CHAPTER V.

QUIVIRA.

It is a well-known fact that lost travellers involuntarily walk circuitously, generally toward the right, and so gradually return to the place whence they started. This phenomenon is especially frequent in wide, treeless plains, where prominent objects by which the wanderer can direct himself are wanting. It has an extremely dangerous effect upon the mind, and may, if it occurs repeatedly, easily lead to despair and frenzy. What happens to individuals may also occur to a larger number. This was the fate of Coronado and his company when they sought and found Quivira. They returned in a wide bend to their starting-point, after they had wandered for months on the desolate plains, “led around in a circle as if by some evil spirit.”

Coronado, having completed all his preparations at Pecos, left that pueblo in the beginning of May, 1541, to go to the prairies. His general direction was northeast. On the fourth day he crossed a river that was so deep that they had to throw a bridge over it. This river was perhaps the Rio de Mora, and not, as I formerly thought, the little Gallinas, which flows by Las Vegas. The latter, an affluent of the Pecos, is too insignificant, while the Mora is tolerably rapid and deeper. But it was more probably the Canadian River, into which the Mora empties. Of the three accounts of the campaign which lie before me, Jaramillo’s is very confused, and that of Pedro de Casteñeda, which was written long after the event, must be used with scrutiny and caution, while the third letter of Coronado to Charles V. was composed immediately after the expedition, and thus records fresh, clear recollections. Coronado and Casteñeda, besides, agree in the principal points. Herrera has compiled from all the materials, and has used, among other sources, the anonymous “_Relacion de los Sucesos de la Jornada_,” etc. (1541). He is not less trustworthy as a source of information than Mota-Padilla.

The Spaniards soon found themselves in the plains, and were surrounded by herds of the American bison or buffalo. The first sight of these animals produced a great terror among the horses. They all ran away at the view of those large, hairy, ill-shaped beasts, which covered the plain by thousands, and whose hollow bellowing and glowing eyes still strangely affect those who see them for the first time. The plain aroused feelings of anxiety and gloom among the men by its immense monotony and the absence of any marks by which they could direct themselves. The conviction stands out in the writings of all the witnesses, that an oppressive feeling of helplessness soon made itself master of them. Casteñeda gives an excellent description of the llanos and their character: “All that one could see of these plains was entirely uninhabited. On a stretch of two hundred and fifty leagues one could discern neither the other mountain chains, nor hills, nor a single elevation of more than two or three fathoms. Occasional lagoons were found, as round as plates, which might have been a stone’s-throw in diameter, while a few were a little broader. The water of some was fresh, of others salt. The grass grows high around these pools, but everywhere else it is extremely short. Trees stand only in isolated ravines, in the bottoms of which flow little brooks, so that one can see around him nothing but sky and plain, for he is not aware of these ravines till he gets to their edge. Descending them are paths, which the buffaloes have trodden in going to drink.”

The feeling of helplessness which gradually crept upon the hearts of the Spaniards became critical by the growing conviction that their leader, “the Turk,” was betraying them and purposely leading them astray. They began to believe that the inhabitants of the pueblos had induced him to conduct the Spaniards into the plains, in order that they might perish there and the sedentary tribes thus be rid of their troublesome guests. His companion, whom the Pecos Indians had associated with him, who was born at Quivira, and whom the chronicler calls variously “Sopete” and “Ysopete,” talked quite differently from “the Turk.” The feeling thus came upon the Spaniards, at the very beginning of the campaign, that the outcome of their enterprise was at least extremely doubtful.

The troop came upon the first Indians of the plains about seventeen days after leaving Pecos. Coronado pertinently designates these people as those “who go around the country with the cows.” The Prairie Indian, who lives on the bison, also, as it were, lives with him. These aborigines dwelt in tents of buffalo hide; they had no agriculture; they dressed in buffalo skins, and kept dogs, which they used as beasts of burden. The Spanish writers call them Querechos. There is no doubt that they were Apaches, and of the group which were called Vaqueros in the beginning of the sixteenth century, because they were associated exclusively with the “wild cow” (or bison). This tribe used the dog as a pack and draft animal as late as the middle of the last century. The species apparently belongs to the family of the Arctic dog, and probably came down with the Apaches from the north. I do not know whence the name of “Querechos” is derived, unless it is a pueblo name from the Jemez dialect, which was spoken in Pecos. It has some resemblance to “Oi-ra-uash,” by which the Queres Indians designated a savage tribe that threatened the pueblos from the plains previous to the arrival of the Spaniards.

The Querechos, or Apaches, as I shall hereafter call them, were friendly toward the Spaniards; but they knew nothing of Quivira and its treasures. The whites then continued to follow their guides, but these soon lost their way; every landmark disappeared, and thirst began to afflict the adventurers, who wandered aimlessly over the plains. Reconnoissances led to no results, for the sky and bisons were all that could be discovered. The Spaniards had accustomed their horses to hunting the wild oxen, and inflicted the same useless slaughter upon them of which American and European hunters and travellers were guilty, till the animals disappeared from their haunts. At one of the camping places the troop were surprised by a violent storm, with hail, that frightened the horses, wounded many, and broke to pieces everything frangible in the camp. A whirlwind accompanied the hail, and carried away tents, coverings, and some of the horses. The storm fortunately came upon them in the bottom of a ravine; if it had been on the plain the damage would have been much greater.

Wandering around in this way upon the illimitable plains, they again came suddenly in contact with Indians. Like the Querechos, this tribe, which was called “Teyas,” lived exclusively with and upon the buffalo. They were hostile toward the Apaches of the plain, had been troublesome to the pueblo of Pecos, and appeared frank and friendly toward the Spaniards. They were of large stature and well shaped, and painted their faces and bodies with various figures. I do not venture to express a definite opinion as to what tribe the Teyas belonged to. Some have thought they were the Comanches, but those Indians were not known to the Pueblos till about the year 1700, while the Teyas, as I have remarked, had had hostile (and also friendly) intercourse with them before the arrival of the Spaniards. They may have been Utes. They knew of Quivira and the eastern regions, and gave Coronado information concerning them. But they were ignorant of the stone buildings, of the treasures and wealth, and in general of all that “the Turk” had described. The dwellings in Quivira, they said, were of “straw and skins,” and there was very little maize there. These accounts produced great depression, but still greater was the irritation against the guide who had drawn them into this country. “The Turk” finally confessed that he had spoken falsely to the whites when he told them of stone houses; but he adhered to what he had asserted concerning the numerous population and the wealth in metals of Quivira. He was thereupon put in chains, and the company continued its arduous march with guides whom the Teyas supplied. Scarcity of water was the greatest privation they suffered. Intense thirst afflicted man and beast, and buffalo meat was all they had with which to appease their hunger, for the supplies of maize were exhausted.

The Teyas advised Coronado to return; they assured him that nearly forty days’ march would still be required to reach Quivira, and that the scarcity of water and of vegetable food would destroy his little army on the way. Many soldiers had already disappeared by going from the camp to hunt, when they became lost and miserably perished. Nevertheless Coronado determined to satisfy at least himself personally with the sight of Quivira, but to risk the lives of only a few men on the chance. Against the entreaties and expostulations of his followers, he selected twenty-nine horsemen, put himself at their head, entrusted the command of the main corps to Tristan de Arellano, and went on under the guidance of the Teyas, together with the enchained “Turk” and the other Indian. According to Casteñeda’s statements, the point where the Spaniards separated was thirty-seven days’ march--of six or seven leagues or between sixteen and nineteen English miles each--from Pecos. If we suppose, what is, however, doubtful, because of their wandering around, that they marched toward the northeast, they were then near the eastern border of New Mexico, close upon what is now the Indian Territory. A passage in Coronado’s report says that in thirty-seven days they only marched on twenty, so that the distance traversed would be about three hundred miles. It, however, appears very plainly that they had turned to the right and marched in a circle, and, instead of northeast, were east or east-southeast of Pecos.

The date of the separation can be fixed approximately. The Spaniards left Pecos on the 3d of May, and, according to Casteñeda, reached the place where the army remained on June 9th. On St. Peter and St. Paul’s day--July 10th--according to Jaramillo, the little band of horsemen to which he belonged, and which was under Coronado’s personal leading, had been thirty days on the march; the separation must therefore have taken place on the 9th of June--that is, on Ascension Day of 1541, as Mota-Padilla correctly gives it. The “army,” as it was called, was now divided into two parts, and it is therefore necessary to follow the fortunes of each of them separately. Casteñeda belonged to the chief corps, and concerned himself, in his account, exclusively with it. Coronado and Jaramillo, on the other hand, speak only of the march to Quivira, in which they took part.

Arellano and the “army” proper remained fifteen days in the spot where Coronado left them, spending the time in slaughtering the buffaloes that ranged around them. This wasteful butchery was carried to such an extent that more than five hundred bulls were slain, with a number of cows. Several of the soldiers were lost in the hunt, and disappeared entirely. At last, on the 24th of June, a retreat was begun, in the course of which several salt lakes and numerous prairie-dogs were seen. More than thirty leagues (eighty-one miles) south of the spot where the bridge had been thrown across the Canadian River the band came to the Pecos, below “Anton Chico”; then followed the course of that river to the great pueblo, arriving in front of it on July 19th. The inhabitants had changed in feeling, and refused them provisions. So the weary company were obliged to go on, and came to a halt at Tiguex, near the present town of Bernalillo, in their former headquarters, at the end of July, 1541. The Tiguas had in the interval resumed possession of their pueblo, but left it on the approach of the Spaniards and fled to the mountains. It was still summer, and there was no lack of provisions. Arellano therefore busied himself actively with laying in stores for the winter.

So far as the main body of the Spanish “army” was concerned, the march toward Quivira had terminated, having borne only insignificant fruits. Except for the buffalo hunting, which supplied meat and hides in quantities, they had gained nothing in return for their unprecedented toil and danger besides the conviction that they had been betrayed and misled, and that Quivira was in no sense the gold-rich land that it had been described to them to be. This conviction had been impressed upon every one of them, so that the men were unwilling to see Coronado start off on an adventure more hazardous than any they had passed through, and with only a few horsemen. They were truly devoted to their leader, and were reluctant to part from him; yet, although many took leave of him with a fixed impression that they would never see him again, they obeyed his orders; for his enterprise might ultimately lead to discoveries that would recompense them for all their sufferings in the past and the present.

They therefore readily disposed themselves to the commands of Arellano, who, starting from Tiguex, instituted further researches along the course of the Rio Grande. Francisco de Barrionuevo, with two soldiers, followed the stream toward the north. Passing through the country on the west side, he came to the group of the “Hernes.” These are the pueblos of which numerous ruins lie in the neighborhood of the present Jemez. They are divided into two groups, numbering together ten villages, seven of which belong properly to Jemez, and three to the subdivision of Aguas Calientes (the present “Thermen”). The Jemez Indians entered at once into friendly relations with the Spaniards, and continued thus till 1680. Touching upon the Queres on the west, they were wedged in between them and the powerful hostile tribe of the Navajos. These were so troublesome to them that even the two churches which were built for them soon after the year 1600 were temporarily given up and the Jemez Indians were dispersed. About the year 1622 the Franciscan missionaries collected them again, and gradually united them into a single large village. This village, abandoned in 1680, is now merged in the pueblo of Jemez, which contains in all about four hundred souls.

Returning from Jemez to the Rio Grande, Barrionuevo seems to have followed the right (or western) shore of the river exclusively, for he mentions the pueblo of “Yuque Yunque,” “the inhabitants of which, as well as those of another village situated on the river, fled to the mountains,” where they had four other fortified villages. The place was inaccessible to horses. “Yuque Yunque” is the present deserted “Yuge-uinge” (village of the ravine), called briefly “Yunque.” The town of Chamita on the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad stands on its ruins, and near by was built, in 1598, the first Spanish settlement in New Mexico, San Gabriel.[87] On the east bank is the pueblo of San Juan, in a charming situation, and the valley, which borders the course of the Rio Grande, although hardly twelve miles long, is the most fruitful and the loveliest in New Mexico, that of Taos, perhaps, excepted. The massive chain of the Sierra Madre overlooks it in the east, with peaks that rise to a height of 13,000 feet; in the west a gloomy front of volcanic mesas, intersected by awful clefts, projects close upon the river-bank; and behind them the mountains of Abiquin and the Sierra del Valle crown the landscape. This beautiful region was, and still is, occupied by the Tehuas Indians. There yet stand two other of their pueblos, San Ildefonso (“Poo-joge”) and Santa Clara (“Ka-Poo”), on the bank, which have existed since 1598. If Barrionuevo, as I suppose, went from Cochiti through the great cañon which the Rio Grande traverses between there and San Ildefonso, or on the east side of the river over the mesa of Toma and the “Cuervo,” as it is called, to Chamita, he would have observed both these pueblos if they existed then. This, however, he seems not to have done, and the four villages situated on the mountain were, therefore, on the west side, “Tzirege” and “Triape,” in a wild region difficult of access; and on the east side two pueblos in the neighborhood of “Nambé.” The accuracy of the accounts of the Spanish writers often astonishes those who have become acquainted by long residence with the country they describe, and creates a feeling of high respect for them.

Barrionuevo pressed still farther toward the north. Twenty leagues, or fifty-four miles, beyond Chamita he came to a large pueblo called “Braba,” which was built on both sides of a river, and contained very large estufas. General Simpson has identified this place with the present Taos, and I see no reason for not agreeing with him. The native name for Taos is indeed “Tegat-hâ,” and I have never been able to find any name of a place in any of the pueblo languages that corresponds with “Braba” or “Uraba,” or “Yuraba.” Yet the situation and the whole description point to Taos as the place that is meant. Casteñeda says further on that Braba was the last village to the north that was built of stone and mortar, and that is actually the case with Taos.

Thus the Spaniards had found and specified, before the end of the summer of 1541, all the linguistic stocks of the pueblos of New Mexico, and had come in actual contact with all the groups of New Mexican aborigines, except the Jumanos and a few roaming hordes in the southwest, which once belonged to the Texan group. It is even possible that the Jumanos might be found among the painted Tejas, who were afterward called by the Spaniards, from their painting, _Indios rayados_, or striped Indians. This great tribe, which was extinguished in the insurrection of 1680, then inhabited the regions of eastern and southeastern New Mexico and northern Chihuahua. The Jumanos of New Mexico were in a state of constant feud with the Apaches, and this became the cause of their disappearance.

September was drawing toward its end, and the commander-in-chief had not yet returned from his hazardous journey to Quivira. The time which he had fixed for his return had passed, and Tristan de Arellano was anxious concerning the fate of the _Adelantado_. Leaving Barrionuevo in command at Tiguex, he went with forty horsemen to Pecos. The people there were still hostile, and he was obliged to bring his small artillery against their pueblo. The great houses resisted the attack, and he could not force an entrance. He was therefore encamped outside of the village in the valley, when the news came to him that the _Adelantado_ was approaching with his company; and a few days afterward Coronado arrived, sound and in good health, but weary, empty-handed, and disappointed. He had found Quivira and explored it well, but discovered no signs there of a permanent settlement, or of gold or silver.

The Tejas Indians had informed the Spaniards, while the whole army was still together, that they had gone much too far south; Quivira was away in the north. When, therefore, Coronado started with his twenty-nine men, the Tejas led him directly north, for thirty days, through unlimited, treeless plains, covered with herds of buffaloes and traversed by small streams, till on August 9th they came to a river, which they named, in honor of the saints of the day, “Rio San Pedro y San Pablo.” Jaramillo says that they had been able to march over only short distances each day, so that this river can have been no other than the Arkansas, and the spot where they struck it was probably near the Great Bend, for after crossing the river they followed its northern bank for three days toward the northeast, a direction corresponding exactly with the course of the Arkansas in that latitude.

It may be remarked, by the way, that Coronado speaks of this region as situated in the 40th degree of north latitude; that is, that it was five and a half degrees north of the Gila, according to the determinations of that time. The Gila River, however, runs, not in the parallel of 34° 30´, but of about 33°, while the Arkansas flows in the 38th degree, or five and a half degrees north of the Gila. Quivira should therefore be sought in the present State of Kansas, and in the central districts, about a hundred miles north of the Arkansas River.

