It was in the sixteenth century that the Spaniards first explored the region that forms the territorial basis of this volume. The discoverers and early explorers found there the home, not only of several wild and roving tribes of the class generally denominated savages, but of an aboriginal people much further advanced in progress toward civilization than any other north of Anáhuac, or the region of Central Mexico. This people, though composed of nations, or tribes, speaking distinct languages, was practically one in the arts and institutions constituting the general features of its emergence from savagism. It was an agricultural people, dwelling in several-storied buildings of stone or adobes. All that pertains to this most interesting people, or to the other native inhabitants of Arizona and New Mexico, has been put before the reader in an earlier work of this series. My present purpose requires but the briefest repetition or résumé of matters thus presented in their proper place, and even that only in certain peculiar phases.

This region offers for antiquarian research a field not surpassed, in several respects, by any in America; for here only we find a people, far in advance of the savage tribes if far behind the highest types, retaining many of their original characteristics, and living on the same sites, in buildings similar to, or in several instances perhaps identical with, those occupied by their ancestors at the coming of the Europeans, and for centuries before. These are the oldest continuously inhabited structures on the continent; and these Pueblo Indians—so called from the Spanish term applied to their community-houses, or towns, in the absence of any general aboriginal name—are probably more nearly in their original condition than any other American tribes. It is therefore hardly possible to overestimate the importance of these tribes for ethnologic study, unless, indeed, we adopt the extreme views of those who refuse to credit testimony to the effect that the most advanced Nahua and Maya nations possessed any trait or custom or institution or degree of culture different from or superior to those found among these Pueblos, or even inferior tribes of the north.

In my Native Races, after describing the monuments of this peculiar people, I expressed a hope that the work might encourage further research and the publication of much additional information on the subject, at the same time predicting with confidence—founded on the uniformity of data already accessible—that newly discovered relics would not differ materially in type from those I was able to study, and that they would require no essential modification of my conclusions respecting the primitive New Mexicans. This hope and prediction have proved well founded. During the decade and more that has passed since my work appeared, able investigators have directed their efforts to this field, with results in the form of accurate knowledge of the people, and their traditions, lan­guages, and material relics that probably surpass in many respects all that was known before; yet these results, so far as I am familiar with them, are confirmatory of the general views which had been taken by me, and which it seems proper to embody briefly here, aboriginal annals being a fitting preface to the record of foreign invaders’ deeds to follow.

 

THE PUEBLO INDIANS

Elk-Foot of the Taos Tribe

In their sixteenth-century explorations, the Spaniards found from seventy to a hundred of the Pueblo towns still inhabited, there being much confusion of names in the different narratives of successive visits. Most of the towns cannot be definitely identified or located; but as groups they present but slight difficulties; and they covered substantially the same territory then as now. South of this territory, in southern Arizona and northern Chihuahua, and probably north of it, in southern Colorado and Utah, though there may have been exceptions, similar widespread structures were then as now in ruins. In the next century, chiefly during the wars following successful revolt against the Spaniards, many of the towns were destroyed or abandoned, the number being reduced in that period or a little later to about twenty-five, the dates and circumstances of the few later changes being for the most part known.

It is only in the broadest outline that the history of this people is known by their material relics, tradition affording but slight aid. Clearly the whole region, extending somewhat farther north and south than the bounds of Arizona and New Mexico, was in the past occupied by semi-civilized tribes, not differing among themselves or from the Pueblos more than do the latter as known since the sixteenth century, and occupying the most fertile valleys with their stone and adobe town houses, similar, but often vastly superior, to the later well-known dwellings of the Pueblos. Long, perhaps centuries, before the Spaniards came, began the decline of this numerous and powerful people. The cause of their misfortunes must be traced to wars with savage predatory tribes like the Apaches, and with each other, drought and pestilence contributing to the same end. All the ruined structures and other relics of the long past were so evidently the work of the Pueblos or cognate tribes that there exists no plausible reason for indulging in conjectural theories respecting the agency of extinct races. Yet nothing is more common than to read of the discovery of prehistoric relics of the long-lost race that once peopled this land. My work has had but slight effect to check this popular tendency to the marvellous.

