This is the fourth in a seven-part series of Southwestern history murals that the Gallup public schools commissioned J. R. Willis to paint through the Public Works of Art Project between 1935 and 1936—and that still hang in the Gallup High School library.
Willis’s background as a Hollywood set painter is on full view in this highly theatrical rendition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s assault on the ancestral A:Shiwi (Zuni) village of Hawiku (Coronado’s 1540 expedition was the second attempt by Spaniards to locate the so-called Seven Golden Cities of Cibola). In Willis’s conception, the Spanish conquistador rides valiantly into battle encased in golden armor and astride a white horse. This heroic treatment only accounts for the victor’s perspective.
