Explorations.

When the Spanish found the great empire of the Aztec in Mexico in 1519 and understood both its immediate riches and its potential to generate wealth into the future, they naturally sought out other great empires. They found the Inca in Peru in 1529 but could not then know that the Aztec and the Inca were the only two such prizes. Exploration also turned north into what would become Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The first trek through the Southwest was accidental. In 1528 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (literally "head of a cow") was part of a colonizing expedition to the Gulf Coast of Florida. The expedition foundered, and he and three of the others washed up on the Texas coast and lived with various Indian groups, all the while traveling west and south. In 1536, eight years later, they finally found other Spaniards...