Spanish Exploration and the Great Plains in the Age of Discovery: Myth and Reality

Authors

Ralph H. Vigil, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Date of this Version

1990

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly [GPQ 10 (Winter 1990): 3-17] .Copyright 1990 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

T his essay attempts to place Spanish exploration on the Great Plains within the context of the temper and feelings prevailing in the first century of the "discovery" of the West. ¹ Because many writers of texts and more specialized works view the past in the light of the present, European expansion in the sixteenth century appears to be more modem than it was. This paper views Spaniards of the early colonial period as more medieval than modem in outlook; it also suggests that mythological geography and mixed spiritual and worldly motives, considered incompatible in our day, were as important as Renaissance curiosity and technology in European expansion overseas.