In this part it is the purpose to present:
First, the facts, as far as ascertained, showing how far south the buffalo came down to the Gulf coast as early as 1536, and how the people where Galeana is now, those of Tanzocob, and those along the lower Bagres might then have had their skins.
Second, the facts showing that Cabeza de Vaca met the first Christians in Jalisco, and that his statement that he went out to Culiacan was made under influences after he got to Mexico.
Third, the facts deemed sufficient to show that the statements made by Castañeda and Jaramillo as to Cabeza de Vaca and his comrades going through the barranca or ravine are unreasonable and not to be credited.
It being believed that the best guide in searching for the truth of a matter resting upon statements made, is that rule requiring a comparison of the facts stated with each other and with natural and known historical facts, in order to harmonize the whole as far as may be consistent, and to reject the parts contradictory to or in conflict with such known natural and historical truths, it was the aim of the preceding parts of this paper to follow such rule; and the reasons for adopting some of the statements made by Cabeza de Vaca and rejecting others will be shown in this part, to enable the reader to pass upon the route adopted. And that part of it presented in the first part being deemed sufficiently explained therein, nothing further than such corroboration as it may naturally receive from what may be said here as to the route from Nogales, or the point on the map marked G, forward to Rio Verde in Jalisco will be added to it.
Cabeza de Vaca mentions three places at which he says they gave him buffalo robes. These places will mark that part of the route along which these skins are claimed to have been possessed by the Indians. The first is the village where they ate the piñones, the second that where they called the people “los de las Vacas,” and the third along the route they traveled up the fourth large river before crossing it; and, as these have been assumed to be the present sites of Galeana and Ciudad de Valles, and that part of Rio Bagres below the mouth of Rio Verde, the question here is how those skins may have been there when Cabeza de Vaca passed through the country in 1536. In answering it the most difficult task, perhaps, will be to show how far the buffalo then ranged southward along the Gulf coast; and the facts collected by a very limited research must suffice for the present purpose, the reader being left to collate such further data on the subject as may be convenient to him, and then reason to his own conclusion.
The earliest written statement on this subject is that of Cabeza de Vaca, which is not a little obscure as to where he saw the buffalo herds the three times he mentions them. This statement comes after the account of his meeting with the other two Spaniards and the negro, and going with them to where they ate the nuts, and of his being given as a slave to the one-eyed Mariame Indian, while Castillo remained with the Iguaces. 2 He adds it after accounting for Castillo and Esquivel going to those Iguaces in on the mainland, leaving it uncertain whether he actually saw the animals or was relating what was told him by his companions as to their seeing them before meeting him. In either case, however, he leaves the impression that the buffaloes were seen while whoever saw them was with the Iguaces, who, according to the position he assigns them, 3 must have been between the Bravo and the Gulf coast further south than where the town of Corpus Christi is now situated. He says: “The cows reach here, and I have seen them three times and eaten of their meat * * *. They come from toward the north forward through the country to the coast of Florida, and spread themselves all over the land more than four hundred leagues; and on all this road along the valleys through which they come, the people dwelling along there descend and live upon them; and they take inland many skins.” 4
While he does not clearly express whether the cows came from some place four hundred leagues north of the coast or spread out such distance over the land along it, yet as he was treating of the coast, it may be presumed he meant the latter, which is borne out by the skins being taken inland, or in a direction from the Gulf.
Of course he meant the coast of Florida as then known, and not as shown on modern maps; for there seems to be a want of evidence to show that the cows ever came down to the Gulf coast at any point east of the mouth of Trinity river. 5 This seems to require something to show what he meant by the coast of Florida.
The Florida assigned to Pánfilo de Narvaez by Charles V. comprised all the provinces on the main from Rio de las Palmas to the cape of Florida. 6 Don Luis de Onis says, in the negotiations preceding the treaty of 1819: “Under the name of Florida was then embraced all the country from the Rio de las Palmas, which is the confine of Pánuco, to the 48th degree, an extension of more than 600 leagues, crossing the Mississippi.” 7 The first part of Chapter I. of the Naufragios shows Cabeza de Vaca was aware of the Rio de las Palmas being the boundary between the province of Pánuco and Florida; and if he had seen Pineda's map or chart of the Gulf coast, he also knew that it was only one hundred leagues from such boundary to Espiritu Santo Bay. So it may be presumed he referred to that part of the coast from such boundary as far north and east as the cows came down to it, applying to it his usual skill in exaggerating distance. He had traveled along that coast forty or fifty leagues while peddling, and knew the Indians inland, and they may have told him how far the cows went south of their territory, possibly making it far enough to reach Rio de las Palmas; or he might have received such information from the light colored Indians, those at the foot of the mountain where he spent two nights, or those of the twenty houses he found the day he left the latter place.
The next written statement in regard to the range of the buffalo herds known to the writer is that found in a manuscript, written at Saltillo in 1792, by the Bachelor Don Pedro Fuentes, then vicar and ecclesiastical judge of that place. In speaking of the Chichimeca nations, he says:
“At a little more than the middle of the sixteenth century of the Christian era and thirty years or more after the Mexican conquest, the famous General Don Francisco de Urdiñola, the elder, began to make war upon this Chichimeca nation, and without ever being repulsed by it, defeated it many times to the north, south, and west, founding all the towns in those directions. On being driven to this country, it subsisted upon the abundant game of buffalo, deer, turkeys, and other animals found in these lands, and on which many of the nations north of here support themselves at the present day, though they are very numerous * * *.
“This nation, what of it had remained after these past battles, taking refuge in this district of mountain ranges, deemed itself unconquerable; but the same general attacking it anew, destroyed it almost entirely.” 8
From this it may be inferred that the buffalo was abundant around where Saltillo and Monterey now are in 1556 to 1560, and may have gone along the plain north of Monterey, Montemorelos, Linares, Burgos, and San Carlos to the Gulf coast near the Soto la Marina river, formerly called Rio de las Palmas, 9 which is about thirty leagues north of the Pánuco river 10 and not fifty leagues from Tanzocob, now Ciudad de Valles; and the people of the latter and Hualahuises and Galeana may have hunted and killed the buffalo along there.
Don Diego Gonzales Herrera, who was born at Palafox, and, when that place was destroyed by Indians, taken to Laredo and reared there and at Estacas, six leagues below there, says:
“From ten years of age I began to go on the buffalo hunts with the men of Laredo to the north and northeast of there as far as the Nueces river. The buffalo then came below Palafox, and along in front of Laredo, and continued to do so at times till 1840. In my youth the old men of Laredo often told of a cold winter in which the buffalo came so near Laredo that some of them ran into the town, and when they went down southeast of there to the coast. Having joined a cavalry company in the Mexican service at Laredo, in 1834, I frequently went as far south as Burgos and San Carlos, where the old men had a tradition of buffalo herds having gone over the plain west of Pamoranes mountain to la Laja, now Mendez, and there crossing the Rio Conchas, passing on to the foot of the Sierra de San Carlos. I also knew the Lipan Indians at Estacas below Laredo till as late as 1840. They killed many buffalo and brought the meat and skins to that place and to Laredo to barter to the Mexicans; and I remember seeing a pet buffalo cow their chief, Castro, had trained to follow his saddle animal.” He was as clear and bright in mind and memory as are ordinary men at fifty years of age when he made this statement to the writer in presence of his family and Don Bernardo Mendiola, in Nuevo Laredo, on the 28th of November, 1899.
There is a well defined tradition among the Chapa family of Matamoros, that about 1808 the buffalo went down south of that place, and one of them came into the lands of the Chapa rancho to near a lake about eight leagues southeast of that place and was there found by Don Manuel Lopez de Chapa, and killed near that lake, and the place is still called El Cíbolo on account of the occurrence. 11 Matamoros was not then established, the place being called El Refugio. It was declared a port of entry on the 28th of January, 1823, under the name of Matamoros.
To avoid confusion, it is proper to bear in mind the Spanish names for the buffalo, used by different writers, and the orthography of these names as written may also serve a purpose.
