Case file · Folklore / legend
Quivira, the city of gold
In 1541 Francisco Vázquez de Coronado marched onto the Kansas plains searching for Quivira, a rich kingdom described by a Plains guide the Spanish called 'the Turk'.
1541 CE · 38.34, -98.20 · status: legend
The account
He found only grass-house villages of the ancestors of the Wichita people near present-day Lyons, Kansas. The Turk was executed after admitting he had led the Spaniards astray to exhaust them.
The sceptical view
Quivira was a real people, not a golden city; the wealth was Spanish hope, fed by legends of the Seven Cities of Cíbola.