It would be useless, however, to look for the ruins of a considerable permanent settlement of the natives. There is no such place, and the tribe that lived at Quivira was a roaming Indian horde that subsisted chiefly by hunting the buffalo, and casually followed a rude agriculture. Coronado says: “I had been told that the houses were made of stone and were several storied; they are only of straw, and the inhabitants are as savage as any that I have seen. They have no clothes, nor cotton to make them out of; they simply tan the hides of the cows which they hunt, and which pasture around their village and in the neighborhood of a large river. They eat their meat raw, like the Querechos and the Tejas, and are enemies to one another and war among one another. All these men look alike. The inhabitants of Quivira are the best of hunters, and they plant maize.” There were no signs of gold or silver; some iron pyrites and a few pieces of copper were all the metal that was found. Jaramillo confirms these statements, adds that the huts were round, and clearly describes one of the medicine lodges that are common among the Indians of the prairies.

Coronado, with his company and “the Turk,” arrived at Quivira on August 21st. “The Turk” was brought in chains, a prisoner, while the other Indian was able to prove that he had at least always told the truth. Through him the Spaniards had been well received at Quivira, and that embittered them all the more against the “the Turk.” He confessed that the Pueblo Indians had engaged him to draw the Spaniards into the plains, in order that they might perish there. Implicit faith must not, however, be given to this assertion. When the prisoner could not deliver himself by such confessions and other pretences, he tried to stir up the people of Quivira against the Spaniards. The plan was quickly discovered, and the treacherous guide was hanged the same night.

Coronado stayed twenty-five days with the Indians of Quivira and the vicinity. He found the country fertile. “The soil,” he says, “is the best that can be found for all the crops of Spain; besides being strong and black, it is well watered with brooks, springs, and rivers. I found plums like those in Spain, nuts, very fine grapes, and mulberries.” To this description is added the testimony of Jaramillo, who praises the fertility of the soil, the abundance of water, and the absence of mountains, and gives special prominence to certain productions, such as flax, sumach, and grapes.

Notwithstanding all these advantages, which Coronado sufficiently pointed out, he could not remain in Quivira. Winter, if not immediately at his door, was not very far off, and the Spaniards, surprised by early frosts, and not being acquainted with the delightful autumn of Kansas and the Mississippi Valley, thought that cold weather would follow at once. They therefore began a retreat, accomplished it without accident in forty days, and arrived in the Pecos Valley on October 25th (1541). Thence Coronado returned with Arellano to Bernalillo, where he wrote on October 31st the report to Charles V., from which part of the facts we have related are taken.

It is remarkable that when Coronado told his men the full truth about Quivira, and confided to them the discouraging results of his expedition, they became all the more fixed in the idea that Quivira was a gold-rich country. They conceived that their commander had not gone far enough into the interior because, meeting a dense population, he was not willing to venture among them with his small following. Indians who had been with Arellano confirmed the Spaniards in these opinions, and promoted an inclination which was liable to lead on the one side to further expeditions, and on the other side to a breach with their leader. He found himself in a very difficult position. He was at all events convinced that another expedition beyond Quivira would not be likely to lead to the discovery of what they were seeking for, while it would be attended with great danger; for the whole army would have to follow him, and he would therefore be cutting himself entirely off from New Mexico and going out into the unknown without any base of operations. He felt, on the other hand, that such a campaign, if not of gold and silver, might lead to other important discoveries. He was sure that the great river which the Spaniards then called “Rio del Espiritú Santo,” and which was nothing else than the Mississippi, must rise in those unknown regions. To reach this river from the west would be a great achievement, which would cover him and his men with honor, and be of much direct or indirect advantage to them. At the same time, his men were insisting so earnestly upon an attempt in that direction, that Coronado determined to yield to them, and, spending the winter in the valley of the Rio Grande, to leave New Mexico in the spring of 1542 and go eastward once more. Quivira, which had now been proved and acknowledged to be poor in metals, was no longer the sole object of the contemplated new expedition; it was to form the new base of operations, from which the step into the unknown should be made.

I have shown that Quivira was in central Kansas, in the region of Great Bend and Newton, and a little north of there. It is also clear that the name appertained to a roving Indian tribe, and not to a geographical district. Hence, when I say that Coronado’s Quivira was there, the identification is good for the year 1541, and not for a later time. The tribe wandered with the bison, and with the tribe the name also went hither and thither. In the place where Coronado found Quivira, he was not more than seven hundred miles from the Mississippi. It is a remarkable fact that in the same year, and at nearly the same time, June 18, 1541, Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi from the southeast and crossed it to the west. Had Coronado gone directly east or southeast from the point where he and his horsemen separated from the chief corps to go in search of Quivira, instead of in a northerly direction, he might have shaken hands with the discoverer of the Mississippi on the western shore of the great river.

On Coronado’s return friendly relations were restored with the Indians of Pecos, and even the Tiguas at Bernalillo showed a disposition to inhabit their deserted villages again. Before the end of the year 1541 (not 1542, as Casteñeda says), in October, Pedro de Tobar arrived with reinforcements. The letters which he brought from Spain and Mexico caused Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas to leave the expedition and return home by way of Zuñi and Sonora. I mention this fact among others because it shows with what security a solitary Spaniard could then make the long journey, which is not wholly without dangers to-day, with only Indian guides. This security has been ascribed to the respect which the Spanish arms won from the tribes, and to intimidation caused by severe treatment. The explanation is not sufficient in the present case. The Pueblo Indian, or the Apache, or the Navajo would not have been afraid of individual Spaniards if he had been generally inclined to hostility. The relation between the Indians and the Spaniards was, on the contrary, a friendly one, to which only the excesses against the Tiguas formed a solitary and therefore a conspicuous exception. With all the other tribes (except the little frictions with the Pecos, which always smoothed themselves away) the Spaniards lived in peace, and the roads from and toward Sonora were more open and secure than they are now. Large tracts were uninhabited, it is true, in which at least a few human abodes may now be seen, and the savage Indians were much more widely dispersed than they are now; but the present increased population, with increased quiet, also furnishes occasions of greater peril to property and life.

Coronado was beloved by his men. He took the largest share in all their privations, and whenever there was an allotment of provisions and clothing, he was careful to protect the common soldiers against the greed of the officers. Such a division took place in the fall of 1541, but Coronado was not in a condition to exercise his accustomed authority. The bonds of discipline had become relaxed, and his own energy had been weakened. Undeceived concerning the value of his conquests, he perceived that they opened no future to him, and still less to his wife, whom he had left in Mexico. He longed to go back to this wife, without whom there was no home for him, and he could not give her a home in New Mexico. It was, therefore, not contrary to his secret wishes, as he remarked, that the soldiers began of themselves to object to the contemplated expedition and to talk of a return to Mexico. Nevertheless, he continued making his arrangements, and the winter of 1541-42 was quietly spent in the camp at Bernalillo in busy preparation. They were to start in the spring of 1542, and the time for breaking camp was approaching, when two events caused a change in their plans. As Coronado was one day tilting with Don Pedro Maldonado, while on the full run the girth of his saddle broke, and he fell upon the side of Maldonado’s horse, which, being also at full speed, sprang over him, and inflicted a dangerous wound upon his head.

After long suffering he had begun to recover, when Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas unexpectedly returned from Sonora, bringing important news. He had gone to the Valley of Sonora without delay, and confidently hoped to meet the little colony in Suya. Instead of that he found the settlement a pile of smoking ruins, and the natives in full insurrection. After the death of Melchior Diaz, Diego de Alcaráz had continued in command at Suya. His character, which he had already revealed in Sinaloa, was not such as to qualify him for forming friendly relations with the Indians, while his subordinates were of the most unruly soldiers of the government of New Galicia. Their outrageous conduct excited the Indians to resistance. Some of the Spaniards fled to Culiacan; the rest, with a few exceptions, besides Alcaráz, were murdered in the night, their horses killed, all their cattle slaughtered or carried off, and their houses torn down and burnt. Cárdenas, in order to escape the poisoned arrows of the Opatas, hurried back to Zuñi, and thence to the Rio Grande.

This report provoked a relapse in Coronado’s condition, which caused all thoughts of Quivira to be set aside for the time. How long his illness and convalescence lasted cannot be exactly determined. An error in counting the years has crept into Casteñeda’s story, for he places the beginning of the expedition to the plains in 1541 and the return in 1542, but afterward corrects himself as to the date 1542, so as to fix the return to Mexico in the year 1543. This is certainly an error, unless Coronado’s illness lasted a whole year and the Spaniards spent the winter of 1542-43 in Bernalillo. It appears clearly from the reports, however, that this was not the case, but that Coronado had fully recovered in March, 1542. The relapse which he suffered is suspected by Casteñeda of having been a pretence; but Jaramillo, who was an officer, and stood in closer relations with him than Casteñeda, says nothing of this. His wounded condition increased the weary commander’s longing to return, and the insurrection of the Opatas in the rear of the little army made its situation very critical. He therefore proposed to his officers to take advantage of the feeling of the troops, and to have them prepare a petition to him for the evacuation of New Mexico. Signatures were easily procured for this petition, but Coronado had hardly begun the preparations for a retreat on the strength of it, when several of the signers asked to have their names withdrawn. It was, however, too late, and most of the soldiers adhered to their former decision. Casteñeda, whose morose nature dwells upon this division, says that Coronado had lost all authority and affection among the officers, who obeyed him after this, not out of respect, but only because of their oaths. Great discord prevailed in the little army; some wanted to stay at any cost; but they all agreed at last, and in the beginning of April, 1542, Tiguex was evacuated and the retreat to Zuñi begun.

Over a few members of the expedition Coronado had no power. These were the priests, who had come with him to this point; the Franciscan monks, Fray Juan de Padilla, Fray Juan de la Cruz, and the lay brother, Fray Luis de Ubeda, decided to remain in New Mexico, even without the protection of the army. It was indifferent to them whether there were treasures in the newly discovered regions or not; they thought only of the souls of the natives, and considered themselves pledged to devote their lives to the work of conversion. Coronado could not compel them to return with him, and they equally could not demand a large guard. Only volunteers, therefore, remained with them in Bernalillo. These were a Portuguese, Andrés del Campo; a mestizo; two Indians named Lúcas and Sebastian, who had been adopted by the monks in Michoacan; two Indians from Oaxaca; and a negro. They stayed voluntarily, as we have said, although there could hardly be a doubt as to what their fate would be. Such heroic devotion finds favor even in Casteñeda’s cynic judgment, for he says of Fray Juan de Padilla that “we must believe that his zeal was true and sincere.”

After the “army” left the Valley of the Rio Grande the three priests apportioned the field of labor which they had chosen. Fray Juan de la Cruz remained among the Tiguas at Bernalillo, where he passed out of view. A story that he was murdered is little questioned in the church, and is very probably true. The other two priests went to Pecos, where Fray Luis de Ubeda settled, and likewise passed out of definite knowledge. The natives were, however, at least in the beginning, friendly in their demeanor toward him.

Fray Juan de Padilla, in his turn, chose Quivira as his field of work. Accompanied by the others who remained behind, and by guides from Pecos, he reached the tribe during the summer months of the same year. The wooden cross was still standing which Coronado had erected, with the words cut upon it: “Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, leader of a campaign, came to this place.” This cross served him as the central point for missionary work, and the Quiviras received him gladly. Yet, notwithstanding the warnings of the people around him, he wanted to go farther. His first effort to travel toward the east brought him in contact with a hostile horde, which Casteñeda calls “the Guyas.” The priest immediately perceived his danger, and ordered the Portuguese and his other companions to flee and leave him alone. Resistance was impossible, and it would be better to save their lives than sacrifice them uselessly. The advice was prudent and worthy of the devotion of the priest. His companions therefore left him, with bitter sorrow in their hearts, and saw him kneel to await the coming of the savages. There is no doubt that he was immediately killed.[88] It is thus not improbable that the first martyr of the church, in the Spanish attempts to settle in the southwest, fell in Kansas, not more than six hundred miles west of the Mississippi, and only fifty years after the landing of Columbus.

The story of this event could hardly reach posterity without including an adventure of great hazard and of the most marvellous character. The companions of Fray Juan de Padilla fled back to the Quiviras, and it is said that those savages received the not unanticipated news of the death of the priest with sincere mourning and deep grief. Neither the Portuguese nor the Indians who had accompanied him felt themselves longer called upon to continue the missionary work, but were anxious to return to Mexico. Yet they were disposed not to go back by the same route as they had come, but to see new regions. It was in the spirit of the time. Fearlessness and the constant expectation of finding something new and astonishing were so deeply implanted in those men that it was like a second nature to them to go recklessly forward into the unknown rather than back into the known. Then, perhaps, a return to New Mexico might be more dangerous than an advance in the opposite direction. The Portuguese and the two Indians from Michoacan, who, as adopted children (“donados”) of the order of St. Francis, wore the Franciscan dress, directed their course from Kansas toward the east and then toward the south. The fact is undoubted that they finally reached Pánuco (in the present State of Tamaulipas in the Mexican republic), after a journey comparable in its adventurous character with that of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions. I have not been able to fix the exact date, for the event, although verified in many ways, seems not to have attracted much attention. The fugitives did not see the Mississippi, but passed on the western side of the river, through the Indian Territory and perhaps a part of Texas, to Tamaulipas, whence the Portuguese went to the City of Mexico, and the two Indians, Lúcas and Sebastian, to their home in Michoacan, where Sebastian died a few days after his arrival. The details of this remarkable wandering are unfortunately very scanty. It is inferred, from the fact that Gomára mentions it, that it took place before the year 1550.

The main corps under Coronado had returned to Mexico. While the expedition had suffered in the beginning from the disadvantages occasioned by intense eagerness and haste to reach its object, the retreat afforded a spectacle of sad disappointment, discontent, and consequent insubordination. Between the Rio Grande and Zuñi disease broke out among the horses, under which more than thirty perished. It was, perhaps, the same disease which now prevails occasionally among horses in New Mexico, and is called _el mal_. The Spaniards rested in Zuñi, and some of the Mexican Indians remained there--a fact which should be carefully regarded in the investigation of the myths and usages of the natives. Although the people were friendly, they followed the troop for several days, and tried to compel some of the men to stay. The troop reached Chichiltic-calli without delay, and were met there by Juan Gallegas, who had come from Mexico with reinforcements and ammunition. He was very angry at finding the army on the retreat. The fabulous reports which, reinforced by the representations of “the Turk,” had reached Mexico had produced a revival of speculative excitement respecting New Mexico, and the newly arrived soldiers were greatly dissatisfied. Some of the officers made use of this feeling to urge at least that a permanent settlement should be founded, but Coronado’s soldiers opposed this, and insisted on continuing the retreat. Coronado himself pleaded illness, and seemed to have lost all his energy.

The troop therefore moved again, to make their way into Sonora. The Opatas opposed them, annoying the march daily, and killing men and horses with poisoned arrows. No pause occurred in the hostilities till Batuco was reached; thence the despondent company proceeded unhindered to Culiacan, and there all the bonds of discipline were broken. Coronado started from Culiacan for Mexico on the 4th of July, 1542. When he arrived at the capital he was followed by hardly a hundred soldiers. The rest had scattered to the right and left on the way.

As the entrance into the capital was gloomy, so was his reception by the viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza, a hard blow for Coronado, from which he never recovered. This officer, the highest in authority in Mexico, declared to his former favorite that he was disappointed and angry that he had given up the north, and in such terms that Coronado withdrew to the present Cuernavaca, where he needed to give himself no more concern about his province of New Galicia, and died there in retirement. In the year 1548 the government was compelled, on account of his entire incapacity for business, to appoint a court of _audiencia_ for the “kingdom of New Galicia.” Little is known concerning the proceedings that were instituted against him. The once honored, now despised nobleman was deserted in early old age, and died neglected.

Was the disfavor into which he had fallen, and which cast a gloomy shadow over the whole of his after-life, deserved? As a leader Coronado was always worthy of distinction; he never spared himself, but always had a fatherly care for his subordinates; and if we regard the whole course of the campaign, we must acknowledge that he always acted prudently and yet decisively. Two dark features are visible in his intercourse with the natives: the abduction of the chiefs of Pecos, and the cruelties against the Tiguas at Bernalillo. In the former case Coronado followed an example which stood prominent at the time in the view of every Spaniard, and of many a champion in the rest of Europe--that of Hernando Cortés; and he afterward repaired his fault. The responsibility for the atrocious cruelties at Tiguex does not fall so much upon him as upon Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas. A proof that he did not, as a rule, behave badly toward the Indians is afforded by the fact that during the whole course of the expedition, which lasted two years and extended over so wide a territory, and in which so many different tribes were encountered, only four cases of real hostilities occurred, and only one of these was of great importance.

