dozen others, whose influence in the conquest Dr. Irving
Leonard has so convincingly set forth.

Many individual soldiers of fortune were ubiquitous, appear-
ing, in spite of the difficulties of travel, here, there, and yonder,
now at the top and then at the bottom of the map, like the pro-
verbial prospector who joins every new gold rush. The names
of some of these repeaters are familiar to every schoolboy. De
Soto pioneered in regions as far apart as Central America,
Peru, Florida, and the Mississippi Valley; Pedro de Alvarado in
Mexico, Central America, and Ecuador; Cabeza de Vaca in
Texas, Mexico, and Paraguay. Las Casas was with the vanguard
in Guatemala, Peru, and Mexico; Fray Juan de Padilla in
Tehuantepec, Jalisco, New Mexico, and Kansas.

On the mainland the regions inhabited by sedentary natives
were usually first to be subjugated, and they became the first
centers of permanent Spanish settlement on a considerable
scale. The reasons for this are not far to seek. Sedentary people
were the easiest to conquer, for they had fixed homes and could
not run away. They were the most worth exploiting because
they were accustomed to disciplined labor. They had a steady
food supply and, in some cases, an accumulation of precious
metals. Their daughters were pleasing, so there were many
thousands of "Pocahontases" in America long before the days
of John Smith of Jamestown. When the Europeans entered
the interior they carried with them the extravagant tales they
had heard in Europe or the islands, added to their repertoire
new ones gathered on the way, and embroidered them with
fantastic passementerie of their own fabrication, sometimes
with waggish humor. Each track made by the explorers on
the enormous map of the New World represents some glowing
idea, some feverish quest, and effort to run to its source this
or that tale of treasure, some rumored city, some wonder in
the country beyond--mas allá.

In this expansion the lieutenants of Cortés quickly extended
their conquests in all directions from the Aztec capital till most
of the sedentary peoples of central and southern Mexico were
under Spanish control. Red-headed Pedro de Alvarado pushed

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