Chapter 29
_The Indians plunder each other._
After the Indians had told and shown these natives well what to do, they left us together and went back. Remembering the instruction, they began to treat us with the same awe and reverence that the others had shown. We travelled with them three days, and they took us where were many inhabitants. Before we arrived, these were informed of our coming by the others, who told them respecting us all that the first had imparted, adding much more; for these people are all very fond of romance, and are great liars, particularly so where they have any interest. When we came near the houses all the inhabitants ran out with delight and great festivity to receive us. Among other things, two of their physicians gave us two gourds, and thenceforth we carried these with us, and added to our authority a token highly reverenced by Indians.[165] Those who accompanied us rifled the houses; but as these were many and the others few, they could not carry off what they took, and abandoned more than the half.
[165] The possession of one of these "medicine" rattles was not improbably one of the causes of the death of Estévanico at the hands of the Zuñis of Cibola in 1539. See the Introduction, and compare p. 90, note 2; p. 117, note 2.
From here we went along the base of the ridge, striking inland more than fifty leagues, and at the close we found upwards of forty houses. Among the articles given us, Andrés Dorantes received a hawk-bell of copper, thick and large, figured with a face, which the natives had shown, greatly prizing it. They told him that they had received it from others, their neighbors; we asked them whence the others had obtained it, and they said it had been brought from the northern direction, where there was much copper, which was highly esteemed. We concluded that whencesoever it came there was a foundry, and that work was done in hollow form.[166]
[166] See p. 97, note 1.
We departed the next day, and traversed a ridge seven leagues in extent. The stones on it are scoria of iron.[167] At night we arrived at many houses seated on the banks of a very beautiful river.[168] The owners of them came half way out on the road to meet us, bringing their children on their backs. They gave us many little bags of margarite[169] and pulverized galena,[170] with which they rub the face. They presented us many beads, and blankets of cowhide, loading all who accompanied us with some of every thing they had. They eat prickly pears and the seed of pine. In that country are small pine trees,[171] the cones like little eggs; but the seed is better than that of Castile, as its husk is very thin, and while green is beaten and made into balls, to be thus eaten. If the seed be dry, it is pounded in the husk, and consumed in the form of flour.
[167] See pp. 92-93, note 2, regarding the occurrence of magnetic iron in Mason County, where it is found in great quantities, but is yet unworked.
[168] Perhaps the Llano, a branch of the Colorado, or possibly they had met the Colorado again. See p. 90, note 1.
[169] See p. 92, note 2. In the edition of 1542 the text here says _silver_.
[170] Lead is found in Texas in the trans-Pecos region. The mineral resources of the state have not yet been well exploited.
[171] Doubtless the nut pine (_Pinus edulis_). Cabeza de Vaca evidently here aims to describe the character of this tree and its fruit without necessarily asserting that the tree was found growing very far east of the Pecos. In the valley of the latter stream it is more or less prolific.
Those who there received us, after they had touched us went running to their houses and directly returned, and did not stop running, going and coming, to bring us in this manner many things for support on the way. They fetched a man to me and stated that a long time since he had been wounded by an arrow in the right shoulder, and that the point of the shaft was lodged above his heart, which, he said, gave him much pain, and in consequence, he was always sick. Probing the wound I felt the arrow-head, and found it had passed through the cartilage. With a knife I carried, I opened the breast to the place, and saw the point was aslant and troublesome to take out. I continued to cut, and, putting in the point of the knife, at last with great difficulty I drew the head forth. It was very large. With the bone of a deer, and by virtue of my calling, I made two stitches that threw the blood over me, and with hair from a skin I stanched the flow. They asked me for the arrow-head after I had taken it out, which I gave, when the whole town came to look at it. They sent it into the back country that the people there might view it. In consequence of this operation they had many of their customary dances and festivities. The next day I cut the two stitches and the Indian was well. The wound I made appeared only like a seam in the palm of the hand. He said he felt no pain or sensitiveness in it whatsoever. This cure gave us control throughout the country in all that the inhabitants had power, or deemed of any value, or cherished. We showed them the hawk-bell we brought, and they told us that in the place whence that had come, were buried many plates of the same material; it was a thing they greatly esteemed, and where it came from were fixed habitations.[172] The country we considered to be on the South Sea, which we had ever understood to be richer than the one of the North.
