The fact that the Spaniards constantly wandered toward the “setting sun,” and that from Texas, and that they did not cross the great waterless plains of that state, excludes the supposition that they entered New Mexico and that the “permanent dwellings” meant the pueblos of the Rio Grande. Further decisive is the declaration that the inhabitants of those permanent houses obtained green stones (turquoise or calcite) in exchange for parrot feathers. There are no species of parrots in New Mexico and Arizona, but the Sierra Madre is the habitat of the large green sittich, the feathers of which I have often seen in the possession of the Pueblo Indians, who had bought them in Sonora. The southern Pimas and the Opatas of Sonora used parrot feathers as decorations in their dances till the middle of the last century; and I have surveyed numerous ruins of the clay and stone houses of the Opatas in the Sierra Madre which, now a solemn, silent wilderness, is covered with lofty pine woods in which the loquacious green sittich flit in the early morning from limb to limb. The Indians of whom Cabeza de Vaca speaks bought the turquoises far in the north, and they told of many great houses in which the people there lived. These statements may refer to New Mexico and Arizona; for turquoises are found in the neighborhood of Santa Fé, where they are called “cerillos,” as well as not far from Zuñi, and in southern New Mexico, at no great distance from the present Silver City.
With the stories of permanent settlements, of natives clothed in cotton, and of turquoises found in the far north, which Cabeza de Vaca and his companions told their countrymen, were associated speculations concerning great metallic riches in the northern regions. The wanderers brought no definite statements on this subject, nor could they present visible evidence in the shape of mineral specimens of the existence of the metals; but the thirst for the precious metals was quite as intense in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth, and the credulity of the gold-seekers of that time was not less ready than that of the “prospectors” of to-day. It could, however, have hardly been greater. As soon, therefore, as Melchior Diaz heard the marvellous story of the new-comers, he sent an account of it, not to Guzman, but to Mexico, to Don Antonio de Mendoza, who had arrived there in the year 1554 as the first viceroy of New Spain, and had superseded the provisional government of the bishop of Santo Domingo. Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were invited to Mexico, were well received there, and with the exception of the negro and Maldonado, who remained in Mexico, were sent to Spain. The subsequent fortunes of Cabeza de Vaca are of no further interest in connection with the purpose of this sketch, and we need only say that his adventurous career did not terminate with his wanderings in North America, but that other sufferings as great but of different character awaited him in South America and in Spain, and misfortune pursued him till the end of his life.
Stories like those which came to Mexico through Cabeza de Vaca could not fail to direct the attention of the government to the northwest. Nuño de Guzman was succeeded as provisional governor of New Galicia[65] by the licentiate Diego Perez de la Torre, and when he died, in 1538, his place was taken by a young noble of Salamanca, Francisco Vasquez Coronado, who had married the daughter of the former treasurer, Alonzo de Estrada. As royal visitador he had already travelled over a large part of Mexico, and enjoyed in a high degree the confidence of the viceroy. Young and energetic, disposed, according to the fashion of the time, toward a knight’s career, he was a most suitable person to direct the further progress of the exploration of the northwest.
The stories of Cabeza de Vaca appear still to have been received with some distrust. Without wholly rejecting them, people hesitated to follow the first impulse, which would prompt them to send an expedition to the north at once. Antonio de Mendoza was a sagacious, quiet, careful statesman, and he preferred to reconnoitre before taking decisive steps. In his reconnoissance he received the assistance of the Church.
Among the Franciscan monks in Mexico was a Sardinian brother named Marcus, who, having been born in Nice, was known as Fray Marcos de Nizza. As he figures in history under this designation, I shall continue to call him Fray Marcos. His real name and the date of his birth are still unknown. He came to America in the year 1551 in the service of his order and went to Peru, whence he proceeded with Pedro de Alvarado to Guatemala, and finally to Mexico. He had distinguished himself by his intelligence, capacity, and devotion, and was respected by the brethren of his order. Fray Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo, father provincial in Mexico, proposed in the interest of the mission to detail one or more Franciscan monks on the contemplated reconnoissance. It is not improbable that Fray Marcos voluntarily offered himself for the service. His long experience among the natives especially fitted him for the work; and, whether by his own free will or out of obedience and a sense of duty to his order, he undertook the arduous and dangerous task.
