"That they were there for agricultural and pastoral purposes I consider certain, from the fact that there are no evidences of mines, or any mineral indications of any kind in the surrounding country, and that the country, with the single exception of the absence of water, is well adapted to the mode of cultivation pursued and crops raised by the Indians.
"That water was brought there from some distant point--and distant it would have been--cannot be the case, as the face of the country would have required the construction of numerous aqueducts for its conveyance, remains of which would be found at the present time; and why would a people bring water a long distance for the purpose of working lands no more valuable than such as could have been had at the water?
"Where, then, did the inhabitants get the water necessary for their subsistence? There are two arroyos between the ruins and the Mesa Jumanes, within a mile of the town, having well-defined watercourses, which might have contained permanent water at the time that the town was inhabited. Even at the present time, the drainage from these arroyos furnishes water for a laguna some five miles below that lasts during about one half the year. Again, springs may have existed around the rise upon which the town is situated that, from natural causes, have become dry.
"The phenomenon of the failures of water is no uncommon one in this region, as is evidenced by the numerous vents where the surrounding rocks show the action of running water.
"A case directly supporting the a.s.sumption of the failure of the water is furnished at a place about thirty-five miles northerly from the Gran Quivira, known as "La Cienega." At this point a stream of water, furnished by two springs, and running to a distance of about a mile at all seasons of the year, which has never been known to be dry within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, has, within the last year, entirely disappeared; and even digging to a considerable depth in the bed of the late springs fails to find the stream, or the channel by which it has so mysteriously disappeared.
"To those at all familiar with the cretaceous formation of the south-eastern portion of New Mexico, and who have seen the numerous rivers that flow hundreds of inches of water within a few yards of where they make their first appearance, and the total disappearance of these streams within a few miles, who have seen the water flowing in caves and subterraneous streams, and the fact that the whole country is cavernous, can easily imagine the possibility of a stream acting upon its cretaceous bed, and eventually wearing a channel, to connect with some immense cavern, and disappearing at once from the surface beyond all reach of human power.
"To the south of the Gran Quivira, at a distance of about twenty miles, commences a _mal pais_, an immense bed of lava, sixty miles in length from north to south, and covering an area of five hundred square miles. To the south-west of this commences a salt marsh, which has an area of fifty square miles, and which is fed entirely by subterranean streams from the Sacramento and White Mountains, receiving without doubt by the same means the drainage of this plain for a hundred miles to the north. The above facts are, I think, sufficient to account for the absence of water at the present time near Gran Quivira.
"As to what became of the inhabitants of this place, as well as those of Abo and Quarra to the north-west,--towns that are coeval with the Gran Quivira,--we can only conjecture.
The most reasonable conclusion that can be arrived at is that they were exterminated by the Spaniards upon their reoccupation of the country. Though history is silent as to the complete operations of the Spaniards upon their return to New Mexico, yet it is a fact established by doc.u.mentary evidence that a relentless war was waged against the Indians, and a number of tribes are spoken of as being engaged in certain battles, of which tribes we know nothing at the present day; and in some instances it is stated that some tribes sued for peace, and promised obedience to the rule of the conquerors, for which they received grants of lands that they at present occupy. The inhabitants of Gran Quivira, Abo, and Quarro would be among the first that the Spaniards would meet on their reoccupation of the country, and there is every reason to believe that they were exterminated by the incensed invaders."
[1] _Las siete cuevas_: in Nahuatl _Chicomoztoc_, from _chicome_, seven, and _oztoc_, cave. Alonzo de Molina, _Vocabulario Mexicano_, 1571, parte iia. pp. 20 and 78. Fray Juan de Tobar, _Codice Ramirez_, p. 18.
[2] Fray Diego Duran, _Historia de las Yndias de Nueva-Espana, e Islas de Tierra Firme_, cap. i. p. 8; _Codex Vatica.n.u.s_, Kingsborough, vols.
i., ii., vi.; _a.n.a.les de Cuauht.i.tlan: a.n.a.les del Museo Nacional de Mexico_, tom. i. entrega 7, p. 7 of 2d vol., but incorporated in the first. "I acatl ipan quizque Chicomoztoc in Chichimeca omitoa moternuh in imitoloca."
[3] _Historia de los Indios de la Nueva-Espana, in Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos para la Historia de Mexico_, by J. G. Icazbalceta, vol. i. p.