It is also still the custom of most writers to refer to the ruins and relics of this region as undoubtedly of Aztec origin, and to adopt more or less fully the theory that the ancestors of the Pueblo tribes were Aztecs left in Arizona during the famous migration from the north-west to Mexico. As the reader of my Native Races is aware, it is my belief that no such general migration occurred, at least not within any period reached by tradition; but whether this belief is well founded or not, I have found no reason to modify my position that the New Mexican people and culture were not Aztec. The Montezuma myth of the Pueblo communities, so far at least as the name is concerned if not altogether, was certainly of Spanish origin. Monumental and institutional resemblances are hardly sufficient to suggest even contact with the Nahua nations, yet such contact at one time or another is not improbable, and is indeed indicated by the dialects of some of the tribes. Linguistic affinities, however, like institutional and architectural resemblances, if any exist, do not indicate an Aztec base for the New Mexican culture at the beginning, but rather a superstructural element of later introduction. I offer no positive assertion that the northern advancement was indigenous or independent of the spirit that actuated the mound-builders or the architects of Palenque and Uxmal; but I claim that any possible connection is but vaguely supported by the evidence, and may at least be regarded as antedating the period of traditional annals. The origin of this most interesting aboriginal people is a legitimate subject of investigation, and there are many more competent than myself to form an opinion; yet I feel justified in protesting against the too prevalent tendency of most writers to accept in this matter as fact what is at the best but vague conjecture.

This chapter is intended to include all that it is necessary to say in a preliminary way, respecting the history of this territory, before beginning the chronologic narrative with the first coming of the Spaniards. An obviously important and necessary feature of this introductory matter is the annals of Spanish progress from Mexico northward, of the successive steps by which the broad regions south of this distant province were discovered, explored, and to some extent settled before the army of invasion secured a foothold in Arizona and New Mexico. But this is a subject that has been presented with all desirable detail in the first volume of my History of the North Mexican States, to which the reader is referred, not only for events preceding the discovery of New Mexico, but for later happenings in the southern regions, an acquaintance with which will greatly stimulate interest in and facilitate the study of the accompanying northern developments. Because this matter is fully treated in the volume alluded to, and because it is also presented in various outline-combinations as a necessary introduction to volumes on other northern Pacific states, I may properly restrict its treatment here to narrow limits; but cannot, consistently with my general plan of making each work of the series complete in itself, omit it altogether.

As soon as the Spaniards had made themselves masters of the valley of Mexico, their attention was attracted in large degree to the north as presenting new and promising fields for conquest. This was natural from their comparatively complete knowledge of southern geography and ignorance of the north, with its probably vast extent, its prospectively rich and powerful nations of aborigines, and its correspondingly attractive mysteries. But there was another and more potent incentive in the current theories respecting geographical relations of the new regions to Asia and the Indies. These theories, legitimately founded on the slight data accessible, furnish the key to all that might otherwise be mysterious in the annals of north-western exploration. So fully have they been explained by me elsewhere in various connections that mere mention may suffice here. At first it was supposed that Columbus had reached the main Asiatic coast, which might be followed south-westward to the Indies. Then a great island—really South America—was found, which did not seriously conflict with the original idea, but was of course separated from the main by a strait, through which voyagers to and from India by the new route must pass. Further exploration failed to find this strait, but revealed instead an isthmus effectually impeding south-western progress in ships; and when Balboa in 1513 crossed the Isthmus to find a broad expanse of ocean beyond, and others a little later explored the western coast for many leagues northward, it became apparent that the old geographic idea must be modified, that the new regions, instead of being the Asiatic main, were a great south-eastern projection of that main. The idea of the ‘strait’, however, had become too deeply rooted to be easily abandoned; accordingly, it was located in the north, always to be sought just beyond the limit of actual exploration in that direction. Of course, this cosmographic ignis fatuus did not obstruct but rather stimulated the quest for new kingdoms to conquer, new riches for Spanish coffers, and new souls to be saved by spiritual conquest.

Fully imbued, not only with the desire to extend his fame as a conqueror, but with the prevalent geographic theories, Hernan Cortés, within a year or two after the fall of Anáhuac, convinced himself, through reports of the natives and of his lieutenants sent to plant the Spanish flag on South Sea shores, that the great westward trend of the Pacific coast that was to connect the new regions with Asia must be sought farther north than the latitude of Tenochtitlan. The plan conceived by him was to build ships on the Pacific, and in them to follow the coast northward, then westward, and finally southward to India. In this voyage, he would either discover the ‘strait’ or prove all to be one continent; discover for his sovereign rich coast and island regions; perhaps find great kingdoms to conquer; and at the least explore a new route to the famous Spice Islands. His shipyard was established at Zacatula in 1522, but through a series of misfortunes, which need not be catalogued here, his maritime exploration in 1530 had not extended above Colima. Meanwhile, however, various land expeditions had explored the regions of Michoacán and southern Jalisco up to the latitude of San Blas, or about 21° 30'. In the interior at the same date the advance of northern exploration had reached Querétaro, and possibly San Luis Potosí, in latitude 22°. On the east a settlement had been founded at Pánuco, and the gulf coast vaguely outlined by several expeditions, the last of which was that of Pánfilo de Narvaez, whose large force landed in 1828 in Florida, and with few exceptions perished in the attempt to coast the gulf by land and water to Pánuco.