The conception which has been often formed of Coronado as a wicked adventurer is therefore unjust. Equally wrong and unfounded are the accusations which Mendoza formulated against him, and on the ground of which he treated the knight so severely. The following are assigned as the reasons by which the action of the viceroy was determined: first, while Alarcon wrote with the fullest detail in his reports, the letters of Coronado were short, and therefore unsatisfactory; second, Coronado wrote also directly to the emperor and king (Charles V.), which the viceroy considered a presumption on his part, and even regarded as bordering on treason; third, his evacuation of New Mexico and return seemed at least a gross violation of duty, for it was ascribed to disobedience, incapacity, and cowardice.

The letters of Coronado (of which I am acquainted only with those written to the emperor) are, indeed, not to be compared with the detailed daybook-like reports of Alarcon. But the latter, being most of the time on shipboard, had leisure and opportunity to prepare even more voluminous reports than he really made. It is not strange that he expanded his accounts. Coronado, on the other hand, was living under conditions which often made writing impossible, as I have many times experienced. No one is disposed to write long letters in the pueblo houses; moreover, in winter and on the road to Quivira the ink may have failed. Don Antonio de Mendoza understood none of these conditions, and did not realize the great difference between the situations of the seaman and of the officer in the heart of the continent. With all the traits for which he was distinguished, the viceroy was first of all things a European officer, who, however ably he could direct from his desk, had no comprehension of American camp-life. Coronado’s letters to the emperor and king were, it is true, an imprudence on his part that bordered on insubordination, and (in view of the previous difficulties of Cortés with Diego Velasquez) might easily have aroused suspicion in the viceroy.

Respecting the evacuation of New Mexico, I have minutely examined the course of events, in order to make a judgment upon it possible. There was no cowardice. Coronado’s wounds, and the result of the expedition to Quivira, with homesickness and a weakened bodily condition, probably contributed much to a discouragement which was based on the conviction that the country was not worth the effort which its control would cost. Coronado accused his predecessor, Fray Marcos, the discoverer of New Mexico, unjustly, as I have already shown, of having published exaggerated accounts of that country. He did not anticipate, he could not anticipate, that his own accounts, which fully agreed, so far as they concerned the same regions, with those of the monk, might afford occasion, to a superficial review, for the same reproaches against him as he made against the Franciscan, and supply material for distortions and mistakes the practical results of which would be as evil in the nineteenth century as were those of the exaggerated accounts of Cibola in the sixteenth century.

* * * * *

With the return to Mexico of the little army that Coronado commanded, the name of Cibola lost its fascination. The legend of the Amazons had, in the north, passed into that of the “seven cities,” and these are accounted for by the seven pueblos or villages of Zuñi. But Quivira continued to exercise an unperceived influence on the imaginations of men. Notwithstanding, or perhaps because, Coronado had told the unadorned truth concerning the situation and conditions of the place, the world presumed that he was mistaken, and insisted on continuing the search for it. And although Juan de Oñate, in 1599, and Saldivar, in 1618, went out in the direction which Coronado had designated, and found only what he had found, yet was Quivira more persistently sought, and at a greater distance; and it became a phantom, like the Dorado, which hovered with visions of golden treasures before the fancies of the Spaniards, in the northeast and east of New Mexico. It was forgotten that the Quiviras were a wandering horde of Prairie Indians, who lived with the herds of bison, and not a sedentary people; that the mission of Jumanos, which Fray Francisco Letrado had founded, was visited by Quiviras, and the church there was the religious centre for all these wandering tribes after 1636; and that the Quiviras were then roaming around for a distance of forty leagues, or one hundred and eight miles, eastward, or in southeastern New Mexico, and that, therefore, they had moved southward. The insurrection of 1680 produced such a confusion in the ethnographic conditions of New Mexico that Quivira passed out of mind, and when the revolution extended to Chihuahua and Sonora in 1684, the only thought was of self-preservation. After the re-conquest of New Mexico by Diego de Vargas (1692 to 1694) followed the irruption of the Comanches from the north, greatly disturbing the former ethnographic conditions, in the east and down into Texas. The Jumanos had already vanished, and even the name of the Quiviras, if it was a real name, was lost; but not the recollection of the golden stories which had been associated with them. A golden kingdom had grown in imagination out of the tribe, and to this golden kingdom belonged, as did the city of Manoa to the South American Dorado, a great capital in New Mexico, called _la gran Quivira_. This treasure-city had lain in ruins since the insurrection of 1680; but its treasures were supposed to be buried in the neighborhood, for it was said there had once been a wealthy mission there, and the priests had buried and hidden the vessels of the church. Thus the Indian kingdom of Quivira of “the Turk” was metamorphosed in the course of two centuries into an opulent Indian mission, and its vessels of gold and silver into a church service. But where Quivira should be looked for was forgotten.

In the middle of the last century a Spanish captain of engineers, Don Bernardo de Mier y Pacheco, went upon a scientific and political mission for the Crown in New Mexico. He explored the ruins of the country, and the numerous pueblos of the Cañon de Chaca (in the present home of the Navajos) excited his interest in the highest degree. When he began to concern himself about the situation of Quivira, it was supposed that he had plans and documentary evidences to assist him in finding the place. The measurements which he made in the ruins of the Chaca convinced the people that Quivira was there, and this conviction grew and spread rapidly. There was living at that time in Socorro on the Rio Grande an old Indian who was called “Tio Juan Largo.” When he heard of the search of the Spanish officer, he protested at once against the idea that Quivira could be found in the northwest, and insisted that the ruins of the former mission of the Jumanos and Quiviras were east of Socorro, on the “Mesa Jumana.” He was a Jumano Indian--perhaps the last who passed for one. Attention was then turned at once to the region east of Socorro. The country beyond the Sierra Oscura, between the Rio Grande and the Pecos, had remained uninhabited after the insurrection of 1680, and the small settlements of Manzano and Abó, in the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake, were not founded till about 1841 and 1869. The Apaches Taraones and the Comanches had, as it were, frightened all life away from the region. Ruins of pueblos and imposing stone churches, burnt out, with their enclosures open to the sky and the clouds, remains of the modest prosperity which the pueblo Indians enjoyed under the guidance of the Franciscan monks, before their unfortunate insurrection, lie scattered on the cliffs. Definite recollections are associated with all these ruins; the descendants of the Indians of Cuaray, Chililé, and Tajique still live at Isleta in Texas, and the posterity of the inhabitants of Abó at Senecú near El Paso del Norte. The existence of these ruins and a dim outline of their history were never absent from the recollections of the Spaniards.

Touching the Valley of Abó on the east and the basin of the Salt Lake on the north, rises a broad mesa, the borders of which are covered only on the north side with thin woods. The surface is inclined toward the south, and is treeless, though covered with good grass, but from the northern edge of the mesa south, southeast, and southwest, there is for from thirty to sixty miles not a drop of standing water. While I was there from the 4th to the 10th of January, 1883, melted snow was my only drink. This uninhabited plateau is the “Mesa de los Jumanos,” and on its southeast side stand the ruins of a pueblo which, according to my measurements, contained about twelve hundred inhabitants, with two stone churches, one of which is thirty-four feet wide and one hundred and thirty-two feet long, and stands almost undamaged, except in the roof. The walls are six feet thick, and a few hewn beams are still left in the interior. Adjoining these ruins are the walls of a considerable presbytery. The other church has been reduced to crumbling walls. No running water is to be found anywhere near, but four large artificial pools afford enough water for drinking purposes. This is the ruin which the old Jumano Indian of Socorro in the last century described as the former mission of Quivira, and which consequently now bears the name of “_la gran Quivira_.”

The old man was right. In the year 1630 Fray Francesco Letrado undertook the conversion of the Jumanos after an earlier effort had failed. But instead of going directly among the Indians, he established himself in a pueblo of the Piros, and had them build a church for the use both of the people there and of the inhabitants of the surrounding country. This pueblo was called the “Tey-paná” in the Piro language, and was the present _Gran Quivira_, while the ruins of the little church are those of the smaller temple. The place was the most eastern mission in New Mexico, and was called _la mision de los Jumanos_. At the same time with the Jumanos, the Quiviras were visited by the priests; and a number of members were gradually associated from all these tribes with the people of the village, and thus the building of a new church became necessary. This was the newer, larger ruin, and the structure was never quite completed. The Apaches pressed so closely upon the remote and isolated village that the mission to the Jumanos was abandoned in 1679. A few surviving members of the Piros who once dwelt there still live in Jemez, but the Jumanos and Quiviras have died away.

The history of the mission, too, was lost in the eighteenth century, although it could be clearly learned from the annals of the church and in Spanish books and manuscripts. But instead of studying these, men have peopled the ruins with fanciful figures, and have entered them cautiously and timidly in superstitious treasure-hunting. Numerous excavations attest the stay there of persons who have searched for the golden cups, the candlesticks of solid silver, and all that the fables ascribed to the poor missionaries of the sixteenth century. Had the gold-hunters, and, in later times, the water-hunters, considered the history of the _Gran Quivira_, they might have spared themselves trouble, labor, much money, and much suffering.

What is true on a small scale of Quivira is true in far greater measure of New Mexico and its metallic wealth in general. Historical writers have dealt superficially with that country by taking only a few authorities (Espejo, for example), and those without adequate criticism, as the basis of their sketches. Practical life demands of research in the historical field that it make it acquainted with the experiences of the past for the use and advantage of the present. Had those experiences been represented as they are clearly and truthfully laid down in the Spanish documents, much useless expenditure of capital would have been spared in New Mexico alone. It cannot be said that those documents were inaccessible, for the reports of Fray Marcos and of Coronado were printed in Italy and in England in the sixteenth century, and the works of Gomara, Herrera, and Torquemada contained the truth in abstracts. A Spanish officer wrote as early as 1601 that New Mexico was not so bad as it was occasionally drawn, but was far from being as good as it was usual to represent the country; and Alexander von Humboldt explicitly denied (“_Histoire politique du royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne_,” vol. ii. cap. viii. 3d book, p. 246) the existence there of rich beds of ore. In spite of this he has often been brought forward as authority for the assertion that the richest mines in the world were once opened there and in Arizona. The truth as to the metallic wealth of the country lies between the two extremes, but considerably nearer the former; and a critical study of the documentary history of the region should have been enough of itself to convince inquiring mankind of the fact.

THE MASSACRE OF CHOLULA (1519).

The day on which occurred the massacre of Cholula--a very important event in the annals of the Spanish conquest of Mexico--has not been determined with certainty, but the month is known. It took place about the middle of October, 1519, probably between the 10th and the 15th. The usual account of the tragedy--the conception of it regarded as historical--represents it as a causeless piece of treachery on the part of the Spaniards, an act of unjustifiable cruelty, an eternal blot on the fame of Hernando Cortés. Prescott gives the fairest and most exact expression to this view in his “Conquest of Mexico” when he says: “This passage in their history is one of those that have left a dark stain on the memory of the conquerors. Nor can we contemplate, at this day, without a shudder, the condition of this fair and flourishing capital thus invaded in its privacy and delivered over to the excesses of a rude and ruthless soldiery.” At the same time Mr. Prescott excuses the proceeding as an act of military necessity, and censures only the excess of the chastisement which Cortés allowed to be inflicted upon the Indians of Cholula.

A long residence in Cholula has enabled me to become thoroughly acquainted with the scene of the massacre, and to collect and study the native traditions concerning it, and their pictorial representations of it. Many documents referring to the slaughter have also come to light since Prescott’s work was published. These papers set the transaction in a new light, and illustrate how important to the composition of a correct historical account of an event is a previous study of its details and the local conditions.

Most incorrect and exaggerated ideas prevail concerning the condition of Cholula at the beginning of the sixteenth century, even in works admired for their apparent thoroughness; and of this Prescott is an example and proof. “The Cholulan capital,” he says, “was the great commercial emporium of the plateau.... Not a rood of land but was under cultivation.” From the top of the artificial hill (falsely called a pyramid) the spectator saw “the sacred city of Cholula, with its bright towers and pinnacles sparkling in the sun, reposing amidst gardens and verdant groves, which then thickly studded the cultivated environs of the capital.” On the summit of what was called the pyramid “stood a sumptuous temple.”

These passages are examples of the conceptions that are current, and specimens, as well, of inaccuracy and exaggeration. Concerning the pyramid so often mentioned, I appeal to the testimony of the authors whom Prescott is accustomed to cite. They agree that at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards this great artificial hill had long been in ruins and was overgrown with bushes. The top of the hill was then convex, and crowned with a “little ancient temple” dedicated to the god _Nahui Quiahuitl_, or nine rains. There was no trace of a large building, and the pyramid looked so much like a wooded hill that the conquerors regarded it as a natural elevation.

Cholula was not a capital, for it had no cities or villages attached to it, nor any rural population. I have investigated in the archives the development of the present district from the earliest period of Spanish rule, and have shown (“An Archæological Tour in Mexico”) that all the Indian villages date from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries; that the few more ancient remains besides Cholula--except the sacrificial hill of Calpan--belong to a far more ancient period, and had been long deserted and forgotten when Cortés conquered Mexico; and that the whole tribe of Cholula dwelt together in six quarters, which were erected on the ground covered by the present city of Cholula and commune of San Andrés Cholula. The environs of these six quarters, which were separated from one another by open places, were cultivated; but the plantations extended no farther out. Three fourths of the present district lay fallow, where now forty villages with twenty thousand souls are supported by the cultivation of the soil.

The architecture of the natives did not include “sparkling towers.” The one-storied, flat houses were whitewashed with plaster, and above them rose the rounded artificial sacrificial hill, on the narrow level spaces of the summit of which stood little tower-shaped chapels. The view of this whole complex, like that of the Indian pueblos of New Mexico, was very striking and very deceiving as to the real number of people, which appeared nearly twice as large as it actually was. Furthermore, as in the present villages of New Mexico, hardly more than two thirds of the houses are inhabited, and one is led to overestimate the population greatly.

Cholula was neither a specially sacred city nor an emporium of trade. The people had their gods, like any other of the tribes, and among them Quetzal-cohuatl was held in high reverence. Pilgrims did not flock to his shrine from near and far, as to Einsiedeln or Mecca, and the lordly neighbors of Tlascala and Huexotzinco, as well as those of Mexico, regarded the idol of Cholula, accordingly as they felt friendly or hostile toward it, as representing a gallant hero, or a blasphemous image, or an evil spirit.

The trade of Cholula did not surpass that which other equally numerous tribes possessed. It was irregular and limited. As the Pueblo Indians used to go a few years ago to the Comanches, in well-guarded caravans, or, till 1859, to Sonora, sometimes to the loss of their goods and even of their lives, so in aboriginal Mexico they went in armed companies to the neighboring tribes for purposes of trade. Cholula was a good market, for its inhabitants were producers of cochineal, and as it was nearer the lowlands than the Mexican plateau and Tlascala, it was a place where traders could exchange their own products for tropical fruits and decorative articles. Feathers of richly colored birds were very much in demand. Parrots and _Trogon resplendens_ came through Tehuacan to Cholula. The people of that region, on the other hand, had no salt. There is a considerable difference, however, between this primitive trade and a great inland market. What is great and important to an Indian people will appear to a European, as soon as the first impression of strangeness has worn off, often very insignificant. All the descriptions of the high civilization and the magnitude ascribed to Cholula rest upon the testimony of Spanish eye-witnesses, and have been composed without due regard to the sort of comparisons the Spaniards were able at that time to make. When, for example, Cortés compared Tlascala with Granada and Cempohual with Seville, we should not only consider how large those cities were in the year 1519, but should especially recollect that the comparisons only related to superficial extent. Every Indian town contains much more vacant space than any European city of the same area. All these accounts are therefore nearly as inexact as the political “campaign documents” of the present. Without really intending to state what was false, the authors of them involuntarily exaggerated in favor of their predilections. Everything was misunderstood at first, or not understood at all; the character of the people and their manners and customs were novel and bewildering. The population of a place was always greatly overestimated, for wherever the Spaniards showed themselves the people ran together, and the same throngs accompanied them all around, so that they met at every step a multitude that gave the appearance of great traffic.

Cholula had in its original condition not many more than 25,000 inhabitants, who were divided among the six quarters that surrounded, at considerable intervals, the chief sacrificial hill. The hill rose out of the usual walled court and stood where to-day stand the great Franciscan cloister of San Gabriel and the _capilla real_. At present not 10,000 people dwell in the city and in San Andrés, but the whole district contains at least as many Indians as inhabited it before the conquest, except that they live scattered over the land, and not, as formerly, together in an extensive pueblo.

