Final Report of Investigations Among the Indians of the Southwestern United States, Carried on Mainly in the Years From 1880 to 1885. Part I.

              OF THE
UNIVERSITY
OF
Capers- of % |,rr^oI0gkaI institute of ^merits.
AMERICAN SERIES.
III.
FINAL REPORT
OF
INVESTIGATIONS AMONG THE INDIANS OF THE
SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES, CARRIED ON
MAINLY IN THE YEARS FROM 1880 TO 1885.
PART I.
BY
A. F. BANDELIER.
INSTITUTE
OF
AMERICA.
8/9
CAMBRIDGE:
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON.
Hnftrersttg Press.
1890.
T,
>J~
ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA,
Council, 1889-90.
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON, President.
HENRY DRISLER, Vice-President.
MARTIN BRIMMER.
FRANCIS PARKMAN.
STEPHEN SALISBURY.
FREDERIC J. DE PEYSTER.
RUSSELL STURGIS.
AUGUSTUS C. MERRIAM.
ALLAN MARQUAND.
DAVID L. BARTLETT.
ARTHUR L. FROTHINGHAM
JOHN P. PETERS.
PREFACE.
IN
submitting this First Part of my Report to the Archae
ological Institute of America, I have to apologize for
the long delay in its completion. Although the material
for it was ready long ago, circumstances beyond my con
trol have prevented my putting it into shape for earlier
publication.
I take this occasion to acknowledge the debt of gratitude
which I owe to the population of the sections of country
through which my investigations have led me, for the uni
form kindness and hospitality shown to me, for the fre
quent disinterested assistance lent me in my labors, and
for the valuable information imparted at almost every step.
This acknowledgment is due to all classes and to all races
with whom I have come in contact. I forbear offering the
thanks specially due to personal friends, since, were I to
enumerate them, the list would become far too long for a
Preface. I offer my grateful acknowledgments to the civil
and ecclesiastical, as well as to the military, authorities of
both the American and Mexican portions of the South
west, for having, by their protection, largely furthered my
work.
The orthography of Indian names which I have adopted
is not that adopted by the Bureau of Ethnology, at Wash-
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
THE ROCK AND PUEBLO OF ACOMA, SEEN FROM THE
NORTH Frontispiece
PROCESSION, FEAST OF ST. ESTEVAN, ACOMA 219
FOOT RACE AT PUEBLO OF TAGS 240
ACOMA : NORTHERN Row OF HOUSES 265
PUEBLO OF TAGS : SOUTH HOUSE 266
INTERIOR OF A HOUSE AT ZUNI 269
MAP OF SONORA AND CHIHUAHUA End Of Volume
FINAL REPORT
ON
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST.
PART I.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST.
i.
INTRODUCTION.
THE country explored, or at least visited, during the
period of four years which the Archaeological Institute
devoted to American research, (exclusive of the year 1881,
which was spent in Southern and Central Mexico,) lies between
the 36th and 2Qth parallels of latitude North, and the ic>5th
and 1 1 2th degrees of longitude West. Since the year 1884,
when explorations were discontinued, I have, as often as it
was feasible, made short tours of investigation into regions
hitherto unknown to me. Although such excursions were
wholly independent of my connection with the Institute, that
connection terminating officially in January, 1.885, I shall in
clude here also whatever observations I may have been able
to secure. They are not very important, still they contribute
to render the general picture more accurate. The accom
panying map will give an idea of the whole ground gone over,
-
mostly alone, on horseback or on foot. To one bent upon
scientific observations, even journeys by rail become instruct
ive and valuable. I have therefore laid down on the map
mentioned the railroad trips also. In a country where the
aboriginal population has been so completely dependent upon
nature as the aborigines of the Southwest were prior to the
sixteenth century, the topography and hydrography of the
4 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
land, its natural history and meteorology, form the basis of
archaeological researches. They furnish the key to the eth
nological development of primitive man ; through them we
secure the explanation of most of the changes which he has
undergone ; they show to us, in a measure, how present eth
nography has come to be. To attempt historical studies
anywhere, without first knowing thoroughly the nature of
the country, is as futile as to try astronomy without the aid
of mathematics, or mineralogy without a previous course of
analytical chemistry.
I have given to the Institute an account of all my trips,
with the exception of the last one, which occupied the period
from November, 1883, to July, 1884. Before entering upon
the general Geographical Introduction to this Report, I may
be permitted to sketch the route of these last travels.
Leaving Santa Fe, I went to El Paso del Norte, where I
resided for nearly two weeks among the remnants of the
Mansos, and among the Piros and Tiguas, who were trans
planted to this vicinity about 1680. Being obliged to return
to Santa Fe, owing to a serious attack of bronchitis, so soon
as I was sufficiently recovered, I made a flying trip to the
Pueblo of San Juan, on the Rio Grande, where I enjoyed full
access to the fine collection of Indian objects and antiquities
which my friend Samuel Eldodt has gathered in the course
of nineteen years residence among the Tehuas. The se
vere cold compelling me to go south, I accordingly removed
to Rincon, on the Rio Grande, there to investigate ruins of
" small-house villages," near San Diego. Thence I went to
Fort Cummings, at the foot of Cook s Peak, and thence on
to the Rio Mimbres, whose course I ascended on foot to
the source. Crossing the divide to the Sapillo, I reached the
wilderness about the head-waters of the Rio Gila, with its
remains of cave habitations, cliff-houses, and open-air villages
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 5
of the small-house type. Returning to the Mimbres, I reached
from there Silver City, Deming, and at last, by rail, Tucson,
where my horse, the same animal that had carried me from
Santa Fe to Tucson previously, had been most kindly taken
care of by the military authorities at Fort Lowell. My inten
tion was to visit Sonora, and although the advice of my mili
tary friends was against an attempt to penetrate the Sierra
Madre, I nevertheless left the post on the /th of February
for the valley of the San Pedro, and travelled up the valley
from Tres Alamos to Contencion, thence to Fort Huachuca,
and entered Sonora on the 2Oth of the same month, near the
head-waters of the stream between the Sierra Cananea and
the Sierra de San Jose. Once on Mexican soil, I followed
the course of the Rio Sonora almost due south, stopping at
every village and hamlet which the Apaches have failed to
destroy, as far as Babiacora, quite one hundred and forty
miles south of the frontier line of the United States. Here
the dangerous part of the journey commenced ; for though
Geronimo and his people were on the point of returning to
the North, occasional bands of Apaches might still be ex
pected to infest the mountains converging towards the Sierra
Madre from Sonora. Nevertheless, I decided upon travelling
to the eastward, with as little display as possible, relying
upon night trips and general caution for safety. By way of
Oposura the upper Rio Yaqui was reached on the 3d of April.
Here I found an opportunity of joining two young men from
Nacori, who had come in order to lay in a supply of provis
ions for their forsaken village, the last one in Sonora to
wards the east, and often sorely crowded by the Apaches.
My horse being exhausted, I accompanied the party on foot
to their village, and thence, with an Indian guide, and with
the greatest precaution, penetrated to the western slopes of the
Que-hua-ue-ri-chi range, considered in the country to be the
6 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
highest and most central portion of the Great Sierra under
that parallel of latitude. After my return to Granados on
the Yaqui, and a few days spent at Huassavas, chiefly in ex
amining remnants of church archives from the time of the
Jesuits, and in measuring the abundant remains of ancient
garden-beds and dwellings, I continued my journey, taking
advantage of a convoy, to Huachinera. It would have been,
to say the least, exceedingly imprudent to undertake the trip
of fifty miles alone, and in a mountain wilderness, where the
presumption was that Apaches might be encountered at any
moment. Huachinera became another centre of operations,
and the next one was Baserac, again on the Yaqui. From
here I succeeded in penetrating the formidable Sierra de
Teras, until then wholly untrodden, as, indeed, may be said
of this region in general, so far as scientific research is con
cerned. Babispe was my last station in Sonora. From there
I passed over into- Chihuahua, crossing the desert plateau to
Janos. Turning south again, I reached Casas Grandes on
the 8th of May. At this important locality I was delayed
nearly a month, inclusive of another tour on foot into the
Sierra Madre as far as the Arroyo del Nombre de Dios, where
I found some very well preserved cave-houses. On the I4th
of June I came at last to Deming, within reach of regular
mail facilities and railroads. After my return to Santa Fe,
I spent a few days in the Pecos valley, to see once more the
sights which had made such a profound impression upon me
when I first engaged in the service of the Institute.
The journey into the Sierra Madre, although to a certain
extent hazardous beyond the measure of duty, has left me no
cause for regret. The numerous remains of man there have
been noticed but lately by travellers, and they have become
a source of undue wonder. As I hope to be able to show
hereafter, they are far from being so marvellous as they have
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 7
been thought. On the other hand, they are interesting and
instructive in the highest degree. They form a connecting
link between the extreme North and much more southerly
regions that does not appear at the first glance, and explain
features the origin of which is certainly not to be looked for
in North America even. These features will be sketched in
their place further on. So much for my journey.
The portion of the North American Southwest of which we
treat consists of the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona,
within the limits of the United States, and of the States of
Sonora and Chihuahua, on Mexican soil. It is a region re
markable for high average elevation above the sea level, and
for aridity. The whole area forms, so to say, a pitched roof,
whose northern gable-end is much higher than the southern,
so that there are three slopes: one to the west, towards the
Gulf of California ; one to the east, towards the Mississippi
valley ; and a gradual decrease in height of mountain chains
from Colorado down to the boundaries of Durango. This lat
ter is not a drainage slope, although it also has its influence
upon river courses, and especially upon the volume of water
they carry. The farther south we go, on this side of the
Isthmus, the less important do the watercourses become, not
only in length, but also in power.
The highest point of the whole region, as far as known, lies
in Northern New Mexico. The "Truchas," north of Santa
Fe, ascend to 13,150 feet above sea level. None of the peaks
of the Sierra Madre reach this altitude ; they do not even
attain the proportions of lesser mountains in New Mexico like
the Sierra Blanca,1 "
Baldy,"
2 the Costilla,
3 or the Sierra de
1 The List of Elevations, 1877. does not give the height, but the official maps
place it at 11,892 feet. Thos. Gannett.
2
12,661 feet.
8
12,634 feet. List of Elevations, p. 118.
8 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
San Mateo.1 The same may be said of Arizona, where only
the northern ranges, the Sierra de San Francisco and the
Sierra Blanca, rise above 12,000 feet.2 There is a gradual
decline in size as the mountains approach the mouth of that
funnel whose wide aperture forms the North of the Mexican
Republic, and its small escape the Isthmus of Panama. It is
doubtful whether any of the summits in the Sierra Madre,
down to the Durango line, rise higher than 10,000 feet.3
Another peculiarity is the narrowing of mountain regions
from north to south. In those portions belonging to the
United States, fully three fourths are strictly mountainous ;
in Sonora and Chihuahua, scarcely one half may be called
mountain lands. The general drift of the chains is from north
to south, although transverse ranges are numerous,4 and
towards the south one of the characteristic features of the
landscape consists often in isolated mountain masses, rising
directly and abruptly out of a level which frequently is of re
pulsive barrenness. Such is the case, for instance, in South
western New Mexico, where the Sierra Florida dominates
the plain around Deming; 5 in Southwestern Arizona, with the
peak of Baboquivari ;
6 in Northwestern Chihuahua, with the
Sierra de en el Medio ; and even in a measure in Southeastern
New Mexico, the huge Sierra Blanca rising to a height of
7,000 feet above the level of Fort Stanton.
1
1 1,200 feet. List of Elevations, p. 129.
2 Humphrey s Peak in the San Francisco range, 12,561 feet.
3
T- Ross Browne, Report on the Mineral Resources of the States and Territories
west of the Rocky Mountains, p. 641 : "few if any points exceeding 10,000 feet
in elevation."
4 For instance, the Sierra Diablo, and the Sierra Luera, near the head-waters
of the Gila; the Sierra del Datil, and the Escudilla, in Western Central New
Mexico ; also the Sierra de Zuni. In Northern Chihuahua, the Sierra de las
Espuelas, etc.
5 This very abrupt and picturesque group is a conspicuous object. It rises
out of the plain around Deming to a height of about 4,000 feet.
6 Visible easily from Tucson. Its elevation is about 7,000 feet, and the plain
around it scarcely reaches 2,000.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 9
The landscape in the Southwest is striking at all times.
The plains of Eastern New Mexico are impressive through
their immensity and absolute rigidity. They are far from
producing the feeling which is created by the ocean. A
liquid level is never absolutely at rest ; the mind, as well as
the eye, is always kept on the alert for something to occur,
even on the calmest day. The plains, on the contrary, are
immovable ; there is nothing on the stark and stiff surface
to connect it with the sky. On the wanderer, they produce
easily a feeling of utter hopelessness.
1 With a sigh of relief,
he at last discovers the faint outline of distant mountain
chains, and their profile, strikingly like motionless lightning,
is to him a token of new life. The plains lie between the
luxuriant vegetation of the central States and the arid moun
tains of the Southwest, like a forbidding barrier. Without
the buffalo, primitive man could never have traversed them.
The higher ranges, especially those in the northern sections
of New Mexico, are far from being dismally arid. In the lati
tude of Santa Fe, pine timber begins at an altitude of about
seven thousand feet. It rises to varied and very irregular
heights, at the upper timber-line. That line changes : in
almost every chain it is different by a few hundred feet.2
Still it may be said that its average level lies above eleven
thousand feet in the Southwest. This height is reached
only by Coniferae ; the scrub oak crowns lesser crests and
tops, such as the mountains on the Mexican border, the
Sierra de la Hacha, the Sierra de la Boca Grande, and the
Espuelas. Some ranges are strikingly destitute of arborescent
1 This feeling is already noticed by the chroniclers of Coronado s march.
Castaneda, Relation du Voyage de Cibola, p. 189.
2 It is sometimes more elevated in northern ranges than in southern ones.
Thus in Lat. 33 to 34 it is n,ioo feet, in Arizona. On Pike s Peak, in Lat.
38 to 39, it is 11,720 feet ; on Buffalo Peak, in Colorado also, 12,041 ; and in the
Sawatch range of Colorado, from 11,500 to 12,117 feet.
