The Gilded Man (El Dorado)/Francisco Vasquez Coronado

by Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

 

CHAPTER III.

FRANCISCO VASQUEZ CORONADO.

ALTHOUGH still young, Coronado had filled offices of no little importance in Mexico. He was born in Salamanca, Spain, and had married the daughter of Alonzo de Estrada, royal treasurer in Mexico. Nuño de Guzman had persecuted and imprisoned Estrada because he would not connive at the robbery of the royal chest of 9000 pesos. After the inquisitorial judge, Diego Perez de la Torre, who had put Guzman in prison, died in 1538 at Guadalajara, Cristobál de Oñate, father of the future conqueror of New Mexico, succeeded him as governor in New Galicia, and Coronado was appointed by a royal decree of April 15, 1539, to conduct the usual examination of the administration of the deceased. He exchanged this position of juez de residencia in the same year for the higher one of governor of the province, with which Oñate had been only provisionally invested. When Fray Marcos returned to the City of Mexico Coronado was there. He asked of the viceroy Mendoza the privilege of attempting at his own expense the conquest and colonization of the newly discovered lands in the north. The viceroy had always regarded and treated Coronado as a favorite and readily accepted his offer, which would save him all material expenditure, and as readily agreed to another condition: to the preparation of an expedition by sea from Natividad, in the present state of Guadalajara, to explore the coast toward the north and the interior of the Gulf of California,^[1] but principally to keep along the coast in touch with Coronado's land expedition. A comrade of Coronado's, Pedro Casteneda, writes of the object of this cruise: "When the soldiers had all left Mexico, the viceroy ordered Don Pedro de Alarcon to sail with two ships from Natividad to the coast of the Southern Sea and proceed to Jalisco, in order to take on board the things which the soldiers could not carry. He was then to sail along the coast, following the march of the army, for it was believed, according to the reports, that it would not be far away, and could easily keep in communication with the ships by means of the rivers. But matters turned out differently, as we shall see further along, and the effects were lost, at least [Casteneda grimly adds] to those to whom they belonged." The cost of the fitting out of these two expeditions amounted, according to Herrera, to 60,000 ducats, a sum at that time equivalent to more than a quarter of a million dollars of our currency. Coronado was therefore deeply in debt, when he, on February 1, 1540, left Compostella, whither the viceroy had accompanied him, to march with his land "army" toward the north. The force consisted, according to Casteneda, of 300 Spaniards and 800 Indians. Mota-Padilla says definitely that Coronado had 260 horse and 60 foot, with more than a thousand Indians, and that he took with him six swivel-guns, more than a thousand spare horses and other horses carrying freight and ammunition. According to Herrera, the train was accompanied by large numbers of live sheep and swine. The Spaniards were divided into eight companies, which were commanded by the captains Diego de Guzman, Rodrigo Maldonado, and other officers. Lopez de Samaniego was master of the ordnance (maestro de campo) and Pedro de Tobar ensign. Four priests of the Franciscan order went along with the battalion: Fray Marcos (who had in the meantime become provincial), Fray Juan de Padilla, Fray Juan de la Cruz, and Fray Luis de Ubeda. Another priest and a lay brother seem to have afterward joined the force. Don Antonio de Mendoza took so much part in the expedition as to choose and appoint the higher officers. Pablo de Melgosa commanded the infantry and Hernando de Alvarado the small artillery force. Nothing was forgotten that could give the expedition splendor of equipment, the most effective leaders, and the largest provision. Coronado himself enjoyed general confidence, but he left behind him, says his morose subaltern Casteneda, "great wealth and a young, noble, and lovely wife." The viceroy, while setting in operation the preparations for this miniature massing of forces, had made a farther step toward the exploration of the north. With the caution that attended every important transaction of the Spanish officers, he had already taken measures to test upon the spot the trustworthiness of the representations of Fray Marcos. Not so much from suspicion as from prudence, based on a knowledge of the honest weaknesses of human nature, Don Antonio de Mendoza had ordered Captain Melchior Diaz to follow from Culiacan the route of the Franciscan toward the north, and approach as near Cibola as possible. Diaz started out with fifteen horsemen on November 17, 1539. On the 20th of March, 1540, the viceroy received a letter from him from Culiacan, whither he had returned with his task so far unaccomplished that he had not succeeded in getting farther north than "Chichiltic-calli." Beyond that point lay an uninhabited region at the end of which was Cibola. "When one has passed the great desert,"^[2] wrote Diaz, "he will find seven cities which are about a day's journey from one another. All together are called Civola." Diaz received this information and a description of the houses of Cibola which was extraordinarily accurate from the Indians between Chichiltic-calli and Culiacan. There was much snow in the former region and the country began to be again mountainous there. He consequently returned, convinced that he could not go farther with his small means.

