Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/298

284 archaeological remains; but these traditions make not the slightest mention of a "center of population," or of a New Mexican "Indian capital," at Santa Fe.

The pueblo on the ruins of which Santa Fe stands is called "Cua-P'ho-o-ge," or "Cua-Pooge" (musselpearl-place-on-the-water). That the place, and even the district, played no prominent part in the sixteenth century, appears from the fact that no Spanish document specially mentions it till after the founding of the capital.

The plateau is dry and barren. The little Rio de Santa Fé sinks into the sand not far from the present capital, and issues from it again at the "Ciénega," or the entrance to what is called the "Bocas." The Arroyo Hondo is entirely dry; the village of CuaKaa, as well as San Marcos, get their water from a spring situated near them. The scarcity of water, which is still very much felt, would make any aggregation of native settlers around Santa Fé absolutely impossible.

The historians of Coronado hardly mention the region. Probably Cua-Pooge was one of the seven villages which Casteneda mentions as lying near the snowy mountains. The accounts of the eight Spanish soldiers who went in the year 1580 with the unfortunate Franciscan monks Fray Augustin Rodriguez, Fray Juan Lopez, and Fray Juan de Santa Maria to Bernalillo on the Rio Grande, prove that neither the escort nor the missionaries set foot upon the Santa Fé plateau.

In the year 1583 Antonio de Espejo, going east