Chapter IV: Observations on New Spain.iv'-1 (5)

[IV'-38] Arizpe is now a small place, with a population of probably 4,000, and is of interest chiefly to the antiquarian. The original mission of Arizpe was already over 150 years old in Pike's time, and the place is believed to have been an Opata village as early as 1540. The derivation of the name is given as the Opata word _arit_, meaning "ant." The name _Arizpe_ suggests the obvious conjecture, that the root of the word _Arizona_, the derivation of which has been so much mooted, may be here found. How this may be, I do not know; but _Arizona_ does not appear to be Spanish, and certainly any such etymology as Lat. _arida zona_, which has been adduced among others, is fictitious.

[IV'-39] Tubson is now Tucson, Ariz. San Cruz is Santa Cruz, also in Arizona, on or near the branch of the Gila of that name. Tubac is likewise now Arizonian, being a place about on long. 111° W., N. W. of Nogales, and not far from old Forts Mason and Crittenden. Altac is Altar, on the Sonoran river of that name. "Fiuntenas" I take to be a misprint for Fronteras, a place on one of the headwaters of the Yaqui, about lat. 31° N. Bacuachi is on one of the branches of the Sonora r., above Arizpe. Bavista is Bavispe, a place high up on the river of that name, close to the eastern border of the State. Horcasites, to judge from its location on Pike's map, was on or near the Sonora r., in the vicinity of present Ures; but I have not found the place. Near it Pike locates a Presidio San Antonio, omitted from the text. Buenavista is a place low down on the Yaqui r.; the present road from Punta de Agua on Rio Matape goes through it to Batacoso, Alamos, and so on.

[IV'-40] Sinaloa or Cinaloa is practically the same as it was, but would be now said to be bounded by Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, and Jalisco; its whole S. W. length is sea-coast, on the Gulf of California and Pacific Ocean. Area, 36,180 sq. m.; pop. 245,700; capital, Culiacan, on the river of that name, in lat. 24° 50´ N., long. 107° 20´ W.; pop. 8,000. The principal city and port is Mazatlan, in lat. 23° 15´ 36´´ N.; pop. 12,000.

[IV'-41] Sinaloa has a long series of comparatively short rivers, with a general S. W. trend to the sea. Rio del Fuerte (River of the Fort) is the largest and, excepting Rio Alamos, the northernmost. The Sinaloa is the next one of any size; on this is Sinaloa, in Pike's time the capital, but not now a place of special importance. Further S. come successively, Rio San Lorenzo, Rio San Miguel, Rio Piaxtla, Rio Mazatlan, and Rio El Rosario; the latter is charted by Pike, who empties it into the Gulf, near 23°, which is about right.

[IV'-42] Coahuila, or Coahuila de Zaragoza, or Cohahuilla, or Quagila, etc., has much the same limits now, excepting of course the cis-Grandean portion which is now a part of Texas. On the eastern side there is a curious peninsula or panhandle of the State, which is wedged between two similar projections of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas respectively. On the S. are San Luis Potosí as well as Zacatecas, and on the W. the former Biscay gives Chihuahua and Durango. Area, 60,500 sq. m.; pop. 178,000; capital, Saltillo, about lat. 25° 25´ N., long. 101° 4´ W., founded 1586; pop. 23,000.

[IV'-43] The Rio Grande does not now cross Coahuila, but forms its whole U. S. border on the N. W., N., and N. E. But there are a good many rivers in Coahuila, some of them notable. 1. Prominent among these is the whole course of the Sabinas, and of its main fork on which is Monclova, together with their respective tributaries, down to where the two are joined, to continue under the name of Rio Salado to the Rio Grande; the Salado cuts across the tip end of New Leon, but again becomes Coahuilan to the extent of separating Coahuila from Nuevo Leon before entering Tamaulipas. The "Aqua Verde" lake which Pike names, and which is rather centrally than westerly located, is the Laguna de Agua Verde; which, with a neighboring one called Santa Maria, belongs to the water-system of the Sabinas. 2. The two rivers which flow into Lag. del Muerto and Lag. de Parras enter Coahuila. 3. The headwaters of the Rio San Juan, on one of which Saltillo, the capital, is situated, are in Coahuila. 4. A series of Coahuilan streams falls into the Rio Grande at successive points from below Presidio Salto to above Presidio San Vincento.

[IV'-44] The tree is not the palmetto of the Southern States, _Sabal palmetto_, but one of the large woody yuccas, of the same genus as the small shrubby ones commonly called Spanish bayonets, from the character of the leaves Pike notes. _Yucca treculeana_ (or _canaliculata_) is a Mexican species sometimes 25 feet high and 2 feet thick, thus answering to the requirements of the text. The one best known in our country is the tree yucca, _Yucca arborescens_, very similar to the last named. This grows abundantly in some parts of Southern California in the valley of the Mohave r., sometimes so thickly as to make a sort of forest. Multitudes may be seen along the line of the Atl. and Pac. R. R. in the desert, where there is for many miles no sign of anything else that looks like a tree.

[IV'-45] For various places mentioned in this and the following paragraphs, see the itinerary of May 16th to June 1st, pp. 680-689, and notes along there.