In 1531 the first great movement northward was made, not by Cortés, but by his rival Nuño de Guzmán, who, with a large army of Spaniards and Indians, marched from Mexico up the west coast to Sinaloa. His northern limit was the Yaqui River in about latitude 28°; and branches of his expedition also crossed the mountains eastward into Durango, and perhaps Chihuahua; but the only practical result of this grand expedition, except a most diabolic oppression and slaughter of the natives, was the founding of the little villa of San Miguel in about latitude 25°, corresponding nearly with Culiacan, an establishment which was permanent, and for many a long year maintained a precarious existence as the isolated frontier of Spanish settlement. Guzman returned to Jalisco, whose permanent occupation dates from this period; and the province or ‘kingdom’ of Nueva Galicia was ushered into existence with jurisdiction extending over all the far north, and with its capital soon fixed at Guadalajara.

But Cortés, though opposed at every step by his enemy, Guzmán, and involved in other vexatious difficulties, continued his efforts, and despatched several expeditions by water, one of which was wrecked on the Sinaloa coast in latitude 26°, and another in 1533 discovered what was supposed to be an island in about latitude 24°. Here, in 1535, Cortés in person attempted to found a colony, but the enterprise was a disastrous failure; the settlement at Santa Cruz—really on the peninsula—was abandoned the next year, and the place was named, probably by the settlers in their disgust, California, from an Amazon isle “on the right hand of the Indies very near the terrestrial paradise”, as described in a popular novel. Meanwhile nothing had been accomplished farther east that demands notice in this connection; and the great northern bubble seemed to have burst.

Yet little was needed to renew the old excitement, and the incentive was supplied even before Cortes’ ill-fated colony had left California. In April 1536, there arrived at San Miguel de Culiacan Álvar Nuñez and three companions, survivors of Narvaez’ expedition of 1528, who had wandered across the continent through Texas, Chihuahua, and Sonora, and who brought reports of rich towns situated north of their route. They carried the news to Mexico, and the result was a series of more brilliant and far-reaching explorations by sea and land than any that had been undertaken before. Soto’s wanderings of 1538-43 in the Mississippi Valley may be connected, chronologically at least, with this revival of interest. Cortés despatched a fleet under Ulloa, who in 1539 explored the gulf to its head, and followed the outer coast of the peninsula up to Cedros Island in latitude 28º. Viceroy Mendoza took the fever, and not only sent Alarcón to the head of the gulf and up the Río Colorado, and a little later Cabrillo to the region of Cape Mendocino on the outer coast, but also despatched Niza as a pioneer, and presently Vasquez de Coronado with his grand army of explorers, who in 1540-2 traversed Sonora, Arizona, New Mexico, and the plains north­eastward to perhaps latitude 40’, and whose adventures will be narrated in the following chapters. The explorers, however, returned without having achieved any final conquest, or established any permanent settlement; and again interest in the far north died out—a result partly due, however, to the great revolt of native tribes in Nueva Galicia, known as the Mixton war of 1540-2.

With the suppression of this revolt, the final conquest of Nueva Galicia was effected; and before 1550 the rich mines of Zacatecas were discovered, and the town of that name founded. Exploration of the northern interior was mainly the work of miners, though the missionaries were always in the front rank. Francisco de Ibarra was the great military explorer from 1554, his entradas covering the region corresponding to the Durango, Sinaloa, and southern Chihuahua of modern maps, besides one vaguely recorded expedition that may have extended into Arizona or New Mexico. About 1562 the new province of Nueva Vizcaya, with Ibarra as governor and capital at Durango, was created, to include all territory above what is now the line of Jalisco and Zacatecas, theoretically restricted to the region east of the mountains, but practically including the coast provinces as well; yet the audiencia of Guadalajara retained its judicial jurisdiction over all the north. Before 1565 there were mining settlements in the San Bartolomé Valley of southern Chihuahua, corresponding to the region of the later Parral, Allende, and Jimenez. These settlements on the east, with San Felipe de Sinaloa on the west, may be regarded as the frontier of Spanish occupation in 1600; yet, as we shall presently see, several expeditions had penetrated the country north-eastward even to New Mexico, the conquest of which province at this date was thus far in advance of the general program northward. South of the frontier line as noted, the regions of Sinaloa, Durango, and southern Coahuila were occupied by many flourishing missions under the Jesuits and Franciscans; and there were numerous mining settlements, with a few military posts; though the general Spanish population was yet very small.

