Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/236

 wrought with turqueses, nor with lime, nor bricks, yet they are very excellent good houses, of three, or four, or five lofts high, wherein are good lodgings and fair chambers, with ladders instead of stairs, and certain cellars under the ground, very good and paved, which are made for winter,—they are in manner like stoves; and the ladders which they have for their houses are in a manner moveable and portable, which are taken away and set down when they please; and they are made of two pieces of wood, with their steps, as ours be. The seven cities are seven small towns, all made with these kind of houses that I speak of; and they stand all within four leagues together, and they are all called the Kingdom of Cibola, and every one of them have their particular name, and none of them is called Cibola, but all together they are called Cibola. And this town, which I call a city, I have named Granada, as well because it is somewhat like unto it, as also in remembrance of 3'our Lordship. In this town where I now remain there may be some two hundred houses, all compassed with walls; and, I think, that, with the rest of the houses which are not so walled, they may be together five hundred. There is another town near this, which is one of the seven, and it is somewhat bigger than this, and another of the same bigness that this is of, and the four are somewhat less; and I send them all painted unto your Lordship with the voyage. And the parchment wherein the picture is was found here with other parchments. The people of this town seem unto me of a reasonable stature, and witty, yet they seem not to be such as they should be, of that judgment and wit to build these houses in such sort as they are. * * * They travel eight days' journey unto certain plains lying towards the North Sea. In this country there are certain skins, well dressed; and they dress them and paint them where they kill their oxen [buffalo]; for so they say themselves."

On the fourth day after the capture of Cibola, Coronado further says: "They set in order all their goods and substance, their women and children, and fled to the hills, leaving their towns as it were abandoned, wherein remained very few of them."

It will be observed that the phrases "great houses of stone," and "good houses of three, or four, or five lofts high," not only describe the