IO ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
vegetation. The Sierra de los Organos and its neighbors
north and south along the eastern border of the Rio Grande
valley, from the Sierra Oscura to El Paso, are completely
without timber. Steepness of the slopes, incident upon
geological structure, may be regarded as the principal cause
of this bareness.
Although the basis of the plain abutting against the moun
tain regions on the east is mostly cretaceous and tertiary,
volcanic flows have penetrated into it, and they form isolated
videttes in the form of table-mountains or Mesas.1 The
Mesa is one of the distinctive traits of Southwestern mountain
scenery. Frequently a thin crust or layer of metamorphic
trap or of basalt covers a base of sedimentary rocks, and
the difference in hardness between base and top has given
a hold to erosion by water as well as by atmospheric cur
rents,
2 a hold that causes the sides to give way and leaves
the surface as a projecting table, whence the Spanish popular
term, now universally accepted, is derived. Erosion has been
exceedingly powerful : not only the Mesa formation, the gi
gantic gorges, or canons, are due to this agency. With their
vertical walls encasing a narrow bottom, these deep ravines
are a testimony of a slow corrosive and erosive force exerted
through long periods of time.
Withal, volcanic action has left many traces. Extinct
craters are frequent in New Mexico and in Arizona, and some
of the most important mountain clusters owe their origin
to eruptive action. The Sierra de San Francisco in Arizona,
and the Sierra de San Mateo in New Mexico, are tall extinct
volcanoes. Well delineated lava-flows fill the bottom of vales
1 Wagon Mound, on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, is a good
specimen of this kind. So are some of the Mesas around Raton, where that road
enters New Mexico.
2 Remarkable erosions through wind are visible in the valleys of Pojuaque
and Tezuque, which empty into the Rio Grande north of Santa Fe.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. n
in Western New Mexico,1 and they appear of relatively recent
origin. Yet it is positive that in the past four centuries
no eruption of any kind has occurred in the southwestern
portions of the United States. On Mexican soil, the disturb
ances in the northeastern portions of Sonora and the north
western of Chihuahua during .this year (1887), are the only
trace of events of this nature within historical times. Con
fused, and perhaps unauthentic, Indian tales hint at displays
of volcanic forces in times previous to Spanish occupation,
but it is impossible as yet to determine when and where they
took place. The " Year of Light and Fire," (Ano de la
Lumbre,) spoken about by the Indians of Laguna, may have
been a year of volcanic phenomena ; but it may equally well
have been one of brilliant auroral displays.
Thermal mineral springs are remarkably common in the
Southwest. Hot springs, with a large proportion of soda
only in their water, are also numerous. There are valuable
medicinal sources in some places.
2 The importance of these
localities has been, locally, exaggerated.
A similar exaggeration has prevailed, and even to a greater
degree, in regard to the mines in the Southwest, and has a
direct bearing upon the studies which I was called upon to
pursue, since it is often stated that the Indians while in their
original condition engaged in mining, and since it is com
monly believed that the aboriginal population was diminished
in numbers, or at least degraded, through compulsory min
ing for the benefit of the Spaniards. In the Southwest, the
1 A fine lava-flow begins near the Agua Azul on the Atlantic and Pacific
Railroad. It is very prominent near McCarthy s. In its passage it has scarcely
ruffled the edge of the carboniferous red sandstone between whose walls it ran, at
the bottom of a narrow valley. The bottom rocks are but slightly singed.
2 Joseph s Springs, west of Taos, and Jemez Springs, north of the Pueblo, in
the Canon de San Diego. The former are arsenical ; the latter contain, besides
iodine, much lithion.
12 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
Indians were compelled to mine but very seldom, and then
only with a stipulated compensation.
1 In New Mexico and
in Arizona they never were compelled to work in the mines,
not only on account of the stringent protective laws of Spain,
but because the Spaniards, more experienced in the forma-
1 I-t is evident that in Spanish America, as well as everywhere else, the strict
decrees of the Crown in behalf of the Indian were sometimes evaded or disre
garded, and the native occasionally treated with cruelty. But these instances
were only exceptions, and not the rule. Las Casas, in his injudicious diatribes,
has completely misrepresented the facts in many cases. He was an honest, but
utterly unpractical enthusiast, who failed to understand both the Indian and the
new issue placed before that Indian through the discovery of America, and who
condemned everything and everybody from the moment that they did not agree
with his own theories and plans. The royal decrees in favor of the Indian were
numerous, and the labor bestowed by the kings of Spain and their councils on
the "Indian question" was immense, so that it would require a special mono
graph of great extent in order to do justice to the subject. Compulsory labor in
mines without compensation, was first abolished in 1551 ; but Philip II. regulated
more explicitly the case by his Real Cedula of loth January, 1589. See Recopila-cion
de las Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, ed. 1756, lib. vi. tit. xv., ley I a, vol. ii.
fol. 254.
" Declaramos, que a los Indies se les puede mandar, que vayan alas
minas, como no sea mudando temple, de que resulte dano a su salud, teniendo
Doctrina y Justicia, que los ampare, bastimentos, de que poclerse sustentar, buena
paga de sus jornales, y Hospital, donde scan curados, asisticlos, y regalados los
que enfermaren, y que el trabajo sea templado, y haya Veedor, que cuide de lo
susodicho; y en quanto a los salaries de Doctrina y Justicia, scan a costa de
los Mineros, pues resulta en su beneficio el repartimiento de Indies ; y tambien
paguen lo que pareciere necesario para la cura de los Enfermos." See also the
Reales Cedulas oi 24th January, 1594, and 26th August, 1595, etc. That the South
western mines were often a real benefit for the Indian who understood how to
take hold of them in the right way, is thus told by P. Andres Perez de Ribas,
Historia de los Trivmphos de nvestra Santa Fee entre gentes las mas Barbaras v
Fieras del Nueuo Orbe, etc., 1645, lib- viii. cap. iii. p. 475. Speaking of the
Indians around the celebrated mines of Topia in Durango, he says :
" Y declarare
aqui lo que significa esa palabra: porque se entienda la grande ganancia que
tienen en la labor de minas los Indies trabajadores, principalmente los ladinos en
ellas, y que conocen los metales, y son barreteros, que con barretas rompen la
veta del metal. Porque estos, demas de la paga de su salario de cada dia, que es
de quatro reales de plata por lo menos : pero fuera de ese, los principales traba
jadores tienen facultad y licencia, de escoger para si vna de las espuertas que
llaman Tenates, llena de metal, que cada dia rompe, y saca de la veta ; metal
que siempre es el mas rico y escogido : porque como ellos lo conocen, y regis-tran
primero que sus amos, apartan para si lo mas precioso ; y esto no se les
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 13
tions of the country than the modern "prospecter" and the
young graduate of mining schools, very soon perceived that
mines in New Mexico, as a general rule, "would not pay."
1
As for aboriginal mining, it is a myth. We have yet to find
a trace of work similar to the breaking of native copper with
huge mauls, performed on Lake Superior. Of reduction of
puede estoruar a los Indies : porque al punto que eso se les estoruase, desam-pararian
las minas, y ellas y sus amos quedaran perdidos. La espuerta de metal
que saca, al Indio le suele valer quatro, seis, y tal vez diez, y mas reales de a
ocho. Y a esto llaman Pepenas, que son muy vsadas en todos los Reales de
minas de la Nueua Espana, y lo mismo deue de pasar en los otros Reinos de
las Indias ; y asi los Indios que son diestros en la labor de minas, andan luci-damete
tratados y vestidos."
1 The deceptive nature of New Mexican ores was discovered by the Spaniards
at an early day. In 1626 complaints were already uttered against the settlers
of New Mexico on the ground of their complete apathy in matters of mining.
Fray Geronimo de Zarate-Salmeron, Relaciones de Todas las Cosas que en el Nueito
Mexico se han visto y sabido, etc., MS., Art. 34, says :
" De todo esto se rien los
Espanoles que alia estan : Como tengan buena cosecha de Tabaco para chupar,
estan mui contentos, y no quieren mas riquezas, que parece han hecho voto de
pobreza, que es mucho para ser Espanoles, pues por codicia de plata y oro
entraran en el mismo Ynfierno a sacarlas." In Art. 35 he tells of three Flemings
who came to New Mexico with some capital, and with the intention of working
mines ; but the Spaniards of Mexico burnt the machinery, which had been stand
ing idle since the time of Don Pedro de Peralta, Onate s successor as governor of
the province. The viceroys themselves were not much taken with mining pros
pects in New Mexico. Already the Conde de Monterey wrote to the King in
1602, Discurso y Proposition que se hace a vuestra Magestad de lo Tocante a los
Descubrimientos del Nuevo Mexico (Documentas de Indias, vol. xvi. p. 50) :
" Y
cierto que no tengo perdido esperanza de que se haya de verificar lo que el
Gobernador todavfa afirma, de que hay plata en algunos cerros de aquella co-marca
en que esta, . . . y aunque Joan de Onate escribe que ahora saldria a
hacer algunas catas hondas, y que hasta tanto no asegura riqueza, porque no
sabe que haya metales de aventajada ley ; esto no me desanima, porque no hay
cuenta cierta en ello." In 1630, Fray Alonso de Benavides writes glowingly of
mines in New Mexico, especially of those of Socorro (Memorial, pp. 17-19);
but nobody felt constrained to attempt working them. The reason for it is stated
afterwards officially by the Brigadier Pedro de Rivera, Diario y Derrotero de lo
Caminado, Visto, y Observado en el Discurso de la Visita General de Presidios, situ-ados
en las Provincias ynternas de Nueva Espana, 1736, p. 32:
" Hanse encon-trado
en dicho Reyno, algunos Minerales, sin dar su metal mas ley, que la de
Alquimia, y Cobre ; y como no se ha podido costear el beneficio que necesita,
las han dejado abandonadas."
14 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
ores, even by the rude process invented by the ancient Peru
vians, there is no sign. For the Southwestern Indian, copper
ores had value only in proportion as they were bright blue
and brigJit green ; and the inferior kalaite, met with in New
Mexico, was liked as well as the bluest turquoise from Asia
Minor would have been. Mining, therefore, has had not the
slightest influence on the fate of the native in the Southwest,
under the Spanish sway ; and no tale of ancient and now hid
den treasures, which "
only the Indian knew and made use
of," should ever be taken as a basis for earnest enterprise.
I am speaking here of those regions alone upon which I have
to report to the Institute.
The geology of the Southwest has given to the Indians
who inhabited the country resources more precious to them
than metal. At a certain stage men do not attempt cutting
and hewing. They have not advanced far enough to know
how to prepare instruments for such purposes, and are there
fore reduced to hammering and breaking. Metals are either
too malleable for such purposes, or too brittle, unless a much
greater advance has been made in treating them than that
which the remains in these regions show. Thus it was that
hard rock, flint, and obsidian were to the aborigines as impor
tant as iron and copper are to us to-day. These minerals are
found in abundance in the Southwest, but they are strictly
localized, and do not appear everywhere. The mountains
converging toward the Sierra Madre from the side of Sonora,
where they merge into that backbone of the Mexican isthmus,
contain an abundance of obsidian in places.
1 Flint is scat
tered here and there. Basalt is common. To these we have
1 I saw much obsidian in nodules on the elevated plateau called " Llanos de
Huepari," near Huachinera, on the western spurs of the Sierra Madre. The
Tahuaro also is full of it. There is obsidian in the mountains which divide the
Rio Grande valley from the sources of the Rio Jemez.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 15
to add, as a matter of secondary importance, however, mineral
paints. Iron is plentiful, and often in the shape of iron ochre.
The copper greens and blues are found almost everywhere.
Kaolin, or rather a coarse kaolin clay, is met with occasion
ally. This exhausts the list of mineral products indispensable
to the aborigines which the Southwest afforded.
The dryness of the Pacific coast is well known. From
that side the regions of New Mexico and Arizona derive no
humidity. Only what passes over the mountains from the
northwest can occasionally irrigate the valleys and basins.
In fact, it is the contact of northerly currents, cold and dry,
with the slight moisture still contained in the air coming up
from the Gulf of Mexico, that produces rain in summer, snow
in winter. This moisture is in itself but a residue, for it has
shed its main contents over the plains of Texas. It may be
said that irrigation, both by precipitation and drainage, is fur
nished from the leavings of surrounding territories, north as
well as south. In winter northerly winds prevail ; in summer
they blow from an intermediate direction between south and
east. Both equinoxes are usually stormy, without much rain.
The rainy season is defined, inasmuch as it is limited to the
months of July, August, and September ; but it is far from
displaying the copiousness of tropical climates. Weeks may
elapse without the discharge of a single shower ; then again
weeks may bring a series of thunder-storms accompanied by
floods of rain. During the other nine months of the year
there are occasional days of rain, which usually comes from
the southeast, and lasts until the wind settles in the opposite
quarter. The same happens with snow-storms ; the south
easterly winds are their forerunners, while northwesterly
currents bring them to a close. What, during winter months,
causes a snowfall in northern sections, appears in Southern
Arizona and Sonora as a succession of rainy days, akin to
1 6 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
"bad weather" in the Eastern States, and called "Quipata"
by the natives of Sonora and Chihuahua. A "Quipata" re
sembles an equinoctial storm of rain, but with less violence
of wind, and perhaps less copiousness of precipitation. The
further south these disturbances occur, the more severe be
comes their character. This may be said of aqueous phenom
ena in general. The banks of the Rio Yaqui and of the Mayo
are very humid in comparison with those of northern rivers ;
and when it rains, even on the dry plateaux of Central Chi
huahua, the fall is extraordinarily heavy.
