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
This man said that he had visited Cibola, which was a month’s journey
distant. There was a good trail by which one might easily reach
that country in forty days. The man said he had gone there merely
to see the place, since it was quite a curiosity, with its houses
three and four stories high, filled with people. Around the houses
there was a wall half as high again as a man, having windows on each
side. The inhabitants used the usual Indian weapons—bows and arrows,
clubs, maces, and shields. They wore mantles and ox hides, which
were painted. They had a single ruler, who wore a long shirt with
a girdle, and various mantles over this. The women wore long white
cloaks which completely covered them. There were always many Indians
waiting about the door of their ruler, ready in case he should wish
for anything. They also wore many blue stones which they dug out of a
rock—the turquoises of the other narratives. They had but one wife,
and when they died all their effects were buried with them. When
[p405] their rulers ate, many men waited about the tables. They
ate with napkins, and had baths—a natural inference from any attempt
to describe the stuffy underground rooms, the estufas or kivas of the
Pueblos.
[Illustration: LIII. Wytfliet’s Kingdoms of Quivira, Anian and Tolm,
1597]
Alarcon continued to question the Indian, and learned that the lord
of Cibola had a dog like one which accompanied the Spaniards, and
that when dinner was served, the lord of Cibola had four plates
like those used by the Spaniards, except that they were green. He
obtained these at the same time that he got the dog, with some other
things, from a black man who wore a beard, whom the people of Cibola
killed. A few days later, Alarcon obtained more details concerning
the death of the negro “who wore certain things on his legs and arms
which rattled.” When asked about gold and silver, the Indians said
that they had some metal of the same color as the bells which the
Spaniards showed them. This was not made nor found in their country,
but came “from a certain mountain where an old woman dwelt.” The
old woman was called Guatuzaca. One of Alarcon’s informants told
him about people who lived farther away than Cibola, in houses made
of painted mantles or skins during the summer, and who passed the
winter in houses made of wood two or three stories high. The Indian
was asked about the leather shields, and in reply described a very
great beast like an ox, but more than a hand longer, with broad feet,
legs as big as a man’s thigh, a head 7 hands long, and the forehead
3 spans across. The eyes of the beast were larger than one’s fist,
and the horns as long as a man’s leg, “out of which grew sharp points
an handful long, and the forefeet and hindfeet about seven handfuls
big.” The tail was large and bushy. To show how tall the animal
was, the Indian stretched his arms above his head. In a note to his
translation of this description, Hakluyt suggests, “This might be the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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