Seventeenth-century annals of the north may be briefly outlined for present purposes. In the beginning, Vizcaino, on the outer coast, repeated Cabrillo’s explorations to or beyond the 40th parallel; while pearl-fishers and others made many trips to the gulf waters. In Sinaloa, the Jesuits prospered; in Sonora, beginning with the Yaqui treaty of 1610, and the conversion of the Mayos in 1613, the missionaries made constant progress until a large part of the province was occupied; and in the last decade, not only did Baja California become a mission field, but Pimería Alta, where Padre Kino pushed forward his explorations northward to the Gila. East of the mountains, Nueva Vizcaya was for the most part a land of war during this century; eight Jesuits and two hundred Spaniards lost their lives in the Tepehuane revolt of 1616 in Durango; but the missionaries not only regained lost ground, but pushed forward their work among the Tarahumares of Chihuahua, where also there were many revolts. North-eastern Durango and eastern and northern Chihuahua formed the mission field of the Franciscans, whose establishments, exposed to the frequent raids of savage foes, maintained but a precarious existence, yet were extended before 1700 to the Casas Grandes, to the site of the later city of Chihuahua, and to El Paso on the Rio Grande. Meanwhile the mines in all directions yielded rich results; and a small military force under the governor’s management strove more or less ineffectually to protect missions and mining camps, and to repel the endless and ubiquitous incursions of marauding tribes. Northern Coahuila was occupied by the Franciscans, and several settlements were founded in the last quarter of this century. Texan annals of the period are divided into three distinct parts: first, the various expeditions from New Mexico to the east in 1601-80; second, the disastrous attempts at colonization by the French under La Salle in 1682-7; and third, efforts of the Spaniards from 1686, resulting in several exploring expeditions from Coahuila, and in the foundation of several Franciscan missions on the branches of the rivers Trinidad and Neches, which were abandoned in 1693.

In the eighteenth century, but for the conquest of Nayarit in 1721-2, the provinces of Sinaloa and Durango relapsed into the monotonous, uneventful condition of Nueva Galicia, that of a tierra de paz; but Sonora and Chihuahua were more than ever a tierra de guerra, the victim of murderous raids of Apaches and other warlike and predatory tribes. A line of presidios was early established along the northern frontier, which, with occasional changes of site as demanded by circumstances, served to prevent the abandonment of the whole region. There was hardly a settlement of any kind that was not more than once abandoned temporarily. New mines were constantly discovered and worked under occasional military protection; the famous mining excitement of the Bolas de Plata, at Arizona, occurred in 1737-41; rich placers of gold were found in Sonora; and the Real de San Felipe, or city of Chihuahua, sprang into existence near the mines of Santa Eulalia early in the century. The missions showed a constant decline, which was not materially affected by the expulsion of the Jesuits and substitution of the Franciscans in 1767. Many new missions were founded, but more were abandoned, and most became but petty communities of women, children, and invalids, or convenient resorts of the able-bodied from time to time, the friars retaining no practical control. There was but slight gain of new territory, though in Pimería Alta the missions and presidios were extended northward to San Javier del Bac and Tubac, in what was later Arizona. On the west coast, however, in 1769-1800, the Spanish occupation was extended to latitude 37°, and exploration to the 60th parallel, while the Franciscans founded a series of nineteen new and flourishing missions in Alta California; and in the extreme east Texas was reoccupied in 1716-22 with missions and presidios, the country remaining permanently under Spanish dominion, though the establishments were never prosperous.

