my women went out to meet them as a great Cacique should be met, in a
canoe with an awning, with fan-bearers and flutes and drums. I saw that
I pleased him," said the Princess. "I gave him the pearls from my neck,
and had from him a ring from his finger set with a red stone. He was a
handsome and a gallant gentleman, knowing what was proper toward
Princesses."
"And all this time you were planning to kill him?" said Dorcas, shocked.
The Princess shook her head.
"Not I, but the Cacica. She told me nothing. Talimeco was a White Town;
how should I know that she planned killing in it. She sat in the Place
of the Silences working her mischief and trusted me to keep the
Spaniards charmed and unsuspicious. How should I know what she meant? I
am chief woman of Cofachique, but I am not far-looking.
"I showed the Adelantado the god-house with its dead Caciques all
stuffed with pearls, and the warrior-house where the arms of Ayllon were
laid up for a trophy. It would have been well for him to be contented
with these things. I have heard him say they would have been a fortune
in his own country, but he was bitten with the love of gold and mad with
it as if a water moccasin had set its fangs in him. I had no gold, and I
could not help him to get Far-Looking into his power.
"That was his plan always, to make the chief person of every city his
hostage for the safety of his men. I would have helped him if I could,"
the Princess admitted, "for I thought him glorious, but the truth was, I
did not know.
"There was a lad, Islay, brought up with me in the house of my aunt, the
Cacica, who went back and forth to her with messages to the Place of the
Silences, and him I drove by my anger to lead the Spaniards that way.
But as he went he feared her anger coming to meet him more than he
feared mine that waited him at home. One day while the Spanish soldiers
who were with him admired the arrows which he showed them in his quiver,
so beautifully made, he plunged the sharpest of them into his throat. He
was a poor thing," said the Princess proudly, "since he loved neither me
nor my aunt enough to serve one of us against the other. We succeeded
only in serving Soto, for now there was no one to carry word for the
Cacica to the men who were to fall upon the Spaniards and destroy them
as they had destroyed Ayllon.
"Perhaps," said the Princess, "if she had told me her plan and her
reason for it, things would have turned out differently. At any rate,
she need not have become, as she did finally, my worst enemy, and died
fighting me. At that time she was as mother and chief to me, and I could
never have wished her so much bitterness as she must have felt sitting
unvisited in the Place of the Silences, while I took the Adelantado
pearling, and the fighting men, who should have fallen upon him at her
word, danced for his entertainment.
"She had to come out at last to find what had happened to Islay, for
whose death she blamed me, and back she went without a word to me, like
a hot spider to spin a stronger web. This time she appealed to
Tuscaloosa. They were of one mind in many things, and between them they
kept all the small tribes in tribute.
"It was about the time of the year when they should be coming with it
along the Tribute Road, and the Cacica sent them word that if they could
make the Spaniards believe that there was gold in their hills, she would
remit the tribute for one year. There was not much for them to do, for
there were hatchets and knives in the tribute, made of copper, in which
Soto thought he discovered gold. It may be so: once he had suspected it,
I could not keep him any longer at Talimeco. The day that he set out
there went another expedition secretly from the Cacica to Tuscaloosa.
'These men,' said the message, 'must be fought by men.' And Tuscaloosa
smiled as he heard it, for it was the first time that the Cacica had
admitted there was anything that could not be done by a woman. But at
that she had done her cleverest thing, because, though they were
friends, the Black Warrior wanted nothing so much as an opportunity to
prove that he was the better warrior.
"It was lovely summer weather," said the Princess, "as the Spaniards
passed through the length of Cofachique; the mulberry trees were
dripping with ripe fruit, the young corn was growing tall, and the
Indians were friendly. They passed over the Blue Ridge where it breaks
south into woody hills. Glossy leaves of the live-oak made the forest
spaces vague with shadows; bright birds like flame hopped in and out and
hid in the hanging moss, whistling clearly; groves of pecans and walnuts
along the river hung ropy with long streamers of the purple muscadines.
"You have heard," said the Lady of Cofachique, hesitating for the first
time in her story, and yet looking so much the Princess that the
children would never have dared think anything displeasing to her, "that
I went a part of the way with the Adelantado on the Tribute Road?" Her
lovely face cleared a little as they shook their heads.