Cabeza de Vaca called them vacas (cows), without mention of any other name; and Francisco Lopez de Gomara, who wrote between 1540 and 1553, publishing at the latter date, tells of Fray Marcos de Niza's traveling three hundred leagues beyond Culiacan in 1538, and returning with his tales of the wonders of seven cities of Síbolo, and saying that there was no cape to that land, but that the farther it extended to the west the more densely populated and richer in gold, turkois, and wool-bearing herds it was; 12 but he does not apply this name síbolo to the wooly cows. In fact such name was not applied to the wild cows until a much later date; and when it did come into use, the writers were not agreed as to its orthography. The first syllable was spelled tzi, zi, si, and ci, but in each instance the name was used to designate the buffalo. Solis called the buffalo bull found in Moctezuma's garden, “el Torro Mexicano” (the Mexican bull), but describes it so it cannot be mistaken. So this name vacas or cíbolos always means the same wild cows, when applied to the animals, they having been at a place so named, or a tribe so named having some connection with them; as when Cabeza de Vaca called the people of a town “los de las Vacas,” or when the earliest priests called a tribe Zíbolos, or when Fray Fuentes called the animals cíbolos, in speaking of the game eaten by the Chichimecas.
The name of the tribe Zíbolos is so written in Mota Padilla's History, as well as in volume XXXI., folio 208, of the Archivo General de la Nacion at Mexico, and Prieto calls the buffalo skins “pielas de síbolos,” while Tello, in speaking of Fray Niza's imaginary cities, writes it Tzibolo. In 1750 José Vasquez Borrego still called them vacas, but cíbolo was used by Fray Fuentes in his manuscript of 1792, and he is followed by most of those writing the name at a later date. And in the Diccionario Castellano, cíbolo is defined “toro de Mejico ó mejicano,” following Solis.
Now when either of these names is used by a Spanish writer we understand the buffalo is meant, and confusion is avoided.
It seems the buffalo herds retired northward as the Spanish settlements encroached upon their range, and finally they have become almost extinct. Indeed, it is said the only wild herds known to exist are about forty head in Sierra del Carmen in the northern part of Coahuila and about the same number in Lost Park, Colorado, the latter being protected by law from destruction by hunters. 13
Prieto tells of the Spaniards going on from Nuevo Leon into the department of Coahuila to trade with the Indians, exchanging cotton and woolen textures for skins of síbolos, deer, and other animals, of which they killed a great many; 14 this being before the foundation of Monclova and probably before Martin Zavala's appointment as governor in 1625, but over eighty years after Cabeza de Vaca passed through the country, José Vasquez Borrego complains of the officers in command of places in Coahulia in 1750 arming their soldiers with kettles, loading their pack animals with salt, and going out to kill the cows, try out their tallow, dry their meat, and dress their skins, and thereby failing to afford proper protection to the new settlers. He makes this complaint in an application to Escandon for a grant of land on the left margin of the Bravo below where Laredo now stands, and dated in 1750, a testimonio of which is found in the expediente of the title in the Spanish archives of Laredo, Texas. And among the places whose commandants so did is named la Punta, now Lampazos, south of the Salado river.
As late as 1847, buffalo were killed in abundance along the foot of Sierra del Carmen and on the plains and in the Sierra del Cíbolo east of it in Coahuila, and before that as far south as the Llano de San José and the Rio Sabinas; and the skulls and other bones of the animals were still seen on that plain as late as 1848. Then it was commonly understood in Santa Rosa, now Villa de Musquiz, that the hunters of that place had often killed buffalo along there in winter for many years, and had named for them places where they were killed; as Sierras del Cíbolo, Puente del Cíbolo, Arroyo del Cíbolo, etc. These places are mentioned by Velasco in speaking of the mountains of Coahuila, as “las Sierras del Cíbolo, which form irregular groups from the Rio Grande to Puente de Riesgo, north of the Sierra del Burro, and in it is the great gap (quiebra) called Puente del Cíbolo, where the arroyo of the same name passes.” 15 And among the wild animals of Coahuila he mentions the cíbolo. 16
Don Anastacio Castro, now of Laredo, but who was reared at Morelos, near Zaragoza, west of Eagle Pass, says that in 1858 the buffalo came so near Zaragoza that a buffalo bull came into the edge of the town with the gentle cattle and was there killed; and that he was there and saw it. Ten years before that the writer spent some time there, and went on scouts and in pursuit of Indians with Captain Patiña and the men of Morelos and Zaragoza, and it was a common thing to hear the older ones tell how they had gone out there to kill buffalo in winter.
Don Manuel Gonxales, grandfather of Hijinio Garcia, of Laredo, was born about 1780, and lived in Laredo till he died, about the beginning of the Civil War. He often told the incidents of his buffalo hunts above Laredo and on the Nueces river as low down as the mouth of the Frio river, till as late as 1840. There is a creek west of the Frio still called Cíbolo creek, as it is said, because the people of the Rio Grande, and the Carrizo Indians formerly camped on it when hunting and killing buffalo.
Captain Refugio Benavides, who recently died at Laredo, where he lived during his eventful and useful life, often related to the writer the interesting incidents of buffalo hunts he went on in his youth along the Nueces river, and he also said he had seen the Lipan chief's pet buffalo cow following his saddle mule, when those Indians had their camp at Las Estacas.
Michael Whelan, who settled at the mission of Refugio in 1832, frequently told of his killing buffalo in that section and between there and San Patricio, and he said that he had killed them along the Nueces river up as far as the mouth of the Frio as late as 1842. 17
Many years ago the Lipan Indians were accustomed to camp on the Nueces river near where San Patricio is now, to hunt and kill buffalo in that region during the winter season; and when the Mexican soldiers under Captain Enrique Villareal made their camp there, these Indians congregated round it, and it was finally named by Colonel Terán, Lipantitlan, 18 meaning Lipan land.
There is a tradition of the buffalo going to near the mouth of the Arroyo Colorado in large herds after the foundation of Reynos, which dates from March 14, 1749.
So for more than two hundred years after Cabeza de Vaca passed through the country the buffalo herds continued to pass down to the coast country round where Matamoros now is, and for three hundred years were still found along the Nueces and as low down the Bravo as in front of Laredo; and it was over two hundred years after he passed through the country that José Vasquez Borrego complained of the officers of Lampazos and other places in middle Coahuila for going on the buffalo hunts along there. Then is it not fair to presume that they went as far south as the San Carlos mountains, and even to Rio de las Palmas prior to 1536?
But if the people of Tanzocob and the lower Bagres did not go to kill the buffalo, there were abundant opportunities for them to have obtained the skins. Their kindred tribes were living, as shown by the manuscript of Fray Fuentes, among the buffalo herds in the vicinity of the present sites of Monterey and Saltillo twenty years after Cabeza de Vaca passed their villages, and must have had such skins to barter to their kindred tribes on visiting them.
Velasco says: “Before the arrival of the Spaniards, and prior to Urdiñola de Ibarra's expedition being sent out in 1556, there roamed over the territory of Nuevo Leon, which then lacked a proper name, nomadic tribes of Indians, some of them having come from Tamaulipas; as the Pames, the Janambres, the Positos, etc., who inhabited the southern part. The Juquiolanes and the Coapoliquanes lived in the mountains; in the region of Linares, the Hualahuises, the Comepescados and the Cadínias; in that of Montemorelos and Teran, the Borrados and Rayones; in Monterey and its surroundings the Guachichiles, the Aguaseros, and the Malinchenos; in Vallecios, the Ayaguas and the Garzas; in Salinas and Marin, the Cuanales and the Aiguales; around Lampazos and Agualeguas, the tribe de Mal Nombre, the Tobosos from Coahuila and the Alazapas. All these Indians, the major part of them being of the Nahoa family, were docile and lively, and the Spaniards were able to conquer them with facility.” 19
These twenty tribes extended from the Sierra Madre in Nuevo Leon to the Rio Salado and the Bravo, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, through a country where, according to Fray Fuentes, buffalo abounded as late as 1560. They were of a common family, and, in addition to the particular dialect of each tribe, they had a common tongue which extended from the Bravo to the Bagres and over to the territory of the Tarascos, as will be seen farther on; and it is reasonable that they carried the buffalo skins as far south as they had communication and mutual intercourse with the kindred tribes.
Of the Pames, Janambres, and Hualahuises, Prieto says they lived in the cantons of North Veracruz, Sierra Gorda, South Tamaulipas, and a part of Nuevo Leon in the fifteenth century; 20 and this scope of country embraced Tanzocob, the lower Bagres, and even Santa Maria del Rio, which is in the Sierra Gorda range, making a family connection with a Nahoa tongue from the buffalo range north of Galeana to beyond the place where Cabeza de Vaca mentions the last skins of buffalo being given to him. And if the buffalo ranged round the present sites of Saltillo and Monterey in 1556, it is not at all strange that these Indians living there should have killed them and carried their skins to Tanzocob and the Bagres river, and there bartered them to their kindred tribes, or that the latter should have gone up to the region of Linares, Hualahuises, Galeana, and Montemorelos and joined those living there in the buffalo hunts. If the herds ranged down the plain north of Burgos and San Carlos to the coast, it was not over fifty leagues from there to Tanzocob, and the people of this place may have gone up to the north side of Rio de las Palmas to kill them and carry their meat and skins to their villages and homes.
