to prepare
the way. Fray Marcos advanced from the Gulf of California eastward. One
can guess the weary hardship of that footsore journeying. It was made
between March and September of 1539. Go into the Yuma Valley in
September! The heat is of a denseness you can cut with a knife. Imagine
the heat of that tramp over desert sands in June, July and August! When
Fray Marcos sent his Indian guides forward to Zuni, near the modern
Gallup, he was met with the warning "Go back; or you will be put to
death." His messengers refusing to be daunted, the Zuni people promptly
killed them and threw them over the rocks. Fray Marcos went on with the
lay brothers. Zuni was called "_cibola_" owing to the great number of
buffalo skins (_cibolas_) in camp.

Fray Marcos' report encouraged the Emperor of Spain to go on with
Coronado's expedition. That trip need not be told here. It has been told
and retold in half the languages of the world. The Spaniards set out
from Old Mexico 300 strong, with 800 Indian escorts and four priests
including Marcos and a lay brother. What did they expect? Probably a
second Peru, temples with walls of gold and images draped in jewels of
priceless worth. What did they find? In Zuni and the Three Mesas and
Taos, small, sun-baked clay houses built tier on tier on top of each
other like a child's block house, with neither precious stones, nor
metals of any sort, but only an abundance of hides and woven cloth. When
the soldiers saw Zuni, they broke out in jeers and curses at the priest.
Poor Fray Marcos was thinking more of souls saved from perdition than of
loot, and returned in shamed embarrassment to New Spain.

Across the Desert to the Three Mesas and the Canyon of the Colorado, east
again to Acoma and the Enchanted Mesa, up to the pueblo town now known
as the city of Santa Fe, into the Pecos, and north, yet north of Taos,
Coronado's expedition practically made a circuit of all the Southwest
from the Colorado River to East Kansas. The knightly adventurers did not
find gold, and we may guess, as winter came on with heavy snows in the
Upper Desert, they were in no very good mood; for now began that contest
between white adventurers and Pueblos which lasted down to the middle of
the Nineteenth Century. At the pueblo now known as Bernalillo, the
soldiers demanded blankets to protect them from the cold. The Indians
stripped their houses to help their visitors, but in the melee and no
doubt in the ill humor of both s