"It is not true," she said, "that I went for any reason but my own wish
to learn as much as possible of the wisdom of the white men and to keep
my own people safe in the towns they passed through. I had my own women
about me, and my own warriors ran in the woods on either side, and
showed themselves to me in the places where the expedition halted,
unsuspected by Soto. It was as much as any Spaniard could do to tell one
half-naked Indian from another.
"The pearls, too,"--she touched the casket with her foot,--"the finest
that Soto had selected from the god-house, I kept by me. I never meant
to let them go, though there were some of them I gave to a soldier ...
there were slaves, too, of Soto's who found the free life of Cofachique
more to their liking than the fruitless search for gold...."
"She means," said the Snowy Egret, seeing that the Princess did not
intend to say any more on that point, "that she gave them for bribes to
one of Soto's men, a great bag full, though there came a day when he
needed the bag more than the pearls and he left them scattered on the
floor of the forest. It was about the slaves who went with her when she
gave Soto the slip in the deep woods, that she quarreled afterward with
the old Cacica."
"At the western border of Cofachique, which is the beginning of
Tuscaloosa's land," went on the Princess, "I came away with my women and
my pearls; we walked in the thick woods and we were gone. Where can a
white man look that an Indian cannot hide from him? It is true that I
knew by this time that the Cacica had sent to Tuscaloosa, but what was
that to me? The Adelantado had left of his own free will, and I was not
then Chief Woman of Cofachique. At the first of the Tuscaloosa towns the
Black Warrior awaited them. He sat on the piazza of his house on the
principal mound. He sat as still as the Cacica in the Place of Silences,
a great turban stiff with pearls upon his head, and over him the
standard of Tuscaloosa like a great round fan on a slender stem, of fine
feather-work laid on deerskin. While the Spaniards wheeled and raced
their horses in front of him, trying to make an impression, Soto could
not get so much as the flick of an eyelash out of the Black Warrior.
Gentleman of Spain as he was and the King's own representative, he had
to dismount at last and conduct himself humbly.
"The Adelantado asked for obedience to his King, which Tuscaloosa said
he was more used to getting than giving. When Soto wished for food and
carriers, Tuscaloosa gave him part, and, dissembling, said the rest were
at his capital of Mobila. Against the advice of his men Soto consented
to go there with him.
"It was a strong city set with a stockade of tree-trunks driven into the
ground, where they rooted and sent up great trees in which wild pigeons
roosted. It was they that had seen the runners of Cofachique come in
with the message from Far-Looking. All the wood knew, and the Indians
knew, but not the Spaniards. Some of them suspected. They saw that the
brush had been cut from the ground outside the stockade, as if
for battle.
"One of them took a turn through the town and met not an old man nor any
children. There were dancing women, but no others. This is the custom of
the Indians when they are about to fight,--they hide their families.
"Soto was weary of the ground," said the Princess. "This we were told by
the carriers who escaped and came back to Cofachique. He wished to sit
on a cushion and sleep in a bed again. He came riding into the town with
the Cacique on a horse as a token of honor, though Tuscaloosa was so
tall that they had trouble finding a horse that could keep his feet from
the ground, and it must have been as pleasant for him as riding a lion
or a tiger. But he was a great chief, and if the Spaniards were not
afraid to ride neither would he seem to be. So they came to the
principal house, which was on a mound. All the houses were of two
stories, of which the upper was open on the sides, and used for
sleeping. Soto sat with Tuscaloosa in the piazza and feasted; dancing
girls came out in the town square with flute-players, and danced for
the guard.
"But one of Soto's men, more wary than the rest, walked about, and saw
that the towers of the wall were full of fighting men. He saw Indians
hiding arrows behind palm branches.
"Back he went to the house where Soto was, to warn him, but already the
trouble had begun. Tuscaloosa, making an excuse, had withdrawn into the
house, and when Soto wished to speak to him sent back a haughty answer.
Soto would have soothed him, but one of Soto's men, made angry with the
insolence of the Indian who had brought the Cacique's answer, seized the
man by his cloak, and when the Indian stepped quickly out of it,
answered as quickly with his sword. Suddenly, out of the dark houses,
came a shower of arrows."
