Guzman, although unsuccessful as to his principal object, did not abandon the effort to press farther north. He reached Culiacan, and founded there a settlement under the name of San Miguel de Culiacan. His force, however, was exhausted and partially destroyed. His Indian guides especially had suffered much. He therefore despatched the Captain Chirinos toward the north, and the latter in turn sent his captains, Cebreros and Diego de Alcáraz, still farther in that direction. Guzman in the meantime started on his return. His direct work in this region ended with the foundation of the Spanish settlement in Culiacan. In the beginning of May, 1531, he left the young town and began a continuous march to the south. His kingdom had come to an end; Cortés had returned to Mexico and arrived at an understanding with the new Audiencia. Grave accusations were raised against Nuño de Guzman. All his orders concerning the Indians were revoked, and when at last the new president of the royal court of justice, Bishop Don Sebastian Ramirez de Fuenléal, came into Mexico, he took control of affairs with a firm hand, and banished his violent predecessor to the scene of his march on the western coast. In 1537 he was arrested by order of the Spanish Government and carried a prisoner to Spain, where, having been deprived of his property by confiscation, he died in poverty in 1544. When Guzman, even after he had become satisfied at Cihuatlan that he had been pursuing a phantom in the shape of the river of the Amazons, still endeavored to go farther north, he was moved by another story which excited his avarice and his imagination. Unable himself to follow this second phantom, he charged Captain Chirinos with the object. The latter went as far as the Rio de Petatlan, and thence sent out his subordinates, Cebreros and Alcáraz, to the Rio Mayo. The numerous though small towns which were found on the banks of this river were inhabited by the Mayo Indians, who now form a branch of the linguistic stock of the Yaqui, or Hyaquin. Cebreros crossed the Mayo, proceeded in 1532 into the present Sonora, and although he had hardly twenty men reached the Rio Yaqui. He did not venture to go farther than to the north bank of that river, but returned to Sinaloa. The Indians there were in active revolt, and the Spaniards had great difficulty in maintaining themselves in the weak settlement of San Miguel Culiacan. They had found on their northern excursions fertile intervales inhabited by warlike tribes. Beyond these tribes lived a people who built their houses of clay. Still farther north another wonder-story invited them, which promised more than the most fertile intervale, more than the most civilized Indian settlements. The account of Indians in Sonora who lived in large houses of clay was true, for it referred to the southern Pimas. But the story that attracted the Spaniards to the north was the legend of the “Seven Cities.”
CHAPTER II.
THE SEVEN CITIES.
The planisphere which Martin Dehaim constructed in the year 1492 for the Portuguese service contained, among other features, an island of Antilia west of the Cape de Verde group, with a note relating that at the time of the conquest of Spain by the Arabs a Portuguese archbishop and a number of Christians had fled to that island and founded seven cities upon it. The story is still more plainly marked on the map of Johannes Ruysch—Universalior Cogniti Orbis Tabula, A.D. 1508. The legend of the seven cities thus appears, like the myth of the Amazons, to have been known in Europe previous to the landing of Columbus. After the successive discoveries of the islands of the West Indian group in the last years of the fifteenth century “Antilia” (ante insula) ceased to designate a proper and special part of the land. The name of Antilles remained, and was applied to the whole chain of islands that separate the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. The seven cities also passed into complete oblivion till they were brought again into a kind of indefinite recollection about the year 1530 by the expedition of Nuño de Guzman. It is uncertain when, how, or where Guzman heard of the “siete cibdadis.” The anonymous author of the “Primua Relacion” speaks of them in connection with that campaign as if he had already heard the story in Mexico; while other contemporary writers say nothing of them, but mention a large river that emptied into the Southern Sea, which the inhabitants had barred with an iron chain. Neither the seven cities nor the broad river with its barrier chain were found by Cebreros and Alcáraz.
It is proper, therefore, to inquire whether, or to what extent, a story concerning the seven cities existed among the natives of Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans. But such an inquiry should be prefaced by this statement of general fact: Wherever it is possible to follow the development of popular legends in groups of men not acquainted with writing, but who have been taught to transmit these stories by verbal tradition from generation to generation, we are surprised at finding that the legend has been preserved with careful fidelity through centuries, and that any novelty or change which has been introduced into it must always be ascribed to foreign influence. Such influence is not necessarily to be attributed to an extra-continental contact; but where such a contact takes place—and where, as everywhere in America, one group of the human race is suddenly caused to live with another of whom it is so far in advance in established historical foundations and knowledge, and in the means of perpetuating the remembrance of them, as the Europeans of the sixteenth century were then in advance of the American aborigines all over the continent without exception; and where this living in contact is at the same time combined with the exercise of a religious influence by the superior race on the other—then a reconstruction of the legends is inevitable. It is expressed first in efforts to adapt the mythology of the inferior people to that of the higher; and as mythology and history are closely interwoven, a partial insinuation of the sagas, stories, and legends of the superior people into those of the others can hardly be avoided.
