Coronado and his army might have crossed the flat and featureless steppe called the Llano Estacado in the Texas Panhandle and Eastern New Mexico, passing through the present-day communities of Hereford and Canadian.

[20] Vázquez de Coronado left the Querechos behind and continued southeast in the direction in which the Turk told him that Quivira was located.

[21] An intriguing event was Vázquez de Coronado's meeting among the Teyas an old blind bearded man who said that he had met many days before "four others like us".

Archaeologists subsequently searched the site and found pottery sherds, more than forty crossbow points, and dozens of horseshoe nails of Spanish manufacture, plus a Mexican-style stone blade.

[25] Another guide, probably Pawnee and named Ysopete, and probably Teyas as well told Vázquez de Coronado that he was going in the wrong direction, saying Quivira lay to the north.

It is a larger river than either Cow Creek or the Little Arkansas and is located at roughly the 25 league distance from Lyons that Vázquez de Coronado said he traveled in Quivira.

[29] Vázquez de Coronado returned to the Tiguex Province in New Mexico from Quivira and was badly injured in a fall from his horse "after the winter was over", according to the chronicler Castañeda—probably in March 1542.

Although he remained governor of Nueva Galicia until 1544, the expedition forced him into bankruptcy and resulted in charges of war crimes being brought against him and his field master, Cárdenas.

Vázquez de Coronado was cleared by his friends on the Audiencia, but Cárdenas was convicted in Spain of basically the same charges by the Council of the Indies.

[33] Beatriz and Francisco have been reported, through different sources, to have had at least four sons (Gerónimo, Salvador, Juan, and Alonso) and five daughters (Isabel, María, Luisa, Mariana, and Mayor).

[36] Beatriz reported that her husband had died in great poverty, since their encomiendas had been taken away from them due to the New Laws, and that she and her daughters lived in misery too, a shame for the widow of a conqueror that had provided such valuable service to his majesty.

This, as most reports from the early days of New Spain, both positive and negative and regarding all things, have been proven to be false, part of the power struggles among settlers and attempts to exploit the budding new system that tried to find a way to administer justice in land the king could not see nor the army reach.

According to the film, this gold cross, discovered in a Utah cave system, was given to Vázquez de Coronado by Hernán Cortés in 1521.

The song "Hitchin' to Quivira"[39] from independent singer-songwriter Tyler Jakes's 2016 album Mojo Suicide is based on the story of Vázquez de Coronado's expedition.

[41] detailing the expedition of Vázquez de Coronado through the use of recycled images from Westerns, conquest films, and The Lone Ranger television series.