Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/159

Rh determine on the spot which of the numerous settlements of the Opatas, Sobaypuris, and Pimas, of which the ruins are still visible, may have been inhabited and relatively prosperous in the sixteenth century, and have found that (except the villages of the southern Pimas already mentioned, which are not, however, in question here) not one of these so-called pueblos corresponds to what is known to us of Cibola. It therefore seems useless to look for Cibola anywhere south of the Rio Gila or on that stream; but only north of it, either in the present Arizona or the present New Mexico, can we expect to find such a clue in language and tradition as shall lead with any certainty to a definite locality.

There is no doubt that the whole extensive region between the course of the Gila in the south, its sources in the east and the present San Carlos in the west, with the northern half of New Mexico and Arizona, was controlled in the sixteenth century by a single linguistic stock—that of what are called the "Apaches." I say controlled, for the Apaches had no fixed abodes then more than they have now, and they roamed through the whole wild chaos of mountains, by their incursions excluding other tribes from the country. Most of their little huts of branches, sometimes plastered with mud, were set up along the streams, but they only stayed in one place so long as no occasion, however frivolous, prompted them to move their camp to some safer or more favorable place. The Apaches therefore furnish nothing to support us in localizing Cibola among them, and I know of no place-name in their language that can be connected with it. Farther