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



or Pecos, the stories about Quivira, which were to add so much to the 

 geographic extent of the expedition. When the Spaniards were about 

 to kill this Indian— "The Turk," they called him'— he told them that 

 his masters, the people of Cicuye, had induced him to lead the stran- 

 gers away to the pathless plains, where water was scarce and corn 

 was unknown, to perish there, or, if ever they should succeed in find- 

 ing the way back to the village settlements, tired and weak, to fall an 

 easy prey to their enemies. 



This plan was shrewdly conceived, and it very nearly succeeded. 

 There is little reason why we should doubt the truth of the confession, 

 made when the Indian could scarcely have hoped to save his life, and 

 it affords an easy explanation of the way in which the exaggerated 

 stories of Quivira originated and expanded. The Turk may have 

 accompanied Alvarado on the first visit to the great plains, and he 

 doubtless told the white men about his distant home and the roving 

 life on the prairies. It was later, when the Spaniards began to ques- 

 tion him about nations and rulers, gold and treasures, that he received, 

 perhaps from the Spaniards themselves, the hints which led him to tell 

 them what they were rejoiced to hear, and to develop the fanciful pic- 

 tures which appealed so forcibly to all the desires of his hearers. The 

 Turk, we can not doubt, told the Spaniards many things which were not 

 true. But in trying to trace these early dealings of Europeans with the 

 American aborigines, we must never forget how much may be explained 

 by the possibilities of misinterpretation on the part of the white men, 

 who so often heard of what they wished to find, and who learned, very 

 gradually and in the end imperfectly, to understand only a few of the 

 native languages and dialects. And besides this, the record of their 

 observations, on which the students of today have to depend, was 

 made in a language which knew nothing of the things which it was 

 trying to describe. Much of what the Turk said was very likely true 

 the first time he said it, although the memories of home were height- 

 ened, no doubt, by absence and distance. Moreover, Oastaneda, who 

 is the chief source for the stories of gold and lordly kings which are 

 said to have been told by the Turk, in all probability did not know 

 anything more than the reports of what the Turk was telling to the 

 superior officers, which were passed about among the common foot sol- 

 diers.- The present narrative has already shown the wonderful power 

 of gossip, and when it is gossip recorded twenty years afterward, we 

 may properly be cautious in believing it. 



Coronado wrote to the King from Tiguex, on April 20, 1541, as he 

 says in his next letter, that of October 20. The April letter, written 

 just before the start for Quivira, must have contained a full and official 

 account of all that had been learned in regard to the country toward 



1 He was called "The Turk " because the Spaniards thought tha " he looked like one. Bandelier, in 

 American Catholic Quarterly Review, vol. xv, p. 555. thinks this was due to the manner in which be 

 wore Ins hair, characteristic of certain branches of the Pawnee. 



2 This probability is greatly strengthened by Mota Padilla'a statement iu relation to the Turk and 

 Quivira, quoted in connection with Castaiieda's narrative. 



