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.
The “Cajon,” more than twenty miles in length, through which one passes
in going from Sinoquipe to Arispe, is rich in the magnificent
development of the most diversified rock-forms. When the “Cabezon de San
Benito,” a massive, bell-shaped peak, has sunk behind the
ever-increasing heights north of Sinoquipe, and these gather thickly
around the river’s course, there also disappears in the east the rudely
notched mountain of the _nueve Minas_, and the inviting cove of Tetuachi
reposes on the right bank, surrounded by mighty mountains. Narrow
tongues of rock jut forward into the peaceful valley, fall
perpendicularly to the ground, and imitate artificial masonry in their
resemblance to squared stones piled up in regular symmetry. The rocks
that overhang them, rising thousands of feet, are clothed with the
peculiar vegetation of the country, which lends a tint of green to even
the highest crests. Through this grand valley as a door one goes into
the Cajon proper. The river is bordered with thick foliage, and gigantic
cliffs rise like coulisses, one behind another, away up, in the most
varied colors of the quaternary rock, alternating with lava. The
pillar-shaped _Pitabaya_ fastens itself in the clefts of the steepest,
even vertical cliffs. Rarely wider than half a mile, yet affording by
its numerous bendings a constant change of view, never bare, but
unceasingly grand and wild, the ravine appears to go along with the
traveller, till the solitary palm-tree at the entrance to the
half-ruined city of Arispe introduces him to a new and entirely
different landscape: a hollow verdant with fields and with poplars; in
the east the Sierra Arispe rises bare and forbidding; the west bank
descends steeply to the river’s edge, and to it clings a group of adobe
dwellings with many ruins of stone buildings and a large, bare church.
This is the former capital of Sonora, the population of which has
diminished by two thirds in half a century--a melancholy place of decay
in the lead region. Here the Rio de Bacanuchi empties into the Sonora
from the north, and the Sonora turns; between Bacuachi and Arispe it
flows from northeast to southwest. I have already observed that
Guagarispa most probably stood on the site of the present Arispe. No
ruins of it are visible; they have been built over; but stone axes,
mortars, and grinding stones (_metates_) are unearthed here and there. A
ravine like that between this place and Sinoquipe begins on the Sonora
River farther north, and at “Ti-ji-só-ri-chi” stand above the river the
ruins of an ancient pueblo. The country becomes more level at
“Chinapa”[77] and a short distance farther along shapes itself into the
sides of the wild Cajon, in the bottom of which one rides beside the
foaming Sonora to near Bacuachi. Here the country becomes open, the
depression of the chain of the “Manzanal” permits a glimpse in the west
of the pillar-shaped Picacho; on the eastern side the dunes extend like
a low table-land ten miles toward the east, where a majestic cordillera
of picturesque shape and covered with fir-trees stretches from northwest
to south. There are a succession of high chains--the Sierra de Bacuachi,
the Sierra Púrica, and, in the farthest southeast, the mountains of
Oposura or the Sierra Grande.
If Coronado steadily followed the course of the Sonora, Suya should be
looked for in the valley of Bacuachi. But if he followed the Bacuachi
River, going therefore directly north, he would have approached the
Cananía, and consequently the sources of the Rio Santa Cruz. The
accounts on these points are unusually indefinite, the same writer often
contradicting himself several times. I am inclined to the opinion that
he followed the Rio Sonora all the time, and that San Hierónymo should
therefore be sought near the ruins of Mututicâchi. Juan Jaramillo says
that the Spaniards marched from “Sonora” for four days through an
uninhabited region, and then came to a brook which he calls “Nexpa”;
followed down this brook for two days to a chain of mountains, along
which they continued for two days. This chain of mountains was pointed
out to him as “Chichiltic-calli.” The itinerary of this writer, who
marched with Coronado while Casteñeda probably followed the main body,
deserves to be reproduced literally.
“After we had crossed these mountains, we came to a deep brook with
steep banks, where we found water and grass for our horses. Leaving this
brook, which is the other side of the Nexpa of which I have spoken, we
took the direction toward the northeast (as it seemed to me), and came
in three days, so far as I can remember, to a river which we named _San
Juan_, because we arrived there on the day of that saint. Leaving this
stream, we passed through a very mountainous country, and turning more
to the north, we came to another stream which we named _de las Balsas_,
because, it being very high, we had to cross it on rafts. I believe we
were two days in going from one river to the other.... Hence we went to
another brook, which we called _de la Barranca_ (of the ravine). The
distance from one to the other may be estimated at two short days’
journey. The direction is northeast. We then came to a river, after one
day’s march, which we called _Rio Frio_, on account of the coldness of
its water. Thence we passed through fir woods, at the end of which we
found cool brooks.... In two days we came to another brook, called
_Vermejo_--always in the same direction, namely, toward the northeast.”
