Having found the letter, Díaz continued upstream for another five or six days, perhaps to learn whether this was indeed the lower end of the big river about which the Hopis had spoken. Evidently satisfied that it was, he sent the Indian footmen of his party and the sheep across the stream on rafts made of reeds. Riders swam over on their horses, and the whole party turned back downstream. At some point in those grisly deserts, Díaz’s greyhound began tormenting a sheep. Díaz ran at the dog with his lance. The point stuck in the ground. Before he could stop his horse, the butt pierced his groin. His distraught men put him on a litter, recrossed the river (it is very low in the fall of the year), and hurried toward San Gerónimo, to no avail. He died and was buried no one knows where.
Of the Coronado party’s far-flung explorations, the one that had the greatest impact on its future was Hernando de Alvarado’s trip to the Great Plains. It was touched off by the appearance at Háwikuh, late in August, of a still undefined party of Indians—traders probably, but perhaps a group who felt they should learn more about what was going on in Cíbola.
They hailed from the pueblo of Cicuyé, located near a river we call Pecos in north-central New Mexico. (Cicuyé was the inhabitants’ name for their town; Pecos, now applied to both the river and the pueblo ruins, derives from Pekush, a word other Pueblo Indians used in speaking of the settlement.) The travelers were led by an elder whom the Spaniards called Cacique, as if it were a name. (Actually, it was an Arawak word meaning “chief.” The conquistadores had picked it up first in the West Indies and later had applied it to Indian leaders throughout Latin America.) Accompanying Cacique was a husky, talkative young man adorned with drooping mustaches, unusual in an Indian. Coronado’s people named him Bigotes, or, in English, Whiskers. Bigotes apparently spoke some Nahuatl, which meant he could converse after a fashion with a few of the explorers, notably Father Juan de Padilla, who seems to have been going slowly mad. Another attention-catcher among the visitors was an Indian from the Great Plains who had a painted picture of a buffalo on his bare chest.
Coronado considered the newcomers a peace delegation. He gave them glass trinkets, beads, and little bells that entranced them. They responded with head dresses, shields, and a wooly hide that, they signified, had been taken from an animal like the one pictured on the chest of one of their number. As the concept became clearer, pulses jumped, for here was a firm tie-in with Cabeza de Vaca’s story about the huge “cows” of the new land and of multistoried cities nearby.
Eager to learn more, Coronado prevailed on the amiable group to lead a party of his own men eastward to see Cicuyé and its surrounding lands—24 riders, four crossbowmen, Fray Juan de Padilla, and a lay brother, Luís de Ubeda. In high spirits they struck off through a malpais of congealed, jumbled, sharp-edged boulders of black lava that made the riders dismount and lead their suffering animals. This short-cut brought them to the amazing town of Acucu (today’s Acoma), perched on the summit of a butte approachable (as far as the Spaniards saw) only by a stairway carved into the pink sandstone. After an uneasy confrontation at the base of the cliffs, the Indians of Acucu invited them to climb arduously to the top, where they were heaped with presents of hides, cotton cloth, turkeys and other foods.
The immense headland of El Morro, also known as Inscription Rock, was a landmark for western travelers. Lured by the shaded pool at the base, they camped nearby and often left a record of their passage in the rock’s soft sandstone face. The party that Coronado dispatched to Acoma in August 1540 passed well south of the mesa and probably never saw it. The main army that ascended the Zuñi Valley several months later may have stopped at El Morro, but if so, they left no inscriptions. The headland is now the centerpiece of El Morro National Monument.
Acoma: Ancient Village in the Sky
Acoma embodies a thousand years of Pueblo life. According to an origin belief, the first dwellers were guided here by Iatiku, “mother of all Indians.” Archeologists trace occupation to at least late Basketmaker times (AD 700). A few centuries later, ancestral Pueblos are living on top in houses of stone and adobe.
The native word for Acoma is ʔá-·k′u, a word of ancient root that means “place of preparedness.” In September 1540, Alvarado’s men arrived at the great rock and marveled at the sight of the village and its people (about 200) on top. “The village was very strong,” said a Spaniard, so difficult of access that no army could assault it.
The Acomans came down to the plain ready to fight the Spaniards. But when they saw that the intruders could not be frightened off, they offered peace and gave them food and deerskins.
This illustration is artist L. Kenneth Townsend’s interpretation of the village about 1540—a world outside time.