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Show 148 LEADING FACTS OF NEW MEXICAN HISTORY JOURNEY information, and in the valley of the Sonora, where the Opatas lived, he set up another great cross. The Opatas told him of the distant kingdoms of Marata, a group of pueblos now abandoned, but lying southeast of modern Zuii, Acus, the Acoma of today, and Totonteac, the Moquis.*? They also and they were no longer of pure Opata stock. The villages of the Opatas were small, their houses detached, and only for one family. In the Sierra Madre proper, where the Yaqui gushes out of the picturesque gorge descending from its sources at Chu-ui-chu-pa, there are remains of Opata villages recalling on a lesser scale, the stately architecture of Casas Grandes. The houses are connected so as to form an interior square, and appear as if raised on artificial platforms. Mutual protection from enemies, which threatened the Opatas on the Chihuahua side of the great central chain, from the inhabitants of the valley of Casas Grandes, is stated as having caused this superior and defensive mode of building. Such is the common opinion of the Opatas of the villages from Huassabas to Baserac and Bapispe. There are sites of hamlets which, according to tradition, had been deserted on account of the constant danger threatening from the Chihuahua side. Whether the enemies who com- pelled this abandonment were the Sumas of Casas Grandes, or some other tribe who, perhaps, built the villages whose and settlements, is not known. Some ruins have given the name to the valley say that the builders of Casas Grandes were the Opatas. “In dress and ornaments the Opatas resemble the Pimas as well as the Yaquis ; but owing to their more northerly home, their costume was more substantial. Deer skins and cotton mantles constituted it in the main. If Fr. Marcos was correctly informed we might even suspect that an occasional buffalo robe found its way into the valley of the Sonora river. Still the hide of the large red deer, or of the mule deer, so common in Lower California, may have ies ry ie ee et and still more imperfectly understood descripee ns of the animal, nips tha to the supposition pp n th that the Opatas obtained buffalo hides 1 157 Bandelier, A. F.,: Investigatio ns in the South vest, part ii, gati p. 114: ‘‘Longest, and above all, best known among the Indians of ‘oneal are the Pueblo oo of the north, the Mogquis or Shi-nu-mo. They were mentioned to Fray : ae Niza in 1539 under the name of Totonteac, a corruption of a Zui _ wW ich applied to a cluster of twelve pueblos lying in the direction of oqui, and already abandoned in the sixteenth century, but the reminiscence of which still remained in the name. The ruins of the villages whose name, a8 in their idiom, has been corrupted into Totonue Indians rahdg as . etween Zufiof andZuiiiMoqui. It is interesting to note how the reports ich Fray Marcos gathered in Sonora concerning the northern pueblos fremi ea relate to events which had oceurred some time previous to his coming. es —o mentioned to him, like ‘Marata’ and ‘Totonteac’ who had ceased aie he distant southern Indians had no knowledge of their dis- in regard to the value of historical in iebidetier... tradition ee! rage of Coronado’s lieutenants, Don Pedro de Tovar, visited the There is not th of today. ieatene! be my aie.the os: Pande $a iti 8 f it until few a days’ journey The © sightest doubt that the Tusayan Sitives nen northwest or west of Zui. of Castafieda is the Moqui of seven pueblos, and that same number subsisted the past century, when one of the seven disappeared, was promptly replaced by a village founded mostly by Irom New Mexico, and to which, in deference to the language TO CIBOLA 149 gave him a description of the Seven Cities of Cibola, but could tell him nothing of the negro, Estevan. Here it was that the friar first heard reports of the wearing of the turquoises *** in the ears and noses of the natives, as well as of their full-sleeved cotton gowns. The Indians of the last village through which he passed before leaving the Sonora valley, also informed him that in To-ton-teac, Moqui, there were stuffs like the woolen frock which he wore, made from material obtained from small animals about the size of a grey-hound.?*® Leaving the high table-lands adjacent to the Sonora valley, Friar Marcos descended into the valley of the San Pedro, which he says was well irrigated, the small villages extending down the valley a distance of a quarter of a league to half a league apart, and that the turquoises were so plentiful that the men wore three or four strings of them about the neck and the women ornamented their ears and noses with them.*®° there spoken, the name of Tehua was given. Ahuatu was destroyed by the Moquis of Oraibe in the year 1700. In June of that year, it still existed. In 1701, Cubero made an unsuccessful expedition against the Moquis. The cause for this military movement is stated in the declaration of the New Mexican clergy, November 20, 1722, as follows: ‘Se mobié (Cubero) con las armas de este Rl Presidio 4 la venganza del estrago qe dhos apostatas executaron contra los indios del puo de Aguatubi de su misma Nazion, que pacificos y combertidos 4 fira Sta Fee passaron 4 sangre y fuego las vidas bienes y alajas, del culto diuino de los miserables qe solo con la firmeza con ge se hallauan de nra Sta Fee otro motibo hizieron en ellos tan pernissiosos estragos.’ It appears, therefore, that Ahuatu was destroyed either towards the end of the year 1700, or in the beginning of 1701. ‘Not much importance can always be attached to the numbers and names Thus, at of Indian villages, according to Spanish sources of an older date. the time of Coronado, the seven pueblos of Tusayan Moqui admit of no doubt. Forty years afterward, the Asay or Osay of Chamuscado had, according to statements made to that explorer by Zufii Indians, he himself never visited the locality — only five.’’ 158 Doc. Inédit., vol. iii, p. 136. 159 Winship, George Parker, Coronado Expedition, 14th B. A. E., p, 357, says: ‘‘The strange thing about all these reports is not that they are true, and that we can identify them by what is known concerning these Indians, but the hard thing to understand is how the Friar could have comprehended so well what the natives must have tried to tell him. When one considers the difficulties of language, with all its technicalities, and of radically different conceptions of every phase of life and of thought, the result must be an increased confidence in the common sense and the inherent intelligence of mankind.’’ 160 Winship, George Parker, Ibid, p. 357, says: ‘‘Friar Marcos tried to find out how these Indians bartered for the things they brought from the northern country, but all he could understand was that ‘with the sweat and |