Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/199

Rh. He says that the "Rio Verniejo," the waters of which were muddy and red, was eight leagues from Cibola.

I believe that we may without mistake regard Cibola as identical with the country of Zuñi. In view of the extreme indistinctness that rules in all the statements of the participants in the expedition through Sonora, it is impossible to identify its route following it from the south alone. I think I may properly, taking the reverse course, make Zuñi the starting-point of the investigation and pick up the threads of the itinerary thence southward. Eight leagues, or 22 miles, southwest of Zuni flows the river of the same name, a muddy, red stream. Two days' journey from Zuñi toward the southwest brings us to the Rio Colorado Chiquito at San Juan, Arizona. This river is as turbid, muddy, and red as the Zuñi. The Rio Vermejo of Jaramillo is therefore the one called the Little Colorado. Casteneda, who did not go with Coronado, saw the likewise muddy Rio de Zuñi, and confounded the two.

As Coronado reached the Rio San Juan on St. John's day, June 24th, the date of his arrival at Cibola may be fixed as about July 12th. He did not go to Ha-ui-cu (Aguas calientes), fifteen miles southwest of Zuñi, the village nearest to him, but to "Oa-quima," because the negro was killed there. The inhabitants of Oa-quima had been warned by some of their people that the Spaniards had come in sight of the Colorado River. The pueblo stood, as the ruins now show, on a hill. It could not turn out more than two hundred men of war, but the