Again Velasco says: “The region at present occupied by the State of Coahuila did not form a part of the ancient Anahuac, but was considered by the Aztecs or Mexicans as the Land of the Chichimecas, or the zone which they considered as inhabited by the barbarous and roving tribes. In fact, there lived in it various nations of the Apaches, Comanches, and Lipans on the margins of the Bravo. At the arrival of the Spaniards there lived in the prairies and on the cordilleras to the west of the Bravo the Toboso Indians, to the north of the Iritiles. The Coahuiltecas lived in the eastern part of the State, as did the Cuachichiles, tribes which have disappeared. As respects the Apaches and Comanches, these have gone to Texas and New Mexico (United States), and if they penetrate Coahuila, it is only to steal cattle or to hunt cíbolos (buffaloes), the skins of which they highly appreciate.” 21
After filling nearly three pages with names of tribes living in Coahuila, he further says: “In addition to all these tribes which form the Texano-Coahuilteca family, whose tongue is very much like the Mexican, there existed, according to the letter of the viceroy, Conde de Revillagigedo, in reference to the suppressed missions, the tribes of the Babeles, Queiquisales, Pinanacas, Baguames, Isipopolames, Pies de Venado, Chacapes, Payagues, Gicocoges, Goricas, Bocoras, Escaoas, Cocobiptas, Codames, Tasmamaves, Filifaes, Junaces, Toamares, Bapancorapinacas, Babosarigames, Paseos, Mescales, Xarames, Chacaguales, Hijames, Terocodames, and Gavilanes.”
In the History of Mota Padilla there are cited the names of the tribes of the Pacpolos, Coaquites, Zíbolos, Canos, Pachochos, Sicxacamas, Siyanguayas, Sandojuanes, Liguaces, Pacuazìn, Pajalatames, and Carrizos.
In volume XXXI, folio 208, of the Archivo General, are cited the tribes of the Negritos, Bocales, Xanambres, Borrados, Guanipas, Pelones, Guisoles, Hualahuises, Alasapas, Guazamoros, Yurguimes, Mazames, Quepanos, Coyotes, Iguanes, Zopilotes, Blancos, Amilaguas, Quimis, Ayas, Comecabras, and Mesquites.
“Many of these tribes also inhabited the territory of Nuevo Leon.” 22
All these tribes were in or in reach of the buffalo winter range. The Zíbolos were in the middle part of the State, and must have killed buffalo in that region and had their skins, a circumstance from which the earliest Spaniards called them by the name given to the wild cows. The Liguaces were near the Bravo, and probably of the same tribe Cabeza de Vaca called Iguaces, in whose territory they saw the cows three times; and, in fact, this tribe may have been distributed on both sides of the Bravo, as the women from the west side had gone over to those on the east side and there told the Spaniards where their houses were, and finally guided them across the river. The Carrizos lived on both sides of the Bravo at places from where Reynosa is now up to near the Pacuache crossing, and even at the place now called Carrizo Springs in Texas. The Borrados and Blancos had homes on the Rio San Juan and in Coahuila and went with the Carrizos; a number of the Borrados having congregated with the Carrizos at Dolores below Laredo in 1750. The Pacuaches had their homes along the Bravo, below where the mission and presidio of San Juan Bautista was afterward established, at which they were congregated in 1701. They were buffalo hunters and followed the herds to the east of the Rio Grande, killing them as far as the Nueces river; and the ford at which they crossed the Bravo, twenty-five miles below Eagle Pass, is still known as the Pacuache Crossing. Most, if not all, of these tribes, being of the Nahoa family, had kindred tribes throughout the country from the Bravo to San Carlos mountains and even to the Sierra Gorda and Bagres river.
The Hualahuises, who had their principal home in the region of the present sites of Linares, Hualahuises, Rayones, Galeana, and Iturbide, extended to the northern parts of Coahuila, and had formerly had their homes in the Sierra Gorda and along the Bagres, and were doubtless of the same family tongue of those at Tanzocob. So it is to be presumed that they had mutual visits and exchanges with those of Tanzocob and the Bagres when Cabeza de Vaca went through the country, and may have carried there the very hides he speaks of. If Galeana is where he ate the piñones and got the first buffalo robes, he was then in the heart of the Hualahuises country, where, according to Fray Fuentes' manuscript of 1792, the buffalo ranged in the years 1556 to 1560.
When Cortés first went into the City of Mexico, Moctezuma had a buffalo in his garden, and Solis describes it, saying: “Among them [the animals Moctezuma had] the greatest novelty was a Mexican bull, most strangely formed of various animals, wooly, and hump-backed like the camel, close small flank, tail long, the neck shaggy like the lion, cloven foot, and forehead armed like the bull.” 23
There being a live buffalo in the City of Mexico at that time, it is not at all strange that the people of Tanzocob and the lower Bagres should have had the skins of such when Cabeza de Vaca passed there in 1536.
Even if the buffalo herds had never gone as far south as Monterey, or south of the Bravo, the fact of a common family and tongue extending from their range in Coahuila and Texas, where they have been killed within the memory of men yet living, makes it reasonable to suppose their skins were carried to and exchanged in the homes of those belonging to the Nahoa family as far south as it extended, and certainly to where it met with the Tarascos.
Now, about three hundred and sixty-four years after Cabeza de Vaca traveled over his route from the Isle of Mal-Hado to the Spanish settlements, this presentation of the buffalo question is made to the reader in view of what has been shown in the first and second parts of this paper as to the other signs of identity of his route; leaving the impartial and intelligent to determine, each for himself, whether it is brought within the bounds of reason that the buffalo skins may have been received at Galeana and Tanzocob, and along the lower Bagres as they were going up it towards the sunset to where maize grew all over the land.
It becomes necessary next to show the manifest exaggerations and misrepresentations in Cabeza de Vaca's statements of time, distance, etc.
He says they ran off to the Avavares on the thirteenth of September when the moon was full, and spent the winter with them, which is the only winter mentioned after he went to them till he reached the Spanish settlements, on the first of April following, making six months and twenty days, counting the day he arrived; and whatever length of time beyond this he claims his journey consumed is at least exaggeration.
He says he and his companions spent eight months with the Avavares, and after leaving them spent in traveling and delays about ten days to where they crossed the first great river as wide as that at Sevilla. They were three days going thence to where they saw the light colored Indians and began to see the first mountain, and one more in going to the stream at the foot of it. They remained there one day, and the next went over the plain to the twenty houses. They went thence in three days to where they got the gourds; and from there fifty leagues, say eight days, to where they got the copper hawkbell, and the next day to where they ate the piñones. Here they remained at least two days, as Cabeza de Vaca says he cut the arrow head out of the man's breast one day and the next he cut the two stitches, and he was well; and the wound he made on him did not appear to have been more than a mark of the palm of the hand, and he said he did not feel any pain or aching whatever. 24 They journeyed thence to the second great river coming from the north, say six days, and thence thirty leagues, say five days, and fifty leagues through the rough, dry mountains to the third great river, say eight days. Then they consumed in traveling and waiting for the return of messengers, say eight days, to the village on a stream flowing between the mountains, and one day thence to the town, the people of which they called los de las Vacas, where they remained two days. Thence they went seventeen days up the river to where they crossed it, and seventeen more to where they found the gathered maize and called the place the town of hearts. Thus he makes the time from leaving the Avavares to the arrival at Corazones ninety-four days, say three months, which added to the eight months spent with that tribe makes eleven months from the day they got with them on running off from their former Indian masters on the thirteenth of September. This makes it the thirteenth of August they reached Corazones, an exaggeration of four months and thirteen days over the time he says it took to reach the Spanish settlement.
