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Thus ends the story of the last of the conquistadores, who had found only villages of barbarians and tribes of half-naked savages, and returned empty-handed from his long chase after the Will-o’ the-wisp of Quivira and its fleeting treasures.
QUIVIRA. The most marvelous sight of the long journey was the herds of buffaloes in countless numbers. The Indians guided Coronado in the end to a cluster of Indian villages which they called Quivira. This was somewhere in what is now central Kansas near Junction City. The Indians were in all probability the Wichitas. Here again the great explorer met with a bitter disappointment.
The fable of the Quivira, the golden city marked now by the ruins of the Piro pueblo of Tabiri, south of the salt-deposits of the Manzano, is still potent in Arizona and New Mexico to lure the treasure-seeker. Three hundred and fifty years ago it inspired a march across the plains that dwarfs the famous march of the Greeks to the sea.
But the Spaniards preferred to believe that the Indians were trying to keep the gold for themselves. They did not see that the Turk was losing their horses one by one; no more did they see, as they neared Quivira, that every day he called his people. "There are many things an Indian can do and a white man not catch him at it.
Also that there was a river there, two leagues wide, and that the boats carried twenty rowers to a side with the Chief under the awning." "That at least was true," said the Burrowing Owl; "there were towns on the Missi-sippu where the Chiefs sat in balconies on high mounds and the women fanned them with great fans." "Not in Quivira, which the Turk claimed for his own country.
Where did the Spaniards expect to find the Seven Cities? Why did he expect to find them there? What was the story of the Seven Cities? Of the Seven Caves? What did Coronado expect to find at the Seven Cities of Cibola? What did he find there? Why did he go far on into North America in search of Quivira? What did he find on the way to Quivira? What did he find Quivira to be?
Even after he was put in chains and kept under the General's eye on the way to Quivira, now and then there would be a horse, usually a mare with a colt, who slipped her stake-rope. Little gray coyotes came in the night and gnawed them. But coyotes will not gnaw a rope unless it has been well rubbed with buffalo fat," said the Road-Runner.
At length they reached Quivira, where they found the King Tatarax, whose only riches consisted in a copper ornament, which he wore suspended from his neck. They saw neither cross, nor image of the virgin, nor any indication whatever of the Christian religion.
"Proceeding onward we came, in two more days, to a high table land, on which was a place known as Gran Quivira. It is now in ruins, but bears the appearance of once having been a large populous city, regularly laid out in streets at right angles. The city is about three miles long, running from north-east, to north-west, and nearly a mile in breadth.
The king of Quivira, he said, took his nap under a large tree, on which were hung little gold bells, which put him to sleep as they swung in the air. Every one in the city had jugs and bowls made of wrought gold. The slave was probably tempted by the eagerness of his hearers to make his tale bigger.
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