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Born into a noble family in Salamanca , Spain , Francisco Vazquez de Coronado became acquainted with the prominent Antonio de Mendoza. When Mendoza was appointed viceroy of New Spain in 1535, he took Coronado along as an assistant. Thriving in the New World, Coronado ensured his financial stability by marrying the daughter of the colonial treasurer and winning acclaim by ending a local slave revolt. He was rewarded by Mendoza with the governorship of Nueva Galicia in western Mexico in 1538. Influenced by the almost unbelievable wealth of the Aztec and Inca empires, the Spanish conquerors were receptive to the belief that hoards of gold and silver existed else where in the Americas. One report of extensive wealth came from Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, an explorer who had been shipwrecked off Florida in 1528 and spent the next six years wandering through present-day Texas and northern Mexico. Among the tales from his trek was a vague description of the fabled Seven Golden Cities of Cibola. Viceroy Mendoza dispatched a preliminary exploratory expedition north from Mexico; among this group was Fray Marcos de Niza, an imaginative friar who claimed to have viewed the cities from a distance. In 1540, Coronado was given command of a major expedition comprising nearly 1,400 soldiers, slaves and natives, accompanied by a vast herd of cattle and sheep. The explorers were disappointed to find that Cibola, a Zuni settlement in present-day New Mexico, offered nothing in the way of riches. Coronado made a bad situation worse by ordering the Zuni to submit to the authority or the pope and the Spanish monarch. Resistance followed, but Spanish military might easily prevailed. Coronado's force was split into smaller exploratory parties. One traveled into modern Arizona and visited a number of Hopi villages; another party under Garcia Lopez de Cardenas followed the Colorado River and became the first European group to behold the Grand Canyon.