Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction | Page 5

of four thousand paces, each pace being equal to
three Castilian feet. The length of the Castilian foot at that time cannot
be established with absolute minuteness. The terrestrial league
consisted of three thousand paces each, so that while it contained nine
thousand Castilian feet, the maritime league was composed of twelve
thousand. The latter was used for distances at sea and occasionally also
for distances on land, therefore where an indication of the league
employed is not positively given, a computation of distances with even
approximate accuracy is of course impossible.

The result of Coronado's failure was so discouraging, and the reports on
the country had been so unfavorable that for nearly forty years no
further attempt was made to reach the North from New Spain. In fact
Coronado and his achievements had become practically forgotten, and
only when the southern part of the present state of Chihuahua in
Mexico became the object of Spanish enterprise for mining purposes
was attention again drawn to New Mexico, when the Church opened
the way thither from the direction of the Atlantic slope. This naturally
led the explorers first to the Rio Grande Pueblos.
The brief report of the eight companions of Francisco Sanchez
Chamuscado who in 1580 accompanied the Franciscan missionaries as
far as Bernalillo, the site of which was then occupied by Tigua villages,
and who went thence as far as Zuñi, is important, although it presents
merely the sketch of a rather hasty reconnoissance. Following, as the
Spaniards did, the course of the Rio Grande from the south, they fixed,
at least approximately, the limit of the Pueblo region in that direction.
Some of the names of Pueblos preserved in the document are valuable
in so far as they inform us of the designations of villages in a language
that was not the idiom of their inhabitants. Chamuscado having died on
the return journey, the document is not signed by him, but by his men.
The document had been lost sight of until I called attention to it nearly
thirty years ago, the subsequent exploration by Antonio de Espejo
having monopolized the attention of those interested in the early
exploration of New Mexico.
The report of Antonio de Espejo on his long and thorough
reconnoissance in 1582-1583 attracted so much attention that for a time
and in some circles his expedition was looked upon as resulting in the
original discovery of New Mexico. This name was also given by
Espejo to the country, and it thereafter remained. While the documents
relating to Coronado slumbered unnoticed and almost forgotten, the
report of Espejo was published within less than three years after it had
been written. It must be stated here that there are two manuscripts of
the report of Espejo, one dated 1583 and bearing his autograph
signature and official (notarial) certificates, the other in 1584 which is a
distorted copy of the original and with so many errors in names and

descriptions that, as the late Woodbury Lowery very justly observed, it
is little else than spurious. I had already called attention to the
unreliability of the latter version, and yet it is the one that alone was
consulted for more than three centuries because it had become
accessible through publication in the Voiages of Hakluyt, together with
an English translation even more faulty, if possible, than its Spanish
original. The authentic document, with several others relating to
Espejo's brief career, was not published in full until 1871, and even
then attracted little attention because it was not translated and because
the Coleccion de Documentos del Archivo de Indias is not accessible to
every one. But the publication of 1871 was by no means the first
printed version of Espejo's relations. Even prior to 1586 a somewhat
condensed narration of his exploration had been published, being
embodied in the History of China by Father Gonzalez Mendoza. This
account is based on the authentic report in some of the various editions,
on the spurious document in others. The book of Father Mendoza was
soon translated into French. It is not surprising that Espejo's narrative
should appear first in print in a work on the Chinese Empire by a
Franciscan missionary. That ecclesiastic was impressed by some of
Espejo's observations on Pueblo customs which he thought resembled
those of the Chinese. The discoveries of Espejo were then the most
recent ones that had been made by Spaniards, and as New Mexico was
fancied to lie nearer the Pacific than it really does, and facing the
eastern coast of China, a lurking desire to find a possible connection
between the inhabitants of both continents on that side is readily
explicable. But Father Mendoza had still another motive. The three
monks which Chamuscado had left in New Mexico had sacrificed their
lives in an attempt