lected their fighting force into two of the strongest villages, from one of which they were able to defy the soldiers until thirst compelled them to abandon the stronghold. The defenders attempted to escape by stealth, but the sentries of the besieging force discovered them and aroused the camp. Many of the Indians were killed by the soldiers during the flight which followed, while others perished in the icy waters of the Rio Grande. During an attack on the second village, a few of the Spaniards who had succeeded in making their way to the highest portion of the buildings, escaped from their perilous position by inducing the native warriors to surrender. The Indians received an ample promise of protection and safety, but the captain of the attacking party was not informed of this, and in obedience to the general's orders that no prisoners should be taken, he directed that the captives should be burned as a warning to the neighboring tribes. This affair is a terrible blot on the record of the expedition and of those who composed it. In condemning it most severely, however, English readers should remember that they are only repeating the condemnations which were uttered by most of the men of rank who witnessed it, which were repeated in New Spain and in old Spain, and which greeted the commander when he led his expedition back to Mexico, to receive the cold welcome of the viceroy. The Spaniards have told us only one side of the story of what was happening along the Rio Grande in the fall of 1540. The other side will probably never be heard, for it disappeared with the traditions of the Indian villagers. Without pretending to supply the loss, it is at least possible to suggest that the preparations by which the armymaster procured the excellent accommodations for the force must have appeared very differently to the people in whose homes Cardenas housed the soldiers, and to those who passed the winter in these snug quarters. Castañeda preserved one or two interesting details which are as significant as is the striking fact that the peaceful natives who entertained Alvarado most freely in September were the leaders of the rebellion three months later. As soon as Coronado's men had completed the reduction of the refractory natives, and the whole country had been overawed by the terrible punishment, the general undertook to reestablish peaceful relations and confident intercourse between his camp and the surrounding villages. The Indians seem to have been ready to meet him almost half-way, although it is hardly surprising to find traces of an underlying suspicion, and a readiness for treacherous retaliation. THE STORIES ABOUT QUIVIRA While this reconciliation was being effected, Coronado heard from one of the plains Indians,' held as a slave in the village of Cicuye Castañeda says that this Indian accompanied Alvarado on the first visit to the buffalo plains, and this may be true without disturbing the statement above. Kansar жина or Pecos, the stories about Quivira, which were to add so much to the geographic extent of the expedition. When the Spaniards were about to kill this Indian-"The Turk," they called him '-he told them that his masters, the people of Cicuye, had induced him to lead the strangers away to the pathless plains, where water was scarce and corn was unknown, to perish there, or, if ever they should succeed in finding the way back to the village settlements, tired and weak, to fall an easy prey to their enemies. This plan was shrewdly conceived, and it very nearly succeeded. There is little reason why we should doubt the truth of the confession, made when the Indian could scarcely have hoped to save his life, and it affords an easy explanation of the way in which the exaggerated stories of Quivira originated and expanded. The Turk may have accompanied Alvarado on the first visit to the great plains, and he doubtless told the white men about his distant home and the roving life on the prairies. It was later, when the Spaniards began to question him about nations and rulers, gold and treasures, that he received, perhaps from the Spaniards themselves, the hints which led him to tell them what they were rejoiced to hear, and to develop the fanciful pictures which appealed so forcibly to all the desires of his hearers. The Turk, we can not doubt, told the Spaniards many things which were not true. But in trying to trace these early dealings of Europeans with the American aborigines, we must never forget how much may be explained by the possibilities of misinterpretation on the part of the white men, who so often heard of what they wished to find, and who learned, very gradually and in the end imperfectly, to understand only a few of the native languages and dialects. And besides this, the record of their observations, on which the students of today have to depend, was made in a language which knew nothing of the things which it was trying to describe. Much of what the Turk said was very likely true the first time he said it, although the memories of home were heightened, no doubt, by absence and distance. Moreover, Castañeda, who is the chief source for the stories of gold and lordly kings which are said to have been told by the Turk, in all probability did not know anything more than the reports of what the Turk was telling to the superior officers, which were passed about among the common foot soldiers. The present narrative has already shown the wonderful power of gossip, and when it is gossip recorded twenty years afterward, we may properly be cautious in believing it. Coronado wrote to the King from Tiguex, on April 20, 1541, as he says in his next letter, that of October 20. The April letter, written just before the start for Quivira, must have contained a full and official account of all that had been learned in regard to the country toward He was called "The Turk" because the Spaniards thought tha he looked like one. Bandelier, in American Catholic Quarterly Review, vol. xv, p. 555, thinks this was due to the manner in which he wore his hair, characteristic of certain branches of the Pawnee. 