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Show 984 LEADING FACTS OF NEW MEXICAN EARLY HISTORY new Biscaya. It is not unlikely that from this circumstance, the name New Mexico came to be applied in later years to a country TUITE rar that Governor Ibarra had never seen. The application of this name to the country has been attributed by a good many authorities, early and modern, both to Friar Rodriguez and Don Antonio de Espejo, although the former called the country which he visited San Felipe, and Espejo, Nueva Andalucia. The truth would seem to be that the name was applied in Mexico, under circumstances not fully recorded, after the return of Chamuscado and while Espejo was still journeying through the land of the pueblos. The first occurrence of the name is in Rio de Losa’s essay written about this time. San Felipe de Nuevo Mexico appears occasionally in early documents. It was obviously natural that such a name should have suggested itself as appropriate for any newly discovered province whose people and buildings resembled, in a general way, that is in comparison with the wild tribes and the huts, those of the valley of Mexico.?®8 293 Bancroft, H. H., History of Arizona and New Mexico, pp. 72 and 73-91 and notes: ‘‘While Coronado’s was the last of the grand military expeditions for half a century, and while for much longer the far north was left almost exclusively to the theorists, yet toward the north there was a constant progress in the interior through the efforts of miners and missionaries in Nueva Galicia and Nueva Viscaya, destined to cross the line of our Territory in time. It was forty years before the line was again passed, unless there may have been one exception in the expeditions of Francisco de Ibarra in 1563-5. From a point not very definitely fixed in the sierra between Sinaloa and Durango, Ibarra marched for eight days to a point from which he saw a large town of several-storied buildings; and later, having gone to Sinaloa, he says he ‘went 300 leagues from Chametla, in which entrada he found large settlements of natives clothed and well provided with maize and other things for their support; and they also had many houses of several stories. But because it was 80 far from New Spain and the Spanish settlements, and because the governor had not enough people for settlement, and the natives were hostile, using poisoned arrows, he was obliged to return.’ Beaumont, deriving his information from unknown sources, adds that ‘Ibarra was accompanied by fifty soldiers, by Pedro de Tovar, of Coronado’s expedition, and by Padre Acevedo and other friars.’ His course was to the right of that followed by Coronado and nearer New Mexico. He reached some great plains adjoining those of the vacas, the buffalo plains, and there found an abandoned pueblo whose houses were of several stories, which was called Paguemi, and where there were traces of metals having been melted. A few days later, Ibarra reached the great city of Pagme, a most beautiful city adorned with very sumptuous edifices, extending over three leagues, with houses of three stories, very grand, with various and extensive plazas, and the houses surrounded with walls that a to be of masonry. This town was also abandoned, and the people were said to have gone eastward. It is difficult to determine what reliance should be placed on Beaumont’s narrative; and there appears to be no grounds for more than SPANISH EXPLORATIONS 285 In the month of November, 1582, the viceroy, the Condé de Coruna, reported to his king the results of his investi gations relative to the journey and probable fate of the THE EXPEDITIONS OF friar Rodriguez and his companions. At HUMANA AND CASTANO this time nothing whatever was known in the City of Mexico of the expedition under Don Antonio de Espejo, starting from Nueva Biscaya. In his.report to the king, the viceroy attached for his information a commun ication from Don Rodrigo del Rio de Losa, lieutenant captain -general of Nueva Galicia, whom he had consulted. This officer, as the viceroy says, was a man of great experience in explorations, having served with Arellano in Florida, and with Ibarra in Nueva Biseaya . Jy YY’ MMVI, Fae-simile He was under of Signature of the Condé the impression that de Corufia the people of New Mexico were very hostile owing to the fact that the friars had been murdered and insisted that a force sufficient for the proper reduction of the natives should be sent, thereby inspiring respect for the Spanish arms and preventing future revolts and outrages; that the force should consist of not less than three hundred men, each provided with seven mules and horses. It was his opinion that after the death of the friars had been avenged and the country placed the vaguest conjecture as to what region was thus explored by Ibarra. He may have visited some of the abandoned pueblos of the Gila valley; or may, as Beaumont seems to think, have gone farther to the region of the Moqui towns ; or, perhaps, he went more to the east and reached the Casas Grandes of Chihuahua.’’ Bancroft, H. H., Hist. North Mez. States, i, 105-10; also Ibarra, Relacion, 482. Vargas, N. Mex. Testim., 129 (about 1583), tells us that Ibarra ‘‘revol- v16 sobre la parte del norte hasta que did en los valles de las vacas.’’ Bancroft, H. H., Hist. Ariz. and New Mexico, p. 73, says: ‘‘ Another noteWorthy circumstance in this connection was the discovery in 1568 by a party of mining was prospectors formally named from Laguna Mazapii, del Nueva in northern Mejico. Zacatecas, This lake was of a lake which apparently ar of those in the modern Coahuila, but the tendency to find a ‘New Mexico’ the north is noticeable.’ in |