Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/224

210 was possibly as much the result of mistakes as of wilful deception on his part; for it was not possible to reach an adequate mutual understanding under the circumstances.

Alvarado's return to Tiguex was marked by an event that places that officer's character in a most unfavorable light. To provide quarters for his few men he forced the evacuation of a whole pueblo, and would not permit the inhabitants to take away anything but their clothing. The pueblo cannot have been of great size, for those communities were generally not large previous to the advent of the Spaniards. The villages were smaller but more numerous than they have been since; for the Franciscan monks combined them into larger settlements, both for purposes of defence, and in order to attach the Indians more closely to the churches and to the schools connected with them. It may be readily conceived that the forced occupation of this pueblo created an unpleasant feeling in the whole region of the present Bernalillo. It was the introduction to subsequent difficulties and dangerous contentions.

Coronado had in the meantime gone away from Zuñi with a small number of his men, leaving the larger number behind under the command of Arellano, who was to follow him after twenty days to the Rio Grande. The route he took led him to that river, about thirty miles south of Bernalillo, in the vicinity of the present Isleta. He recognized that the people there belonged to the same tribe as those of Tiguex. Their houses were likewise of adobe. Casteñeda calls this region "Tutahaco," while Jaramillo applies that name to Acoma. The latter is right to