Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins o | Page 9

known as 'La Cienega.' At this point a stream of water, furnished by two springs, and running to a distance of about a mile at all seasons of the year, which has never been known to be dry within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, has, within the last year, entirely disappeared; and even digging to a considerable depth in the bed of the late springs fails to find the stream, or the channel by which it has so mysteriously disappeared.
"To those at all familiar with the cretaceous formation of the south-eastern portion of New Mexico, and who have seen the numerous rivers that flow hundreds of inches of water within a few yards of where they make their first appearance, and the total disappearance of these streams within a few miles, who have seen the water flowing in caves and subterraneous streams, and the fact that the whole country is cavernous, can easily imagine the possibility of a stream acting upon its cretaceous bed, and eventually wearing a channel, to connect with some immense cavern, and disappearing at once from the surface beyond all reach of human power.
"To the south of the Gran Quivira, at a distance of about twenty miles, commences a mal pais, an immense bed of lava, sixty miles in length from north to south, and covering an area of five hundred square miles. To the south-west of this commences a salt marsh, which has an area of fifty square miles, and which is fed entirely by subterranean streams from the Sacramento and White Mountains, receiving without doubt by the same means the drainage of this plain for a hundred miles to the north. The above facts are, I think, sufficient to account for the absence of water at the present time near Gran Quivira.
"As to what became of the inhabitants of this place, as well as those of Abo and Quarrá to the north-west,--towns that are coeval with the Gran Quivira,--we can only conjecture. The most reasonable conclusion that can be arrived at is that they were exterminated by the Spaniards upon their reoccupation of the country. Though history is silent as to the complete operations of the Spaniards upon their return to New Mexico, yet it is a fact established by documentary evidence that a relentless war was waged against the Indians, and a number of tribes are spoken of as being engaged in certain battles, of which tribes we know nothing at the present day; and in some instances it is stated that some tribes sued for peace, and promised obedience to the rule of the conquerors, for which they received grants of lands that they at present occupy. The inhabitants of Gran Quivira, Abo, and Quarro would be among the first that the Spaniards would meet on their reoccupation of the country, and there is every reason to believe that they were exterminated by the incensed invaders."

[1] Las siete cuevas: in Nahuatl Chicomoztoc, from chicome, seven, and oztoc, cave. Alonzo de Molina, Vocabulario Mexicano, 1571, parte iia. pp. 20 and 78. Fray Juan de Tobar, Codice Ramirez, p. 18.
[2] Fray Diego Durán, Historia de las Yndias de Nueva-Espa?a, é Islas de Tierra Firme, cap. i. p. 8; Codex Vaticanus, Kingsborough, vols. i., ii., vi.; Anales de Cuauhtitlan: Anales del Museo Nacional de México, tom. i. entrega 7, p. 7 of 2d vol., but incorporated in the first. "I acatl ipan quizque Chicomoztoc in Chichimeca omitoa moternuh in imitoloca."
[3] Historia de los Indios de la Nueva-Espa?a, in Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de México, by J. G. Icazbalceta, vol. i. p. 7.
[4] Segunda Relacion Anónima de la Jornada de Nu?o de Guzman, in Coleccion de Documentos, etc., vol. ii. p. 303.
[5] The early literature on this subject will only be fully known when the remarkable collection called Libro de Oro shall have been published by Se?or Icazbalceta, its meritorious owner. This valuable collection of manuscripts dates from the sixteenth century, and contains, besides a number of official reports on local matters of Mexico and districts pertaining to it, the chronicles of the tezcucan Juan Bautista Pomar, a copy of Motolinia, and a number of MSS. written between 1529 and 1547 at the instance of the much-abused Bishop Zumárraga. These MSS. contain the results of the earliest investigations on Mexican history and tradition.
The natives of Mexico appear to have had no knowledge, nay, not even the most dim recollection, of the fauna of South-western North America. While their so-called calendar, in the graphic tokens used to designate each one of the twenty days of their conventional "month," contains the forms of all the larger quadrupeds roaming over Mexico and Central America, the tapir excepted, we look in vain for the coyote, the bear, the mountain-sheep, and the buffalo.
[6] Popol Vuh, part iii. cap.