a picture of a buffalo drawn on a piece of hide. Vaca had told of "humpbacked cows," and here were people who lived on the very borders of the cow country. So Hernando de Alvarado was sent east with twenty men, instructed to return within eighty days, and Fray Juan de Padilla went with him. Some fifty miles east of Zuñi Alvarado came on the famous pueblo of Acoma, or People of the White Rock, three hundred and fifty-seven feet in the air. Acoma was so lofty, says Castañeda “that it was a very good musket that could throw a ball as high." A broad stairway of about two hundred steps began the ascent, then one hundred narrower steps followed; and "at the top they had to go up about three times as high as a man by means of holes in the rock, in which they put the points of their feet, holding on at the same time by their hands. There was a wall of large and small stones at the top, which they could roll down without showing themselves, so that no army could possibly be strong enough to capture the village. On the top they had room to sow and store a large amount of corn, and cisterns to collect snow and water." The natives came down to the plain and at first offered battle, but presently consented to make peace.

Proceeding eastward, Alvarado went a week's journey beyond to the Tigua villages lying above Albuquerque on both sides of the Río Grande. Pressing on, he visited the towns of Cicuyé, or Pecos (in the valley of the upper Pecos River and at the foot of the Santa Fé mountains) and the Buffalo Plains to the east. The Pecos Indians received him warmly and escorted him into the town "with drums and pipes something like flutes" and gave him presents of cloth and turquoises.

By the close of autumn Coronado's several detachments reassembled in the village of Tiguex near the site of Bernalillo, above Albuquerque. Here they listened to tales of a new El Dorado from an Indian whom Alvarado had picked up and had dubbed El Turco (the Turk) "because he looked like one." The new El Dorado was called Quivira. El Turco said that in Quivira, which was his own country and far to the east, there was a river two leagues wide, where fish as big as horses sported themselves. Great numbers of huge canoes, with twenty rowers on a side and with high carved golden prows thrusting up among their white sails, floated on its surface like water lilies on a pond. The chief of that country took his afternoon nap under a tall spreading tree decorated

with an infinitude of little golden bells on which gentle zephyrs played his lullaby. Even the common folk there had their ordinary dishes made of "wrought plate"; and the pitchers and bowls were of solid gold. El Turco could readily prove his tale if only he could recover his wonderful golden bracelets of which he had been robbed by the natives of Cicuyé, the town of Chief Whiskers' countrymen where Alvarado had recently been entertained with such hospitality and good will.

So Coronado sent Alvarado back to Cicuyé to demand the bracelets. The natives of Cicuyé bluntly said that El Turco was a liar; whereupon Alvarado put Whiskers and the head chief, a very old man, in chains. Enraged at this treachery, the Indians took up their arrows and drove the Spaniards out, denouncing them as men who had no respect for their word. "This began the want of confidence in the word of the Spaniards whenever there was talk of peace from this time on," says Castañeda. Coronado followed up the seizure of Whiskers and the old chief of Cicuyé by a levy of three hundred mantas, or pieces of cloth. The Tiguas, not having the mantas, were stripped of their garments. A Spanish officer forcibly possessed himself of an Indian's handsome young wife.

The Indians rose. In the mêlée the Spaniards were victorious; and presently the natives, from the roofs, were making their symbol of peacethe cross sign of the evening and morning star. The Spaniards made the same sign by crossing their spears. The natives threw down their arms. Contrary to the peace pledge, some two hundred of them were seized and stakes were erected to burn them. Seeing the rest of their number "beginning to roast," a hundred captives made valiant, if futile, efforts to defend themselves. Only one or two escaped to warn their friends that Spaniards speaking peace must never again be trusted.

Heavy snows and severe cold so hampered the army during the winter that not until early in spring was the surrounding country "pacified." A great many Indians had been slain, but many more had escaped to their mountain retreats. In vain had Coronado sent deputations seeking peace. The invariable answer was that the Spaniards were false men who had desecrated the star symbol, the sign of inviolable peace; the wind of the desert might hearken to their promises, but never the Indians. So when Coronado took up his march he left implacable enemies in his wake.

But the "great good news of the Turk gave no little joy," and the restless conqueror prepared to set out for Golden Quivira. Among the Indians news traveled fast, and it is easy to imagine the consternation felt by the tribes of the lower Mississippi Valley, in the spring of 1541, to hear of the approach of the two great invading expeditions from opposite directions, each of which was conquering every tribe and village on the way. De Soto had reached Tampa Bay in 1539, just about the time when Fray Marcos came in view of Cibola. Coronado had left Culiacán when De Soto was on the Savannah River; when Coronado reached the Río Grande pueblos, De Soto was marching south through Alabama toward Mobile Bay. While Coronado was in winter quarters at Tiguex, on the Río Grande, in New Mexico, De Soto was in camp at the Chickasaw town in Mississippi; and now Coronado entered the Texas plains shortly before De Soto crossed the Mississippi.

On April 23, 1541, Coronado set out under the guidance of El Turco; and four days later crossed the Pecos in the vicinity of Puerto de Luna, New Mexico. He continued in an easterly course across the great plains (where the Arab-like

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