hough] ANTIQUITIES OF GILA-SALT VALLEYS 9 



Coronado, commanding an army of Spanish adventurers, traveled 

 from Culiacan, Mexico, and passed through this wilderness to Cibola 

 (Zurii). Coronado's route has long been a subject of inquiry, but it 

 i is now generally conceded that he passed down the upper course of 

 the San Pedro, thence northeastwardly to the Gila and over the 

 White mountains by the site of the present Fort Apache, Showlow, 

 and St. Johns to Zuni and the Rio Grande. The region is not believed 

 to have been inhabited at the time of the Coronado expedition, 

 but subsequently it was occupied by bands of Apaches, and the 

 settlement of the country was much retarded in consequence until 

 the establishment of military posts and the final pacification of 

 renegade bands in 1886. Up to the close of the Civil War the settlers 

 were almost exclusively Mexicans, whose principal occupations were 

 mining and farming. The region has never been of great historical 

 importance. 



ANCIENT AND RECENT NATIVE INHABITANTS 



The tribes formerly inhabiting the upper Gila-Salt River region are 

 probably not referred to in any traditions of the surviving Pueblos, 

 this fact making the problem of their ethnology one of extreme diffi- 

 culty. Only through the comparison of their arts with those of other 

 regions may even a general statement be made of their likeness or 

 entire dissimilarity^ to the other ancient inhabitants of the Southwest. 

 It seems likely, from the data at hand, that they w T ere distinct from the 

 tribes of the neighboring regions and sprang from an original local 

 source. 



Of interest, because it may indicate a migration of a Rio Grande 

 tribe to the headwaters of the Salt, is the statement in the ancient 

 Zuni origin myth that the hero Hliakwa, who, coming from Santo 

 Domingo, joined the tribe four years after the War gods had set 

 fire to the world, later separated from the Zuni and took up his 

 abode in the great mountain southwest of the sacred Salt lake. 



It is incredible that none of the blood of the inhabitants of the 

 Gila-Salt region passed into the surviving Pueblos, but there is no 

 proof of this having taken place. It is likely that the Pima-Opata 

 tribes to the extreme southwest and the Zuni to the northeast have 

 inherited all that remains of this ancient population, while the 

 Hopi to the north still retain traces of the influences of its culture. 

 A comparative study of artifacts must be further pursued to deter- 

 mine the points and the traditions of various tribes recorded with the 

 accuracy which characterizes Doctor Fewkes's work among the Hopi. 6 



"Mrs Matilda Coxe Stevenson. Twenty-third Report <*f Hunan of American Ethnology, 

 60. 



b Fewkes, Tusayan Migration Traditions, Nineteenth Report of Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, pt. 2, 626. 



