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Show 202 LEADING FACTS OF NEW MEXICAN HISTORY not to cross it. Alvarado, seeing that there was no chance for a peaceable occupation of the place, determined to attack the Indians. He began making his preparations, when the Indians came forward and sued for peace. Castafieda says that the Indians went through the forms of making peace, which were to ‘‘touch the horses and take their sweat and rub themselves with it and to make crosses with the fingers of their hands. But to make the most secure peace, they put their hands across each other, and they keep this peace inviolably.’’ After the surrender the Indians presented the Spaniards with turkeys, bread, dressed deer-skins, grains of the fir-cone, flour, and corn. Continuing on, Alvarado, in due time, arrived at Tiguex.?" 216 The official account of the journey to Cicuyé is given by Alvarado himself in his Account of what Hernando de Alvarado and Friar Juan de Padilla Discovered going in Search of the South Sea, Pacheco y Cardenas, Doa da Ind., vol. iii, p. 511. Translation found in Transcript, Boston, Oct. 14, 1893. Alvarado says: ‘ We set out from Granada (Civola) on Sunday, the day of the beheading of Saint John the Baptist, the 29th of August, in the year 1540, on the way to Coco (Acoma). After we had gone two leagues, we came to an ancient building like a fortress, and a league beyond this we found another one, and yet farther on another, and beyond these we found an ancient city, very large, entirely destroyed, although a large part of the wall was standing, which was six times as tall as a man, the wall well made of good worked stone, with gates and gutters like a city in Castile. Half a league or more beyond this we found another ruined city, the walls of which must have been very fine, built of very large granite rocks, as high as a man and from there up of very good quarried stone. Here two roads separate, one to Chia (Cia) and the other to Coco (Acoma); we took this latter and reached that place, which is one of the strongest places that we have seen, because the city is on a high rock, with such a rough ascent that we repented having gone up to the place. The houses FRANCISCO VASQUEZ CORONADO 203 Here the inhabitants received him with peaceful demonstrations, largely because Bigotes was with him, he ALVARADO PROCEEDS TO being a powerful chief and much feared TIGUEX AND CICUYE in that country. Alvarado was so much pleased with the appearance of Tiguex that he sent a messenger to Coronado recommending that he bring the army and spend the winter at that place. Thence the Spaniards continued their march, and in five days arrived at Cicuyé, a large and strongly fortified village. Here, also, they were received in a When the inhabitants saw them approach most friendly manner. they marched out to receive them, and escorted them into town to the music of drums and fiutes. Alvarado was presented with goods and turquoises, of which latter there were many in the proHere Alvarado remained for some days recovering from the vince. fatigues of his march from Cibola. While at Cicuyé 7!” they met of the same sort. In this province there are seven other villages, destroyed and depopulated by those Indians who paint their eyes, of whom the guides will tell your Grace; they say that these live in the same region as the cows, and that they have corn and houses of straw. ‘‘Here the people from the outlying provinces came to make peace with me, and as your Grace may see in this memorandum, there are 80 villages there of the same sort as I have described, and among them one which is located on some streams; it is divided into twenty divisions, which is something remarkable; the houses have three stories of mud walls and three others made of small wooden boards, and on the outside of the three stories with the mud wall, they have three balconies; it seemed to us that there were nearly 15,000 persons in this village. The country is very cold; they do not raise fowls nor cotton; they worship the sun and water. We found mounds of dirt outside of the place, where they are buried. : : ‘In the places where crosses were raised, we saw them worship these. They have three or four stories; the people are the same sort as those of the province of Cibola ; they have plenty of food, of corn and beans, and fowls like those of New Spain. From here we went to a very good lake or marsh, where there are trees like those of Castile, and from there we went to a river, which we named Our Lady (Nuestra Sefiora), because we reached it the evening before her day made offerings to these of their powder and feathers, and some left the blankets to the villages in advance, the flowers and feathers.’’ 217 Castafieda, Relacion, in the month of September (September and 8th). We the next day people sent the cross by a guide came from twelve villages, the chief men and the people in order, those of one village those of another, and they approached the tent to the sound of a pipe, behind and with an old na ag spokesman. In this fashion they came into the tent and gave me food $i ley ent cee rent nn Tn. Shem some ay 08 ‘This river of Our Lady (Rio Grande) flows through a very wide, open plain oi with corn plants; there are several groves, and there ues ive villages leet aad tout s, ana : ef heli they have a large supply of corn, beans, skind of cows ana a grea eine they clothe themselves with cotton and the Vitaw Whe tite tae ae of the feathers of birds; they wear their hair short. Matis teks i i authority among them are the old men; we regarded use they say that they go up into the sky and other things they had on. They showed so much zeal that some climbed up on the others bringing ladders, while some held them, went up to tie strings, so as to fasten ete. This historian’s account of the pueblo of Cicuyé is very accurate, when one compares the foundation and old wall remains of this ruin as they appear today. He says: ‘‘Cicuyé is a village of nearly five hundred warriors, who are feared throughout that country. It is Square, situated on a rock with a large court-yard in the middle, containing the estufas. The houses are all alike, four stories high. One can go over the There re top of the whole village without there being a street to hinder. corridors going all around it at the first two stories, by which one can go —— the whole village. They are like outside balconies, and they are able to protec themselves under these. The houses do not have doors below, but they use ladders, which can be lifted up like a draw-bridge, and so go up to the corridors which are on the inside of the village. As the doors of the houses open on the corridor of that story, the corridor serves as a street. The houses that _ the plain are right back of those that open on the court, and in time of war they |