The Spaniards remained at Corazones three days, and went thence to the place where the high water detained them in one day, and remained there fifteen days. From there the story of Cabeza de Vaca is vague, but leaves the inference that he was at least three days in reaching the town on the point of the mountain where he remained one day, and was one day in going to where he met his messengers. Thence to where he found the camping place of Christians he traveled two days; and thence to where he met the four horsemen and was taken to their captain, two days. There the record was made, showing the year, month, and day he had arrived there, and the manner in which he came. That place was thirty leagues from the town of the Christians, which was called Sant Miguel and was of the government of the province called Nueva Galicia. 25 After five days' delay Dorantes and Castillo arrived with the six hundred Indians who were of those people the Christians had made go up on the mountain. They remained here at least one day more, and were carried through the woods two days without water, and next day were taken to Culiazan. This makes thirty-five days more, and in all one year and four days from the time they ran off to the Avavares till they reached Culiazan and met Melchor Diaz. So the exaggeration of time spent along the different parts of the route is patent, which shows that Cabeza de Vaca's disposition was not altogether unlike that he attributes to the Indians, when he says: “And they told of us all the others had taught them, and they added much more, because all these Indian people are great friends of novelties, and very untruthful, especially where they pretend some interest.” 26
It is apparent that this count places his arrival at Culiazan, as he calls it, after the middle of September, though after arriving there they went out to bring in Indians and sent off two with one of the gourds he carried in his hands. After seven days they returned and brought with them three lords of those who were in revolt in the mountains, and after a long interview with them let them go with the two captives; and then the Indians of the province, having heard of them, came to see them, and they made them bring the children of the principal lords and baptized them. After a long story of what the captain did, he says they left for Sant Miguel, 27 without stating time or distance in going there; but fifteen days after their arrival, Alcaraz arrived also, and they remained there till the fifteenth day of May. But allowing them ten days at Culiazan, and fifteen at Sant Miguel before Alcaraz arrived would make it the tenth of October. So it seems he did not expect his exaggerations of time would be believed, for he shows that he went thence one hundred leagues to Compostela, where he remained ten days, and thence to Mexico, where he says he arrived on Sunday, one day before the eve of St. James' day, 28 which comes on the twenty-fifth of July.
It will be observed that in this count no time is included for their traveling through the one thousand leagues, or three thousand miles, of settled country where the people planted beans and maize three times in the year, 29 or for making any of the other wild flights, which will be considered in connection with distances stated in the relation.
The first dash at a stretch of distance is the fifty leagues from where they got the gourds to where they were given the copper hawkbell. It is an indefinite hundred and fifty miles, without a single attempt at description of any place passed while making it, except that it was inland along the skirt of the mountain. All along the same indefinite exaggeration crops out, until they start up the river towards the sunset to go to the land of maize. Then they were necessarily going in a direction from the Gulf coast, and may have started on this stretch at a point forty leagues from it. They made two principal marches of seventeen days each on this westward way, 30 and at six leagues per day would have made two hundred and four leagues, which added to the forty would put them two hundred and forty-four leagues from the Gulf coast at Corazones. But Cabeza de Vaca disregards all this and says: “By information which, with much diligence we were able to understand, from one coast to the other, at the widest, is two hundred leagues;” 31 and if both statements were taken as true, Corazones would have been at least forty-four leagues in the Pacific. Yet he says: “And for this we gave it the name of Corazones, and by it is the entrance to many provinces which are upon the Sea of the South; and if those who may go to seek it should not enter by here, they will be lost.” 32 And immediately he says: “We believe that near the coast, along the way we came by those towns, there are more than a thousand leagues of populated country.” 33 This, added to the two hundred and forty-four, makes twelve hundred and forty-four leagues, or three thousand seven hundred and thirty-two miles, a distance sufficient to have carried them from the coast of the Mexican Gulf to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
This is deemed sufficient to show that the statements of distances made by Cabeza de Vaca are not reliable and should not be taken as the basis for conclusions contradicting what is shown by the main natural objects he accounts for on his route.
It remains to be shown that Cabeza de Vaca did not go to Culiacan in Sinaloa, and that he made the statement that he went there, suppressing the real facts as to where he met the first Christians, for a purpose, while in fact he met them in Jalisco. This is a task not hitherto undertaken it is believed, though doubts on the subject seem to have occurred to one modern writer, which were dismissed upon the supposition of the credibility of this part of Cabeza de Vaca's statement, notwithstanding the appearance of some historical impediments.
It is not the present purpose to affirm the credibility of exaggerated and contradictory statements or those irreconcilable with known natural and historical facts, but to sift the statements and arrive at a reasonable conclusion as to the route of Cabeza de Vaca from Mal-Hado to where he actually met the first Christians. In discarding his incredible statements, the real truth contained in his relation is the aim, without entertaining any undue disrespect for the main subject. While the maxim falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus may suit the technical purpose of the barrister seeking to discredit the parts of a witness' testimony injurious to his cause, yet in the examination of historical matters that other maxim, falsa demonstratio non nocet, should be applied, and the real truth ascertained by excluding exaggerations and misrepresentations alone, for the falsity of their claim to have gone to Culiacan does not negative the fact of these survivors of the Narvaez expedition having gone to the Spanish settlements at some point and thence to the City of Mexico; and the object of this investigation is to ascertain as near as may be possible their actual footsteps in going over the route.
In order to do this, enough will be told of the campaigns made by Nuño de Guzman and his forces from the time he left the City of Mexico in November, 1529, until 1536, to enable the reader to follow the thread of affairs in Neuva Galicia, with such citations of authors as may be deemed proper to afford the means of verifying the important points as they are reached.
There are, of necessity, some questions about the identity of places mentioned, growing out of changes in orthography of the names of both places and things, but these may be referred to those about which there is no question, and thereby reconciled to the main truth.
The preparations made by Guzman included the sending of Pedro Almendez Chirinos to Zintzontzan and Patzcuaro to bring the Tarasco Indians and their king, Don Francisco Catzoltzin. On the return of this officer, Guzman raised the standard and appointed captains and royal officers and other ministers. 34
Things being ready, he went out from Mexico at the beginning of the month of November, 1529, and marched to the province of Jilotepec, approaching the province of Michoacan and the river which goes from Toluca, at which he arrived on the day of Concepcion de Nuestra Señora, and discovered a crossing at the town of Conguripo, which he named Nuestra Señora, because of the day when he arrived there. From there he sent a messenger to Captain Chirinos, ordering him to hasten his arrival, and bring all the men he could, both Tarascos and Spaniards, who desired to go on that campaign, and those of Jacona, which belonged to his encomienda; and at the end of two days he arrived, accompanied by the king of Michoacan, Don Francisco Catzoltzin, and all his people of war. On the 13th of December a church was erected, and on the 14th they sang the mass of Concepcion; and then Guzman reviewed the army, finding it consisted of two hundred Spanish cavalry and three hundred infantry, ten thousand Mexican Indians and ten thousand of the Tarascos and other nations. Then he appointed anew captains, royal officers, and constables, giving the lead to the principal men, as were Cristóbal de Barrios, caballero of the order of Santiago, and twenty-four of Sevilla; Pedro Almendez Chirinos, factor of Mexico; José de Angulo, Diego Hernandez Proaño, Miguel de Ibarra, Francisco Flores, Juan Villalva, Cristóbal de Tapia, Cristóbal de Oñate, and Juan de Oñate. He appointed Herman Flores royal ensign, Juan de Oñate and Juan Ojeda royal officers, Juan Sanchez de Olea major constable, and José de Angulo and Cristóbal de Tapia captains. And the army being together, the Captain General, Don Beltran Nuño de Guzman, received from the hands of the captain Chirinos the royal standard, and and raised it, taking possession of his conquest, which he called Castilla la Nueva de la gran España. (How it was afterward called Galicia will appear at the proper time.) 35
Here we have the whole expeditionary force, together with a list of the principal officers, who subsequently figured in the conquest, filling various positions; and reference to these may be had in comparing the statements of Cabeza de Vaca with the known history of the times to which they relate.
Passing over the cruel treatment and brutal murder of the king of Michoacan by Guzman, to satisfy a thirst for gold that no king's riches could quench, and the dissatisfaction in Guzman's camp as to the route to be pursued, and the change in favor of going down the river toward the territory of Francisco Cortés, as well as the struggles in crossing the river and in capturing the valley of Cuina, we come to that which has relation to the subject of this paper.
