On the return of Espejo, the main party determined to return to New Biscay, or Chiwawa, but he resolved to ascend higher up the river. The only mention of degrees of latitude is on one occasion, when they speak of having reached the 37th degree; but this was probably mere guess-work.
Espejo now ascended the river sixty leagues to Quires; thence, going east, he came to Hubites, containing twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and he heard of the Tamas, containing forty thousand. Whether these were towns or provinces is not stated. All the places visited had gold, and turquoises, and manufactured fine cotton cloths. The myriads of buffalo, or crooked backed oxen, which covered the whole face of the country were mistaken for domestic herds; no country on the globe was ever so abundantly supplied with the means of subsistence through this animal, as were the aborigines of the interior of North America. So that particular districts might be most thickly populated, while vast unoccupied regions lay around them, swarming with the buffalo, or rather the bison, which is the true name of that animal. Their skins were elegantly dressed by them; and, for the finer kinds, the mountain sheep, or goat, or chamois, as the Spaniards called it, furnished an abundant supply. Espejo resolved to return by a different course, and was conducted by the Indians down the Rio de las Vacas, which he followed 120 leagues, meeting with no inhabitants, but vast numbers of cattle. But without seeing any habitations, the herdsmen appearing to live among their herds. The use of fire-arms has no doubt rendered them more shy, and at one time they literally blackened the face of the western prairies. Their range was limited both to the south and north. He then struck across to the Rio Grande, and came to the Conchas, by which he returned to New Biscay. The Rio de las Vacas is evidently the Rio Puerco, or Pecos. Here closes the expedition. Having the point of departure fixed, and at the same time the point of termination equally ascertained, I think the whole mystery of these expeditions has been cleared up.
The question will naturally present itself, what has become of the millions of civilized people who occupied New Mexico? I will ask, what has become of the millions of Yucatan, of Chiapas, and of Old Mexico? The reduction to slavery, their wars, and other causes, are not sufficient to account for the disappearance of the great nations of the west, or of the Atlantic slope. In looking for a cause, I have found one fully adequate, in that horrid plague and scourge, the small-pox. Let any one read the accounts of McKenzie, Carver, and Catlin, and I think he will seek no further for it. To the indian it is peculiarly fatal, not only from his want of skill in treating it, but from his physical organization; his skin is so remarkably thick that the pustules cannot break through it, and the disease is almost always fatal. When among the Arikaras, I was informed by them that they were but the remnant of seventeen towns lower down the river, and I traced their former abode for seven miles. The Arikaras and Mandans have since disappeared from the earth. After the greater part had been carried off by the small-pox, the survivors abandoned these towns and fled, covering their trails as they went, as if pursued by an enemy; but that mortal foe still followed them to annihilation. I have not been able to find any account of the nations of New Mexico from the year 1583 until 1698; and it is perhaps during that interval, that the rapid destruction of the American tribes and nations took place, while there was no one to record the desolation of the provinces of Cibola, or the country of the Buffaloe, which is the meaning of the word. The ruins, of cities on the Gila, and between it and the Colorado, remain to prove the fact that they once existed. Yet, there are some remnants of their former civilization in the Nabahoes, and the Pumas one on the Gila, the other on the heads of the Colorado, who still live in well-built houses, and manufacture their beautiful blankets. The suggestion I have made might be extended to the old world, and its ruined cities of Asia and Africa.
The only recent account of the country between the Gila and the Colorado which I have been able to meet with, is in Pattie’s Narrative, a hunter of Kentucky, who trapped on the Gila and Colorado twenty-five years ago, whose journal is done into readable English by the geographer, Flint. Pattie saw many of these ruins; saw much fine land heavily timbered; and by the friendship of the Nabahoes, was directed through a pass at the head of the Colorado which carried him to the Platt of the Missouri. This is, possibly, the pass sought for by Colonel Fremont. Pattie went through it in May; if it was bad then, what must it have been in the depth of winter! I am of opinion, that between 32° and 37° there is sufficient land to make two States, without going east of the Rio Grande del Norte. Yet, it was but partially seen by Pattie. It appears to be a mountainous country, well watered, and no doubt abounding in minerals, and having many rich valleys adapted to cultivation. The Colorado is a fine river, navigable eight hundred or a thousand miles with steamboats, unless there be obstructions that we do not know of. In extent, it is equal to Pennsylvania or Virginia. It will not be long before it will be thoroughly explored by our countrymen. Pattie says that it contains numerous bands of the most savage and ferocious Indians, armed with bows and arrows pointed with flint, who have had no intercourse or knowledge of the whites. He says that the country in some respects reminded him of parts of Kentucky, his native State.
H. M. BRACKENRIDGE.
DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIANS BY SMALL-POX.
I could bring together numerous separate accounts of the fatal ravages of this disease among the Indians in different portions of the continent. Bernal Dias, incidentally mentions, that it carried off a million shortly after the conquest, but how many more we are not told. The disease, no doubt, appeared at different intervals. A sermon by a New England divine, (in the collection of Mr. Force) of 1621, mentions that not more than one in twenty of the natives then remained, the rest having been carried off by the small-pox. In a Jesuit account which I found in the same collection, it appears that it broke out among the Indians in Chiwawa in 1617, and carried off whole tribes of Indians. There was no escape from it, for as long as two remained together the contagion might be there; it was, therefore, more fatal than an atmospheric epidemic, which might be checked by change of place or season. The Indian fled from his village or town, and never returned to it; he never dared to approach it afterwards, believing it to be haunted by evil spirits. In many places, this superstitious dread prevails to this day.
McKenzie gives the following account of the destruction of the Knistenew and Chippowyen tribes in 1780: “This was the small pox which spread its destructive and desolating power, as the fire consumes the dry grass of the field. The fatal infection spread round with a baneful rapidity which no flight could escape, and with a fatal effect that nothing could resist. It destroyed with its pestilential breath whole families and tribes; and the horrid scene presented to those who had the melancholy and afflicting opportunity of beholding it, a combination of the dead, the dying, and such, as to avoid the horrid fate their friends around them, prepared to disappoint the plague of its prey, by terminating their own existence.
“The habits and lives of those devoted people, which provided not to-day for the wants of to-morrow, must have heightened the pains of such an affliction, by leaving them not only without remedy; but even without alleviation. Nought was left to those but to submit in agony and despair.”