In a country whose topography displays such variety of
features, and which besides extends over so many degrees
of latitude as well as of longitude, a great number of what
might be termed " local climates "
appear. According to
altitude, temperature varies within short distances.1 The
direction of mountain chains deflects and diverts atmospheric
currents ; what is a northerly wind on the plains may enter
a narrow gorge from an opposite direction ; a circle of high
ranges around a low basin may keep it absolutely dry for
years, all the precipitation being shut off by the crests. Such
is the case on the middle Rio Gila about Casa Grande, and
near Marricopa, in Southern Arizona. Years elapse some
times ere these sandy bottoms are blessed by a substantial
shower. Santa Fe in New Mexico is much more arid than
the valley of Tezuque, although the latter is only seven miles
distant. Las Cruces and the Mesilla valley on the Rio
Grande are moist, and to a slight extent malarial, compared
1 There is already a marked difference between Santa Fe and Tezuque,
although the distance is only seven miles. Pena Blanca, twenty-seven miles from
the capital, and 1,700 feet lower, is both colder in winter and much warmer in
summer than the former. At Albuquerque the thermometer rises occasionally
to over 100, whereas at Santa Fe it never reaches 90 in the shade. At Tucson,
where the thermometer attains 120 frequently, and where it hardly ever snows,
the climate is torrid, whereas the sources of the San Pedro on the Sonora fron
tier are bitterly cold in winter.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 17
with Socorro on the same stream, while the difference in
their altitude is only a few hundred feet. Still, the general
characteristics prevail everywhere as soon as we compare the
climate with that of other regions on the North American
continent. Dryness, comparative richness in ozone, and in
the higher portions a mild temperature, whose extremes fluc
tuate between 90 in the summer, and 12 in cold winters.
These extremes do not apply of course to the mountain zones
proper, at an elevation of 8,000 feet and beyond, nor to the
torrid lowlands of Arizona, of Chihuahua, and of the Sonoran
sea-coast.
Where the water supply is wholly dependent upon what
surrounding countries cannot absorb, the river systems suffer
from the same scantiness as precipitation itself. Rainy sea
sons do not swell streams in the northern Southwest in any
permanent manner; it is the melting of snow on the mountains
of Colorado that causes the Rio Grande and the great Colo
rado to rise, and to inundate their banks. The same is true
of the Gila, whose head-waters lie in the mountains of South
ern New Mexico. These streams are therefore highest in
May and in June, whereas during the months of rain their
volume of water is steadily on the decrease. All these rivers
have a rapid fall in the beginning, and are constantly washing
down detritus, mostly of volcanic origin, towards their lower
course. In proportion as they approach the ocean they have
formed sandy bottoms, and this soil contributes to narrow
the river bed, even to close it, where the stream is of small
volume. The rivers of the Southwest, therefore, diminish
more or less before reaching their mouths. South of the
Rio Chama, the waters of not a single tributary of the Rio
Grande reach the main artery throughout the whole year: the
confluences of the Rio de Jcmez, of the turbulent Puerco, of
the Pecos, and of the Concho, are dry washes, except for a
1 8 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
few hours in the rainy season, when an extraordinarily heavy
shower causes the torrent to disgorge floods of roaring waters,
carrying huge boulders and masses of rubbish. This peculiar
ity of Southwestern rivers and streams, which causes them to
resemble mountain torrents rather than regular watercourses,
is of great importance to the historical student. In the dry
season, early Spanish explorers could easily fail to notice
a river which, on maps, astonishes us by the length of its
course, and therefore leads us to expect a corresponding
volume of water, whereas in reality it presents at a certain
period of the year but the appearance of a dry gulch, or at
best of a thin film lazily sinking through whitish sand. If,
for instance, Alarcon does not mention the mouth of the Gila
when he rowed up the great Colorado in September, 1540, it
should be no matter of surprise, for the Gila at that season
sometimes carries no more water than an ordinary brook,
notwithstanding the length of its course.
Under such circumstances, it follows that even the moist
ure which the Southwest derives from surrounding districts
by the channels of drainage is not abundant. That drainage
itself is limited in area, and hence the habitable portions of
the surface are small in comparison with the total expanse.
The soil is largely fertile, that is, where there is any soil at all ;
it produces as soon as it can be moistened. Vegetation there
fore bears the character that might be expected : it appears
scant along the mountain bases, and often on the lower moun
tains themselves ; and owing to the more southerly latitude,
coupled with the elevation of the general level, it affords sin
gular associations of vegetable types, and great contrasts in
what lives and blossoms in the same neighborhood.
I have already alluded to the Coniferae as forming the vege
table covering of the higher mountains. These stately plants
are not limited to northern latitudes ; they extend into Sonora
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 19
and Chihuahua, where large portions of the Sierra Madre dis
play vast forests of splendid pine timber. Finns Chihua-huana
and strobiformis cover the central elevated basins, the
"heart of the Sierra." On the whole, forests are not abun
dant in the Southwest. What is called " Monte " in Spanish
embraces any description of country covered with plants,
perennial, and higher than the low shrub. Mezquite (JProsopis
juliflord), although only three and four feet high, but scattered
thickly over a number of acres, is a " Monte" in the midst of
an arid plain. Narrow canons studded at intervals with tall
pines, high Mesas on which the low and wide juniper bushes
are scattered for miles like an irregular orchard, are called
" Monte." Real timber regions are scarce. The cold and
well-watered Tierra Amarilla in Northern New Mexico, the
plateau of the Sierra de Zufii, the surroundings of the Sierra
de San Francisco in Arizona, are among the few typical tim
bered areas.1 In the main, trees are farther apart than in
better irrigated sections, and the majority of valleys present
a series of groves, instead of a connected forest.2
The change in vegetation incident upon more southern lati
tude, as well as upon decrease in altitude, is very sudden and
striking in Southern Arizona, on the banks of the Gila River.
There the transition from the pine area, clustering around the
base of the Sierra Blanca, to the thorny and threatening forms
of gigantic Cacti, of Fouquiera splendens, Larrea gigantea, Da-sylirium,
Parkinsonia, and similar brilliantly flowering mon
strosities of the vegetable kingdom, is not only interesting,
it is fascinating to the eye. Another world opens before the
1 A beautiful section of high and picturesque timber-land surrounds also Fort
Apache in Eastern Arizona. There the forest is dense, the trees stately, and
among the varieties represented is the Psendotmga Douglassii. The pines of
Chihuahua reach as far north as Mount Graham, on the southern shores of the
Gila.
2 The valley of the upper Rio Pecos is a good specimen.
20 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
traveller; with the unexpected sight of strange plants he
breathes, or seems to breathe, another equally strange air.
In other sections of the Southwest this transition is much
more gradual, certain families of plants, like the Cacti, for
instance, being everywhere represented,1
Opuntise blossom
ing in the shade of Finns Murrayana, as well as on the plain
alongside of Buffalo-grass and of Yucca angnstifolia. The
transformation from smaller into taller forms as we proceed
farther south is not so striking. In Central Arizona the
" Palo Verde "
(Parkinsonia Torreyand) creeps up to near the
Little Colorado River.2 In Western Sonora the specifically
Arizonian flora prevails generally in the centre, the "
Pitahaya"
takes the place of the colossal " Zahuaro" (Cereus giganteus},
and cylindrical Opuntiae or " Choyas
" increase in number, as
well as in size. Thickets are not common in the South vest,
on the whole. They are found in northern sections, in gorges
and ravines like the Canon of Santa Clara, where wild-cherry
trees, and even elders, willows, and poplars, gather closely
along the banks of a limpid brook. Farther south, however,
the thicket is much more frequent, and what is there called
" Monte "
is but a thicket, often dangerous to penetrate on
account of the thorny plants of which it is constituted. Such
thickets cover the drift-hills encasing the Sonora and Upper
Yaqui Rivers ; they impede approach to the numerous and
small aboriginal ruins with which these hills are covered, and
render both difficult and tedious the surveys of rude fortifica
tion lines that sometimes furrow the slopes of more isolated
eminences.
Sonora is a country of striking contrasts. From the road
leading to Bacuachi, the eye embraces at once pine-clad crests,
1 Opimtia arborescens, for instance, acquires a fine development on the plains,
or rather basins, of Middle New Mexico. It flowers in four different shades.
2 Through Tonto Basin. It is also found in the Mojave Desert.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 21
slopes covered with oak, Palo Blanco, and " Dunes "
thickly
overgrown with Mezquite and formidable Choyas. In the
narrow cleft through which the Yaqui runs past Huassavas
and Granados, wild-fig trees associate with oak. The latter
is also an almost steady companion of the Fan-palm.1
Farther south, on the banks of the Lower Yaqui and of the
Rio Mayo, vegetation assumes more vigorous proportions.
The sugar-cane grows well there, and orange trees thrive luxu
riantly around Hermosillo and near Guaymas on the coast of
the Gulf of California;
2 or rather near it, for the coast itself,
on Sonoran territory at least, is a forbidding stretch, marshy
below Guaymas, fearfully dry and arid between Guaymas
and the mouth of the Colorado River. What are called the
"Play,-
s" is nothing else but a desert of sand and occasional
rock, a dreary waste, without water, unfit for permanent
abode. Of similar character is Eastern Chihuahua. It is
a dismal region, almost destitute of water in many places,
terribly hot, and with a dwarfish and thorny vegetation.
3 As
for the Bolson de Mapimi, it is Sahara on a limited scale.
Apparent poverty of the vegetable kingdom, while it seems
to be one of the characteristic traits of nature in the South
west, does not preclude the existence of a great number of
useful plants, useful through their nourishing qualities as
well as through medicinal properties of no small value. Of
nutritive indigenous species there are a great number, and
many of them are, like the medicinal herbs and shrubs, far
1 Corypha. I found it with oak in many places, on the desolate stretch
extending between Babiacora on the Sonora River, and Oposura at the foot of
the Sierra de Bacachi. I also found it similarly associated in the State of
Oaxaca, under the iSth degree of latitude.
2 What is called in Sonora the Date-palm appears already on the banks of
the Sonora River, at Arispe, in an isolated specimen. I met it again on the
Upper Yaqui at Huassavas.
3 The mountains skirting the Rio Grande are fearfully arid. Mezquite is the
dominating plant.
22 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
too little known as yet.
1
Truly, the Indian feeds on many
a natural resource which we should fail to appreciate, but it
is not our taste which determines the value of a plant in
matters of historical import. The great question of subsist
ence is one which has exercised a powerful influence on the
ethnography of the American continent, for primitive man,
man destitute of iron and of draft animals, was not nature s
master ; he lived with nature, and so to say by its pleasure
and permission, with him, life was indeed a struggle, and
the degree of culture which he attained the result of neces
sity. Inorganic forces alternately fostered and threatened
his existence, without leaving him any clue to their why and
wherefore ; vegetation appeared more congenial ; still it lay
before him like a vast field for doubtful experiments. The ani
mal kingdom, however, was more tangible : its species placed
their useful and the noxious qualities within easy reach of his
judgment. The Fauna of the Southwest, therefore, is deserv
ing of attention, even of closer notice than the other features
of nature s complete realm.
In the Fauna of the Southwest there appear, prominent
to the general observer, a certain number of species of a
high order like zoogeographic landmarks. It is not always
the large animal which has played the most important part
in man s history ; still, it cannot be denied that the Indian
associated and lived more intimately with larger species than
with inferior ones. I purposely say with for he was placed
in a state of quasi equality towards beasts whose physical
1 To enter into details here would be to undertake an almost endless task.
For Sonora, the Description Geogi-afica de Sonora (1764, MS.) contains a list
which is very important in every respect. I shall have occasion to refer to it
subsequently, as well as to the excellent treatise of Dr. Washington Mathews,
Names of Plants in the Navajo Language. The latter is especially valuable from
a medicinal point of view. The Pueblo Indians know and use, often with great
secrecy, a large number of medicinal plants. Others play a famous part in magic
performances and conjurations. I shall treat of some of these hereafter.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 23
properties resembled closely his own. There is no clear di
vision line susceptible of being drawn in the Fauna, except
in as far as the topography has marked out the great plains,
with their crushing uniformity, and the mountain regions, with
ever-changing accidentations. The great plains only graze
the Southwest ; they lie at some distance east of the Rio
Grande, and do not penetrate Mexico. Their Fauna has
played a remarkable part in the past of the Indian, a part
which deserves special investigation further on. As to the
larger animals of the mountain districts, it is not easy to
draw lines of geographical distribution.
Thus the mountain- sheep (Ovis montana) is found to-day
in northern, and even in northeastern Chihuahua. 1 Among
the objects exhumed from the ruins at Casas Grandes, I saw
and copied a pestle, whose upper end was a perfect represen
tation of the mountain sheep with its enormous spiral horns.
The panther (Felis concolor), the coyote (Cams latrans), the^
wolf, the deer, the bear species with exception of the grizzly,
2
are all found in Sonora, as well as on the southern border
of the State of Colorado. Mountain goats were noticed in
Southern Arizona as early as I54O.
3 Now they have almost
completely disappeared from the Southwest. Antilocapra
Americana is as common on levels in the 2Qth degree of lati
tude as on the Northern New Mexican plains.
4 Lynx rufus
1 In the mountains west of El Paso del Norte, even, I presume, in the Corral
de Piedras. The Description Geografica de Sonora, cap. iii. art. 5, 1764, says:
" Carnero cimarron, en opata Tetesso : hay muchos en la Pimeria alta, en lo
demas de Sonora no tanto. Son mas grandes que los mansos y tienen los
cuernos sin comparacion mas gruesos y largos que los domesticos."
2 What is called Grizzly,
" Oso platiado," or " Oso barroso," in New Mexico,
is a cross-breed only. The real Grizzly seldom enters the Southwest.
3 Castaiieda, Cibola, p. 159 : "On trouve beaucoup de moutons et de cheveres
sauvages ; ces animaux sont tres-grands, ils ont de longues comes."
4 On the plain which extends along the eastern foot of the Sierra Madre, and
southwest of Casas Grandes, beyond the abandoned hacienda of San Diego, I
saw large flocks of antelopes.
24 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
and L. Canadensis commonly designated as "wild-cats"
are found on nearly all the mountains. But the largest
of American felines, the jaguar (Felis onzd), but very rarely
treads the soil of the United States. I know of well-authen
ticated instances when strayed specimens of this beautiful
and powerful animal were discovered as far north as the 33d
degree of latitude in Arizona. 1 But the home of the jaguar
in the Southwest is Sonora, and some parts of Chihuahua.
Ajnong larger mammals the elk, Cervus Canadensis, has prac
tically been exterminated in this century, whereas formerly
it was found, abundantly even, in the mountains north and
west of Santa Fe. Of smaller mammals, the badger, the
hares and rabbits, etc., are scattered over the entire region,
and varieties of the prairie marmot inhabit, or infest some
times, all the larger level spaces, and especially the plains.