Tello says: “As soon as the captain Nuño de Guzman had concluded the war with the Indians of the river of Cuitzeo, as already said, he sent Captain Pedro Almendez Chirinos toward the North, in order that he might see and ascertain whether the route first taken when they started from Mexico was correct and true, and whether he could find any notice of the Amazons; for which he gave him fifty Spanish horsemen and thirty footmen and five hundred Mexican and Tlascalan Indians. Chirinos started from Cuitzeo river, and went to Tzapotlan del Rio, the valley of Acatic, and Tzapotlan de Juan de Saldivar, large capitals, and to Tecpatitlan, 36 to the Cerro Gordo, where there were many people of the Humares, of the Zacatecan nation, in ranchos. He went on approaching Camanja and las Chichimequillas, which is the place now called Los Lagos, where there were a great many settlements of people, living in movable ranchos and supporting themselves with game, rabbits, hares, and deer, dressed in skins, with the bow in hand, and sleeping where night overtook them. In the valley of Acatic he was very well received and regaled with bread and fowls, as if they were settled people, and he took possession. The other Chichimecas gave him only game, and therefore they would make no more records, only taking notes of places reached. And it being seen that there was no bread, and that they would have to suffer very much, they went to some villages of Zacatecans, whose cacique and lord was called Jiconaque, and arriving, they were received very well, and given maize, bread, and game to eat. And they asked the captain where he was going, and he said towards the north to hunt certain people of whom he had heard, and Amazons. The cacique said: `You should not go further on, because you will be lost; for passing beyond the Zacatecans, who are of our generation, all further forward are treacherous people, called Guachichiles, and there is nothing to eat. Only we, the Tzacateca people, plant some maize, and have ranchos; and if you desire to know what is passing I will take you to that large town of the Tzacatecans, only five days journey, so that you may believe me, and we will take something to eat with us.' And so they loaded up with about two hundred fanegas of maize.” 37
It will be seen that this march made by Chirinos passed places still known, which were then, in 1530-1531, large Indian capitals; as Tzapotlan del Rio, now Zapotlanejo; Tecpatitlan, now Tepatitlan, to the northeast of the former; Chichimequillas, now Los Lagos, at the north end of the fertile valley called “Valle del Bajio”; Cerro Gordo, where there were many people, which may have been where Santa Maria del Rio is now, or between that and Cerro Gigante, situate southeasterly from Los Lagos; the valley of Acatic, which was, in all probability, in the northern part of “El Bajio,” where they met the cacique called Jiconaque and loaded up with the two hundred fanegas of maize, and possibly the place from which the maize was taken to the point of the mountain where Cabeza de Vaca went up to the town and received such a vast quantity. So they crossed and went up east of the river now called Rio Verde, 38 in Jalisco, from near where it has its confluence with the Rio Grande de Santiago to Los Lagos, on a route almost identical with that assumed for Cabeza de Vaca from Cerro Gigante to San Miguel. They may have gone through the western part of “El Bajio” after leaving Tepatitlan, as Tello mentions the valley of Acatic before he does Los Lagos.
Passing over Chirinos' march to Zacatecas, and thence to rejoin the main column under Guzman, the onward march up the Pacific coast will be taken up. But it will be observed that much is said about what occurred along the Rio Grande de Santiago before the campaign to the north was undertaken in earnest.
In 1531 Guadalajara and San Miguel were founded; and then the troops divided into three columns, under Oñate, Chirinos, and Angulo, respectively. Their destinations were marked out in general terms; Chirinos was to go in search of the river Petatitlan 39 and province of Sinaloa until he reached all its settlements of which they had notice, and Angulo was to go into the mountains of Topia in search of the valleys of Pánuco until he should come opposite Tampico, the intention of which was to open a road that way, so that these two governments Guzman had under his charge might have communication. These two captains started on their routes in November, 1531. 40
Having dispatched the captains Chirinos and Angulo, neglecting all precaution and preparation in the town of San Miguel, Guzman went out therefrom by the rivers and coasts of the sea, and the towns surrendered in peace; but in spite of this, great cruelties were committed in them, in making slaves of the people and burning their houses. He went to the port of Bato and to the Ostial, and went up the river to Culiacan, which had more than five thousand inhabitants, and was the best of these provinces. The cacique received him in peace, and quartered him in his houses, where Guzman was royally treated; and he took possession of this province for the crown of Castile, and put the town in his encomienda. He remained some days in this town, where the Indians came to him with quantities of maize, beans, pumpkins, and fishes, in which the river of Culiacan was most abundant, being only two leagues from the sea. It was sufficient to sustain two cities like Lisbon and Sevilla, and the tide reached to the town. 41
Then follows a description of the conquest he made.
Captain Chirinos went by the river Petatitlan in search of the seven cities of fine houses, which, as Guzman had notice, were in the mountains of the interior, and to find a great river four or five leagues wide emptying into the Sea of the South.
Passing over that part of Chirinos' campaign and much foreign to the present subject, as well as the story of Chirinos having a battle with thirty thousand Indians, conquering them and putting them under the Spanish crown, and then passing on to the valley of Petatitlan, the part of the story pertinent here is reached.
After Chirinos came to the valley of Petatitlan, as Tello says, he remained there and sent out Lázaro Cebreros and Diego de Alcaraz 42 to make discoveries. And after these had determined to return to Petatitlan, they received notice of there being further on some white men who had a negro with them; and these two captains, with four other mounted men, went in search of them, and found they were Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, Castillo, Maldonado, and Esteban, the negro, who had reached the Yaquimi, where they remained fifteen days, crying over their long and painful journey. 43 An intelligent Indian had arrived there and told them to take consolation, because not far from there were many men like them; and this brought them to their senses, and they went in search of the men of whom they were told by the Indian, believing they were near the City of Mexico; and meeting Cebreros, he took them to where Alcaraz was, and they were taken by him to Captain Chirinos, by whom they were kindly treated, and who recognized them, because they had been his friends before the voyage to Florida. 44
According to this statement, the meeting at Petatlan was in the fall of 1532, nearly four years before the date at which it is claimed Cabeza de Vaca arrived at San Miguel, and almost three years before he ran off to the Avavares in the prickly pear range not very far from the Mexican Gulf coast. So it will be seen that this story requires sifting to get out what may be real truth, consistent with other known facts.
1.That “they believed they were near the City of Mexico,” may be true, as they knew of the Christians having possession of that region, and had an idea of its locality.
2.That they met with Cebreros and Alcaraz is borne out by Cabeza's relation, though the manner, time, and circumstances are very different.
3.That they were carried to Captain Chirinos at Petatitlan may be true; not, however, in 1532, when he was on his campaign north of Culiacan, but in 1536, when he was in his encomienda in the northern part of Michoacan, and probably on a visit north of the Rio Grande de Santiago, at the ancient Indian capital of Petatlan in the territory he conquered on his first campaign in 1530-31, when he took that place and others up to Los Lagos, then called Chichimequillas.
4.Cabeza de Vaca entirely ignores this meeting with Chirinos, as well as the fifteen day's stay on the river Yaquimi, and places the fifteen days delay one day from Corazones and before reaching the town on the point of the mountain where a large quantity of maize was received, and then accounts for every day till they met Cebreros.
Still striving to harmonize contradictory statements, that is, the known facts as to the campaign made by Chirinos in 1532, and what was spread broadcast over the City of Mexico, by gossip and the excited chroniclers, Tello goes on to say in the same connection of 1532, that Captain Chirinos left Petatitlan, with Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, and went to Culiazan, where Melchor Diaz, who was captain and justicia mayor, received them. In the church there they sang Te Deum laudamus, which is sometimes sung on such occasions, on account of it being seen that in two years, a little more or less, with so few Castilians, Chirinos returned in peace and without loss, although many of the friendly Indians were lacking; but in recompense it was God's will they should find the four Castilians. 45 But Cabeza de Vaca, whose zeal for religious matters was unbounded, fails to mention any part of all this ceremony, and does not mention being in company with Chirinos, or that he ever knew him. Indeed, the acknowledgment of such acquaintance would have been damaging to the plan manifest in the latter part of the Naufragios.
Again Tello says: “They rested in the town of Culiacan fifteen days, to be able to march seventy leagues, the distance to the City of Compostela, in Tepic, where Nuño de Guzman was. * * * Nuño de Guzman ordered a visit to Dorantes, Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, and Maldonado, and that they should be lodged in the quarters of the Captain Flores, and Estebanico in the house of Guzman. * * * And Captain Chirinos told him what he had discovered, and in what state he had left those provinces, and that there was no sign of gold or silver.” 46
Here the sifter must be brought in play, to separate the chaff of fiction from the real facts.
1.That Captain Chirinos left Petatitlan in Sonora in 1532, after ending his campaign, is historically true, and it is not improbable that he returned by way of Culiacan, where Te Deum laudamus may have been sung on his safe arrival; but it is impossible that Cabeza de Vaca could then have been with him, for he was yet with his Indian masters.
2.It is historically true that Chirinos did return to Compostela, while it was at Tepic and Guzman was there; but it is in contradiction to all the known facts about the travels of Cabeza de Vaca to say he was there with Chirinos in 1532. And the history of that time shows that Guzman was there in Compostela on the sixteenth day of December, 1532, and then and there made the Auto de Nuño de Guzman Para las Elecciones de Guadalajara, signing it, Fecha ut supra. Nuño de Guzman—Attested. Por mandado de S. S. Antonio de Teran.
