OCR Text |
Show 104 LEADING FACTS OF NEW MEXICAN HISTORY In a day’s journey beyond this village, they arrived at another town where they were detained fifteen days on account of heavy floods which raised the river so high that it was impossible to make a crossing for some time. It was here that Castillo saw upon the neck of an Indian the buckle of a sword-belt and the nail of a horse’s shoe. Having been asked how they obtained these things, the Indians replied that they had got them from men who wore beards like the Spaniards, who came from heaven, and had arrived at the river with horses, lances, and swords, where they killed two of their people; that they had gone to sea and returned home where the sun sets. This was the first information that the Spaniards received of their countrymen; they were greatly rejoiced and, as they advanced, heard more rumors of white men having been in the country, and, in order to conciliate the Indians, they were informed that the Spanlards were going to find the white people in order to persuade them to no longer hurt or make slaves of the natives. In the account of their further journeyings, the meetings with their countrymen, and their final arrival at the City of Mexico, and their reception by the viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza, Alvar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca Says; 111 ‘We travelled over a great part of the country, and found it all deserted as the people had fled to the mountains, leaving houses and fields, out of fear of the Christians. This filled our hearts with sorrow, seeing the land so fertile and beautiful, so full of water and streams, but abandoned and the places burned down, and the people so thin and wan, fleeing and hiding; and as they did not raise any crops, their destitution had become so great that they ate tree- bark and roots. Of this distress we had our share the way along, because they could provide little for us in their all indigence, and it looked as if they were going to die. They brought us blankets, which they had been concealing from the Christians, and gave them pasadas las tierras ness dicho, llegaron estos cuatro christianos . . . 4& tres fas cuales eran come ee pequetos, en que avia hasta veynte casas on ello, diciendo pueblos sain 1 conesdte juntas . . . a ere pueblo, 6 mejor gy les dieron ) alli mas os christianos la Villa de los Corazones, de Seiscientos corazones de venados escalados 6 The Village of H earts is a place well establish ed in southern says Bandelier. 111 The Journey of Alwar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca, et seq. Central Santo Sonora, Bandelier trans., p. 163 Domingo Pueblo Indian Clown or Delight-maker |