Vol. III. JANUARY, 1900. No. 3.
The publication committee and the editor disclaim responsibility for views expressed by contributors to the Quarterly.
When Mexico so nobly won its independence from Spain, its leading citizens were not practically trained statesmen, but either enthusiaśtic patriots or selfish adherents to a popular cause. The numerous revolutions that followed the establishment of the republic after the overthrow of Iturbide's short lived empire, were due therefore partly to the ambition of unscrupulous politicians, but mainly to the visionary character of the natural leaders of the people, and to the lack of political experience in the mass of the population.
It is not at all strange that the ardent Mexicans, in the full glow of enthusiastic feeling at having won for themselves a name among the nations of the earth, should have turned toward their northern neighbor for the pattern of the new political institutions about to be formed. No antagonisms had yet arisen between the two peoples; the well known sympathy of the Monroe administration for the Spanish-American Republics had won the warm gratitude of these embryo nations; and the Monroe doctrine of December, 1823, seemed permanently to cement this friendly feeling. Consequently when in 1824 the Mexicans proclaimed in their famous constitution the form of their government to be a Federal republic, the impression at once prevailed in the United States that they had reproduced the main features of the American system. This opinion may be seen from quotations from several historical writers of that time and the present.
“The Federal Constitution of the Mexican Republic, modeled after the Constitution of the North American Union.” Kennedy's Texas, vol. I, p. 306.
“The Mexican federal constitution of 1824 * * * was formed upon that of the United States.” Yoakum's Texas, vol. I, p. 230.
“In 1824 the Mexicans * * * adopted a Federal Republican constitution, in palpable imitation of the Constitution of the United States.” Bruce's Houston, page 70.
“* * * Constitution of 1824, which in many particulars was a copy of the Constitution of the United States.” Bernard Moses' Introduction to the Constitution of the United States of Mexico.
“Several of its articles are transcripts of corresponding clauses in the Constitution of the Northern United States. Here and there appears the old Spanish leaven, particularly in the Fourth Article (sic. should be Third). * * * Comments almost without number were made even in those early days by both Mexicans and foreigners, endeavoring to show that the troubles Mexico soon found herself involved in, were the result of the liberal institutions she had adopted by servilely copying, as the commentators said, her more fortunate neighbor of the North.” Bancroft's History of Mexico, vol. V, page 19.
It is the aim of this paper to show, that while the constitution of 1824 was in part formed on the model of that of the United States, much of its form, and practically its entire spirit came from the beloved Spanish Constitution of 1812. This Constitution, overthrown by Ferdinand in 1814, but restored by the army and people in 1820, had secured political liberty and constitutional government for the Spaniards, colonial as well as native, and had granted to the colonies representation in the national cortes. So far were the Mexicans from “servilely copying” the American Constitution, that even those ideas plainly adopted were so altered in spirit and detail that there is clearly implied rather an attempt to adapt them to Spanish institutions than simply to imitate the American constitution. In general it may be said that the Spanish constitution was followed unless the federal republic idea compelled change.
The verbal resemblance of the Mexican and Spanish constitutions may readily be seen in the introductory clauses:
SPANISH MEXICAN
“In the name of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Author and Supreme Legislator of the Universe.” “In the name of God Almighty, Author and Supreme Legislator of Society.”
“The general and extraordinary Cortes of the Spanish nation * * * do decree the following constitution.” “The general constituent Congress of the Mexican nation * * * do decree the following constitution.”
“The nation is free and independent, and is not the patrimony of any family or person whatever.” “The nation is forever free and independent of the Spanish government and of every other power.”
“The Roman Catholic and apostolic religion, the only true one is, and always shall be, that of the Spanish nation; the government protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other whatever.” “The religion of the Mexican nation is and will be perpetually the Roman Catholic apostolic. The nation will protect it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other whatever.”
This close parallelism can be traced through clause after clause, showing not merely the adoption of the idea, but even the copying of the very words. This same point may be illustrated by the plan adopted of dividing the various topics; both constitutions use the terms, titles, sections, and articles; these last, furthermore, are numbered consecutively. The order of titles also may be noted. The Spanish constitution has ten, of which the Mexican omits titles 1, 7, 8, and 9 and divides title 3 into two. With these changes the topics and order are practically the same, viz.: territory and religion, form of government and separation of powers, into legislative, executive, and judicial, local government, and lastly the method of amending the constitution.
Without devoting further space to parallelisms of words, attention will not be called to the ideas themselves. Undoubtedly the statement of the fourth clause represents the victory of the Mexican federal party over the Centralists. It reads “The Mexican Nation adopts for its government the republican, representative, popular, federal form.” In this we find the high water mark of American influence; a republic, rather than a monarchy; a federation, rather than a centralized government. The important difference between the American and Mexican systems lies in the interpretation of federalism. In our system the national state was created by the local states and, in 1824, the former was still comparatively weak as against the latter. These by constitution have inherent, not delegated powers, full local control subject to certain constitutional restrictions, and have their integrity and powers fully guaranteed by such provisions as clause 1, section 3, article 4, the last two lines of article 5, and amendments X and XI. In the Mexican system, however, the local states were created by the national state (though in most cases with historic boundaries) which delegated to them their powers of local self-government and restricted them far more closely than in our system. For instance state governors might be impeached, the local states in their constitutions had to guarantee many legal rights (articles 145-156), to separate the governmental powers into the three divisions and keep them separate, and to have but one legislative house; they had to report annually to the national congress their financial and industrial condition, and to submit annually to congress and the executive their constitution and laws (title V). Over these Congress had virtually the veto power, inasmuch as it, and not the supreme court, had the power of deciding the constitutionality of laws.
The adoption of the federal idea necessitated a departure from the unicameral legislature of Spain in the addition of a senate to the representative house. The Mexican senate, as in the United States, comprised two members from each state. These were elected for four years by the state legislatures on the same day (Sept. 1), one-half retiring every two years, but vacancies were filled by the legislatures only. The senate confirmed nominations to positions in the treasury, diplomatic service, and the army and navy, but not other officials. In other respects it was simply one of two legislative houses. Both houses ratified treaties, and both had the power of impeachment. Either house, furthermore, might impeach members of the other house.
In leaving the federal idea with its senate and local and national states we practically leave the contribution of the United States to the Mexican constitution. Of course there are slight resemblances here and there (for instance in the organization of the executive), but these are comparatively unimportant.
Attention will now be directed to the ideas contributed by the Spanish constitution. Both the Spanish and Mexican constitutions devote an article to a statement of national territory and both formally divide the functions of government into the threefold division. The Spanish document gives in full the method of holding elections, this was not made part of the Mexican constitution, but became a separate law, following the details closely in prescribing the system of substitutes and the meeting of primary assemblies, which elected electors, who again elected other electors, who in their turn chose the provincial or the state deputies to the Congress. Elections in both cases were held on Sunday and religious processions, services, exhortations and te deums were prescribed. In Mexico as in Spain in electing deputies substitutes also were chosen, at the ratio of one substitute for every three deputies. In Spain the king, in Mexico the President, opened Congress with a speech, to which in both the presiding officer was to reply “in general terms.” In comparing the powers of the two legislatures we note equal emphasis on national higher education, freedom of the press, and individual responsibility of the members of the cabinet to the congress. In general the powers of the Mexican congress may be traced in those of the Spanish cortes and of the king, besides several evidently taken from the United States, and others local in origin. Legislation in Mexico might be initiated by Congress, the President, or by the state legislatures, in Spain by the cortes and by the king. In the Mexican as in the Spanish constitution an absolute majority was required to pass bills, which in Mexico might be vetoed as in the American system, the royal veto of course being inappropriate in a Republic. There were in both property qualifications for members of the legislative bodies, but in Mexico this applied only to naturalized foreigners who in Spain were debarred from membership in the Cortes. In both a candidate might stand in the district of his residence as well as that of his birth; the former district must be preferred in case of plural elections. In both practically the same classes of persons were debarred from becoming candidates.
During the recesses of the legislative bodies permanent committees, elected from the membership of the Cortes and of the Congress, sat with delegated powers to watch over the observance of the constitution and the laws (and incidentally to watch the executive). This important body of course is lacking from the American system, though a similar body had existed under the Articles of Confederation.
In vesting the executive power in a President rather than in a monarch a mingling of American and Spanish ideas may be expected. From the United States e. g. came the title, the qualifications, and the four year term. The President and the Vice-President, however, were elected by the state legislatures, not by electors. An absolute majority of votes elected, ties being settled in the House by methods fully covering all possible cases. If the House failed to elect by the day set for the inauguration, or if there happened to be an unexpected vacancy, a President pro tem. was elected or, in certain possibilities, the Chief Justice of the supreme court might assume the office. The President, following the Spanish deputy method, could not accept a second term till after an interval of four years. So far, the resemblance in form to the provisions of the American constitution is marked. The important departure from this model comes in the enumeration of executive powers. The powers of the American executive are vague and ill-defined, purposely so, presumably; the powers of the Mexican executive, however, like those of the Spanish king, were carefully defined and specifically restricted, though in the aggregate they were very large. Among imitations of Spanish clauses may be mentioned, the power to appoint and remove the secretaries of the Department, to dispose of the national forces on land and sea, to declare war, to regulate the relations of the nation with the Papal See, and the power to initiate bills In addition may be mentioned the prohibition placed on his departure from the national territory or to infringe on property rights, or to interfere with the national elections. The Vice-President, who also was forbidden to leave the country, presided over, not the senate, but the Council of Government already mentioned. This important body, besides acting as a substitute for Congress during recess, also acted as a council of state, to advise the executive and to recommend legislation. It thus combined the functions of the “Permanent Committee of the Cortes” and of the “Council of State,” as defined in the Spanish constitution. The Mexican constitution devoted six articles, the Spanish nine, to the secretaries of state. The main difference is that the latter constitution gave the names of the departments and the number of secretaries. Both constitutions required the same qualifications for holding office, annual reports, countersignatures to the laws affecting the respective departments, and responsibility to the legislative body.