7.
[4] _Segunda Relacion Anonima de la Jornada de Nuno de Guzman, in Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos_, etc., vol. ii. p. 303.
[5] The early literature on this subject will only be fully known when the remarkable collection called _Libro de Oro_ shall have been published by Senor Icazbalceta, its meritorious owner. This valuable collection of ma.n.u.scripts dates from the sixteenth century, and contains, besides a number of official reports on local matters of Mexico and districts pertaining to it, the chronicles of the tezcucan Juan Bautista Pomar, a copy of Motolinia, and a number of MSS. written between 1529 and 1547 at the instance of the much-abused Bishop Zumarraga. These MSS. contain the results of the earliest investigations on Mexican history and tradition.
The natives of Mexico appear to have had no knowledge, nay, not even the most dim recollection, of the _fauna_ of South-western North America.
While their so-called calendar, in the graphic tokens used to designate each one of the twenty days of their conventional "month," contains the forms of all the larger quadrupeds roaming over Mexico and Central America, the tapir excepted, we look in vain for the coyote, the bear, the mountain-sheep, and the buffalo.
[6] _Popol Vuh_, part iii. cap. iv. p. 216, cap. vi. pp. 226, 228, cap.
viii. p. 238, etc.
[7] Hernando Cortes, _Carta Quarta_, dated Temixt.i.tan, 15 October, 1524, Vedia i. p. 102. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, _Historia General y Natural de las Indias_, lib. x.x.xiii. cap. x.x.xvi. vol. iii. p. 447, lib. x.x.xiv. cap. viii. p. 576, Madrid, 1853. The information was derived from Gonzalo de Sandoval. See Antonio de Herrera, _Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano_, dec. iii. lib. iii. cap. xvii. p. 106, edition of 1726.
[8] _Relacion de las Ceremonias y Ritos, Poblacion y Gobierno de los Indios de la Provincia de Mechuacan_, p. 113, from the _Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos para la Historia de la Espana. Tercera Relacion Anonima de la Jornada de Nuno de Guzman, Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos_, Icazbalceta, ii.
pp. 443, 449, 451. _Matias de la Mota Padilla, Historia de la Nueva-Galicia_, published 1870, cap. iii. p. 27. Oviedo, lib. vi. cap.
x.x.xiii. vol. i. pp. 222, 223.
[9] _Quarta Relacion Anonima de la Jornada de Nuno de Guzman, Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos_, Icazbalceta, ii. p. 475. Oviedo, lib. vi. cap. x.x.xiii.
vol. i. p. 223.
[10] In 1527, Herrera, dec. iv. lib. ii. cap. iv. pp. 26, 27.
[11] He was treasurer of Narvaez" expedition, and subsequently, upon his return, or rather in 1541, became _adelantado_ of Paraguay.
[12] He wrote all from memory. The t.i.tle of his work is _Naufragios de Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, y Relacion de la Jornada que hizo a la Florida_. It was first printed in 1555, at Valladolid. My references are to the reprint in Vedia"s _Historiadores Primitivos de Indias_, vol. i.
[13] Cabeza de Vaca, _Naufragios_, etc., cap. x.x.xvii. p. 548, x.x.xiv. p.
545. According to Herrera, dec. vi. lib. i. cap. vii. p. 11 and cap.
viii. p. 11, it might be either 1536 or 1534, "el ano pasado de 1534."
Oviedo, lib. x.x.xv. cap. vi. p. 614, intimates as much as 1538. Fray Antonio Tello, _Historia de la Nueva-Galicia_, fragment preserved in _Coleccion de Doc.u.mentos_, Icazbalceta, ii. cap. xii. p. 358, says "habian llegado ese ano de treinta y tres a aquellas tierras," 1533.
[14] Cabeza de Vaca, cap. x.x.xi. pp. 542, 543.
[15] Id., p. 543.
[16] He was a native of Savoy, Italy, and was with Sebastian de Belalcazar during the latter"s conquest of Quito. Juan de Velasco, _Histoire du royaume de Quito_, French translation by Ternaux-Compans, Introd. p. viii. He wrote the following books: _Conquista de la Provincia del Quito: Ritos y Ceremonias de los Indios_; _Las dos Lineas de los Incas y de los Scyris en las Provincias del Peru y del Quito_; _Cartas Informativas de lo Obrado en las Provincias del Peru y del Cuzco_. These ma.n.u.scripts may still exist. According to Fray Augustin de Vetancurt (Menologio Franciscano, ed. of 1871, pp. 117, 118, 119), he was born at Nizza, and in 1531 came to America, being in Peru in 1532.