There they met Indians from Cibola, and two days afterward they reached
the last pueblo. Casteñeda mentions striking a “river” which “flowed” in
a deep ravine three days after they entered the “wilderness” north of
Chichiltic-calli. He says that the “Rio Vermejo,” the waters of which
were muddy and red, was eight leagues from Cibola.
I believe that we may without mistake regard Cibola as identical with
the country of Zuñi. In view of the extreme indistinctness that rules in
all the statements of the participants in the expedition through Sonora,
it is impossible to identify its route following it from the south
alone. I think I may properly, taking the reverse course, make Zuñi the
starting-point of the investigation and pick up the threads of the
itinerary thence southward.
Eight leagues, or 22 miles, southwest of Zuñi flows the river of the
same name, a muddy, red stream. Two days’ journey from Zuñi toward the
southwest brings us to the Rio Colorado Chiquito at San Juan, Arizona.
This river is as turbid, muddy, and red as the Zuñi. The Rio Vermejo of
Jaramillo is therefore the one called the Little Colorado. Casteñeda,
who did not go with Coronado, saw the likewise muddy Rio de Zuñi, and
confounded the two.
As Coronado reached the Rio San Juan on St. John’s day, June 24th, the
date of his arrival at Cibola may be fixed as about July 12th. He did
not go to Hâ-ui-cu (_Aguas calientes_), fifteen miles southwest of Zuñi,
the village nearest to him, but to “Oa-quima,” because the negro was
killed there. The inhabitants of Oa-quima had been warned by some of
their people that the Spaniards had come in sight of the Colorado River.
The pueblo stood, as the ruins now show, on a hill. It could not turn
out more than two hundred men of war, but the whole male population of
all the villages, seven in number, which constituted the tribe of Zuñi,
had come to its assistance and were awaiting the Spaniards on the little
plain separating Oa-quima from the mesa south of it. The peaceful
message sent to them by Coronado was answered with threatening gestures.
The horsemen then dashed at them, and the Indians speedily fled from the
sight of the strange, rushing figures. The capture of the pueblo proved
to be a difficult task, for the steep, rugged precipices were exposed to
a hail of stones, which rattled down upon the Spaniards. The assault was
made on foot; and in it Coronado narrowly escaped death by a stone. The
village was, however, captured in an hour, and the whole tribe submitted
soon afterward. The tradition of this event, according to Mr. Cushing,
is still living among the Zuñi Indians.
I cannot forbear giving here a final and irrefragable proof of the fact
that Zuñi is really Cibola. The French translation of Casteñeda says
that the largest pueblo of Cibola was called “Muzaque.” In the original
manuscript, which is in the Lenox Library in New York, this word is
written several times plainly and clearly “Maçaqui.” “Matzaqui” is the
ruin of a large village situated three miles east of the present pueblo
of Zuñi near the foot of the great mesa, and some four or five miles
north-northwest of Oa-quima. The Indians say that this village was once
the largest of the tribe. The ruins are very much decayed now, but they
indicate a considerable settlement. The testimony of the original text
of Casteñeda thus lifts the identity of Cibola with Zuñi above all
doubt. The possibility that Matzaqui was not the village of which
Casteñeda speaks is quite removed by later documents: first, by the
definite affirmation by Espejo in the year 1583 that Zuñi was Cibola,
which is confirmed by an act of the year 1601; and second, by the
enumeration in the act of submission and pardon of the Zuñi Indians of
1591 of Maçaqui as one of the pueblos of that tribe; and finally, by the
language of Fray Augustin de Betancurt, who wrote in the year 1689:
“Four-and-twenty leagues from Acoma is the pueblo of Alona, with its
Church of the Purification of the Virgin, with two hamlets belonging to
the diocese, each with its little church, called Mazaquia, at the
entrance to the province of Zuni, Moqui, and Caquima, two leagues from
Alona.”
The immediate object of the expedition was therefore attained with
little trouble in comparison with the labor with which the preparations
had been made. A fifth part of the force had already succeeded in
conquering the “seven cities of Cibola,” yet, if faith is to be given to
Casteñeda’s expressions, this result was not at all pleasing to those
who had won it rather with sweat than with blood. They were bitterly
disappointed. As soon as the men saw Cibola, they “broke out in curses
against Fray Marcos.” The historian afterward adds, “For his account was
found to be false in every respect.”
I have already said that I believe these accusations cannot be
substantiated. The written account of the priest is absolutely true, not
at all exaggerated, and agrees fully with those of Melchior Diaz, Juan
Jaramillo, and especially with the representations of Casteñeda himself.
But this account was in a very short time repeated on many tongues, and
it shared the usual fate of stories transmitted verbally in being added
to, exaggerated, and colored in the imaginations of those through whom
it successively passed. The original account, by which all these
falsifications might have been corrected, was not given to the public,
and the officers, using Coronado as their instrument, suffered only the
most flattering parts of it to be put forward. What Fray Marcos said of
gold was from hearsay, and was so represented by him. It, moreover, did
not relate to Cibola, but to a region much farther south. His accounts
also agree with those which Alarcon received concerning Cibola from the
Indians on the Colorado River.