The tribe of Cholula was tributary to no one; it belonged to the large number of settled groups which, wholly independent of one another, comprised the native population of old Mexico. Among these groups, which were all military democracies with elective officers, never hereditary monarchies or despotisms, three had joined in a confederation and had become very dangerous to all the others. They were the tribes of the Mexican Valley: Mexico, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan. Mexico took the lead in warlike affairs: Montezuma was simply the commander-in-chief of the soldiers of the three tribes, and not a crowned head. The allies were the most dangerous enemies of Cholula. Yet when the Spaniards had forced themselves into the present Mexico, Cholula had approached them, or rather the Confederation had approached the Cholulans, in order to obtain a support against Tlascala and against the powerful strangers who had just concluded an alliance with the Tlascalans.

Not much regard was felt in the neighborhood[89] for the shrine of the holy Quetzal-cohuatl, but its people were generally looked upon as cowards and knaves, and its idol as a “bad medicine”; and every appeal was made to Cortés to induce him not to go by way of Cholula to Mexico. In Cholula the people were not pleased with the sojourn of the Spaniards in Tlascala, for that tribe stood in bad repute among them. It was inclined to favor Cholula’s neighbors of Huexotzinco, between whom and Cholula bloody feuds prevailed at the time over a question of water-supply. Quarrels of this kind were frequent, for the Huexotzintecans controlled the upper course of the streams with which the Cholulans irrigated their gardens. If a Cholulan looked awry at a Huexotzintecan, or met him in hunting and reviled him, or a Huexotzintecan came to the market in Cholula and was overreached, the Huexotzintecans cut off the water from their neighbors, and war ensued. The dispute has lasted till the present day, with the difference that the Spaniards have suppressed the murders of former times, and have directed complainants to the courts.

Notwithstanding the strained relations which prevailed at that time between Cholula and Tlascala, four inhabitants of Cholula called upon Cortés and invited him to visit their tribe. The Tlascalans advised him not to go, and asserted that those men were not deputies, but unimportant personages. But little attention has been given to this episode; it has even been overlooked. It came about in the following way:

The Mexican Confederation regarded the friendly relations between the Spaniards and their hereditary enemies of Tlascala with great concern, and made more earnest efforts to come to a good understanding with Cholula. Through its envoys it stirred up the tribe of Cholula against the strangers, and succeeded in winning at least three of the quarters to its side. At the same time it was anxious that Cortés, in case he insisted on going on to Mexico, should not pass over the territory of Huexotzinco, for that tribe was decidedly hostile to the Confederation. Mexicans were present with the Spanish troops, both messengers and spies. They were ignorant of what was going on at Mexico and Cholula, but urged a march by way of Cholula, in order to withdraw the strangers as soon as possible from their alliance with Tlascala. The Spaniards knew nothing of this confusion; the thing of most importance to them seemed to be to secure the submission of one tribe after another. They felt sure as to Huexotzinco, and were anxious to have Cholula decide in their favor. Cortés therefore sent Indian commissioners thither.

What took place in Cholula cannot be learned from Spanish sources; but Indian paintings preserved at San Juan Cuauhtlantzinco, which were shown me, afford information on the subject. Their evidence is confirmed by the traditions which are still current in and around Cholula.

The summons of Cortés aroused much consternation in Cholula, where great fear prevailed concerning the mysterious visitors, and their presence was not desired at all. But a few, amongst whom were some men of influence, thought it would be better to ally themselves with the Spaniards. Against the voice of the majority, they went secretly to Tlascala and invited Cortés to go to Cholula. Cortés, urged by the Tlascalans, sent these men home, with a peremptory demand upon the tribe to send him officially a formal invitation, otherwise he would regard them as enemies and make war upon them. The Indians conveyed this message to the council which constituted the chief authority of the tribe of Cholula.

The Indian sources which I have consulted represent the effect of this threatening message as a double one. The first effect was against the messengers, who were bound and imprisoned as traitors, then put into a _temazcalli_ (or sweat-bath), for the purpose of smothering them with vapors of red pepper. This treatment was not successful, and the intended victims escaped. As much fear as anger prevailed against the Spaniards, and it was decided not to meet them with hostilities, but to respond to the demand of Cortés and send to Tlascala a formal invitation to him. When the strangers were once within the walls of Cholula then they could be disposed of. The Mexican envoys stirred the fire of excitement.

A large deputation from Cholula went to the Spanish headquarters, bearing gifts and messages of peace and hospitality, and attended the ceremonies which Cortés instituted to make them vassals to the Spanish Crown. Although the true meaning of this transaction was not apparent to the Indians, yet, as nothing was asked of them, they thought that if it did no good it would do them no harm, and conducted themselves as they were desired to do. The Spaniards considered that the Cholulans had voluntarily pledged themselves by the act to be subjects of the Spanish Crown. They did not know that a hundred formal oaths taken by the chiefs could bind the tribe only when they had been commissioned for that purpose by the tribe itself and armed with power to enter into the engagement in its name. The embassy from Cholula was delegated only to amuse the Spaniards, and as a decoy.

The Tlascalans, while they, too, had no clear comprehension of this “submission to the Crown,” recognized that the purposes of the Cholulans could not be sincere. They inferred this from their own usages. Certain religious ceremonies were essential to the obligation of a pledge, and when these were not observed, the engagement was without binding effect. Although discord now existed between the two tribes, they knew or could understand what was going on. The Tlascalans knew that the oracle at Cholula had said, “Let the strangers only come...;” and they cautioned the Spaniards against treachery. Cortés, in order not to show weakness, and in order also to secure a new base against emergencies, decided, nevertheless, to continue his march through Cholula. He had less than five hundred men and his small guns. His new allies of Tlascala furnished him a few thousand men.[90] On the first day he came to the place where the little village of Xoxtla now stands, nine or ten miles north of the pueblo, and, according to the often very untrustworthy Bernal Diaz, one league, or 2-7/10 miles from the Indian plantations. These plantations were those of Coronanco, seven miles from Cholula, where the Indians had a few houses and fields--not a real village, but temporary lodgings. A considerable delegation came to the Spaniards on the next morning in order to welcome them outside of the place. As usual, it included the chief officers--the two highest chiefs,[91] and the medicine-men, or priests, in ample robes, black, red and black, and all red. They carried incense-vessels in their hands, and perfumed the strangers. These attentions were interpreted by the Spaniards as signs of honor, submission, and even reverence; they were not aware that the Mexican Indians perfumed prisoners of war whom they expected afterward to sacrifice.

It could not surprise them much that the Cholulans demanded that as the Tlascalans were enemies they should not encamp within the circuit of the dwellings. The condition was reasonable, and Cortés agreed to it. The Indian allies remained near the present village of Santa Maria Coronanco, while the Spaniards went farther on, in the midst of a multitude that grew constantly more numerous. All Cholula came out to see the white men, their dress and weapons, and especially their wonderful horses. This multitude was not satisfied with seeing the strangers pass by; but the Indians followed them, as children run after a circus procession. Bernal Diaz says characteristically of the scene, “So great was the crowd that came to see us, that the streets and roofs were filled with them.” The six quarters all turned out at once upon the line of march of the Spaniards, so that the same public was around them everywhere. There were, in fact, as Andrés de Tápia says, more than twelve thousand men and women of all ages, and they gave the impression of a population probably approaching a hundred thousand. Hence the “twenty thousand households” (_veintemil casas_) of Cortés. The word casa applied to an Indian settlement would not signify a single house, but a household.

Any one who has witnessed a dance of the sedentary Indians, with the throngs of spectators on the flat roofs, may form a conception of the diversified scene which this entrance of the Spaniards into Cholula afforded. I have seen in these dances women in their ancient dress, with the hair done up in the style of a turban, the short _uipil_, or sleeveless waistcoat, made of cotton cloth and embroidered with red, black, and white figures, through which the head and neck projected, and beneath it a long skirt, girt around the body; the men, excepting the officers, bareheaded, in white robes, and also in embroidered jackets; on the heads of the principal officers, the half-mitre, adorned with colored feathers, colored stones, and shells; the priests in black; all the faces painted in festive style, that is, hideously striped, those of the common people with cochineal on the cheeks and forehead, and those of the higher chiefs with green, blue, and yellow, and the faces of the priests black, with white rings round the eyes and mouth. Added to these features were the noise of large and small drums, the squeaking of pipes, the roaring, thumping sound of the “Tozacatl,” and the clattering of many rattles. The Spaniards marched slowly along in the midst of this uproar, while the horses walked under their armored riders, not proudly and defiantly, but gently and rarely shying; for these horses had till now been engaged in hard and dangerous service, and much worse awaited them.

Of such character, according to the accounts of Indian writers of the sixteenth century, were the reception processions of the natives of Mexico. If we add to this picture the little company of Spaniards with their uniforms, their horses, and their small artillery, we can imagine the entrance of Cortés into Cholula as a festival far less formal and ceremonious than most of the historians have represented it, but still extraordinary, gorgeous, and strange enough. I have found the first impression in all the Indian dances well-nigh overpowering, but the eye gradually becomes accustomed to regard the spectacle with indifference.

The Spaniards, dazzled by the sight, wavering between heed to the warning of the Tlascalans and a favorable interpretation of the bearing of the people of Cholula, could not help regarding with wonder and suspicion whatever might reveal the real feeling of the people. They observed that the road was interrupted by ditches and depressions, and that sling-stones were piled up on the flat roofs. The first sign seemed very suspicious and appeared to confirm certain statements of the Tlascalans. The depressions indicated pitfalls, or at least devices to stop their horses. The ditches, on the other hand, were not trenches, but simply the channels of the smaller irrigation rills such as run through the roads everywhere in the southwest. The Spaniards now saw them for the first time, and were naturally suspicious of them. To them, as to the Indians, whatever was new was doubtful. The piles of gravel on the roofs were at all events a warlike provision, but it is still questionable whether they were intended particularly for the Spaniards. Most of the Indian villages were open, and were defended directly from the houses, or, in case of extremity, from the sacrificial hills; and piles of sling-stones were always kept convenient and ready for this event. Cholula lay in a plain, with the heights of Tzapotecas three miles away. It had no walls, and an assailing enemy must of necessity be repelled from the roofs of the houses. The Spaniards not properly understanding the conditions, these hostile precautions seemed to them to be directly opposed to what had appeared a formal voluntary submission of the Cholulans. Cortés was moved by them to suspect treachery.

While thus many of the external signs were mistakenly interpreted by him, he was right in the main. The Indian paintings at Cuauhtlantzinco confirm the native story that the people of Cholula had prepared a trap for him; but not, as Bernal Diaz declares, with the aid of a corps of troops from Mexico. The Mexicans could not furnish such aid, for they had not the means; their own tribe numbered hardly 40,000 souls, and their allies hardly 60,000. Had they indeed ventured to appear in the neighborhood with 20,000 men, Cholula would not have permitted them to concentrate such a force on its territory; especially as they were its hereditary enemies. It was, besides, impossible to conceal even 10,000 men in that region so that, even though not visible to the Spaniards, they could escape the peering eyes of the Tlascalans who were encamped without. The tale of the auxiliaries from Mexico is a fable, like many other of the stories in the history of the Conquest of Mexico. The origin of the story, which the Spaniards really believed, is of great, of momentous significance.

The Spaniards were quartered in a large house surrounding a courtyard, which they supposed to be a public building. According to tradition, Cortés was lodged in the present southwestern quarter of the city, which is now called “Santa Maria Tecpan”--the “Tecpan” being the communal house where strange visitors were received. In the middle of the quarter there still stands, in the _Calle de Herreros_, an ancient portal, with the inscription, in the Nahuatl language and Latin letters, “Here stood the Tecpan, where now is the house of Antonio de la Cruz.” The Spaniards were therefore really residing in a government building, but at the same time in private dwellings, for each quarter formed a connected complex, which had been temporarily vacated to give accommodation to the strangers. The people gathered in a crowd outside, and this gave the start to the story that a hostile force was lurking around Cholula.

In assigning a dwelling of this character to the Spaniards, the Cholulans enclosed them as if in a fortress, for the thick walls were proof against every attempt to break through them with native implements. The entrance indeed had no doors, but guards with guns and cannon were so planted that they covered the larger openings, and showed the Indians, or rather might have shown them, that an assault would be dangerous. The people of Cholula did not know what sort of guests they had invited, or what means they possessed for opposing any treachery.

The behavior of the Cholulans was in direct contradiction to the popular view that they regarded the white men as gods. One does not entice gods into traps, and does not try, as was done after the coming of the Spaniards, to enfeeble them gradually by depriving them of food. Both devices were tried against Cortés and his companions.

The intercourse of the Spaniards with the natives was very limited. In the first place, neither could understand the other; and in the second place, Cortés restrained his men so far as he could from going outside of the quarter. Only the young Indian woman Marina, who had been given to the Spaniards at Tabasco, on account of her precious ability to speak both Maya and Nahuatl--who has been the theme of much descriptive writing and verse, and whose career as interpreter and mistress has been invested with a poetical nimbus not appropriate to it--went in and out, diligently using her eyes. A broad affection, which extended from the common soldiers to the commander-in-chief, attached the woman to the Spanish flag. It was said also in Cholula that the wives of those whom Cortés first visited in Tlascala, and who were threatened with death by strangulation, had talked in secret about their tribal kinsmen. Cortés was soon convinced that the people were removing their women and children, not only from the quarter assigned to him, but everywhere. Every one who is acquainted with Indians knows what that proceeding means. It is the incontestable evidence of hostile intentions, and only individuals can in such case, perhaps, escape. Had the Spaniards withdrawn upon the discovery of this fact, they would have been attacked in the streets, and might easily have been exposed to a slaughter far more disastrous to them than that which they afterwards suffered in the famous _noche trista_. They were secure where they were against an open attack. All Cholula could not have carried the quarter by storm in the face of the Spanish muskets and artillery. But the adoption by the Cholulans of the formidable instrumentality of gradual starvation compelled action. Cortés determined upon a measure which would have been wholly unjustifiable in time of peace. The Spaniards, however, knew that treachery, not peace, was in the air, and the Indians confessed it. The situation was such that only stratagem could deliver them from the snares that had been set for them.

Search was first made for the Mexican deputies who had been with the Spaniards, but they had gone away and had only left their attendants. The chief officers of Cholula were no longer to be seen in the Spanish headquarters, and Cortés had two priests called and questioned in his presence. Presents, cross-questionings, and threats were employed to extort a confession that the destruction of the Spaniards was contemplated. Cortés immediately sent word through these priests to the chiefs of the tribe to come to him, and they came. The Spanish commander reproached them courteously for their reserve, asked them why they had estranged themselves from him in such a way, and intimating to them that he would start for Mexico on the following day, asked for a number of their soldiers to escort him, and for porters. His request was very readily granted, even with professions of lively pleasure. But while Cortés was thus treating with them, messengers arrived from his Indian allies with urgent communications. Both Tlascalans and Indians from Cempohual, of whom a few hundred accompanied the Spaniards, brought reports that threatening proceedings were going on outside of the Spanish quarter. The people were collecting more stones on the roofs, and were barring and building up the passages. Pits had been discovered in the streets, or rather in the vacant spaces between the quarters, lightly covered with limbs of trees and earth. If was certain that all non-combatants had been sent away. Everything pointed to an impending outbreak of hostilities. The Spaniards, not being acquainted with the Indian custom of making no assault at night except under the most favorable circumstances, or in case of necessity, expected to be attacked immediately after dark. The number of men in the previously deserted space around the Spanish quarter was visibly increasing, and among them were some armed. As night came on, Cortés assembled his men for anxious consultation. Some proposed to evacuate Cholula and retire to Huexotzinco; but the majority, perceiving that it was too late for that, favored attacking the Cholulans on the next morning, before they could strike a blow.

While these measures were being determined upon, two Indians of the place, an old woman and her son, came secretly to the Marina whom we have mentioned. She was regarded, by virtue of her origin and her language, as belonging to the Nahuatls, and as she was, besides, a good-looking girl, and made considerable display of the presents which she had acquired from the Spaniards, she was regarded among her countrymen as desirable for marriage. The woman came to the girl in order to warn her and save her, and at the same time to secure her for one of her sons. Marina obtained from her a relation, to the minutest detail, of the whole plan of the conspiracy, how the Spaniards were to be attacked in the ravines and roads on their march to Mexico, and other particulars. Her story fully confirmed the statements of the priests. Marina detained the woman under the pretext that she wished to prepare to go away, and ran to Cortés to tell him all. The poor wife-hunter was consequently brought before the commander, closely questioned, and confined for the night with her son, while the Spanish soldiers prepared to march.