In the organization of the Mexican judicial system, as outlined in the constitution, a resemblance to that of the United States is easily noted, but the spirit except where the federal idea compelled change, is distinctly that found in the constitution of 1812. The system required an Attorney-General, a Supreme Court, and Circuit and District Courts. Judges of the Supreme Court held during good behavior, but were elected by the state legislatures by an absolute majority of votes. The House, as in the case of the President, was to elect from the candidates named as many as failed to receive the required majority. Inferior judges were named by the Supreme Court and appointed by the President. The chief powers of the Supreme Court were, to settle interstate disputes, to act as an administrative court, as a court of last resort, as a court to try impeachments, and as an advisory body in matters appertaining to the Papal See. It decided admiralty cases, cases in which diplomatic agents were concerned, and cases involving the national laws. All of these powers, however, might be regulated by Congress.
The Spanish system also had three classes of courts. The judges were named by the council of state and appointed by the king under life or fixed term tenures. The powers of the Spanish “supreme tribunal of justice” were with slight alterations the same as those enumerated in the Mexican constitution, save that it had of course no interstate jurisdiction. This close resemblance in judicial matters might be still further traced; the legal rights of citizens specified in both are close parallels, both in words and in thought. As illustrations might be noticed the principles of arbitration and conciliation, guarantees of speedy trial without torture or forced confessions, the privilege of bail, and the prohibitions of search without warrant and of the confiscation of the property of criminals. In both constitutions also the army and the church remained under their own jurisdictions, not under the ordinary laws.
Finally the Mexican method of amending the constitution was in direct imitation of the Spanish method, with of course slight changes of detail. There was to be a long period (Mexico six years, Spain eight years) during which no amendments could be offered at all. The Congress at the end of that period might suggest amendments to the following Congress; this in turn might consider and recommend by a two-thirds vote to the following Congress, which in its turn might pass them as ordinary laws. The Mexican constitution, unlike either the Spanish or the American, forbade the amending of the fundamental ideas of the constitution.
Enough has now, perhaps, been given to show that the real basis of the Mexican constitution of 1824 was the Spanish constitution of 1812, and that the departures from the latter were due largely to the adoption of the form of a federal republic, which compelled, to some extent, the imitation of the American model. But, even in so imitating, the framers of the Mexican constitution endeavored to mould the unfamiliar institutions of the North to the more familiar institutions of Spain.
This inquiry into the origin of the Mexican constitution is not merely an historical one, but has also a present interest; for the constitution of 1824 forms the basis of the present Mexican constitution, and the two constitutions, that of Spain in 1812 and that of Mexico in 1824 can be shown to be the patterns after which the numerous constitutions of South and Central America have largely been modeled. As might also be expected these same two constitutions powerfully influenced the ideas of the local constitutions of the Mexican states. To illustrate this statement attention might briefly be called to that one that has a special interest for the United States, the first constitution of Coahuila and Texas, adopted 1827. The basis of this is the Spanish constitution, with such changes as were necessitated by the requirements of the federal constitution and by local circumstances. For instance the Spanish titles 7, 8, 9, omitted from the Mexican constitution, reappear in the Coahuilan-Texan constitution as titles 4, 5, 6. Whole clauses are transferred word for word, and one might almost say that this local constitution more closely resembled the Spanish than did the Mexican constitution.
In this earliest of Texan constitutions many have referred to the generous provisions with regard to education, and to the clause that permitted a trial of the English jury system. Both of these liberal provisions were almost verbally reproduced from the Spanish constitution. The state election law also (dated July, 1826), like that of Mexico proper, was taken almost bodily from the same source.
In view of the foregoing it would be natural to inquire into the origin of these liberal ideas contained in the Spanish constitution. Part, no doubt, can readily be traced to institutions at that time existing in Spain. Again the Spanish, during the formation of the constitution, were in close alliance with England; and, in conjunction with Wellington, were patriotically resisting the usurpations of Napoleon. This alliance would tend to call the current English constitutional principles to the attention of the framers of the Spanish constitution. But there is still a third source to which reference must be made. The greatest political influence of that generation had come from the French revolution, in which the French at first, as the Spaniards were then trying to do, had overthrown despotism and had established a constitutional monarchy on the basis of the sovereignty of the people. One need simply quote the third article of the Spanish Constitution to show this French influence. “Sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; in consequence whereof it alone possesses the right of making its fundamental laws.” In the French constitutions of 1791 and 1795 (not the radical constitution of 1793) we can find the general order of titles in the Spanish constitution, the plan of numbering clauses, the method of amending, and such ideas as the threefold division of powers, a unicameral legislature, indirect elections, the system of substitutes, the prohibition of continuous terms of office, the method of veto, the individual responsibility of each member of the cabinet to the legislative body, freedom of the press, free public and liberal education, and equality in civil and political rights. These ideas, to be sure, are in part of English origin; but the student of modern political institutions will recognize two important sources of political theory, the one arising from the English constitution and finding its best exponent perhaps in American institutions; the other springing from the French revolution, recasting old institutions, formulating new theories, and sending forth broad lines of influence throughout all the Romance nations and their colonies.
In the plate accompanying the article by Mrs. Looscan in the Comprehensive History of Texas on The History and Evolution of the Texas Flag she presents eleven different banners that were the products of the Texas Revolution. Some of them are reproduced from actually existing specimens, but most are simply restorations made from printed descriptions. 1 In the text of the article others still are mentioned. It may be an ungrateful task to add to this rather heterogeneous collection of symbolized outbursts of revolutionary feeling another, or, to speak more strictly, another pair; but I trust the addition will not be wholly unprofitable.
As Mrs. Looscan indicates, the principal variations in the flags made in Texas were due to varying degrees of radicalism on the part of the revolutionary Anglo-Americans. The conservative element, which controlled the Consultation of 1835, opposed severance from Mexico for the time, and favored coöperation with the Mexican liberals in seeking to restore the constitution of 1824, which Santa Anna had overthrown. The same element controlled the council of the provisional government. Gov. Henry Smith, on the other hand, belonged to the party of radical revolutionists; and the essential issue of the unfortunate quarrel between the governor and council which divided the energies and paralyzed the action of the government in the winter of 1835-6 was whether or not the Texans should coöperate with the Mexican liberals. The result of the quarrel was that there was no consistent policy. The radical revolutionists succeeded in breaking up the Matamoros expedition and spoiling the effort to carry the war into Mexico; but the conservatives, on the other hand, were able to prevent the abandonment of the outposts at Goliad and Bexar. This will serve to explain the meaning of the flag used at the Alamo. It represented the policy of the conservatives in being identical with the Mexican national flag, except that the figures 1824 took the place of the eagle.
During the earlier stages of the revolution, Stephen F. Austin was of the conservative party. He was, in fact, the most prominent and generally trusted man belonging to it; and, after the Texans had actually risen, it was doubtless only the weight of his influence that restrained their hot impulses and turned the scale in its favor. But the progress of events towards the end of the year 1835 made it more and more evident that there could be no resuscitation for “the republican principles,” as the declaration of November 7th expressed it, of the constitution of 1824, and that the only hope for Texas was absolute separation from Mexico. Austin held out against this policy until he left Texas near the end of December, 1835, in order to begin his work as a member of the commission to the United States. 2 But in two letters, one to Royall and S. R. Fisher and the other to Gen. Sam Houston, both written from New Orleans and dated January 7, 1836, 3 he declared himself in favor of an unequivocal declaration of independence. His change of attitude removed the most serious obstacle to such a declaration, and it was thenceforth practically certain that the convention which had been called to meet on March first would make that declaration.
Now it became necessary to devise a flag for the new republic which the convention was expected to bring to birth. Just how the matter was approached is not made clear by the materials I have been able to discover; but the evidence indicates that Austin himself prepared a design, which was modified by the commission and, thus changed, was recommended for adoption.
On the eighteenth of January, 1836, Austin wrote a letter from New Orleans to Gail Borden, Jr., at San Felipe, favoring the declaration of independence. A copy in Austin's own handwriting is among his papers in the possession of Col. Guy M. Bryan, and one of the paragraphs reads as follows: “I shall preach independence all over the U. S. wherever I go. What do you think of the enclosed idea for a flag?” No design accompanies the copy from which I quote; but there is a draft of a flag in the State library at Austin which appears to be the one referred to, although there is no means of showing the connection in time and place. This draft was discovered by Judge Raines, the present librarian, among the Nacogdoches archives, which were turned over to the Secretary of State pursuant to an order of the legislature made in 1850, and transferred to the State library in 1877. In the engraving which accompanies this paper, it is given as No. 1. Judge Raines can recall no accompanying paper that might serve to explain how the design happened to be sent to Nacogdoches. It may not, in fact, have belonged originally among those archives, and may have been placed among them by some negligence while they were in the vaults of the State Department. The best evidence that it is the “idea” referred to in Austin's letter to Borden is the description on the margin and on the back of the sheet containing it. Above the drawing is written, “Idea for an independent flag;” while below are the words: “The shape of the English jack indicates the origin of the North American people. The stripes indicate the immediate descent of the most of the Texans. The star is Texas. The tricolour is Mexican.” On the back of the sheet is the endorsement, written in a different hand, “Stephen F. Austin's design of Flag.”
