Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/222

208 He informed the Spaniards that gold-bearing and thickly populated districts lay toward the east. Such information was extremely welcome; he was taken as a guide for the visit to the buffalo herds of the plains that was to be made in pursuance of Coronado's directions; but this was not continued long, for Alvarado hastened back, in order to communicate to his commander what he regarded as important news. He returned speedily to Tiguex or Bernalillo, where Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas had in the meantime arrived, Coronado having despatched him to prepare quarters for the whole army, which was to spend the rest of the winter there.

"The Turk" (el Turco) was to play so important a part henceforth in the fortunes of Coronado's expedition, that I think it right to give the charge of deliberate deception which the Spaniards have made against him a closer examination. The charge has perhaps some foundation. The Indian was unquestionably a native of the plains, and had been carried to Pecos by war or the incidents of hunting expeditions. It was a custom among the Pueblo Indians (and it ceased only a few years ago) to make at least one expedition a year to these plains for the purpose of providing themselves with buffalo meat, and more particularly with buffalo skins, which they used in armor, for shoes, and for many other of their needs. The plains were not constantly inhabited; even the Apaches, who regularly roamed through a part of them, did not live there, for they are without water, and are a long distance from it, and the buffaloes resort to them only at certain seasons. As the tribes of the southwest made their regular hunts on