When morning broke, all was ready for departure, and armed Cholulans gathered around the lately deserted quarter, ostensibly to accompany the Spaniards, but really in order to attack them at the first opportunity. Both sides were alike ready, and the only question was, which should be first. The Spaniards had the advantage of knowing the designs of their perfidious hosts, while the latter had no suspicion that the whites were aware of their treachery. As soon as the Spanish guards permitted it, the court of the quarter was filled with Indians. They exhibited all the signs of satisfaction, in the false fancy that their success was assured. Cortés was already on his horse, with Marina by his side, the cavalry were mounted, and the infantry held their guns ready to fine. Orders had been sent to the Tlascalans during the night to hasten up on the first alarm. When the chiefs of Cholula had gathered around Cortés, he plainly told them through the mouth of the Indian interpreter that he had penetrated their designs. He said to them, without passion, that he knew all, and that, as they were bound to the Spanish Crown, having voluntarily made their submission to it, they should therefore be punished, according to Spanish law, as traitors and rebels. Before the Indians could recover from their astonishment, he gave the signal for attack, and the fight began with the firing of muskets into the throng. It lasted about five hours.

There was no slaughter of unarmed women and children. The non-combatants had been sent out of the way long before by the Cholulans to a place of security, with the exception of those in the remote quarters, who did not participate in the contest and were not harmed by the Spaniards. It was a house and street fight between armed whites who had anticipated likewise armed Indians, and had therefore secured to themselves the advantage of the assault. Many Indians were killed in the court--a relatively large number, it is said, perhaps more than a hundred men. This part of the affair occurred where the present Calle de Chalingo passes into the Calle Real, and the place is still called the “Ezcoloc,” or the place of the flowing and crossing of meandering streams of blood. According to tradition, Cortés had his headquarters in the same system of houses. The action could not last long in the court, for the Cholulans, after the first volleys, rushed out of the trap into the open space, which they could easily do, as no doors prevented their exit. But they could not be allowed to go unpunished even outside, for the Spaniards were exposed to the danger of a siege by starvation. They also rushed out, and their enemies, driven by their guns, fled to the “Cerro de la Cruz,” a sacrificial mound still partly standing, about 1100 feet east of the spot where the fight began. Here, according to the pictures at Cuauhtlantzinco, the principal engagement took place, in the storming of the artificial height. After this, all was over. The Cholulans who were involved in the conspiracy and were surprised belonged to three of the six principal quarters, while the three other quarters had been neutral and now interceded for peace. Cortés contented himself with this short chastisement, and did not permit his people to scatter--prudently, for that might have been very disastrous. In the afternoon he drew his troops back into the quarter, and the negotiations were begun which established peace and a good understanding.

In the meantime, when the fight was already on the wane, the Tlascalans rushed up in thick masses. They eagerly overran the empty houses in order to plunder them. It is self-evident that none of the inhabitants who fell into their hands were spared. But there were not many, for the unarmed had long ago betaken themselves to places of security; the soldiers were busy with the Spaniards, and the heroes of Tlascala did not venture against non-participants and their closed houses. Like genuine Indians, they contented themselves with robbery and the destruction of property: there was no extensive conflagration; the “smoking ruins” of Prescott could not exist where roof-beams loaded with earth and plaster were the only combustibles. Such a laying waste of Cholula as is represented by some authors would require pulling it down, and that could not be accomplished in so short a time as five hours. Yet five hours after the first shot was fired, Cortés stopped the proceedings of his companions. Many of them undoubtedly continued to steal privately; and on the next day reënforcements came from Tlascala for the purpose of recompensing themselves from the Cholulans and their property, but they were prevented from doing this by the strict orders of the Spanish commander. Andrés de Tápia speaks of a two days’ destruction, but Cortés, in a letter which he wrote a year after the affair, affirmed that the place was again full of women and children on the next day.[92]

Cortés stated that about three thousand of the enemy were killed. In 1529 Nuño de Guzman accused him of having caused four thousand Indians to be slain in a large court in Cholula. The witnesses whom Cortés brought forward swore that a “few” Indians were indeed punished there with death. Las Casas, whose statements cannot be trusted on account of his strong passion, speaks of six thousand dead. The local conditions speak more definitely, and, above all, the duration of the battle. It is hardly conceivable that even if the conflict lasted five hours, five hundred Spaniards could have killed so large a number of Indians in that time. The first volleys may have been murderous, but after them the affair became a skirmish, with single brief and bloody combats at close quarters. The Tlascalans had no time to kill many.

I am very doubtful, especially when I recollect that the battle was fought on a space not an English quarter of a mile in length, whether more than five hundred men fell. Certainly nothing like what is called a “decline” of Cholula was caused by the massacre. The Indian population of the district is still as large as it was then, notwithstanding fatal epidemics have prevailed. The only difference between the past and present conditions of population is that the tribe has now dispersed into the country, while in the year 1519 it dwelt together in a group of complexes.

But even if only one Indian was killed without just cause, it would be a serious crime. Yet from a military point of view the conduct of Cortés is entirely justified. He was obliged to proceed in that way, to surprise the Indians, if he would not himself be surprised and destroyed. The reproach brought against him is not based upon the Cholula incident, but lies against the conquest in general, against every aggression of the kind, and against our own conduct toward the Indians.

Only the pretexts have changed with the times, while the means have become, through the advance of knowledge, surer and more destructive. The Spaniards took and held the land, and saved its inhabitants: in the United States we have destroyed the people to get their land. The Spaniards subdued the aborigines openly: we approach them in the disguise of neighbors, pursue them and vex them, often for years at a time, till the desired offence is committed which affords us a pretext for removing them or exterminating them. The history of Arizona since the United States forcibly incorporated that territory into its domain furnishes much worse and more blameworthy transactions than the “bloodbath” of Cholula. If we can excuse these and other wrongs, and can justify our whole systematic robbery and destruction of the Indians under the pretence of progress, then we cannot be judges against the Conquest. The Spaniards planted the European civilization of their time in the place of the rude semi-civilization that existed, and adapted the natives to it: we plant our present civilization without taking a thought for the continued existence of the Indians.

THE AGE OF THE CITY OF SANTA FE.

The belief has been fixed in the public mind for a considerable time that Santa Fé, the capital of New Mexico, is also its oldest Spanish settlement, and even the oldest city in the United States. It is obvious that the latter opinion is incorrect, for St. Augustine in Florida dates from 1560. After Coronado’s retreat from New Mexico in 1542 no Spaniard entered the territory till 1580, consequently no city was founded there by them; and it is well known that Coronado left no settlers there. Santa Fé is therefore, in any event, younger than St. Augustine, for it was built after 1580.

Concurrently with the belief that Santa Fé is the oldest city in New Mexico prevailed the legend that it occupied the site of a populous Indian settlement, of a native seat of government for all the pueblos of the Province. This fable is wholly destitute of documentary proof, and is not supported by any traditional or archæological evidence. The present city covers the ruins of an Indian village, and the earthworks of old Fort Marcy have partly obliterated the remains of another, older one. The older village contained hardly five hundred inhabitants; the more modern one, of which one house besides San Miguel’s Church is still standing, numbered seven hundred souls in the year 1630. The plateau of Santa Fé contains besides these two ruins only four sites of remains of Indian dwelling-places or pueblos. Five miles south are two, one smaller and one larger, on the banks of the usually dry “Arroyo Hondo.” The small village contained not quite two hundred, the larger one--which is called “Cua-Kaa” by the Tanos, to whom it belongs--less than eight hundred souls. Both were deserted before the middle of the sixteenth century. Twelve miles southwest lie the ruins of “Tzigu-ma,” near the place called “Ciénega.” This village also, which was abandoned after 1680, never numbered one thousand inhabitants. Lastly, there is San Marcos, or “Yaa-tze,” eighteen miles south-southwest of Santa Fé, near the so-called “Cerrillos.” In the year 1680 it contained six hundred Indians, and the extent of the ruins leads me to the conclusion that this number was not at any time doubled. The plain of Santa Fé, which includes an area of hardly one hundred square miles, thus never held more than three thousand settled inhabitants before the advent of the Spaniards, and these were distributed among not more than four villages inhabited at one time. None of these villages could compare in population with Pecos, Hauicu, Pilabó (or Socorro), Teypaná (or Quivira), etc., or with the Zuñi of to-day.

Those villages were inhabited in the sixteenth century and from a long time before by the Indians called “Tanos.” The Tanos were Tehuas; they constituted the southern half of that great linguistic stock; and their territory extended from Pojuaque (“P’ho-zuang-ge”), seventeen miles north of Santa Fé, to San Pedro (“Cua-Kaa”), forty miles southwest. Their traditions are fully confirmed by the archæological remains; but these traditions make not the slightest mention of a “center of population,” or of a New Mexican “Indian capital,” at Santa Fé.

The pueblo on the ruins of which Santa Fé stands is called “Cua-P’ho-o-ge,” or “Cua-Pooge” (mussel-pearl-place-on-the-water). That the place, and even the district, played no prominent part in the sixteenth century, appears from the fact that no Spanish document specially mentions it till after the founding of the capital.

The plateau is dry and barren. The little Rio de Santa Fé sinks into the sand not far from the present capital, and issues from it again at the “Ciénega,” or the entrance to what is called the “Bocas.” The Arroyo Hondo is entirely dry; the village of Cua-Kaa, as well as San Marcos, get their water from a spring situated near them. The scarcity of water, which is still very much felt, would make any aggregation of native settlers around Santa Fé absolutely impossible.

The historians of Coronado hardly mention the region. Probably Cua-Pooge was one of the seven villages which Casteñeda mentions as lying near the snowy mountains.[93] The accounts of the eight Spanish soldiers who went in the year 1580 with the unfortunate Franciscan monks Fray Augustin Rodriguez, Fray Juan Lopez, and Fray Juan de Santa Maria to Bernalillo on the Rio Grande, prove that neither the escort nor the missionaries set foot upon the Santa Fé plateau.

In the year 1583 Antonio de Espejo, going east from the Queres villages on the Rio Grande, arrived at the Tanos and Galistéo. He called them “Ubates”--a corruption of the word “Puya-tye,” by which the Queres now designate the Tanos. He there touched upon the southern part of the plain of Santa Fé. He mentions five Tanos pueblos, and estimates their population at 20,000 souls. Espejo was a careful and intelligent observer, except that his estimates of population are always exaggerated at least four times. The exaggerations arise from the fact that whenever the Spaniards visited a village not only the people of that village, but those also of the neighboring pueblos, were present to greet their strange animals, and this multitude followed them as long as they continued in the territory of the tribe. This was a result more of curiosity than of fear. Moreover, an Indian village, in consequence of the peculiar structure of its buildings, always appears at least twice as large as it really is.

The founding of Santa Fé has been ascribed to Espejo. The error is the result of inaccurate, extremely superficial historical inquiry. The mere reading of Espejo’s account would satisfy any one that he marched all through New Mexico and northern Arizona with only fourteen soldiers; that his expedition was a mere reconnoissance and no scheme of colonization; and that he arrived again, with all his men, in Santa Barbara in southern Chihuahua on the 20th of September, 1583. The story of the founding of Santa Fé by Espejo in the year 1583, aside from the one which fixed the origin of the capital in 1550--which suggested the spurious “Tertio millennial jubilee” of 1883--furnishes a most emphatic proof of the want of thought and of scientific care with which the history of Spanish colonization is still written. After his return Espejo made a proposition to the Crown concerning the settlement of New Mexico (April 23, 1584) but he died in 1585, before the government had examined his plan.

The first Spanish settlement in New Mexico was founded in the year 1598 by Juan de Oñate. It was not, however, where Santa Fé now stands, but thirty miles north of that place, on the tongue of land formed by the junction of the Rio Grande with the Rio Chama, opposite the present Indian village of San Juan de los Caballeros. It was therefore very near the station Chamita, on the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. Oñate marched from San Marcos to San Ildefonso on the Rio Grande, barely touching the southwest corner of the Santa Fé plateaus, and paid no attention whatever to the little village of Cua-Pooge. The well-watered, highly fertile valley near San Juan, on the contrary, attracted him at once, and he began the building, opposite that pueblo, of a chapel and a Spanish headquarters, which he called “San Francisco de los Españoles,” on the 23d of August, 1598. The chapel was consecrated on the 8th of September of the same year. This first colony was called San Gabriel in 1599, and that has continued till now to be the name given to the place by the Mexicans, although every trace of the buildings disappeared long ago. Ruins were still visible about 1694.

San Gabriel remained the only settlement of Europeans in New Mexico till 1608. In that year the Crown fixed the governmental regulations of the new possession and assigned a regular salary of 2000 ducats a year to the governor, and he immediately departed for Santa Fé. More exact statements concerning the date of this settlement are not accessible, although they probably exist in the Spanish archives; but it is certain that Santa Fé was not founded till after the year 1607. Twenty years afterward two hundred and fifty Spaniards dwelt there, including soldiers; and when the Indians rose and drove out the whites in 1680, the whole district contained not more than one thousand Europeans, about half of whom lived in Santa Fé.

All the other towns in New Mexico, the Indian villages excepted, are of much later origin than Santa Fé. Albuquerque, for example, dates from 1701, Las Vegas from 1835, Bernalillo from 1701, Socorro--the old pueblo was destroyed in 1681--from 1817. The oldest Indian missions in Arizona--“Tubac,” “Tumacacori,” etc.--date from the close of the seventeenth century. Tucson was still in 1772 a small village of the Pimas. Santa Fé is therefore the oldest existing city in the two Territories, and the second oldest European town in the United States that is still inhabited.

The first church in Santa Fé was begun in 1622 and completed in 1627. It stood on the site of the present cathedral, and the remains of the walls of the old “Parroquia,” or parish church, probably belonged to that oldest temple. Of San Miguel, the walls are of the middle of the seventeenth century. The roof and towers were built after 1694. The old house by the side of it is of the same age. The oldest churches in New Mexico still standing and in use are those in the Indian villages San Ildefonso and Santa Clara; the oldest abandoned houses of worship are those of Pecos, San Diego de Jemez, and perhaps Abó and Cuaray. All these buildings were erected in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

JEAN L’ARCHEVEQUE.

The Indian village--or, as it is usually called in New Mexico, the pueblo--of Santa Clara lies thirty miles north of the city of Santa Fé, on the Texas, Santa Fé & Northern Railroad. It is inhabited by about four hundred agricultural Indians of the Tehua tribe, whose one-and two-storied houses form two irregular quadrangles, surrounding two open places, called plazas. A large church of adobe, now in decay, stands at the northeastern end of the village. It dates from the middle of the last century (1760). The priests’ houses have fallen to ruins, the interior of the temple is strikingly bare and bald, and the few paintings are either unrecognizable on account of the dirt and the advanced decay of the canvas, or they are specimens of the unskilful works of the domestic art industry so often met with in New Mexico. The best kept of the appurtenances are two wooden side-altars, marked with the date of 1782. The bell bears the year-mark of 1710. Everything savors of neglect; only a few dwellings are outwardly new, but within the habitations are comparatively clean; while the population, through frequent mixture with wandering Indians--the Utes, Apaches, and Navajos--are taller and more slenderly built, if not stronger, than the ordinary pueblo Indians of New Mexico.

Santa Clara is situated on a sandy prominence which overlooks the course of the Rio Grande del Norte from a height of about fifty feet. The village is not more than five hundred paces in a straight line from the river-bank. The view from the dune on which it stands is therefore not without attractions, but the immediate vicinity is bare and treeless. Fields, green in summer, desolate in winter, lie around it, while in the west the side of a barren table-land rises to shut off every view in that direction. Only the highest peaks of the mountains of Abiquin look down furtively, as it were, upon the barren hillside of rubbish and gravel.

A broad view is spread out toward the east. The course of the Rio Grande is visible from north to south for a length of ten English miles. A dark mesa, the Mesa de la Canoa, shuts off the northern horizon, while the river is lost sight of in the south at the foot of a grand isolated rock of dark lava--the Mesa de San Ildefonso. A narrow but fertile valley forms the eastern shore, on the other side of which stretches the chain of the high mountains--the wild Sierra de la Truchas, the massive flat dome of the Sierra de Nambe, and the Pico de la Laguna. The range descends in terraces to the south, where the city of Santa Fé lies hidden at its foot. All these peaks exceed twelve thousand, the Truchas thirteen thousand, feet in height, and they are often crowned by snow-fields in summer.

