The Wichitas once populated southern Kansas, living in villages of cone-shaped grass lodges and growing crops for food and trade, then heading west in the fall and winter to hunt buffalo. By the 16th century, they were actively trading with tribes in the Southwest, which gave them experience with people in other cultures, and by 1720 they had migrated south. When Francisco Vasquez de Coronado rode into a Wichita village in 1541, the Wichita numbered around 200,000. Coronado was searching for Quivira, though he had begun to doubt stories of this mythical city of gold, a land where the king slept each night beneath a tree of golden bells that made soft music in the wind and the people ate from plates of silver and gold. The lure of Quivira was so strong that when he encountered the Wichita, he assumed he had found it, and he spent 25 days in Kansas before returning to Mexico.