Event Details

Peter Stark, an adventurer and historian will talk about the history of conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. Leading a cavalcade of more than 1,500 fighting men, Coronado left Mexico in 1540 to find the Seven Cities of Gold – “the most brilliant company ever assembled in the Indies to go in search of new lands.” Two years later he stumbled back to Mexico with less than 100 followers. Was it a lack of treasure that turned him back? Or a Puebloan resistance he never understood that ultimately outwitted him? Or something deeper and darker, something in his own psyche that would come to engulf him the farther he ventured into the Unknown Lands?

Peter Stark, an adventurer and historian, has lived in Mozambique and Brazil and written about Greenland and Tibet. His articles on human endurance have been published in Outside, Smithsonian, The New Yorker and The New York Times magazines. He is the author of eight books including At the Mercy of the River and The Last Empty Places. His book, Astoria, was The New York Times Bestseller. Young Washington was a finalist for the 2019 George Washington Book Prize. Now based in Montana, Stark specializes in researching and writing historical accounts of early American explorers in wilderness settings and their contact with Indigenous peoples. His talk will include a reading from his upcoming book about Coronado.