winship] THE ROUTE OP NIZA 359 



people dwelt and which had streets and open squares or plazas. In some 

 parts of it there were very large houses, which were ten stories high, 

 and the leading men met together in these on certain days of the year. 

 Possibly this is one of the rare references in the accounts of these early 

 visits to Zuiii. to the ceremonials of the I'ueblo Indians, which have 

 been studied' and described with so much care by later visitors, notably 

 by Mrs M. C. Stevenson and by Dr J. Walter Fewkes of the Eemen- 

 way Southwestern Archeological Expedition. 



This native of Cibola verified all the reports which the friar had 

 already heard. Marata, he said, had been greatly reduced by the lord 

 of Cibola during recent wars. Totonteac was a much larger and richer 

 place, while Acus was an independent kingdom and province. The 

 strange thing about all these reports is not that they are true, and that 

 we can identify them by what is now known concerning these Indians, 

 but the hard thing to understand is how the Spanish friar could have 

 comprehended so well what the natives must have tried to tell him. 

 When one considers the difficulties of language, with all its technicali- 

 ties, and of radically different conceptions of every phase of life and of 

 thought, the result must be an increased confidence in the common sense 

 and the inherent intelligence of mankind. 



On his way up this valley of Sonora, Friar Marcos heard that the sea- 

 coast turned toward the west. Realizing the importance of this point, 

 he says that he "went in search of it and saw clearly that it turns to 

 the west in 35 degrees." He was at the time between 31 and 31 A degrees 

 north, just opposite the head of the Gulf of California. If Bande- 

 lier's identification of the friar's route is accepted — and it has a great 

 deal more in its favor than any other that can be proposed with any due 

 regard to the topography of the country — Friar Marcos was then near 

 the head of San Pedro valley, distant 200 miles in a direct line from the 

 coast, across a rough and barren country. Although the Franciscan 

 superior testified to Marcos' proficiency in the arts of the sea, the friar's 

 calculation was 3A degrees out of the way, at a latitude where the usual 

 error in the contemporary accounts of expeditions is on the average a 

 degree and a half. The direction of the coast line does change almost 

 due west of where the friar then was, and he may have gone to some 

 point among the mountains from which he could satisfy himself that 

 the report of the Indians was reliable. There is a week or ten days, 

 during this part of the journey, for which his narrative gives no specific 

 reckoning. He traveled rather slowly at times, making frequent stops, 

 so that the side trip is not necessary to fill this gap. The point is a 

 curious one; but, in the absence of any details, it is hardly likely that 

 the friar did more than secure from other Indians stories confirming 

 what he had already been told. 



Friar Marcos soon reached the borders of the wilderness — the country 

 in and about the present White Mountain Apache reservation in Arizona. 

 He entered this region on May 9, and twelve days later a young man 