Great care is therefore necessary to extract the real kernel of the Indian traditions, in Mexico for instance, from the investing shell of the legends of the sixteenth century. The subject has been treated till now not only with little critical care as to this point, but for the most part without any critical sense. Everything has been accepted as pure coin which, since the subjection of the Mexican tribes by Cortés, has been called Indian historical tradition. Only superficial consideration has been given to the time, place, and manner of the origin of the Indian paintings and other documents. It has not been considered, in using them as historical authorities, that the Codex Mendocino, the Codex Vaticanus, and the Codex Telleriano Ramensis were painted by Indians in the middle and second half of the sixteenth century, by order of the Spanish viceroy and Don Martin Enriquez, as illustrations of the local traditions which were collected at the time by a commission in the name of the Crown. No inquiry has been made into the extent to which those paintings agree with the earliest declarations of the natives, which were made and recorded not more than ten years after the institution of Spanish rule. The Church also, as well as the Spanish Government, made earnest efforts a short time after the conquest to collect the historical legends and stories of the Indians. About the middle of the sixteenth century a statement was introduced into the publications concerning these traditions, that the Nahuatl tribes of Mexico believed that they had originated out of seven caves. The Codex Mendocino had nothing about this, and it was not composed much before 1549. Later writers made seven tribes out of the seven caves, and finally seven towns or cities. We have already seen that Nuño de Guzman had heard or knew of the story of the seven cities about 1530; and the supposition therefore seems not unauthorized that the seven caves of the Mexican tradition, as they were conceived and represented after the discovery of New Mexico, were an interpolation of the European legend into the Indian recollections of their history.
In 1531 the bishop of San Domingo assumed control of the government in Mexico as president of the Royal Law Court. No further advance of importance was made in the discoveries in the northwest, and the settlement of San Miguel de Culiacan in Sinaloa was held as the extreme post in that direction whence occasional excursions to the north were attempted. In the meantime Nuño de Guzman was removed from the scene and called to answer for his misdemeanors before the Spanish courts. Melchior Diaz commanded in Culiacan as capitan and alcalde mayor, and Diego de Alcáraz was at the head of an advanced post which was pushed out between Culiacan and the borders of the present Sonora. Some of the men of this reconnoitring party, when about eighty miles north of Culiacan, met in the last days of March, 1536, a strange spectacle. A man, nearly naked, with long tangled hair and beard, accompanied by eleven Indians and a negro, came to them, and spoke to them in Spanish, with warm emotion, expressing great joy that after eight years of wandering he had at last been permitted to meet white men, and Spanish countrymen. He bore the outer traces of great physical suffering, and spoke in so excited a manner that the other Spaniards at first regarded him and listened to him with suspicion. He gave his name as Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, and that of the negro who was with him was Estévanico. Two other Spaniards, Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado and Andrés Dorantes, were a day’s journey back, in company with a number of Indians who had followed them from the north.
When the Spaniards had recovered from their surprise, they took the new-comers to Diego de Alcáraz, who immediately sent three of his men with fifty Indians to search for the other Spaniards. His purpose, however, was not so much to deliver his countrymen as to find provisions and gold. For this object he kept back the Indians who had come with Maldonado and Dorantes, removed the latter from them, and finally put the four, including Cabeza de Vaca and the negro, under arrest. The Indians escaped by flight; and the prisoners, after having been abused in various ways, were delivered on May 1st to the commander, Melchior Diaz, at Culiacan, who gave them an honorable reception, and to whom they were permitted to relate the wonderful history of their adventures.
This story of the wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions is indeed a wonder-tale, and is hardly matched in thrilling incident by anything of the kind of the sixteenth century. De Vaca has himself written it out in the book “Naufragios de Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca y Relacion de la Jornada que hizo á la Florida con el Adelantado Pámfilo de Narvaez,” which was printed at Valladolid in 1555. Having been composed from recollection and not on the basis of notes of any kind, the book is obscure in its geographical data. Many of the details are erroneously set forth, and the glowing fancies excited by the contemplation of the author’s terrible sufferings and privations are in many cases obviously detrimental to historical truth. The substance of the story is true, and gives a vivid picture of the fortunes of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions.
An expedition was organized in 1527 under the command of Pámfilo de Narvaez, the former rival of Cortés, whom he had attacked and captured in 1520 at Cempohual, to explore the peninsula of Florida, concerning the wealth of which extremely vague and therefore exaggerated accounts were in circulation. Five vessels, with six hundred men, left San Lúcar de Barrameda in Spain on June 17th. Cabeza de Vaca was treasurer of the enterprise. Rarely has any campaign of conquest met with such a series of consecutive disasters as befell this unhappy expedition of the “Armada of Pámfilo de Narvaez.” One of the vessels went down in a squall during the stay of the fleet at the island of Cuba. The flotilla could not leave Havana till February, 1528, and it was so hindered by storms and head-winds that it did not reach the coast of Florida till Maundy-Thursday of that year. It anchored in a bay on the shore of which was an Indian village. The men were landed, and it was decided, against the advice of Cabeza de Vaca, to leave the ships and march inland. The unfortunate march began on May 1, 1528, with three hundred men and forty horses.[64] Amidst great difficulties, without provisions, they went northward through marshy woods and morasses, and across broad rivers, at no very great distance from the seashore. Till the 17th of June they found only a single Indian village (on May 16th). Then some Indians met them from whom they learned that they were near the settlement of Apalache, of which they were in search, concerning the wealth of which fabulous reports had found their way to the Spanish Antilles. They suffered a bitter disappointment when, on June 24th, they came in sight of the desired place. Forty Indian huts constituted the whole village. They were now in northern Florida, on the Suwanee River. At Apalache serious hostilities began with the natives, who daily harassed the weary and famishing Spaniards and killed some of their men. After a halt there of twenty-five days, Narvaez decided to go westward.
It is not necessary to go further into the melancholy details of the march of this expedition. Once in the swamps and bayous that extended along the coast of Alabama, and perhaps Louisiana, no escape was to be hoped for. An attempt to build rafts and sail upon them across the gulf to the Mexican coast resulted in the drowning of a part of the men. The rest, cast back upon the shore without food and without water, fell victims to the hostility of the natives, to hunger, and to the winter, which came upon them. Only four survived, viz., Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo Maldonado, Dorantes, and the negro Estévanico. The vessels which had been left in the Bay of Santa Cruz, Florida, went to pieces in the storm, and their crews perished.