Deni Seymour and Coronado's Path

I've been spending time today following two recurrent questions: 1.) what path did Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado's expedition follow when it entered the Southwestern U.S.?, and 2.) where is the notable ruin Chichilticale (Red House) located? These questions are the Great White Whale of Southwestern history! 

These questions have excited archaeologists for generations. In the 1987 book "To The Inland Empire," former Interior Secretary (under the Kennedy Administration) Stewart Udall quoted University of Arizona's noted authority Dr. Emil Haury (who searched for 60 years) as believing Chichilticale is likely located near the base of the Pinaleño Mountains (Mt. Graham), and would make a fine addition to the National Park system when it is finally located. 

Since then, I've followed these questions sporadically. I was excited by Nugent Brasher's 2007 work, and subsequent refinements, where he threads Coronado's expedition through Apache Pass between the Dos Cabezas and Chiricahua Mountains, and places Chichilticale at Kuykendall ruins. I've also followed Andy Ward, who places the expedition and Chichilticale farther east, in the Mangas Valley of southwestern New Mexico. 

One trouble is that the landscape permits multiple possible solutions to the problem. There just aren't enough solid constraints on the path. The Spanish logs of the expedition can be vague, because the conquistadors were passing through unknown lands. So, much depends on interpretation, intuition, logic, and a deep understanding of the terrain. 

Several days ago, someone commented on one of my blog posts that Brasher is unqualified, and that I should be following Dr. Deni Seymour instead. Who is that? 

I guess the politics of these questions gets really heated. Everything depends on finding exceedingly-scarce medieval-era Spanish metal artifacts that are dreadfully hard to find, because they were dropped and scattered over an unbelievably-vast territory nearly 500 years ago. So I began checking on Deni Seymour. 

This video summarizes Seymour's work. She places Coronado's San Geronimo 3 camp at Suya farther west than others do, near Nogales, Arizona in the Santa Cruz Valley (not the San Pedro Valley), then sends the expedition through the Sonoita and Whetstone areas. Yet, the expedition manages to swing through the San Bernardino Valley SOUTHEAST of the Chiricahuas. That's a really puzzling route. It tries to account for all the available artifacts. It's important to remember that Coronado's expedition had 2,500, or so, people, so it's possible that multiple side expeditions also occurred. Chichilticale she places near Willcox Playa, at the base of the Dos Cabezas Mountains. That could make a dramatic vista back in the day! 

It's likely the Chichiticale ruin was completely ruined in the Apache Wars of the 18th and 19th Centuries. It will be very hard to find. Still, that ruin has got to be somewhere! 

I'm very pleased that Deni Seymour's work is partly-funded by the Steven C. Leuthold Family Foundation. Foundation Trustee Mike Leuthold was our systems manager at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona when I was there in the mid-80s, back when the biggest challenge of the day was keeping impatient Dr. Twomey from opening his PC's floppy disk drive before his data transfer had finished. Go Mike! 

For the record, I think enthusiastic and educated amateurs like Nugent Brasher are essential in work like this, and his contributions to the debate are most-appreciated. I'm optimistic that these problems will eventually all be solved, because of better technology, better Spanish archival work, more intrusive amateurs, and more monetary support.