CORONADO

Aura’s got a little problem with old time motor cars like my Vette that runs on gas. I’m not sure if Sine’s running his on electricity makes her partial to him, but let’s face it: gas is still around. She might have been happier in the old days before cars were invented, but she’s the type that would find something else to gripe about. But here’s how things used to be in America before the wheel and the horse.

Castañeda describes the Spanish foray along the south rim of the Grand Canyon as being 12 men on foot led by native guides from Tusayan (That’s the ruins at the east end of Grand Canyon National Park that are marked there):

Pedro de Castañeda, “Relación de la jornada de Cíbola … ,” Nacera, ~1562, trans. George Parker Winship, The Coronado Expedition 1540-1542, (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896), pp 489-90:

They did not go farther up the river [along the rim], because they could not get water.… The guides said that if they should go four days farther, it would not be possible to go on, because there was no water within three or four days, for when they travel across the region themselves they take with them women loaded with water in gourds, and bury the gourds of water along the way, to use when they return, and besides this, they travel in one day over what it takes us two days to accomplish.

Cantañeda describes a town in current-day New Mexico, Acoma, where the only way in or out was climbing.

pp. 490-1:

"Captain Alvarado … reached a village which was on a rock called Acuco having a population of about 200 men. The village … was up on a rock out of reach, having steep sides in every direction, and so high that it was a very good musket that could throw a ball as high. There was only one entrance by a stairway built by hand...

...a broad stairway for about 200 steps, then a stretch of about 100 narrower steps, and at the top they had to go up about three times as high as a man by means of holes in the rock, in which they put the points of their feet, holding on at the same time by their hands. On the top they had room to sow and store a large amount of corn, and cisterns to collect snow and water.

On the Buffalo plains of Texas and Kansas, dogs were used for hauling. One of the friars accompanying Coronado on the trek to Quivira (Kansas) wrote in a 1541 letter to another Franciscan of a settlement that he estimated being 200 homes:

“Relación …,” trans. George Parker Winship, The Coronado Expedition 1540-1542, (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896) pp. 570-571:

"The houses were made of the skins of the cows [Buffalo], tanned white, like pavilions or army tents. The maintenance or sustenance of these Indians comes entirely from the cows, because they neither sow nor reap corn.

These people have dogs like those in this country, except that they are somewhat larger, and they load these dogs like beasts of burden, and make saddles for them like our pack saddles, and they fasten them with their leather thongs, and these make their backs sore on the withers like pack animals. When they go hunting, they load these with their necessities, and when they move - for these Indians are not settled in one place, since they travel wherever the cows move, to support themselves - these dogs carry their houses, and they have the sticks of their houses dragging along tied on to the pack-saddles, besides the load which they carry on top, and the load may be, according to the dog, from 35 to 50 pounds.

And in Tenochtitlán (at present-day Mexico City), the living was apparently easier according to this other book:

Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-21 (Harper & brothers, New York, 1928): pp. 218-219:

… from [the top of the huge temple we, with Cortes and our guide the Great Montezuma], saw the three causeways which led into Mexico, … and we saw the bridges on the three causeways …, and we beheld on that great lake a great multitude of canoes, some coming with supplies of food and other returning loaded with cargoes of merchandise; and we saw that from every house of that great city and of all the other cities that were built in the water it was impossible to pass from house to house, except by drawbridges which were made of wood, or in canoes.

No horses, and no wheels. Heavenly, huh ?

● GET EBOOK

● GET BOOK