Now, take another view of these statements, by changing the date to April, 1536.
1.Chirinos made no such campaign in 1536, for in the early part of that year he was in Jalisco and went to the celebrated meeting at Compostela, called by Guzman to settle the question as to making slaves, and from there returned to his encomienda in Michoacan, having retired from Guzman's service, as will appear further on.
2.Melchor Diaz could not then have been captain and alcalde mayor at Culiacan; for, while he was appointed to such position in San Miguel prior to its removal to Culiacan and may have so officiated there when Chirinos returned, yet on Easter, 1534, Diego Hernandez de Proaño was appointed to that place by Guzman, as shown by the record. 47 He held the office until some time in 1536, when, according to Tello, “it occurred that in the province of Culiacan, where Diego Hernandez de Proaño was captain and justicia mayor, there was an uprising of the Indians. The cause was Proaño's having exceeded and ill-used the license to make slaves, and being so cruel in this, that while the miserable Indians were in their markets buying and selling with perfect peace, he turned people and soldiers upon them to attack them, and ordered the capture of the youngest and best disposed Indians, whom they branded, chained together, and sold.” 48
Being informed of these facts, Guzman had Proaño arrested and brought before him at Compostela, and there tried and convicted him, sentencing him to death and confiscation of property, from which he was relieved on appeal. Upon the arrest of Proaño, Guzman appointed Captain Cristóbal de Tapia, a resident of Culiacan, to succeed him; 49 and the latter was still holding the office of alcalde mayor and captain of the province at the end of 1537, leaving no room for Melchor Diaz to have held such office there in the year 1536.
As the making of slaves had been absolutely forbidden by the king in 1532, the question naturally arises, what license had Proaño exceeded and ill-used? As it may not be generally known to the English readers what license is here referred to, and it may cast light upon the present subject to show, the following quotation is given:
“Year of 1536. Nuño de Guzman being in the City of Compostela, and it being discussed very much among the captains and other Spaniards, whether they would leave the country on account of the poverty of the realm, and this being understood by Nuño de Guzman, who lived in dread from the flight of the fifty Spaniards, and considering that if with force and rigor he should offer to detain those who remained, he would expose himself to the manifest danger that they might revolt and that it would result in some kind of civil and martial war, in which he might be lost, without allowing himself to be understood, he endeavored to remove those intentions, by giving license to make slaves, although it was against what his majesty had ordered in the year 1532, abolishing absolutely the custom of making slaves, even if they were cannibals; it appearing to Nuño de Guzman less inconvenient to fall into the hands of the king's indignation, than into those of the conquerors, because, if they left, all the country and what was conquered would be lost, and these might cause other irreparable injuries, which being remedied by the permission to make slaves, his majesty, as lord of his realms, might appease his indignation on that account.
“In order to deal with an affair so grave, he called the royal officers, alcaldes, magistrates, captains, and nobility, and, all being assembled, he required them to give their views upon the question whether slaves ought to be made, because his opinion was that slaves should be made of the rebellious; and all said there was no other means to remedy their poverty, a reason of state, which might prevail in supplicating his royal majesty to supersede his express order, until the discovery of some mines of silver and gold, and until cattle, sheep and other kinds of stock could be bred, in order to gain a support with the slaves in the meantime. But in no manner should there be slaves taken to another realm or government, with which the licensed use of making them was modified. The Spaniards remitted their opinion to that of Cristóbal de Oñate, who, speaking to the governor, said: `Sir Governor, these gentlemen, royal officers, alcaldes, aldermen, captains, and other noble persons have committed it to me to respond and give my opinion'; and, turning his face toward all of them, in order that they might say whether they had so determined, they responded in a loud voice, yes, that he should speak for all of them. Then he said that he conformed to the determination of his lordship in the name of those present and absent, on account of the great poverty in which they were living, because in that would consist their not abandoning the provinces they had pacified, and that if they left them it would be in disservice of God our Lord and of the majesty of the king of Castile, the natives of them having received the holy faith, and very many of them being baptized; and his majesty being fully informed of the most grave necessity which obliged them to act, he would hold it well done. Furthermore, the service and slavery should be personal and within the ports of the realm, for the conservation of which that law which prohibits slavery was dispensed with, and when the herds and other things should be augumented, the service should cease and those who were slaves should be free, carrying into due execution the mercy his lordship, the governor, designed to extend to them in the name of his majesty, who would receive it well when better informed. And with the use of the law of mild construction, he, in the name of all, gave his faith and word that they would not abandon the country, but rather, with more perfection, as loyal vassals of his majesty, they would put their forces in his royal service.
“Having heard Cristóbal de Oñate, who spoke in the name of all, Nuño Guzman pronounced a decree that they could make slaves, giving therein the order that had to be obeyed, and saying that there should be comprehended in the slavery, the mountaineers as rebels and disturbers of the peace, and conspirators against the royal possession. And having signed the act and license, he called the Captain Cristóbal de Oñate, who was one of the royal officers, and said to him: `Well do I know, sirs, that if this act and license be exceeded, I will have to pay for it, and I recognize the fault which I commit against what is ordained by the king our lord; but God knows that I attend more to his service and to that of his royal majesty than to our interests, and I will be satisfied if for the act they should cut off my head, for with this determination I prevent the gravest injuries, which, as they are known to us all, we will express to his majesty.'
“Nuño de Guzman delivered the license and act to Cristóbal de Oñate and the other royal officers, and ordered that the branding iron be made to mark the slaves, and that the royal fifth should be taken out; 50 and the next day the act was proclaimed with trumpets through the accustomed streets,, and the Indians of the mountains being in rebellion, it was ordered that they should be given reductive notices in order that they might enter into peace, but they would not submit themselves. This being seen by Guzman, he ordered that some raids should be made upon them, and some captains went with broad license, and were excessive in making slaves, because, without excusing ages, they branded them, and he who in this displayed himself most cruel was a captain, whose name I do not discover, because of his having paid for his ferocity in Peru, remaining blind and begging alms. When one said that his brother Cristóbal de Oñate and other Spaniards let their hands slip in similar cruelties, and particularly in not branding the children at the breast, he replied: `No, there is no reason to hold back.' And there was so much cruelty in making these slaves, that the clamor of the innocent reached the pious and Christian ears of the king our lord, who provided an efficient remedy, which will be seen in the residencia of Nuño de Guzman.
“Seeing this the captains Diego Almendez Chirinos and Orozco asked leave of Nuño de Guzman to return to Mexico, for they had served more than six years in that journey and conquest, and other twenty-five Spaniards also asked leave. And Pedro Almendez Chirinos, as inspector of the royal fisc, with much courtesy requested that Guzman should allow the friendly Mexican Indians and the Tarascos whom he had taken in his company to go away; 51 and Guzman granted the leave with disguised sentiment, and ordered them to prepare as soon as possible for their departure. But they who desired it were not at all slow, and within eight days left with twenty-five cavalry and eight thousand Mexican and Tarasco Indians that had remained. There were many envious of that day, but their nobility required them not to leave the realm.
“The army was diminished, and the captains Chirinos and Orozco went to Mexico, leaving the friendly Indians in Michoacan. Chirinos remained in Mexico with the Mexicans he took, having left in order his encomienda, of Jacona in the province of Michoacan, and Orozco went to Guaxaca, where he had his, and the twenty-five Castilians went to Peru, where they had better luck.” 52
There being no other license of the kind after the king's cedula of 1532 until this was adopted in 1536, it is presumed that Proaño's abuse of it was after its being issued, and, therefore, his arrest and trial for such abuse must have been as late as 1536, and not in 1532, as may be inferred from the vague statement of Mr. Bancroft, who partly relieves his statement from such view by saying: “In a vain effort to regain lost favor at court Nuño de Guzman, regardless of his own past policy and instructions, caused Captain Proaño to be arrested and brought to Compostela for trial, on charge of making slaves in violation of law.” 53 But what past policy and instructions did Guzman disregard? Were not they embodied in the decree at Compostela mentioned above, which occurred in 1536? Since the records show no other after the king's order of 1532 absolutely abolishing such custom and since they also show Proaño's appointment in April, 1534, is it not plain that it was the notorious policy adopted in 1536? In this connection, Mr. Bancroft says: “According to Beaumont and Ramirez, Cristóbal de Tapia was sent as alcalde mayor to San Miguel,” 54 which shows Tapia was successor to Proaño, whose appointment then dated from Easter in 1534. And, whether Proaño was the first alcalde of San Miguel and Melchor Diaz a little later, as stated by Mr. Bancroft, or Diaz was the first, as stated by Tello, and held the office until April, 1534, the fact that Proaño was arrested, tried, and condemned for the violation and misuse of a license issued at Compostela in 1536, and Tapia was made his successor, precludes Diaz from being such officer in April, 1536, when Cabeza de Vaca met Alcaraz.
