pueblo on the Chaco in apt language, but there are no other pueblos in New Mexico, exclusively of stone, of which we have knowledge, except those of the Mokis, in the Cañon de Chelly, on the Animas River, and elsewhere in Southwestern Colorado. There is an apparent difficulty in the narrative, in the reference made to the number of houses; but it is evident, I think, that Coronado meant apartments or sections, treating each great house as a block of houses, and expressing a doubt of their "judgment and wit to build these houses in such sort as they are." If any doubt remained, it is entirely removed by the fact that all the pueblo houses in New Mexico, whether occupied or in ruins, are great edifices constructed like these on the communal principle, and that two hundred such houses grouped in one town were an utter impossibility.
Jaramillo, who wrote his Relation some time after the return of the expedition, remarks, "that all the water-courses that we fell in with, whether brook or river, as far as that of Cibola, and I believe for one or two days' journey beyond, flow in the direction of the South Sea [the Pacific]; farther on they take the direction of the North Sea [the Atlantic]."[1] This tends to show that Cibola was situated on a tributary of the Colorado, which gathers all the waters of New Mexico west of the Rio Grande and north of the Gila, and also that it was situated quite near the dividing ridge. It is but ten miles from the Cañon de Torrejon, on the Puerco, a tributary of the Rio Grande,' to the commencement of the Rio de Chaco, an affluent of the San Juan, and but twenty-three miles to the Pueblo Pintado. In this respect the sites of the ruins on the Chaco are in close agreement with the description of the situations of the towns of Cibola. Castañeda, after speaking of the seven villages, and the character of the houses, remarks that "the valley is very narrow, between precipitous mountains" ["C'est une vallée très-étroite entre des montagues escarpées"],[2] which, in the light of Coronado's declaration, that "the country is all plain, and on no side mountains," may perhaps have reference to the encompassing walls of the canon. This language, literally interpreted, does not describe this cañon, neither is there any valley in New Mexico, occupied by pueblos, which answers this description.
