356 THE CORONADO EXPEDITION, 1540-1542 [eth.ann.14 



Estevau started on Passion Sunday, after dinner. Four days later 

 messengers sent by him brought to the friar "a very large cross, as tall 

 as a man." One of the Indians who had given the negro his informa- 

 tion accompanied the messengers. This man said aud affirmed, as the 

 friar carefully recorded, "that there are seven very large cities in the 

 first province, all under one lord, with large houses of stone and lime; 

 the smallest one-story high, with a fiat roof above, and others two and 

 three stories high, and the house of the lord four stories high. They 

 are all united under his rule. And on the portals of the principal houses 

 there are many designs of turquoise stones, of which he says they 

 have a great abundance. And the people in these cities are very well 

 clothed. . . . Concerning other provinces farther on, he said that 

 each one of them amounted to much more than these seven cities." All 

 this which the Indian told Friar Marcos was true; and, what is more, 

 the Spanish friar seems to have correctly understood what the Indian 

 meant, except that the Indian idea of several villages having a common 

 allied form of government was interpreted as meaning the rule of a 

 single lord, who lived in what was to the Indians the chief, because the 

 most populous, village. These villages of stone aud lime — or rather of 

 stone and rolls or balls of adobe laid in mud mortar and sometimes 

 whitened with a wash of gypsum 1 — were very large and wondrous 

 affairs when compared with the huts and shelters of the Seri and some 

 of the Piman Indians of Sonora. 2 The priest can hardly be blamed for 

 translating a house entrance into a doorway instead of picturing it as 

 a bulkhead or as the hatchway of a ship. The Spaniards — those who 

 had seen service in the Indies — had outgrown their earlier custom of 

 reading into the Indian stories the ideas of government and of civiliza- 

 tion to which they were accustomed in Europe. But Friar Marcos was 

 at a disadvantage hardly less than that of the companions of Cortes, 

 when they first heard of Moctecuhzoma, because his experience with 

 the wealth of the New World had been in the realm of the Incas. He 

 interpreted what he did not understand, of necessity, by what he had 

 seen in Peru. 



The story of this Indian did not convince the friar that what he heard 

 about the grandeur of these seven cities was all true, and he decided 

 not to believe anything until he had seen it for himself, or had at least 

 received additional proof. The friar did not start immediately for the 

 seven cities, as the negro had advised him to do, but waited until he 

 could see the Indians who had been summoned from the seacoast. 

 These told him about pearls, which were found near their homes. Some 

 ''painted" Indians, living to the eastward, having their faces, chests, 

 and arms tattooed or decorated with pigments, who were perhaps the 

 Pima or Sobaipuri Indians, also visited him while he was staying at 

 Vacapa and gave him an extended account of the seven cities, very 

 similar to that of the Indian sent by Estevan. 



1 SeeF. W. ncul^i', " Aboriginal Use of Adobes," Tbe Archaeologist, Columbus, Ohio, August, 1895. 

 3 These are described in t lie Castaueda narrative. 