If one stands, in the evening, when the sun is setting and the shadows are already cast over the valleys, on the swell above the church of Santa Clara, he will see the snow-peaks glowing for a little while in fiery red. The crags of the Truchas blaze like flowing ore. An Alpine lustre is displayed, less soft in colors than that of the central mountains of Europe, but much more intense and longer lasting. The mountains stand out ghostly pale as soon as the last glow is extinguished, and a white shroud appears to rest upon the landscape.

In this homely Indian village has lain concealed for many years a treasure of historical knowledge, an archive rich for America, so poor in archives, of the history of New Mexico. The Indians preserve and guard the treasure with superstitious care. It was entrusted to them years ago; and although their care for it has been limited to a superstitious guardianship and a cautious preservation, and no catalogue exists and no thought is taken of the greedy mice, the papers are still tolerably well preserved, and might safely lie there for yet many a year, suspiciously watched by men to whom the text is still a puzzle--for to them reading is a mystery, and the art of writing seems a kind of magic.

The collection is the remains of the archives of the Franciscan order in New Mexico, the “_Custodia de la conversion de San Pablo de la Nueva-Mexico_,” which have lain here for more than thirty years, or since the time when the old military chapel (called _Castruenza_) of Santa Fé was condemned as unsafe. Such of the documents and church-books stored there as were not immediately needed were securely deposited in Santa Clara; for a priest then lived in the pueblo, and Santa Clara formed a parish by itself. When the parish was discontinued and the seat of the pastorate was removed to Santa Cruz, the archives were left. No one having any use for them, they remained in an old cupboard of the ruined convent till an Indian, who could neither read nor write, but had a clear head and respect for the old and venerable, proposed to commit the care of the papers to private hands. It took long and solemn meetings for consultation before the _Principales_ of the pueblo would agree to such an innovation. They would keep the documents, indeed, as something having an incomprehensible sanctity, but to remove them from the ruins, where they were given up to mold and decay, seemed at first a doubtful step. Those above, the “Shiuana,” might be displeased at it. The spiritual powers were finally consulted, and their decision was in favor of the innovation. The Franciscan archives were thus carried into the dark back-room of an Indian house, where a blind man was their first guardian; but they are now in charge of an intelligent, tolerably clear-seeing citizen of the village.

I tried in 1886 to obtain access to these old manuscripts, but was at once refused. It is of no use to importune an Indian. If he denies a request he is fixed in it, and one must wait. I waited two years, provided myself with a most urgent letter of introduction from the archbishop and an order from the priest of Santa Cruz, and went again. At last the prohibition was withdrawn, and after three protracted visits to Santa Clara, the last of which lasted twenty days, I was able to say that I had exhausted all the material and had accurate and complete copies of all the documents which had any important bearing on the history of New Mexico. It was no easy work, for the hand-writing was often nearly illegible, and the ink had faded and the paper grown yellow, and become almost rotten.

The contents of the archives of Santa Clara may be divided into three classes. The first class consists of documents not strictly ecclesiastical, among which I found much that was valuable; the second, of the special church books, including registers of baptism, marriage, and death, many of the last of which begin with the date of 1694. Many valuable facts were also found in these. The papers called _Diligencias Matrimoniales_, or _Informaciones_, official inquiries to determine the civil standing of the contracting parties, which preceded every marriage, were the most numerous. Many of these are very long; some of them are of the seventeenth century, and they unfold an extremely instructive picture of the customs of those times. There are hardly any documents left in New Mexico of the period before the great insurrection of 1680, and I have the few that have been saved. But I found in Santa Clara a large number of details concerning the years preceding the insurrection, although contained in manuscripts that were composed one or two years after the troubles broke out. There have come to light little “court histories” of the governor of the time, scenes from the private life of long-vanished families which were then playing an important part in the troubled world called the Spanish Colony of New Mexico; notices of many an event which is never mentioned in the printed annals, and which was still of great importance. The real life of the people has taken shape out of these obscure writings of the monks, and many a striking revelation has been obtained from them. One of the discoveries made in them has given occasion to the present paper.

Among the _Diligencias_ or _Informaciones_ was one the superscription of which read, “Information of Pedro Meusnier--a Frenchman--1699.” It was strange to meet with a Frenchman in New Mexico in 1699; and on reading the document it appeared that Pedro or Pierre Meusnier, or Meunier, at the time a soldier in the garrison at Santa Fé, born in Paris, had come to America in the year 1684 with the flotilla commanded by Monsieur de la Sala. Meunier brought forward two witnesses, one of whom was named Santiago Grolee, the other Juan de Archeueque. Both were French, and both declared that they had come across the sea with Meunier in the flotilla which the same “Monsieur de la Sala” commanded; and Grolee said that he was born at La Rochelle.

“Monsieur de la Sala” could have been nobody else than the famous brave discoverer of the mouths of the Mississippi--Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The date agrees with this supposition, for La Salle crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the last time in 1684, to found a French colony on the coast of Texas. There came also with the expedition Jacques Grollet, a sailor, and a certain Jean l’Archévèque. It was the latter who, on March 18, 1687, led the unfortunate commander into the trap which his confederates Duhaut and Liotot had set, and in which La Salle was killed. Grollet was in the plot, but took no part in the murder. The supposition seems at least well founded that Juan de Archeueque was the traitor L’Archévèque, and Santiago Grolee was his accessory in a lesser degree, the sailor Grollet. I wrote at once to Mr. Francis Parkman, the historian of Canada, and received the answer that my supposition seemed to him perfectly well founded, although all that is known concerning the fate of the two men after La Salle’s death is that they were found among the Indians in 1689 by Alonzo de Leon, commanding a Spanish expedition to Texas, and were taken to New Mexico. They were sent from Mexico to Spain where they were supposed to have ended their lives in the galleys.

The last supposition was soon shown to be erroneous. The Jesuit father Andrés Cavo, author of the work “_Los tres siglos de Mexico_,” says:[94] “After a number of days the messengers [whom Leon had sent to the Indians] came back with two Frenchmen, whose names were Jacob Grollet and Juan l’Archiveque.... After Monclova returned, the governor [Leon] sent the two Frenchmen to the viceroy, and they legitimated themselves before him. The Conde de Galve, convinced that the affair was of particular importance, sent them both to the court of Charles II. under the care of Captain Don Andrés Perez.[95]... In this year [1691] Don Andrés Perez came back from Madrid with both of the Frenchmen.” This is now also confirmed by the deposition of Santiago Grolee himself, which I found in Santa Clara in the investigation (_Informacion_) concerning his own person. It is of the year 1699, and he said in it: “We remained lost in that country five years among the wild infidel Indians, and after we had at last escaped from their power we went to Spain by the order of the Viceroy Conde de Galve, in order to give an account of our persons and of that country.” He said nothing of La Salle’s death and of his own participation in the murder.

Satisfied that in the persons of Archeueque and Grolee I had found the notorious L’Archévèque and the sailor Grollet, two of the accomplices in the killing of La Salle, I made further investigation in the case. Members of a family named Archibeque still live in different parts of New Mexico; and as this one wrote his name that way in the later papers, I thought that these Archibeques might be descendants of the ill-famed Frenchman. In Santa Clara, and with the help of the general surveyor’s archives at Santa Fé, I succeeded in restoring a tolerably complete picture of the life of Jean l’Archévèque. I shall now limit myself to this picture, and avoid the tedious details of documentary research. With the exception of the participation in the death of La Salle and the voyage to Spain, the facts are new and the results of local investigations.

Jean l’Archévèque was born in Bayonne, in southern France, in the year 1671. His parents were Claude l’Archévèque and Marie d’Armagnac. Both died in 1719. When thirteen years old, in 1684, he went with Robert Cavelier de La Salle to the coast of Texas and shared the fortunes of that unfortunate expedition. He entered the service of the notorious Duhaut, who, equally with the surgeon Liotot, was chief of the conspiracy to which La Salle fell a victim. His relation to Duhaut and his youth, he being only sixteen years old in 1687, explain, or at least partly excuse, the criminal part which he performed on the morning of the 18th of March. It was he who stood on the river-bank and when La Salle came over and inquired for his nephew, who was already murdered, answered the commander in insolent tones, and led him towards the ambush, where Duhaut and Liotot were hidden in the high grass. Mr. Parkman has described the scene from the best sources and with his accustomed vividness; and I therefore refer to his work, “La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,” for the details of the affair. This historian also gives a very intelligible account of L’Archévèque’s behavior immediately after the murder. Whether repentance or a sudden coming back to his senses after the act or uncertainty concerning the real intentions of his associates determined him to it, L’Archévèque seems to have afterward gradually separated himself from the murderers. He thus escaped the vengeance which the freebooter Hiens inflicted on Duhaut and Liotot. The adherents of the murdered man also seem to have considered him less guilty. But he did not join the little company which set out on its extensive wanderings northward under the lead of Joutel. With Grollet and some others, among whom was Meunier, he stayed among the Indians of Texas till 1689, when Alonzo de Leon ransomed him. Fray Isidro Espinosa gives the details of this ransoming in his “_Crónica seráfica y apostólica_” (first part); but he does not mention L’Archévèque, although he names Pedro Muñi (or Meunier).

I have not been able to determine the date when the three Frenchmen went from Mexico to New Mexico. It was probably with Don Diego de Vargas, the reconqueror of the province. L’Archévèque and Meunier were soldiers, while Grollet came as a settler. All three were in Santa Fé as early as 1696. In the next year L’Archévèque was married to Antonia Gutierrez, who was born at Tezonco, near the City of Mexico, and was the widow of a certain Tomas de Yta, who had been murdered three years previously near Zacatecas. In the year 1701 he bought a land estate in Santa Fé, but still continued a soldier, and in that capacity visited in the next year the distant Indian villages of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuñi. His wife died in the first year of the eighteenth century, and he continued a widower till 1719, when he married as his second wife the daughter of the Alcalde Mayor Ignacio de Roybal. The second marriage was solemnized in the church of the pueblo of San Ildefonso, and the governor of New Mexico at the time, General Don Antonio Valverde Cosio, was one of the witnesses. L’Archévèque, or, as he now began to call himself, Captain Juan de Archibeque, stood in high credit. He had left the military service with honor, and had become a successful trader, or peddler. His trading journeys extended to Sonora, and he occasionally visited the City of Mexico on business. His notes[96] were current everywhere, and were even accepted and endorsed by men connected with the government. He was a man in easy circumstances--for New Mexico, a wealthy man. His son by his first marriage, Miguel de Archibeque, assisted him faithfully in his business affairs, and a natural son, Augustin de Archibeque, likewise helped, by his labor and his watchful care of his interests, in the accumulation of his wealth. Everything went on according to his desire.

Jean l’Archévèque celebrated his second marriage on the 16th of August, 1719, with a daughter of one of the first families of New Mexico. A year afterward, on the same day of the same month, Jean l’Archévèque was a bleeding corpse.

The “Captain” and former soldier, Juan de Archibeque, enjoyed with the Spanish military officers no less a degree of confidence than was reposed in him as a merchant by the same officers and the people in general. He was consulted concerning all important enterprises; and the minutes are in my hand of several war councils in which his views were influential. When, therefore, in the spring of 1720, Governor Don Antonio Valverde Cosio was contemplating the preparation of an expedition by order of the viceroy to the far northeast, in order to establish commercial relations with the Prairie Indians of Kansas, as well as to make a military reconnoissance in a direction in which an approach of the French was apprehended, L’Archévèque gave his opinion that the expedition should be dispatched at once. Among the reasons which in his view should commend it to the Spaniards, he emphasized the approach of “his countrymen, the French.” The campaign was organized; Don Pedro de Villazur was given the command of the fifty armed men who formed the corps, and Jean l’Archévèque, or Archibeque, went along as one of his staff. The march led through the great plains to the banks of the Arkansas River, which the force reached about August 14th. There they confronted a large camp or village of the Pananas (Pawnees). When the Pananas returned an obscure and therefore suspicious answer to a peaceful message of the Spanish commander, Villazur went back with his men and crossed the Arkansas, in order to have the river between himself and his presumed enemies. During the night between the 15th and 16th of August, the Spanish guards and the Indians of the company heard a splashing in the river, as if men were swimming across; and the guards were captured. A dog barked, but no attention was paid to that sign. At daybreak, when the horses had been collected and the command was about to mount, an attack was made upon them from the high grass. The horses took fright at the first shots, which were fired from a very short distance, and were aimed mainly at the tent of the commander. Some of the soldiers succeeded in catching the fugitive animals, but only for their own deliverance. The effect of the enemy’s fire was so quick and murderous that nothing else than flight was thought of. Five or six of the fifty armed men escaped. Among the dead were the commander, Don Pedro de Villazur, and Jean l’Archévèque. It is probable his own countrymen, the French, of whom there were several with the Pananas, shot him. His personal servant, although himself bleeding from six wounds, stayed with him till he ceased to breathe, and then saved himself “by a miracle,” as he declares, with one of the horses of the deceased. The betrayer of La Salle had fallen, on the anniversary of his second marriage, at the hands of his own countrymen or their allies.

L’Archévèque left a property of 6118 pesos, a considerable sum for the time. Besides his sons--his legitimate son Miguel and his natural son Augustin--he left a daughter, Marie, by his first marriage. His widow three years afterward married Bernardino Sena. From the two sons are derived the present families of Archibeque in New Mexico.

It is hardly possible to determine how far L’Archévèque was knowingly accessory to the murder of La Salle. His youth lends favor to the supposition that he may have acted ignorantly or thoughtlessly when he led the great discoverer into the ambush. But his whole character, as it was afterward unfolded, indicates an early maturity of mind, a considerable capacity, and great resolution, as well as unusual sagacity. His hand-writing, which I have often read, shows that he had been taught in school; and he could have received his instruction only in France. The manner of his death is very suggestive of a later requital for his earlier offence.

Of Meunier I could learn nothing further; and of Grollet only that he settled at Bernalillo, on the Rio Grande, there married Elena Galuegos in the year 1699, and was still living six years later.

The three persons on whose fate a light has been so curiously thrown by the archives of Santa Clara were the first French settlers on New Mexican territory. Driven there in consequence of a murder, one of them at least, L’Archévèque, played a notable part in the history of the country. His descendants know little or nothing of the deeds and adventures of their ancestor, and are quiet, modest people; who yet seldom fail to insist that they are of French origin. The church in which Archévèque was married a second time, a year before his tragical death, cannot be seen from the barren dune on which Santa Clara stands. The high mesa of San Ildefonso hides the pueblo, although it can be barely five miles from Santa Clara. That isolated lava cliff also, with the perpendicular precipices around its summit, bears a memory of the betrayer of La Salle. As a Spanish soldier he made several unsuccessful attempts to take the Black Mesa, as it was called, by storm.

From Santa Clara the view is very beautiful; but a taint of blood adheres to the rocks and to the valley which thence the eye looks down upon. Elsewhere throughout New Mexico, in places of ancient habitation, it is the same: for the history of this region is darkened by a sombre melancholy, the inevitable outcome of its blood-stained past.

THE END

* * * * *

D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS.

_THE HISTORICAL REFERENCE-BOOK, comprising a Chronological Table of Universal History, a Chronological Dictionary of Universal History, a Biographical Dictionary._ With Geographical Notes. For the use of Students, Teachers, and Readers. By LOUIS HEILPRIN. Fourth edition, revised and brought down to 1893. Crown 8vo. 569 pages. Half leather, $3.00.

“One of the most complete, compact, and valuable works of reference yet produced.”--_Troy Daily Times._

“Unequaled in its field.”--_Boston Courier._

“A small library in itself.”--_Chicago Dial._

“An invaluable book of reference, useful alike to the student and the general reader. The arrangement could scarcely be better or more convenient.”--_New York Herald._

“The conspectus of the world’s history is as full as the wisest terseness could put within the space.”--_Philadelphia American._

“We miss hardly anything that we should consider desirable, and we have not been able to detect a single mistake or misprint.”--_New York Nation._

“So far as we have tested the accuracy of the present work we have found it without flaw.”--_Christian Union._

“The conspicuous merits of the work are condensation and accuracy. These points alone should suffice to give the ‘Historical Reference-Book’ a place in every public and private library.”--_Boston Beacon._

“The method of the tabulation is admirable for ready reference.”--_New York Home Journal._

“This cyclopædia of condensed knowledge is a work that will speedily become a necessity to the general reader as well as to the student.”--_Detroit Free Press._

“For clearness, correctness, and the readiness with which the reader can find the information of which he is in search, the volume is far in advance of any work of its kind with which we are acquainted.”--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._

“_The geographical notes which accompany the historical incidents are a novel addition, and exceedingly helpful._ The size also commends it, making it convenient for constant reference, while the three divisions and careful elimination of minor and uninteresting incidents make it much easier to find dates and events about which accuracy is necessary. Sir William Hamilton avers that too retentive a memory tends to hinder the development of the judgment by presenting too much for decision. A work like this is thus better than memory. It is a ‘mental larder’ which needs no care, and whose contents are ever available.”--_New York University Quarterly._

_A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY._ Extending from the Earliest Times to the Year 1892. For the use of Students, Teachers, and Readers. By LOUIS HEILPRIn. 12mo. 200 pages. Cloth, $1.25.