"It was the plan of the Cacica of Cofachique," explained the Egret. "The
men of Mobila had meant to fall on the Spaniards while they were eating,
but because of the Spanish gentleman's bad temper, the battle began
too soon."
"It was the only plan of hers that did not utterly fail," said the
Princess, "for with all her far-looking she could not see into the
Adelantado's heart. Soto and his guard ran out of the town, every one
with, an arrow sticking in him, to join themselves to the rest of the
expedition which had just come up. Like wasps out of a nest the Indians
poured after them. They caught the Indian carriers, who were just easing
their loads under the walls. With every pack and basket that the
Spaniards had, they carried them back into the town, and the gates of
the stockade were swung to after them."
"All night," said the Egret, "the birds were scared from their roost by
the noise of the battle. Several of the horses were caught inside the
stockade; these the Indians killed quickly. The sound of their dying
neighs was heard at all the rookeries along the river."
"The wild tribes heard of it, and brought us word," said the Princess.
"Soto attacked and pretended to withdraw. Out came the Indians after
him. The Spaniards wheeled again and did terrible slaughter. They came
at the stockade with axes; they fired the towers. The houses were all of
dry cane and fine mats of cane for walls; they flashed up in smoke and
flame. Many of the Indians threw themselves into the flames rather than
be taken. At the last there were left three men and the dancing women.
The women came into the open by the light of the burning town, with
their hands crossed before them. They stood close and hid the men with
their skirts, until the Spaniards came up, and then parted. So the last
men of Mobila took their last shots and died fighting."
"Is that the end?" said Oliver, seeing the Princess gather up her pearls
and the Egret preparing to tuck her bill under her wing. He did not feel
very cheerful over it.
"It was the end of Mobila and the true end of the expedition," said the
Princess. Rising she beckoned to her women. She had lost all interest in
a story which had no more to do with Cofachique.
"Both sides lost," said the Egret, "and that was the sad part of it. All
the Indians were killed; even the young son of Tuscaloosa was found with
a spear sticking in him. Of the Spaniards but eighteen died, though few
escaped unwounded. But they lost everything they had, food, medicines,
tools, everything but the sword in hand and the clothes they stood in.
And while they lay on the bare ground recovering from their wounds came
Juan Ortiz, who had been sent seaward for that purpose, with word that
Maldonado lay with the ships off the bay of Mobila,--that's Mobile, you
know,--not six days distant, to carry them back to Havana.
"And how could Soto go back defeated? No gold, no pearls, no conquests,
not so much as a map, even,--only rags and wounds and a sore heart. In
spite of everything he was both brave and gallant, and he knew his duty
to the King of Spain. He could not go back with so poor a report of the
country to which he had been sent to establish the fame and might of His
Majesty. Forbidding Juan Ortiz to tell the men about the ships, with
only two days' food and no baggage, he turned away from the coast, from
his home and his wife and safe living, toward the Mississippi. He had no
hope in his heart, I think, but plenty of courage. And if you like,"
said the Egret, "another day we will tell you how he died there."
"Oh, no, please," said Dorcas, "it is so very sad; and, besides," she
added, remembering the picture of Soto's body being lowered at night
into the dark water, "it is in the School History."
"In any case," said the Egret, "he was a brave and gallant gentleman,
kind to his men and no more cruel to the Indians than they were to one
another. There was only one of the gentlemen of Spain who never had
_any_ unkindness to his discredit. That was Cabeza de Vaca; he was one
of Narvaez's men, and the one from whom Soto first heard of
Florida,--but that is also a sad story."
Neither of the children said anything. The Princess and her women lost
themselves in the shadowy wood. The gleam here and there of their white
dresses was like the wing of tall white birds. The sun sailing toward
noon had burnt the color out of the sky into the deep water which could
be seen cradling fresh and blue beyond the islets. One by one the
pelicans swung seaward, beating their broad wings all in time like the
stroke of rowers, going to fish in the clean tides outside of
the lagoons.
The nests of the flamingoes lay open to the sun except where here and
there dozed a brooding mother.
"Don't you know any not-sad stories?" asked Dorcas, as the Egret showed
signs again of tucking her head under her wing.
"Not about the Iron Shirts," said the Egret. "Spanish or Portuguese or
English; it was always an unhappy ending for the Indians."