Speaking of the appointment of officers by Coronado, Tello says: “In Culiacan there was another captain made, who was called Melchor Diaz, who was alcalde mayor and lieutenant-governor in that province.” 55 Whose lieutenant was he? Certainly not Guzman's who had already been arrested and sent to Spain; and not that of the Licentiate Diego Perez de la Torre, for he was commissioned to act as governor and to take the residencia of Guzman and his officers, and to take charge of the government of Nueva Galicia; and finally, after taking the residencia of Guzman at Mexico, and of his officers at Pánuco, he reached Guadalajara in 1537, where he died in January, 1538, leaving Cristóbal de Oñate as governor by public instrument, and no sign of his removing Tapia has been met so far. 56 Whether Oñate made any change at Culiacan, or San Miguel, as it was then called, is not made to appear, nor does it make any difference whether he, or Coronado, after succeeding him, appointed Melchor Diaz, as Cabeza de Vaca was then already in Spain. So it may be presumed that Coronado made Diaz captain and his lieutenant-governor at Culiacan in lieu of Tapia, since no earlier record of the change appears to have been found.
Thus it seems that Proaño's offense was an alleged breach of the license issued at Compostela in 1536; that he was then acting under his appointment of April, 1534; and that his immediate successor was Tapia, appointed by Guzman, who continued to be governor of Nueva Galicia till late in the fall of 1536, long after Cabeza de Vaca had passed through and gone to Mexico.
Is it rational to suppose that Cabeza de Vaca went to Culiacan in April, 1536, and was ignorant of all these facts? If he had gone there before the arrest, Proaño would have been the alcalde mayor and captain of the province; and if he had gone there after the arrest, then Tapia would have been such officer there. Guzman was still governor, as shown by all authorities, and if he did not remove Tapia, he or Proaño must have been at Culiacan in April, 1536. This would contradict the statement that Melchor Diaz then held the position, showing it untrue, and assumed without proper knowledge of collateral facts, or in disregard of them. If Cabeza de Vaca left Culiacan and went to San Miguel and there remained until May 15, 1536, where was that San Miguel? Was not the town of such name removed to Culiacan long before that? Whether Guzman removed it to that place in 1531, as said by Tello, or in 1532, as claimed by Bancroft, it was certainly done before 1536, and the two were then one and the same. 57
If, as Cabeza de Vaca says, he went from San Miguel to Compostela in company with six men in charge of five hundred Indian slaves, it must have been after the license to make slaves was issued; else they would not have been driving such a herd of them to Guzman's capital; and this would have required Proaño still to be alcalde mayor and captain at Culiacan. Do not these facts show that Cabeza de Vaca did not go to Culiacan, and that he suppressed real facts and substituted others with which he was not acquainted, and which were not sustained by the history of the times? Let all impossible and contradictory parts of the story of his going to Culiacan be sifted out and discarded, and then it will be seen what is left.
Pedro Almendez Chirinos was not at Culiacan with his forces in April, 1536, as there is no account of his going there after his return to Compostela in the latter part of 1532. He could not then have taken with him the survivors of the Narvaez expedition; for at that time they had not left the prickly pear region on the Mexican Gulf coast, nor had they crossed the great river as wide as that at Sevilla. There is not even a pretence in Naufragios that they reached the first Christians before 1536, and the claim that they met them in 1532 contradicts a large proportion of the relation in regard to their stay with their Indian masters. It is not claimed in the relation that they met Chirinos or ever heard of him in New Spain. The story of their being in Culiacan in 1532 is totally ignored, and that of their being there in 1536 is tainted with statements contradicting the records and history of the country at that time; so the claim that they were there at all should be discarded.
Cabeza de Vaca fails to tell of crossing a single river or seeing any natural object along the pretended march from Culiacan to Compostela, or any persons except the escort a short distance from San Miguel to where he met the six men and five hundred slaves, none of whom has he described even by name. So Cabeza de Vaca's reaching Culiacan must go with the chaff, and that Captain Chirinos was there in 1536 is equally unfounded. That Cabeza de Vaca traveled to Compostela with the six nameless men and five hundred Indians made slaves contradicts all the other data; and that he spent over a month with Melchor Diaz on the way from Culiacan to Compostela, and that Diaz was then the captain and alcalde mayor of that district is unfounded and violative of the historical record as to others filling that place in 1536. All these things may be discarded. But Cabeza de Vaca may have met Melchor Diaz on the first of April, 1536, on Rio Verde of Jalisco, above the ancient Indian town of Petatitlan; he may have gone with him and Cebreros to Petatitlan and there have met Captain Chirinos, as that was in the latter's first conquest in Nueva Galicia, and not far north of his encomienda accross the line in Michoacan. He may have there embraced his old friend Chirinos at that time and engaged in singing with him Te Deum laudamus; he may have gone thence with the captain to Compostela and have been present at the meeting when the resolution to make slaves was adopted; and he may have protested against the slave business and made a note of it. Though he is silent on all this, there is a connection of facts to bring it to light.
As above related, the two, Chirinos and Orosco, withdrew from the service of Guzman when the slave resolution was adopted at Compostela in 1536, and it remains to be shown that the claim that Cabeza de Vaca came there from Culiacan in 1532 is a mistake by Tello, as he gives a key for its correction. When he comes to treat of what took place there between Cabeza de Vaca and Guzman he says:
“It is already told how Captain Chirinos, when he returned from the river Yaquimi and Petatlan, brought in his company the Castilians from Florida. These having been in the city of Compostela some days, and seeing the disorder there was in making slaves, Cabeza de Vaca said to Nuño de Guzman he had let his hand slip in it, and that he should remedy it to prevent his receiving injury, it being in disservice of God and the king. And having heard them, Nuño de Guzman was offended at them, and dispatched them for Mexico, because in those times, and even in these, in the West Indies, the truth is regulated and tyranny prevails, and their ministers and officers take more hand than is given them by the offices, his majesty being absent. They took out a testimonio of the mode used in making slaves, and left at the beginning of June of the year 1536, and arrived at the City of Mexico on the 22nd of July. There they were well received by the viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza, who ordered them to make a map of their peregrination and the countries they had seen, because he proposed to make a new discovery, which Cabeza de Vaca and Andrés Dorantes made and delivered.” 58
The testimonio is a certified copy of the protocol, and, in this instance, showed that the license to make slaves and the manner of doing it constituted a protocol, and the testimonio was plenary proof of it, which Cabeza de Vaca, as a lawyer, understood, so this clearly corrects the error as to his being there in 1532.
Of this matter, Cabeza makes no mention in his relation, nor does he mention that Chirinos was there; but it is evident that if he went there at that time, there was some foundation for the statement that he accompanied Chirinos and his command, and not the six men with five hundred Indians made slaves. He may have taken the idea of getting a copy of the license to make slaves from the discontent of Chirinos and his asking permission to retire. For some reason not given, he omitted the trouble at Compostela, his taking the testimonio of the license, and the fact that he warned Guzman of the danger he was in on account of the affair. His whole description of the journey from San Miguel to Compostela is as follows:
“In the town of Sant Miguel we remained till the 15th day of May, and the cause of our remaining there so long was that from there to the city of Compostela, where the Governor Nuño Guzman resided, there are one hundred leagues, all unsettled and full of enemies, and people had to go with us with whom there were going twenty cavalrymen, who accompanied us forty leagues; and from there forward there came with us six Christians, who were bringing five hundred Indians made slaves. On our arriving at Compostela, the Governor received us very well, and of all he had he gave us to clothe ourselves, which for many days I could not use, nor could we sleep except on the ground; and after ten or twelve days we left for Mexico. All along the road we were well treated by the Christians, and many came along the roads to see us, and they gave thanks to God for having delivered us from so many dangers. On Sunday, one day before the eve of St. James, we arrived at Mexico, where by the Viceroy and the Marqués del Valle we were well treated and received with much pleasure, and they gave us clothes, and offered all they had, and on St. James' day there were feasts, firing of rockets, and bull fights.” 59
This quotation shows all said about the whole journey from San Miguel via Compostela to Mexico. It is devoid of the description of a single point on the way. It crosses all the rivers within one hundred leagues of Compostela going along the coast, without the mention of one, or even of the coast of the great Sea of the South. Omitting all the rivers except one, can it be believed he would have crossed the Rio Grande de Santiago, emptying into the sea not far from Tepic, without noticing it? Did not the volcano Cangruco, rising more than six thousand feet above the plain of Tepic and Compostela, afford him a scene worthy of note? Did he cross the rivers Quilá, Elote, Piaxtia, Quelite, del Presidio, Chametla, and the Narrows, and even Tequepan Bay, unnoticed? Did he thence pursue Guzman's road, crossing Rio Chico, Rio San Pedro, and Rio Grande de Santiago to Tepic, without seeing any of these or the Pacific? Why was he so averse to naming these rivers and places, if he really passed them? But from Compostela to Mexico what does he state to show he traveled the road, except that the people came out to see him? The road went up the south side of the Rio Grande to Guadalajara, then a considerable place, in fact, the largest in Nueva Galicia; but he seems to have overlooked it. Either side of Lake Chapala he may have taken would certainly have presented a grand and enchanting scene, yet if he passed along there he concealed the fact. In a word, if he had passed down from Culiacan, the intended rendezvous of the viceroy's pet expedition, he would have grown eloquent in the description of so many rivers carrying much water (caudalosos), but he does not even tell whether they were breast deep like those crossed on the first part of his route.
