Cerro Tucumcari. — Marcou. 103 
CERRO TUCUMCARI. 
By Jules Marcou, Cambridge, Mass. 
Mr. W. F. Cummins, of the Texas Geological Survey, has 
published in The American Geologist, June, 1893, pp. 375-383, 
an article entitled Tucumcari Mountain, in which he says, that 
"Prof. Marcou was wrong in his designation * * * that he 
did not follow what others had done before him. * * # It is 
evident to me for the reasons assigned that the Big Tucum- 
cari of Marcou is not the same as the Cerro of Tucumcari of 
Simpson, and that the one now known as Big Tucumcari by 
the inhabitants of the country and so marked on my map is 
the one described by Lieut. Simpson." Mr. Cummins' knowl- 
edge of Lieut. Simpson's Report of Exploration and Survey 
of Route from Fort Smith to Santa Fe , made in 184-9, is very 
deficient and incomplete; the most important part and the 
one I referred to in The A merican Geologist, Dec, 1892, p. 372, 
— the Simpson map — being passed over entirely, as if it did 
not exist. 
In transmitting the report of Lieut. Simpson, to the U. S. 
Senate, Washington, January 4, 1850, Colonel J. J. Abert, 
chief of Corps Topographical Engineers, states distinctly: 
"the report and map ;" and in my paper of American Geolo- 
gist, I go so far as to say: "a small sketch map, marked No. 
4, in Lieut. J. H. Simpson's report of 1819, Washington, which 
gives also the exact position of the Little and Big Tucumcari." 
If Mr. Cummins had given a copy of Lieut. Simpson's map, 
as he did of my map of 1853-57, for comparison, all his re- 
marks and perfectly useless long dissertation would have fal- 
len to the ground. For it is a question of plain fact, recorded 
very distinctly on Simpson's map and accessible to everybody. 
The cut — Fig. 2 upon next page — is an exact copy of a part 
of Lieut. Simpson's map. 
The excuse of Mr. Cummins, is probably, that he never saw 
it. Then why did he raise a question of correcting the geog- 
raphy of my map and accusing me of not following my pre- 
decessors, when he does not know himself, what others have 
done before me. 
Here is the true history of the Cerro Tucumcari. The 
Spaniards of New Mexico, called Commancheros because they 
traded with the Commanches Indians, used to go every year 
