From here the general sent out to explore the country,[1] and they found another settlement four days from there[2]. . . The country was well inhabited, and they had plenty of kidney beans and prunes like those of Castile, and tall vineyards. These village settlements extended for three days. This was called Cona. Some Teyas,[3] as these people are called, went with the army from here and traveled as far as the end of the other settlements with their packs of dogs and women and children, and then they gave them guides to proceed to a large ravine where the army was. They did not let these guides speak with the Turk, and did not receive the same statements from these as they had from the others. These said that Quivira was toward the north, and that we would not find any good road thither. After this they began to believe Ysopete. The ravine which the army had now reached was a league wide from one side to the other, with a little bit of a river at the bottom, and there were many groves of mulberry trees near it, and rosebushes with the same sort of fruit that they have in France. They made verjuice from the unripe grapes at this ravine, although there were ripe ones.[4] There were walnuts and the same kind of fowls as in New Spain, and large quantities of prunes like those of Castile, During this journey a Teya was seen to shoot a bull right through both shoulders with an arrow, which would be a good shot for a musket. These people are very intelligent; the women are well made and modest. They cover their whole body. They wear shoes and buskins made of tanned skin. The women wear cloaks over their small under petticoats, with sleeves gathered up at the shoulders, all of skin, and some wore something like little sanbenitos[5] with a fringe, which reached half-way down the thigh over the petticoat.
The army rested several days in this ravine and explored the country. Up to this point they had made thirty-seven days' marches, traveling
- ↑ Herrera, Historia General, dec. vi, lib. ix, cap. xi, xii, vol.iii, p. 206, ed. 1728: "La relacion que este Indio hacia, de la manera con que se governaban en una Provincia mas adelante, Hamada Harae, i.juzgandose, que era imposible quo alli dexasede haver algunos Christianos perdidos del Armada de Panfilo de Narvaez, Francisco Vazquez acordò de escrivir una Carta, i la embiò con el Indio fiel de aquellos dos, porque el que bavia de quedar, siempre le llevaron de Retaguarda, porque el bueno no le viese. . . . Embiada la Carta, dando cuenta do la jornada que hacia el Exercito, i adonde havia llegado, pidiendo aviso, i relacion de aquella Tierra, i llamando aquellos Christianos, ai por caso los huviese, ò que aviaasen de lo que havian menester para salir de cautiverio."
- ↑ A manera de alixares. The margin reads Alexeres, which I can not find in the atlases. The word means threshing floor, whence Ternaux: "autres cabanes semblables à des bruyères (alixares)."
- ↑ Bandelier suggests that the name may have originated in the Indian exclamation, Texia! Texia! — friends! friends! — with which they first greeted the Spaniards.
- ↑ Ternaux: "il y avait des vigues, dea mûriers et des rosiers (rosales), dont le fruit que l'on trouve en France, sert en guise de verjus; il y en avait de mûr."
- ↑ Captain John Stevens's New Dictionary says the sanbenito was "the badge put upon converted Jews brought out by the Inquisition, being in the nature of a scapula or a broad piece of cloth banging before and behind, with a large Saint Andrews cross on it, red and yellow. The name corrupted from Saco Benito, answerable to the sackcloth worn by penitenta in the primitive church." Robert Tomson, in his Voyage into Nova Hispania, 1555, in Hakluyt, iii, 536, describes his imprisonment by the Holy Office in the city of Mexico: "We were brought into the Church, every one with a S. Benito upon his backe, which is a halfe a yard of yellow cloth, with a hole to put in a mans head in the middest, and cast over a mans head: both flaps hang one before, and another behinde. and in the middest of every flap, a S. Andrewes crosse, made of red cloth, sowed on upon the same, and that is called S. Benito."