By some accident the paper has had a hole burned in it, but fortunately in such a place as not to destroy any part of the description.
It must, I think, have been a flag made after this design that was presented to Mosely Baker's company at San Felipe in February, 1836. Mrs. Looscan makes up this flag from the description given in the Telegraph and Register of Saturday, March 5, 1836, and inserts it as No. 4 in the plate accompanying her article already mentioned. The description is as follows: “The flag presented to the San Felipe company was made according to the pattern proposed for the flag of Texas and of independence. The following is the device: The English Jack, showing the origin of the Anglo-Americans; thirteen stripes, representing that most of the colonists in
Texas are from the United States; the star is Texas, the only State in Mexico retaining the least spark of the light of liberty; tricolor is Mexican, showing that we once belonged to that confederacy; the whole flag is historic.”
4 It will be noted that these are nearly the same as the words used to explain the Austin design. Add to this the likelihood of this design's being adopted at Austin's home, the fact that Gail Borden, Jr., who presented the flag on behalf of the two ladies that made it, was the man to whom Austin had sent the design, and the statement of the Telegraph and Register that the pattern was that proposed for the flag of Texas and of independence, and there remains little doubt as to the origin and proper make up of the colors given to Baker's company. The description printed in the Telegraph and Register without the drawing sent by Austin is misleading. In the absence of further information, there could be no reason for presenting the stripes in any other color than the wellknown red and white of the United States flag; and the questions as to the proper place of the star and the exact implication in the use of the word “tricolour” became very puzzling. The drawing, however, settles these questions, and makes the description intelligible.
Austin's design was laid before the other commissioners, and the three expressed themselves concerning it in writing as follows:
“In place of the star, put the sun with the head of Washington [in marked out] in the center, and rays, representing the light of liberty, radiating all round—Outside of them and above, put the motto —`Where Liberty dwells there is my country'—Change the stripes from green to blue &have exactly thirteen of them—[Here a line and a half is obliterated] * * * the stripes will then be blue and white—Change the ground of the Jack in the corner from white to yellow, or leave it white either will do, either will make a handsome Texas Jack [of marked out], which old Grand Father John Bull need not be ashamed [of marked out], or unwilling to acknowledge.
This flag is approved by us and we recommend its adoption.
S. F. Austin, B. T. Archer.
I object much to the hackneyed quotation `Where liberty dwells there is my country.' Its frequent use by school boys as a motto & by Volunteer companies on their banners have rendered it stale &fulsome. Virgil from whom it is taken expresses the sentiment antithetically. In the latin language it has much point and beauty. Ubi Libertas—Ibi Patria. If we are to have it [at probably omitted] all let us have it expressed in this way. But I should much prefer that the [expression marked out] motto be discarded &that the words `The light of liberty' or the words Lux Libertatis if they are preferred be substituted. The [words probably omitted] light of Liberty apply to the sun. Underneath Washington I would have the words, `In his example—there is safety.' With this alteration I am much pleased with the banner.
Wm. H. Wharton. I have no objection to the motto Lux Libertatis, or Light of Liberty. S. F. Austin.”
This is written partly on the face and partly on the back of a sheet containing a copy of Austin's design apparently exact, except as to the color of the stripes. In the example from which No. 1 is engraved they appear blue, but in the one on which the above is written they are green. The sun and its rays and the head of Washington, making up the complicated device that was to replace the star, are scrawled in free hand on the face of the drawing, and the mottoes are added. The result appears in flag No. 2 of the engraving. The document is without an address or a date, and the precise nature the commissioners meant to give it does not appear. It is now among the records in the Department of State and is in one of the boxes containing the diplomatic correspondence of the Republic. 5 This would indicate that it came as an official communication to the government, but there is nothing to show whether its classification was based on any other grounds than the simple fact that it bears the signatures of the three commissioners. The cover in which it is enclosed has written upon it 1835; but the writing is evidently much more recent than the document itself, and is clearly wrong.
There is one interesting point of seeming connection between this flag and that brought by Ward's battalion from Georgia in the motto so criticized by Wharton. It appears on the design as approved by Austin and Archer in the English form, “Where Liberty dwells there is my country;” while on the Ward flag it is given in the Latin, “Ubi Libertas habitat, ibi nostra patria est.” If our be used in place of “my,” the translation becomes exact. Could there have been any connection? The Georgia battalion was encamped at Velasco for some days previous to the departure of the commissioners from that vicinity, and Austin or Archer may have seen and been attracted by the motto on its flag. The fact that it was not on Austin's original design would lead to the supposition that it was proposed by Archer. Wharton characterized it as a “hackneyed quotation;” and if this was true no one necessarily owed it to anybody in particular. On the other hand, his reference to the frequent use of it “by Volunteer companies on their banners” might seem to contain a sly suggestion that it was taken from the Ward flag. 6
It is interesting further to note that this elaborate design was actually realized in silk. There is in the collection of Colonel Bryan a letter from Mrs. Holley, dated Lexington, Kentucky, June 1, 1836, and addressed to Austin at Louisville, 7 in which she writes, among other things, as follows: “* * * Miss James has painted your flag on silk—sun Washington &all—it is beautiful—it is to be presented by Henrietta 8—with an appropriate speech written for her by myself—Friday afternoon. How interesting to have you here. 9 It will be in Mrs. Hart's lawn. We tried to have it today, but the weather has been so bad [that the flag] could not be got dry, and it rains fast—All the military were to parade. We tried to hurry it because some of the troops are to start tomorrow in the Car—There is an encampment and rendezvous in Shelbyville—another is in Louisvile—Some have gone on there. * * *
* * * I furnished the silk for the Flag—Gen. McCauley the staff &spear head. * * *
* * * It has been suggested that at the presentation of the Flag in Mrs. Hart's lawn—you being present to make a speech—1-000 $ or more might be collected you had better come. * * *”
What became of this flag? I should be very grateful for any information concerning it.
The ordinary definition of a word calls it the sign of an idea, and it is astonishing to see how much of intense emotion may be sometimes indicated by such a sign. How fitly does the same definition apply to a national ensign; and among all those suggested for Texas, or actually used during the Revolution, there are none that have more significance than Austin's original design and the complicated modification by the commissioners. The mute appeal by the Texans to their near and still nearer of kin which lay in joining the British Jack to the stripes of the American Union was at once proud and pathetic. But had the appeal been answered by the United States with the right degree of unanimous official cordiality, it is likely that our decade of independence and separate national life would have been reduced to a few short months, and that we should now scarcely know the flag of which we are so proud at all.
This part will present two routes from Nogales, pursuing them to their western termini, to afford the reader an opportunity to determine which, if either, is the true route in question. The most southerly, in the conception of the writer, embracing the greater number of natural objects mentioned by Cabeza de Vaca as existing along this part of his route, it will be taken up first. Along it there will be pointed out nine leading objects, with their circumstances, marks of identity, and connection with and relation to each other and their bearings along the route. They are:
.First, the beautiful river on which there was an Indian village where they ate the piñones.
.Second, the large river coming from the north, crossed after going through the valleys where the Indians chased and killed the hares.
.Third, the very large river whose water was breast deep, crossed at the end of the fifty leagues' march through the rough, dry mountains.
.Fourth, the river flowing between some mountains, with an Indian village on it where the captive woman's father lived, and another a day's march further on, the people of which Cabeza says they called those of the Cows.
.Fifth, the river up which Cabeza de Vaca says they made seventeen days' march and then crossed it, which is the fourth large one mentioned by him as crossed after leaving the Avavares.
.Sixth, the place where they got the arrows with emerald points, the cotton robes, and the deer hearts.
.Seventh, the town where they were waterbound for fifteen days.
.Eighth, the mountain on the point of which the Indians had congregated, and where they gave the Spaniards a large quantity of maize.
.Ninth, the place where they found Diego Alcaraz and made the document,—and thence the probable route pursued to San Miguel, the Christian town in Nueva Galicia.
The facts and circumstances mentioned by Cabeza de Vaca tending to identify each of these objects and places will be examined and the order in which they come kept in view to avoid being misled by imaginary flights of hundreds and even thousands of leagues.
In construing that part of the relation touching this portion of the route, the highest dignity and greatest weight should be given to natural objects named by Cabeza de Vaca, when they can be ascertained with reasonable certainty; which will apply with peculiar force to those objects he could have had knowledge of only by actual experience. Next in importance are the positions of these natural objects and their relation to each other and to the main route. Last and least in importance are course and distance, or time spent in going over the latter. But patent exaggeration and statements liable to have been influenced by circumstances after reaching the Spanish settlements, should not be given controlling influence; and when in conflict with the route marked by the principal natural objects called for, or contradicting known historical facts, they should be rejected altogether.
With these rules in view to guide the investigation, the route will be taken up again at Nogales in sight of the south end of Sierra de Pamoranes which is within fifteen leagues of the Gulf coast, and the beautiful river on which stood the village where they ate the piñones will be sought as the first leading natural object called for on this part of the route.
