THE WILD HORSES OF AMERICA. 201 



date of January 24, 1895. He knows all about the ruins in ques- 

 tion, for he owns the land on which they are situated, and puts 

 the whole matter very clearly, as follows: 



" I know nothing of the drawings of horses and other animals on the walls 

 of the ' Aztec Ruins ' here that Mr. Wallace speaks of. I think the drawings 

 were all in the imagination of the correspondent to whom Mr. Wallace refers. 

 I have been familiar with the ruins for fourteen years and this is the first time 

 I have ever heard of any drawings of horses on any of the walls. There are 

 drawings on some rocks some miles from the ruins, hut from their nature I 

 have considered them the work of the modern Indians. These ruins were 

 visited by a party of archeologists two years ago, who spent several weeks 

 here, and made a survey, with maps and general drawings of ihe same. They 

 decided that the main building had, originally, over seven hundred rooms." 



These letters are conclusive, so far as the region of the Las 

 Animas is concerned, and with that region knocked out there is 

 not enough left to justify further search for evidence that the 

 prehistoric races had any knowledge of the horse. Nothing re- 

 mained then but the linguistic test, and in 1885 I had such an 

 opportunity for applying this test as may never occur again. 

 This test formulated itself in my mind, in this shape: "Did any 

 of the nations or tribes of the aboriginal inhabitants of this con- 

 tinent have a word in their language indicating a horse?" 

 When in California I applied to Mr. Bancroft, the compiler and 

 publisher of the great documentary history of the Pacific coast, 

 who then had a large corps of skilled translators at work on his 

 famous compilation, and submitted my question. He introduced 

 me to his principal linguist, who knew not only Spanish, Eng- 

 lish and other modern languages, but also the language of the 

 Indians of the coast, the mountains and the plains, of the period 

 covered by the question. The question did not seem to be new 

 to him, and he answered with the candor and conscientiousness 

 of a man who knew what he was saying, that there was no word in 

 any of the Indian tongues, ancient or modern, that represented 

 the horse. This settled the question of the supposed prehistoric 

 character and rank of the horse, and we are thus driven to accept 

 the infinitesimally small number left behind by Cortez, Nunez 

 and De Soto as the seed from which sprang the countless thou- 

 sands of wild horses that for generations roamed the Western 

 plains. 



The story of the Conquest of Mexico is full of blood and 

 cruelty, but as we have nothing to do with any part of the story 



