Jerome, Minetres, Moon, Magoo:
Join me while we discuss this.
I uncovered evidence that 'cannot be proven', however in the early days, the King Of Spain had no idea of what he had. He needed it explored by competent explorers.
To do this by himself would cost too much, so his ministers came up with the idea of embellishing a story about the 7 Ciudades de Cibola.
There is a series of 7 villages etc in a large remote, off travel Barranca in the eastern borders of the present Snail, extremely rough terrain, still basically uniknown today. They apparently worshiped the Buffalo, since many, figures and drawings of them are to be found there, yet no Buffalo are known to have been in that that area.
The only way they could have known of the Buffalo was from second hand information - part of the migration path of the Aztecs?
They also found large deposits of iron pyrites stored there. Evidence suggests that they mixed them with the external coating of their homes with it, possibly for beauty, as well as possible reflective insulation. The effect would be that from a distance, they would appear to have homes made of gold.
Estaban on his journey south could quite possibly have passed near by them and saw the houses 'built of gold' and later reported this the Ones that rescued him.
This was ideal for the king, he let the story be leaked, then graciously allowed various explorations be made up with a charter to give the King part of what they found, and to have Royal Representatives with them to record the country encountered in their travels.
They had no problems equipping these expensive expeditions see -- from --> Full text of "A journal of American ethnology and archæology;"
at -->
http://www.archive.org/stream/ajournalamerica00expegoog/ajournalamerica00expegoog_djvu.txt
Quote -- "that Mexico was then so poorly supplied with colonists, that any at- tempt to draw them towards another section of America was regarded as dangerous to the existence of the colony ; hence, that that colony afforded but a trembling staff to European domination. On the other hand, it proves that even among the scanty population of Europeans there was a crowd ready to engage in anything, provided it was new and striking. In other words, circumstances then were just as they have been in the Southwest but lately. As soon as anything new \& discovered, everybody rushes for it. With such a class of men, re- ports like those of Fray Marcos fell on fertile soil. The viceroy encouraged Coronado's expedition by all possible means. His main object was to eliminate from Mexico elements unfavorable to a steady progress of the country. He was afraid that if a leaven of a certain kind was left it would produce a fermentation detrimental to the interests of Spain and of civilization in general; for it should not be forgotten that Spain cherished then the same exalted ideas about its duties as the banner-bearer of progress as every other nation, including the American, has since.
overreaching, and the startling information secured by Fray Marcos and its effects upon the mind of the public did not escape his notice. He secretly caused an agitation in favor of the ^^ newly discovered country," in order to get rid of people who were a nuisance in New Spain, and with the faintest of all hopes that they might, perhaps, prosper in the far distant North."
So where were the elusive 7 Ciudades de Cibola? North, which was explored, or to the hidden barranca de Conijaqui in Sinaloa, which was quite possibly on Estavan's journey, and not explored.
Don Jose de La Mancha .
? The conversations of the Great Giant Serpent, could they be one in the same treasure 
