Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/200

186 whole male population of all the villages, seven in number, which constituted the tribe of Zuñi, had come to its assistance and were awaiting the Spaniards on the little plain separating Oa-quima from the mesa south of it. The peaceful message sent to them by Coronado was answered with threatening gestures. The horsemen then dashed at them, and the Indians speedily fled from the sight of the strange, rushing figures. The capture of the pueblo proved to be a difficult task, for the steep, rugged precipices were exposed to a hail of stones, which rattled down upon the Spaniards. The assault was made on foot; and in it Coronado narrowly escaped death by a stone. The village was, however, captured in an hour, and the whole tribe submitted soon afterward. The tradition of this event, according to Mr. Gushing, is still living among the Zuñi Indians.

I cannot forbear giving here a final and irrefragable proof of the fact that Zuñi is really Cibola. The French translation of Casteñeda says that the largest pueblo of Cibola was called "Muzaque." In the original manuscript, which is in the Lenox Library in New York, this word is written several times plainly and clearly "Maçaqui." "Matzaqui" is the ruin of a large village situated three miles east of the present pueblo of Zuñi near the foot of the great mesa, and some four or five miles northnorthwest of Oa-quima. The Indians say that this village was once the largest of the tribe. The ruins are very much decayed now, but they indicate a considerable settlement. The testimony of the original text of Casteneda thus lifts the identity of Cibola with Zuñi above all doubt. The possibility that