2 This probability is greatly strengthened by Mota Padilla's statement in relation to the Turk and Quivira, quoted in connection with Castañeda's narrative. the east, as well as more reliable details than we now possess, of what had happened during the preceding fall and winter. But this April letter, which was an acknowledgment and answer to one from Charles V, dated in Madrid, June 11, 1540, has not been found by modern students. When the reply was dispatched, the messenger-probably Juan Gallego, who had perhaps brought the Emperor's letter from Mexico was accompanied by Pedro de Tovar, who was going back to Corazones valley for reinforcements. Many mishaps had befallen the town of San Hieronimo during the year, and when the messengers arrived there they found it half deserted. Leaving Don Pedro here, Gallego hastened to Mexico, where he raised a small body of recruits. He was leading these men, whose number had been increased by some stragglers and deserters from the original force whom he picked up at Culiacan, toward Cibola and Quivira, when he met the expedition returning to New Spain. It was during this, probably his fifth trip over the road from Mexico to our New Mexico, that he performed the deeds of valor which Castañeda so enthusiastically recounts at the very end of his book. THE JOURNEY ACROSS THE BUFFALO PLAINS April 23, 1541, Coronado left the Tiguex country and marched toward the i member of the army accompanied the general, for no one was willing to be left behind when such glorious prospects of fame and fortune lay before them. A few of the officers suggested the wisdom of verifying these Indian tales in some measure before setting the whole force in motion and abandoning their only sure base of supplies. It seems as if there must have been other reasons influencing Coronado beyond those revealed in Castañeda's narrative; but, if so, we do not know what they were. The fear lest he might fail to accomplish any of the things which had been hoped for, the absence of results on which to base a justification for all the expense and labor, the thought of what would await him if he should return empty handed, are perhaps enough to account for the determination to risk everything and to allow no possible lack of zeal or of strength to interfere with the realization of the hopes inspired by the stories of Quivira. Guided by the Turk, the army proceeded to Cicuye, and in nine days more they reached the buffalo plains. Here began the long march which was to be without any guiding landmarks. Just where, or how, or how far the Spaniards went, I can not pretend to say. After a month and more of marching-very likely just thirty-five days-their patience became exhausted. A second native of the plains, who accompanied the Spaniards from the pueblo country, had declared from the first that the Turk was lying, but this had not made them trust the latter any less. When, however, the Indians whom they found living among the buffalo herds began to contradict the stories of their guide, suspicion was aroused. The Turk, after much persuasive cross-questioning, was at last induced to confess that he had lied. Quivira, he still insisted, existed, though it was not as he had described it. From the natives of the plains they learned that there were no settlements toward the east, the direction in which they had been traveling, but that toward the north, another good month's journey distant, there were permanent settlements. The corn which the soldiers had brought from Tiguex was almost gone, while the horses were tired and weak from the constant marching and buffalo chasing, with only grass for food. It was clearly impossible for the whole force to attempt this further journey, with the uncertain prospect of finding native tribes like those they had already seen as the only incentive. The general held a council of his officers and friends, and decided to select 30 of the best equipped horsemen, who should go with him and attempt to verify the new information. After Coronado had chosen his companions, the rest of the force was sent back to Tiguex, as Castañeda relates. The Indians whom they met on the plains furnished guides, who led the soldiers to the Pueblo settlements by a more direct route than that which the Turk had taken. But the marches were short and slow, so that it was the middle of July before they were again encamped alongside the Rio Grande. So far as is known, nothing of interest happened while they were waiting there for the return of the general. Coronado and his companion horsemen followed the compass needle for forty-two days after leaving the main force, or, as he writes, "after traveling across these deserts for seventy-seven days in all," they reached the country of Quivira. Here he found some people who lived in permanent settlements and raised a little corn, but whose sustenance came mainly from the buffalo herds, which they hunted at regular seasons, instead of continuously as the plains Indians encountered previously had done.' Twenty-five days were spent among the villages at Quivira, so that Jaramillo, one of the party, doubtless remembered correctly when he said that they were there after the middle of August.2 There was 'The Spaniards had already observed two distinct branches of these pure nomads, whom they knew as Querechos and Teyas. Bandelier, in his Final Report, vol. i. p. 179, identified the Querechos with the Apaches of the plains, but later investigation by Mr James Mooney shows that Querecho is an old Comanche name of the Tonkawa of western central Texas (Hodge, Early Navajo and Apache, Am. Anthropologist, Washington, July, 1895, vol. iii. p. 235). I am unable to find any single tribal group among the Indians whom we know which can be identified with the Teyas, unless, as Mr Hodge has suggested, they may have been the Comanche, who roamed the plains from Yellowstone Park to Durango, Mexico. más de 2 I am inclined, also, to believe Jaramillo's statement that the day's marches on the journey to Quivira were short ones. But when he writes that the journey occupied "more than thirty days, or almost thirty days' journey, although not long day's marches,"-seguimos nuestro viaje treinta dias ú casi treinta dias de camino, aunque no de jornadas grandes-and again, that they decided to return "because it was already nearly the beginning of winter, . . . and lest the winter might prevent the return, "-nos paresció á todos, que pues que hera ya casi la boca del inbierno, porque si me acuerdo bien, jera media y más de Agosto, y por ser pocos para inbernar allí, . . . y porque el invierno no nos cerrase los caminos de nieves y rios que no nos dexesen pasar (Pacheco y Cardenas, Doc. de Indias, vol. xiv, pp. 312, 314)—we experience some of the difficulties which raake it hard to analyse the captain's recollections critically and satisfactorily. |