“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.