class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[73] and the four villages on the Rio Grande far south of Isleta, naturally are found in the now deserted towns of the "Piros" near Socorro, the most southerly and the least known of the linguistical stocks of sedentary Indians in New Mexico.[74]

In sending the officers mentioned along the Rio Grande, as far south as Mesilla probably, Coronado explored the territory beyond the range of the pueblos, and he thus secured information also concerning the roaming tribes. It is essential that I should touch these here also, because the subsequent history of the village Indians cannot be understood without connection with their savage surroundings. I might as well state here, that west of the Rio Grande and south of Zuñi, the entire south-west corner of New Mexico, appears to have been uninhabited in 1540. Stray hunting parties may have visited it, though there was hardly any inducement, since the buffalo was found east of the Rio Grande only, as far as New Mexico is concerned.[75]

The country visited along the Rio Grande, as far as Mesilla, appears not to have given any occasion for its explorers, to mention any wild tribes as its occupants. Still we know that, east of Socorro and south-east, not forty years after Coronado, the "Jumanas" Indians claimed the Eastern portions of Valencia and Socorro counties; the regions of Abo, Quarac, and Gran Quivira.[76] These savages, also called "Rayados"p. 25 ("Striated" from their custom of painting or cutting their faces and breasts for the sake of ornament), were reduced to villages in 1629 only, by the Franciscans; and the ruins which are now called Gran Quivira date from that time.[77] Dona Ana county was (from later reports which I shall discuss in a subsequent paper), roamed over, towards the Rio Grande, by equally savage hordes, to which Antonio de Espejo and others give the name of "Tobosas."[78] It is, of course, impossible to assign boundaries to the Ranges of such tribes.

Very distinct ethnographic information, however, is given by Coronado himself, as well as by Castañeda and by Jaramillo, in regard to north-eastern New Mexico. This information was secured in the year 1542, during his adventurous expedition in search of Quivira.

In regard to the route followed by him, I can but, in a general way, heartily accept the conclusions of General Simpson.[79] If, in some details, we may have some doubts yet, I gladly bow to his superior knowledge of the country and to his experience of travelling in the plains, in the latter of which I am totally deficient. Coronado started from Pecos, he crossed, probably, the Tecolote chain, threw a bridge over the Rio Gallinas, and then moved on to the north-east at an unknown distance. Although not as yet satisfied that he reached as far north-east as General Simpson states, and believing that he moved more in a circle (as men wandering astray in the plains are apt to do), there is no doubt but that he went far into the "Indian territory,"p. 26 and that Quivira—which, by the way, is plainly described as an agglomeration of Indian "lodges" inhabited, not by sedentary Indians of the pueblo type, but by a tribe exactly similar in culture to the corn-raising aborigines of the Mississippi valley[80]—was situated at all events somewhere between the Indian territory and the State of Nebraska. This is plainly confirmed by the reports of Juan de Oñate's fruitless search of Quivira in 1599,[81] and principally by the statements of the Indians of Quivira themselves, when they visited that governor at Santa Fé thereafter.[82] They told him that the direct route to Quivira was by the pueblo of Taos.

The Quivira of Coronado and of Oñate has therefore not the slightest connection,—and never had, with the Gran Quivira of this day, situated east of Alamillo, near the boundaries of Socorro and Lincoln Counties, New Mexico, and the ruins there;[83] which ruins are those of a Franciscan mission founded after 1629, around whose church a village of "Jumanas" and probably "Piros" Indians had been established under direction of the fathers.

The reports of Coronado, and others, reveal to us the east and north-east of New Mexico as the "Buffalo Country," and consequently as inhabited or roamed over by hunting savages. Of these, two tribes were the immediate neighbors of the Pueblos,—the "Teyas" to the north-east, and the "Querechos" more to the east, south of the former probably. The Ranges intermingled, and both tribes were atp. 27 war with each other. The "Teyas" were possibly Yutas,[84] as these occupied the region latterly held by the Comanches. About the "Querechos" I have, as yet, and at this distance from all documentary evidence, not a trace of information.

On the ethnographical map accompanying this sketch, I have indicated the Apaches as occupying North-western New Mexico. In this locality they were found by Juan de Oñate in 1598-99.[85]

Coronado's homeward march offering no new points of interest, I shall, in conclusion, briefly survey the Ethnography of New Mexico, as it is sketched on the map, and as established by the preceding investigation of the years 1540-43.

We find the sedentary Indians of New Mexico agglomerated in the following clusters:—

1. Between the frontier of Arizona and the Rio Grande, from west to east: Zuñi, Acoma, with possibly Laguna.

2. Along the Rio Grande, from north to south, between "Sangre de Cristo" and Mesilla: Taos, Picuries, Tehua, Queres, Tiguas (branch of the Tanos), Piros.