TRANSLATION OF THE REPORT OF HERNANDO DE 



ALYARADO 



Account of what Hernando de Alvarado and Friar Juan de 

 1'adilla Discovered going in Search of the South Sea. 1 



We set out from Granada on Sunday, the day of the beheading of 

 Saint John the Baptist, the 29th of August, in the year 1540, on the 

 way to Coco. 2 After we had gone '2 leagues, we came to an ancient 

 building like a fortress, and a league beyond this we found another, and 

 yet another a little farther on, and beyond these we found an ancient 

 city, very large, entirely destroyed, although a large part of the wall 

 was standing, which was six times as tall as a man, the wall well made 

 of good worked stone, with gates and gutters like a city in Castile. 

 Half a league or more beyond this, we found another ruined city, the 

 walls of which must have been very fine, built of very large granite 

 blocks, as high as a man and from there up of very good quar- 

 ried stone. Here two roads separate, one to Chia and the other to 

 Coco; we took this latter, and reached that place, which is one of the 

 strongest places that we have seen, because the city is on a very high 

 rock, with such a rough ascent that we repented having gone up to 

 the place. The houses have three or four stories; the people are the 

 same sort as those of the province of Cibola; they have plenty of 

 food, of corn and beans and fowls like those of New Spain. From 

 here we went to a very good lake or marsh, where there are trees like 

 those of Castile, and from there we went to a river, which we named 

 Our Lady (Nuestra Senora), because we reached it the evening before 

 her day in the month of September. 3 We sent the cross by a guide to 

 the villages in advance, and the next day people came from twelve vil- 

 lages, the chief men and the people in order, those of one village behind 

 those of another, and they approached the tent to the sound of a pipe, 

 and with an old man for spokesman. In this fashion they came into 

 the tent and gave me the food and clothes and skins they had brought, 

 and I gave them some trinkets, and with this they went off. 



This river of Our Lady flows through a very wide open plain sowed 

 with corn plants; there are several groves, and there are twelve vil- 



*The text of this report is printed in Buckingham Smith's Florida, p. 65, from the Munoz copy, and 

 in Pachecoy Cardenas, Documentos de Indias, vol. iii, p. 511. See note on page 391. A translation 

 of tliis document was printed in the Boston Transcript for October 14, lfi!):t. 



*Acuco or Acoma. The route taken liy Alvarado was not the same as that followed by Coronado, 

 who went by way of Matsaki. Alvarado's course wus llie old Acoma trail u liich led directly east- 

 ward from nawiknh or Ojo Caliente. 



"Day of the nativity of the Blessed Virgin, September 8. This was the Tiguex or present Kio 

 Grande. 



594 



