Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos

The earliest knowledge of the existence of the sedentary Indians in New Mexico and Arizona reached Europe by way of Mexico proper; but it is very doubtful whether or not the aborigines of Mexico had any positive information to impart about countries lying north of the present State of Querétaro. The tribes to the north were, in the language of the valley-confederates', Chichimecas', —a word yet undefined, but apparently synonymous, in the conceptions of the 'Nahuatl'-speaking natives, with fierce savagery, and ultimately adopted by them as a warlike title. Indistinct notions, indeed, of an original residence, during some very remote period of time, at the distant north, have been found among nearly all the tribes of Mexico which speak the Nahuatl language. These notions even assume the form of tradition in the tale of the Seven Caves, whence the Mexicans and the Tezcucans, as well as the Tlaxcaltecans, are said to have emigrated to Mexico. Perhaps the earliest mention of this tradition may be found in the writings of Fray Toribio de Paredes, surnamed Motolinia. It dates back to 1540 a. d. But it is not to be overlooked that ten years previously, in 1530, the story of the Seven Cities, which was the form in which the first report concerning New Mexico and its sedentary Indians came to the Spaniards, had already been told to Nuño Beltran de Guzman in Sinaloa. The parallelism between the two stories is striking, although we are not authorized to infer that the so-called seven cities gave rise to what appeared as an aboriginal myth of as many caves.