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Updated: June 20, 2025
These mantles, or "towels" as they were styled by Espejo, were, according to Castañeda, ornamented with embroidery, and had tassels at the corners. In early times garments were made of the fiber of the maguey, and of feathers and rabbit skins.
As he proceeded from village to village the natives gathered at every point from other places out of curiosity, fear, or perhaps with hostile intent, so that the number of the people which the explorer met was each time much larger than the actual number of inhabitants. On the question of population Espejo could have no knowledge, since he had no means of communicating with the people by speech.
The more is it surprising that his statements in regard to the population of the Pueblos are so manifestly exaggerated; yet, as I have elsewhere stated, this may be explained. A tendency to enhance somewhat the importance of discoveries is inherent in almost every discoverer, but in the case of Espejo he was exposed to another danger.
This was symbolic of welcome; they "made" the trail, a ceremony which is still kept up when entrance to the pueblo is formally offered. The people, considering their poverty, were generous, and gave Espejo "hand towels with tassels" at the corners. These were probably dance kilts and ceremonial blankets, which then, as now, the Hopi made of cotton.
Neither Chamuscado nor Espejo kept journals, but Castaño de Sosa, and especially Oñate, did. But the document itself is a sober, matter-of-fact record of occurrences and geographical details, interspersed with observations of more or less ethnological value. The diario forms the beginning of accurate knowledge of the region under consideration.
The first notice of this region is derived from the report of Espejo, who visited some “mines” north and east of the present site of Prescott early in 1583; in 1598 Farfan and Quesada of Oñate’s expedition visited probably the same locality from Tusayan, and in 1604 Oñate crossed the country a little way north of the present Prescott, in one of his journeys in search of mineral wealth.
While the documents relating to Coronado slumbered unnoticed and almost forgotten, the report of Espejo was published within less than three years after it had been written.
Chamuscado having died on the return journey, the document is not signed by him, but by his men. The document had been lost sight of until I called attention to it nearly thirty years ago, the subsequent exploration by Antonio de Espejo having monopolized the attention of those interested in the early exploration of New Mexico.
The entire population of the seven Moqui towns numbers about two thousand souls. In 1583 Espejo estimated that the Moquis numbered fifty thousand, which, doubtless, was an over estimate, as he has been accused of exaggeration.
Espejo, therefore, appears to have been the first to mention Awatobi as "Aguato," which is metamorphosed in Hakluyt into "Zaguato or "Ahuzto," although evidently Oñate's "Aguatuybá" was intended as a name of a pueblo. I have not been able to determine satisfactorily the date of the erection of the mission building of San Bernardino at Awatobi, but the name is mentioned as early as 1629.
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