Texas Discovery Could Unlock Secrets of ‘City of Gold’ Expedition

An obsidian blade found in Texas decades ago could shed new light on a Spanish expedition that set out in search of a fabled “city of gold” during the mid-16th century.

The unassuming artifact, which measures around 2 inches in length, may have been dropped by a member of the expedition, research conducted by anthropologist Matthew Boulanger of Southern Methodist University suggests.

Led by Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (1510-1554), the expedition took place between 1540 and 1542. In this period, Coronado and his party, which included Indigenous Mexicans, trekked across parts of what is now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Kansas.

Boulanger’s latest research, published in the Journal of the North Texas Archeological Society, describes how the obsidian blade could unravel the mysteries surrounding the route that the expedition took hundreds of years ago.

“The path of Coronado’s expedition through the American Southwest and the southern Great Plains has been a matter of much debate and discussion,” Boulanger told Newsweek. “The exact path he took through New Mexico is well known because his group visited many of the large towns occupied by Indigenous Puebloan peoples. Reconstructing the journey through New Mexico is a simple matter of connecting the dots from each of the towns that they visited.”

“However, once the expedition moved eastward onto the Great Plains, they were confronted with a vast flat plain with no clear landmarks to describe—there are no geographical dots to connect,” Boulanger continued. “So even though we have written journals from the expedition’s members, we have no way of knowing where exactly the group was until they arrived at the [Wichita Indian] town of Quivira in southern Kansas.”

For over a century, archaeologists and historians have debated the exact path of the expedition through Texas and Oklahoma. But these researchers have all worked from the same limited source of data: the vague descriptions of canyons, valleys…