The name "Chichiltic-calli" is derived from the Nahuatl language of Central Mexico, and means literally "red house." It therefore probably came from the Indians who went with Fray Marcos on his first journey, among whom were some who spoke the Nahuatl language. The word has now disappeared as the name of a place. The position of Chichiltic-calli is thus an object of careful search, the more so because the determination of its location will afford an important aid in the identification of Cibola.

General Simpson and several writers following him have expressed the opinion that the ruins of "Casa Grande" which the Pimas call Civano-qi, on the southern bank of the Gila River and about eighty-five miles northwest of Tucson in Arizona, represent Chichiltic-calli. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan has very pertinently objected to this supposition that no single ruin on the Rio Gila corresponds with the description which Coronado's contemporaries have left us of the "red house." At the risk of anticipating the course of historical events, I shall examine this question more closely.

Casteñeda says definitely that Chichiltic-calli was 220 leagues, or about 550 English miles, north or northeast of Culiacan, and 80 leagues, or 216 miles, south or southwest of Cibola. The distance and direction point to southeastern Arizona, near the western line of New Mexico, and not to the region of Casa Grande, which is situated rather west of north from Culiacan. Although the measurements as well as the statements of direction of the itineraries of the sixteenth century cannot be implicitly relied upon, still the fact that the companions of Coronado—Casteñeda, Diaz, and Juan Jaramillo—agree in respect to the direction is important. Of still more decisive significance are the descriptions of the country, the account of the building at Chichiltic-calli, and the itinerary itself.

Melchior Diaz, who first saw the "red house," does not mention the ruins. Juan Jaramillo, without speaking of the building, mentions a chain of mountains that was called Chichiltic-calli. Casteñeda, on the other hand, is very circumstantial. He says first, explicitly, that the unpopulated region begins there, and that "the land ceases to be covered with thorny trees and the aspect of the country changes. The Gulf [of California] terminates there, the coast turns, the mountains follow the same direction, and one has to climb over them to get into the plains again. . . . The soil of this region is red. . . . The rest of the country is uninhabited, and is covered with forests of fir, the fruits of which tree are found in abundance. . . . There is a kind of oak there, the acorns of which. . . are as sweet as sugar. Watercresses are found in the springs, rosebushes, pulegium, and marjoram." In the vicinity he saw flocks of wild sheep, very large, with long horns and long hair. Finally, he describes the inhabitants as belonging to the wildest tribe which they had met in that country. They dwelt in isolated huts and lived solely by hunting. The ruin was roofless, extensive, and had been built of red earth.

A later writer, Matias de la Mota-Padilla, who was born at Guadalajara in 1688 and died there in 1766, gives a very detailed description of Chichiltic-calli. It is not probable that he had access to the manuscript of Casteñeda, for he was never away from Spanish America.^[3] He borrows nothing either in his account of the "red house" from Herrera, who copied Jaramillo. His statements are, then, derived from some still unknown source, and are therefore doubly interesting. He says: "They went through a narrow defile (portezuela) which was named Chichiltic-calli (which means 'red house,' because there was a house there plastered on the outside with red earth, called almagre). There they found fir-trees with fir-cones full of good meat. On the top of a rock lay skulls of rams with large horns, and some said they had seen three or four of these sheep, which were very swift-footed."

Not one of these descriptions corresponds with the Casa Grande of Arizona, and still less do they fit the Casas Grandes in Chihuahua. The latter is even quite out of the question. The former is situated a mile and a half south of the bank of the Gila, in a wide waterless plain of dazzling grayish-white sand and marl. The plain stretches out of sight in the south, but the horizon is bounded in the distant west by the low range of the Maricopa hills, while in the east the Sierra Tortilla is visible in the distance. On the north bank of the Gila the foot-hills of the Superstition Mountains rise precipitously, and back of them that range unfolds itself like a broken wall, overlooked by the Sierra Masásar in the northwest, while in the northeast the Sierra Final lifts itself up, the only range crowned with fir-trees. All the near mountains are marked by an awful wildness, frightful steepness, and terrible cliffs and gorges, while the vegetation is sparse and exclusively thorny. There are found the beautiful red-flowered ocotilla (Fouquiera splendens), the creosote-plant (Larrea gigantea), and quantities of mezcal-agaves. Every plant pricks and the leaves are gray. A lowly vegetation grows on the white sand flats and gravel hills and clings to the bare rocks. Only when showers fall the ravines are filled in a short time with wild torrents, which overflow and irrigate the plain; for while in June, July, and August the clouds discharge daily upon the mountains, a whole year has often passed at Casa Grande, sometimes eighteen months, without its raining. The thermometer rises every day in summer to above 100° in the shade, and snow-falls are almost unknown. It is a hot, arid region, covered with desert plants, to which the coarser forms of the lower animal life, the disgusting bird-spider (Mygale heintzii), the great millipede (Scolopendra heros), the scorpion (Scorpio boreusand Telyphonus excubitor), the rattlesnake (Caudisono molossus), and the large warty lizard, appropriately called the Gila monster (Helodernm horridum), are eminently adapted. The mountain sheep (Ovis montana) formerly roamed in the mountains. The region has for many centuries been inhabited exclusively by the Pima Indians, who have always been a more or less settled, agricultural people, like the Pueblos of New Mexico, living in villages composed of round huts, and acquainted with the art of irrigation by canals.

