Chapter V: Quivira (4)

[70] We may remark further that interchanges of _b_ and _v_ were common with the early Spanish writers, and that Fray Marcos de Nizza was a Piedmontese, who, writing in the Italian style, wrote _Ci_ for the English _Chi_; thus the similarity between Shiuano and Chivola becomes greater, and the difference limits itself to such a confusion of sounds and such exchanges of letters arising from it as are often and strikingly exemplified in the Indian names of places in New Mexico; for example, in the Tehua language, _Ta-ui_ into _Taos_; in the Queres, _Pa-go_ or _Pa-yo-qo-na_ into _Pecos_, _Hamish_ into _Jemez_, _Qo-tyi-ti_ into _Cochiti_; the Tigua word _Tuth-la-nay_ into _Tutahaco_; _Saray_ into _Xalay_, _Na-si-ap_ into _Napeya_; the Zuñi names _Mu-gua_ into _Moqui_, _Hacuqua_ into _Acuco_. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the name Cibola, as the Italian monk heard and pronounced it, was strikingly similar to the word in the Zuñi language that denotes the Zuñi country; therefore this first linguistic clue suggests that the “seven cities of Cibola” may be sought in the region of Zuñi.

[71] They are also known in Sonora as Névomé.

[72] As they still did at the beginning of this century.

[73] Then called _Mar Vermejo_, the Red Sea. It was navigated for the first time by Francisco de Ulloa, in 1539.

[74] Properly, uninhabited region--“_desierto_.”

[75] Casteñeda’s work was not printed till 1838, and then in a French translation.

[76] The earliest documentary data on the subject are of 1655.

[77] A former mission, which the Apaches burned in 1836, and in the place of which stands a miserable hamlet.

[78] The same who in his time had so inhospitably received Cabeza de Vaca and his companions.

[79] It appears that he did not return to Sonora.

[80] The Zuñi call them Mu-qua, whence the word Moqui is derived.

[81] These helmets, or, rather, leather caps, are still in use among the Pueblos. They belong to the aboriginal equipment for war.

[82] It is doubtful whether the Zuñis at that time took part in the periodical buffalo-hunts which the Pueblo Indians farther east still engaged in as late as 1881.

[83] Vol. i. of the “Papers of the Archæological Institute of America,” 1883.

[84] Casteñeda says he was a slave, but that is not correct. He did not belong to the tribe, and had attached himself to a family, but he was not and could not be a slave, according to the custom of the Pueblos. Every Indian has a right to be a permanent guest with them.

[85] Blue turquois is rare.

[86] Available only as a pigment on account of the difficulty of working it.

[87] Santa Fé was not founded till ten years later.

[88] The legend stands in the Martyrology under date of the 30th of November, but Gonzaga (“_Orígen de la religion seráfica_,” 1587,