Marco died in 1558 in disgrace, everyone having blamed him for leading Coronado's army on a fruitless quest under false pretenses. The actual personality of the man is very unclear, and it is exciting to go back through the documents and try to understand what really happened. The French scholar Bandelier (1886, 1890 -- see reference list) re-examined the case and concluded Marcos had told the truth. Carl Sauer (1932) published a thorough but hard-to-find analysis of Marcos and his route in "The Road to Cibola." Other crucial studies of Marcos and his journey were published in the New Mexico Historical Review by Henry Wagner (1934), Carl Sauer (1937, 1941), claiming that Marcos was a complete fraud, having turned back near the present-day border without reaching Cibola, and that he was part of a secret conspiracy with Viceroy Mendoza to promote exploration of the north. Lansing Bloom (1940, 1941) attacked the faulty claim by Wagner and Sauer that Marcos had inadequate time to reach Cibola. William Hartmann (1997) argued from more modern archaeological data that Marcos was on well-known trade routes and did complete his journey, essentially as he described it.
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