Of Chichilticalli and the desert, of Cibola, its customs and habits, and of other things.

Chichilticalli is so called because the friars found a house at this place which was formerly inhabited by people who separated from Cibola. It was made of colored or reddish earth.[458] The house was large and appeared to have been a fortress. It must have been destroyed by the people of the district, who are the most barbarous people that have yet been seen. They live in separate cabins and not in settlements.[459] They live by hunting. The rest of the country is all wilderness, covered with pine forests. There are great quantities of the pine nuts. The pines are two or three times as high as a man before they send out branches. There is a sort of oak with sweet acorns, of which they make cakes like sugar plums with dried coriander seeds. It is very sweet, like sugar. Watercress grows in many springs, and there are rosebushes, and pennyroyal, and wild marjoram.

There are barbels and picones,[460] like those of Spain, in the rivers of this wilderness.[461] Gray lions and leopards were seen.[462] The country rises continually from the beginning of the wilderness until Cibola is reached, which is eighty leagues, going north. From Culiacan to the edge of the wilderness the route had kept the north on the left hand.

Cibola[463] is seven villages. The largest is called MaÇaque.[464] The houses are ordinarily three or four stories high, but in MaÇaque there are houses with four and seven stories. These people are very intelligent. They cover their privy parts and all the immodest parts with cloths made like a sort of table napkin, with fringed edges and a tassel at each corner, which they tie over the hips. They wear long robes of feathers and of the skins of hares, and cotton blankets. The women wear blankets, which they tie or knot over the left shoulder, leaving the right arm out.[465] These serve to cover the body. They wear a neat well-shaped outer garment of skin. They gather their hair over the two ears, making a frame which looks like an old-fashioned headdress.[466]

The country is a valley between ridges resembling rocky mountains. They plant in holes. Maize does not grow high; ears from a stalk three or four to each cane, thick and large, of eight hundred grains, a thing not seen in these parts. There are large numbers of bears in this province, and lions, wildcats, deer, and otter. There are very fine turquoises, although not so many as was reported.[467] They collect the pine nuts[468] each year, and store them up in advance. A man does not have more than one wife. There are estufas or hot rooms[469] in the villages, which are the courtyards or places where they gather for consultation. They do not have chiefs as in New Spain, but are ruled by a council of the oldest men. They have priests who preach to them, whom they call papas.[470] These are the elders. They go up on the highest roof of the village and preach to the village from there, like public criers, in the morning while the sun is rising, the whole village being silent and sitting in the galleries to listen.[471] They tell them how they are to live, and I believe that they give certain commandments for them to keep, for there is no drunkenness among them nor sodomy nor sacrifices, neither do they eat human flesh nor steal, but they are usually at work. The estufas belong to the whole village.[472] It is a sacrilege for the women to go into the estufas to sleep. They make the cross as a sign of peace. They burn their dead, and throw the implements used in their work into the fire with the bodies.[473]

It is twenty leagues to Tusayan,[474] going northwest. This is a province with seven villages, of the same sort, dress, habits, and ceremonies as at Cibola. There may be as many as 3,000 or 4,000 men in the fourteen villages of these two provinces.[475] It is forty leagues or more to Tiguex, the road trending toward the north. The rock of Acuco, which we described in the first part, is between these.