"Oh," said Dorcas, disappointed; and then she reflected, "If they hadn't
come, though, I don't suppose we would be here either."
"I'll tell you," said the Man-of-War Bird, who was a great traveler,
"they didn't all land on this coast. Some of them landed in Mexico and
marched north into your country. I've heard things from gulls at Panuco.
You don't know what the land birds might be able to tell you."
[Illustration]
XIII
HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME LOOKING FOR THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA; TOLD BY
THE ROAD-RUNNER
From Cay Verde in the Bahamas to the desert of New Mexico, by the Museum
trail, is around a corner and past two windows that look out upon the
west. As the children stood waiting for the Road-Runner to notice them,
they found the view not very different from the one they had just left.
Unending, level sands ran into waves, and strange shapes of rocks loomed
through the desert blueness like steep-shored islands. It was vast and
terrifying like the sea, and yet a very pleasant furred and feathered
life appeared to be going on there between the round-headed cactus, with
its cruel fishhook thorns, and the warning, blood-red blossoms that
dripped from the ocatilla. Little frisk-tailed things ran up and down
the spiney shrubs, and a woodpecker, who had made his nest in its pithy
stalk, peered at them from a tall _sahuaro_.
The Road-Runner tilted his long rudder-like tail, flattened his crested
head until it reminded them of a wicked snake, and suddenly made up his
mind to be friendly.
"Come inside and get your head in the shade," he invited. "There's no
harm in the desert sun so long as you keep something between it and your
head. I've known Indians to get along for days with only the shade of
their arrows."
The children snuggled under the feathery shadow of the mesquite beside
him.
"We're looking for the trail of the Iron Shirts," said Oliver. "Alvar
Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca," added Dorcas Jane, who always remembered names.
The Road-Runner ducked once or twice by way of refreshing his memory.
"There was a black man with him, and they went about as Medicine Men to
the Indians who believed in them, and at the same time treated them very
badly. But that was nearly four hundred years ago, and they never came
into this part of the country, only into Texas. And they hadn't any iron
shirts either, scarcely anything to put either on their backs or into
their stomachs."
"Nevertheless," quavered a voice almost under Oliver's elbow, "they
brought the iron shirts, and the long-tailed elk whose hooves are always
stumbling among our burrows."
The children had to look close to make out the speckled fluff of
feathers hunched at the door of its _hogan_.
"Meet my friend Thla-po-po-ke-a," said the Road-Runner, who had picked
up his manners from miners and cowboys as well as from Spanish
explorers.
The Burrowing Owl bobbed in her own hurried fashion. "Often and often,"
she insisted with a whispering _whoo-oo_ running through all the
sentences, "I've heard the soldiers say that it was Cabeza de Vaca put
it into the head of the King of Spain to send Francisco Coronado to look
for the Seven Cities. In my position one hears the best of everything,"
went on Po-po-ke-a. "That is because all the important things happen
next to the ground. Men are born and die on the ground, they spread
their maps, they dream dreams."
The children could see how this would be in a country where there was
never a house or a tree and scarcely anything that grew more than
knee-high to a man. The long sand-swells, and the shimmer of heat-waves
in the air looked even more like the sea now that they were level with
it. Off to the right what seemed a vast sheet of water spread out like
quicksilver on the plain; it moved with a crawling motion, and a coyote
that trotted across their line of vision seemed to swim in it, his head
just showing above the slight billows.
"It's only mirage," said the Road-Runner; "even Indians are fooled by it
if they are strange to the country. But it is quite true about the
ground being the place to hear things. All day the Iron Shirts would
ride in a kind of doze of sun and weariness. But when they sat at meals,
loosening their armor buckles, then there would be news. We used to run
with it from one camp to another--I can run faster than a horse can
walk--until the whole mesa would hear of it."
"But the night is the time for true talking," insisted Po-po-ke-a. "It
was then we heard that when Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain he made one
report of his wanderings to the public, and a secret report to the King.
Also that the Captain-General asked to be sent on that expedition
because he had married a young wife who needed much gold."
"At that time we had not heard of gold," said the Road-Runner; "the
Spaniards talked so much of it we thought it must be something good to
eat, but it turned out to be only yellow stones. But it was not all
Cabeza de Vaca's doing. There was another story by an Indian, Tejo, who
told the Governor of Mexico that he remembered going with his father to
trade in the Seven Cities, which were as large as the City of Mexico,
with whole streets of silver workers, and blue turquoises over
the doors."