[172] The allusion is probably to Mexico rather than to a northern country, as previously asserted by the Indians. See the second preceding paragraph.
We left there, and travelled through so many sorts of people, of such diverse languages, the memory fails to recall them. They ever plundered each other, and those that lost, like those that gained, were fully content.[173] We drew so many followers that we had not use for their services. While on our way through these vales, every Indian carried a club three palms in length, and kept on the alert. On raising a hare, which animals are abundant, they surround it directly and throw numerous clubs at it with astonishing precision. Thus they cause it to run from one to another; so that, according to my thinking, it is the most pleasing sport which can be imagined, as oftentimes the animal runs into the hand. So many did they give us that at night when we stopped we had eight or ten back-loads apiece.[174] Those having bows were not with us; they dispersed about the ridge in pursuit of deer; and at dark came bringing five or six for each of us, besides quail, and other game. Indeed, whatever they either killed or found, was put before us, without themselves daring to take anything until we had blessed it, though they should be expiring of hunger, they having so established the rule, since marching with us.
[173] Of this exchange of gifts, or perhaps we may call it plunder, there was an echo a few years later, when Coronado and his army were traversing the eastern part of the Staked Plain, under the guidance of the "Turk," in search of Quivira, in 1541. Before sending the army back, and while among the ravines of western Texas, Rodrigo Maldonado was sent forward to explore, and in four days reached a deep ravine in the bottom of which was a village that Cabeza de Vaca had visited, on which account (see p. 332) "they presented Don Rodrigo with a pile of tanned skins and other things." An unfair distribution being threatened, the men rushed upon the skins and took possession without further ado. "The women and some others were left crying, because they thought that the strangers were not going to take anything, but would bless them as Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes had done _when they passed through here_." Captain Jaramillo does not mention this occurrence in his narrative (_Fourteenth Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_, p. 588), but he speaks of reaching a settlement of Indians, in advance of that, according to the narrations, of which Castañeda speaks, "among whom there was an old blind man with a beard, who gave us to understand by signs which he made, that he had seen four others like us many days before, whom he had seen near there and rather more toward New Spain [Mexico], and we so understood him, and presumed that it was Dorantes and Cabeza de Vaca and those whom I have mentioned." Although we do not have here conclusive evidence that Cabeza de Vaca actually visited the village or villages mentioned, there is no question that he must have been in this vicinity, and as the evidence is strong that the Rio Colorado was the ravined stream alluded to, there is little likelihood that Cabeza de Vaca's route lay far below that river.
[174] The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico have similar communal rabbit-hunts, in which the animals are killed with a curved stick shaped somewhat like a boomerang.
The women carried many mats, of which the men made us houses, each of us having a separate one, with all his attendants. After these were put up, we ordered the deer and hares to be roasted, with the rest that had been taken. This was done by means of certain ovens made for the purpose. Of each we took a little and the remainder we gave to the principal personage of the people coming with us, directing him to divide it among the rest. Every one brought his portion to us, that we might breathe upon and give it our benediction; for not until then did they dare eat any of it. Frequently we were accompanied by three or four thousand persons, and as we had to breathe upon and sanctify the food and drink for each, and grant permission to do the many things they would come to ask, it may be seen how great was the annoyance. The women first brought us prickly pears, spiders, worms, and whatever else they could gather; for even were they famishing, they would eat nothing unless we gave it them.
In company with these, we crossed a great river coming from the north,[175] and passing over some plains thirty leagues in extent, we found many persons coming a long distance to receive us, who met us on the road over which we were to travel, and welcomed us in the manner of those we had left.
[175] Evidently the Pecos. This is the first stream mentioned as flowing from the north.