A few historians, among whom are Torquemada and Arricivita, suppose that a preliminary expedition was sent out in 1538, in which, according to some, Fray Marcos did, according to others did not, take part. We have no official reports of such an expedition, and it is possible that these accounts originated in a mistake. The instructions which Don Antonio de Mendoza sent to Fray Marcos, and the receipt of which he acknowledged from New Galicia on November 25, 1538, do not agree with the supposition of such a preliminary reconnoissance. In those instructions the monk is advised to insist upon good treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards of Sinaloa, to protect them against every attempt to reduce them to slavery, and to promise them all support and help in the name of the Crown. He was then ordered to proceed into the interior with all possible precautions, carefully to observe land and people, to avoid all personal danger, and should he find himself on the coast of the “Southern Sea”[66] he was to bury written reports at the foot of a tree distinguished by its size, and to cut a cross in the bark of the tree, so that in case a ship was sent along the coast, its crew might know how to identify it by that mark. Finally Estévanico, the negro who had made the perilous journey with Cabeza de Vaca from Florida to the coast of the Pacific Ocean, was assigned to him as leader and attendant; and in case any of the Indians who had come with those men and their companions to Sinaloa could be of use to him, Francisco Vasquez Coronado, the new governor of Culiacan, was instructed to engage them to accompany Fray Marcos and the negro. The negro was to be subordinate to the monk in every point.
The zealous Franciscan left San Miguel de Culiacan on Friday, March 7, 1539. Besides Estévanico and several Indians, a brother of the order, Fray Onorato, accompanied him. Their route was northward, toward the present state of Sonora. The Indians who went with them belonged to the southern branch of the great Pima tribe. They had, as we have already said, followed Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, Maldonado, and Dorantes from central and southern Sonora to Sinaloa, and a part of them had remained there and founded a village on the Rio Petatlan. Probably in this village, certainly on that river, Fray Onorato became so ill that it was necessary, after three days’ delay, to leave him. The party kept as nearly as possible to the coast of the Pacific Ocean, leaving the villages on the Yaqui to their right. A halt was made at Bacapa, and the monk sent the negro forward, with directions to go fifty or sixty leagues (from 135 to 162 miles) north, and send him from time to time news of whatever he saw and heard. The more favorable the reports the larger should be the cross on the piece of white wood which the negro was to send with each despatch of an Indian messenger.
Bacapa appears on the map that Father Joseph Stöcklein, S. J., published in the Neuen Weltblatt in 1728, which is based on the journey of the famous Jesuit missionary P. Eusebius Kühne (Eusebio Kino), as St. Ludovicus de Bacapa, and is located in Arizona, west of Tucson—Fray Marcos himself gives the distance from the coast as forty leagues, or 108 miles. He arrived there before Easter of 1539. Bacapa could not therefore have lain so far north as Father Kühne’s map represents it, but must at farthest have been in the northern part of the southern half of Sonora, near the present Matape. In this case it was probably a Pima settlement, as the name denotes.[67] Four days after the negro departed the monk received a first message from him through Indians, who brought a cross the height of a man. The Indians told “such wonderful things of his discoveries,” Fray Marcos says, “that I would not believe them unless I saw the things myself.... The Indian told me that it was thirty days’ journey from the place where Estévanico was to the first city of the country, which was called Cibola.... He affirmed and maintained that this first province contained seven very large cities which were all subject to one lord. In them were large houses of stone and mortar, the smallest of which were one story high with a terrace, and there were besides two-and three-storied buildings. The chief’s house was of four stories. There were many decorations at the entrance of the principal houses, and turquoises, which were very plentiful in the country. The people of these cities were very well clothed.” Notwithstanding these reports, Fray Marcos was in no hurry to go away from Bacapa. He seems not to have placed an absolute trust in the negro, and waited for the return of the Indians who had gone by his command to the coast (of the Gulf of California). They came back bringing with them natives of the seashore. These belonged, no doubt, to the Seris, a wild tribe who still live on the islands of the Gulf of California. On the same day men came into Bacapa from the east, Indians whose faces, breasts, and arms were painted. They confirmed the stories that the negro’s messengers had brought. Fray Marcos de Nizza hesitated no longer. He started away two days after Easter, following the track of his dark-skinned guide, in search of the “seven cities of Cibola.”
The name of Cibola was thus known away in the interior of Sonora. Whence was it derived? From what Indian language was it borrowed? These are questions with which till recently only my eminent friend F. H. Cushing, and, to a small extent, I myself have been engaged. How far our investigations are of definite value can hardly be determined as yet, for the languages of Sonora are still very little known. They are reduced, if we exclude the Apache idiom, to three large groups. In the south is the Cahita or Yaqui language, which includes the Mayo; in the west the Seri; and in the centre, north, and east the Pima-Opata, which is divided into two principal branches—the Pima and the Joyl-raua or Opata. The Eudeve and Jova appear to be dialects of the Opata. At Bacapa Fray Marcos was among the Pimas; Estévanico, a few days’ journey north, was either among the Pimas, the Seris, or the Opatas, for those three tribes met in the vicinity of Ures. The word Cibola might therefore belong to one of the languages or dialects of northern Sonora and the districts north and northeast of it. Its home need not be sought south of there.