I have already mentioned that the Punas claimed to be descendants of the inhabitants and builders of the Casa Grande. Casteñeda says that the "red house" was destroyed by the people who lived there at the time of his arrival, and describes them as completely savage.

The ruin of Casa Grande is composed of a whitish-gray calcareous marl, is three stories high, and has no floor or roof. The roof was probably destroyed by fire, kindled by the Apaches. It is not certain but is possible that the building was once covered on the outside with a red plaster, as it still is on the inside, so as to make it look from without like a red house; and in this possibility consists the only analogy that can be discovered between Casa Grande and Chichiltic-calli. In all other points there is not the slightest resemblance.

It is useless to look for the "red house" farther west, or between Florence and Fort Yuma. The ruins cease at Gila Bena, and the country beyond is almost a clear desert. East of Florence, between Riverside and San Carlos, the mountains are too wild and ragged. Within New Mexico there is no place affording any ground for identification with it in the latitude corresponding with the head of the Gulf of California. Chichiltic-calli, therefore, was situated in the southeastern corner of Arizona, and within a quadrangle which is bounded on the east by New Mexico, on the west by the Rio San Pedro, on the south by Sonora, and on the north by the Gila River. As the ruin does not stand upon any stream, it is impossible to fix the exact place; yet I was disposed at first to look for it in the vicinity of the new Fort Grant, or south of Mount Graham, where the fir woods really begin. The height above the sea of this station, where there are considerable ruins, is 4753 feet, while the mountains rise to 10,516 feet, and snow-storms are not only regular every winter, but considerable. If this site should not be found to answer, then the ruins at Eagle Creek, west of Clifton, might be considered. But they lie north of the Rio Gila, and that stream has a considerable breadth and a notable supply of water even in summer. The fact that the mountains north of the banks of the Gila for a short day's journey toward Mount Turnbull, Mount Graham, the Sierra Bonita, and the Peloncillo, are still bare or covered with thorny plants, as at Casa Grande, is against seeking for Chichiltic-calli at Fort Grant. There are also more substantial reasons, as I shall proceed to show, for not looking for it on Eagle Creek.

The march of the troops from Compostella to Culiacan was not free from hindrances. The horses were too highly fed for hard work, and the soldiers did not know how to arrange the loads upon them. Much of the baggage was therefore lost, and the provisions began to fail at Chiametla. The Indians were hostile, and Maestro de Campo Samaniego lost his life in a skirmish with them. On Easter Monday, 1540, the little army arrived at Culiacan, where it was received with much enthusiasm and military pomp. Hermandarias de Saavedra was appointed to the place of the slain officer.

Discontent had already broken out among the men in Chiametla. Diaz had met them there on his return, and although his reports were kept secret, stories of misfortune became current, and the storm broke out against Fray Marcos, who was now accused of having purposely exaggerated. We do not know what the Franciscan had said, but what he wrote is fully confirmed by the report of Diaz. The morose Casteñeda says that the priest and Coronado especially had told the men stories about mountains of gold. We have nothing in writing on the subject except Casteneda's own testimony. It is curious that while he raised such complaints, he at the same time quarrelled with Coronado because he would not stay in New Mexico.

After Coronado had tarried two weeks in Culiacan, he started somewhat hurriedly with fifty horsemen to hasten forward to Cibola in advance of the main body. Ten foot-soldiers and the priests went with him. Cristobal de Oñate remained as representative of the Governor in Sinaloa, and Tristan de Arellano was given the chief command over the main body, with instructions to follow on in fourteen days. The departure of Coronado probably took place at the end of April. The campaign was thus divided into three parts: the advance under Coronado, the rear under Arellano, and the expedition by sea under Alarcon. The last contributed so little to the result that I prefer to tell its story briefly at once.