"If there is a story about it--" began Oliver, looking from one to the
other invitingly, and catching them looking at each other in the
same fashion.
"Brother, there is a tail to you," said the Burrowing Owl quickly, which
seemed to the children an unnecessary remark, since the Road-Runner's
long, trim tail was the most conspicuous thing about him. It tipped and
tilted and waggled almost like a dog's, and answered every purpose of
conversation.
Now he ducked forward on both legs in an absurd way he had. "To you, my
sister--" which is the polite method of story asking in that part of
the country.
"My word bag is as empty as my stomach," said Po-po-ke-a, who had eaten
nothing since the night before and would not eat until night again.
"_Sons eso_--to your story."
"_Sons eso, tse-ná_," said the Road-Runner, and began.
"First," he said, "to Hawikuh, a city of the Zuñis, came Estevan, the
black man who had been with Cabeza de Vaca, with a rattle in his hand
and very black behavior. Him the Indians killed, and the priest who was
with him they frightened away. Then came Coronado, with an army from
Mexico, riding up the west coast and turning east from the River of the
Brand, the one that is now called Colorado, which is no name at all, for
all the rivers hereabout run red after rain. They were a good company of
men and captains, and many of those long-tailed elk,--which are called
horses, sister," said the Road-Runner aside to Po-po-ke-a,--"and the
Indians were not pleased to see them."
"That was because there had been a long-tailed star seen over
To-ya-lanne, the sacred mountain, some years before, one of the kind
that is called Trouble-Bringer. They thought of it when they looked at
the long tails of the new-fashioned elk," said Po-po-ke-a, who had not
liked being set right about the horses.
"In any case," went on the Road-Runner, "there was trouble. Hawikuh was
one of these little crowded pueblos, looking as if it had been crumpled
together and thrown away, and though there were turquoises over the
doors, they were poor ones, and there was no gold. And as Hawikuh, so
they found all the cities of Cibola, and the cities of the Queres, east
to the River of White Rocks."
Dorcas Jane nudged Oliver to remind him of the Corn Woman and
Tse-tse-yote. All the stories of that country, like the trails, seemed
to run into one another.
"Terrible things happened around Tiguex and at Cicuye, which is now
Pecos," said the Road-Runner, "for the Spaniards were furious at finding
no gold, and the poor Indians could never make up their minds whether
these were gods to be worshiped, or a strange people coming to conquer
them, who must be fought. They were not sure whether the iron shirts
were to be dreaded as magic, or coveted as something they could use
themselves. As for the horses, they both feared and hated them. But
there was one man who made up his mind very quickly.
"He was neither Queres nor Zuñi, but a plainsman, a captive of their
wars. He was taller than our men, leaner and sharp-looking. His god was
the Morning Star. He made sacrifices to it. The Spaniards called him the
Turk, saying he looked like one. We did not know what that meant, for we
had only heard of turkeys which the Queres raised for their feathers,
and he was not in the least like one of these. But he knew that the
Spaniards were men, and was almost a match for them. He had the
Inknowing Thought."
The Road-Runner cocked his head on one side and observed the children,
to see if they knew what this meant.
"Is it anything like far-looking?" asked Dorcas.
"It is something none of my people ever had," said the Road-Runner. "The
Indian who was called the Turk could look in a bowl of water in the sun,
or in the water of the Stone Pond, and he could see things that happened
at a distance, or in times past. He proved to the Spaniards that he
could do this, but their priests said it was the Devil and would have
nothing to do with it, which was a great pity. He could have saved them
a great deal."
"_Hoo, hoo_!" said the Burrowing Owl; "he could not even save himself;
and none of the things he told to the Spaniards were true."
"He was not thinking for himself," said the Road-Runner, "but for his
people. The longer he was away from them the more he thought, and his
thoughts were good, even though he did not tell the truth to the Iron
Shirts. They, at least, did not deserve it. For when the people of Zuñi
and Cicuye and Tiguex would not tell them where the sacred gold was hid,
there were terrible things done. That winter when the days were cold,
the food was low and the soldiers fretful. Many an Indian kept the
secret with his life."