Chapter 25

[379]The slope referred to is an immense sand-dune. The horse trail did not exist in Coronado's time, having been built by Fray Juan Ramirez, who established a mission at Acoma in 1629.

[380]The Acomas still obtain their water supply from this source.

[381]Tiguex. See p. 317, note.

[382]Pecos. See p. 329, note 2.

[383]See p. 308, note 3.

[384]This name has always been a problem to students of the expedition, and various attempts have been made to determine its application. Jaramillo, one of Coronado's captains, applies the name to Acoma, and indeed its final syllables are the same as the native name of Acoma. In the heading to Chapter 11 Castañeda erroneously makes Tutahaco synonymous with Tusayan. The description indicates that the Tigua village of Isleta and others in its vicinity on the Rio Grande in the sixteenth century were intended.

[385]This Eldorado is seemingly a combination of falsehood and misinterpretation. The Turk's only means of communication were signs; and we shall see later on that he deliberately deceived the Spaniards for the purpose of leading them astray. The nameacochishere given is an aid in the identification of the mysterious province of Quivira. See p. 337, note 1.

[386]This was Matsaki, at the northwestern base of Thunder Mountain, about three miles east of the present Zuñi and eighteen miles northeast of Hawikuh, where the advance force had encamped. The ruins may still be seen, but no standing walls are visible.

[387]The first-story rooms were entered by means of hatchways through the roof. As the necessity for defence no longer exists, the rooms of the lower stories of Zuñi houses are provided with doors and windows.

[388]The army passed from Cibola by way of the present farming village of Pescado, Inscription Rock or El Morro (thirty miles east of Zuñi), and over the Zuñi Mountains to Acoma. Alvarado followed an almost impassable trail eastward from Hawikuh, across a great lava flow, to reach Acoma.

[389]Tiguex (pronounced Tee-guaysh') is the name of a group of Pueblo tribes, now consisting of Isleta, Sandia, Taos, and Picuris, speaking the Tigua language, as it is now designated. Their principal village in Coronado's time was also called Tiguex by the Spaniards; this was the Puaray of forty years later (1583), the first time the native name was recorded. It was situated at the site of Bernalillo, on the Rio Grande, and was inhabited up to the time of the Pueblo rebellion of 1680, when it contained two hundred Tiguas and Spaniards.

[390]Antonio de Espejo learned of this occurrence at "Puala" (Puaray) when the place was visited by him in 1583 (seeDocumentos Inéditos de Indias, XV. 175).

[391]The pueblos are not provided with cellars. The underground ceremonial chambers, orkivas, are doubtless here meant.

[392]The altitude of Bernalillo is 5260 feet, and snowstorms are sometimes severe.

[393]Wooden war-clubs.

[394]The Rio Grande, which is near by.

[395]Should be Alcaraz. See Chapter 10.

[396]That is, the west coast of the Gulf of California.

[397]During 1905 the waters of the Rio Colorado were diverted westward below Yuma and are now (1906) flowing into the Salton Sink, or Imperial Valley, in southern California, forming an immense lake.

[398]Doubtless the Opatas, whose poisoned arrows are often alluded to by later Spanish writers. See, for example, theRudo Ensayo(ca. 1762), (San Augustin, 1863); also Guiteras's translation inRecords of the American Catholic Historical Society, V. No. 2 (Philadelphia, June, 1894).

[399]The upper part of the Rio San Pedro (which rises in northern Sonora), according to recent studies by Mr. James Newton Baskett.

[400]The present Sia, a small pueblo on the Rio Jemez. In 1583 Sia was one of a group of five pueblos which Antonio de Espejo called Cunames or Punames. It suffered severely by the Pueblo revolt a century later, and is now reduced to about a hundred people who have great difficulty in gaining a livelihood, owing to lack of water for irrigation.

[401]That is, the Rio Grande.

