n inch of New Mexico.

With each new tribe the Spaniards paused awhile to heal the sick.
Everywhere they were treated with the greatest kindness their poor hosts
could give, and with religious awe. Their progress is a very valuable
object-lesson, showing just how some Indian myths are formed: first, the
successful medicine-man, who at his death or departure is remembered as
a hero, then as a demigod, then as divinity.

In the Mexican States they first found agricultural Indians, who dwelt
in houses of sod and boughs, and had beans and pumpkins. These were the
Jovas, a branch of the Pimas. Of the scores of tribes they had passed
through in our present Southern States not one has been fully
identified. They were poor, wandering creatures, and long ago
disappeared from the earth. But in the Sierra Madre of Mexico they found
superior Indians, whom we can recognize still. Here they found the men
unclad, but the women "very honest in their dress,"--with cotton tunics
of their own weaving, with half-sleeves, and a skirt to the knee; and
over it a skirt of dressed deerskin reaching to the ground, and fastened
in front with straps. They washed their clothing with a soapy root,--the
_amole_, now similarly used by Indians and Mexicans throughout the
Southwest. These people gave Cabeza de Vaca some turquoise, and five
arrow-heads each chipped from a single emerald.

In this village in southwestern Sonora the Spaniards stayed three days,
living on split deer-hearts; whence they named it the "Town of Hearts."

A day's march beyond they met an Indian wearing upon his necklace the
buckle of a sword-belt and a horseshoe nail; and their hearts beat high
at this first sign, in all their eight years' wandering, of the nearness
of Europeans. The Indian told them that men with beards like their own
had come from the sky and made war upon his people.

The Spaniards were now entering Sinaloa, and found themselves in a
fertile land of flowing streams. The Indians were in mortal fear; for
two brutes of a class who were very rare among the Spanish conquerors
(they were, I am glad to say, punished for their violation of the strict
laws of Spain) were then trying to catch slaves. The soldiers had just
left; but Cabeza de Vaca and Estevanico, with eleven Indians, hurried
forward on their trail, and next day overtook four Spaniards, who led
them to their rascally captain, Diego de Alcaraz. It was long before
that officer could believe the wondrou