329 



see that Coronado's inarch from Chichilticale, or Casa Grande, must 

 have been very nearly coincident with the route there laid down, to wit: 

 in a northeasterly direction for the first thirty leagues, over the rough 

 Final and Mogollon Mountains ; and then getting on the tributaries of 

 the Rio del Lino, or Flax River, where he found " fresh water and grasses," 

 he followed up the Verinejo, or Colorado River, to Cibola, or Zuni of the 

 present day and its vicinity, where he found the other six cities. The 

 distance by such route, between Chichilticale and Zuni, would be about 

 270 miles, or require a journey of 17 days, (about 10 miles a day,) the 

 time it took Coronado to accomplish the distance ;* and this agrees quite 

 exactly with the distance, 80 leagues, as given by Castaneda in another 

 place t 



( But there are other good reasons for this belief. At Zuni and its 

 vicinity, within a distance of about 16 miles, and on the banks of the 

 Vermejo, or Little Colorado River, there are the ruins of as many as six 

 pueblos, all showing that they were once built of stone ; and, with the 

 present Zuni, doubtless they constituted the "seven cities" which, ac- 

 cording to Coronado, were all built "within four leagues together," | 

 and according to Castaneda were "situated in a very narrow valley be- 

 tween des Montagues Escarpees, r which may have been intended to 

 mean escarped mesas, or table lands, just as close in the valley of the 

 Little Colorado or Rio de Zuiii. 



In my report to the Chief of Topographical Engineers of my reeon- 

 noissance made in the Navajo country in 1848, I described Zuni as fol- 

 lows: "The pueblo of Zuni, when first seen about three miles off, appeared 

 like a low ridge of brownish rocks, not a tree being visible to relieve 

 the nakedness of its appearance. It is a pueblo or Indian town, situ- 

 ated on the Rio de Zuiii. This river at the town has a bed of about 150 

 yards wide. The stream, however, at the time we saw it, only showed a 

 breadth of about G feet and a depth of a few inches. It is represented 

 as running into the Colorado of the West. The town, like Santo Do- 

 mingo, is built terrace- shaped, each story of which there are generally 

 three as you ascend being smaller laterally, so that one story answers, 

 in fact, for the platform of the one above it. It, however, is far more 

 compact than Santo Domingo, its streets being narrow, arid in places 

 presenting the appearance of tunnels or covered ways, on account of 

 the houses extending at these places over them."|| 



Lieutenant A. W. Whipple, Corps Topographical Engineers, visited 

 the ruins of old Zuiii in 1853-'54, and in his report to the War Depart- 

 ment thus describes the place : " We took a trail and proceeded two 

 miles south to a deep canon, where were springs of water. Thence by 

 a zigzag course we led our mules up the first bench of ascent. At vari- 

 ous points of the ascent, where a projecting rock permitted, were barri- 

 cades of stone walls, from which, the old man (his guide) told us, they 

 had hurled rocks upon the invading Spaniards. Having ascended, 

 according to our estimate, 1,000 feet, we found ourselves upon a level 

 surface covered with thick cedars. The top of the mesa was of an irregu- 

 lar figure a mile in width, and bounded on all sides by perpendicular 

 cliffs. Three times we crossed it, searching in vain for the trace of a 



* Castaneda's Relatious, pp. 41. 42. 



t Ibid., p. 188. 



t Coronado's Relations, Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 451. 



$ Castaneda's Relations, Ternaux Compans, p. 164. 



|| "Journal of a military reconnoisBODCe from Santa F<5, New Mexico, to the Navajo 

 country, made by Lieutenant J. II. Simpson, Corps of Topographical Engineers, ia 

 1849," United States Senate Ex. Doc. No. (il, :',lst Congress, 1st session, 18">U ; also, Lip- 

 piiicott, Grambo & Co., Philadelphia, Id5'2, pp. 89 ami 9U. 