This is one of the three sections comprised in Heilprin’s “Historical Reference-Book,” bound separately for convenience of those who may not require the entire volume. Specimen pages sent on request.

* * * * *

“This work marks an epoch in the history-writing of this country.”--_St. Louis Post-Dispatch._

_THE HOUSEHOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES AND ITS PEOPLE._ FOR YOUNG AMERICANS. By EDWARD EGGLESTON. Richly illustrated with 350 Drawings, 75 Maps, etc. Square 8vo. Cloth, $2.50.

_FROM THE PREFACE._

The present work is meant, in the first instance, for the young--not alone for boys and girls, but for young men and women who have yet to make themselves familiar with the more important features of their country’s history. By a book for the young is meant one in which the author studies to make his statements clear and explicit, in which curious and picturesque details are inserted, and in which the writer does not neglect such anecdotes as lend the charm of a human and personal interest to the broader facts of the nation’s story. That history is often tiresome to the young is not so much the fault of history as of a false method of writing by which one contrives to relate events without sympathy or imagination, without narrative connection or animation. The attempt to master vague and general records of kiln-dried facts is certain to beget in the ordinary reader a repulsion from the study of history--one of the very most important of all studies for its widening influence on general culture.

“Fills a decided gap which has existed for the past twenty years in American historical literature. The work is admirably planned and executed, and will at once take its place as a standard record of the life, growth, and development of the nation. It is profusely and beautifully illustrated.”--_Boston Transcript._

“The book in its new dress makes a much finer appearance than before, and will be welcomed by older readers as gladly as its predecessor was greeted by girls and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of colored plates, woodcuts, and photographic reproductions, gives an unwonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely as the text engages the mind.”--_New York Critic._

“The author writes history as a story. It can never be less than that. The book will enlist the interest of young people, enlighten their understanding, and by the glow of its statements fix the great events of the country firmly in the mind.”--_San Francisco Bulletin._

* * * * *

_HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES_, from the Revolution to the Civil War. By JOHN BACH MCMASTER. To be completed in five volumes. Vols. I, II, and III now ready. 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $2.50 each.

In the course of this narrative much is written of wars, conspiracies, and rebellions; of Presidents, of Congresses, of embassies, of treaties, of the ambition of political leaders, and of the rise of great parties in the nation. Yet the history of the people is the chief theme. At every stage of the splendid progress which separates the America of Washington and Adams from the America in which we live, it has been the author’s purpose to describe the dress, the occupations, the amusements, the literary canons of the times; to note the changes of manners and morals; to trace the growth of that humane spirit which abolished punishment for debt, and reformed the discipline of prisons and of jails; to recount the manifold improvements which, in a thousand ways, have multiplied the conveniences of life and ministered to the happiness of our race; to describe the rise and progress of that long series of mechanical inventions and discoveries which is now the admiration of the world, and our just pride and boast; to tell how, under the benign influence of liberty and peace, there sprang up, in the course of a single century, a prosperity unparalleled in the annals of human affairs.

“The pledge given by Mr. McMaster, that ‘the history of the people shall be the chief theme,’ is punctiliously and satisfactorily fulfilled. He carries out his promise in a complete, vivid, and delightful way. We should add that the literary execution of the work is worthy of the indefatigable industry and unceasing vigilance with which the stores of historical material have been accumulated, weighed, and sifted. The cardinal qualities of style, lucidity, animation, and energy, are everywhere present. Seldom indeed has a book in which matter of substantial value has been so happily united to attractiveness of form been offered by an American author to his fellow-citizens.”--_New York Sun._

“To recount the marvelous progress of the American people, to describe their life, their literature, their occupations, their amusements, is Mr. McMaster’s object. His theme is an important one, and we congratulate him on his success. It has rarely been our province to notice a book with so many excellences and so few defects.”--_New York Herald._

“Mr. McMaster at once shows his grasp of the various themes and his special capacity as a historian of the people. His aim is high, but he hits the mark.”--_New York Journal of Commerce._

“...The author’s pages abound, too, with illustrations of the best kind of historical work, that of unearthing hidden sources of information and employing them, not after the modern style of historical writing, in a mere report, but with the true artistic method, in a well-digested narrative.... If Mr. McMaster finishes his work in the spirit and with the thoroughness and skill with which it has begun, it will take its place among the classics of American literature.”--_Christian Union._

* * * * *

A BOOK FOR THE QUADRI-CENTENNIAL YEAR.

_THE STORY OF COLUMBUS._ By ELIZABETH EGGLESTON SEELYE, edited by Dr. Edward Eggleston. With 100 Illustrations by Allegra Eggleston. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

This book is the result of most extensive investigations, which have been carefully verified by the eminent historian and novelist, Dr. Eggleston. It is not too much to say that the whole world has been drawn upon for material by the author and the artist. The fruits of these investigations are presented in a popular, readable, always entertaining form. While the book contains all the results of modern inquiry offered in the bulkiest biographies, the story is here condensed and the material selected with a view to an always interesting narrative. To a considerable extent the plan of both text and illustrations is like that of Eggleston’s “Household History of the United States.” It is hardly necessary to say more regarding the fitness of this volume for a place in every American private, public, and school library.

“A brief, popular, interesting, and yet critical volume, just such as we should wish to place in the hands of a young reader. The authors of this volume have done their best to keep it on a high plane of accuracy and conscientious work without losing sight of their readers.”--_New York Independent._

“In some respects altogether the best book that the Columbus year has brought out.”--_Rochester Post-Express._

“A simple story told in a natural fashion, and will be found far more interesting than many of the more ambitious works on a similar theme.”--_New York Journal of Commerce._

“This is no ordinary work. It is pre-eminently a work of the present time and of the future as well.”--_Boston Traveller._

“Mrs. Seelye’s book is pleasing in its general effect, and reveals the results of painstaking and conscientious study.”--_New York Tribune._

“A very just account is given of Columbus, his failings being neither concealed nor magnified, but his real greatness being made plain.”--_New York Examiner._

“The illustrations are particularly well chosen and neatly executed, and they add to the general excellence of the volume.”--_New York Times._

* * * * *

_AROUND AND ABOUT SOUTH AMERICA: Twenty Months of Quest and Query._ By FRANK VINCENT, author of “The Land of the White Elephant,” etc. With Maps, Plans, and 54 full-page Illustrations. 8vo, xxiv + 473 pages. Ornamental cloth, $5.00.

No former traveler has made so comprehensive and thorough a tour of Spanish and Portuguese America as did Mr. Vincent. He visited every capital, chief city, and important seaport, made several expeditions into the interior of Brazil and the Argentine Republic, and ascended the Paraná, Paraguay, Amazon, Orinoco, and Magdalena Rivers; he visited the crater of Pichinchas, 16,000 feet above the sea-level; he explored falls in the center of the continent, which, though meriting the title of “Niagara of South America,” are all but unknown to the outside world; he spent months in the picturesque capital of Rio Janeiro; he visited the coffee districts, studied the slaves, descended the gold-mines, viewed the greatest rapids of the globe, entered the isolated Guianas, and so on.

_IN AND OUT OF CENTRAL AMERICA; and other Sketches and Studies of Travel._ By FRANK VINCENT. With Maps and Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.

_BRAZIL: Its Condition and Prospects._ By C. C. ANDREWS, ex-Consul-General to Brazil. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

“I hope I may be able to present some facts in respect to the present situation of Brazil which will be both instructive and entertaining to general readers. My means of acquaintance with that empire are principally derived from a residence of three years at Rio de Janeiro, its capital, while employed in the service of the United States Government, during which period I made a few journeys into the interior.”--_From the Preface._

_CHINA: Travels and Investigations in the “Middle Kingdom.”_ A Study of its Civilization and Possibilities. With a Glance at Japan. By JAMES HARRISON WILSON, late Major-General United States Volunteers and Brevet Major-General United States Army. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

“The book presents China and Japan in all these aspects; the manners and customs of the people; the institutions, tendencies, and social ideas; the government and leading men.”--_Boston Traveller._

* * * * *

_ABRAHAM LINCOLN: The True Story of a Great LIFE._ By WILLIAM H. HERNDON and JESSE W. WEIK. With numerous Illustrations. New and revised edition, with an introduction by HORACE WHITE. In two volumes. 12mo. Cloth, $3.00.

This is probably the most intimate life of Lincoln ever written. The book, by Lincoln’s law-partner, William H. Herndon, and his friend Jesse W. Weik, shows us Lincoln the man. It is a true picture of his surroundings and influences and acts. It is not an attempt to construct a political history, with Lincoln often in the background, nor is it an effort to apotheosize the American who stands first in our history next to Washington. The writers knew Lincoln intimately. Their book is the result of unreserved association. There is no attempt to portray the man as other than he really was, and on this account their frank testimony must be accepted, and their biography must take permanent rank as the best and most illuminating study of Lincoln’s character and personality. Their story, simply told, relieved by characteristic anecdotes, and vivid with local color, will be found a fascinating work.

“Truly, they who wish to know Lincoln as he really was must read the biography of him written by his friend and law-partner, W. H. Herndon. This book was imperatively needed to brush aside the rank growth of myth and legend which was threatening to hide the real lineaments of Lincoln from the eyes of posterity. On one pretext or another, but usually upon the plea that he was the central figure of a great historical picture, most of his self-appointed biographers have, by suppressing a part of the truth and magnifying or embellishing the rest, produced portraits which those of Lincoln’s contemporaries who knew him best are scarcely able to recognize. There is, on the other hand, no doubt about the faithfulness of Mr. Herndon’s delineation. The marks of unflinching veracity are patent in every line.”--_New York Sun._

“Among the books which ought most emphatically to have been written must be classed ‘Herndon’s Lincoln.’”--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

“The author has his own notion of what a biography should be, and it is simple enough. The story should tell all, plainly and even bluntly. Mr. Herndon is naturally a very direct writer, and he has been industrious in gathering material. Whether an incident happened before or behind the scenes, is all the same to him. He gives it without artifice or apology. He describes the life of his friend Lincoln just as he saw it.”--_Cincinnati Commercial Gazette._

“A remarkable piece of literary achievement--remarkable alike for its fidelity to facts, its fullness of details, its constructive skill, and its literary charm.”--_New York Times._

“It will always remain the authentic life of Abraham Lincoln.”--_Chicago Herald._

“The book is a valuable depository of anecdotes, innumerable and characteristic. It has every claim to the proud boast of being the ‘true story of a great life.’”--_Philadelphia Ledger._

“Will be accepted as the best biography yet written of the great President.”--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

“Mr. White claims that, as a portraiture of the man Lincoln, Mr. Herndon’s work ‘will never be surpassed.’ Certainly it has never been equaled yet, and this new edition is all that could be desired.”--_New York Observer._

“The three portraits of Lincoln are the best that exist; and not the least characteristic of these, the Lincoln of the Douglas debates, has never before been engraved.... Herndon’s narrative gives, as nothing else is likely to give, the material from which we may form a true picture of the man from infancy to maturity.”--_The Nation._

* * * * *

_APPLETONS’ CYCLOPÆDIA OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY._ Complete in six volumes, royal 8vo, containing about 800 pages each. With sixty-one fine steel portraits and some two thousand smaller vignette portraits and views of birthplaces, residences, statues, etc.

APPLETONS’ CYCLOPÆDIA OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY, edited by General JAMES GRANT WILSON, President of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, and Professor JOHN FISKE, formerly of Harvard University, assisted by over two hundred special contributors, contains a biographical sketch of every person eminent in American civil and military history, in law and politics, in divinity, in literature and art, in science and in invention. Its plan embraces all the countries of North and South America, and includes distinguished persons born abroad, but related to American history. As events are always connected with persons, it affords a complete compendium of American history in every branch of human achievement. An exhaustive topical and analytical Index enables the reader to follow the history of any subject with great readiness.

“It is the most complete work that exists on the subject. The tone and guiding spirit of the book are certainly very fair, and show a mind bent on a discriminate, just, and proper treatment of its subject.”--_From the_ Hon. GEORGE BANCROFT.

“The portraits are remarkably good. To any one interested in American history or literature, the Cyclopædia will be indispensable.”--_From the_ Hon. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

“The selection of names seems to be liberal and just. The portraits, so far as I can judge, are faithful, and the biographies trustworthy.”--_From_ NOAH PORTER, D. D., LL. D., _ex-President of Yale College_.

“A most valuable and interesting work.”--_From the_ Hon. WM. E. GLADSTONE.

“I have examined it with great interest and great gratification. It is a noble work, and does enviable credit to its editors and publishers.”--_From the_ Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

“I have carefully examined ‘Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography,’ and do not hesitate to commend it to favor. It is admirably adapted to use in the family and the schools, and is so cheap as to come within the reach of all classes of readers and students.”--_From_ J. B. FORAKER, _ex-Governor of Ohio_.

“This book of American biography has come to me with a most unusual charm. It sets before us the faces of great Americans, both men and women, and gives us a perspective view of their lives. Where so many noble and great have lived and wrought, one is encouraged to believe the soil from which they sprang, the air they breathed, and the sky over their heads, to be the best this world affords, and one says, ‘Thank God, I also am an American!’ We have many books of biography, but I have seen none so ample, so clear-cut, and breathing so strongly the best spirit of our native land. No young man or woman can fail to find among these ample pages some model worthy of imitation.”--_From_ FRANCES E. WILLARD, _President N. W. C. T. U._

“I congratulate you on the beauty of the volume, and the thoroughness of the work.”--_From_ Bishop PHILLIPS BROOKS.

“Every day’s use of this admirable work confirms me in regard to its comprehensiveness and accuracy.”--_From_ CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

_Price, per volume, cloth or buckram, $5.00; sheep, $6.00; half calf or half morocco, $7.00. Sold only by subscription. Descriptive circular, with specimen pages, sent on application. Agents wanted for districts not yet assigned._

* * * * *

MILITARY TEXT-BOOKS.

_THE NEW ARMY DRILL REGULATIONS._ As approved by the Secretary of War. Superseding Upton’s Tactics, previously the authorized standard for the United States Army.

FOR INFANTRY.--One volume. Bound in leather, with tuck, 75 cents; in stiff paper covers, 30 cents.

FOR CAVALRY.--One volume. Bound in leather, with tuck, $1.00.

FOR ARTILLERY.--One volume. Bound in leather, with tuck, $1.00.

_MANUAL OF GUARD DUTY, for the United States Army._ Paper, 25 cents; leather, 50 cents.

_HANDBOOK OF MILITARY SIGNALING._ Prepared by Captain ALBERT GALLUP, Signal Officer First Brigade, National Guard, New York. Illustrated. 16mo. Flexible cloth, 50 cents.

This manual has been approved by the Signal Office at Washington, and its use has been prescribed for the National Guard of the State of New York.

_THREE ROADS TO A COMMISSION IN THE United States Army._ By Lieutenant W. P. BURNHAM, Sixth U. S. Infantry, author of “Manual of Outpost Duty,” etc. 12mo. Cloth.

_PROMPT AID TO THE INJURED._ A Manual of Instruction designed for Military and Civil Use. By ALVAH H. DOTY, M. D., Major and Surgeon, Ninth Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y.; Attending Surgeon to Bellevue Hospital Medical Dispensary, New York. With 96 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

* * * * *

MODERN SCIENCE SERIES.

Edited by Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., F. R. S.

_THE CAUSE OF AN ICE AGE._ By Sir ROBERT BALL, LL. D., F. R. S., Royal Astronomer of Ireland, author of “Starland.”

“Sir Robert Ball’s book is, as a matter of course, admirably written. Though but a small one, it is a most important contribution to geology.”--_London Saturday Review._

“A fascinating subject, cleverly related and almost colloquially discussed.”--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._

_THE HORSE_: A Study in Natural History. By WILLIAM H. FLOWER, C. B., Director in the British Natural History Museum. With 27 Illustrations.