Hernando Alarcon sailed with the ships "San Pedro" and "Santa Catarina" on May 9th and kept along the coast; encountered the usual storms, terrors, and shoals; added a third ship, the "San Gabriel," to his fleet at "Aguaiaval"; and arrived on August 26th at the mouth of a large river, the current of which was so rapid that the vessels could hardly make way against it. He launched two boats and embarked in them with a few men and light artillery to ascend the stream. The shores were inhabited, and the houses were round, made of limbs of trees, and plastered and covered with earth, like those of the present Pimas. Several families lived in the same building. Not much reliance is to be placed on the reports of the Indians which he repeats in his Relation, for great mistakes were unavoidable in the absence of interpreters. For that reason the statement which would otherwise be valuable, that the Indians showed him a village of stone houses on a height in the distance, is doubtful. Alarcon thus went up and down the river twice, and asserts that he sailed 85 leagues, or 230 miles, upon it. Finally he heard of Cibola, of the arrival of the Spaniards there, and of the death of the negro. The distance at which he was from Cibola is variously given by him at thirty, forty, and ten days' journey. In despair of meeting Coronado, he returned to the Mexican coast at the end of the year 1540, with the purpose of his voyage unaccomplished.

Although the main object of this voyage, coöperation with Coronado, was not gained, it contributed much to geographical knowledge, for it determined the form of the Gulf of California and elicited the first information concerning the lower course of the largest river on the western coast of America—the Rio Colorado; for this is the river which Alarcon ascended with his boats. The map in the Ptolomæus of Messer Pietro Andreas Mattiolo, of the year 1548, already represented Lower California in its true shape as a peninsula.

Postponing for the present the story of the efforts which were made by the land expedition to establish communication with Alarcon, I return to Coronado, who left Culiacan and marched northward with sixty men, five priests, one lay brother, and a few Indians who were more bold than discreet. He first met the Yaqui Indians in the territory of Sonora, and north of that, 12 leagues, or 32 miles, from Sonora, he met the southern Pimas in the "Valley of Hearts" (Voile de los Corazones). On the third day after his departure from Culiacan, a mishap befell the expedition: a priest, Fray Antonio Victoria, broke his thigh and had to be sent back. The Valley of Hearts is south of Batuco, and Coronado therefore probably reached the Rio Sonora in the vicinity of Babiácora, or about 160 miles south of the Mexican border of Arizona. Forty leagues, or 108 miles, farther on, he founded a Spanish colony in the Valley of Suya, to which he gave the name of San Hierónymo. As the Valley of Suya lay on the Sonora River, San Hieronymo should be looked for north of Bacuachi. The place was situated on the bank of "a small river." Although there are names of places that likewise end in Sonora west of the Sonora Valley, in the country between Magdalena and Altar, once controlled by the Pimas, there is no doubt that Coronado entered the real Sonora Valley. Casteñeda gives names of places that are only to be found there. "Guaga-rispa," called "Ispa" by Jaramillo, is unmistakably "Huc-aritz-pa," the present "Arispe."

Few valleys have so small a breadth for so great a length as the valley of the Sonora River. From Babiácora to Sinoquipe, a distance of forty-five miles, the fertile intervale widens out at only one place, Banámichi, to three miles; elsewhere it is seldom more than half a mile wide. Large gravel dunes with thorny bushes of mesquite, choya, pitdhaya, agovin, and palo-blanco form a base of greater or less breadth on both sides, from which mountains rise abruptly with wild, picturesque profile, forming on the eastern side a continuous chain which is crossed by only a few extremely difficult paths. The defile which Jaramillo mentions as leading from the south to the Sonora River can only be that one which enters the valley at Babiácora and comes down from Batuco. The Rio Sonora turns thence toward the southwest, and runs through the dark gorge of Ures to the present city of Hermosillo and the Gulf of California. When the first Jesuit missionaries visited the region in the year 1638, they found its inhabitants numerous and more peaceful and better civilized than the other peoples of the country. These inhabitants are now known by the name of "Opata"; they call themselves "Joyl-ra-ua," or village people. The name "Opata" belongs to the Pima language; it arose toward the end of the seventeenth century and is analyzed into "Oop," enemies, and "Ootam," men. The Pimas designate themselves by the latter word. Opata is therefore equivalent to "men hostile to the Pima tribe." The languages of the two tribes are very closely related.

Few tribes in Spanish America have so readily and completely assimilated with the whites as the Opatas of Sonora. I am convinced, after a slow journey of three months through their whole country, that there are hardly two dozen of them who can and will speak their own language. The dress of the Opatas is white, customary in all Mexico, with the palm-leaf hat. Their houses are like the habitations of the Mexicans. They wear sandals or moccasins indifferently, although the latter are more common on account of the great roughness of the mountains. They are generally ashamed of their mother tongue, desire to be castellano or ladino, and speak only Spanish with their children. Hardly more than recollections and a few dances that have been converted into church festivals are left of their former customs. Four of these were danced a hundred years ago, but only the "daninamaca" and the "pascola" are still in use. The "mariachi," a dance which is similar to our round dances, has been abandoned on account of its obscenity, but the "majo dani," the stag dance, still exists in the recollections of the people.

The present organization of the Opatas has been conformed since the reform legislation of 1857 to the North American pattern—that is, one in which the old and the new are partly combined. The original community of goods of the Indians, which the Crown accorded to them in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, still subsists. Hence, since the Indians live alongside of the Spanish families, there is a double administration, which is plainly apparent at some places in the Sonora Valley.

