582 THE CORONADO EXPEDITION, 1540-1542 [eth.anw.14 



because, as I wrote Your Majesty, they are very brave and fierce ani- 

 mals; and going many days without water, and cooking the food with 

 cow dung, because there is not any kind of wood in all these plains, 

 away from the gullies and rivers, which are very few. 



It was the Lord's pleasure that, after having journeyed across these 

 deserts seventy-seven days, 1 arrived at the province they call Quivira, 

 to which the guides were conducting me. and where they had described 

 to me houses of stone, with many stories; aud not only are they not of 

 stone, but of straw, but the people in them are as barbarous as all those 

 whom I have seen and passed before this; they do not have cloaks, nor 

 cotton of which to make these, but use the skins of the cattle they kill, 

 which they tan, because they are settled among these on a very large 

 river. They eat the raw flesh like the Querechos and Teyas; they are 

 enemies of one another, but are all of the same sort of people, and these 

 at Quivira have the advantage in the houses they build and in planting 

 corn. In this province of which the guides who brought me are natives, 

 they received me peaceably, and although they told me when I set out 

 for it that I could not succeed in seeing it all m two months, there are 

 not more than 25 villages of straw houses there and in all the rest of the 

 country that I saw and learned about, which gave their obedience to Your 

 Majesty and placed themselves under your royal overlordship. The peo- 

 ple here are large. I had several Indians measured, and found that they 

 were 10 palms in height; the women are well proportioned and their fea- 

 tures are more like Moorish women than Indians. The natives here gave 

 me a piece of copper which a chief Indian wore hung around his neck; 

 1 sent it to the viceroy of New .Spain, because I have not seen any other 

 metal in these parts except this aud some little copper bells which I 

 sent him, aud a bit of metal which looks like gold. I do not know 

 where this came from, although I believe that the Indians who gave it 

 to me obtained it from those whom I brought here in my service, because 

 I can not hud any other origin for it nor where it came from. The 

 diversity of languages which exists in this country and my not having 

 anyone who understood them, because they speak their own language in 

 each village, has hindered me, because I have been forced to send cap- 

 tains and men in many directions to find out whether there was any- 

 thing in this country which could be of service to Your Majesty. And 

 although I have searched with all diligence I have not found or heard 

 of anything, unless it be these provinces, which are a very small affair. 

 The province of Quivira is 950 leagues from Mexico. Where I reached 

 it, it is in the fortieth degree. The country itself is the best I have ever 

 seen for producing all the products of Spam, for besides the laud itself 

 being very fat and black and being very well watered by the rivulets 

 and springs and rivers, 1 found prunes like those of Spain [or I found 

 everything they have in Spain] and nuts and very good sweet grapes 

 and mulberries. I have treated the natives of this province, aud all 

 the others whom I found wherever I went, as well as was possible, 