2
It is a surprising fact, that, in a country so devoid of water
as New Mexico, almost one fourth of the species of birds
should be aquatic. Ducks, wild-geese, herons, cranes, even
the swan and the gull, make at least sporadically their ap
pearance on the Rio Grande. In the dry and high mountain
regions, the crow and the raven rule supreme. No solitude
is so complete that the wanderer will not meet one or more
of these birds of ill omen.3 They form almost an integral
1 In the Sierra Blanca. The fact appears to me well authenticated.
2 Arctomys flaviventer, for instance. The animal is not at all limited to the
plains. At Santa Fe, it burrows to-day in fields on the outskirts of town, and
even in town. On the Mesa between Santa Fe and Pena Blanca it is very com
mon, and renders transit for horses often dangerous, by burrowing in the mid
dle of the road. On the Rio Grande near Santo Domingo, prairie-dog holes
are of frequent occurrence. As usual, owls and rattlesnakes associate with the
harmless little rodent, and the great Mygale retire into their subterraneous
dwellings also.
3 Conms Americanus, the crow, is much more common than C. corax, the
raven. The latter is but occasionally met on Mesas, where a solitary bird
of the species may be seen to stand watching the neighborhood in search
of food.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 25
part of the Southwestern landscape. In elevated regions
eagles (in New Mexico Aquila chrysaetns and leucocephalus]
are not unfrequent. Quails, grouse, pheasants, and the beau
tiful wild turkey, represent the Gallinaceae. Songsters haunt
groves as well as thickets ; the mocking-bird enlivens at night
the banks of the Rio Grande as well as the solitudes of the
Gila. In the immense pine forests of the heart of the Sierra
Madre, the tall green parrot is a conspicuous feature. At
sunrise, it flutters from tree-top to tree-top, filling the air with
discordant, but ever-changing cries.
Still, animal life is far from being prominent on the whole.
Nature in the Southwest is rather solemn than lively. Days
may elapse ere the wanderer meets with anything else than a
solitary crow, a coyote, or, if he chance to strike a grove of
Pinon trees, flocks of handsome but ruthlessly pilfering Pici-corvus
colnmbinus, a beautiful bird, though damaging to the
edible fruit of this species of Coniferae, and disagreeable on
account of the unharmonious noise with which he accom
panies his work of plunder. On smaller plains droves of ante
lopes are occasionally encountered ; the other large mammals,
even deer, although plentiful in certain localities, shun even
the distant approach of man. There is a stillness prevailing
which produces a feeling of quiet and solemnity well adapted
to the frame of pine-clad mountains, with their naked clefts
and rents, or huge, picturesque crags, from which one looks
down on mesas and basins, beyond which the eye occasion
ally escapes towards an unbounded horizon, over arid valleys
and barren plains, with the jagged outline of other ranges far
away, where the dark-blue sky seems to rise or to rest.
This scarcity of animal life visible to the traveller prevails
also in lower orders of the Fauna. Snakes, especially the
venomous Caudisona, are but locally abundant. Months and
months may elapse before we meet a single one of the much
26 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
feared " rattlers "
; then, again, within a small compass, quite
a number are seen. Heloderma suspectum (the
" Gila Mon
ster"),
1 Mygale Heintzii (the "Tarantula" of popular fame),
2
the scorpion and telyphonus,
3 the disgusting scolopenders
and julus, are noxiously frequent in certain parts, but only
at the periods of annual rains. They become then, in a fear
fully torrid atmosphere, the fit companions of thorny Choyas,
spectral Cereus, sharp-cutting Yucca, and of the Fouquiera,
with its dangerous spines, emerald-green foliage, and flaming
red blossoms.
Thus there is a certain harmony between all the kingdoms
of Nature in the Southwest. They compose everywhere a
picture, not lovely, but very striking; attractive through its
originality rather than through beauty. It is so striking
that over primitive man it has wielded power in every sense,
and in every direction of his physical, as well as intellectual
life. The Indian was, and still is, much more helpless in
presence of nature than we are. In order not to succumb to
that nature s encroachments, he must yield where we oppose
successful and profitable resistance. The physical qualities
of the Indian, for which we envy him, are the result of com
pulsory pliability, rather than of superior endowment.
The Indian, says Lewis H. Morgan, " migrates under the
influence of physical causes."
4 This is absolutely true ; for
1 The Gila Monster is much dreaded, but I never heard of one authenticated
case when his bite had fatal results. I know, on the other hand, that dogs were
bitten by this ugly-looking but very slow animal (slow unless teased, when it
becomes very lively), without the slightest noxious effects.
2 The Mygale is not so common by far as reported by many. In the rainy
season it appears sometimes quite often in certain places, but, on the whole, as
it is not at all gregarious, and two mygale can hardly approach each other with
out fighting at once, it is very rare to meet any numbers of them. As to the bite,
it is certainly very dangerous, unless attended to without delay.
3 The so-called "
Vinagron."
4 In that very remarkable and too little known essay entitled Indian Migra
tions. I refer to it because it deserves greater attention than has hitherto been
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 27
even when superstition impels him to change his place of
abode, that belief has been created by natural phenomena.
Topography, hydrography, the flora and fauna, they induce
him to stay or to move. Relations towards others of his
race hostilities, for instance have similar effects, but
their origin is mostly a desire to obtain what Nature has
given to one locality and refused to another. The Indian,
untouched by European culture, was nowhere absolutely
sedentary; neither did he become a perfect nomad until he
learned to own and to use the horse, with one single excep
tion ; and this was the Indian of the great plains. He was a
true nomad, because the plains nowhere afforded him perma
nent subsistence, and he could secure it only by following the
American bison or buffalo. As soon as a tribe came in con
tact with a great quadruped, and began to enjoy the manifold
benefits which it offered as a source of food, of clothing, and
of shelter, that tribe gave up sedentary life, unless the jeal
ousy of others that had preceded drove it back into the
mountains. The difference between sedentary and roving
Indians is therefore not one of kind ; it is the result of cir
cumstances under which the sympathies and antipathies of
man have only been involuntary agents of Nature. Still, the
topographical division of the Southwest into mountain region
and steppes reflects upon ethnography. There are moun
tain Indians and plain Indians ; the former are more sedate,
the latter more erratic. Groups of both speak the same lan
guage, and recognize each other as having a common origin.
I allude here especially to the Apaches, and to their cousins
the Navajos.
From whatever side the Indian may have come, the steppes
or plains opposed to his movements a formidable barrier. In
bestowed upon it. Much of what I say here is almost repetition of what Mr.
Morgan wrote many years ago.
28 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
the North he might cross them by following streams like the
Missouri, the Platte, the Arkansas, shifting from west to east,
or vice versa, within constant reach of water. Therefore we
notice remains of more permanent habitations vestiges of
household pottery along the Canadian River in the steppes,
far away from those sections where the " Pueblos" have dwelt
and dwell to-day;
1 but where streams traverse the plains
from north to south, as in Texas, or where there are no water
courses at all, it was impossible for primitive man to cross
the plains in any direction, that is, without the buffalo.
The greatest of all American mammals was never perma
nent in the Southwest. Its home is in the Northwest, and
overcrowding there, it pushed its herds steadily and uninter
ruptedly to the South. Therefore the buffalo people, as we
might term the enormous droves of the American wild steer,
were constantly on the move, and the Indian followed them,
lived from them, in fact, with them.2 Once accustomed to
1 Ruins are found in the plains both west and east of Wagon Mound. I have
not been able to visit them, and cannot therefore speak of their character.
Those east lie on Canadian River, aud twenty-five miles east from the railroad.
The pottery, of which I have seen specimens, appears to be similar to that
made by the Pueblos. One specimen had the bright glossy ornaments, ap
parently covered with a very coarse glaze, peculiar to some of the older Pueblo
pottery.
2 This "living with the buffalo" of the Plains Indians struck the earliest
Spanish explorers. I begin with Coronado, Car/a al Emperador, 2oth Octo
ber, 1541 (Doc.de India*, vol. iii. p. 364):
" Y a los 17 dias de camino, tope
una rancheria de Indies, que andan con estas vacas, que los llaman querechos,
los cuales no siembran, y comen la carne cruda y beben la sangre de las vacas
que matan. Estos adoban los cueros de las vacas, de que en esta tierra viste
toda la gente della ; tienen pabellones de cueros de vacas adobados y ensebados,
muy bien hechos, donde se meten y andan tras las vacas, mudandose con ellas."
Juan Jaramillo, Relacion hecha por el Capitan ; de la Jornada que habia
hecho a la Tierra Nueva en Nueva Espana y al Descubrimiento de Cibola ; yendo
por General Francisco Vasquez Coronado (Doc. de Indias, vol. xiv. p. 310) :
" En
estos principles de las vacas hallamos indios que los llamaban a estos, los de
las casas de azotea, querechos ;
. . . segun se entendio de estos iridios, todo su
menester humane es de las vacas, porque dellas comen, y visten y calzan; son
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 29
life in company with the buffalo, the Indian was no longer
master of his destinies. He traversed the steppes hither and
thither, as the animal led him. Fragments of these wandering
tribes were sometimes cast ashore, so to say, on both banks
of the plains. There they were forced to become more per
manent, in a measure. On the other hand, the Indian from
Western mountains, as well as the Indian from Arkansas and
Missouri, was tempted to try his luck at times in the hunt of
the great quadruped. Thus the steppes became, through the
buffalo, traversable, useful to the aborigines, and almost a
mart where the two sections of the continent, the East and
the West, communicated. In hostile meetings of bands who
spoke distinct tongues, who had not the slightest idea of
each other s existence even, or in attempts at exchange of
captives, they carried over to one section of the continent
notions or objects from the opposite ; geographical concep
tions, however vague and distorted, passed from east to west,
or from west to east, wandering over the plains after the
buffalo. 1 Instead of being a barrier, the plains became a con-hombres
que se mudan aqui y alia, donde mejor les parece." Relation del
Suceso de la Jornada que Francisco Vazquez hizo en el Descnbrimiento de Cibola
(Ibid., p. 327): "En estos llanos e con estas vacas andaban dos maneras de
gente ; los unos se llamaban Querechos e otros Teyas. . . . No tienen otra
grangeria ni asiento mas de cuidarse con las vacas, de las cuales matan todas
las que quieren, e adoban los cueros, de que se visten e hacen tiendas, e comen
la carne e aun algunas veces cruda, y aun tambien beben la sangre, quando en
sed." Relation Postrera de Sivola : y de mas de Quatro-cientas Leguas Adelante
(MS., Libro de Oro, Fray Toribio Motolinia) :
" El mantenimiento o sutenta-miento
de estos indios es todo de las vacas, porque ni siembran ni cogen
maiz." See also Castaneda, Cibola (pp. 116, 190, etc.).
1 Evidence of this is furnished by the tales of the so-called Turk, the captive
Indian, from a tribe living east of the plains, and who determined the expedition
of Coronado in search of Quivira through his statements. It is not unlikely
that the great river of which the Spaniards heard at Pecos, and from this same
Indian, was either the Missouri or the Mississippi. Thus the Pueblos had some
notions of the eastern half of North America. It was of necessity very defect
ive ; but still it was a notion, and it had reached them through that occasional
intercourse, hostile or friendly, to which the plains gave rise. Compare Casca-
30 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
necting medium between the two divisions of North America,
even in aboriginal times.
Entirely different was the fate of the Indian in the moun
tains. There it was, above all, linked to the distribution of
water. Scarcity of permanent water is one of the dark sides
of many regions in the Southwest ; wherever water appeared
to be in permanence, therefore, it created a tendency to re
main and to settle. The approach of others to the same
spot caused dispute, estrangement among people of the same
stock, secessions, warfare, displacements. Water was the
most powerful agent which propelled the settlement of these
regions ; at the same time, it was the most immediate cause
for strife and disturbances.
An Indian tribe may have wandered for a long while with
out forgetting agricultural arts and their consequences for
living. As soon as necessity or natural advantages impel to
it, they settle again, adapting their customs to whatever
change nature requires. Thus we find the southern Pimas,
in Sonora, living at the time the Spaniards first came in con
tact with them in solid houses made of large adobes, each
village having besides a central place of refuge in the shape
of a house strongly constructed for defence.1 The northern
neda, CMola, pp. 72 and 77; Jaramillo, Relation Hecha, p. 311; Relation de
Suceso, p. 325, etc.
1 This fact is stated by P. Ribas, Historia de los Trivmphos (p. 360) :
" Pobla-dos
estauan los Nebomes a orillas de arroyos de buenas aguas, y corrientes;
sus casas eran mejores, y mas de asieto que las de otras Naciones : porque
eran de paredes de grandes adobes, que hazian de barro, y cubiertas de azoteas,
y terrados. Algunas dellas edificaua mucho mayores, ycon troneras a modo de
fuertes, y proposito para si acometiesen enemigos, recogerse a ellas la gente
del pueblo, y valerse de su flecheria." Relacion de- los Descubrhnientos Conqttistas
y Poblaciones Jiechas por el Gobernador Francisco-, de Ybarra en las Provincias de
Copala, Nuez a Vizcaya y Chiametla (Doc. de Indias, vol. xiv. p. 482) :
" Y que
habia muchas tierras fertiles y comodas para sementeras de trigo y maiz, . . .
en partes doncle buenamente se podian regar con los rios que por cerca dellas
iban; y que ansimismo tenian muchas casas hechas
d^e
terrados."