The easy and voluntary, even eager, denationalization of the Opatas cannot be ascribed to the influence of the Jesuits alone, although they exercised an almost theocratic rule over the tribe for one hundred and thirty-eight years. The Pimas were under the same influence for a like period, yet even the Pápagos of Tucson tenaciously hold to the language and partly to the religion of their fathers. There was an element of greater docility in the nature of the Opatas, which the fathers of the Society of Jesus encouraged, and vigilantly guarded against all interference of the officers and colonists. Then the necessity of defence against a common formidable enemy, the Apaches, attached the sedentary Opatas closely to Spanish civilization and customs for more than two hundred years. The awful desolation which this hereditary enemy inflicted upon the Opatas after the conspiracy formed at Casas Grandes in Chihuahua in 1684 drove them all to the large towns, and compelled them to seek the better protection which the adoption of the Spanish-Mexican arrangement of houses and manner of living afforded them. Those who did not adapt themselves to this condition and remained outside of the pueblos soon fell victims^[4] in the Sierra Madre, the sierra of Texas, to the Janos and Jócomes, and afterward to the Apaches, which gradually absorbed these tribes.

The chroniclers of the campaign which is the object of this study spoke of the Opatas as being "numerous and intelligent." Their habitations in the Sonora Valley were, however, not so large as those of the southern Pimas, and their villages were less populous. I have surveyed seventeen ruins between Los Fresnos and Babiácora, and have visited many other sites of ruins, but have found no village there that contained a hundred huts. But Batesopa, at the foot of the Sierra Huachinera (a branch of the Sierra Madre), may have had two hundred houses. The houses there are also more durably built of clay and stone, or their posts rest on square or rectangular foundations of stone, while the walls are made of intertwined reeds and the roofs of palm leaves or yucca blades, for it is cold in the Sonora Valley. A fan palm is growing in Arispe which has a height of twenty-five feet; and the artistically woven roofing of the leaves of this species, which I have admired in Oaxaca, is an adequate protection against the heavy rains of summer. The little villages were always on elevations near the water, and the rainfall flowed away safely to the lower land. I found no settlement fortified, but places of refuge are numerous in the interior of the Sierra Madre. They are very significantly called fort-hills (Cerros de Trincheras). They are natural heights, often very steep, along the brows of which and bending to their sinuosities rude bulwarks of stone have been raised. The hill could thus be converted in the simplest way into a fortification, and where it is conical, as at Terrenate, Ymúrez, and Toni-vavi, near Nacori, the walls naturally assume a spiral form. The Indians thus adapted their constructions to the irregularities of the slopes. The people of several villages could take refuge in one of these fortified heights. These primitive fortifications have attracted the attention of travellers in recent years, and have given rise to exaggerated newspaper reports concerning a gigantic artificial pyramid in the vicinity of Magdalena.

Division into many small tribes was the original constitution and social order of the Opatas. The people of Opasura attacked them on the Sonora River at Banámichi, and the river-side tribes made war upon one another. The Opatas had slings, stone axes, clubs, and arrows without stone heads, but burnt hard and strongly poisoned. Their clothing was of cotton and skins, and their decorations were of colored feathers.

Our information respecting their religious rites is very scanty, but I have succeeded in collecting some of their folk tales, which permit a glimpse into their earlier forms of belief as well as into their history. They affirm that they came from the north and moved gradually southward. The New Mexican Pueblo Indians recognize the Opatas, as well as the Pimas and the Yaquis, as allied to them, although they are of different linguistic affinities.

Coronado's movements in the valley of the Sonora River appear to have been rapid. He could not possibly have reached Arispe in about a day's journey from Babiácora, as Jaramillo asserts, for the distance is seventy miles; and though a single horseman might accomplish it in case of emergency, a troop composed of horse and foot could not. His relations with the natives seem to have been friendly—Coronado was always very much liked personally by the Indians—and they recognized Fray Marcos and welcomed him. The advance to Sinoquipe in the months of May and June, or before the rainy season begins, is attended with no difficulties. The river is really shrunken to a brook, as Jaramillo describes it, and there are only occasional very low dunes to climb. But the thickets of river poplar, elder, willow, and cane which bordered the course of the Sonora may have presented impediments then, for the paths from village to village wind up and down over the dunes. At Sinoquipe the Spaniards would come upon the series of deep ravines which extend uninterruptedly to Arispe, and thence with slight intermissions to near Bacuachi, and often force the traveller to take to the bed of the river. In the whole distance of one hundred and forty miles between Babiácora and the source of the Sonora the traveller leaves the river bank only once for a short time, while he crosses the narrow stream two hundred and fifty times. It is one of the most charming and at the same time least difficult routes which the North American continent offers to a horseman. A steadily mild climate enhances the traveller's pleasure.