[402]The "province" occupied by the Queres or Keresan Indians, consisting of the pueblos of Cochiti, San Felipe, and Santo Domingo, of to-day—all on the Rio Grande. Sia and Santa Ana are and were also Queres villages in Coronado's time, but as these were not on the Rio Grande, they may not have been included in Castañeda's group. When Espejo visited the Queres in 1583, they occupied only five pueblos on the Rio Grande; now only the three above mentioned are inhabited.

[403]See p. 337, note 1.

[404]Evidently the Harahey of other chroniclers, which has been identified with the Pawnee country of southern Nebraska.

[405]Possibly the Kansa or Kaw tribe, after whom the state of Kansas is named.

[406]In his letter to the King, dated Tiguex October 20, 1541, Coronado says that he started April 23. See Winship's translation inFourteenth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology(1896), p. 580.

[407]Cicuye is Pecos, as above mentioned. The direction is north of east and the distance forty miles in an air line, or fifteen Spanish judicial leagues. By rail, which follows almost exactly the old trail, the distance is sixty-five miles, or almost precisely twenty-five leagues.

[408]The Rio Pecos. The bridge was doubtless built across the stream somewhere near Puerto de Luna. The Ms. here reads Cicuyc for Cicuye.

[409]The name by which the eastern Apaches, or Apaches Vaqueros of later times, were known to the Pecos Indians. The first Querechos were met near the eastern boundary of New Mexico.

[410]Wherever "cows" are mentioned, bison are of course meant. Herds of these animals ranged as far as the Pecos, which was known as the Rio de las Vacas later in the century.

[411]All the Indians of the great plains were expert in the sign language, as their spoken languages were many and diverse.

[412]The place has not been identified with certainty.

[413]This river, if it existed at all, was in all probability the lower Arkansas or the Mississippi, hundreds of miles away.

[414]The Turk was evidently lying, at least so far as the distance was concerned. The Texas Indians were not canoeists. The army was now in the western part of the staked plains of Texas, but had changed its course from northeasterly to south of east. The country is greatly broken by the cañons of the streams which take their rise in these parts.

[415]See Cabeza de Vaca's narration in this volume, p. 97.

[416]Probably an albino is here referred to.

[417]Castañeda here refers to the buffalo-hunting Indians in contrast to the Pueblo tribes which the Spaniards had left.

[418]"A manera de alixares." The margin readsAlexeres, a word meaning "threshing floor."

[419]These were evidently the Indians later called Tejas, or Texas, from which the state took its name. The name was indiscriminately applied by various later writers, but always to one of the Caddoan tribes or group of tribes.

[420]"We were brought into the Church, every one with a S. Benito upon his backe, which is a halfe a yard of yellow cloth, with a hole to put in a mans head in the middest, and cast over a mans head: both flaps hang one before, and another behinde, and in the middest of every flap, a S. Andrewes crosse, made of red cloth, sowed on upon the same, and that is called S. Benito."—Robert Tomson, "Voyage into Nova Hispania," 1555, in Hakluyt,Voyages, IX. 348 (1904).

[421]The league is equivalent to 2.63 English miles. This Spanish judicial league is still used in Mexico.

[422]The Tiguex villages on the Rio Grande are often referred to as the region where the settlements were.

[423]The point of separation of the army was in all probability the upper waters of the Rio Colorado in Texas. See the narration of Cabeza de Vaca, p. 97, note 2.

[424]That is, toward the southeast. At a somewhat later period Florida included everything from the peninsula northward.

[425]For additional details respecting the route pursued by Coronado after the main army was sent back, consult the narrative of Jaramillo, theRelacion del Suceso, and other documents pertaining to the expedition, in Winship'sCoronado Expedition(1896) andJourney of Coronado(1904), and in connection therewith a discussion of the route by F. W. Hodge, in J. V. Brower'sMemoirs of Explorations in the Basin of the Mississippi, II. (St. Paul, 1899). Continuing due north from the upper waters of the Rio Colorado of Texas, Coronado's immediate force in thirty days' march, according to theRelacion del Suceso(or "more than thirty days' march, although not long marches," according to Jaramillo), reached the river of St. Peter and St. Paul the last of June, 1541. This was the "river of Quivira" of theRelacion del Suceso, the present Arkansas River in Kansas, which was crossed at its southern bend, just east of the present Dodge City. The party continued thence northeast, downstream, and in thirty leagues, or six or seven days' march, reached the first of the Quivira settlements. This was at or near the present Great Bend, Kansas, before reaching the site of which the Turk was "made an example of." That the inhabitants of Quivira were the Wichita Indians there can be no reasonable doubt. The Quivira people lived in grass or straw lodges, according to the Spaniards, a fact that was true of the Wichitas only of all the northern plains tribes. The habitations of their congeners and northern neighbors, the Pawnee (who may be regarded as the inhabitants of the province of Harahey), were earth lodges. The wordacochis, mentioned by Castañeda as the Quivira term for "gold," is merely the Spanish adaptation ofhakwichis, which signifies "metal," for of gold our Indians knew nothing until after the advent of the white man. After exploring Quivira for twenty-five leagues, Coronado sent "captains and men in many directions," but they failed to find that of which they went in search. There is no reason to suppose that Coronado's party went beyond the limits of the present state of Kansas.

[426]Prairie-dogs.

[427]This would make the point at which the army reached Pecos River about eighty miles below Puerto de Luna, or not far from the present town of Roswell.

[428]Castañeda is writing about twenty years later. De Soto's army was exploring the eastern country as Coronado was traversing the buffalo plains. The Espiritu Santo is the Mississippi.

[429]See the Gentleman of Elvas in the second part of the present volume.

[430]As usual Castañeda gives a date a year later than the actual one.

[431]The pueblos occupied by the Jemez people. Only one of these now exists; this is on the Rio Jemez, a western tributary of the Rio Grande, which enters the latter stream above Bernalillo, New Mexico. See p. 359, note 2.

[432]This was Yukiwingge, on the site of the present small village of Chamita, at the mouth of the Rio Chama, opposite San Juan pueblo. The other one of the two villages was doubtless San Juan. Both of these were occupied by Tewa Indians. At Yukiwingge was established, in 1598, by Juan de Oñate, the colonizer of New Mexico, the settlement of San Gabriel de los Españoles, which was occupied until the spring of 1605, when the seat of the provincial government was moved to Santa Fé, founded for the purpose in that year. See p. 359, note 4.

[433]These may have been the pueblos, now in ruins, in and north of the Pajarito Park, one of which, called Puye, gives evidence of occupancy in post-Spanish times.

[434]It is not known definitely whether actually glazed pottery or merely the black, highly polished earthenware characteristic of the Tewa Indians of the neighborhood is here meant. The ancient Pueblos manufactured a ware with decoration in what appears to be a salt glaze. Specimens of this have been gathered in the Pajarito Park, at Zuñi, among the Hopi of Arizona, and from ancient ruins around Acoma, but the art seems to have been lost. There is abundant evidence that this form of decoration was prehistoric. The finding of the "shining metal" (called antimony in Pt. 2, chap. 4) would seem to indicate that the polished rather than the glazed ware was here meant.

[435]This was the pueblo of Taos, which stood near the site of the present village of the same name, on both sides of the little stream (Taos River). The present Taos has 425 inhabitants. The swift and deep river without the ford, here referred to, must have been the Rio Grande in the neighborhood of Taos, rather than the Rio de Taos, which is insignificant except in seasons of freshet. Castañeda was evidently not one of Barrionuevo's party.

[436]The altitude of Taos is 6983 feet; of Taos Peak, 13,145 feet.

[437]Seemingly the Piros villages on the Rio Grande south of Isleta. They are now extinct, having been finally abandoned during the revolt in 1680, the inhabitants fleeing with Governor Otermin to El Paso. Senecu and Socorro (taking their names from former villages) were afterward established below El Paso, where the few survivors of the Piros, almost entirely Mexicanized, still reside.

[438]This rendering, doubtless correct, is due to Ternaux. The Guadiana, however, reappears above ground some time before it begins to mark the boundary of the Spanish province of Estremadura. The Castañeda family had its seat in quite the other end of the peninsula. (Winship.)

[439]See p. 337, note 1.

[440]The Newfoundland region.

[441]See p. 285, note 1.

[442]Castañeda, like many other early Spanish chroniclers, is careless in his directions. It will be observed that he frequently says west, east, etc., when he means westwardly, eastwardly. This has led one writer on the Coronado expedition seriously astray. Culiacan is decidedlynorthwestof Mexico City.

[443]The Gulf of California.

[444]Lower California is of course meant.

[445]For an account of the Indians of Lower California in the eighteenth century, see the translation of Father Jacob Baegert's narrative, by Charles Rau, in theReport of the Smithsonian Institutionfor 1863 and 1864.

[446]The Rio Petlatlan is the present Rio Sinaloa. The name Sinaloa is synonymous in application with Cahita, a group of tribes including the present Yaqui and Mayo.

[447]That is, as far northward as the Rio Gila.

[448]The fruit of the prickly-pear cactus.

[449]The giant cactus. See p. 305, note 1.

[450]Sonora. See p. 301, notes 1 and 2.

[451]See p. 334, note 1.

[452]This was Arizpe, on the upper waters of the Rio Sonora. Jaramillo calls it Ispa.

[453]See p. 326, note 2.

[454]These are, from the south northward, the Pimas Bajos or Nevome, Opatas, Papagos, and Pimas. The older Pima women still paint their faces in fine lines and also are tattooed, but the custom is becoming a thing of the past. The Opatas are almost entirely Mexicanized.

[455]These were doubtless cantaloupes The southwestern Indians still slice and dry them in a manner similar to that here described.

[456]The Pueblo Indians, particularly the Zuñi and the Hopi, keep eagles for their feathers, which are highly prized because regarded as sacred and are much used in their ceremonies.

[457]Probably Dragoon Pass, through the Dragoon and Galiuro Mountains of southeastern Arizona, thence between the Pinaleño and Chiricahua mountains to the plains of San Simon.

[458]This ruin is supposed to have been in the vicinity of the present Solomonsville, Graham County. The name is Aztec (chichiltic"red,"calli"house"). Writers have endeavored to identify it with the celebrated Casa Grande farther to the northwest, but this is inconsistent with the directions recorded in the narratives, and all students of the subject have now abandoned this theory.

[459]These people are not identifiable with certainty. If the Apaches of Arizona, it is the only mention of them and is contrary to all other testimony. The Sobaipuris lived on the upper Rio San Pedro and on the Gila near the mouth of the former stream, until the latter part of the eighteenth century.

[460]Picones are catfish.

[461]The "wilderness," or uninhabited region, extended from the Gila in central Graham County to the crossing of the New Mexico boundary by Zuñi River, where Cibola began.

[462]These are the mountain lion and the wildcat.

[463]See p. 300, note 1.

[464]See p. 315, note 1.

[465]Identical with the dress of the Zuñi women of to-day. Rabbit-skin robes have been replaced by woollen blankets, like those woven by the Navaho, who learned the art from the Pueblos. The rabbit-skin robes are now manufactured chiefly by the Paiutes, the Pueblos having almost ceased to make them.

[466]This custom has been abandoned except by the Hopi maidens, who still wear their hair in picturesque whorls, one on each side of the head, until married.

[467]See p. 308, note 3. This entire description is characteristic of the present Zuñi country, except that game is not so abundant.

[468]Piñon nuts, which are still gathered in large quantities.

[469]Thekivas, or ceremonial chambers, of which there are usually several in each pueblo. It is in these that most of the secret rites are performed.

[470]Pápais a true Zuñi word, signifying "elder brother," as distinguished from sú-e, "younger brother." These terms allude both to age and to rank.

[471]All public announcements are still made in this way.