Both the Pima and the Opata languages have names of places which somewhat resemble the word Cibola. East of the little village of Huachinera, at the western foot of the Sierra Madre, the Yaqui River emerges from a dark gorge and turns thence to the northwest, to irrigate the narrow, fertile valley of Baserac and Babispe. At the place where the river leaves the gorge, to turn a little later upon its northern course, lie some ruins of former villages of the Opatas, concerning the fate of which definite traditions exist. Not far from the mouth of the gorge is Batesopa; farther west are Baquigopa, then Cobora, and lastly Quitamac. When in April, 1884, I passed through this wilderness with my intelligent guide, Spiridion Lucero, to explore the ruins, exposed to constant danger of our lives from the swarms of Apaches around us, we came, after twice fording the Yaqui, to a rock around which led an extremely perilous, dizzy path, fully a hundred feet above the raging stream. The Opata Indians call this critical spot “Ci-vo-ná-ro-co,” or the rock which one goes around. A distant resemblance can be recognized between this name and Cibola, or, as it was sometimes written in the sixteenth century, “Cevola” and “Civona”; and the ruins of Batesopa opposite the dangerous cliff, as well as those of Baquigopa west of it, point to the former existence of villages of considerable extent.[68]
The language of the Pimas is divided into several dialects. Besides the southern and northern Pima, there are the Pápago and the now extinct Sobaypuri dialects. In the idiom of the northern Pimas, the ruins on the southern bank of the Rio Gila in Arizona, generally known as Casa Grande (in distinction from Casas Grandes in Chihuahua), are called “Civano-qi,” the house of the Civano. The traditions as I heard them on the spot relate that in the times before the coming of the Spaniards the Pimas lived on the banks of the middle Gila, between Riverside and Phenix, in Arizona, in permanent houses, which were grouped into small villages. No common bond connected the different villages, except in those cases where small settlements gathered around a larger neighboring one. Such tribe centers existed at Florence, Casa Grande, Zacaton, and Casa Blanca on the Gila, and at Mesa City and Tempe on the lower Rio Salada. The best known of these is the ruin of Casa Grande.
Thirty days’ journey north of Ures carries the pedestrian to the other side of the Gila River. In ten days he can easily reach the present southern boundary of Arizona, and following the course of the little Rio San Pedro, he can in five or six days more be at San Carlos on the Gila. But the old Pima villages around Casa Grande lie a hundred miles in a straight line west of San Carlos, and it would be hard to keep in this straight line, for the mountains south of the Gila as far as Riverside are high, wild, broken, and poorly watered. The estimate of thirty days’ journey might therefore possibly fit Casa Grande. The first description of Cibola which Estévanico’s Indians gave the monk is, however, more important. It does not apply to the stairlike style of building of the pueblos, but to such architecture as I found at Casa Grande, and everywhere in the ruins on the Gila, Salado, and Rio Verde. The principal building at Casa Grande, still standing, is indeed not of stone, but of coarse adobe; but three stories are still plainly visible, while smaller, one-storied houses are scattered around it. The supposition is therefore not to be absolutely rejected, that the accounts concerning Cibola current in Sinaloa were a recollection of the former Pima settlement of Civano-qi, eighty miles northwest of Tucson, on the Gila River, the ruins of which are now known by the name of Casa Grande—the great house.
Settlements of similar architectural character existed in Sonora in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and belonged likewise to the Pima, or, as it was sometimes called, the Névome tribe. The Jesuit missionary Padre Andrés Pérez de Ribas wrote of them in 1645: “Their houses were better and more solidly built than those of the other nations, for the walls consisted of large air-dried brick of clay, with flat roofs and balconies. They built some [of these houses] much larger, and with loop-holes, in order to take refuge in them as in a fortress in case of a hostile attack, and to defend themselves with bows and arrows.” The principal building of Casa Grande seems to have been a place of refuge of this kind.
