In the early summer of 1601, Juan de Oñate, a conquistador who helped establish the Spanish colony of New Mexico, set out with 200 soldiers, several cannons, a dozen priests and others, on a search to find Quivira, a fabled city of gold. What he found though was the “most monstrous cattle” (bison), wide open prairie with “grasses so high that in many places they hid a horse” and a settlement on the Arkansas River of more than a thousand large, thatched-roof buildings, scattered among fields of corn, squash, and beans.
This map was drawn in 1602 by a Wichita Indian who was captured by the Spanish, the Lost City is located near present day Arkansas City in southern Kansas.