Before reaching Nogales, or the place of twenty houses, Cabeza de Vaca met the women loaded with flour of maize, who told him that forward on that other river he would find houses and plenty of prickly pears and of that flour; 10 and Prieto says that some of the people of the tribes from Rio Conchas to Rio Santander had fields of maize and beans. 11 He also mentions the Sierra de Pamoranes north of Sierra de San Carlos, with an open space between the two six or seven leagues in width traversed by Rio de Conchas, 12 which flows by Nogales. So these mountains, the space between them, the river traversing it, and that the Indians grew corn there, were all recognized by Escandon's expedition in 1749; and Cabeza de Vaca could only have known what he says of this region from actual experience.
There being neither natural objects nor particular places mentioned to identify the three days' march made with the people of the twenty houses, it may be assumed to have been along the south side of Rio de Conchas to where Trinidad is now, where they received the gourds. 13 From there they went on inland by the skirt of the mountain more than fifty leagues, at the end of which they found forty houses; and, among other things given them there, Dorantes got a large copper hawkbell, having the figure of a face upon it, which the Indians said they had obtained from others their neighbors, who had brought it from towards the north, where there were many such highly esteemed. And Cabeza de Vaca says they understood that wherever it came from smelting and casting were carried on. 14
The only description of these fifty leagues being that they were along the skirt of the mountain going inland, the calls for other objects before and after reaching the forty houses must serve to identify their site with reasonable certainty.
By inland Cabeza de Vaca must have meant away from the coast, and therefore in a westerly direction; and Sierra de Pamoranes, within fifteen leagues of the coast and between it and the place where they got the gourds, is a natural object in the rear to show where the mountain along the skirt of which they traveled should be situated. On the north side along there is an open plain, while on the south side a high range of mountains extends from Burgos westward to near Linares. Velasco calls these “the mountains of Bernal, which are the beginning of the Sierra de San Carlos,” and says: “at the foot of these mountains the Nuevo Leon plains extend towards the northeast to the Rio Bravo and the Gulf of Mexico.” 15
In the vicinity of the present sites of Linares and Hualahuises will be assumed to be where they found the forty houses and got the hawkbell, as these two places are only six or seven miles apart, and the latter was an ancient Indian settlement, where the early fathers established a mission called “San Cristobal de Hualahuises.” 16 And though it is not fifty leagues from where they got the gourds to this vicinity, the calls for natural objects beyond it will be sufficient to prevail over the statement of distance they traveled to get there.
Cabeza de Vaca says: “We left the next day, going over a mountain seven leagues across, the stones of which were scoriæ of iron, and at night arrived at many houses on the banks of a very beautiful river.” 17 And in going from the vicinity of Linares and Hualahuises to Galeana, the old trail passed over a mountain about seven leagues across, the stones of which had the appearance of scoriæ of iron, which Cabeza must have known from going over it; so it will be assumed that Galeana is now situated where the houses were found on the very beautiful river. These calls for such a mountain and the houses on the river as being after they got the hawkbell will certainly be given greater weight than can be due to the call for traveling the distance of fifty leagues.
Of the place on the beautiful river Cabeza de Vaca says: “And the lords of the houses came out to the middle of the road, with their children on their shoulders, to receive us, and gave us many little bags of periwinkles and antimony ground together, with which they anoint their faces; 18 and they gave us many beads and robes of cowhides, and loaded all who came with us with some of every thing they had. They eat prickly pears and piñones. There are in this country small piñones, and the burrs (piñas) are the size of small eggs, but the piñones are better than those of Castile, because they have the shells very thin, and when they are green they grind them and make balls and so eat them; and if they are dry they grind them with the shells and eat them made into powder.” 19
Velasco says Galeana is “situated on the margins of the arroyo of Alcantarillas in the valley of its name, in an agricultural region fertile in cereals and fruits.” 20 And going into the place on the old trail the valley presents a beautiful aspect, there being many willows and other handsome trees growing along the stream.
Among the timbers most abundant in the municipality of Galeana, Velasco mentions the piñon; 21 and of Iturbide, bounding it on the east, and Aramberri, bounding it on the south, he says the same. 22 The piñon is very abundant in the western part of the municipality of Galeana on the declivities of Cerro de Potosí. Don Rafael Treviño Leal, formerly an officer in the customs service at Monterey, but now living in Laredo, Texas, who visited the Hacienda de Potosí in 1868, going to all the ranchos it embraced, in connection with his official duties in the enforcement of the payment of the dues on the estate of Jesus Terán, the owner, who died while in Paris, says:
“I passed through the piñon region on the declivities of Cerro de Potosí, and gathered the piñones at several places there. The small thin-shelled kind, growing in burrs or cones (piñas) the size of a small hen egg, are abundant there, and are gathered and taken to Galeana and other places for sale.”
Don Julian Palacios, present treasurer of Duval county, Texas, who has spent much time at Galeana, says the piñones brought into that city are the same as those brought into Alpine on the Southern Pacific railway, where he has also spent much time. O. P. Reid, of Laredo, Texas, having eaten the piñones of New Mexico and those growing on Sierra Encantada in the northern part of Coahuila, Mexico, says they are of the same kind. Having eaten the piñones of New Mexico, Sierra Encantada, and Galeana, the writer found the little thin-shelled kind at the latter place the same as those at the other two. And though Cabeza de Vaca does not say what was the species to which those he described belonged, the thin-shelled kind of Galeana might well be included in that of the pinus edulis. Anyway, the fact that they are there in abundance may serve to show that the piñon part of Cabeza de Vaca's description is fairly answered by the facts on the ground at Galeana; and the reader may determine for himself whether these signs of identity require the application of the rule to make them, as called for after they got the hawkbell, control the calls for time and distance before reaching them, and whether the Alcantarillas is the beautiful river and Galeana the place on its bank referred to by Cabeza de Vaca, who could have known such facts only by experience.
Of the hawkbell Cabeza de Vaca says: “They told us that where it came from there were many flat thin pieces of that metal buried, * * * and there were houses with foundations there, and this we believed to be the South Sea, as we always had notice that it is richer than that of the North.” 23
How did they get such notice as to the South Sea or Pacific? Does not this indicate impressions received after they reached the Spanish settlements? It will be remembered that this was between the first and second great rivers, rendering it impossible for it to have been on the Pacific slope under any theory as to these rivers yet read by the writer.
If, as Cabeza de Vaca says, the Indians told him “they got it from others their neighbors, who brought it from towards the north,” is it not fair to presume he there meant the North Sea, as he called the Gulf? Were not the circumstances such as to aid the conclusion that his meaning was, that they brought the hawkbell from towards the Gulf? If so, is not such aid powerfully corroborated by the fact that the hawkbell was obtained before they reached the place where they ate the piñones, but after leaving the mountain within fifteen leagues of the Gulf coast?
For more than thirteen years before Cabeza de Vaca went through the country, there were Spanish settlements at Pánuco and along the coast there, where the Indians could have bartered for such things. Cortés made his campaign along Lake Champayan in 1522, driving into the mountains thousands of coast Indians, who might have carried such things with them. Such articles may have been obtained from Garay's command on its march through the country from Rio de las Palmas to Pánuco in 1523, or from Pineda's ship captured in the Pánuco river by Indians. As Pánuco is not over ninety leagues from Linares, it is not very strange this hawkbell should have been in the hands of Hualahuises at the latter place in 1536; and being brought from towards the North, or the Gulf coast, these abundant opportunities to have obtained it there strengthen the conclusion that it was obtained there. And as the Indians where they ate the piñones told the Spaniards “that there were many flat thin pieces of that metal buried” where it came from, it is not impossible that those who captured Pineda's ship should have found on it the pieces of copper and buried them there.
In the ruins of las Palmas, a village destroyed by Cortés, Prieto found a flat, sharp-pointed piece of copper five inches long. In 1850, a Mexican found, in the ruins in the valley of Tamesí, a small golden cup, roughly wrought, and rather having the appearance of a little bell; and later a farmer found, in the ruins above the houses of Palmas Altas, on the left margin of the Tamesí, four circular plates of gold, three inches in diameter and weighing six ounces each. 24 Finally, the golden image of the head and face of Quetzalcoatl, found in the pyramid of Pajin south of Pánuco, shows that the people inhabiting that region at an early date had knowledge of such metal; and it is probable that metallic things of value were found in the sepulchres of the caciques round Pánuco, as Guzman was not a person who would have been robbing so many graves if they contained no valuable matter.
But having had no communication with Guzman or any person in his province of Pánuco, Cabeza de Vaca did not “always have notice” of these things on the Sea of the North, as he called the Gulf; and, therefore, he attributed them to the Sea of the South, as he called the Pacific, though it was impossible for him to have had any communication from Guzman or any of his followers, after they went into Nueva Galicia, until he reached the Spanish settlements, where such things might have been suggested to him for a purpose.
At the place where they ate the piñones, they were given many robes of cow skins, 25 which indicates that the Indians living there either went to the cow range to kill them or traded with others for the skins; and as they were not far from the plains stretching out to the Rio Grande, they may have made regular trips to meet the cows. But this cow or buffalo question will be examined in Part III.
Cabeza de Vaca says: “We took leave of these and traveled among so many kinds of people and such diversity of tongues, that memory is not sufficient to recount them,” 26 which probably applies to all the country he passed through before reaching the village on the stream flowing between the mountains.