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 31
Pimas and the Papagos, although their near relatives, occu
pied huts well covered, but still only huts, and their villages
were but hamlets compared with those of their southern
brethren. The Navajos cultivated by irrigation, and lived in
log cabins,1 while their cousins the Apaches moved to and
fro, subsisting on the chase and on murder and rapine. If
the reports of Espejo are correctly interpreted, the Jumanos
in Central Chihuahua were village Indians,2 whereas those of
New Mexico lived in a condition little better than the tribes
of the plain. On the other hand, the Piros on the Rio
Grande irrigated their lands, while the Piros on the so-called
" Medano " those who inhabited the village of Tabira and
its neighboring settlements, who were strictly Pueblos also
depended upon the annual precipitation for their crops, and
upon tanks for their drinking water. The Tehuas irrigated
on the Rio Grande ; the Tanos, who spoke the same lan
guage, and had the same beliefs and customs, raised on the
arid plain of Galisteo corn and squashes by means of summer
rains and winter snow alone, without attempting to extend
their dominion by encroaching upon more amply watered
valleys. )<
It is difficult to trace the migration lines of the Indians
on a sweeping scale. In the Southwest there seems to
be, as in the configuration of the country, a general trend
from north to south ; but transverse movements have been
as common in the vicissitudes of the same tribes as trans-
1 The first notice of the character of the culture of the Navajcs I find in Fr.
Benavides, Memorial (pp. 57, 58) :
" Y estos de Nauajo son muy grandes labra-dores,
y eso significa Nauajo, sementeras grandes. . . . Tienen su modo de
viuienda debaxo de tierra, y cierto modo de xacales para recoger sus sementeras,
y siempre habitan en aquel puesto."
2 Antonio de Espejo, Relation del Viage (Doc. de Indias, vol. xv. p. 105) :
" En que vimos cinco pueblos, con mas de diez mil indios y casas de azotea,
bajas y con buena traza de pueblos."
32 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
verse upheavals of the surface, and often barriers of that
nature have changed the fate of a group, compelling it to
retrace its steps, even to " go back to the place of be
ginning."
The topography of the country has thus, to a great degree,
determined the sites of establishments. The Indian looks to
a few leading features to decide his settlement, apart from
the indications given by superstition. He wants, first of all,
water. Then he requires a limited extent of fertile soil. If
that soil cannot be irrigated, he relies upon rain and snow,
for corn will always grow where it rains moderately. Further
more, he seeks a location where he may feel reasonably safe
from an enemy. In judging of defensible locations, we cannot
apply to them the principles of modern warfare. A treeless
level is often as good a protection. to an Indian village, con
structed of heavy adobes, against a foe armed with bows and
arrows, as an extensive uncommandable slope is against the
artillery of to-day. Retreats, concealed nooks, were as valua
ble to the Indian as high-perched rocks. Communities could
afford to retire into caves, on rocky recesses, where access to
water was difficult in the day-time, without thereby exposing
themselves to more than usual danger, for it is only of
late that the Indian learned to attack at night. Lastly, the
abundance of game, or its absence, and the prevalence of
certain nutritive or medicinal plants, influenced the choice of
location.
The abandonment of villages has been due to various
causes. Thus the Tehuas, of Santa Clara, assert that their
ancestors dwelt in the clusters of artificial grottos exca
vated in cliffs of pumice-stone west of the Rio Grande. The
cave villages of the Pu-ye and Shu-fin-ne are claimed by
the Tehuas as those of their own people. A few years of
drought compelled them to abandon these elevated and
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 33
sparsely watered places, and to descend upon the river banks,
where they had to resort to irrigation for raising their
crops, whereas at the caves they grew corn and squashes
by means of the rains alone. The Queres of Cochiti posi
tively state that similar artificial caves, which line the walls
of the Rito de los Frijoles, or Tyuo-nyi, were formerly the
habitations of their tribe, and that constant hostilities of the
Tehuas and Navajos, as well as the gradual disintegration of
the very friable rock, compelled their abandonment. The
latter is very plainly visible. In proportion as the material
is easy to work, it deteriorates easily, and crumbles. The
majority of such caves have fallen in on the front, and against
such accidents there was no remedy.
On the high "
Potreros," fronting upon the Rio Grande,
stand the ruins of a number of villages. These were succes
sively occupied by the same tribe, and therefore successively
abandoned also, owing to "
physical causes." Drought espe
cially has been a leading agent ; a single year, without ade
quate rain, compelled the tribe to remove to a better watered
locality. Comparative permanence of abode was possible in
the Southwest only where irrigation could be resorted to, and
even there the irregularity of water supply is such that the
Rio Grande, for instance, has been known to disappear in
the middle of its course, as at La Joya and Mesilla in New
Mexico. There is no positive evidence that the climate of
the Southwest has suffered any important changes since man
has inhabited the country ; every seeming anomaly in the
location of ancient dwellings explains itself, after a close
scrutiny, by phenomena which are of actual occurrence to
day. The existence of the long "mysterious" ruins on the
Medano, south of the salt lagunes of the Manzano, the so-called
Gran Quivira, the Pueblo Blanco, and others, in locali
ties where there is no water far and near, where irrigation
3
34 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
was impossible, but the soil fertile and game abundant, is
fully explained by the fact that the main Indian staples
corn and calabashes grow with summer rain alone, while
the discovery of water tanks near to every ruin proves that
the inhabitants had artificially provided for the supply essen
tial to life. The same is true in regard to the ruins scattered
over arid plains of Southwestern Arizona; everywhere the ar
tificial reservoir accompanies traces of former settlements.
But while deficiency in the water supply has occasionally
determined changes of abode on the part of primitive man,
excess of it has quite as often had the same consequences.
In the mountainous parts of Sonora, the villages of the Opatas
were constructed on dunes skirting the river banks. Torren
tial rains flood these regions in summer ; they not only cause
sudden freshets, but wash even the bluffs sometimes to a de
gree which rendered the small dwellings of the Indian very
insecure, and occasioned displacements of whole villages. In
New Mexico, and during historical times, the instances of
pueblos being destroyed by a sudden rise of mountain torrents
are not infrequent. Santo Domingo, for instance, has been
washed away four times within the last two hundred years,
1
and every time it has been rebuilt on a new site. With the
exception of Acoma, there is not a single pueblo standing
where it was at the time of Coronado, or even sixty years
later, when Juan de Onate accomplished the peaceable reduc
tion of the New Mexican village Indians. Such mutations
have also been caused by hostilities, or merely by fear of
them. The great insurrection of 1680 wrought an important
change in the numbers and distribution of Indian villages.
1 The original pueblo, called Gui-pu-y, stood on the banks of the Arroyo de
Galisteo, more than a mile east of the station of Wallace. It was partly de
stroyed by a rise of this dangerous torrent in one night. The next one has com
pletely disappeared, the Rio Grande having washed it away. It was called
Uash-pa Tze-na. The present village has suffered three disasters
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 35
Although the Southwest is, on the whole, not subject to epi
demic diseases, the coast of Sonora excepted, it is not
unlikely that many ancient settlements owe their decay and
abandonment to sickness among its inhabitants. Mountain
fever induced the remnants of the Pecos to forsake their homes
and retire to Jemez. The villages on the lower Rio Mimbres
became deserted, in all likelihood, owing to the malarial !
qualities of the region. The Indian is much more helpless
in such cases than we are; and when the "hand of nature"
begins to weigh heavily upon any tribe, superstition comes
in and hastens the destruction through practices which, while
intended for relief, are actually more dangerous than the
evil itself. 1
The natural resources of the Southwest have been suffi
cient to induce man to settle, and to remain settled, in a
great number of localities, for a certain length of time at
least ; but the influence of contact of different tribes has done
a great deal also towards tying them to the soil, or loosening
ties already extant. This contact has nowhere been con
stant ; overcrowding has not occurred, although crowding in
the shape of persistent harassing, as the wolf harasses and
finally wears out a steer or a drove of cattle, has been the
constant tactics of the roving Indian against the land-tilling
natives.
Contact has been occasional only, whether it was friendly
or hostile. Natural resources and wants have caused and
upheld this. The existence of products which one possessed
and the other coveted has alternately caused war and com-
1 Any disaster of magnitude, like drought, epidemic diseases, or a flood, is
quickly attributed by the Pueblos to witchcraft. In consequence of this, suspi
cion sets in, and many crimes are committed which are kept secret, but con
tribute slowly and surely to depopulate the village. Certain pueblos, like
Nambe, Santa Clara, and Cia, owe their decline to the constant inter-killing
going on for supposed evil practices of witchcraft.
36 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
merce. It may be said that no two tribes were ever so hostile
as never to trade, or so intimately connected in friendship as
never to fight each other. The possession of turquoise in the
small range of mountains called Cerrillos gave the Tanos
Indians of Galisteo Basin a prominent position among their
neighbors. The Zimis enjoyed similar privileges, which
caused their modest relations of commerce to extend as
far as the interior of Sonora and the Colorado of the West.1
The proximity of the buffalo gave the Pecos Indians a valu
able staple of commerce. Buffalo robes wandered as far as
Zuni, and from there into Arizona.2 These robes also were,
for the Pecos Indians, an acquisition largely by trade ; they
obtained them quite as often from the Apaches, who came
down to the village in winter in order to get corn,3 as by
actual hunt on the plains. The salt marshes in front of
the Manzano range gave the Tiguas, as well as the Piros
of Abo and of Tabira, an influential position, through their
control over the supply of salt. Possession of such natural
treasures formed ties of friendship, or broke them, as cir
cumstances might determine. They also extended the geo
graphical knowledge of the native, by attracting to his home
people from other regions. This geographical knowledge,
very faint and still more confused, has played an important
part in the creeds and beliefs of the aborigines. What the
Indian fails to understand he assigns at once to the domain
of the supernatural ; distant lands, of which he hears fabu-
1 This is stated by various authors of the sixteenth century, like Fray Marcos
of Nizza, Descubrimiento de las Siete Ciudades (Doc. de Indias, vol. iii. pp. 333-342).
About the veracity of Fray Marcos there cannot longer be any doubt. I hope to
have established this point fully in two essays on the subject. Compare also, in
regard to the Indians of the Colorado River, Hernando Alarcon, Relation de la
Navigation et de la Decouverte faite par le Capitaine Fernando Alarcon (in Cibola,
Appendix, p. 324, ct seq.}.
2 Ibid.
3 Castaneda, Cibola, p. 179.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 37
lous descriptions, become the scene of folk-lore; events which
are striking, and yet inexplicable to him, pass over into the
realm of mythology.
The role which plants have played in Southwestern eth
nography has been varied, and yet not as evident on the sur
face as might be expected from its intrinsic importance. The
same staples in the shape of domestic vegetables prevailed in
the main over the Southwest. Corn, beans, calabashes, were
cultivated almost everywhere, and only local and temporary
scarcity could cause a pressure upon the native. But there
were other plants also cultivated which could not grow every
where, and thus became an element of trade. Such was
cotton. Cotton demands irrigation, and a warm season of
considerable duration. North of Cochiti it was not raised on
the Rio Grande. Neither did it occur at the Zuni villages.
Commercial intercourse furnished it to such tribes as had it
not, and with that intercourse came all the favorable and un
favorable results of contact. Tobacco was not known to the
Pueblos until Spanish rule became established ; but it was in
constant use among the tribes of Southern Sonora, the
Yaquis, Mayos, and probably the Southern Pimas. Through
cotton the art of weaving became an accomplishment among
certain groups, whereas others, equally advanced in other re
spects, resorted to plaiting and tressing, using the yucca,
turkey feathers, and rabbit skins for their vestments. 1 I have
1 The Zunis, for instance, raised no cotton. The Moquis, and the Rio Grande
Pueblos, however, cultivated the plant. This is so positively stated by the ma
jority of writers contemporary with the expedition of Coronado, that it is almost
superfluous to quote from them. Still I must notice a few, as they refer more
particularly to the mode of dress of the Pueblo Indians. Castaneda describes the
costume of Zuni as follows (Cibola, p. 163) :
" Les Indiens de ce pays sont tres-intelligents
; ils se couvrent les parties naturelles et tout le milieu du corps avec
des pieces d etoffes qui ressemblent a des serviettes ; elles sont garnies de houpes
et d une broderie aux coins ; ils les attachent autour des reins. Ces naturels ont
aussi des especes de pelisses en plumes ou en peaux de lievres, et des etoffes de
38 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
already spoken of the part played by the buffalo in general ;
he has been a powerful agency in the formation of South
western ethnography. It is not unlikely even that he has
largely contributed to facilitate the peopling of the whole
North American continent, at least to direct the movements
of the Indian. In regard to this quadruped, and to whatever
he could afford to man, the roving Indian had the advan
tage over the villagers. He almost controlled the market.
He might, if not exclude, at least very much hamper their
endeavors to obtain hides and meat. The roving Indian
was not much below the Pueblo in arts of life. He had
even made one step beyond what the sedentary aborigine
ever achieved without the ai$ of the European, in Peru ex-cepted,
the Apache of the plains had a beast of burden !
With the Pueblos the only domestic animal was the turkey.
1
The Apaches-Vaqueros had the Arctic dog to carry his tents,
his wardrobe, his entire household goods.
2 This animal gave
coton." The Relation del Sticeso (p. 320): "... a causa que no tienen ningun
algodon ; e se visten de mantas de Wenegrien e de cueros de venados, e algunos
de vaca." Jaramillo, Relacion (p. 308) :
" Tienen mantas de algodon cuadradas ;
unas mayores que otras, como de vara y media de largo." Relacion Postrera
(MS.) :
" Desta gente algunos traen mantas de algodon y de maguey y cueros
de venados adobados, . . . tambien hacen mantas de pellejos de liebres y de
conejos, con que se cubren : andan las mujeres vestidas de mantas de maguey
hasta los pies." Fr. Geronimo de Zarate-Salmeron, Relaciones de Todas las
Cosas (1626, MS., art. 44): " Vistense de mantas de Yztli texidas de cardon-cillo,
no tienen estos Yndios algodon." The mantles of maguey were made
of yucca leaves. Such textures are still found occasionally in cave houses and
cliff dwellings. The mantles of rabbit hair are still worn at Moqui to-day.
As to the mantles made of turkey plumes, they are out of use altogether at
present.
1 They kept the turkey for his plumage, rather than for meat or eggs.
Relacion del Sticeso (p. 320) :
" La comida que tienen es mucho maiz, e frisoles, e
melones, e algunas gallinas de las de Mexico; y estas las tienen mas para la
pluma que para comer, porque hacen della pellones."
