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Show 118 LEADING FACTS OF NEW MEXICAN THE HISTORY one of the low islands, somewhere on the coast of Texas, near Galveston.176 The course pursued by Alvar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, after leaving the coast of Texas, was generally in a northwesterly direction. Many distinguished historians and translators of the narrative have endeavored to mark and trace, with some degree of plausibility or certainty, the course of the wanderers after they had reached the western portion of the present state of Texas. Not one of these, by personal exploration or inspection, so far as the writer is advised, ever acquainted himself with the actual physical conditions of that section of the state, nor has any one of them, with the possible exception of Dr. Prince, ever visited or traveled over the country now embraced within the limits of eastern and southeastern New Mexico. Mr. Winship 12 in his historical introduction to his monograph on the Coronado expedition has undoubtedly fol126 Prince, Malhado and L. B., History of New Mezico, p. 91, says: ‘‘The island Espiritu Santo bay have been located by different historians widely varying localities. lation and of Cabeza Buckingham de Vaca’s traces the travelers’ Narrative, route north of in Smith, in his first edition of his trans- places them to the Muscle as far river. And in the edition of 1871, he has changed pac, fat the locality may have been as far west exas. east as Mobile bay, Shoals in the Tennessee his views so far as to as San Antonio bay, in Davis, W. W. H., Spanish Conquest of New M exico, expresses the opinion that Malhado was one of the low islands on the coast of Louisiana; and the mention of a tribe called Atayos in the narrative, who are probably identical with the Adayes, who lived, in 1805, about forty miles from Nachitoches, and the Hadaies, who years before were reported as being between Nachitoches and Sabine rivers — adds plausibility to this view. It is possible the island may have been at or near Galveston, or as far west as the beaches or islands known as Matagorda beach and Matagorda island, which are the outer protections of Matagorda and San Antonio bays. But see ante, this volume, Hodge, F. W., p. 83, note 80. The Atayos, mentioned by Cabeza de Vaca, in his N arratwe, and mentioned by Prince, were a part of the Caddo confederacy, speaking related to that of the Kadohadacho, Hainai and Anadarko. a dialect De Soto closely also encountered some of the Caddo Indians in 1540, but the people known until met by La Salle in 1687. At that time the Caddodid not become villages were Scattered along Red river and its tributaries in what are now Louisiana and Arkansas and also on the banks of the Sabine, Neches, Trinity, Brazos, and Colorado rivers in eastern Texas. : ns Winship, George Parker, The Coronado Expedition, 14th Ann. Rep., B. aaa Pp. 347, note: ‘‘The best study of the route followed by the survivors i e expedition, after they landed in Texas, is that of Bandelier, in the second oon of his Contributions to the History of the Southwest. In this essay, = . neon ae try which Cabeza oo de Veen a ni ravellin must iaiie ee aueeea evidence, and he writes with I Po i Pa) ee FIRST SPANISH EXPLORERS 119 lowed the course and adopted the one as described by Mr. Bandelier. Mr. F. W. Hodge 18 is also impressed with the solution offered by Mr. Bandelier. While it is true that the last named did traverse portions of the route probably taken by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, he began his travels at the point where Cabeza de Vaca had coneluded his wanderings across the continent. Mr. Bandelier is entirely familiar with western and southwestern New Mexico, Arizona, and the states of the Mexican Republic which join the American southern border, still he had no personal acquaintance with the topography of middle or western Texas, nor of eastern or southeastern New Mexico. The same may be said of Buckingham Smith, W. W. H. Davis, Dr. J. G. Shea, Hubert Howe Bancroft, and others. Mr. Smith was clearly in error when he fixed one of the large rivers crossed by Cabeza de Vaca as being the Arkansas, near its junction with the Canadian fork. Mr. Davis also erred when he stated that in his Franjudgment the wanderers were as far north as the Canadian. cisco Vasquez Coronado, in 1542, after leaving the pueblo of Ci-cu-yé, going toward the plains, after a four days’ journey came to a ‘‘river with a large, deep current which flowed down toward Ci-cu-yé, and they named this the Ci-cu-yé river.’’ This river was beyond all doubt the Pecos of the present day. Across this river they built a This bridge eould bridge which took them four days to construct. not have been built across the Canadian at any point where Coronado and his army could have been traveling in the direction described by Castafieda for the reason that the Canadian at any point in the di- rection taken by Coronado is not a river ‘‘having a large, deep current,’’ nor does it flow down towards Ci-cu-yé. It was somewhere in the vicinity of the Pecos crossing, in an easterly direction on the plains, certainly within two or three days’ marching, that Coronado was informed by Indians whom he met that Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes had visited that portion of the country some years before, and also near the place where Maldonado was informed that Cabeza It is the judgde Vaca 22° and Dorantes ‘‘passed through here.’’ ment 128 of the writer F. W., The the Indians Spanish Explorers that gave in Southern the Expedition, : Coronado ‘ Winship, George Parker, 129 Winani p-. 505. this information who United States. to 14th Ann. Rep. B. A. E., |