Uncovering America's First War: Contact, Conflict, and Coronado's Expedition to the Rio Grande

By the 1530s, Indigenous Pueblo populations in the American Southwest reached tens of thousands of people with a rich culture expressed through stunning architecture, ceramic technology, and ceremonial life. Then, into that world came outsiders—an army of foreigners from the south led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado. Coronado's expedition was sent from Spain's new colony in Mexico, seeking overland routes to Asia. Not finding what they sought, the strangers made steep demands on the Pueblo people, and the Pueblos fought back. First contacts at the western Pueblos of Zuni, Hopi, and Acoma led to open warfare. Coronado continued eastward into an area settled by ancestors of today's Rio Grande Pueblos, where thousands lived in large villages along the river. The Spanish called the area "Tiguex," which became the overwintering place for Coronado by the end of 1540. Increasing tensions and resistance that winter spilled over into violence in America's earliest named war: the Tiguex War. The largest and most intact battle site of that fierce conflict is known as Piedras Marcadas Pueblo, situated within present-day Albuquerque, New Mexico. Coronado's men were armed with crossbows and muskets while their Mexican Indigenous allies relied on stone arrows and slingstones. The Puebloans mounted a courageous defense of their largest village, piling rocks on the rooftops and hurling them down on the attackers. Today, hundreds of artifacts found at Piedras Marcadas reveal the colliding cultures who fought each other within those ancient walls and plazas that are now silent but were once the focal point of a life-and-death contest for survival.