Juan de Padilla, OFM (1500–1542) was a Spanish Catholic priest and missionary who spent much of his life exploring North America with Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. He was killed in what would become Kansas by Native Americans in 1542.
Cross in honor of Juan de Padilla near Lyons, Kansas.
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was a Spanish conquistador and explorer who led a large expedition from what is now Mexico to present-day Kansas through parts of the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542. Vázquez de Coronado had hoped to reach the Cities of Cíbola, often referred to now as the mythical Seven Cities of Gold. His expedition marked the first European sightings of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, among other landmarks. His name is often Anglicized as Vasquez de Coronado or just Coronado.
The Coronado Expedition (1540–1542) from Mexico north through the future U.S. states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
Coronado Sets Out to the North (Frederic Remington, c. 1900)
La conquista del Colorado, by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau, depicts Coronado's 1540–1542 expedition. García López de Cárdenas can be seen overlooking the Grand Canyon.
Episode from the Conquest of America by Jan Mostaert (c. 1545), probably Vázquez de Coronado in New Mexico