Whilst it appears probable and even certain that these “permanent houses” of the Pimas in Sonora, and not the great communal structures of the New Mexican pueblos, were what Cabeza de Vaca had seen in his wanderings, it is still doubtful to what extent an indefinite recollection of their former settlement of Civano-qi may have made the southern Pimas the originators of the story of Cibola. It is to be remarked, however, that according to the reports which Estévanico sent to the priest, Cibola designated a still existing Indian settlement, and not a ruin, as Casa Grande undoubtedly was at that time. I have taken much pains to determine on the spot which of the numerous settlements of the Opatas, Sobaypuris, and Pimas, of which the ruins are still visible, may have been inhabited and relatively prosperous in the sixteenth century, and have found that (except the villages of the southern Pimas already mentioned, which are not, however, in question here) not one of these so-called pueblos corresponds to what is known to us of Cibola. It therefore seems useless to look for Cibola anywhere south of the Rio Gila or on that stream; but only north of it, either in the present Arizona or the present New Mexico, can we expect to find such a clue in language and tradition as shall lead with any certainty to a definite locality.
There is no doubt that the whole extensive region between the course of the Gila in the south, its sources in the east and the present San Carlos in the west, with the northern half of New Mexico and Arizona, was controlled in the sixteenth century by a single linguistic stock—that of what are called the “Apaches.” I say controlled, for the Apaches had no fixed abodes then more than they have now, and they roamed through the whole wild chaos of mountains, by their incursions excluding other tribes from the country. Most of their little huts of branches, sometimes plastered with mud, were set up along the streams, but they only stayed in one place so long as no occasion, however frivolous, prompted them to move their camp to some safer or more favorable place. The Apaches therefore furnish nothing to support us in localizing Cibola among them, and I know of no place-name in their language that can be connected with it. Farther east, along the course of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, are the pueblos of the Piros; these, too, aside from their distant situation, give no clue. The region, clothed with magnificent fir-trees, between the Gila and the Rio Colorado Chiquito (the Little Colorado) in western Arizona, the noble mountain landscape of the Sierra Blanca, the wild and precipitous rocks of the Escudilla and Sierra del Dátil, the still sparsely populated hunting-grounds between the Rio Grande and the Rito Quemado—were uninhabited, and only the Apaches and their northern relatives, the present Navajos, swept through them from time to time on hunting and predatory expeditions.
An undulating, often bare, highland begins in the northern part of the Escudilla, the average height of which is 6000 feet above the sea. One may wander for days at a time on the mesas, as if in a large garden of low, spreading junipers. At rare intervals a valley cuts through the uniform level, the borders of which sometimes present picturesque rocks of inconsiderable height. This region is bounded on the north by the valley of the western Rio Puerco. In the east it passes through the continental watershed of what is called the “Atlantic and Pacific Divide” into the more broken heights of San Estévan de Acoma to the Cerros Mohinos, not far from the Rio Grande. In the west it flattens out, without losing in height, into the treeless district of the Little Colorado. This desert country, visited by the summer’s heat and the winter’s cold, situated in New Mexico and on the borders of Arizona, is penetrated by a small river which rises in the Atlantic and Pacific Divide, flows generally from east to west, and unites in Arizona with the Rio Puerco. This stream flows at first through a narrow and exceedingly fertile valley. About thirty miles from the borders of Arizona it widens into a sandy and treeless but productive intervale. This intervale, which is hardly fifteen miles long and nowhere more than twelve miles wide, is watered only by the muddy brook. An isolated table-mountain rises on the southeast side over the edge of the intervale to a perpendicular height of 1026 feet above its level. The rocks everywhere hang wall-like over the valley, or swell out at the foot over the river; and only a few dizzy paths lead to the summit. Similar colossal rocks tower upon the north side, far above the rest of the valley’s edge. This plain, with the little sand-burdened river that bears its name, is the plain of Zuñi.