Prieto enumerates seventy-two tribes and over thirty distinct tongues found in that region in 1749, and a like number are mentioned by Santa Maria, and in the historical branch of the Archivo General of Mexico; but there seems to have been no such diversity of tongues reported to have existed elsewhere in the country in so small a section of territory. Indeed, this great number of distinct tongues known to have existed among the mountains between Cerro de Potosí and the Tamesí river is a remarkable circumstance to identify this as the country through which Cabeza de Vaca passed after leaving the place where they ate the piñones; and he could not have ascertained the fact of these circumstances except by actually going along there. He mentions one trait common to all these tribes, that “they always sacked each other,” 27 and he says they had with them so many people they did not know what to do with them.
“Along those valleys where we traveled,” says Cabeza de Vaca, “each of them carried a club three palms in length, and, all going deployed on the flanks, when they jumped a hare (of which there were many), they surrounded it at once, and it was wonderful to see the number of clubs thrown at it; and in this way they made it go from the ones to the others; this, in my view, being the most handsome chase that could be thought of, because many times the hare would run into the hands of the hunters. When we halted at night, the number they had given us was so great that each of us had eight or ten cargas of them.” 28
A carga is commonly understood to be three hundred pounds, a mule load, and ten such loads for each of the four would be forty cargas, or twelve thousand pounds of jack rabbits.
This kind of game is still abundant on the plains and in the valleys between Galeana and Doctor Arroyo. Don Rafael Treviño Leal says when he was traveling along there, in 1858 and 1868, visiting and inspecting the offices of the tax collectors, the liebre (jack rabbit) was in sight all the while, bounding over the plains in every direction. And this game being called for along the valleys, before they went among the rough, dry mountains, and after leaving where they ate the piñones, it would be proper to show a like coincidence in going out from such a place on any route adopted; for the absence of such game on this part of a route proposed would be strong negative evidence against its being that pursued by Cabeza de Vaca and his comrades. To answer the call, it should be shown to be between the first and second of the great rivers they crossed on such route, as it is shown to be on that here adopted; else the one assuming the route would have his rivers and jack rabbits confounded.
The chase exhibited to the viceroy, Mendoza, in 1540, may repel the presumption of that described by Cabeza de Vaca being unknown to the natives, and bring it within the bounds of credibility. The viceroy having frequently expressed a desire to witness a chase like those exhibited to Moctezuma, the caciques made for him one exactly corresponding to the description. The site selected was a broad plain between Jilotepec and San Juan del Rio, where spectators could see and pursue with the eye all the móvements of the hunters, at whatever point they might be in the vast scene upon which they were to display their dexterity and ability. At a place deemed convenient, the caciques improvised on the plain a pavilion from which the viceroy and his suite could witness the spectacle. And more than fifteen thousand Indians took their positions, and, watching the game, went on forming themselves into a circle, conducting the game towards the pavilion in which the viceroy and his caballeros were seated; the dexterity of the Indians in watching the game they had imprisoned in the circle, and marching it on towards the place the hunters proposed, affording them great pleasure and satisfaction. Having regaled the sight with such agreeable scene, the signal was given for the killing to begin. It was at noon when the Indians, with wonderful swiftness, but maintaining admirable order, dashed upon the animals, letting fly their unerring arrows. The spectacle lasted till sunset, astonishing the viceroy with the amount of game killed in the chase; the number of deer being over seven hundred, and that of wolves and jack rabbits being each as great or greater.
Content with having seen what he had heard related and exaggerated from his arrival in Mexico, the viceroy promised to witness another chase within two years, and, thanking the caciques for the good time they had afforded him, and to perpetuate the memory of that chase, which was the first after the fall of the Aztec Empire, he named the place “Llano del Cazadero” (Plain of the Chase), the name it still has. 29
This chase having occurred after Cabeza de Vaca wrote his relation, he could not have borrowed from it, no matter what may be said of his knowledge of those of Moctezuma's days.
Without informing us how far his chase extended or the number of days it continued, Cabeza de Vaca says they went on to where “they crossed a great river coming from the north,” and thence thirty leagues over a plain to where they found many people coming from afar off to receive them. 30
Rio Blanco, coming from the north, flows in a southerly direction to near where Aramberri now stands, and there turning to the east, flows through a deep narrow cañon in the Sierra Madre and on by Soto la Marina to the Gulf, changing its name to Rio de Soto la Marina after passing the cañon. It is the same the Spaniards called Rio de las Palmas, which was the boundary named between the Florida of which Narvaez was made governor and the province of Pánuco. Of this river Velasco says: “The Rio Blanco passes to the north of Aramberri; coming from the mountain, it flows along the cañon 12 kilometers from the Cedrito southward to the Molino north of the Cabecera; it passes the mountain and penetrates Tamaulipas through a narrow cañon.” 31 Again he says of it that “passing through the heart of the Sierra Madre and going out of it in Ibarrillos, penetrating Tamaulipas where it is known by the name of Rio Soto la Marina. This river has a great abundance of water.” 32
It is about sixty miles from Galeana to this river, and the way the Spaniards may have traveled it is seventy miles, requiring five days to make it on foot. So we have Rio Blanco for the great river coming from the north, the second such crossed by Cabeza de Vaca, and the second leading natural object to be pointed out in Part II.
The next distance of thirty leagues over some prairies to where they found many people who, from afar from there, were coming to receive them, and came out on the road where they had to pass, 33 was over the plains from Rio Blanco to near where the present town of Mier y Noriega stands, not more than twenty leagues by a right line. From this point these people guided them through more than fifty leagues of unpopulated and very rough mountains, so dry there was no game, which caused them to suffer much hunger, and at the last they crossed a very large river, the water of which was breast deep, and there the people took them to some prairies at the end of the mountains, where people came from afar from there to receive them. 34
Though Cabeza de Vaca gives no course for this fifty league march, it will be remembered that he had an idea where Pánuco was situated on the coast, and knew there were Spanish settlements there when he sailed from Spain. He must have known he had gone inland some distance from where he left the mountain fifteen leagues from the coast, and probably thought he had gone far enough south to be opposite to Pánuco, and therefore determined to cross the mountains in an easterly direction. So it will be presumed that this stretch of fifty leagues, over which they were guided through the rough mountains, was from where they met the many people on the prairie near Mier y Noriega through the Sierra Madre to the present site of Ocampo on the left margin of the south fork of the Tamesí, and thence to Comandante between and near the junction of the two forks of that river, and that they there crossed the southern branch of it, which is quite a river there, and its water may well have been breast deep. So it fills the description of the third great river beyond which the people began to suffer from the great hunger and labors they endured in those mountains. Their route from this river to the prairies at the end of the mountains was southward between the Tamesí and the mountains, and possibly to near where Limon is now. There they met the people who came from afar off, and gave so many things to those accompanying the Spaniards that they left half of them on account of being unable to carry them. And there the Spaniards told these people they desired to go towards the sunset, and were informed that in that direction the people were very far away. 35 And from there they sent forward the two women to look for people, and followed them to a point agreed upon to await their return, which may have been on the little stream putting in above the present site of Tamatan. Here the Spaniards told the Indians to take them towards the north, and were told that in that direction there were no people except far off. 36
Here the circumstances must be considered to determine whether by “towards the north” they meant in a northerly direction, or meant the direction of the Gulf, which they called the Sea of the North. Further on Cabeza de Vaca says they would not follow the road of the cows because it was toward the north, which was for them a very great round-about way, because they always held it for certain that, going to the sunset, they would have to find what they desired. 37 Did they not desire to find Spanish settlements? Though the settlements at Pánuco might have been broken up, they were confident they would find a land of Christians round the City of Mexico, which they knew to be inland. If they did not desire to go northward on the cow road, but did wish to be taken towards the north by the Indians, then in the first instance they must have meant toward the north pole, as that was the direction the road to the cows led, and in the second they must have meant toward the Gulf, which they called “la Mar del Norte.” And toward the Gulf meant to go in search of Spanish settlements in the province of Pánuco.
After the Spaniards had been wating three days at the point agreed upon, the women returned, saying that all the people had gone to the cows, that it was in their season. 38
The next day they left there and at the end of three days halted; and the next day Castillo and the negro, taking the two women for guides, left there, and she who was a captive took them to a river which flowed between some mountains where there was a village in which her father lived. 39
The three days' march must have been along the prairie to the gap in the mountains at the north end of Cerro de Tonchina, and from there Castillo and the negro went forward through the gap to the village on the eastern branch of Rio de Valles; and Castillo returning with the good news of houses and people who ahd beans, pumpkins, and maize, and saying the negro would bring the people to meet them, the Spaniards started and a league and a half from there met them, and six leagues further reached the village, which was probably near where the east prong of Rio de Valles forks. Here were the first houses the Spaniards saw that had the appearance or style of such. 40 Here they remained one day, and the next arrived at other houses having foundations, which completes the fourth leading point to be shown in this part.
The people of this last village the Spaniards called “de las Vacas.” It is the present city of Valles, of which Cabrera says: There are no data of the epoch of its foundation; indeed, the settlement existed from before the conquest, and was called, in the Indian tongue, Tanzocob, place of clouds.
