LIFE INTHEFAR WEST. 163 



armed expeditions under adventurous desperadoes to take and re- 

 tain possession of the said country, with orders to compel the sub- 

 mission of the native tribes, and enforce their obedience to the 

 authority of the whites — that the simple and confiding Indians 

 began to see the folly they had committed in permitting the resi- 

 dence among them of these superior beings, whom they had first 

 looked upon as more than mortal, but who, when strong enough to 

 do so, were not long in throwing off the mask, and proving to the 

 simple savages that they w'ere much " more human than divine." 

 Thus, in the province of New Mexico, Fray Augustin Ruiz, 

 with his co-preachers, Marcos and Venabides, were kindly received 

 by the inhabitants, and we have seen how one million (?) Indians 

 came from the "rumbo" of the cibolo, ready and willing to receive 

 the baptismal sacrament. This Cibolo, or Sivulo, as it is written 

 in some old MSS., is, by the way, mysteriously alluded to by the 

 monkish historians who have written on this region, as being a 

 kingdom inhabited by a very superior class of Indians to any met 

 with between Anahuac and the Vale of Taos — in the enjoyment 

 of a high state of civihzation, inhabiting a well-built city, the 

 houses of which were three stories high, and having attained con- 

 siderable perfection in the domestic arts. This, notwithstanding 

 the authority of Don Francisco Vasquez Corona do, who visited' 

 Cibolo, and of Solis and Venegas, who have guaranteed the asser- 

 tion, must be received cum grano sails; but, at all events, the 

 civilization of the mysterious Cibolo may be compared to that of 

 the Aztec empire, under Montezuma, at the time of the Spanish 

 Conquest, both being egregiously exaggerated by the historians of 

 the day. Cibolo was situated on a river called Tegue. At this 

 day, neither name is known to the inhabitants of New Mexico. 

 If pate-shaven Venabides had held his tongue. New Mexico might 

 now be in the peaceful possession of the Catholic Missions, and the 

 property of the Church of Mexico pretty considerably enhanced by 

 the valuable ^Zaceres, or gold washings, which abound in that prov- 