There is yet another introduction or accompaniment, pertaining appropriately enough to the early history of New Mexico, to which I may call attention here, at the same time suggesting that a perusal of its de­tails as recorded in another volume of this series may yield more of pleasure and profit if undertaken a little later, after the reader shall have made himself familiar with the record of the earliest expeditions as presented in the opening chapters of this volume. I allude to the mass of more or less absurd conjectural theories respecting northern geography, which, plentifully leavened with falsehood, were dominant among writers and map-makers for two centuries, and which—belonging as much and as little to New Mexico as to any part of my territory—under the title of the Northern Mystery I have chosen to treat in my History of the Northwest Coast. The earliest theories respecting the geographic relations of America to Asia were in a sense, as we have seen, reasonable and consistent; but after the explorations of 1539-43, this element of consistency for the most part disappeared, as the Spanish government lost much of its interest in the far north, with its faith in the existence of new and wealthy realms to be conquered there. There remained, however, a firm belief in the interoceanic strait, and an ever-present fear that some other nation would find and utilize it to the disadvantage of Spain. Meanwhile, there were many explorers legitimately desirous of clearing up all that was mysterious in the north, conquerors bent on emulating in that direction the grand achievements of Cortés and Pizarro, friars eager to undertake as missionaries the spiritual conquest of new realms for God and their king; and their only difficulty was to gain access to the royal treasury in behalf of their respective schemes. The fear of foreign encroachment was a strong basis of argument, and in their memorials they did not hesitate to supplement this basis with anything that might tend to reawaken the old faith in northern wealth and wonders. These interested parties, and the host of theorists who embraced and exaggerated their views, generally succeeded in convincing themselves that their views were for the most part founded in fact. The old theories were brought to light, and variously distorted; the actual discoveries of 1539-43, as the years passed on, became semi-mythical, and were located anywhere to suit the writer’s views, Indian villages being magnified without scruple into great cities; each new discovery on the frontier was described to meet requirements, and located where it would do the most good; and even the aborigines, as soon as they learned what kind of traditions pleased the white men most, did excellent service for the cause. It must be understood that much of all this was honest conjecture respecting a region of which little or nothing was known; but theory became rapidly and inextricably mingled with pure fiction; and there were few of the reported wonders of the north that had not been actually seen by some bold navigator, some ship-wrecked mariner wandering inland, or some imaginative prospector or Indian-fighter. Not only did the strait exist, but many voyagers had found its entrance on the east or west, and not a few had either sailed through it from ocean to ocean, or reached it from the interior by land. The kingdoms and cities on its banks were described, though with discrepancies, which, indeed, threw no doubt on its existence, but rather suggested that the whole northern interior might be a great network of canals, among which the adventurer—would the king but fit out a fleet for him—might choose his route. Only a small portion of the current speculations and falsehoods found their way into print, or have been preserved for our reading; but quite enough to show the spirit of the time. The resulting complication of geographic absurdities, known as the Northern Mystery, has had a strange fascination for me, and its close connection with the early annals of New Mexico, as with those of the other Pacific United States, will doubtless be apparent to all.

The wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca, including, as most or all writers on the subject have agreed, the first visit of Europeans to New Mexico, have been recorded somewhat in detail in another volume of this series. For that reason, but chiefly because it is my opinion that Cabeza de Vaca never entered New Mexico, I devote in this volume comparatively little space to the subject; and for the latter reason, what I have to say is given in this introductory chapter instead of being attached to the record of actual explorations in the next. Álvar Nuñez, or Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, and a negro slave called Estevanico were the only known survivors of the expedition of Narvaez to the gulf coast in 1528. After years of captivity among different native tribes, they finally escaped from servitude on the Texas coast, crossed the continent in a journey that lasted nearly a year, and arrived at San Miguel de Culiacan in April 1536. The success of so remarkable a trip resulted from the leader’s wonderful good luck in establishing his reputation as a great medicine man among the natives, who escorted the strangers from tribe to tribe along the way with full faith in their supernatural powers; or perchance the wanderers were, as they believed, under the miraculous protection of their god.

Naturally no journal was kept; but a report was made on arrival in Mexico, and a narrative was written by Álvar Nunez after he went to Spain in 1537. There is no reason to question the good faith of either report or narrative as written from memory; but there is much discrepancy and confusion, not only between the two versions, but between different statements in each. Moreover the narrative informs us that they passed through so many peoples that “the memory fails to recall them”, and the report disposes of an important part of the journey by the remark that they went forward “many days”. There are, however, allusions to two or three large rivers, which, if the record has any significance, can hardly have been other than the Pecos, Rio Grande, and Conchos; and the route—shown on the annexed map without any attempt to give details—may be plausibly traced in general terms from the Texan coast near Galveston north-westward, following the course of the rivers, then south-west to the region of the Conchos junction, then westward to the upper Sonora and Yaqui valleys in Sonora, and finally south to San Miguel in Sinaloa.

