Now and then no made hunting excursions into the country of his old friends the Wacoes—who were over glad to see him again, and still hailed him as their chief.
Of San Ildefonso there is no more heard since that time. No settlement was ever after made in that beautiful valley. The Tagnos—released from the bondage which the padrés had woven around them—were but too glad to give up the half-civilisation they had been taught. Some of them sought other settlements, but most returned to their old habits, and once more became hunters of the plains.
Perhaps the fate of San Ildefonso might have attracted more attention in other times; but it occurred at a peculiar period in Spanish-American history. Just then the Spanish power, all over the American continent, was hastening to its decline; and the fall of San Ildefonso was but one episode among many of a character equally dramatic. Near the same time fell Gran Quivira, Abo, Chilili, and hundreds of other settlements of note. Each has its story—each its red romance—perhaps far more interesting than that we have here recorded.
Chance alone guided our steps to the fair valley of San Ildefonso,—chance threw in our way one who remembered its legend—the legend of the White Chief.
Appendix.
Notes.
“Sierra Blanca.”—Page 1. The Sierra Blanca is so called because the tops of this range are usually covered with snow. The snow of the Sierra Blanca is not “eternal.” It only remains for about three parts of the year. Its highest peaks are below the snow-line of that latitude. Mountains that carry the eternal snow are by the Spanish Americans denominated “Nevada.”
“The Grand Prairie.”—Page 2. This name is somewhat indefinite, being applied by some to particular portions of prairie land. Among the hunters it is the general name given to the vast treeless region lying to the west of the timbered country on the Mississippi. The whole longitudinal belt from the Lower Rio Grande to the Great Slave Lake is, properly speaking, the Grand Prairie; but the phrase has been used in a more restricted sense, to designate the larger tracts of open country, in contra-distinction to the smaller prairies, such as those of Illinois and Louisiana, which last are separated from the true prairie country by wide tracts of timbered surface.