as waged against the
Indians, and a number of tribes are spoken of as being
engaged in certain battles, of which tribes we know nothing
at the present day; and in some instances it is stated that
some tribes sued for peace, and promised obedience to the
rule of the conquerors, for which they received grants of
lands that they at present occupy. The inhabitants of Gran
Quivira, Abo, and Quarro would be among the first that the
Spaniards would meet on their reoccupation of the country,
and there is every reason to believe that they were
exterminated by the incensed invaders."

[1] _Las siete cuevas_: in Nahuatl _Chicomoztoc_, from _chicome_, seven,
and _oztoc_, cave. Alonzo de Molina, _Vocabulario Mexicano_, 1571, parte
iia. pp. 20 and 78. Fray Juan de Tobar, _Codice Ramirez_, p. 18.

[2] Fray Diego Duran, _Historia de las Yndias de Nueva-Espana, e Islas
de Tierra Firme_, cap. i. p. 8; _Codex Vaticanus_, Kingsborough, vols.
i., ii., vi.; _Anales de Cuauhtitlan: Anales del Museo Nacional de
Mexico_, tom. i. entrega 7, p. 7 of 2d vol., but incorporated in the
first. "I acatl ipan quizque Chicomoztoc in Chichimeca omitoa moternuh
in imitoloca."

[3] _Historia de los Indios de la Nueva-Espana, in Coleccion de
Documentos para la Historia de Mexico_, by J. G. Icazbalceta, vol. i. p.
7.

[4] _Segunda Relacion Anonima de la Jornada de Nuno de Guzman, in
Coleccion de Documentos_, etc., vol. ii. p. 303.

[5] The early literature on this subject will only be fully known when
the remarkable collection called _Libro de Oro_ shall have been
published by Senor Icazbalceta, its meritorious owner. This valuable
collection of manuscripts dates from the sixteenth century, and
contains, besides a number of official reports on local matters of
Mexico and districts pertaining to it, the chronicles of the tezcucan
Juan Bautista Pomar, a copy of Motolinia, and a number of MSS. written
between 1529 and 1547 at the instance of the much-abused Bishop
Zumarraga. These MSS. contain the results of the earliest investigations
on Mexican history and tradition.

The natives of Mexico appear to have had no knowledge, nay, not even the
most dim recollection, of the _fauna_ of South-western North America.
While their so-called calendar, in the graphic tokens used to designate
each one of the twenty days of their conventional "month," contains the
forms of all the larger quadrupeds roaming over Mexico and Central
America, t