I can never forget my first view of this plain from a distance, nor the entrance into it. I had left the provisional station of Bennett’s late in the morning, alone, on foot, without arms, to go thirty miles to Zuñi on a strange road through a wholly uninhabited country, which was only occasionally traversed by Navajo Indians. Till four o’clock in the afternoon I passed through the apparently endless plateau, on which the sandy trail was visible only from one juniper bush to another, and seemed to lead around each one. From the few elevations only the next rise could be seen; no mountain ranges enlivened the horizon, for thick clouds covered the sky; it was in February, and a snow-storm might come on at any moment. About four o’clock in the afternoon I reached an ascent on the summit of which rested a little light. In the southeast rose gigantic masses of red sandstone menacingly high above the dark-green wood. These were the mesas of Zuñi. The sun broke out of the clouds and its beams in a little while changed the distant colossi into glowing pillars of fire; the sky was then covered again, and instead of the dreaded snow-storm there came on a shower, with distant thunder in the west. Beyond the light pine woods encompassed me; the eatable piñon (Pinus edulis) overshadowed the dwarf forms of the junipers. It began to grow dark, and the frequent thunder-claps were sounding nearer. When I came out of the wood the plain of Zuñi lay before me in a sombre half-light; sand-whirls were driving through it and veiled the lofty mesa; I stood at the foot of the northern table-mountain, which rose sheer a full thousand feet. A flash of lightning ran through the sky and struck the rocks below, and an icy gust brought a shower of hailstones. The lightning flashes were numerously repeated and always struck the same peak—a phenomenon with which the Indians are well acquainted, and which occurs in every thunder-storm. A shower of hail followed without rain, and then it became calm and dark. Distant lightning reminded us of the storm that had passed, but the sky was still clouded and extreme darkness covered the plain. I could not see the way. Then the eastern horizon brightened up with the light of the rising moon without the clouds breaking, and I could perceive the outlines of the rock mass in front of me, in the direction of which the village of Zuñi lay. At last the moon came out, and the stars shone in the zenith. A procession of clouds was floating in front of me, over the top of a dark, low hill. That hill was Zuñi, where I afterward spent weeks of instructive research in the house and the company of Mr. Cushing.
The name of Zuñi does not belong to the language of the tribe that bears it, but to the Queres idiom of the valley of the Rio Grande. The pueblo is named “Halona,” and the Zuñi Indians call themselves “A-shiui.”[69] They call the land they occupy “Shiuano,” a name the analogy of which with Cibola should not be overlooked.[70] It is therefore not strange that the general direction in which Estévanico went, and in which the monk followed at a regular distance behind him, was north. Unfortunately the single report which Fray Marcos, the only scribe in his party, wrote is unsatisfactory, or deficient in geographical data. No conclusions can be drawn from it in respect to the character of the country or to the number of rivers, the volume of water in them or their course. Equally indefinite are his statements concerning the inhabitants. The zealous Franciscan seems to have been animated by only one thought—that of finding the seven cities of Cibola. The farther he advanced, the more he heard of them, and the more definite were the accounts. Besides the Indians of Sonora, probably Pimas, by whom he was accompanied, men of the northern tribes joined him as he proceeded on his journey. It is still, however, possible that he continued entirely within the territory of the Pimas; for the Indians of Bacapa, who belong to the southern Pima tribe, served him everywhere as interpreters.[71] Only short distances separated them from their tribal relatives, who were known under the name of the Pápagos (Pápap Ootam), and then[72] formed the lowest, the most miserable, branch of the great linguistic group. Fray Marcos crossed the southeast corner of the “Papagueréa” and turned toward the northeast, where he successively met the Sobaypuris and, on the Gila, the Ootam (men) or northern Pimas. He was everywhere received in a friendly manner. Estévanico kept sending back the cross signs, as had been agreed upon, and thus fortified the zeal of the enthusiastic monk. The stories of the natives set forth the glories of Cibola in ever more brilliant colors. Then he heard names of places suggestive of grandeur: they spoke, for instance, of the “province” of Totonteac; of a “city” of Ahacus, which was one of the seven cities; of a “kingdom” of Hacus in the vicinity of Cibola, and of another “kingdom” called Marata. They told of green stones that adorned the doorposts of the houses of Cibola, of houses several stories high, of skins that came from a large animal of the cow-kind with curly hair. And the negro sent him back not only crosses for his encouragement, but also verbal accounts that confirmed all that the Indians had given the Franciscan to understand by signs and words.
The negro also travelled in company. During his wanderings with Cabeza de Vaca he had obtained a clapper or gourd-rattle, like those which are used by most of the Indian tribes in their religious rites and in working their cures. He carried this with him, and thereby acquired for himself the dignity and fame of a medicine-man. But Estévanico seems to have made an unwise use of the advantage which this prestige gave him. Besides requiring from the natives more provisions than he needed, he sought greedily for precious metals and green stones, and abused the superstitious Indians because they had not enough of them to satisfy his avarice. He seems also to have made requisitions upon the highest and most precious possession of the people, their women. Yet he obtained leaders and guides everywhere, and when Fray Marcos had reached the interior of Arizona, the black was far ahead of him with a numerous retinue.
