The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542.: Excerpted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, Part 1.Winship, George Parker
History
The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542.: Excerpted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, Part 1.
Winship, George Parker
Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, 1510-1554; Southwest, New -- Description and travel
The day we reached the first village part of them came out to fight
us, and the rest stayed in the village and fortified themselves. It
was not possible to make peace with these, although we tried hard
enough, so it was necessary to attack them and kill some of them. The
rest then drew back to the village, which was then surrounded and
attacked. We had to withdraw, on account of the great damage they did
us from the flat roofs, and we began to assault them from a distance
with the artillery and muskets, and that afternoon they surrendered.
Francisco Vazquez came out of it badly hurt by some stones, and I am
certain, indeed, that he would have been there yet if it had not been
for the army-master, D. Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, who rescued him.
When the Indians surrendered, they abandoned the village and went to
the other villages, and as they left the houses we made ourselves at
home in them.
Father Friar Marcos understood, or gave to understand, that the
region and neighborhood in which there are seven villages was a
single village which he called Cibola, but the whole of this settled
region is called Cibola. The villages have from 150 to 200 and 300
houses; some have the houses of the village all together, although
in some villages they are divided into two or three sections, but
for the most part they are all together, and their courtyards are
within, and in these are their hot rooms for winter, and they have
their summer ones outside the villages. The houses have two or three
stories, the walls of stone and mud, and some have mud walls. The
villages have for the most part the walls of the houses; the houses
are too good for Indians, especially for these, since they are
brutish and have no decency in anything except in their houses.
For food they have much corn and beans and melons, and some fowls,
like those of Mexico, and they keep these more for their feathers
than to eat, because they make long robes of them, since they do not
have any cotton; and they wear cloaks of heniquen (a fibrous plant),
and of the skins of deer, and sometimes of cows.
Their rites and sacrifices are somewhat idolatrous, but water is
what they worship most, to which they offer small painted sticks and
feathers and yellow powder made of flowers, and usually this offering
is made to springs. Sometimes, also, they offer such turquoises as
they have, although poor ones.
From the valley of Culiacan to Cibola it is 240 leagues in two
directions. It is north to about the thirty-fourth-and-a-half degree,
and from there to Cibola, which is nearly the thirty-seventh degree,
toward the northeast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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