The "Cajon," more than twenty miles in length, through which one passes in going from Sinoquipe to Arispe, is rich in the magnificent development of the most diversified rock-forms. When the "Cabezon de San Benito," a massive, bell-shaped peak, has sunk behind the ever-increasing heights north of Sinoquipe, and these gather thickly around the river's course, there also disappears in the east the rudely notched mountain of the nueve Minas, and the inviting cove of Tetuachi reposes on the right bank, surrounded by mighty mountains. Narrow tongues of rock jut forward into the peaceful valley, fall perpendicularly to the ground, and imitate artificial masonry in their resemblance to squared stones piled up in regular symmetry. The rocks that overhang them, rising thousands of feet, are clothed with the peculiar vegetation of the country, which lends a tint of green to even the highest crests. Through this grand valley as a door one goes into the Cajon proper. The river is bordered with thick foliage, and gigantic cliffs rise like coulisses, one behind another, away up, in the most varied colors of the quaternary rock, alternating with lava. The pillar-shaped Pitabaya fastens itself in the clefts of the steepest, even vertical cliffs. Rarely wider than half a mile, yet affording by its numerous bendings a constant change of view, never bare, but unceasingly grand and wild, the ravine appears to go along with the traveller, till the solitary palm-tree at the entrance to the half-ruined city of Arispe introduces him to a new and entirely different landscape: a hollow verdant with fields and with poplars; in the east the Sierra Arispe rises bare and forbidding; the west bank descends steeply to the river's edge, and to it clings a group of adobe dwellings with many ruins of stone buildings and a large, bare church. This is the former capital of Sonora, the population of which has diminished by two thirds in half a century a melancholy place of decay in the lead region. Here the Rio de Bacanuchi empties into the Sonora from the north, and the Sonora turns; between Bacuachi and Arispe it flows from northeast to southwest. I have already observed that Guagarispa most probably stood on the site of the present Arispe. No ruins of it are visible; they have been built over; but stone axes, mortars, and grinding stones (metates) are unearthed here and there. A ravine like that between this place and Sinoquipe begins on the Sonora River farther north, and at "Ti-ji-só-ri-chi" stand above the river the ruins of an ancient pueblo. The country becomes more level at "Chinapa"^[5] and a short distance farther along shapes itself into the sides of the wild Cajon, in the bottom of which one rides beside the foaming Sonora to near Bacuachi. Here the country becomes open, the depression of the chain of the "Manzanal" permits a glimpse in the west of the pillar-shaped Picacho; on the eastern side the dunes extend like a low table-land ten miles toward the east, where a majestic cordillera of picturesque shape and covered with fir-trees stretches from northwest to south. There are a succession of high chains—the Sierra de Bacuachi, the Sierra Purica, and, in the farthest southeast, the mountains of Oposura or the Sierra Grande.

If Coronado steadily followed the course of the Sonora, Suya should be looked for in the valley of Bacuachi. But if he followed the Bacuachi River, going therefore directly north, he would have approached the Canania, and consequently the sources of the Rio Santa Cruz. The accounts on these points are unusually indefinite, the same writer often contradicting himself several times. I am inclined to the opinion that he followed the Rio Sonora all the time, and that San Hierónymo should therefore be sought near the ruins of Mututicâchi. Juan Jaramillo says that the Spaniards marched from "Sonora" for four days through an uninhabited region, and then came to a brook which he calls "Nexpa"; followed down this brook for two days to a chain of mountains, along which they continued for two days. This chain of mountains was pointed out to him as "Chichiltic-calli." The itinerary of this writer, who marched with Coronado while Casteñeda probably followed the main body, deserves to be reproduced literally.

"After we had crossed these mountains, we came to a deep brook with steep banks, where we found water and grass for our horses. Leaving this brook, which is the other side of the Nexpa of which I have spoken, we took the direction toward the northeast (as it seemed to me), and came in three days, so far as I can remember, to a river which we named San Juan, because we arrived there on the day of that saint. Leaving this stream, we passed through a very mountainous country, and turning more to the north, we came to another stream which we named de las Balsas, because, it being very high, we had to cross it on rafts. I believe we were two days in going from one river to the other. . . . Hence we went to another brook, which we called de la Barranca (of the ravine). The distance from one to the other may be estimated at two short days' journey. The direction is northeast. We then came to a river, after one day's march, which we called Rio Frio, on account of the coldness of its water. Thence we passed through fir woods, at the end of which we found cool brooks. . . . In two days we came to another brook, called Vermejo— always in the same direction, namely, toward the northeast." There they met Indians from Cibola, and two days afterward they reached the last pueblo. Casteñeda mentions striking a "river" which "flowed" in a deep ravine three days after they entered the "wilderness" north of Chichiltic-calli. He says that the "Rio Verniejo," the waters of which were muddy and red, was eight leagues from Cibola.