The belief that Cabeza de Vaca passed through New Mexico and visited the Pueblo towns is not supported by the general purport of the narrative, or of what followed. Not only is it wellnigh certain that had he seen those wonderful structures, they would have figured largely in his reports in Mexico, but we know that the effective part of his statement was the report, obtained from Indians, of populous towns with large houses and plenty of turquoises and emeralds, situated to the north of his route. There are but two bits of testimony that might seem to conflict with my conclusion, and both, when examined, seem rather to confirm it. One of the relations of Coronado’s later expedition indicated that traces of Cabeza de Vaca’s presence were found on the plains far to the north-east of the Santa Fé region; but in another it is explained that they simply met an old Indian, who said he had seen four Spaniards in the direction of New Spain, that is, in the south. Again, according to the narrative, the wanderers, long before they heard of the great houses of the north, came to “fixed dwellings of civilization”, and indeed, it is implied that they travelled for long distances in the regions of such dwellings; but that these were not the Pueblo structures is clear, not only from the lack of description, but from the fact that the natives built new houses for the accommodation of their guests. I suppose these fixed dwellings were simply ranchería huts of a somewhat more permanent nature than those that had been seen farther east on the plains; and indeed, the Jumanas were found before the end of the century living in such houses, some of them built of stone. Again, it is to be noted that Espejo in 1582 found among the Jumanas, not far above the Conchos junction, a tradition that the Spaniards had passed that way. Even Davis, who has no doubt that the party visited New Mexico, has to suggest that that country then extended much farther south than now, thus somewhat plausibly proving that if Álvar Nuñez did not come to New Mexico, a convenient lack of boundaries enabled the province to go to Cabeza de Vaca. It seems to me that the most positive assertion that can be made in connection with the whole matter, except that the wanderers arrived at San Miguel, is that they did not see the Pueblo towns; yet it can never be quite definitely proved that their route did not cut off a small south-eastern comer of what is now New Mexico. While Cabeza de Vaca is not to be credited with the discovery of the country, he was the first to approach and hear of it; his reports were the direct incentive to its discovery and exploration; and thus, after all, his wonderful journey may still be regarded as the beginning of New Mexican annals.

 

THE NARRATIVE OF CABEZA DE VACA

In some respects the journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions overland from coast to coast during the eight years from 1528 to 1536 is the most remarkable in the record of American exploration, and as a narrative of suffering and privation the relation here presented perhaps has no equal in the annals of the northern continent.

The author of the narrative was a native of Jerez de la Frontera, in the province of Cádiz, in southern Spain, but the date of his birth is not known. His father was Francisco de Vera, son of Pedro de Vera, conqueror of the Grand Canary in 1483; his mother, Teresa Cabeza de Vaca, who also was born in Jerez. Why Alvar Nuñez assumed the matronymic is not known, unless it was with a sense of pride that he desired to perpetuate the name that had been bestowed by the King of Navarre on his maternal ancestor, a shepherd named Martin Alhaja, for guiding the army through a pass that he marked with the skull of a cow (cabeza de vaca, literally “cow’s head”), thus leading the Spanish army to success in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, in July, 1212, which led up to the final conquest of the Moors in Spain.

Having returned to Spain after many years of service in the New World for the Crown, Pánfilo de Narvaez petitioned for a grant; and in consequence the right to conquer and colonize the country between the Río de las Palmas, in eastern Mexico, and Florida was accorded him. The expedition, consisting of six hundred colonists and soldiers, set sail in five vessels from San Lúcar de Barrameda, June 17, 1527, and after various vicissitudes, including the wreck of two ships and the loss of sixty men in a hurricane on the southern coast of Cuba, was finally driven northward by storm, and landed, in April, 1528, at St. Clements Point, near the entrance to Tampa Bay, on the west coast of Florida. Despite the protest of Cabeza de Vaca, who had been appointed treasurer of Río de las Palmas by the King, Narvaez ordered his ships to skirt the coast in an endeavor to find Panuco, while the expedition, now reduced to three hundred men by desertions in Santo Domingo, death in the Cuban storm, and the return of those in charge of the ships, started inland in a generally northern course. The fleet searched for the expedition for a year and then sailed to Mexico.

Among the members of the force, in addition to Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, were Andrés Dorantes de Carranga, son of Pablo, a native of Béjar del Castañar, in Estremadura, who had received a commission as captain of infantry on the recommendation of Don Alvaro de Zúñiga, Duke of Béjar; Captain Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, of Salamanca, the son of Doctor Castillo and Aldonza Maldonado; and Estevan, or Estevanico, a blackamoor of Asemmur, or Azamor, on the west coast of Morocco, the slave of Dorantes. With the exception of those who returned with the ships, these four men were the only ones of the entire expedition who ever again entered a civilized community.