When the territory was occupied by the Spaniards, they called this place Santiago de la Villa de Valles. 41
This place was certainly inhabited when Cabeza de Vaca passed through the country in 1536, and was still within the original design to go to Pánuco, and not more than forty leagues from there, and he could not have described it so without seeing it. And they may have had reasons for going inland from Sierra de Pamoranes besides that given by Cabeza de Vaca for not going to the point of that mountain near the coast. 42 The great number of bays extending inland being difficult to cross, and the delays they would cause, if they were to be gone round, must have been taken into consideration; and they doubtless knew of the total routing of the coast tribes from Pánuco up the Champayan lake and almost to Rio de las Palmas, by Cortés, and the wholesale slaughter and burning of the caciques and their tribesmen at Pánuco by Sandoval, as these things occurred over four years before the Narvaez expedition sailed from Spain; and such knowledge would naturally cause them to fear that the coast tribes below Rio de Conchas might seek revenge upon four defenseless, naked men, three of whom were Spaniards. For even those on Mal-Hado intimated that they knew something of such tragedies when they replied to the request that they should take the naked Spaniards to their houses, by saying that ought not to be spoken of, because if they took them to their houses they might sacrifice them to their idols, 43 and though it is stated that “some of them had been in New Spain,” it does not appear what part of that country they had visited. It seems, however, they spoke jestingly, as they took the Spaniards to their houses, or lodges, and treated them kindly, while there is no evidence that they worshipped or offered sacrifice of any kind to idols. And while the Spaniards were in Tanzocob, the people there must have told them some story that revived their fears and deterred them from going to Pánuco; else their knowledge of the bearing of that place from Espiritu Santo Bay, and of the fact it was a Spanish settlement when they left Spain, would have caused them to still pursue their route to it to find Christians.
The natural conditions of this place whose inhabitants the Spaniards called “de las Vacas,” deducible from what Cabeza de Vaca says of its surroundings, may be collated with and applied to those of Tanzocob, in order to ascertain whether it is the ancient village of those Indians.
Cabeza de Vaca says: “Es tierra muy poblada.” 44 It is a country thickly populated. This is corroborated by what was found there in 1740.
Prieto says: “Contiguous to Sierra Madre, having on the south the jurisdiction of Villa de Valles and extending themselves towards the north to the campañas in which Victoria was afterwards founded, there were found in 1740 the tribes of the Janambres, Pisones, and Siguillones, who were as yet and always had been of the most audacious in their incursions and combats.” 45 And he says the “Molinas and the Mariguanes lived with these three nations. Of the latter he says there was also a tribe in the space which extends from the Sierra de la Tamaulipa Occidental to the sea, and also in the Oriental some fractions of them were found. And the ruins north and northeast of Valles to and along the west side of Tamesí show that region was inhabited by people, who, like those of Tanzocob, erected houses and lived in groups or towns.” Again he says: “In the year 1746 the indigenous tribes that inhabited the mountains and the coasts of the colony were very numerous; in their customs they were almost complete barbarians and wild; they lived in complete nudity.” 46 Cabeza de Vaca says of those at Tanzocob: “Esta gente andan del todo desnudos, a la manera de los primeros que hallamos.” 47 These people go totally nude, in the manner of the first ones we found. So the country there was, as Cabeza de Vaca says, “muy poblada,” and the people went nude when the Spaniards went among them, making the descriptions agree in these particulars.
Tanzocob was on a river, and so is Valles, and Cabeza de Vaca says of the buffalo: “Y por aquel rio arriba mas de cincuenta leguas, van matando muchas de ellas.” 48 And up that other river more than fifty leagues they go killing many of them. This expression ring to another river is used as if he were at the village on one river and speaking of another up which they went; and as the town of Tanzocob was on a river and the road to the cows was up another and to the north, the expression suited the Tamesí for “aquel rio,” or that other river. The Indians there told them “they brought the corn from where the sun goes down,” and being asked the way to go there, they said the road was up that other river towards the north,” doubtless meaning the other river which was towards the Gulf from the town. So there were at least three rivers near there. At Valles there are the Rio de Valles on the left margin of which the town stands, the Rio Tamesí northeast of there, flowing down from the north, and the Rio Bagres southeast of there, in the direction of the Gulf, flowing down from the far west, or where the sun goes down, where maize grew all over the land. So it is believed that the Indian tribes, with their customs, and the three rivers so related to the site of the town, sufficiently identify it as the one whose people the Spaniards called “de las Vacas.” 49
Cabeza de Vaca says: “We also desired to know from what place they had brought that corn, and they told us that they brought it from where the sun goes down, that it was in all that land, and the nearest to there was on that road. We asked by what way we might go well, and that they should inform us of the road, because they did not want to go there. They told us the road was up that other river towards the north, and that in seventeen days' journeys we would find nothing to eat, except a fruit they called chacan, and they beat it between some stones, though after this is done it is so rough and dry that it cannot be eaten; and this was true, for there they gave us a sample of it, and we could not eat it. They also told us that while we would be going up the river we would always be going among people who were their enemies and spoke their same tongue, and who had nothing to give us to eat, but they would receive us with very good will, and that they would give us many robes of cotton and skins and other things of those they had; and furthermore that it appeared to them that we ought in no wise to take that road. Doubting what we ought to do, and what road we should take that might be most to our advantage and purpose, we
remained over with them two days. They gave us beans and pumpkins to eat.”
50
Then he tells how they cooked pumpkins.
“After the two days we remained there, we determined to go to hunt the maize, and would not follow the road of the cows which was towards the north, and this was a very great round-about way for us, because we always held it certain that, going to the sunset, we should find what we desired.” 51
They first told the Spaniards “they brought the maize from where the sun goes down, and that it was in all that land, and the nearest was on that road.” Then they told them “the road was up that other river towards the north;” and still the Spaniards went to hunt the maize toward the sunset up that river. How shall this be reconciled?
As there used, the words “aquel rio” referred to two rivers, one beyond the other in the same direction; 52 and “aquel rio hacia el norte,” meant that other river towards the Gulf, or what the Spaniards call the North Sea. So there being two rivers, one beyond the other, going from the village towards the Gulf, and going up the one most remote from the village was to the sunset, all said about it is harmonized. Tanzocob, the present Ciudad de Valles, is on the left margin of the Rio de Valles, which empties into the Rio Bagres below there. Beyond it in the direction of the Gulf, not far from the village, is the Bagres, coming from the sunset and from a land of maize, which is presumed to be the river up which the road led to the land all over which there was maize.
It was natural that at Tanzocob, in latitude 21° 50’ N., the people should go without clothes, but had their village been on the higher lands in latitude 31° N., they would have been clad in skins, as were the tribes there and further north when the Spaniards first went among them.
With all these facts in view, the reader may determine for himself whether ancient Tanzocob, now Ciudad de Valles, is the place whose people the Spaniards called “de las Vacas.”
Here at Tanzocob Cabeza de Vaca gets off on a high flight before giving any of the particulars of the journey or country it passes over. “He says: “We followed our road, and traversed all the country until we came out at the Sea of the South; and the fear they put us in of the great hunger we would have to pass (as in truth we passed) along all the seventeen days' journey of which they had told, us, was insufficient to deter us. For all of them up the river, they gave us many robes of cows, and we did not eat the meat of them, but our support was each day as much as a handful of deer tallow, which for these necessities we always managed to keep, and thus we passed all the seventeen days' journey; and at the end of them we crossed the river, and traveled other seventeen. Towards the sunset, through some prairies, and among some mountains that rise there, we found a people who for a third part of the year eat nothing but some powders of straw; and on account of its being that time when we passed by there, we had to eat it until, these journeys being completed, we found houses of foundation, where there was a great deal of gathered maize, and of it and of its flour they gave us a large quantity, and of pumpkins, beans, and cotton robes; and with all these we loaded those who had brought us there, and thereupon they turned back the most contented people in the world.” 53
Here we have Cabeza de Vaca's description of the thirty-four days march towards the sunset to the maize; and it will be assumed now that it was up the Rio Bagres from opposite Tanzocob, as the general course of it, going up stream, is to the sunset.
The first division of seventeen days to where they crossed to the south side of the Bagres was, in all probability, from above the junction of Rio Valles with the Bagres up to near the mouth of Rio Verde. There they crossed the Bagres, which is the fourth large river on the route, and the fifth leading object proposed to be pointed out in this part. But these seventeen days are exaggerated, unless much time was lost in following the meanders of the river.
Leaving where they crossed this river, he says they traveled other seventeen days, to the sunset, over some prairies and among some very high mountains which rise there. 54
Near the junction of Rio Verde and the Bagres, on the south of the latter, there rise some very high mountains, a continuation of Sierra Gorda, and further west are some prairies extending up to near the present site of Salsipuedes; and these conditions fairly meet the description, except as to distance, it not being above fifty leagues, even by the tortuous route they may have pursued. All along the valleys of the Bagres here, the ancient tribes lived and cultivated maize, and it will be presumed that Cabeza de Vaca again reached this river in the vicinity of but above where Salsipuedes is now situated. Finding maize already gathered and cotton robes or cloth here shows it must have been in a very warm climate, for it could not have been later than the first week of March when they arrived here, as they arrived in San Miguel on the first of April and were waterbound at one place fifteen days. In fact, it is about 21° 10’ N., and in the low valleys of the river maize, pumpkins, and cotton grow all the year round. On the north side of the river below here, at the foot of a high mountain, there was an Indian village where Bagres is now.