All that can be definitely gathered from the scanty ethnographic information which the monk has left is, that even tribes that spoke the same language were separated from one another by uninhabited tracts. When he had crossed the Gila there lay before him a wide, depopulated district which he calls a desert (desierto). This word should be understood, however, not in the sense of a dry, barren region, but simply of a country without inhabitants. On the other side of this land, forsaken or neglected by men, far in the north, lay Cibola. The missionary entered upon the passage of that desert region with a numerous company, and it was midsummer when the Indians of his retinue at last assured him that only a few days’ journey separated him from the long-sought spot. Then natives met him who flocked around him trembling and distressed, with all the evidences of great trouble. Their scanty clothing was torn, and they appeared to be starved and exhausted by long flight. They were men who had been with Estévanico, and brought bad news.
The negro had arrived at Cibola a little while before, and had behaved there in his peculiar reckless manner. So much, and no more, was disclosed in the confused expressions which Fray Marcos obtained from his agitated and frightened informants. Some of them had soon perceived that their presence was not welcome to the inhabitants of the place, and had concealed themselves in the vicinity. Others remained with the black. Trustworthy details of what occurred afterward are wanting, for the catastrophe appears to have taken place in the interior of the village, or, as the story has it, “the city.” The fugitives, who were still in hiding, one day saw a number of persons coming out of the place. They recognized those of their company who had remained behind, as fleeing, and pursued by the people. The negro Estévanico, however, was not among them; the people of Cibola had killed him, notwithstanding his medicine rattle. The fugitives succeeded in escaping, and eventually in finding the hiding-place of their companions. Then they all took to flight, for the people were searching the vicinity for them. They now implored the priest not to make any further effort to approach Cibola. Estévanico had been killed, and the inhabitants were in great excitement. Only rapid flight could deliver them all, for the braves of Cibola were already on their track.
After nearly reaching his aim, having come almost to the threshold of the place so long sought with so much toil and anticipation, Fray Marcos de Nizza could now feel the force of the warning,
The trial was a severe one to Fray Marcos. Yet suddenly and unexpectedly as it had come, he came as quickly to a decision. His object was to reconnoiter; the instructions enjoined him to learn as much as he could, but in doing so to expose himself as little to danger as possible. He questioned the fugitives searchingly concerning what they had seen in Cibola, and they confirmed all that he had previously heard of it. They told him that the place where Estévanico was killed was only one of the seven cities of Cibola, and was not the most populous one. The priest concluded from their accounts and expressions that even to go to the place would be attended with great risk to life. He would have to give up his missionary work temporarily, for a martyr’s death would under such circumstances be fruitless. Yet it seemed possible to him to steal carefully into the vicinity and cast a glance from some favorable point into the region of his hopes and desires, in order to be satisfied by seeing for himself, even if it were only from a distance, of the truth or untruth of the accounts that had been brought to him. By this method he hoped properly to perform his duty to the Spanish authorities, and at the same time, if he succeeded in executing the attempt without harm, to gain some knowledge of the land and be prepared to carry out the work of conversion if he should return at some later time and with better opportunity.
Attempts have been made in later times to fasten a charge of cowardice upon Fray Marcos because he did not give himself blindly up to death by taking the risk of going among the excited people of Cibola. Catholic missionaries have set examples of heroic devotion in many other places, and have with their blood fertilized the earth, to the securing in later times of rich spiritual harvests to the Church. The reproach is in this case undeserved and unjust. As the instructions of Don Antonio de Mendoza show, the Franciscan’s position was ambiguous, and his purpose was rather to prepare than to complete. Obviously nothing was to be gained by a heroic sacrifice of his life, while everything, the whole object of his journey, might have been defeated by it. If this object was to be secured, he must before everything else spare his life in order to return to Mexico and make new attempts thence.
The censure is especially unfair in view of the effort which the priest resolved to make before he began his retreat to Mexico. That the attempt to steal up into the vicinity of Cibola was attended with great difficulties and considerable danger is attested by the opposition of the men of his company, otherwise so obedient, when he asked them to assist him. He eventually succeeded in persuading a few to go with him, but the majority held back. The party went upon the precarious way with extreme caution, and at last reached a hill whence they looked down into a valley in which lay several villages, the houses of which were unusually large, of several stories, and apparently built of clay and stone. The village nearest to them was pointed out as the one in which the negro had been killed. It seemed to be “as large as the City of Mexico,” and men could be clearly seen in it who appeared to be dressed in cotton. Rejoicing in these discoveries, and at now being able to make a report to the viceroy of what he had observed, Fray Marcos started on his return. He first, however, set up a wooden cross on the spot from which he had seen Cibola. It was intended to be an evidence to the natives of his having been there without their knowledge, and at the same time a notice that he would at some time return.