Pursuing a generally northerly course, harassed by Indians, and beset with hunger, illness, and treachery in their ranks, Narvaez’s party finally reached the head of Appalachee Bay, in the country of the Indians after whom this arm of the Gulf of Mexico takes its name. Looking now to the sea as his only means of escape, Narvaez the incompetent, with neither the proper materials nor the mechanics, set about to build boats to conduct his men out of their trap : craft that were expected to weather such tropical storms as they had already so poorly buffeted with their stouter ships. Every object of metal that the expedition afforded, even to stirrups and spurs, was requisitioned for the manufacture of nails and necessary tools; a rude forge was constructed, with bellows of wood and deer-skins; the native palm supplied tow and covering; the horses were killed and their hides used for water-bottles, while their flesh served the Spaniards for food as the work went on; even the shirts from the very backs of the men were fashioned into sails. Picturing the character of the five boats, laden almost to the gunwales with nearly fifty men each, besides such provisions as could be stowed away, and the untold hardship from thirst after the decay of the horse-hide canteens, the chief wonder is that the motley fleet survived long enough to reach Pensacola Bay. As it passed the mouth of the Mississippi, the current was so swift that fresh water was dipped from the gulf, and the wind so strong that the boats were carried beyond sight of land for three days, and for a time lost sight of each other. For four days more, two of the boats, including that in which was Cabeza de Vaca, drifted within view of each other; but another storm arose, again they were lost to sight, and one by one the occupants succumbed to exhaustion and cast themselves into the bottom of the boat, until Cabeza de Vaca alone was left to steer the flimsy craft in its unknown course. Night came on and the author of our narrative lay down to rest. The next morning, November 6, 1528, the boat was cast ashore on a long narrow island, inhabited by savages, on the Texas coast.

On this “Island of Misfortune” Cabeza de Vaca’s party was soon joined by that of one of the other boats, including Dorantes, so that altogether the island harbored about eighty Spaniards. Four men later attempted to reach Panuco, but all perished but one. During the following winter disease raged among the little colony, reducing it to fifteen. Then the Spaniards became separated, Dorantes and his slave Estevan, now both the slaves of the Indians, were taken to the mainland, whither Cabeza de Vaca, weary of root-digging on the island shore, also escaped, becoming a trader among the Indians, journeying far inland and along the coast from tribe to tribe, for forty or fifty leagues. Every year during the five years that he plied his trade as a dealer in shells, sea-beads, medicine-beans, skins, ochre, and the like, he returned to Malhado, where Lope de Oviedo, and Alvarez, a sick companion, still remained. Finally the latter died, and Cabeza de Vaca and Oviedo again sought the main in the hope of reaching Christian people. Journeying southward along the coast, they crossed the Brazos and other rivers, and finally reached San Antonio Bay. Here Oviedo, owing to ill-treatment by the Indians, deserted Cabeza de Vaca, who shortly after also stole away from the savages and joined Dorantes, Castillo Maldonado, and the Moor (the sole survivors of the party of twelve who had left Malhado years before), whose Indian masters had come down the river, evidently the San Antonio, to gather walnuts.

Once more together, the Christians planned to escape six months hence, when all the Indians from the surrounding country gathered on the southern Texas plains to eat prickly pears. But again were they doomed to disappointment, for although the savages assembled in the tuna fields, a quarrel arose among them (there was “a woman in the case”), which caused the Spaniards to be separated for another year. Their escape was finally accomplished in the manner they had planned; but their departure for the Christian land was not at once effected, by reason of the inhospitable character of the country, which compelled them to sojourn among other Indians until the beginning of another prickly-pear season.

While among the Avavares, with whom the Spaniards lived for eight months, they resumed the treatment of the sick, a practice that had first been forced on them, by the natives of Malhado Island, under threat of starvation. With such success did the Spaniards, and especially Cabeza de Vaca, meet, that their reputation as healers was sounded far and wide among the tribes, thousands of the natives following them from place to place and showering gifts upon them.

