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Page 38
The next day our Captaine seeing for that time it was not possible for
our Pinesse to goe on any further, he caused our boates to be made
readie, and as much munition and victuals to be put in them, as they
could well beare: he departed with them, accompanyed with many
Gentlemen, that is to say, Claudius of Ponte Briand, Cupbearer to the
Lorde Dolphin of France, Charles of Pommeraye, Iohn Gouion, Iohn
Powlet, with twentie and eight Mariners: and Mace Iallobert, and
William Briton, who had the charge vnder the Captaine of the other two
ships, to goe vp as farre as they could into that riuer: we sayled
with good and prosperous weather vntill the second of October, on
which day we came to the towne of Hochelaga, [Montreal] distant from
the place where we had left our Pinnesse fiue and fortie leagues.
[1] From a letter by Cartier, of which a translation exists in
Hakluyt's "Principal Navigations," etc. Printed in Hart's "American
History Told by Contemporaries."
[2] The Gulf of St. Lawrence.
SEARCHES FOR "THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA"
(1530-1540)
THE ACCOUNT BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES[1]
In 1513, a hundred and seven years before the landing of the Pilgrims
at Plymouth, Balboa scaled the continental backbone at Darien and
unfurled the flag of Spain by the waters of the Pacific. With wondrous
zeal did Spanish explorers beat up and down the western shore of the
Gulf of Mexico, seeking for an opening through. Cortez had no sooner
secured possession of Mexico, after his frightful slaughter of the
Aztecs, than he began pushing out to the west and northwest--along the
"upper coasts of the South Sea"--in search of the strait which
Montezuma told him existed.
It is unlikely that Montezuma's knowledge of North American geography
was much greater than that of his conqueror. But in every age and land
aborigines have first ascertained what visiting strangers most sought,
whether it be gold or waterways, and assured them that somewhere
beyond the neighboring horizon these objects were to be found in
plenty. Spanish, French, and English have each in their turn chased
American rainbows that existed only in the brains of imaginative
tribesmen who had little other thought than a childish desire to
gratify their guests.
Cortez undertook, at his own charge, several of these expensive
exploring expeditions to discover the strait of which Montezuma had
spoken, and one of them he conducted in person. In 1528--the year he
visited Spain to meet his accusers--we find him dispatching Maldonado
northward along the Pacific coast for three hundred miles; and five
years later Grijalva and Jimenez were claiming for Spain the southern
portion of Lower California. A full hundred years before Jean Nicolet
related to the French authorities at their feeble outpost on the rock
of Quebec the story of his daring progress into the wilds of the upper
Mississippi Valley, and the rumors he had there heard of the great
river which flowed into the South Sea, Spanish officials in the halls
of Montezuma were receiving the tales of their adventurers, who had
penetrated to strange lands laved by the waters of this selfsame
ocean.
It was about the year 1530 when the Spaniards in Mexico first received
word, through an itinerant monk, Marcos de Niza, of certain powerful
semi-civilized tribes dwelling some six hundred miles north of the
capital of the Aztecs. These strange people were said to possess in
great store domestic utensils and ornaments made of gold and silver;
to be massed in seven large cities composed of houses built with
stone; and to be proficient in many of the arts of the Europeans. The
search for "the seven cities of Cibola," as these reputed communities
came to be called by the Spaniards, was at once begun.
Guzman, just then at the head of affairs in New Spain, zealously set
forth at the head of four hundred Spanish soldiers, and a large
following of Indians, to search for this marvelous country. But the
farther north the army marched the more distant became Cibola in the
report of the natives whom they met on the way; until at last the
invaders became involved in the pathless deserts of New Mexico and the
intricate ravines of the foothills beyond. The soldiers grew mutinous,
and Guzman returned, crestfallen, to Mexico.
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