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Show THE SPANISH FRIARS 257 From this point they journeyed up the valley of the Rio Grande, visiting almost all of the pueblos along its banks and on its branches.?74 Pedro Bustamante and Hernan Gallegos, soldier s in the expedition, in their narratives, say they heard of many pueblos on both sides of the river which they visited and that they reached a pro- vince where a different language was spoken and where tants wore a different sort of clothing and where habitations. the inhabi- they had better This was in all probability the Tiguex of Corona do.272 Leaving the river they visited a very large pueblo contai ning four or five hundred houses, some of which were four and five stories in ay i ssn, ii a 271 The friar passed through and crossed the route taken by Alvar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca. He met no Indians who had ever heard of Alvar Nuiiez, as did Espejo later. Escalona and Barrundo, Relacion, 1582, Cartas de Indias, 230, say that the friar and his companions traveled thirty-one days among tribes of Indians, then nineteen days through a desert, uninhabited country, and, on August 15th, found an Indian who told of a corn-producing country ahead; that they reached the first pueblo on the 21st day of August; that this pueblo had forty-five houses and half a league farther on were five more towns and that in the whole province, for a space of fifty leagues, there were sixty-one towns, with a population of over 130,000. 272 This was the pueblo of Puara, situate in the vicinity of the present*tow n of Bernalillo, but not near its present location, as Bandelier says. Puara was undoubtedly on the opposite side of the Rio Grande. As late as the first years of the nineteenth century, the Rio Grande had its channel about where the town of Bernalillo is now located, and that town, before the independence of Mexico from Spain, was located over two miles west, where the course of the Rio Grande is found today. These facts were ascertained in the investigation before the Court of Private Land Claims, when the title to lands at Bernalillo was being determined by the court. Mr. mm <me td ae . height, which place they called Tlascala. Here they heard of many other fine villages to the north, but they did not visit them, but, turning back, crossed the river and going up one of its branche s, visited three others, whose inhabitants told them of eleven others. They then visited many other places, going in search of buffalo and Bandelier directly opposite says: ‘‘Speaking the present town of Puaray of Bernalillo,’’ Bernalillo stands to-day, there were probably two.’’ . . and . which again pueblo he says, stood ‘‘ where Espejo, at page 175 of his Relacion del Viage, says: ‘‘A donde hallamos relacion muy verdadera; que estubo en esta provincia Francisco Vasquez Coronado y le mataron en ella nueve soldados y cuarenta caballos, y que por este respeto habia asolado la gente de un pueblo desta provincia, y destos nos dieron razon los naturales destos pueblos por sefias que entendimos.’’ This corresponds exactly with what Castafieda relates concerning events at Tiguex. Puaray meant village of worms or insects. The site of this pueblo is well known to the Indians of Sandia. Vetancurt says, Cronica, p. 132, it was “‘cerca de una legua de Zandia, 4 la orilla del rio.’’ |