The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 3, July 1899 - April, 1900 Page: 193

Route of Cabeza de - Vaca.

remained over with them two days. They gave us beans and pump-
kins to eat."41
Then he tells how they cooked pumpkins.
"After the two days we remained there, we determined to go to
hunt the maize, and would not follow the road of the cows which
was towards the north, and this was a very great round-about way
for us, because we always held it certain that, going to the sunset,
we should find what we desired."42
They first told the Spaniards "they brought the maize from where
the sun goes down, ad that it was in all that land, and the
nearest was on that road." Then they told them "the road was up
that other river towards the north;" and still the Spaniards went to
hunt the maize toward the sunset up that river. How shall this be
reconciled ?
As there used, the words "aquel rio" referred to two rivers, one
beyond the other in the same direction ;43 and "aquel rio hacia el
norte," meant that other river towards the Gulf, or what the Span-
iards call the North Sea. So there being two rivers,.one beyond the
other, going from the village towards the Gulf, and going up the
one most remote from the village was to the sunset, all said about
it is harmonized. 'Tanzocob, the present Ciudad -de Valles, is on
the left margin of the Rio de Valles, which empties into the Rio
Bagres below there. Beyond it in the direction of the Gulf, not
far from the village, is the Bagres, coming from the sunset and
from a land of maize, which is presumed to be the river up which
the road led to the land all over ,which there was maize.
It was natural that at Tanzocob, in latitude 21 50' N., the people
should go without clothes, but had their village been on the higher
lands in latitude 310 N., they would have been clad in skins, as were
the tribes there and further north when the Spaniards first went
among them.
With all these facts in view, the reader may determine for him-
self whether ancient 'Tanzocob, now Ciudad de Valles, is the place
whose people the Spaniards called "de las Vacas."
"Naufragios, COap. XXX.
Ibid., Cap. XXXI.
48Diccionario Castillano, h. v.

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