The retreat during the first few days naturally took the character of a carefully guarded flight. But the fugitives soon felt safe, and with less caution, and accordingly greater speed, they went toward the south without meeting any further obstacles. The monk arrived at Culiacan on September 2, 1539, and shortly afterward sent the viceroy the report to which we are indebted for our knowledge of his journey and for the first authentic account of New Mexico.
Few documents of Spanish origin concerning America have been exposed to a sharper and more severe criticism than the “Descubrimiento de las siete Ciudades” of Fray Marcos de Nizza. It has been condemned for defectiveness and superficiality, and charges of exaggeration and untruth have been made against it. A one-sided and inadequate investigation has also caused doubt to be cast upon the declaration that he saw Cibola. The fact has not been without effect in the inquiry that no one has ever succeeded in finding among the Indian tribes of New Mexico a tradition, myth, or story, even in a distorted form, containing a reminiscence of the march, presence, or fate of the negro Estévanico or of the Franciscan. Both, the black and the monk, were prominent figures, well fitted to leave deep traces in the memories of the natives. This total disappearance of all recollections of these two personages has also, perhaps unawares, moved other more meritorious inquirers to look for Cibola in the ruins of long extinct pueblos.
In the year 1880 Frank Hamilton Cushing, commissioned by the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, went to the pueblo of Zuñi, in order, for the first time in the annals of science, to subject a tribe of men who stood on a lower plane of civilization than ours to a thorough study by completely identifying himself temporarily with their condition. The distinguished young student was even more successful than he had hoped to be in accomplishing his difficult and somewhat dangerous task. Through becoming a Zuñi by all the forms of their law he made himself thoroughly acquainted with the past and present of the tribe, and has, by his discovery of the esoteric bond among the Indians for religious purposes, made the most important contribution of recent times to our knowledge of primitive peoples, as well as to the history of polytheism.
In the course of his laborious researches, which occupied him and his devoted wife and prevented their permanent return to civilization till 1884, Mr. Cushing collected a valuable store of historical legends and folk-stories. Most unselfishly he permitted me to draw from his collection, and whatever these sketches contain of linguistic explanations, traditions, customs, and usages from the circle of the Zuñi is of his acquisition; and I more gladly use it because it gives me the opportunity to acknowledge with hearty thanks the eminent merit of their collector.
There are associated with the whole region of Zuñi a mass of tales and household stories of a religious and historical nature and of a more or less contemplative character. Many of these stories, transmitted through the esoteric union with exact fidelity during hundreds of years, reflect the influence which the surroundings have imperceptibly exercised in a powerful degree upon human thought and feeling. The treeless, sandy plains, the low heights of the borders covered with junipers, stand in impressive contrast to the few isolated table-mountains which rise perpendicularly here and there like gigantic towers. Many of the tales rest upon historical foundations, and the history is clothed as with the drapery of a wonderful landscape. The high mesa of Zuñi, called in the language of the tribe “To-yo-a-la-na,” or Thunder-mountain, is four miles at the northern end, six miles at the southern end, from the pueblo; then it bends around to the east and turns back to the north. The red sandstone rocks rise nearly everywhere perpendicularly from the plain. The summit is a plateau, overgrown with junipers, piñons, and cactus, and with scanty grass. On it are the ruins of six small pueblos. This group of ruins has been christened “Old Zuñi,” but erroneously, for the aggregated villages were built after 1680 and deserted about 1705, when the tribe of Zuñi, which had fled to the rocks before the Navajos and from fear of the Spaniards, returned of its own accord to the valley where its pueblo now stands. But several ruins of old towns lie at the foot of the mesa, concerning which very definite historical traditions still exist. “Ma-tza-ki,” once an important place, is in the northwest, and “O’aquima” in the south. The rocks there form a niche which is filled to the height of about one hundred and fifty feet with steep, partly barren heaps of débris. Imposing cliffs menacingly overlook these hills, but the rock-wall in the background of the niche rises less perpendicularly, although inaccessibly smooth, to the plateau of the summit. At the foot of the hill is permanent water, to which extend the scattered individual fields of the Zuñi Indians.
On the crests of these hills, imbedded as it were in the niche, stand the ruins of “Heshota O’aquima,” a former village of the Zuñi. It was a pueblo of moderate importance in 1599, but was wholly deserted after the insurrection of 1680, and fell into ruins. The population may be estimated, from the appearance of the ruins, to have been equal to about half that of Zuñi, which was 1608 in 1880. Difficult to assail, easily defended against an enemy who had no artillery or long-range guns, provided with water and a fertile soil, O’aquima had an exceptionally protected situation. The village could be seen only from the southern, southwestern, and southeastern sides; on every other side it was enclosed and hidden by the rocks.