As is always the case when the passion of the multitude turns against a
single man, no regard was paid in this instance to the voice of reason.
Fray Marcos was no longer sure of his life in Zuñi; the Spaniards, who
had deceived themselves, made him responsible for their mistake, and
concern was felt for his safety. Coronado had a report of his success to
send to the viceroy. Juan Gallego was commissioned to carry it, and the
Franciscan went with him. He was even then Padre Provinzial of the order
in and for Mexico. He died in the capital on March 25, 1558. The
sufferings which the cool climate of New Mexico and the innumerable
hardships of his journeys caused him had culminated in paralysis in
Cibola, and it is not improbable that it was this and not fear of
violence from those around him that moved him to return to Mexico.
Gallego and the priest on their return met in the Sonora Valley the main
body of the army, as it was called, which Coronado had left in Culiacan.
It had been started fourteen days after the departure of the commander,
but the cavalry “went on foot, with lances on their shoulders, and
carrying provisions; all the horses were loaded.” Having arrived in the
Sonora district, Arellano, who was in command, sent Rodrigo Maldonado
down the river toward the sea, in order if possible to establish
communication with the marine expedition. He appears to have reached the
mouth of the Rio Sonora, but he found no trace of Alarcon. It was the
first time that the places where Hermosillo, the chief city of Sonora,
and Guaymas, the principal port of the Gulf of California, stand were
visited by white men. The Spaniards consequently came in contact with
the still savage tribe of the Serès. Coronado had founded the settlement
of San Hierónymo at Suya, and Melchior Diaz was left with eighty men to
hold it. The main body of the command was reduced by this measure to one
hundred and seventy Spaniards, so that when it arrived at Cibola in the
winter of 1540-41 Coronado could not count upon more than two hundred
and twenty-five men. He performed all his later acts in New Mexico with
this small force.
Although Melchior Diaz had particular orders to guard the new
settlement, he could not remain idle. Attempting further explorations of
the regions west, he left Diego de Alcáraz[78] at San Hierónymo, and
started out with only twenty-six men--Casteñeda says to the southwest,
but this is probably a mistake for northwest; for after wandering 150
leagues, or 405 miles, Diaz seems, according to the account, to have
reached the great Colorado River of the west, where he found letters
from Alarcon buried at the foot of a marked tree, which contained news
of his having reached that place and then gone back to New Spain. Diaz
followed up the eastern bank of the river for several days’ journey; but
I have not been able to learn anything concerning the conclusion of his
campaign. During his absence[79] the Indians attacked the settlement at
Suya and destroyed it, depriving Coronado of an important link of
communication between his isolated position in the north and the Spanish
advanced posts in the south.
The campaign of Diaz was probably begun in the winter of 1540-41, for
the main part of Coronado’s expedition was still in Sonora in October,
1540. The destruction of Suya (by the Opatas) probably took place about
the end of 1542 or in 1543. The chronology of the whole expedition is
obscure and extremely confused. Pedro de Sotomayor went with it with the
purpose of describing its events, but not a line of his writings is
known. Even Herrera, who had all the sources of that kind at his
command, appears to have consulted Jaramillo almost exclusively, with,
perhaps, Coronado’s letters and the anonymous “_Relaciones_,” which cast
light upon single parts of later events. Possibly these “_Relaciones_”
were fragments of Sotomayor’s account.
The history of the discovery and conquest of the “seven cities” closes
with the capture of Cibola, and the union of the whole force under
Coronado’s command. The geographical and ethnographical problem has been
solved. Connected with this solution are a number of practical
consequences which are of greater importance than the mere satisfaction
of the promptings of an adventurous curiosity. Even when this
satisfaction is obtained, there lies in it the germ of further inquiry.
In the situation in which Coronado was placed continued effort was a
condition of existence. He saw that his highly strained anticipations
were not fulfilled in Zuñi-Cibola, and that his campaign to that place
had been a material failure. The force which he commanded was still more
bitterly disappointed, for their expectations had been of a more
immediate character. A plundering expedition meant mutiny and
destruction. Coronado learned, however, that Zuñi (as I shall henceforth
call Cibola) was not the only tribe that possessed a superior rank among
village Indians, and that farther on in the country, in the west and
especially in the east, were similar groups or pueblos. The stories told
him awakened hopes that there were perhaps better regions and mountains
richer in metals in those directions. His men agreed in his conjecture,
and it grew during the cold winter in Zuñi to a probability. Soldiers
and leader therefore awaited with impatience the mild weather, when they
could go forward into the great unknown region on the edge of which
they were. Their eyes were turned predominantly toward the east, and
thus the conquest of the “seven cities of Cibola” was the starting-point
for the exploration and opening of New Mexico.