The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 3, July 1899 - April, 1900 Page: 230

230 Texas Historical Association Quarterly.
a matter resting upon statements made, is that rule requiring a com-
parison of the facts stated with each other and with natural and
known historical facts, in order to harmonize the whole as far as may
be consistent, and to reject the parts contradictory to or in conflict
with such known natural and historical truths, it was the aim of the
preceding parts of this paper to follow such rule; and the reasons for
adopting some of the statements made by Cabeza de Vaca and reject-
ing others will be shown in this part, to enable the reader to pass
upon the route adopted. And that part of it presented in the first
part being deemed sufficiently explained therein, nothing further
than such corroboration as it may naturally receive from what may
be said here as to the route from Nogales, or the point on the map
marked G, forward to Rio Verde in Jalisco will be added to it.
Cabeza de Vaca mentions three places at which he says they gave
him buffalo robes. These places will mark that part of the route
along which these skins are claimed) to have been possessed by the
Indians. The first is the village where they ate the piriones, the sec-
ond that where they called the people "los de las Vacas," and the third
along the route they traveled up the fourth large river before crossing
it; and, .as these have been assumed to be the present sites of Galeana
and Ciudad ide Valles, and that part of Rio Bagres below the mouth
'of Rio Verde, the question here is how those skins may have been
there when Cabeza de Vaca passed through the country in 1536. In
.answering it the most difficult task, perhaps, will be to show how far
the buffalo then ranged southward along the Gulf coast; and the
facts collected by a very limited research must suffice for the present
purpose, the reader being left to collate such further data on the
subject as may be convenient to him, and then reason to his own
conclusion.
The earliest written statement on this subject is that of Cabeza de
Vaca, which is not a little obscure as to where he saw the buffalo
herds -the three times he mentions them. This statement comes after
the account of his meeting with the other two Spaniards and the
negro, and going with them to where they ate the nuts, and of his
being given as a slave to the one-eyed Mariame Indian, while Castillo
remained with the Iguaces.a He adds it after accounting for Cas-

laNaufr'agios, Cap. XVII.