I believe that we may without mistake regard Cibola as identical with the country of Zuñi. In view of the extreme indistinctness that rules in all the statements of the participants in the expedition through Sonora, it is impossible to identify its route following it from the south alone. I think I may properly, taking the reverse course, make Zuñi the starting-point of the investigation and pick up the threads of the itinerary thence southward. Eight leagues, or 22 miles, southwest of Zuni flows the river of the same name, a muddy, red stream. Two days' journey from Zuñi toward the southwest brings us to the Rio Colorado Chiquito at San Juan, Arizona. This river is as turbid, muddy, and red as the Zuñi. The Rio Vermejo of Jaramillo is therefore the one called the Little Colorado. Casteneda, who did not go with Coronado, saw the likewise muddy Rio de Zuñi, and confounded the two.

As Coronado reached the Rio San Juan on St. John's day, June 24th, the date of his arrival at Cibola may be fixed as about July 12th. He did not go to Ha-ui-cu (Aguas calientes), fifteen miles southwest of Zuñi, the village nearest to him, but to "Oa-quima," because the negro was killed there. The inhabitants of Oa-quima had been warned by some of their people that the Spaniards had come in sight of the Colorado River. The pueblo stood, as the ruins now show, on a hill. It could not turn out more than two hundred men of war, but the whole male population of all the villages, seven in number, which constituted the tribe of Zuñi, had come to its assistance and were awaiting the Spaniards on the little plain separating Oa-quima from the mesa south of it. The peaceful message sent to them by Coronado was answered with threatening gestures. The horsemen then dashed at them, and the Indians speedily fled from the sight of the strange, rushing figures. The capture of the pueblo proved to be a difficult task, for the steep, rugged precipices were exposed to a hail of stones, which rattled down upon the Spaniards. The assault was made on foot; and in it Coronado narrowly escaped death by a stone. The village was, however, captured in an hour, and the whole tribe submitted soon afterward. The tradition of this event, according to Mr. Gushing, is still living among the Zuñi Indians.

I cannot forbear giving here a final and irrefragable proof of the fact that Zuñi is really Cibola. The French translation of Casteñeda says that the largest pueblo of Cibola was called "Muzaque." In the original manuscript, which is in the Lenox Library in New York, this word is written several times plainly and clearly "Maçaqui." "Matzaqui" is the ruin of a large village situated three miles east of the present pueblo of Zuñi near the foot of the great mesa, and some four or five miles northnorthwest of Oa-quima. The Indians say that this village was once the largest of the tribe. The ruins are very much decayed now, but they indicate a considerable settlement. The testimony of the original text of Casteneda thus lifts the identity of Cibola with Zuñi above all doubt. The possibility that Matzaqui was not the village of which Casteñeda speaks is quite removed by later documents: first, by the definite affirmation by Espejo in the year 1583 that Zuñi was Cibola, which is confirmed by an act of the year 1601; and second, by the enumeration in the act of submission and pardon of the Zuni Indians of 1591 of Maçaqui as one of the pueblos of that tribe; and finally, by the language of Fray Augustin de Betancurt, who wrote in the year 1689: "Four-and-twenty leagues from Acoma is the pueblo of Alona, with its Church of the Purification of the Virgin, with two hamlets belonging to the diocese, each with its little church, called Mazaquia, at the entrance to the province of Zuni, Moqui, and Caquima, two leagues from Alona."

The immediate object of the expedition was therefore attained with little trouble in comparison with the labor with which the preparations had been made. A fifth part of the force had already succeeded in conquering the "seven cities of Cibola," yet, if faith is to be given to Casteñeda's expressions, this result was not at all pleasing to those who had won it rather with sweat than with blood. They were bitterly disappointed. As soon as the men saw Cibola, they "broke out in curses against Fray Marcos." The historian afterward adds, "For his account was found to be false in every respect."

I have already said that I believe these accusations cannot be substantiated. The written account of the priest is absolutely true, not at all exaggerated, and agrees fully with those of Melchior Diaz, Juan Jaramillo, and especially with the representations of Casteñeda himself. But this account was in a very short time repeated on many tongues, and it shared the usual fate of stories transmitted verbally in being added to, exaggerated, and colored in the imaginations of those through whom it successively passed. The original account, by which all these falsifications might have been corrected, was not given to the public, and the officers, using Coronado as their instrument, suffered only the most flattering parts of it to be put forward. What Pray Marcos said of gold was from hearsay, and was so represented by him. It, moreover, did not relate to Cibola, but to a region much farther south. His accounts also agree with those which Alarcon received concerning Cibola from the Indians on the Colorado River.