2 This domestic dog is mentioned by all the authors who were eyewitnesses
of Coronado s march. Subsequent authors, like Benavides and Villasenor y
Sanchez, mention it also. Not one of them, however, gives a detailed descrip
tion. Still, it must^have been the same dog which more northern Indians still
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 39
roving man a sway on the plains which the villager could not
dispute. The main staple of the plains, therefore, the hides
and meat of Bison Americanus, became of necessity an object
of commercial intercourse, even between the most hostile
groups of sedentary Indians and nomads.
On account of the demand for animal products, commerce
extended in the Southwest over much greater expanses than
might be supposed. Iridescent shells, common on the coast
of the Gulf of California, wandered as far as the plains, chan
ging hands through barter, gift, or violence. The inhabitants
of the Colorado river shores, the Seris of Sonora, exchanged
these bivalves for the turquoises of Zuni, or the tanned hides
and rabbit mantles of Moqui. ,The same took place with par
rot feathers. The large green parrot is very common in the
Sierra Madre, and Cabeza de Vaca tells us that the Jovas,
who dwelt on the mountainous confines of Sonora and Chi
huahua, exchanged its plumes for green stones farther north.1
At Casas Grandes I saw turquoises, shell beads, and marine
snails of various kinds, which had been exhumed from the
ruins, and among the latter were species found only in the
West Indies, or in the Gulf of California,
2 whereas Casas
Grandes lies midway between the shores of both oceans, in
the very heart of Northern Mexico. All these objects were
not necessaries of life in the strictest sense, they were luxu-use
as a beast of burden. In this case, it certainly is a variety of the Arctic. The
Relation Fostrera says of the dogs of the Querechos :
" Esta gente tiene perros
como los de esta tierra, salvo que son algo mayores." Mota-Padilla, Historia
de Nueva Galicia (1742, p. 165) :
" Unos perillos no corpulentos."
1 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Naicfragios, y Relation de la Jornada que
hizo d la Florida (in Veclia, Historiadores primitives de fndias, vol. i. cap. xxxi.
p. 543) :
" Y dijeron que las traian de unas sierras muy altas que estan hacia
el Norte, y las compraban a trueco de penachos y plunias de papagayos." The
Indians of whom Cabeza de Vaca received this information were Jovas.
2 There were, among others, Turritella Broderipiani, from the Pacific ;
Conus proteus, from the West Indies ; and Coitus regularis, from the west coast
of Mexico.
40 INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST.
ries, and constitute to-day what the Southwestern Indian
regards as his specific
"
treasure." Still, the possession of
them was regarded as essential, because they formed an ac
cessory to their
religjous rites, or to the magic processes with
which their religion is so intimately linked.
The influence of natural scenes, of atmospheric phenomena,
of the qualities, useful and baneful, of natural objects, on the
religious beliefs and practices of the Indians of the Southwest
is such, that one may feel tempted to think that that religion
itself sprung up in the midst of a nature reflecting itself so
strongly in the mental conceptions of man.
The scenes of man s first appearance upon this earth are
laid among the Pueblos and Navajos, in that Southwest which
they inhabit to-day. What occurred previously is said to have
been enacted below, and not on the surface of the earth, in
distant countries. Still, this may be a " myth of observation,"
arising from the sight of growth in plants, and from the forms
of mountains. But the peculiarly vivid tints of the skies have
given rise to the characterizing of cardinal points by colors,
and these colors are again given in the most ancient myths
to specific mountains, easily recognizable at this day. The
regions beneath the surface of the earth mentioned in myths
of the Pueblos and Navajos are naturally unrecognizable.
These myths show, at least, that, if those Indians removed to
their present homes from distant lands, it was so long ago
that recollection has become exceedingly dim and ill-defined.
The same may be said of their mythological .animals. The
earliest of these are shapes purely monstrous in part, but
those which have become chief characters in the practices
of to-day are well-known types of the present fauna. The
creeds and beliefs of Southwestern tribes may have at one
time possessed more elevated ideas ; to-day these redeeming
Matures are wellnigh obliterated, and it is the influence of a
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 41
nature which man was unable to master that has done it. In
order to save himself from that nature in which he was com
pelled to live, the Indian strains all his faculties to soothe it
by worship. If the Indian has ever had a clear conception of
monotheism, it is long forgotten, and the most slavish crin
ging before natural phenomena, the cause of which is incon
ceivable to him, has taken its place.
1
Idolatry is not even an
adequate term for it ; it is a Fetichism 2 of the grossest kind,
and so complicated, so systematized, that an appeal to one
particular natural object, to one specific deified feature or
phenomenon, can be resorted to, and is resorted to, in every
circumstance of human life. Indian religion bows to the
seasons for its rites, it borrows from them and from atmos
pheric phenomena its symbols. It places animals on a foot
ing of equality with mankind, often even they are recog
nized as his superiors, and placed before him as models of
conduct. Indian religion assumes utter helplessness on the
1 Dr. Mathews says of the Navajos, Some Deities and Demons of the Nava-jos
:
" It is a difficult task to determine which of their gods is the most potent.
Religion with them, as with many other peoples, reflects their own social condi
tions. Their government is a strict democracy. Chiefs are at best but elders,
men of temporary and ill-defined influence, whom the youngest men in the tribe
can contradict and defy. There is no highest chief in the tribe. Hence their
gods, as their men, stand much on a level of equality." What the Pueblo Indian
mentions as a supreme God is the Christian God, but this supreme power is
strictly apart from the real Pueblo creed. I have noticed this often, and very
plainly, in my conversations with them, as well as in the rites which I witnessed.
2 F. H. Gushing, Znni Fetiches (1883, from the Second Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnology), says: "The A-shi-wi, or Zunis, suppose the sun, moon,
and stars, the sky, earth, and sea, in all their phenomena and elements, and all
inanimate objects, as well as plants, animals, and men, to belong to one great
system of all-conscious and inter-related life, in which the degrees of relationship
seem to be determined largely, if not wholly, by the degrees of resemblance. In
this system of life the starting point is man, the most finished, yet the lowest
organism ; at least the lowest, because most dependent, and most helpless. In
just as far as an organism, actual or imaginary, resembles his, it is believed to be
related to him, and correspondingly mortal ; in just as far as it is mysterious is
it considered removed from him, further advanced, powerful, and immortal."
OF THK
UNIVERSITY
42 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
part of man within the natural realm ; it excuses crimes on
that account, and denies retribution beyond the grave. It
teaches no fatalism, because for every evil there is a remedy
within nature itself, which has a supernatural effect as soon
as properly employed. There is something like a poetic
hue cast over some elements of their religion, but this
poesy is not derived from the creed, it is rather a last echo
from a time when man knew better, and felt differently,
-
a complaint that such times are gone ! There is no greater
slave than the Indian. Every motion of his is guided by
superstition, every action of his neighbor suspiciously scru
tinized. We wonder at many strange actions of the Indian,
at what seems to us a lack of consistency, of truthfulness,
an absence of moral consciousness. We punish him for
crimes which he commits without any regret whatever
about the consequences of his misdeed. In this we fail to
understand the motives of the Indian. He is not his own
master. Nature, deified by him to the extent of innumerable
personalities and principles, exacts from him the conduct that
we blame. His religion, notwithstanding the promise of
coarse felicity which it holds out beyond the grave, reduces
him to utter helplessness so long as he has not crossed the
threshold of death, makes of him a timid, fettered being,
anxiously listening to the voices of nature for advice. These
voices stifle the silent throbs of conscience; they are no guide
to the heart, no support for the mind.
This is not the place to enter into details concerning the
creeds of the Indian of the Southwest. What little I shall
have to say about them will find its place farther on. Neither
can I attempt here a discussion of the great importance that
nature has had in shaping his household arts and architecture.
Having described the nature of the country in general, and
its relation to man before the coming of European colonists,
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 43
I proceed to consider that man as he presents himself now,
as well as he presented himself when first encountered ; to
explain the changes in his condition ; and, lastly, to examine
his vestiges from a time of which we have few if any positive
records.
44 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
IT.
ETHNOGRAPHIC CONDITION OF THE SOUTH
WEST IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
IT may be asserted, and without danger of exaggeration,
that before the year 1600 the Spaniards had visited all the
principal regions of the Southwest comprised between the
Indian Territory on the east and the western Rio Colorado,
and had gone as far north as the southern limits of the
State of Colorado. They had even penetrated farther, for
the tribe of Quivira, which Coronado visited in 1541, were
living at that time in eastern Kansas.1 But his adventurous
expedition was a mere reconnoissance, and while it has left
us excellent descriptions of the great plains, of their fauna, and
of the general features of the existence of man in the American
steppes, little that was definite was ascertained concerning the
tribes which the Spaniards met, and with which they had a
short period of peaceable intercourse.2 In order to present a
picture of primitive southwestern ethnography it is necessary
1 I cannot give here all the proofs on hand of this fact. A careful examina
tion of the various documents of Coronado s time, as well as of those which,
while having been written by companions of Coronado, were composed from
memory years afterwards, proves the location to be as I have stated it. One
of the most important witnesses on that point is the Captain Juan Jaramillo,
Relation hecha . . . de la Jornada qne habia Jiecha en la Tierra Nueva en
Nueva Rspana y al Descubrimiento de Cibola ; yendo por General Francisco Vaz
quez de Coronado (Documentos de Indias, vol. xiv. p. 312). I also refer to the
MS. Relation Postrera de Siuola y de mas de Quatro-Cientas Legnas adelante,
in Fray Motolinia s Libra de Oro 6 Thesoro fndico.
2 That Coronado never experienced any difficulty in his intercourse with the
Indians of the plains is a fact well ascertained.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 45
to extend the scope of study to sources more recent than the
sixteenth century, and to embrace in it so far as possible
everything on record concerning the earliest meetings be
tween the white and the so-called "red" man. It is not likely
that a century could have wrought important changes in the
condition of tribes which were not in contact with Euro
peans, and, of such changes as there were, some even are
traceable through Spanish sources themselves. The peremp
tory orders of the Crown to all explorers about preserving
accurate records of what they experienced, saw, and heard, 1
1 Compare Codice de Lcyes y Ordaianzas nueiianiente hechas par su Magestad
para la Gonernacion de las Yndias y buen Tratamiento y Consernacion de los
Yndios, etc. (Docum. de Indias, vol. xvi. p. 458, art. 119), A. D. 1571. Also,
and in the same volume, Ordenanzas de su Magestad hec/uis para los uuevos
Descubrimientos, Conquistas y Pacificaciones (p. 149) :
" Los descobridores por
mar 6 por tierra hagan comentario e memoria por dias, de todo lo que vieren y
hallaren y les aconteciere en las tierras que descobrieren ; todo lo vayan
asentando en un libro, y despues de asentado se lea en publico cada dia, delante
de los que fueren al dicho descobrimiento, porque se averigue mas lo que pasare
y pueda constar de la verdad de todo ello, firmandolo de algunos de los princi-pales,
el cual libro se guardara a mucho recabdo para que cuando vuelvan le
traigan y presenten ante la Audiencia con cuya licencia hobieren ido." Still
more definite is one of the preceding paragraphs (p. 107) : "... por medio de
las dichas lenguas 6 como mejor podieren, hablen con los de la tierra y tengan
platicas y conversacion con ellos, procurando entender las costumbres calidades
y manera de vivir de la gente de la tierra y comarcanos, informandose de la
religion que tienen, ydolos que adoran, con que sacrificios y manera de culto,
si hay entre ellos alguna dotrina 6 genero de letras, como se rigen y gobiernan,
si tienen reyes y si estos son por eleccion 6 derecho de sangre, 6 si se gobiernan
como republica 6 por linages ; que rentas y tributes dan y pagan, y de que
manera y a que personas, y que cosas son los que ellos mas precian que son las
que hay en la tierra, y cuales traen de otras partes quellos tengan en estimacion ;
si en la tierra hay metales y de que calidad ; si hay especena, alguna manera de
drogas y cosas aromaticas, para lo qual lleven algunos generos de especias asi
como pimienta, clavos, gengibre, nuez moscada y otras cosas por muestras para
amostrarselo y preguntarles por ello ; y asf mismo sepan si hay algun genero de
piedras, cosas preciosas de las que en Nuestros Reynos se estan ; y se informen
de la calidad de los animales domesticos y salvajes, de la caJidad de las plantas
y arboles cultivados e incultos que hobiere en la tierra, y de los aprovechamien-tos
que dellas se tiene," etc. Although this royal decree is dated 1573, similar
instructions were imparted to discoverers by the viceroys at a much earlier
46 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
had to be obeyed. Out of this resulted an accumulation of
ethnographic, historic, and geographic material, the critical
sifting of which in the spirit and from the standpoint of the
times in which it was collected gives a tolerably accurate
idea of how man was in the Southwest when he first saw man
coming from a world which, in nature as well as in ideas, was
as new to him as America seemed to the European.
The Indian tribes of Sonora and of Chihuahua were known,
and were to a limited extent described, by the Spaniards,
in the first half of the sixteenth century. But an accurate
description of them was secured only one hundred years
later, when Jesuit missionaries established themselves among
them. It is therefore essential to blend the reports of Fray
Marcos of Nizza 1 with those of P. Andres Perez -de Ribas,2
of Castaneda 3 with those of anonymous writers of the " Com
pany of Jesus." The same is the case in regard to the inhab
itants of Chihuahua: Juan de Miranda 4 must be consulted, as
well as Fray Francisco de Arlegui,
5 and Espejo
6
placed
date. Witness the Instruction de Don Antonio de Mendoza, Visorey de Nueva
Espana, to Fray Marcos de Nizza, from 1538 (Docnmentos de Indias, vol. iii. pp.
325-328). When Coronado went to New Mexico he took along a special chron
icler, Pedro de Sotomayor. Castaneda, Relation du Voyage de Cibola (p. 65) :
"
Garci-lopez avait emmene avec lui un certain Pedro de Sotomayor, qui etait
chroniqueur de 1 expedition."
1 Descubrimiento de las Siete Ciudades. (Doc. de Indicts, vol. iii.)
2 Historia de los Trivmphos de nvestra Santa Fee entre Gentes las mas Barbaras
y Fieras del Nueuo Orbe : conseguidos por los Soldados de la Milicia de la Com-panfa
de lesvs en las Misiones de la Prouincia de Nueua Espana. Madrid, 1645.