Cabeza de Vaca says the cotton robes given them here were “better than those of New Spain,” showing that these Indians, like those of the valley of Mexico, knew the art of weaving cotton cloth, which was also known on the Pánuco, and especially by the inhabitants of Tancanhuitz, not forty leagues eastward from Salsipuedes, and those of other towns further east and along Rio Moctezuma, when the Spaniards first went among them.
But in coming to Salsipuedes, Cabeza de Vaca must have lost or forgotten his deer tallow, as he had to eat the powdered straw.
As if leaving Salsipuedes, Cabeza de Vaca says: “We went through more than one hundred leagues of country and always found houses of foundations and much subsistence of maize and beans, and they gave us many deer and many cotton robes better than those of New Spain.” 55
One hundred leagues of such densely populated country, with houses, maize, beans and cotton robes, found outside of the Aztec portion of the country at that time, would have been a strange fact, and stranger still if found hundreds of miles further north. As the hundred league part of this statement bears the fleshmarks of Cabeza de Vaca's inclination to exaggerate, without any further description than that it was a continuous settlement, with maize, beans and cotton robes, it will be left under the rule as to patent exaggerations stated above. But along the Bagres river from Bagres up to Santa Maria del Rio was a maize producing district as early as 1540, when Fra San Miguel went into the country to convert the Indians along there and at Rio Verde; and, though less than one hundred miles in length, it will be assumed to be what Cabeza de Vaca's stretch of one hundred leagues referred to, and that he was still at Salsipuedes in his proper person while on the imaginary flight.
Of this place Cabeza de Vaca says: “They also gave us many beads of some corals there are in the South Sea, many very good turquoises, which they have from towards the north; and finally they gave us here everything they had, and to me they gave five emeralds made into arrow points, and with these arrows they make their feasts and dances; and it appearing to me that they were very good, I asked them where they had obtained them, and they said they brought them from some very high mountains which are towards the north, and that they obtained them in barter for plumes and feathers of papagallos, saying there were towns there of many people and very large houses.” 56
It will be observed that he is here telling what these Indians said about the high mountains, towns, people, and large houses, and does not pretend to have seen them, or to say they were Quivira or Cibola, and as he was in a climate where maize was already gathered in March, and cotton robes and parrots were found, he must have been many degrees south of where imagination afterwards located the places of such names.
He is here speaking of the same place where he found the gathered maize, beans, etc., to which the turquoises as well as the emerald arrow points were brought from the north, that is, of Salsipuedes, and gives no evidence of his moving on from there before he makes the following statement: “On the way we traveled by those towns there are more than a thousand leagues of populated country, and they have much subsistence, for they always plant beans and maize three times a year.” 57
As the distance here is more than twice that from one gulf to the other, leaving no room for unsettled or uncultivated country, it will here be discarded altogether, as in contradiction to known natural and historical facts. But it may have been intended to trump or forestall Fray Niza's three hundred leagues west from Culiacan, without finding any end to the land, through towns and cities, all the people of which had large herds of woolly cattle, though one who knows the country from Culiacan to Altata, and the other way to the Gulf of Mexico will not be deceived by either story.
It seems that both the hundred leagues' flight and that of a thousand leagues were made at the place they called Corazones as they precede the account of their leaving there. Cabeza de Vaca says: “In this town we remained three days, and at one day's journey from there was another, in which so much rain fell upon us, that because a river rose a great deal, we could not cross it, and we were detained there fifteen days.” 58 So the town of Corazones was a single day's march before they reached the place where they were so waterbound, and the things around it may afford some means of calculating its bearing in the story. Being in the vicinity of where Salsipuedes is now, it is the home of the papagallos or parrots, the vast flocks of which around there afforded abundant opportunity for the Indians of that place to catch many and rob them of their plumage to be bartered for stones at the very high mountain north of there; and if there was such a mountain in that direction, it and the parrots will further identify Salsipuedes as the place called Corazones.
Rising to a height almost, if not quite, equaling that of Popocatepetl, nearly due north of Salsipuedes stands Cerro de Potosí, fully answering the description, and forming a majestic landmark in the western part of the municipality of Galeana. It has upon and around it all of the elements to form stones such as Cabeza describes the arrow points to be. In that municipality selenite abounds, and is there called espejuelo, its transparency being such that window lights and lanterns are made of it, and alabaster is so abundant there, that it is used to make fences. 59 There is abundance of iron in all that part of the Sierra Madre, as well as of copper, lead, and silver. 60 And Velasco says the country is crossed in all its extension by the Sierra Madre, the Cerro de Potosí rising in the north-west so high that only in the summer it is not covered with snow; and that in this municipality the Sierra Madre has for principal elements of formation the carbonate of lime, under distinct forms of composition. “For this reason there abounds in Galeana and its vicinity, alabaster, gypsum, dolomite, selenite, and statuary marble.” 61 So in the iron pyrites are the elements for marcasite, in the selenite for the supposed emeralds with the oxide of iron for their coloring, and it is said that around Cerro de Potosí there are prisms of beryl like those at Acworth in New Hampshire, and these may have been the source of the arrow points. It is highly probable that the supposed turquesas and emerald arrow points were obtained in the territory of the municipality of Galeana, as it is in the proper direction and sufficiently distant from Salsipuedes, where Cabeza de Vaca got the arrow points; and the Indians living around Galeana, Linares, Hualahuises, and Montemorelos, when the Spaniards first went there, had houses and towns, and did not call them Quivira.
In the region round Salsipuedes, monilla and other poisonous trees are still found, meeting this circumstance mentioned by Cabeza de Vaca, and now each reader may judge for himself whether all these facts and circumstances are sufficient to justify the opinion that Salsipuedes is in the vicinity of the place the Spaniards called Corazones.
After all the flights of imagination taken by Cabeza de Vaca in chapters thirty-one and thirty-two, they were still at Corazones, for he says: “In the town where they gave us the emeralds, they gave Dorantes more than six hundred open deer hearts, of which they always have a great abundance for their support, and therefore we named it `el pueblo de los Corazones' (the town of hearts), and by it is the entrance to go to many provinces which are towards the Sea of the South; and if those going to hunt it should not go in by here, they will be lost, because on the coast there is no maize. * * * In this town we remained three days, and at the end of a day's journey from it there was another in which there fell on us so much rain, that because a river rose very high, we could not pass and we were detained fifteen days.” 62
So, prescinding all his flights of imagination, Cabeza de Vaca takes up the line of march at Corazones, and the first day reaches the place where he was so detained by high water, which will be here presumed to be where the city of Santa Maria del Rio is now situated, on both sides of the river between the mountains where the water-shed from a large scope of territory west of it concentrates and finds outlet through the city. And it was here they saw a sword belt buckle on the neck of an Indian, the first notice they had of Christians.
By looking upon a modern map of Mexico, on the Mexican National Railway will be seen the city of Acambaro, and a short distance west of it a small lake, marked Lago de Cuitzeo, on the north side of which is a town called Cuitzeo. On his march into Jalisco, Guzman sent Pedro Almendez Chirinos from the region of this town northward in order to ascertain whether the direction taken on leaving Mexico was correct, and whether he could find any notices of the Amazons. After going to several other places, he “went to Sierra Gorda, and in all of them he took peaceable possession and was very well treated by the Indians.” 63 And being at Chichimequillas, now called Lagos, on his way, and accounting for meeting many Indians on his march, he may have passed through the gap where Santa Maria del Rio is now situated, in going into the Sierra Gorda, as the stream there actually divides the mountain and flows between the two parts of it; and some one of his command may have left the buckle there. Finally, his returning through the same gap to pursue his march to Zacatecas, may have been the real foundation for the Indian fiction of their returning to the sea.
It will be remembered that Chirinos had a large encomienda in Michoacan, and that the country north of Cuitzeo and Cerro Culiacan as far up as Zacatecas was that through which he marched and considered his conquest, when it is mentioned further on.
From Santa Maria del Rio, Cabeza de Vaca again becomes obscure, indulging in his imaginary scenes for a while, without naming a place or natural object, and then says: “They brought us robes of those they had concealed from the Christians and gave them to us, and even recounted to us how at other times the Christians had come into the country, and had destroyed and burned the towns and taken off half the men and all the women and children, and that those who had been able to escape from their hands had run away.” 64
On passing through the gap at Santa Maria del Rio, they entered Chirinos' conquest, where slavemaking had been a principal means of gain, and were not over sixty leagues from Chichimequillas, now the City of Lagos, where Chirinos found great numbers of Indians when he first went into that country, and he or his men may have captured and made slaves of many of the Indians in that region until the publication of the king's final decree prohibiting it, a short time before Cabeza's arrival there.
