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156 took the character of a carefully guarded flight. But the fugitives soon felt safe, and with less caution, and accordingly greater speed, they went toward the south without meeting any further obstacles. The monk arrived at Culiacan on September 2, 1539, and shortly afterward sent the viceroy the report to which we are indebted for our knowledge of his journey and for the first authentic account of New Mexico.

Few documents of Spanish origin concerning America have been exposed to a sharper and more severe criticism than the "Descubrimiento de las siete Ciudades" of Fray Marcos de Nizza. It has been condemned for defectiveness and superficiality, and charges of exaggeration and untruth have been made against it. A one-sided and inadequate investigation has also caused doubt to be cast upon the declaration that he saw Cibola. The fact has not been without effect in the inquiry that no one has ever succeeded in finding among the Indian tribes of New Mexico a tradition, myth, or story, even in a distorted form, containing a reminiscence of the march, presence, or fate of the negro Estévanico or of the Franciscan. Both, the black and the monk, were prominent figures, well fitted to leave deep traces in the memories of the natives. This total disappearance of all recollections of these two personages has also, perhaps unawares, moved other more meritorious inquirers to look for Cibola in the ruins of long extinct pueblos.

In the year 1880 Frank Hamilton Gushing, commissioned by the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, went to the pueblo of Zuñi, in order, for