1877.] The Seven Towns of Moqui. 129 
north). The inhabitants were filled with great fear when they 
heard that a race of fierce men who rode horses (never having 
seen such animals before) had captured Cibola (ancient Zuni). 
* They, however, made some show of resistance to the invaders 
in their approach to their towns, but the Spaniards charging 
upon them with vigor, many were killed, when the remainder 
fled to the houses and sued for peace, offering as an inducement 
presents of cotton stuffs, tanned hides, flour, pine nuts, maize, 
native fowls, and some turquoises,”’ 1 
Resulting from this visit of the conquerors, the Moquis or Mo- 
quinos were afterwards converted by the zeal of the Franciscans, 
but in the year 1680 they apostatized, and after massacring their 
instructors revolted, together with other Indians of the territory 
then included in New Mexico. At that time they drove out the 
Spaniards from their towns, and no attempt, since that event, 
has been made to reduce them again to submissi 
In the latter part of the last century, about fas Sl 1799, Don 
Jose Cortez wrote of them: “ The Moquinos are the most indus- 
trious of the many Indian nations that inhabit and have been 
discovered in that portion of America. They till the earth with 
great care, and apply to all their fields the manures proper for 
each crop. . . . They are attentive to their kitchen gardens, and 
have all the varieties of fruit-bearing trees it has been in their 
. power to procure. The peach-tree yields abundantly. The coarse 
clothing worn by them they make in their looms. . . . The town 
is governed by a cacique, and for the defense of it the inhabit- 
ants make common cause. The people are of a lighter complex- 
ion than other Indians. . . . The women dress in a woven tunic 
without sleeves, and in a black, white, or colored shawl, formed 
like a mantilla. The tunic is confined by a sash, that is usually 
of many tints. . . . The aged women wear the hair divided into 
_ two braids, and the young in a knot over each ear.” 
Although the foregoing descriptions were written more than 
three quarters of a century ago, they apply to the tribe, in every 
detail, at the present time. During our visit to these strange and 
isolated people in the summer of 1875, I was struck with thè 
accuracy of some of the early Spanish writers in their quaint 
accounts which I had previously read. The names of the seven 
towns are subject to shades of variation in pronunciation at dif- 
_ ferent times, because the tribe possesses no written language by 
which they might be permanently recorded; yet it is a curious 
1 See Essay by Col. J. H. Simpson, Smithsonian Report, 1869.2 
