"If we go north again we can be certain of good food for the soil is the best that can be found for all kinds of crops. In Quivera we were given plums, nuts, very fine grapes, mulberries and flax. I really believe we shall make some important discoveries very soon."
One day at Pecos after he had made friends with the Indians, he was tilting with an officer in his command when his saddle girth broke while his horse was running at full speed. He fell on his head and was run over and so badly hurt that for days it was thought he would die. Before he got well news came from Mexico that the Indians behind him were on the warpath, and then he knew he must retreat as quickly as possible. So instead of going in quest of the roving band of Quivera Indians, he was obliged to return to the city of Mexico. Here the Viceroy received him coldly and upbraided him, saying:
"It is a source of keen disappointment and regret to me, that you, my trusted friend and favorite officer, should abandon the rich treasures of the north. I wish you to go to your estate and live in retirement for the remaining years of your life. I will try to find some one more worthy of my confidence for future work."
Reduced to poverty, with many debts unpaid, and disgraced by the Viceroy, the poor unfortunate nobleman lived only a few years on his estate in Mexico and died heartbroken over his failures.
Everybody in Mexico believed that he was mistaken, and several other expeditions set out to find the Kingdom of Quivera. More than a century afterward the legend settled around one of the missions founded by the padres, and for years people thought this was the Grand Quivera. Great treasures were supposed to be buried there by the missionaries when the insurrection of 1680 came. That year all the Indians in the region of Arizona and New Mexico organized a general uprising and they not only killed all the whites they could find but sacked and burned the missions. And that is the last ever heard of the one known as the Grand Quivera. No treasures were ever found in or near its ruins. There are ten curious maps of that time and each one locates the kingdom of Quivera in a different place. One of them brings it as far north as the Sacramento Valley in California.
Really Quivera is a will-o'-the-wisp, and from a roving band of Indians, has become a wandering treasure city, and a land of vague and mysterious proportions.
"AN OLD COMMUNITY HOUSE"