The first natural object of note, mentioned by Cabeza de Vaca, after passing the gap in the mountains, is the mountain on the point of which there was a town; and of it he says: “These conducted us to a town which is upon the point of a mountain, and it is reached by going up through great roughness; and here we found many people gathered together out of fear of the Christians. They received us very well, and gave us all they had, and they gave us more than two thousand cargas of maize, which we gave to those miserable and hungry people who had brought us there.” 65
About fifty leagues in a southwesterly direction from Santa Maria del Rio, Cerro de Gigante rises to about eleven thousand feet above sea level, and is covered with basalt, 66 causing its roughness. Its northwest point or cuchilla, about twenty leagues from Lagos, will be assumed to be the place where the town stood. All along the route from Santa Maria del Rio to this point was formerly inhabited by Chichimecas, as was the country south and west of there, and they had large towns at the present sites of Lagos and the city of Leon, the latter being at the foot of the western declivity of the mountain. Of it Velasco says: “Before the Conquest the site which Leon occupies was inhabited by Chichimeca Indians.” 67 The great maize region before the Conquest was the fertile “Valle del Bajio,” extending from Silao to Lagos, and the country from the latter to the entrance of the Cañon de Santa Maria, a distance of sixty leagues more, which had been depopulated by Chirinos' men before Cabeza de Vaca got there. 68
When Cabeza de Vaca reached here, Guzman was giving his whole attention to the means of escaping the king's residencia, which he was expecting to be issued, and which did issue against him on the twenty-seventh of March, 1536. He had then neither time nor inclination to capture Indians for the slave trade. Indeed, he was endeavoring to practice tardy repentance by arresting, trying, and condemning the alcalde mayor and commander of Culiacan for slavemaking, and appointing the noble Tapia in his stead. So if Cabeza met men out catching Indians to make them slaves, they must have been some of Chirinos' forces up in his conquest, making slaves on their own account, and as near the Pánuco slave market as they could find Indians in New Galicia to prey upon.
Speaking of the town on the point of the mountain, Cabeza de Vaca says: “The next day we dispatched from there four messengers through the country, as we were accustomed to do, to call and convoke the most people they could at a town three days' journey from there; and, this being done, the next day we left with all the people who were there, and we always found a trail and signs where Christians had slept; and at midday we met our messengers, who told us they had not found any people, that they had all run off and concealed themselves in the mountains to prevent the Christians from killing them or making them slaves; and that the night before they had seen the Christians, they being behind some trees watching what they were doing, and saw that they were taking many Indians in chains.” 69 He says they slept there that night, “and the next day we traveled and slept on the road; and the second day, those we had sent as messengers guided us to where they had seen the Christians; and arriving at the hour of vespers, we saw clearly they had told the truth, and recognized that the people were cavalry from the stakes to which the horses had been tied.” 70
After the obscure back count from Petutan, Cabeza de Vaca again gets down to the thread of his journey, and says: “Next day in the morning I took with me the negro and eleven Indians, and, upon the trail of the Christians we had been following, passed by three places where they had slept; and that day I traveled ten leagues, and the next day in the morning I overtook four Christians on horse-back. * * * I told them they should take me to where their captain was, and so we went half a league from there to where Diego de Alcaraz was, who was the captain.” 71
They went in half a day from the town on the point of the mountain to where they met the messengers, spending the night there; next day they traveled, but the distance is not given; the next they went to where the Christians had been seen; the next he says he traveled ten leagues, and the next morning overtook the four horsemen, and went half a league from there to where the captain was, making three days and a half, and possibly two hours next morning, they were in going from the town to that place. Two days and a half were traveled with the whole multitude found on the mountain, and possibly not exceeding ten leagues, as the messengers had made it in one day; and ten leagues one day and possibly two more to where the captain was, and not more than twenty-two leagues in all from the town on the mountain to where they found Diego Alcaraz, and there made the document. He says, “from this river to the Christian town, which is called Sant Miguel, which is of the government of the province called Nueva Galicia, it is thirty leagues.” 72 This makes it fifty-two leagues from the town on the mountain to San Miguel. At twenty-two leagues they were on a river, as he says “from this river,” etc., and this was probably the stream flowing down from Lagos to San Juan de los Lagos, possibly thirty leagues above the present site of San Miguel on Rio Verde in Jalisco, within Nueva Galicia, which then extended as far to the northeast as the western declivity of Sierra Gorda. Thus far he makes no mention of Culiacan; for it was here where he met Diego Alcaraz that subsequent circumstances began to shape the story, making Culiacan, pretended to be twenty-eight leagues from there, the objective point, that being the name of the intended rendezvous for the viceroy's contemplated expedition in search of the Amazons and a northern pass.
It is here the difficulty begins, and historical facts and actual locality of places then known will have to settle it. If the statement that he went from here to Culiaçan means to Culiacan in Sinaloa, then a question arises as to the distance between that place and San Miguel. He makes it twenty-eight leagues to the former, though he says it was only thirty to the latter, from where he met Alcaraz. If it was only two leagues from the one to the other, this fact ought to be known, notwithstanding he fails to state the distance, though he tells of going over it and staying at San Miguel till in May. He simply says: “And after the children were baptized, we left for the town of San Miguel.” 73
Now, if another person altogether was alcalde mayor and captain of that province, and not Melchior Diaz, in April, 1536, the presumption will be that Cabeza de Vaca did not go to Culiacan in Sinaloa; and if Diaz was in Jalisco at that time, with the troops of Chirinos, that presumption will be doubly supported; so it will here be assumed that Cabeza de Vaca met him at San Miguel on the Rio Verde, further evidence of which will be adduced in Part III.
That in the latter part of 1537, more than a year and a half after Cabeza de Vaca went through the country, Diaz went to the City of Mexico and presented a petition to the viceroy, asking for permission to make slaves of the Indians is wholly inconsistent with his having come from Culiacan in Sinaloa, where the noble Tapia had restored order among the Indians and extended to them protection against such ill treatment, after succeeding the cruel Proaño. But this will be fully examined in Part III of this paper.
It is possible that Cabeza de Vaca went from San Miguel, on Rio Verde, to Compostela, scarcely one hundred leagues, by way of Tepatitlan, Zapotlanejo, and Guadalajara, if he went there at all; but this question also properly belongs to and will be discussed in Part III.
This route from Sierra de Pamoranes to San Miguel on Rio Verde was not adopted without due consideration of what has been said and written about the route terminating at Culiacan in Sinaloa; nor is it the present purpose to deny that Cabeza de Vaca intended to state in his relation that he did go there. It is believed, however, that the great preponderance of evidence—the number of leading natural landmarks on the route here adopted—is sufficient to overbalance the assertion, and show that he did not go to Sinaloa, and before this paper is finally concluded the reasons for this belief will fully appear.
Now, looking back over this route, it will be seen that Cerro de Gigante stands between San Miguel and Santa Maria del Rio in the proper position to be the mountain on the point of which stood the Indian town where the Indians gave them the large amount of maize. Santa Maria's situation fully meets the conditions of the place where Cabeza de Vaca says they were waterbound fifteen days. It is in the gap in that part of Sierra Gorda, where the water from the country west and southwest of it concentrates to find outlet through the mountain; and when swollen, the river passing through there might well afford the impediment mentioned. It is more than probable that the soldiers of the command of Chirinos went through this gap in going into the Sierra Gorda, and they may have left the buckle that serves as the foundation for the whole story about Spaniards having been there. The circumstances of Salsipuedes meet Cabeza de Vaca's account of the place where he got emerald arrow points and his comrade got the open deer hearts, and which they called “el pueblo de los Corazones,” as being the place where they found the gathered maize (maiz allegado). The Bagres coming from the sunset, and from the great land of maize, to the junction of the Rio de Valles with it, suit the description given by Cabeza de Vaca, and that of the river they crossed at the end of the first seventeen days march up it. Valles fully meets the description of the town whose people they called “de las Vacas;” and the junction of the two prongs of the east branch of Rio de Valles that of the place where they found the houses with foundations situated on the river flowing between the mountains. The west prong of the Tamesí near the junction, meets the conditions for the third great river crossed, the water of which came up to their breasts. From here that part of the Sierra Madre extending to the vicinity of Mier y Noriega answers well for the fifty leagues of rough mountains passed through before crossing that third big river. The plain from near Mier y Noriega up to Rio Blanco satisfies the conditions of the relation, and Rio Blanco fully meets the description of the second great river coming from the north, at the end of the jack rabbit chase from the place where they ate the piñones. Galeana, with its surroundings, fully corresponds to the facts stated of the place where the village was on the beautiful river, where the people ate the piñones. The mountain crossed on the trail going over there from the neighborhood of Linares and Hualahuises, being covered with stones having the appearance of scoriae of iron, serves as a great natural monument to identify the vicinity of Linares and Hualahuises as the locality where they got the copper hawkbell. The chain of mountains to the south of Linares extending to Burgos and San Carlos suits the description of the range along the skirt of which they traveled inland, though the distance is not so great as that given. And Nogales above the point of Sierra de Pamoranes, which is within fifteen leagues of the Gulf coast, and the first so close west of the mouth of the Mississippi, meets the description of the place of twenty houses where Cabeza de Vaca passed the first night after leaving the place on the stream at the foot of the mountain and going along on the plain.
So on this route from Mal-Hado, as stated in the Naufragios, all the time spent by the Spaniards after being cast on the island until they ran off to the Avavares and while with them was previous to crossing the first great river coming from the north as wide as that at Sevilla, and the water of which came up to their breasts. The prickly pear region where they went two seasons to eat the pears and where they ran off to the Avavares; the place where Cabeza de Vaca met the other Spaniards; that where they went to eat the nuts; that where the buffalo herds were seen three times; that where the trees bore a fruit like pease; that where they spent the winter with the Avavares; that where they ate the flour of mesquite beans; and the thorny region where Cabeza de Vaca contemplated the suffering of his Savior under the crown of thorns, are all on the Mal-Hado side of, and before crossing, this first great river. The light colored Indians; the mountain within fifteen leagues of the sea coast, and having a stream flowing along its west side; the place where they were given the two gourds; that where they received the copper hawkbell; the mountain along the skirt of which they traveled inland to where they got the hawkbell; that s