Now, if he met Cebreros on the stream flowing down from Chichimequillas or Los Lagos to the Verde and then went to San Miguel to meet Melchor Diaz, and thence to Tepatitlan and there met Chirinos, he may have gone with him to the meeting at Compostela, all in the spring of 1536, without contradicting known history; and when Captain Chirinos left Compostela, he may have gone with him to Jacona, the head of his encomienda, and rested there, and then have gone with the captain to the City of Mexico. But if this route had been reported to the king, it would not have favored the expedition to hunt the Northern Pass, the Amazons, or the Seven Cities of Cíbolo.
That Mendoza had already conceived the idea of making new discoveries toward the north is generally understood. Tello says Mendoza “ordered them to make a map of their peregrinations and the countries they had seen, because he proposed to make a new discovery; which Cabeza de Vaca and Andrés Dorantes made and delivered.” And this map would have shown many of the natural objects along their route, had it been preserved or exhibited to the king, a consequence that may have been unfavorable to Mendoza's design. It was either not of sufficient importance to require its preservation, or too damaging to the idea of its leading to an expedition to the north in search of the Amazons, the Seven Cities, or the Northern Pass to the Islands of Spices, to allow its presentation to the king on such subject, or its preservation in the Archivo General. At least the writer has met with no authentic account of its having been sent to the king or placed in the archives at Mexico; nor has he been able to find any trace of the record made when Cabeza de Vaca encountered Diego Alcaraz, of which Cabeza de Vaca says: “And I asked that there should be given to me in testimonio the year and the month and day I had arrived there, and the manner in which I came, and so they made it.” 60 This document might have shown that Diego Alcaraz belonged to Pedro Almendez Chirinos' command and was in the limits of Jalisco. It might have explained that he was one of the captains of such command, stationed above San Miguel, or subordinate to Melchor Diaz at that place; but if it did then its presentation to the king would have shown that the route of the survivors of the Narvaez expedition was not such as would have afforded any reliable information as to the wonders of Síbola, Quivira, or the Amazons. And the map taken with this document might have shown very much the same route traced on the sketch attached to Part II of this paper, which would have been detrimental to the real design of Mendoza and those interested in procuring royal permission and aid to make the expedition to the north. But the map and document having disappeared, their effect was obviated.
2. Naufragios, Cap. XVII.
3. Naufragios, Cap. XVIII.
4. Ibid.
5. The writer has met with no written account or tradition of these herds going through the pine forests to that part of the Gulf coast.
6. Naufragios, Cap. I.
7. Memoir of the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America leading to the treaty of 1819, published in Madrid in 1820, and reprinted in Mexico in 1826.
8. See Collection of Notes and Documents for the History of the State of Nuevo Leon, by Eleuterio Gonzales, Professor of History in the Civil College of Monterey, Chap. I.
9. In 1523, the expedition which Garay commanded in person arrived at the Barra of Palmas, which was afterward called Santander and is now called Soto la Marina. Prieto: Historia, Geografia, y Estadística del Estado de Tamaulipas, p. 14.
10. Francisco Gomara says the river of Palmas is thirty leagues above Pánuco towards the north. Historia de las Indias, Tit. Rio de Palmas. And he says: “From Pescadores, which is 28° 30’ N., it is one hundred leagues to Rio de las Palmas, near which the tropic of Cancer passes. From the Rio de las Palmas to the river of Pánuco it is more than thirty leagues.” Ibid. Tit. El Sitio de las Indias. All well informed Mexicans know Rio de Soto la Marina is identical with the Rio de las Palmas of the Spaniards, which formed the northern limit of the province of Pánuco.
11. One Chapa, now living in Laredo, but of that same family, and Don Victoriano Chapa, now living in Live Oak county, at the ripe age of ninety years, uncle of the first, and who was captured by the Comanches in 1818 and kept till 1829, both tell this tradition.
12. Historia de las Indias, Tit. Síbolo.
13. This information as to the latter herd was given by C. E. Tillotson, of Manitou, Col.
14. Historia, etc., p. 81.
15. Velasco: Geografia y Estadística, Coahuila, p. 25.
16. Ibid., p. 36.
17. This information was given at Corpus Christi on September 23, 1899, by Pat Whelan, a relative of Michael Whelan.
18. These facts were stated by José Maria Villareal, son of the Captain, at Matamoros in 1887, he having been at Lipantitlan with his father from 1828 to 1835.
19. Vol. Nuevo Leon, p. 144.
20. Historia, etc., p. 8.
21. Vol. Coahuila, pp. 9-10.
22. Velasco: Vol. Coahuila, pp. 15-16.
23. Historia le la Conquista de Mexico, Lib. III, Cap. XIV.
24. Naufragios, Cap. XXIX.
25. Ibid., Cap. XXXIII.
26. Naufragios, Cap. XXIX.
27. Ibid., Caps. XXXV, XXXVI.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., Cap. XXXII.
30. Naufragios, Cap. XXXI.
31. Ibid., Cap. XXXVI.
32. Ibid., Cap. XXXII.
33. Ibid.
34. Tello, Cap. XXVI, and authors there cited. Pedro Almendez Chirinos was then in possession of his encomienda of Jacona in Michoacan and had authority among and was respected by the Tarascos.
35. Tello, Cap. XXVI. Diego Hernandez Proaño was afterward made alcalde mayor at Culiacan. See account infra. Tapia was his successor.
36. This name is so written by Tello, though it is the same generally called Tepatitlan.
37. Tello, Cap. XXXVIII.
38. This is the river on which San Miguel is marked on the sketch accompanying Part II, but its name was omitted in transferring the sketch.
39. This is the river so called above the Culiacan river.
40. Tello, Cap. XLVIII.
41. Ibid., Cap. LII.
42. These two were then under Chirinos.
43. Tello, Cap. LIX.
44. Tello, Caps. LIX-LXI.
45. Tello, Cap. LXIII.
46. Tello, Cap. LXIII.
47. Ibid., Cap. LXIX.
48. Tello, Cap. LXXX.
49. Ibid.
50. The king reserving to his treasury a fifth of all reprisals, as such gains were called, it seems that Guzman, as a lawyer, intended to commit him as a party interested.
51. This shows that neither of the Captains Chirinos left the service of Guzman in 1530, as supposed by some writers, but that they both retired in 1536, when the license to make slaves was issued at Compostela. It seems that Pedro Almendez Chirinos kept soldiers under his command in his encomienda at Jacona till as late as 1551, when, as Velasco says, they went to where the city of Leon is now situated, which place they had named Valle de Señora. See volume Guanajuato, p. 215.
52. Tello, Cap. XXV.
53. N. Mex. States and Tex., I, 59.
54. Ibid.
55. Tello, Cap. XCIX.
56. Ibid., XCI.
57. See Tello, Caps. XLVIII and LII.
58. Tello, Cap. LXXIV.
59. Naufragios, Cap. XXXVI.
60. Naufragios, Cap. XXXIII.
How to cite:
Coopwood, Bethel, "ROUTE OF CABEZA DE VACA ", Volume 003, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 229 - 264. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v003/n4/article_1.html
[Accessed Tue Dec 2 20:40:26 CST 2008]
