TRANSLATION OF THE TRASLADO DE LAS NUEVAS[1]
Copy of the reports and descriptions that have been received regarding the discovery of a city which is called Cibola, situated in the new country.
His grace left the larger part of his army in the valley of Culiacan, and with only 75 companions on horseback and 30 footmen, he set out for here Thursday, April 22. The army which remained there was to start about the end of the month of May, because they could not find any sort of sustenance for the whole of the way that they had to go, as far as this province of Cibola, which is 350 long leagues, and on this account he did not dare to put the whole army on the road. As for the men he took with him, he ordered them to make provision for eighty days, which was carried on horses, each having one for himself and his followers. With very great danger of suffering hunger, and not less labor, since they had to open the way, and every day discovered waterways and rivers with bad crossings, they stood it after a fashion, and on the whole journey as far as this province there was not a peck of corn.[2] He reached this province on Wednesday, the 7th of July last, with all the men whom he led from the valley very well, praise be to Our Lord, except one Spaniard who died of hunger four days from here and some negroes and Indians who also died of hunger and thirst. The Spaniard was one of those on foot, and was named Espinosa. In this way his grace spent seventy seven days on the road before reaching here, during which God knows in what sort of a way we lived, and whether we could have eaten much more than we ate the day that his grace reached this city of Granada, for so it has been named out of regard for the viceroy, and because they say it resembles the Albaicin.[3] The force he led was not received the way it should have been, because they all arrived very tired from the great labor of the journey. This, and the loading and unloading like so many muleteers, and not eating as much as they should have, left them more in need of resting several days than of fighting, although there was not a man in the army who would not have done his best in everything if the horses, who suffered the same as their masters, could have helped them.
The city was deserted by men over sixty years and under twenty, and by women and children. All who were there were the fighting
- ↑ Translated from Pacheco y Cardenas, Documentos de Indias, vol. xix, p. 529. This document is anonymous, but it is evidently a copy of a letter from some trusted companion, written from Granada-Hawikuh, about the time of Coronado's letter of August 3, 1540. In the title to the document as printed, the date is given as 1531, but there can be no doubt that it is an account of Coronado's journey.
- ↑ The printed Spanish text reads; "que como venian abriendo y descobriendo, cada dia, camino, los arcabucos y rios, y malos pasos, se llevaban en parte.". . .
- ↑ A part of Granada, near the Alhambra. There is a curious similarity in the names Albaicin and Hawikuh, the latter being the native name of Coronado's Granada.
