Hawiku: A Six-Century Exile

Founded during AD 1400, Hawiku flourished as one of the biggest Zuni villages, situated 12 miles southwest of Zuni Pueblo. For six centuries, it thrived - until the scorching summer of 1539. That hot season, it gained a new name - Cevola, Tzibola, or Cibola - and a dismal destiny. Estevanico, the initial visitor from the Old World, met an untimely end within its adobe walls, a sacrificial lamb to the myth of seven golden cities and the insatiable quest for the unknown, light-years away from his origins. Spanish adventurers promised treasure; they delivered exile. Captured, seized, and inhabited, Hawiku was abandoned by its dwellers, and by the century's conclusion, it was a relic, eager to be discovered.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons