Chapter 3

_Of Chichilticalli and the desert, of Cibola, its customs and habits, and of other things._

Chichilticalli is so called because the friars found a house at this place which was formerly inhabited by people who separated from Cibola. It was made of colored or reddish earth.[458] The house was large and appeared to have been a fortress. It must have been destroyed by the people of the district, who are the most barbarous people that have yet been seen. They live in separate cabins and not in settlements.[459] They live by hunting. The rest of the country is all wilderness, covered with pine forests. There are great quantities of the pine nuts. The pines are two or three times as high as a man before they send out branches. There is a sort of oak with sweet acorns, of which they make cakes like sugar plums with dried coriander seeds. It is very sweet, like sugar. Watercress grows in many springs, and there are rosebushes, and pennyroyal, and wild marjoram.

[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.

There are barbels and picones,[460] like those of Spain, in the rivers of this wilderness.[461] Gray lions and leopards were seen.[462] The country rises continually from the beginning of the wilderness until Cibola is reached, which is eighty leagues, going north. From Culiacan to the edge of the wilderness the route had kept the north on the left hand.

[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.

Cibola[463] is seven villages. The largest is called Maçaque.[464] The houses are ordinarily three or four stories high, but in Maçaque there are houses with four and seven stories. These people are very intelligent. They cover their privy parts and all the immodest parts with cloths made like a sort of table napkin, with fringed edges and a tassel at each corner, which they tie over the hips. They wear long robes of feathers and of the skins of hares, and cotton blankets. The women wear blankets, which they tie or knot over the left shoulder, leaving the right arm out.[465] These serve to cover the body. They wear a neat well-shaped outer garment of skin. They gather their hair over the two ears, making a frame which looks like an old-fashioned headdress.[466]

[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.

The country is a valley between ridges resembling rocky mountains. They plant in holes. Maize does not grow high; ears from a stalk three or four to each cane, thick and large, of eight hundred grains, a thing not seen in these parts. There are large numbers of bears in this province, and lions, wildcats, deer, and otter. There are very fine turquoises, although not so many as was reported.[467] They collect the pine nuts[468] each year, and store them up in advance. A man does not have more than one wife. There are estufas or hot rooms[469] in the villages, which are the courtyards or places where they gather for consultation. They do not have chiefs as in New Spain, but are ruled by a council of the oldest men. They have priests who preach to them, whom they call papas.[470] These are the elders. They go up on the highest roof of the village and preach to the village from there, like public criers, in the morning while the sun is rising, the whole village being silent and sitting in the galleries to listen.[471] They tell them how they are to live, and I believe that they give certain commandments for them to keep, for there is no drunkenness among them nor sodomy nor sacrifices, neither do they eat human flesh nor steal, but they are usually at work. The estufas belong to the whole village.[472] It is a sacrilege for the women to go into the estufas to sleep. They make the cross as a sign of peace. They burn their dead, and throw the implements used in their work into the fire with the bodies.[473]

[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] The _kivas_, 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] _Pápa_ is 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.

It is twenty leagues to Tusayan,[474] going northwest. This is a province with seven villages, of the same sort, dress, habits, and ceremonies as at Cibola. There may be as many as 3,000 or 4,000 men in the fourteen villages of these two provinces.[475] It is forty leagues or more to Tiguex, the road trending toward the north. The rock of Acuco, which we described in the first part, is between these.

[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.