Earlier historians and archaeologists who had used the documents dealt with misleading errors in transcription and translation, which is why many archaeological discoveries in the area were misinterpreted.  Donald Blakeslee, professor of archaeology at Wichita State University, presented in March at the annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology discussing recent archaeological evidence that shows a thriving ancestral Wichita Indian town of more than 20,000 residents near Arkansas City, Kansas. If Etzanoa was bigger, “and it might have been,” that will rewrite American history, Blakeslee said. “Work at Etzanoa will continue for the rest of my career and beyond,” says Blakeslee. Blakeslee reported archaeology that coincides with eyewitness accounts from five soldiers of Spanish explorer and founder of New Mexico, Juan de Oñate, who were interviewed in Mexico City in 1602. The biggest piece of confirmation came with the discovery of the site of a battle fought there in 1601. Metal detectors were used to uncover small iron shot from in front of the ravine where natives took shelter and well beyond it where shots eventually fell. “One implication is that Old World epidemic diseases had not yet reached this region, but probably did so by around 1650, because there were far fewer Wichitas when the French arrived in 1718,” says Blakeslee. “It will be an important part of WSU’s future.”
– Don Juan de Oñate sought a city of gold when he explored what are now the Plains states. It wasn't to be, but according to an interview given by five of his men in 1602, they did find something staggering: a "great settlement" some five miles long that housed at least 20,000 people, an ancestral Wichita Indian town called Etzanoa. But French explorers in the region 100 years later found no sign of those people, sowing confusion among latter-day historians. Donald Blakeslee, an archaeologist with Wichita State University, says he's cleared it all up: Etzanoa did exist, he claims, once thriving where the Walnut and Arkansas Rivers meet in Arkansas City, Kansas. Per a university press release, things got off the ground with a new and more correct transcription of centuries-old Spanish documents by the University of California, Berkeley's Cibola Project. Prior translation errors caused "many archaeological discoveries in the area [to be] misinterpreted," per the release. In 2015, Blakeslee noted that a geographic description of a 1601 ambush described in a Spanish account had to have occurred where the rivers joined. And, indeed, a search there turned up small iron cannon balls, reported the Kansas City Star at the time. If Blakeslee is right, the "long-lost city" would be second only to Cahokia on the list of biggest prehistoric Native American sites, reports the Wichita Eagle. That would be a boon for Arkansas City and its 12,000 residents; some 400,000 flock to the remains of Cahokia, in Illinois, each year. The Kansas House of Representatives thinks Blakeslee is onto something; earlier this month it approved a resolution that formally recognizes Etzanoa based on "the evidence," reports the Courier Traveler. (This man followed a hunch, says he uncovered a lost city.)