Which gives the number of villages which were seen in the country of the terraced houses, and their population.

Before I proceed to speak of the plains, with the cows and settlements and tribes there, it seems to me that it will be well for the reader to know how large the settlements were, where the houses with stories, gathered into villages, were seen, and how great an extent of country they occupied.[494] As I say, Cibola is the first:

Cibola, seven villages.[495]
Tusayan, seven villages.[496]
The rock of Acuco, one.[497]
Tiguex, twelve villages.[498]
Tutahaco, eight villages.[499]
These villages were below the river.[500]
Quirix, seven villages.[501]
In the snowy mountains, seven villages.[502]
Ximena, three villages.[503]
Cicuye, one village.[504]
Hemes, seven villages.[505]
Aguas Calientes, or Boiling Springs, three villages.[506]
Yuqueyunque, in the mountains, six villages.[507]
Valladolid, called Braba, one village.[508]
Chia, one village.[509]

In all, there are sixty-six villages.[510] Tiguex appears to be in the centre of the villages. Valladolid is the farthest up the river toward the northeast. The four villages down the river are toward the southeast, because the river turns toward the east.[511] It is 130 leagues—ten more or less—from the farthest point that was seen down the river to the farthest point up the river, and all the settlements are within this region. Including those at a distance, there are sixty-six villages in all, as I have said, and in all of them there may be some 20,000 men, which may be taken to be a fair estimate of the population of the villages.[512] There are no houses or other buildings between one village and another, but where we went it is entirely uninhabited. These people, since they are few, and their manners, government, and habits are so different from all the nations that have been seen and discovered in these western regions, must come from that part of Greater India, the coast of which lies to the west of this country, for they could have come down from that country, crossing the mountain chains and following down the river, settling in what seemed to them the best place. As they multiplied, they have kept on making settlements until they lost the river when it buried itself underground, its course being in the direction of Florida. It [the Rio Grande] comes down from the northeast, where they [Coronado's army] could certainly have found signs of villages. He [Coronado] preferred, however, to follow the reports of the Turk, but it would have been better to cross the mountains where this river rises. I believe they would have found traces of riches and would have reached the lands from which these people started, which from its location is on the edge of Greater India, although the region is neither known nor understood, because from the trend of the coast it appears that the land between Norway and China is very far up. The country from sea to sea is very wide, judging from the location of both coasts, as well as from what Captain Villalobos discovered when he went in search of China by the sea to the west,[513] and from what has been discovered on the North Sea concerning the trend of the coast of Florida toward the Bacallaos, up toward Norway.[514]

To return then to the proposition with which I began, I say that the settlements and people already named were all that were seen in a region seventy leagues wide and 130 long, in the settled country along the river Tiguex.[515] In New Spain there are not one but many establishments containing a larger number of people. Silver metals[516] were found in many of their villages, which they use for glazing and painting their earthenware.