There are few Spanish narratives that are more unsatisfactory to deal with by reason of the lack of directions, distances, and other details, than that of Cabeza de Vaca; consequently there are scarcely two students of the route who agree. His line of travel through Texas was twice crossed by later explorers, in 1541 by the army of Francisco Vazquez Coronado, on the eastern edge of the Stake Plains, and again in 1582 by Antonio de Espejo, on the Río Grande below the present El Paso. These data, with the clews afforded by the narrative itself, point strongly to a course from the tuna fields, about thirty leagues inland from San Antonio Bay, to the Rio Colorado and perhaps to the Rio Llano, westward across the lower Pecos to the Rio Grande above the junction of the Conchos, thence in an approximately straight line across Chihuahua and Sonora to the Rio Sonora, where we find Cabeza de Vaca’s Village of the Hearts, which Coronado also visited in 1540, at or in the vicinity of the present Ures. Soon after he reached this point traces of the first Christians were seen, and shortly after the Spaniards themselves, in the form of a military body of slave-hunters.

As to the character of our chronicler, he seems to have been an honest, modest, and humane man, who underestimated rather than exaggerated the many strange things that came under his notice, if we except the account of his marvellous healings, even to the revival of the dead. The expedition of Narvaez was in itself a disastrous and dismal failure, reaching an end alike forlorn and fatal; but viewed from the standpoint of present-day civilization, the commander deserved his fate. On the other hand, while one might well hesitate to say that the accomplishment of Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions compensated their untold sufferings, the world eventually became the wiser in more ways than one. The northern continent had been penetrated from shore to shore; the waters of the Mississippi and the bison of the plains were now first seen by white men; and some knowledge of the savage tribes had been gleaned for the benefit of those who should come after. There is no blatant announcement of great mineral wealth : a mountain with scoria of iron, some small bags of mica, a quantity of galena, with which the Indians painted their faces, a little turquoise, a few emeralds, and a small copper bell were all. Yet the effect of the remarkable overland journey was to inspire the expedition of Coronado in 1540; and it is not improbable that De Soto, who endeavored to enlist the services of Cabeza de Vaca, may likewise have been stimulated to action.

After the three Spaniards returned to Mexico they united in a report to the Audiencia of Española (Santo Domingo), which is printed in Oviedo’s Historia General y Natural de las Indias. In April, 1537, they embarked for Spain, but the ship in which Dorantes set sail proved to be unseaworthy and returned to Vera Cruz. Invited to the capital by the Viceroy Mendoza, Dorantes was tendered a commission to explore the northern country, but this project was never carried out.

Cabeza de Vaca, in reward for his services, was appointed governor, captain-general, and adelantado of the provinces of Río de la Plata. Sailing from Cadiz in November, 1540, he reached Brazil in March of the following year. Here he remained seven months, when he sent his vessels ahead to Buenos Ayres and started overland to Asuncion, which he reached in March, 1542, after a remarkable experience in the tropical forests. But the province seems to have needed a man of sterner stuff than Alvar Nuñez, for he soon became the subject of animosity and intrigue, which finally resulted in open I rebellion, and his arrest in April, 1543. He was kept under close guard for about two years, when he was sent to Spain, and in 1551 was sentenced to banishment in Africa for eight years, a judgment that does not seem to have been carried out, for after serving probably a year or so in mild captivity at Seville, he was acquitted. He died in 1557.

Of the subsequent career of Castillo little is known. He returned to New Spain, became a citizen of the City of Mexico, married a widow, and was granted half the rents of the Indian town of Tehuacan.

Dorantes, as has been stated, for some reason did not carry out the plan of exploring the north, perhaps because of the projected expedition of Coronado, the way for which was led by Fray Marcos de Niza in 1539 with the negro Estevan as a guide. Dorantes served Mendoza in the conquest of Jalisco, and married Dona Maria de la Torre, a widow, by whom he had a large family. One of his sons, Balthasar, sometime king's treasurer of Vera Cruz, was born about the middle of the century, and on the death of his father inherited an encomienda that produced an income of five thousand pesos a year. Another son, Gaspar, inherited the encomienda of the pueblos of Ocava; and another, Melchior, an encomienda of Indians and of very good rents.

Of Estevan there is somewhat more definite information. Well on the road toward the north in 1539, he was sent ahead by Fray Marcos to report the character of the country and its people, and with rattle in hand and accompanied by many Indians of the present Gila River region, entered Háwikuh, the first of the Seven Cities of Cíbola. Here Estevan and most of his Indian followers were put to death by the Zuñis; those who escaped fled to Fray Marcos, whose life was threatened but who saved himself by regaling the natives with the contents of his pack.

There was another survivor of the inland expedition of Narvaez, Juan Ortiz by name. This Spaniard, who had been enticed ashore by the Indians of Florida, led practically the life of a slave, like his countrymen on the Texas main, until 1539, when he was rescued by De Soto, but he died before the expedition returned to civilization.

 

NIZA AND CORONADO IN ARIZONA.

1539-1540.