The Zuñis definitely informed Mr. Cushing, after he had become an adept by initiation into the esoteric fraternity of warriors, that a “black Mexican” had once come to O’aquima and had been hospitably received there. He, however, very soon incurred mortal hatred by his rude behavior toward the women and girls of the pueblo, on account of which the men at last killed him. A short time after that the first white Mexicans, as the Indians call all white men whose mother-tongue is Spanish, came to the country and overcame the natives in war. This tale is of indubitable authenticity, and of evident significance. It proves what I have only intimated above, that Cibola represented the present country and tribe of Zuñi. It is also of great importance in its bearing upon the truth of the statements of Fray Marcos. The hill from which he, coming from the southwest, looked at Cibola, could have been nowhere but on the southern border of the plain of Zuñi; and it is only from that side that the pueblo of O’aquima can be seen, while it is possible to approach it thence unremarked to within two miles, and to observe everything plainly. There, too, the remains of a wooden cross were visible till a few years ago. It has been supposed that this was the cross which the monk erected; considering the dry atmosphere of the region, the supposition, even if it is not probable, is not to be wholly rejected.
The charge of exaggeration and distortion which has been made against the “Descubrimiento de las siete Ciudades” is based chiefly upon two points—on the comparison of Cibola or O’aquima with the City of Mexico, and on the statement that the people of Cibola were accustomed to adorn their houses with green stones, or turquoises.
Besides the fact that every New Mexican pueblo appears larger and more imposing from a distance than it really is on account of the peculiar structure of its houses, we should bear in mind that the priest’s comparison was not with the earlier Indian pueblo of Tenochtitlan that was destroyed by Cortés, or, still less, with the present City of Mexico, but with the new Spanish town as Fray Marcos knew it in the year 1539. It is very doubtful whether it had a thousand inhabitants then, and the houses they lived in were all grouped, for the sake of security, in the vicinity of the present Zócalo. The comparison, therefore, instead of being exaggerated, seems to have been fitting and correct. As to the decoration of the doorposts with turquoises, Mr. Cushing has found that a custom formerly prevailed, in Zuñi at least, of decorating the openings in the roof through which the inmates of the house went down into the rooms and chambers with green stones, among which kalaite, or turquoise, carbonate of copper, or malachite, and phosphate of copper, etc., were occasionally introduced. The monk was therefore correctly informed concerning this matter, and repeated truly what had been told him.
Efforts have been made for a long time in vain to localize the names which Fray Marcos heard of what were styled “kingdoms,” “provinces,” and “cities” in the vicinity of Cibola. Mr. Cushing has succeeded in explaining the names of “Marata” and “Totonteac.” Although they are distorted, they both belong to the language of the Zuñi, and denote directions, rather than particular regions. “Ahacus,” on the other hand, is one of the seven cities—Ha-ui-cu or Aguas calientes—situated fifteen miles southwest of Zuñi, and deserted since the year 1679. “Hacus,” finally, which Fray Marcos called a kingdom in distinction from the others, is a tribe independent of Zuñi, that of Acoma, the real name of which is A-co, and which the Zuñi, according to Cushing, call Ha-cu-quä.
The return of the priest, his remarkable experiences, and the stories which he brought from the far north attracted the highest degree of attention from the officers and people of Mexico. Nobody doubted the truth of the statements of Fray Marcos. He had not found gold and silver, but he had discovered settled tribes and a fertile country. The notion of great wealth in metals readily associated itself with these two elements, and it was not difficult to obtain help in men and means for the organization of a campaign on a larger scale into those regions. Don Antonio de Mendoza therefore did not hesitate, after the discovery had been made and the way pointed out, to proceed to conquest. For this he found a ready and willing instrument in 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, Cristóbal 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,[73] but principally to keep along the coast in touch with Coronado’s land expedition. A comrade of Coronado’s, Pedro Casteñeda, 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 [Casteñeda 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 Casteñeda, 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 Casteñeda, “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,”[74] 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.[75] 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 Pinal 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 boreus and Telyphonus excubitor), the rattlesnake (Caudisono molossus), and the large warty lizard, appropriately called the Gila monster (Heloderma 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 Pimas 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 Bonìta, 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 Casteñeda’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 Relacion, 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” (Valle 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 Hierónymo 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. “Guagarispa,” 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, pitahaya, 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[76] 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.