“The author admits that there are 3,800 separate treatises on the horse already published, but he thinks that he can add something to the amount of useful information now before the public, and that something not heretofore written will be found in this book. The volume gives a large amount of information, both scientific and practical, on the noble animal of which it treats.”--_New York Commercial Advertiser._

_THE OAK_: A Study in Botany. By H. MARSHALL WARD, F. R. S. With 53 Illustrations.

“An excellent volume for young persons with a taste for scientific studies, because it will lead them from the contemplation of superficial appearances and those generalities which are so misleading to the immature mind, to a consideration of the methods of systematic investigation.”--_Boston Beacon._

“From the acorn to the timber which has figured so gloriously in English ships and houses, the tree is fully described, and all its living and preserved beauties and virtues, in nature and in construction, are recounted and pictured.”--_Brooklyn Eagle._

_ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE._ By GEORGE L. GOMME, F. S. A., President of the Folklore Society, etc.

“Many scholars have drawn upon various classes of folklore as illustrative of problems in mythology, but no attempt has been made until lately to formulate the principles and laws of folklore in general. This labor the learned President of the English Folklore Society has undertaken, and has accomplished his task, as might have been expected, in a scholarly and entertaining volume.”--_New York Evening Post._

“The author puts forward no extravagant assumptions, and the method he points out for the comparative study of folklore seems to promise a considerable extension of knowledge as to prehistoric times.”--_Independent._

_THE LAWS AND PROPERTIES OF MATTER._ By R. T. GLAZEBROOK, F. R. S., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Each, 12mo, cloth, $1.00.

* * * * *

APPLETONS’ LIBRARY LISTS.

Libraries, whether for the school, home, or the public at large, are among the most important and wide-reaching educational factors in the advancement of civilization. Modern intellectual activity, keeping pace with modern invention, has added to the earlier stores of literature myriads of books, and a still greater mass of reading-matter in other forms. Unfortunately, much of the material put into print is not of an educational or elevating character. It is important, then, in the selection of books for public use, especially for the young, that great care be exercised to secure only such kinds of reading as will be wholesome, instructive, and intrinsically valuable.

For more than fifty years Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. have been engaged in the publication of the choicest productions from the pens of distinguished authors of the past and present, of both Europe and America, and their catalogue now comprises titles of several thousand volumes, embracing every department of knowledge. Classified lists of these publications have been prepared, affording facilities for a judicious selection of books covering the whole range of Literature, Science, and Art, for individual book-buyers or for a thorough equipment of any library.

Lists A, B, and C are of books selected especially for School Libraries. The other lists are of books grouped according to subjects. The classifications are as follows:

_List A._--_For Primary and Intermediate Grades._

_List B._--_For Grammar and High School Grades._

_List C._--_For College and University Libraries._

List D.--HISTORY. “ E.--BIOGRAPHY. “ F.--PHYSICAL SCIENCE. “ G.--MENTAL AND MORAL SCIENCE. “ H.--POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. “ I.--PHILOSOPHY AND METAPHYSICS. “ K.--HYGIENE AND SANITARY SCIENCE. “ L.--FINANCE AND ECONOMICS. “ M.--TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIAL ARTS. “ N.--ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. “ O.--LITERATURE AND ART. “ P.--BOOKS OF REFERENCE. “ R.--TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE. “ S.--PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION. “ T.--FICTION. “ U.--AMUSEMENTS AND RECREATIONS. “ V.--EVOLUTION. “ W.--ARCHÆOLOGY AND PALÆONTOLOGY.

Also, Special Lists of Legal, Medical, and Religious Works.

We respectfully invite the attention of public and private book-buyers everywhere to these lists, confident that they will be found of interest and profit. Either or all will be mailed free on request.

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] While we may look for the former treasure region in Sumatra, the latest researches make it probable that Ophir represented not only Sofala, but also the coasts and interior of East Africa south of it, including Mozambique, Monomotapa, and the country of the ruins of Zimbabue (Mashonaland). This conclusion appears more credible than the opinion persistently maintained by Montesino that Ophir was Peru. The difficulties of a long sea-voyage from Ezion-Geber to the western coast of South America would be partly removed if we could accept Professor Haeckel’s hypothesis of a continent of Lemuria having once stood in the Indian Ocean, and should also suppose the Western Atlantis to have existed--which the natives of Australia sought in the eastern part of their quarter of the globe.

[2] Journal of the Admiral, published by Navarrete, from the “_Historia apologética de las Indias_” of Bartolomeo de Las Casas, MSS. at Madrid.

[3] Decada iii.

[4] Emeralds may also have been shown to the Spaniards then; for in the capitulation with Ojeda, on his second voyage, July 5, 1501, islands are mentioned, near Quiquevacoa, on the mainland, where the green stones were of which specimens had been brought to him. Quiquevacoa, or Coquivacoa, was the Indian name for the country around the Gulf of Venezuela.

[5] The name of “The Rich Coast,” Costa Rica, is still attached to that part of Central America north of Chiriqui.

[6] Ojeda and Diego de Nicuesa.

[7] Quintana, and Herrera, dec. i. lib. x. cap. iii.

[8] The discovery of Mexico by Córdova and its conquest afterward by Cortés affected the Spanish colonies south of the Isthmus very little. The influence of the colonization of the Mexican table-land extended no farther than to Yucatan, Guatemala, and a part of Honduras. The booty which the Spaniards gained there, partly in gold, was not great. The presents which the chiefs at Tenochtitlan sent to the seacoast to Cortés were lost at sea, and all the treasures which the Mexicans had accumulated in their great “pueblo” in the lagoon were ruined by the inundation during the retreat of July 1, 1519, or were burned during the subsequent attack.

[9] Decada i., p. 267.

[10] “_Relacion de los sucesos de Pedrarias Davila_,” etc.

[11] “_Historia general del nuevo Reyno de Granada, 1688._”

[12] Zamora treats these ceremonies as fabulous, but they are vouched for by Piedrahita, Pedro Simon, and others, as having once existed.

[13] A group of ten golden figures has been found in the lagoon of Siecha, representing the _balsa_ with the _dorado_.

[14] Bacatá--the extreme cultivated land.

[15] Dec. iv. lib. iv. cap. i., p. 101.

[16] Dr. Clements R. Markham supposes, following Oviedo y Baños (“_Historia de Venezuela_,” 1728), that Dalfinger died from a wound in 1530; but this appears to be erroneous, as is the assertion, too, of the same author that Dalfinger got no farther than the Rio Cesar. As to the latter point, Herrera, who is very exact in relating the deeds of the Europeans, mentions very plainly his reaching the cool country (_adonde halló tierra fria_). Dalfinger’s death can hardly have taken place before 1532. Nicolaus Federmann, Dalfinger’s provincial successor, says that he went to San Domingo in 1530 to be cured of a fever. When Federmann returned, in 1532, from his first expedition (southward to the plain of Meta), the governor was still living. Herrera’s statement (dec. iv. lib. ii. cap. ii.) that Dalfinger died at Coro in 1532 is the probable one. Federmann went back to Europe, but we shall see him later seeking for the _dorado_. Hans Seissenhoffer (Juan Aleman) succeeded him as governor of Coro, but died soon afterward without having undertaken anything. His successor, Georg von Speyer, was likewise inactive till the year 1535.

[17] Called Motolinia, “the poor” “_Historia de los Indios de Nueva España._”

[18] “_Hist. gen. y nat. de Indias_,” lib. xxiv. cap. i.

[19] Herrera, dec. v. lib. ii. cap. i.

[20] The knowledge of this river was so imperfect at this time that we cannot be sure this statement is correct, although Herrera says (dec. iv. lib. x. cap. ix.): “Diego de Ordás reached the Rio Marañon with the intention of beginning his explorations there.”

[21] From _arna_, tiger.

[22] Herrera, dec. iv. lib. x. cap. x.

[23] Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. vii.

[24] According to Oviedo there were two San Miguels: the “house of contention,” where D’Ortal landed, “_en aquel golpho é costa de Paria_” (lib. xxxiv. cap. viii.); and the later San Miguel de Neveri, east of Piritú. Oviedo and Herrera do not agree concerning the latter post.

[25] Huyapari was one of the many names of the Orinoco. It is also written Biapari and Uiapari.

[26] The height of water in the Orinoco in the interior of Guiana varies from twenty-eight to thirty-four feet annually.

[27] Oviedo.

[28] Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. xv.

[29] Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. xvi.

[30] “_Relacion de Nicolaus Federmann le Jeune_,” cap. ii. Translated by Ternaux-Compans. The original was printed at Haguenau in 1557. We here follow almost exclusively the story of Federmann himself. Oviedo does not mention Federmann’s next campaign, but says that he was in Coro during the rest of Dalfinger’s life. Herrera also says nothing about it. Hence his own account is our only authority.

[31] Probably near the present Barquicimeto.

[32] We should add to this that nobody but Federmann mentions these dwarfs.

[33] They are: Ananas; Cobéus (man-eater); Piraiurus (fish-snout); Pisas (net); Tapurus (tapir); Uaracus (fish); Tucunderas (ant); Jacamis (trumpet-bird); Mucuras (opossum); Taiassus (hog); Tijucos (mud); Arapassos (woodpecker); Tucanas (pepper-eater); Uacarras (crane); Ipecas (duck); Gis (axe); Coua (wasp); Corocoro (green ibis); Armadillos (armadillo); Tatus; Penimbucas (ashes). These names are somewhat similar to the designations which the Iroquois chose for their gentes, and prove, by the use of the names of peculiar animals, that the tribe of the Uaupés was certainly formed or divided up within tropical America.

[34] This story related to the unfortunate expedition of Herrera.

[35] The former sings in “Araucana” of Chili; the latter of La Plata in “Argentina.”

[36] Dec. v. lib. viii. cap. xiv.

[37] Father Gumilla says likewise in “_El Orinoco ilustrado_,” etc.: “Reports concerning the gilded king were current from the earliest times of the conquest at Santa Marta, as well as on the coast of Venezuela.”

[38] As Fray Pedro Simon records in the fragment of his “_Noticias historiales_” printed by Lord Kingsborough.

[39] In this act he abused his powers, which only permitted him to concede the whole government of Peru at pleasure, while single districts were put under the direction of commanders who could not be changed by him. See Herrera, dec. vi. lib. iii. cap. xi., and lib. viii. cap. vi.

[40] Herrera, dec. vi. lib. viii. cap. vi.

[41] It was probably the black cinnamon which Balmont de Bomaré” in his “_Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle_” of 1765 calls “_Canelle geroflée, Capelet ou Bois de Crabe_.”

[42] Oviedo says 230; Zarate, 200, and 4000 Indians.

[43] “_Historia del Descubrimiento y de la Conquista del Peru._”

[44] “_Une Barca llena de Bastimento._”

[45] Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, a Dominican, who went in Orellana’s voyage, says that the current was so strong that they travelled twenty-five leagues a day.

[46] On which a contemporary, Gómara, in his “_Historia General de las Indias_,” division, “_Rio de Orellana_,” lays special emphasis.

[47] The later Peruvian fable of the Paytiti is connected, as Von Humboldt has justly remarked, with the last concerted efforts of the Inca tribe to hold its position on the upper tributaries of the Amazon, and has therefore no connection the real _dorado_ legend.

[48] Herrera, dec. vii. lib. iv. cap. xii.

[49] Oviedo, lib. xxvi. cap. xxx.

[50] According to Oviedo (lib. xxv. cap. xvi.), 1262 pesos for the men and 1700 pesos for Von Speyer.

[51] Oviedo quotes from a report of Von Speyer’s dated Coro, October 9, 1538, which has not since received any attention. Possibly it no longer exists.

[52] Benzoni, “_Storia di Nuovo Mondo_,” etc., says that Von Speyer came to a tragical end, and was murdered in bed by the Spaniards. There is no further evidence on this point. Benzoni was in America, it is true, from 1541 to 1556, but his statements have not nearly the value of those of Oviedo, who was very much interested in Von Speyer, was personally acquainted with him, and would at least have spoken of such a crime with indignation, especially as Benzoni himself says the King of Spain caused the murderers to be punished. Benzoni has probably confounded Von Speyer’s death with some later bloody event.

[53] Oviedo.

[54] It appears that Welser’s agents were, besides, creditors of most of the soldiers who went in this campaign, so that their interests commanded them to give the men all possible assistance, in order that they might recover what was due them.

[55] Herrera, dec. vi. lib. ix. cap. iii.

[56] Lib. l. cap. xxiv.

[57] “_El Nuevo Descubrimiento del gran Rio de las Amazonas_,” Madrid, 1664.

[58] “_Historia del reyno de Quito._”

[59] The third of the able monsters of that name who lived in South America in the middle of the sixteenth century.

[60] “_Noticias historiales_” Part I., Noticia VI., cap. i.

[61] Cap. xviii.

[62] Cap. xxiii.

[63] “_Hist. Nat. general de las Indias_,” lib. ii. cap. vi.

[64] The Bay of Santa Cruz, in the present State of Florida, appears to have been the point where Narvaez landed.

[65] This province comprised the undefined northwest of Mexico, while New Biscay included the northeast, on the coast of the Mexican gulf.

[66] _Mar del Sur_, the Pacific Ocean, in distinction from _Mar del Norte_, the Northern Sea, the name by which the Atlantic Ocean was known in the sixteenth century.

[67] Particularly the first syllable, _Bac_, a corruption of _Bat Ki_--old house--as it often appears in the names of places in Arizona, e.g., _San Xavier del Bac_, _Tubac_, etc.

[68] The large former settlement of the Opatas at Casas Grandes, at the western foot of the Sierra Madre in Chihuahua, cannot be considered in connection with this discussion, for it was called “Hue-hueri-gi-ta,” and was already deserted in the sixteenth century.

[69] The application by the whites of foreign names to Indian tribes is very frequent in America.

[70] We may remark further that interchanges of _b_ and _v_ were common with the early Spanish writers, and that Fray Marcos de Nizza was a Piedmontese, who, writing in the Italian style, wrote _Ci_ for the English _Chi_; thus the similarity between Shiuano and Chivola becomes greater, and the difference limits itself to such a confusion of sounds and such exchanges of letters arising from it as are often and strikingly exemplified in the Indian names of places in New Mexico; for example, in the Tehua language, _Ta-ui_ into _Taos_; in the Queres, _Pa-go_ or _Pa-yo-qo-na_ into _Pecos_, _Hamish_ into _Jemez_, _Qo-tyi-ti_ into _Cochiti_; the Tigua word _Tuth-la-nay_ into _Tutahaco_; _Saray_ into _Xalay_, _Na-si-ap_ into _Napeya_; the Zuñi names _Mu-gua_ into _Moqui_, _Hacuqua_ into _Acuco_. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the name Cibola, as the Italian monk heard and pronounced it, was strikingly similar to the word in the Zuñi language that denotes the Zuñi country; therefore this first linguistic clue suggests that the “seven cities of Cibola” may be sought in the region of Zuñi.

[71] They are also known in Sonora as Névomé.

[72] As they still did at the beginning of this century.

[73] Then called _Mar Vermejo_, the Red Sea. It was navigated for the first time by Francisco de Ulloa, in 1539.

[74] Properly, uninhabited region--“_desierto_.”

[75] Casteñeda’s work was not printed till 1838, and then in a French translation.

[76] The earliest documentary data on the subject are of 1655.

[77] A former mission, which the Apaches burned in 1836, and in the place of which stands a miserable hamlet.

[78] The same who in his time had so inhospitably received Cabeza de Vaca and his companions.

[79] It appears that he did not return to Sonora.

[80] The Zuñi call them Mu-qua, whence the word Moqui is derived.

[81] These helmets, or, rather, leather caps, are still in use among the Pueblos. They belong to the aboriginal equipment for war.

[82] It is doubtful whether the Zuñis at that time took part in the periodical buffalo-hunts which the Pueblo Indians farther east still engaged in as late as 1881.

[83] Vol. i. of the “Papers of the Archæological Institute of America,” 1883.

[84] Casteñeda says he was a slave, but that is not correct. He did not belong to the tribe, and had attached himself to a family, but he was not and could not be a slave, according to the custom of the Pueblos. Every Indian has a right to be a permanent guest with them.

[85] Blue turquois is rare.

[86] Available only as a pigment on account of the difficulty of working it.

[87] Santa Fé was not founded till ten years later.

[88] The legend stands in the Martyrology under date of the 30th of November, but Gonzaga (“_Orígen de la religion seráfica_,” 1587,