8 Relation du Voyage de Cibola.
4 Relacion hecha por Joan de Miranda, Clerigo, al Doctor Orozco, Presidente
de la Andiencia de Guaaalajara ; sobre la Tierra y Poblacion que hay desde las
Minas de San Martin d las de Santa Barbara, que esto ultimo entonces estaba pob-lado.
1575. (Doc. de Indias, vol. xvi. p. 563.)
6 Chronica de la Provincia de N. S. P. S. Francisco de Zacat/cas. 1737.
6 Relacion del Viaje. 1583. (Doc. de Indias, xv.) The same volume contains
two copies of this report. There are important discrepancies between Espejo s
original report and the corrupted and distorted version given by Hakluyt. The
latter is completely unreliable, and does not deserve to be consulted at all.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 47
alongside of the Litteri Annul. It is impossible, and were it
possible it would scarcely be judicious, to go here into great
details concerning any of these tribes. Much of what is re
corded in early writers is still exposed to misinterpretation
on our part, for none of the Sonora Indians have been sub
jected to systematic ethnologic investigation according to
the methods initiated by Mr. dishing, and so long as this
is not done we are quite as liable to reject truths as to
accept errors.
A powerful group, divided into two dialects, of almost
sedentary Indians, barred access, so to say, to Sonora from
the south. These were the natives who spoke, and speak
to-day, the Cahita language,
1 the Mayos, and their northern
relatives, the Yaquis. In the first half of the seventeenth
century these two tribes together represented a population
of not exceeding sixty thousand souls.2 I would here remark,
that the average proportion of adult males to the total num
ber of people, among village Indians, does not exceed I to 3f.
Among roving tribes it is still lower. As most of the esti
mates of population in former times are derived from those
of the "men at arms," this basis of calculation should be
stated beforehand.3
1 So it is called by modern linguists, and I follow their lead, not having been
among the Yaquis myself.
2 Ribas, Historia de los Trivmphos, etc. (lib. iv. cap. i. pp. 236, 237): "La
palabra, Mayo, en su legua significa, Termino : por vetura, por estar este rio
entre otros dos de gentes encontradas, y q traian guerras cotinuas con los
Mayos, y no les dauan lugar a salir de sus terminos. . . . Pero auq el Rio
no es caudaloso, era de lo mas poblaclo de gete de todos los de Cinaloa : de
suerte, que se podrian jutar en sus poblaciones ocho, 6 diez mil Indies de pelea,
y eran como treinta mil personas las q lo poblauan." In regard to the Yaquis
he states (p. 284) :
" Quando los Hiaquis en su Gentilidad poblaua este rio,
era en forma de rancherfas terididas por sus riberas, y junto a sus sementeras, y
el numero destas rancherfas seria de ochenta, en que auia treinta mil almas."
3 A close examination of a great many old and modern estimates, lists, and
censuses has satisfied me that the average ratios are as stated. It would be
tedious to furnish the proof in detail.
48 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
The Mayos were independent of the Yaquis, and the
relations between the two groups were far from being always
friendly. There even existed on the part of the latter a ten
dency to crowd and overwhelm the former, in that gradual
but persistent manner which is characteristic of Indian war
fare. 1
Still, there was no difference in degree of culture.
Settled each along the banks of a considerable river, which
bore the name of its respective tribe, they planted Indian
corn, cotton, calabashes, beans, and tobacco, improved the
Mezcal varieties of the American agave, hunted, fished, and
fought their neighbors, as well as among themselves.2 Owing
1 Ribas, Historia, etc., lib. iv. p. 236.
2 Ribas, (Historia, p. 237,) speaking of the Mayos : Su legua es la misma
que corre en los rios de Cuaque, y Hiaqui : el natural de la gete no ta feroz
como el de las otras Naciones ; dntes mas tratable, y blado : son todos labra-dores,
excepto los de qual, o qual, racherfa, q eran motarazes. En lo demas de
sus costiibres, susteto, casas, viuieda, armas, vsos de borracheras, y bailes,
multiplicidad de mugeres, 6 cocubinas, era los Mayos semejates a las demas
Naciones de q auemos escrito. A la pesca se dauan muchos, particularmete los
q tenia habitacio mas cercana a la mar, el qual, y su rio, es muy abudate de
pescado : sus poblaciones estaua en forma de rachenas a las riberas del rio."
In a general way, this author, who saw the Indians of Sonora when they were
yet untouched by the influence of European culture, says of them (lib. i. cap. ii.
pp. 5. 6) :
" Las poblaciones destas naciones son ordinariamente a las orillas
y riberas de los rios ; porque si se apartaran dellos, ni tuuieran agua que beuer,
ni aun tierras en que sembrar. Las habitaciones, en su Gentilidad, era de
aldeas, 6 rancherias no muy distantes vnas de otras aunque en partes a dos y
tres leguas, conforme hallauan la comodidad de puestos y tierras para semente-ras,
que ordinariamente las procurauan tener cerca de sus casas. Estas hazian,
vnas de varas de monte hincadas en tierra, entretexidas, y atadas con vejucos,
que son vnas ramas, como de carfaparrilla, muy fuertes, y que duran mucho
tiempo. Las paredes que hazian con essa barazon las aforrauan con vna torta
de barro, para que no las penetrasse el so], ni los vientos, cubriendo la casa con
madera, y encima tierra, 6 barro, con que hazian a9Otea, y con esso se conten-tauan.
Otros hazian sus casas de petatcs, qe es un genero de esteras texidas de
cana raxada, y estas cosidas vnas con otras, siruen de pared y cubierta, que es
tumbada sobre arcos de varas hincadas en tierra, y sobre el la corre el agua sin
peligro de gotear, y quedan al modo de los carros cubiertos de Espana. Delante
de sus casas levantan vnas ramadas que les siruen de portal, sobre que guardan
los frutos de sus sementeras, y debaxo del es su viuienda entre dia, y les sirue
de sombra. Alii duermen de noche en tiempo de calores, teniendo por colchon
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST 49
to the almost tropical climate, their dwellings appeared frail,
canes and boughs forming the framework, palm-leaves the
y cama vna estera de cafia de las dichas. Cerradura,ni llaue, no la vsauan, ni
la conocian, y lo que mas es, sin temor de hurtos ; contentandose quando algunas
vezes hazian ausencia de su casa, con poner a la puerta algunos ramos de arbol
sin otro guarda. Y esta tenian tambien para los frutos de la sementera, quando
losdexauan en el campo. . . . Las semillas que estas gentes sembrauan, y frutos
de la tierra que benefician y cogen, y de que se sustentan, son en primer lugar el
maiz que en Espana llaman, trigo de las Indias, que se da con tanta multitud, q
suele rendir vnafanega sembrada ciento y mas de fruto. Demas de esse siem-bran
entre el maiz varios generos de calaba9as, sabrosas y dulces, y de algunas
dellas hazen tassajos que secos al sol les duran mucho tiempo del ano. El
frixol, que es semilla semejante a la haba de Castilla, y aun mas suaue, vsan
todos sembrarlo, con otros generos de semillas," etc. Among the nutritive
plants he mentions also Mezquite beans, Mezcal, Tunas, and others. Cotton is
mentioned by him on page 12 :
" Y para sembrar essas semillas, y limpiar la tierra,
no tenian otros instrumentos que los de vnas cuchillas anchas, y largas, de palo,
con que mullian la tierra ; en que tambien ayudaban a los varones las mugeres.
Estas vsauan el arte de hilar, y lexer algodon, 6 otras yeruas siluestres, como el
cafiamo de Castilla, o pita; y desta hazian algunas mantas, no en telares, que
aun esse arte no alcan9aron ; sino con tra9a trabajosa, hincando vnas estacas en
el suelo, de donde tirauan la tela." Of tobacco he says (p. 9) :
" Y en estas
tales fiestas eran tambien muy celebres los brindis del Tabaco, muy vsado de
todas estas gentes barbaras." He places considerable stress on the fact, that
all these Indians of Sonora and of Sinaloa were addicted to intemperance (p. 8) :
"El vicio que mas generalmente cundia en estas getes, y de tal suerte q apenas
se hallaua vna en la qual no predominasse, era el de la embriaguez, en q gastaua
noches y dias ; porq no la vsauan cada vno solos, y en sus casas, sino en cele
bres, y continues cobites que hazian para ellos : y qualquiera del pueblo q hazia
vino, era llenando grandes ollas, y combidando a la boda a los de su ranchena,
o pueblo, y a vezes tambien a Ins comarcanos, y vezinos : y como era tanto la
gente, no faltaua combite para cada dia y noche de la semana; y assi siempre
se andaua en esta embriaguez. El vino hazia de varias plantas, y frutos de la
tierra, como de Tunas, que en Castilla llaman higos de las Indias, o de Pita-hayas
; otras vezes de las algarrouillas de Mezquite, q atras dixe, 6 de la p ata
Mescal, y sus pencas, coforme a los tiempos en que se dan estos frutos, y de
otras plantas ; q molidas, 6 quebratadas, y echadas en agua, en dos o tres dias
se acedan, y toman el gusto que tanto arrebataua el juizio que de almas raciona-les
les auia quedado a estas gentes. Entre todos los vinos que hazian, el mas
estimado y gustoso, era de panales de miel, q cogen a sus tiempos. Y es de
aduertir, que en este vicio de embriaguez auia vna cosa que lo templaua, porq
en el no entrauan mugeres, ni los que eran 010905, y gente nueua." Segunda
Relacion Anonima de la Jornada de Nttno de Guzman (Collecciou de Docu-mentos
para la Historia de Mexico, Garcia Ycazbalceta, vol. ii. p. 304) :
" El
4
50 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
outer protective shell. 1
Split up into a number of autonomous
villages, each one governed after the well known tribal sys
tem, the entire dialectic cluster only coalesced temporarily
and at rare intervals, for self-protection, in case insult offered
by one of their villages to outsiders led to threatened revenge
on a larger scale.2 No central head existed, either for war or
brebaje que tienen es de unos arboles que tienen que se dice mezquites, que dan
unas algarrobillas delgados, y majanlas en unos almireses de palo que tienen
grandes, y aquello mezclan con agua, y otras cosas de que hacen su brebaje
para beber."
1 See above. Also Proceso del Marques del Valle y Nuno de Guzman y los
Adelantados Soto y Alvarado, sobre el Descubrimiento de la Tierra Atteva, 1541
(Doc. de Indias, vol. xv. p. 332) :
" En sdbado, dia de Sant Francisco, pase el
rio, y de la otra parte halle una estancia de treinta ranches de petates con
unas ramadas pequenas; no habia gente." Castaneda, Cibola, p. 157: "On
nomme cette province Petatlan, parceque les maisons sont faites en Petates
(nattes de jonc). Cette maniere est la meme pendant deux cent quarante lieues,
jusqu a 1 entree du desert de Cibola." Relation dd Suceso de la Jornada qne
Francisco Vazquez hizo en el Descubrimiento de Cibola, 1541 (Doc. de Indias,
vol. xiv. p. 318): "Todo este camino hasta cinquenta leguas dntes de Cibola
es doblado, aunque en algunas partes esta apartado del camino ; la poblacion es
toda una suerte de gente, porque las casas son todas de petates, e alguna entre
ellas de azoteas baxas. Tienen maiz todos, aunque no mucho, y en algunas
partes muy poco ; tienen melones frisoles." Ribas, speaking of the change
in customs and manners of the Yaquis, after their reduction to obedience
to the Church, says (ffistoria de los Trivinphos, lib. v. cap. xxi. p. 339) :
" Los
pueblos estan dispuestos en muy buena forma, sin quedar ya vno solo, que
de assienta viua en sus sementeras, ni rancherfas antiguas. Las casas hazen
ya muchas de paredes de adobes, y terrados, y las de los Gouernadores mas
amplas."
2 Ribas, lib. i. cap. ii. p. 5: "Qvado llamo naciones las que pueblan esta
Prouincia, no es mi intento dar a entender, que son tan populosas como las de
Europa ;
. . . porque no tienen comparacion con ellas. Pero llamolas naciones
diferetes, porque aunque no son tan populosas, pero estan diuididas en trato de
vnas con otras : vnas vezes en lenguas totalmente diferentes, aunque tambien
sucede ser vna la lengua, y con todo estar desvnidas, y encontradas : y en lo que
todas ellas estan diuididas y opuestas, es en continuas guerras q entre ellos
traian, matandose los vnos a los otros ; y tambien en guardar los terminos, tierras,
y puestos que cada vna destas naciones poblauan, y tenia por propios ; de suerte,
q el q se atreuia a entrar en los agenos, era con peligro de dexar la cabega en
manos del enemigo que encotrasse." Ibid., p. n :
"
Leyes, ni Reyes que casti-gassen
tales vicios y pecados, no los tuuieron, ni se hallaua entre ellos genero de
autoridad y gouierno politico que los castigasse. Es verdad que reconocian
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 51
in peace.
1
Still, it is not improbable that each group may
have constituted a sort of barbaric confederacy, although it is
certain that it did not possess the consistency which we ad
mire in the " League of the Iroquois." Gentilism certainly
prevailed,
2 and there are traces of similar esoteric clusters
to those discovered by Mr. Gushing among the Zufiis, and
which, guided by his observations, I have since found in ex
istence among the Queres, Tehuas, and the Tiguas, in New
Mexico.3 Fetichism characterized their religious beliefs, as
well as those of all other southwestern Indians, and the ab
sence of the conception of one supreme being is as plain
among them as elsewhere.4
algunos Caciques principales, que era como cabe9as y Capitanes de familias, o
rancherfas, cuya autoridad solo consistia en determinar alguna guerra o cometi-miento
contra enemigos, o en asentar pazes con otra Nacion : y por ningun caso
se determinauan semejantes facciones sin la voluntad de los dichos Caciques,
que para tales efectos no dexauan de tener muy grande autoridad. En casa
destos se celebrauan las borracheras celebres de guerra, y tambien a estos ayu-dauan
sus subditos a hazer sus sementeras, que era lo ordinario mayores qua
de los demas. Esta tal autoridad alcan9aua dichos Caciques, no tanto por
herencia, quanto por valetia en la guerra, 6 amplitud de familia de hijos, nietos,
y otros parientes, y tal vez por ser muy habladores y predicadores suyos."