Thence he went to Nicaragua and Mexico. He was provincial from 1540 to 1543, and died at Mexico, March 25, 1558.
[17] Fray Marcos Nizza, _Descubrimiento de las Siete Ciudades_, p. 329.
[18] Nizza, p. 332. Herrera, dec. vi. lib. vii. cap. vii. p. 156.
[19] In _Doc.u.mentos para la Historia de Mejico_, 1856, 4 serie, vol. i.
p. 327. The diary has not even a t.i.tle. Mentioned by Father Jacob Sedelmair, S. J., _Relacion que hizo ... Misionero de Tubatama_, in _Doc.u.mentos para la Historia de Mejico_, 3a serie, vol. ii. pp. 846, 848, 857, 859.
[20] On the map of Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, in _Der neue Weltbott_, by P. Joseph Stocklein, vol. i. 2d edition, 1728, there appears St. Ludov. de Bacapa. The diary of Mange, p. 327, is explicit.
[21] Manuel Orozco y Berra, _Geografia de las Lenguas y Carta Etnografica de Mexico_, part iii. cap. xxiii. pp. 345-353, etc.
Francisco Pimentel, _Cuadro Descriptivo y Comparativo de las Lenguas Indigenas de Mexico_, 1865, vol. ii. pp. 91, 92-116.
[22] The fact that he became the guide of Coronado, and led him to Cibola, indicates that Fray Marcos crossed the Gila, since otherwise the Spaniards would have traversed the Sierra Madre, and entered New Mexico from Chihuahua. It is true that the general direction of Coronado"s march from Culiacan was from south to north, inclining to the _east_.
[23] The attest of D. Antonio de Mendoza, concerning Nizza"s report, bears the date, Mexico, 2 Sept., 1539. Consequently, Fray Marcos had returned previously. See _Relation du Voyage de Cibola_, Ternaux-Compans, Appendix, p. 282.
[24] This word is said to be now found only in the dialect of the pueblo of Isleta, south of Santa Fe, under the form _sibuloda_, buffalo. Albert S. Gatschet, _Zwolf Sprachen aus dem Sudwesten Nord Amerika"s_, Weimar, 1876, p. 106.
[25] Herrera, _Descripcion de las Indias_, cap. ix. p. 17, says that Mexico has 4,000 vecinos. This was in 1610, about.
[26] Lewis H. Morgan, _On the Ruins of a Stone Pueblo on the Animas River_, in _12th Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology_, etc., 1880, p. 550.
[27] _The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico_, Doylestown, Pa., 1869.
[28] Pedro de Castaneda y Nagera, _Relation du Voyage de Cibola_, translation of Ternaux-Compans, Paris, 1838, part ii. cap. iii. p. 163.
[29] Juan Jaramillo, _Relation du Voyage fait a la Nouvelle-Terre sous les Ordres du General Francisco Vasquez de Coronado_, in _Voyage de Cibola_, Append. vi. pp. 365, 366, 367.
[30] Castaneda, i. cap. ix. pp. 40, 41, ii. cap. iii. p. 162. The word is composed of _chichiltic_, a red object, and _calli_, house. Molina, ii. pp. 11, 19.
[31] General Simpson locates the "Casas Grandes" on the Gila, in lat.
33 4" 21" and lon. 111 45" Greenwich. _Coronado"s March_, p. 326.
[32] _Relation_, etc., p. 365. "Nous souffrimes quelques fatigues, jusqu"a ce que nous eussions atteint une chaine de montagnes dont j"avais entendu parler a la Nouvelle-Espagne, a plus de trois-cents lieues de la. Nous donnames a l"endroit ou nous pa.s.sames le nom de Chichiltic-Calli, parce que nous avions su par des Indiens que nous laissions derriere nous, qu"ils l"appelaient ainsi," etc. Id. "On nous dit qu"elle se nommait Chichiltic-Calli. Apres avoir franchi ces montagnes." ...