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Show 498 NOTE ON GRAN QUIVIRA. ble ( se nos hazen provables), since in view of the houses of Moqui there is no reason to deny the others. I see that for a century has the faith been planted in these provinces, and that nothing prospered in those most propitious times when there were no enemies, and when his Majesty had no other expenses on these frontiers than the Presidio de Janos. For the Es-panoles having lapsed ( decaydo) from that primal fervor of conquest of souls for God and of provinces for their sovereign, when was alluring them the man-come to Tabira to stay " may be read in the strenuous language of Lummis' The Cities that were Forgotten, Scribner's Mag., Apr., 1893, pp. 466- 477, and eke in Bandelier's two articles on Quivira in The Nation, N. Y., Oct. 31 and Nov. 7, 1889. Such a wrong view of the case was doubtless favored' by the mere similarity of the names Tabira and Quivira; it was taken by Lieut. J. W. Abert, in his Report of 1846- 47, 30th Congr., 1st sess., Ex. Dpc. No. 41, 8vo, Washington, 1848, p. 487, seq., and after him by many other writers. Among these was so deservedly high an authority as Albert Gallatin, whose articles on the Ancient Semicivilization of New Mexico, in Trans. Amer. Ethnol. Soc, ii, 1848, set an example followed by many other authors of equal- or less repute, as Squire, Schoolcraft, W. W. H. Davis, etc. In fact the curious error flourished as an almost undisputed fact till 1869, when J. H. Simpson, the most judicious and reasonable writer upon Coronado up to that time, let a new light into the former fog; and even since then- to say nothing of times since Bandelier and Lummis proved the identity of Gran Quivira with Tabira- the ancient myth has never lacked believers among the credulous and the uncritical. |