[472]Rather to the religious societies. Some of them belong exclusively to the women.

[473]Excavations made at Halona, one of the Seven Cities of Cibola, yielded only skeletons that had been interred within the houses, beneath the floors. In the Salt River and Gila valleys, southern Arizona, this method was also practised, but in addition remains were cremated and deposited in earthen vessels in mounds near by.

[474]See p. 307, note 1; p. 358, note 3.

[475]This would indicate a population of 10,500 to 14,000, which is doubtless an excessive estimate for the sixteenth century. The present population of Zuñi is 1514; of the Hopi villages, about 2000.

[476]The Rio Grande, as previously described.

[477]The Sandia Mountains.

[478]The pueblo of Picuris, about twenty miles south of Taos. This is a Tigua village of about 125 inhabitants.

[479]Compare the previous reference to Tutahaco (p. 314). Both the distance and the direction here given seem to be erroneous.

[480]This would indicate the existence of a true communal system that does not prevail at the present time.

[481]See Voth, "Oraibi Marriage Customs,"American Anthropologist, II. 238 (1900).

[482]The American turkey cocks.

[483]A custom still common at Zuñi and other pueblos. Before the introduction of manufactured dyes the Pueblos used urine as a mordant.

[484]See Mindeleff's "Pueblo Architecture," in theEighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 208; also Cushing, "Zuñi Breadstuff," inThe Millstone(Indianapolis, 1884-1885).

[485]A number of memoirs on the pottery of the ancient Pueblos may be consulted in theAnnual Reportsof the Bureau of American Ethnology.

[486]This is Pecos, the largest pueblo of New Mexico in the sixteenth century and for a long time after. Its people belonged to the Tanoan family, although their language was understood only by the Jemez villagers, their nearest kindred. It was the scene of the missionary labors of Fray Luis Descalona, who remained behind when Coronado returned to Mexico in 1542, but he was probably killed before the close of that year. Pecos became the seat of an important Franciscan mission early in the seventeenth century, but it began to decline after the revolt of 1680-1692, and in 1838 the half-dozen survivors removed to Jemez, where one of them still (1906) lives. Cicuye is the Isleta, or Tigua, name for Pecos, while "Pecos" itself is the Keresan, or Queres, appellation, with the Spanish-English plural. The ruins of the town are plainly visible from the Santa Fé Railway. See Bandelier inPapers of the Archaeological Institute of America, Amer. ser., I. (1881); Hewett inAmerican Anthropologist, n. s., VI. No. 4, 1904.

[487]The spring was "still trickling out beneath a massive ledge of rocks on the west sill" when Bandelier (op. cit.) sketched it in 1880.

[488]The former Tanos pueblo of Galisteo, a mile and a half northeast of the present town of the same name.

[489]According to Mota Padilla,Historia de la Conquista, 1742 (Mexico, 1870), this was called Coquite.

[490]These Indians were seen by Coronado during his journey across the plains. See p. 333, note 3.

[491]The name applied in Mexico at the time to any warlike, unsubdued tribe.

[492]The mountains to the north, in which the Rio Pecos has its source.

[493]The Rio Pecos, still noted for trout.

[494]Only the pueblos of Acoma and Isleta occupy their sixteenth-century sites, all the other villages having shifted their locations after the great revolt of 1680-1692, when the Spaniards granted specific tracts of land, usually a league square, later confirmed to the Indians by Congress under the provisions of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

[495]Zuñi, including the pueblos of Halona, Matsaki, Kiakima, Hawiku, Kyanawe, and two others which have not been identified with certainty.

[496]The Hopi villages, among them being Awatobi (destroyed at the beginning of the eighteenth century), Oraibi, Walpi, Mishongnovi, Shongopovi, and Shupaulovi. The remaining pueblo has not been determined absolutely. Sichomovi and Hano are comparatively modern.

[497]Acoma. See p. 311, note 2.

[498]The Tigua pueblos; see p. 312, note 2.

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