1 Compare the description of the hostilities between the Yaquis and the
Spaniards in Ribas, lib. v. cap. ii. to vi. Also in Francisco Xavier Alegre,
Historia de la Companid de Jesus en Nueva Espana, 1842, vol. ii. pp. 31-38.
Alegre gathered most of his information from Ribas.
2 Ribas, Historia, p. 295. The disconnected state of affairs among the
Yaquis is very well pictured in their attempts to treat with the Spaniards after
they had repelled three attacks from the latter. Alegre, Historia de la Com-pania,
vol. ii. p. 32: "Los yaquimis tuvieron su asemblea y se dividieron en
varios pareceres. Los mas juiciosos, a cuya frente estaba el cacique Anabay
lutei fueron de sentir que se ofreciese al capitan la paz y se le concediese lo
que tan justamente pedia."
3 The sorcerers or magicians were so numerous, that Ribas affirms (p. 332) :
" En cierto pueblo, por meclio de su Governador, quiso otro Padre corregir a
vnos quantos hechiceros, para escarmiento de los demas ; y ellos mismos dixeron :
Padre, no te canses en juntarnos, porque qual mas, qual menos, la mitad de los
del pueblo (que era grande) son como nosotros."
4 Ribas, p. 332 :
" Estaua tan sepultada esta Nacion en estas tinieblas, que
vna India, ya desenganada despues que se introduxo la doctrina del Euangelio,
declaro, y dixo a vno de los Padres que se lo predicaua; Padre, mira de la otra
52 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
These two clusters dwelt, for the most part, about the
mouths of the two rivers bearing their names : they held
but a portion of the course of each stream, and it cannot
parte del rio ; ves quantos cerros, motes, picachos, y cimas ay en todo este
contorno? pues en todos ellos teniamos nuestras supersticiones ; y a todos los
reuerenciamos, y las celebrauamos en ellos. Las viejas certificauan, que el
clemonio se les aparecia en figura de perros, sapos, coyotes, y culebras." This
belief is eminently Indian. To-day the sedentary aborigines of New Mexico,
Sonora, etc., believe in the possibility, not only of such apparitions, but
also of the transformation, through witchcraft, of men and women into animals
of some kind. Ribas, p. 332 :
" Indies principales, y Fiscales, afirmaron, como
cosa sabida y recibida entre ellos, que las hechizeras ivan de noche a ciertos
bailes y combites co los demonios, y que boluian por los aires." Page 16 :
" Vi-niendo
aora a las gentes barbaras de que trata esta historia, y auiendo estado
muy ateto los anos que entre ellas auduue para aueriguar lo que passaua en esta
materia de idolatna : y lo que con puntualidad se puede dezir es, que auque en
algunas destas tales gentes no se puede negar que auia rastro de idolatrfa for
mal, pero otras no tenian conocimiento alguno de Dios, ni de alguna Deidad
aunque falsa, ni adoracion explicita de seiior que tuuiesse dominio en el mundo,
ni entendian auia providencia de Criador y Gouernador de quie esperassen pre-mios
de buenas obras en la otra vida, o castigo de las malas, ni vsaron de
comunidad culto diuino. El que en ellos se hallaua, se venia a reduzir a super
sticiones barbaras, 6 hechizos ensenados por los demonios a particulares per-sonas,
con quienes en su Getilidad tenia familiares tratos ; y este vnos implicfto,
y heredado de sus mayores, q se lo ensenaua a la hora de su muerte, encargan-doles
vsassen algunas ceremonias de hechizos, y supersticiones q serian para
curar, 6 matar, o enganar." The same author describes the Fetiches very
clearly (p. 17): "El pacto q co estos hechizeros tiene assentado el demonio
ordinariamente esta* aligado, y lo tienen muy guardado en vnos cuerecillos de
animales parecidos al Huro, de que hazen vnas bolsillas, y detro dellas vnas
pedreguelas de color, 6 chinas medio trasparentes, y esta bolsilla guarda como
si fuera de reliquias; y quando para bautizar se entrega estas predas, es buena
sena, de q recibe de veras la Fe de Christo, y dexan y se apartan de la familiari-dad
del demonio." It is indeed very difficult to induce any Indian to part with
the Fetich, which many of them carry in the little satchels of buckskin, or hide
of some kind, that F. Ribas describes. He continues: " Este muchas vezes se
les aparecia en tiepo de su Getilidad, habladoles en figura de animales, pescados,
6 serpientes, q no se ha oluidado qua a su proposito le salia el auer derribado
a nuestra primera Madre en esta forma. Horauale mucho, 6 temialo quando
se les aparecio ; y por titulo de honra le llamauan Abuelo, sin hazer discurso si
era criatura, o Criador : y aunque la figura de animal, 6 serpiente en que se les
aparecia el demonio, la obserbauan y pintauan a su modo, y tal vez leuantauan
alguna piedra, 6 palo a manera de idolo ; pero claramente no parece reconocian
deidad, ni suprema potestad del vniuerso."
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 53
be said that their sway extended any distance into the Sierra
Madre. East of them, Indians speaking what may be dialects
of the Tarahumar and Tepehuan idioms occupied the valleys
and fastnesses. These tribes are little known, some of them
have disappeared by name, and what we know of their con
dition recalls that of the Yaquis and Mayos, locally varied
through environment.1
North of the Yaquis, and in what might be called the
southern heart of Sonora, we meet with an interesting tribe,
about which little has been said lately, and in regard to which
the positive information of older authors has been in a meas
ure overlooked. These are the southern Pimas, also called
1 Orozco y Berra ( Geografta delas Lengitasy Carta Etnografica de Mexico, 1864,
p. 356) mentions among the " lost languages
" the Tepahues, Tecayaguis,
Cues or Macoyahuis, Vayema, Putima, Baturoque, and Teparantana. At the
same time he says that the Tepahue was spoken at San Andres Conicari and at
La Asuncion Tepahue. The Relation de las Misiones que la Copanta de Jesus
tiene en el Retno y Provincia de la Nueva Vizcaya en la Nueva Espana, 1678,
(Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, IVa Serie, vol. iii. p. 384,) says about
the Partido of San Andres Conicari :
" La lengua es particular si bien una par-cialidad
de este pueblo es de Mayo en la nacion y en la lengua." In regard to
"la Asuncion de Tepahue "(p. 385) : "La lengua es particular: distinta de la
de los demas pueblos si bien todos los demas de ellos entienden la lengua tepave
y aun la caita aunque no la hablaban." This leads to the inference, that the
Tepahues and those of Conicari spoke not the same idiom. Ribas (Historia
de los Trivmphos, p. 254, etc.) says of the Tepahues, that they were settled in
the mountains higher up than the Mayos, with whom they were generally at war,
and that after the reduction of the latter they established themselves " a vn
puesto llano, cinco leguas arriba del rio de Mayo, en vn arroyo, q entra en el
donde formarS vn pueblo de hasta seiscientas familias, y como dos mil personas
de todas edades." Of the Conicaris he tells us (p. 254),
" tenia como de
dozientas familias." It is difficult to determine whether or not the Guazapares
and the Tubares belonged to Sonora. Orozco (Geografta de las Lengnas, pp. 323,
324, 326) locates both tribes in southwestern Chihuahua. There is no doubt
that they lived there in part. Alegre however (Historia, vol. iii. p. 12) locates
the Guazapares in Sinaloa, that is, either in the Northern part of that State or in
southeastern Sonora. The same with the Tubares. (Ibid., p. 52.) Pedro de
Rivera, in his Diario y Derrotero de lo Caminado visto y observado en el Discurso
de la Visita General de Presidios sitnados en las Provincias Ynternas de Nueva
Espana, 1736, p. 47, includes the Tubares among the tribes of Sonora. Orozco
y Berra classifies both languages as dialects of the Tarahumar.
54 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
-^Nebomes or Coras. I shall call them Nebomes hereafter,
in order to distinguish them from the Arizonian Pimas, which
are more generally known under that name. Their social
organization, their religious system of beliefs and practices,
were analogous to those of the Yaquis, their language so
differentiated that it made intercourse impossible except by
signs, and the Nebomes were higher advanced than their
southern neighbors, inasmuch as they were more substan
tially dressed. 1 Their mode of agriculture and also their
1 Ribas, who visited the southern Pimas at the time of their first contact with
Europeans, speaks of the tribe as follows (Historia, p. 360) :
" En el vestido
era esta Nacion la mas compuesta de todas las demas de Cinaloa, a que les
ayudaua la mucha catidad de los cueros de venado, que sabian beneficiar, y
hazen muy buenas gamuzas, muy durable, y quelessiruen en particular de cubi-erta,
al modo de faldellines a las mugeres, tan largos q arrastra por el suelo : y
era gala entre ellas, q los estremos de las gamuzas arrastrasson por tierra. A
que la gente moca tambien anadia otra gala de labores de almagre. En medio
cuerpo arriba, tambien era ordinario traerlo cubierto con mantas, que texia, 6
de algodon, 6 de otra planta como la pita. Y aunque en los varones no era ta
ordinario el andar vestidos, todavia muchos se cubrian con dichas matas." On
page 380 he describes the costume of a chief of the "
Sisibotaris," a branch of
the Pimas or Nebomes :
" Vestido y cubierto con vna large manta, enla9ada al
onbro al modo de manto, y demas desta traia otro cenida a la cintura, como ]o
vsan otros desta Nacion." Father Alegre gathered his information concerning
the Nebomes from the writings of Father Diego Guzman, S.J., who began his
mission work among them in 1619, and he quotes his statements in Historia de
la Campania, vol. ii. p. 117, "y
las mugeres desde muy ninos andan cubiertas
hasta los pies con pieles de venado muy bien curtidas y pintadas." His infor
mation in regard to the Sisibotaris is derived from a letter written by Father
Nicolas de Arnaya in 1621 (Ibid., p. 124): "Los hombres se cubren con una
pequena manta pintada de la cintura a la rodilla y cuando hace frio usan unas
mantas grandes de algodon y pita. Las mugeres van cargadas de vestidos, y al
entrar en la iglesia hacen tanto ruido como si fueran espanolas. Las faldellines
que usan llegan hasta el suelo, de pieles brunidas y blandas como una seda, con
pinturas de colores 6 de algodon y pita, que tienen en abundancia. Se ponen
a mas de eso un delantar de la cintura abajo, que en muchas suele ser negro, y
parece escapulario de monjas. Las doncellas especialmente usan una especie
de jubones 6 corpinos muy bien labrados ; a todo esto afiaden en el invierno
unos como roquetes, y asi todas son honestisimas." Ribas (Historia, p. 385)
uses almost the identical words, but he attributes the letter to Father Pedro
Mendez.
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 55
houses are described as follows by an author of the seven
teenth century, a missionary, who witnessed the first efforts
made at their Christianization :
" The Nebomes were settled
on the banks of creeks with good running water. Their
houses were better and more durable than those of other
nations, for the walls were made of large adobes, which they
manufactured out of clay and covered with flat roofs of earth.
Some of these houses they built even much larger, and with
loopholes like forts, in order that, if they should be attacked
by enemies, the people of the village might retire into them
and make use of their arrows."
1
It is not devoid of significance that the southern Pimas
dwelt in such buildings, which so closely recall the architec
ture of the Casa Grande on the Gila, as well as of the Casas
Grandes in Chihuahua.
As to the numbers of the Nebomes, it is difficult to form
any close estimate. The tribe was divided into two groups,
geographically, the Lower and Upper Nebomes, both of
which were autonomous, often at loggerheads with each other,
and respectively inhabiting a number of equally autonomous
villages. If the Nebomes counted, all told, eight thousand
souls, it is as much as may be safely attributed to them.2
They were consequently at a disadvantage, so far as n timbers
were concerned, as compared with the Yaquis, and only nat
ural advantages and superior architectural skill in works for
defensive purposes enabled them to maintain their existence.
Without mentioning here several smaller tribes wedged in,
as it were, between the more conspicuous groups,
3 and with-
1 Ribas, p. 360. Already quoted in the Geographical Introduction. Alegre
copies the passage almost textually.
2 Ribas, Historia, p. 370. Alegre, ffistoria, vol. ii. p. 122.
3 These tribes were branches of the Nebomes ; for instance, the Sisibotaris,
Nures, and the Aivinos. They spoke the same language, but their settlements
lay apart from the clusters formed by the Nebome villages.
56 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.
out more than alluding to the Eudeves and Jovas, two clus
ters using dialects of the Opata, and occupying a number of
villages nearly in a half-circle around the Opatas and dividing
them from the Nebomes,1 I pass on to the Opata Indians,
a formerly important group, now so completely
"
Hispani-cised
" as to have almost forgotten their native tongue. The
1 That the Eudeve and the Jova idioms are dialects of the Opata is gen
erally accepted. The Eudeves began on the west of the Sonora River, at Opo-depe,
Cucurpe, and Toape, and extended as far southeast as Matape and Los
Alamos. The Jovas were along the Upper Yaqui south of Huassavas, Sahuaripa
and Aribechi belonging to their range. Thence they penetrated into the very
heart of the Sierra Madre as far as western Chihuahua. All their villages
within the great chain are now in ruins, owing to the hostilities of the Apaches.
Thus Tyopari, Mochopa, Servas, and other villages, part of which were Jova,
part Opata, had to be abandoned in the second half of the past century. Of the
Jovas, says the Description Geografica Naturaly Curiosa de la Provincia de Sonora,
1764. (cap. vi. art. i., MSS. of the National Archives at Mexico) :
" Mas zafios
y agrestes son los Jovas, especiahnente casi la mayor porcion de su casta que
no quiere reducirse a vivir en pueblos, fuera de los que estan en Ponida, Teopari
y Mochopa ; sino tiran a vivir en las barrancas de la sierra donde nacieron ;
ni cede su terquedad a diligencias que se hagan con ellos ; ni se enamoran con
el buen trato, comodidades y conveniencias que se les procuren para conser-varles,
aim despues de traidos y congregados en pueblos, como le ha sucedido
al padre Manuel Aguirre, misionero en mision de San Luis Gonzaga de Bacade-guatzi
con los de la