The Interpreter Was Given A Chance
To Speak To Them And To Give Them One Warning, For They Were Very
Intelligent People, But Nevertheless They Drew Lines And Insisted That Our
Men Should Not Go Across These Lines Toward Their Village.
While they were
talking some men acted as if they would cross the lines, and one of the
natives lost control of himself and struck a horse a blow on the check of
the bridle with his club.
Friar Juan, fretted by the time that was being
wasted in talking with them, said to the captain, 'To tell the truth, I do
not know why we came here.' When the men heard this, they gave the Santiago
(The Battle Cry of Spain), so suddenly that they ran down many Indians and
the others fled to the town in confusion. Some indeed did not have a chance
to do this, so quickly did the people in the villages come out with
presents, asking for peace. The captain ordered his force to collect, and,
as the natives did not do any more harm, he and those who were with him
found a place to establish new headquarters near the village. They had
dismounted here when the natives came peacefully, saying that they had come
to give in the submission of the whole province and that they wanted him to
be friends with them and to accept the presents which they gave him. This
was some cotton cloth, although not much, because they do not make it in
that district. They also gave him some dressed skins and some corn meal,
and pine nuts, and corn and birds of the country. Afterward they presented
some turquoises, but not many. The people of the whole district came
together that day and submitted themselves, and they allowed him to enter
their villages freely to visit, buy, sell, and barter with them.
"It is governed like Cibola, by an assembly of the oldest men. They have
their governors and generals. This was where they obtained the information
about a large river, and that several days down the river there were some
people with very large bodies.
"As Don Pedro de Tovar was not commissioned to go farther, he returned from
there, and gave this information to the general, who dispatched Don Garcia
Lopez de Cardenas with about twelve companions to go to see this river. He
was well received when he reached Tusayan and was well entertained by the
natives, who gave him guides for his journey. They started from here loaded
with provisions, for they had to go through a desert country before
reaching the inhabited region, which the Indians said was more than twenty
days journey. After they had gone twenty days, they came to the banks of
the river, which seemed to be more than three or four leagues above the
stream which flowed between them. This country was elevated and full of
low, twisted pines, very cold, and lying open toward the north, so that,
this being the warm season, no one could live there on account of the cold.
They spent three days on this bank looking for a passage down to the river,
which looked from above as if the water was six feet across, although the
Indians said that it was half a league wide. It was impossible to descend,
for after these three days Captain Melgosa and one Juan Galeras and another
companion, who were the three lightest and most agile men, made an attempt
to go down at the least difficult place, and went down until those who were
above were unable to keep sight of them. They returned about four o'clock
in the afternoon, not having succeeded in reaching the bottom on account of
the great difficulties which they found, because what seemed to be easy
from above was not so, but instead very hard and difficult. They said that
they had been down about a third of the way and that the river seemed very
large from the place that they reached, and that from what they saw the
Indians had given the width correctly. Those who stayed above had estimated
that some huge rocks on the side of the cliffs seemed to be about as tall
as a man, but those who went down swore that when they reached these rocks
they were bigger than the great tower of Seville. They did not go farther
up the river because they could not get water. Before this they had to go a
league or two inland every day late in the evening in order to find water,
and the guides said that if they should go four days farther, it would not
be possible to go on, because there was no water within three or four days,
for when they travel across this region themselves they take with them
women loaded with water in gourds, and bury the gourds of water along the
way to use when they return, and besides this, they travel in one day
what it takes us two days to accomplish.
"This was the Tison (Firebrand) river, much nearer its source than where
Melchior Diaz and his company crossed it. These were the same kind of
Indians, judging from what was afterward learned. They came back from this
point and the expedition did not have any other result. On the way they saw
some water falling on a rock and learned from the guides that some bunches
of crystals which were hanging there were salt. They went and gathered a
quantity of this and brought it back to Cibola, dividing it among those who
were there. They gave the general a written account of what they had seen,
because one Pedro de Sotomayor had gone with Don Garcia Lopez as chronicler
for the army. The villages of that province remained peaceful, since they
were never visited again, nor was any attempt made to find other peoples in
that direction."
Place Described by Cardenas Unknown.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 64 of 85
Words from 64146 to 65150
of 85893
