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Show DOLORES. 77 and in its shaded recesses we remained for the day. The chief men conversed readily in Spanish ; but, among themselves, they spoke a language of which I could not catch a syllable. Nor is it known to the Mexicans, even to the interpreters who speak the tongues of all the wild tribes. They conduct all their trades in Spanish, and ex-clude Mexicans as much as possible from their towns. There is evidence that these people were once far more numerous than now, as the country was far more fertile. Conquered by the Spaniards nearly three centuries since, they revolted and with desperate bravery expelled or exterminated their conquerors. But, in 1690, a new and more powerful Spanish army reconquered the province ; the Quiros, Tagnos, and kindred tribes submitted sullenly to the Spanish yoke, but the more warlike retreated to the defensible valleys and walled basins of the Sierra Madre Range, and maintained a fierce inde-pendence. It was to those we were bound. Those near the Rio Grande, compelled to give up their Montezumas religion and become nominal Catholics, still held to many features of their ancient faith, and long cherished plans of revolution and vengeance. But time, which reconciles us to all things, had now led them to acquiesce in the political control of the Spanish race, though they tenaciously resisted all social intercourse, and maintained their own line of priesthood and a distinct language. " By the advice of Gomez, I here stained my face, hands, and arms with a pigment, which gave them color like that of the Pueblos; and the next night we crossed the Rio Grande, as it was well for us to avoid observation till we left that neighborhood. After another halt at Jemez, near the wonderful Hot Springs, we hastened on to Dead Man's Canon and crossed into the land of the Navajoes. These Indians hung upon the slopes of the Sierra Madre, a living threat to the Mexican settlements. They waged a war, never intermitted for two hundred years after their fierce ancestors were driven from the fertile valleys and forced to find subsistence and refuge amid the secluded canons and on the storm- swept mesas of the mountains. In-genious, brave, and haughty, they called the Mexicans ' their herders/ and robbing without quite ruining the dwellers in the valley, they took tribute alternately from different settlements, leaving time be-tween raids for the sufferers to renew their stock and gather wealth for future forays. But now a precarious peace existed, and each Mexican hamlet secured protection by purchasing the friendship of some Navajo chieftain. " For the first two days of travel, I hung upon the neck of my |