More like a musket round
Ed
Re: Half inch cannon ball
I think the author means “cannon shot.”
There would have been dozens, perhaps hundreds, of those small projectiles loaded into the cannon.
It would have functioned as a giant, long range shotgun.
In 1601, that might have been the first encounter between the Spanish and the indigenous people of Kansas.
Always important to remember that, before the Spanish arrived, Native Americans had never seen horses, or armored warriors, or military guns and explosives, or the wheel, or a written language.