[IV'-46] Robert Cavelier, Le Sieur de la Salle, b. Rouen, Normandie, France, Nov. 22d, 1643, murdered by Duhaut in conspiracy with other assassins, in Texas, on a branch of the Trinity, or of the Brazos, Mar. 19th or 20th, 1687, was never at the mouth of the Rio Grande. La Salle sailed from France with four vessels and about 280 persons, July 24th, 1684; three of the vessels sighted Florida Jan. 15th, 1685; landed at St. Louis, later St. Bernard, now Matagorda, bay, in Feb., 1685; one vessel sailed away in Mar., 1685, leaving La Salle with about 180 adventurers or colonists. He founded Fort St. Louis at or near present La Vaca, in Apr., 1685, giving a color of French claim that did not entirely fade away till 1803, though the settlement speedily aborted. The remainder of 1685 and the year 1686 were mainly passed in fruitless wanderings and warrings in different directions, with misery and disaster at every turn. La Salle's people dwindled down to about 20 who were left at the fort, and 17 who started with their leader, Jan. 7th, 1687, overland to Canada. This _verloren hoop_ included: La Salle; Father Jean Cavelier, his brother; their two nephews, Moranget and Cavelier; Sieur de Maria, Friar Anastase Douay, who afterward wrote of the journey, a witness of La Salle's death; Joutel, a trusty soldier, whose account (pub. 1713) is to be preferred to Douay's when the two differ; Teissier, a pilot, one of the conspirators; Liotot, the surgeon, ditto; Hiens, a German ex-buccanier, ditto; Duhaut, the actual assassin; Jean Archevêque, his servant and accomplice; Saget, La Salle's servant; Nika, a Shawanoe hunter; another Indian, and some other persons. This party had crossed the Colorado and Brazos Mar. 15th, 1687. After a quarrel which arose over some buffalo meat, in a detached party who were 6 m. away from La Salle, Duhaut, Liotot, Hiens, and others conspired to kill Moranget; Liotot brained him; Saget and Nika were also then and there killed. La Salle left Joutel and others in their own camp and proceeded to the scene of this tragedy, accompanied only by Father Douay, and an Indian, Mar. 19th or 20th. On his approach, Duhaut shot him in the head from ambush; Liotot and others mocked and buffeted his corpse. Some time in May Duhaut was murdered by Hiens; at the same time Liotot was murdered by one Ruter. Some survivors of this bloody expedition reached Poste aux Arkansas in July. The colony left at Fort St. Louis had been utterly extirpated by Indian massacre and dispersion of the few survivors, before Apr. 22d, 1689, when the spot, void of all but the dead there buried, was visited by a Spanish party under Don Alonzo de Leon. See note 21, p. 560.

[IV'-47] For the several rivers about to be treated here, see the itinerary, June 7th-29th, and notes there.

[IV'-48] This description of the Nachez, Angelina, and Toyac (Atoyac) rivers agrees with the map, and with the misapprehension under which Pike labored. As already indicated, note 18, p. 710, the three are branches of one, which falls into the Gulf in the same bay with the Sabine; but Pike cuts off the Nachez and Angelina from the Toyac and turns them into the Trinity as branches of the latter, thus leaving the Toyac alone to pursue the course all three should have taken together.

[IV'-49] The reboso, with which the women muffle their faces, in a characteristic manner perhaps traceable back to the Moors, or to the wives of the prophet himself, is as indispensable an article of attire as a fan. The Spaniards have a phrase _de reboso_, equivalent to the Italian _in petto_, Latin _sub rosa_, to indicate secrecy, intrigue, and the like. The reboso varies much in size, shape, color, texture, price, and other qualities; and, according to one distinguished author, it has various uses: "The church was crowded with women of all conditions, and the horrid _reboso_, which the poor use for shawl, bonnet, handkerchief, and spit-box, sent out an odor which the incense from the altar failed to stifle," says Emory, Ex. Doc. 41, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., 1848, p. 41. Some say that the large mobile lips of Mexican señoras acquire their osculatory capacity by the habitual use of those features in gesticulation as well as articulation; their hands and arms being kept bundled up with their heads in that comprehensive article of attire, they are obliged to use their lips for pointers.

[IV'-50] Humboldt, in his Personal Narrative, etc., p. xxii of the Philada. ed. of 1815, takes express exception to these statistics, in the following terms: "The numerous statistical data, which Mr. Pike has collected in a country of the language of which he was ignorant, are for the greater part very inaccurate. According to this author the mint of Mexico coins every year 50 millions of piastres in silver, and 14 millions in gold; while it is proved by the tables annually printed by order of the Court, and published in the Political Essay [of Humboldt and Bonpland], that, the year in which the produce of the mines was the most abundant, the coinage amounted only to 25,806,074 piastres in silver, and to 1,359,814 piastres in gold."

[IV'-51] Bernardo Galvez y Gallardo, viceroy of Mexico from June 16th, 1785, until his death at Tacubaya, Nov. 30th, 1786. He was b. at Marcharavieja July 23d, 1746, was son of Mathias de Galvez, and had a very eminent career as soldier and statesman.