As is always the case when the passion of the multitude turns against a single man, no regard was paid in this instance to the voice of reason. Fray Marcos was no longer sure of his lif e in Zuni; the Spaniards, who had deceived themselves, made him responsible for their mistake, and concern was felt for his safety. Coronado had a report of his success to send to the viceroy. Juan Gallego was commissioned to carry it, and the Franciscan went with him. He was even then Padre Provinzial of the order in and for Mexico. He died in the capital on March 25, 1558. The sufferings which the cool climate of New Mexico and the innumerable hardships of his journeys caused him had culminated in paralysis in Cibola, and it is not improbable that it was this and not fear of violence from those around him that moved him to return to Mexico. Gallego and the priest on their return met in the Sonora Valley the main body of the army, as it was called, which Coronado had left in Culiacan. It had been started fourteen days after the departure of the commander, but the cavalry "went on foot, with lances on their shoulders, and carrying provisions; all the horses were loaded." Having arrived in the Sonora district, Arellano, who was in command, sent Rodrigo Maldonado down the river toward the sea, in order if possible to establish communication with the marine expedition. He appears to have reached the mouth of the Rio Sonora, but he found no trace of Alarcon. It was the first time that the places where Hermosillo, the chief city of Sonora, and Guaymas, the principal port of the Gulf of California, stand were visited by white men. The Spaniards consequently came in contact with the still savage tribe of the Sers. Coronado had founded the settlement of San Hierónymo at Suya, and Melchior Diaz was left with eighty men to hold it. The main body of the command was reduced by this measure to one hundred and seventy Spaniards, so that when it arrived at Cibola in the winter of 1540-41 Coronado could not count upon more than two hundred and twenty-five men. He performed all his later acts in New Mexico with this small force.

Although Melchior Diaz had particular orders to guard the new settlement, he could not remain idle. Attempting further explorations of the regions west, he left Diego de Alcáraz^[6] at San Hierónymo, and started out with only twenty-six men Casteñeda says to the southwest, but this is probably a mistake for northwest; for after wandering 150 leagues, or 405 miles, Diaz seems, according to the account, to have reached the great Colorado River of the west, where he found letters from Alarcon buried at the foot of a marked tree, which contained news of his having reached that place and then gone back to New Spain. Diaz followed up the eastern bank of the river for several days' journey; but I have not been able to learn anything concerning the conclusion of his campaign. During his absence^[7] the Indians attacked the settlement at Suya and destroyed it, depriving Coronado of an important link of communication between his isolated position in the north and the Spanish advanced posts in the south.

The campaign of Diaz was probably begun in the winter of 1540-41, for the main part of Coronado's expedition was still in Sonora in October, 1540. The destruction of Suya (by the Opatas) probably took place about the end of 1542 or in 1543. The chronology of the whole expedition is obscure and extremely confused. Pedro de Sotomayor went with it with the purpose of describing its events, but not a line of his writings is known. Even Herrera, who had all the sources of that kind at his command, appears to have consulted Jaramillo almost exclusively, with, perhaps, Coronado's letters and the anonymous "Relaciones" which cast light upon single parts of later events. Possibly these "Relaciones" were fragments of Sotomayor's account.

The history of the discovery and conquest of the "seven cities" closes with the capture of Cibola, and the union of the whole force under Coronado's command. The geographical and ethnographical problem has been solved. Connected with this solution are a number of practical consequences which are of greater importance than the mere satisfaction of the promptings of an adventurous curiosity. Even when this satisfaction is obtained, there lies in it the germ of further inquiry.

In the situation in which Coronado was placed continued effort was a condition of existence. He saw that his highly strained anticipations were not fulfilled in Zuñi-Cibola, and that his campaign to that place had been a material failure. The force which he commanded was still more bitterly disappointed, for their expectations had been of a more immediate character. A plundering expedition meant mutiny and destruction. Coronado learned, however, that Zuni (as I shall henceforth call Cibola) was not the only tribe that possessed a superior rank among village Indians, and that farther on in the country, in the west and especially in the east, were similar groups or pueblos. The stories told him awakened hopes that there were perhaps better regions and mountains richer in metals in those directions. His men agreed in his conjecture, and it grew during the cold winter in Zuni to a probability. Soldiers and leader therefore awaited with impatience the mild weather, when they could go forward into the great unknown region on the edge of which they were. Their eyes were turned predominantly toward the east, and thus the conquest of the "seven cities of Cibola" was the starting-point for the exploration and opening of New Mexico.

 

1. Then called Mar Vermejo, the Red Sea. It was navigated for the first time by Francisco de Ulloa, in 1539.
2. Properly, uninhabited region "desierto."
3. Casteñeda's work was not printed till 1838, and then in a French translation.
4. The earliest documentary data on the subject are of 1655.
5. A former mission, which the Apaches burned in 1836, and in the place of which stands a miserable hamlet.
6. The same who in his time had so inhospitably received Cabeza de Vaca and his companions.
7. It appears that he did not return to Sonora.