The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 4, July 1900 - April, 1901 Page: 19

Route of Cabeza de Vaca.

dalgo when the Spaniards 'came too the country, will suffice to show
that if Cabeza de Vaca pursued the route indicated upon the sketch
accompanying Part II of this paper he went through a country
where the Nahuatl was spoken by the tribes. But, notwithstanding
the fact of its being historically known that such tribes have existed
along there -ever since he went through the country en route to a
land -of Christians, it may not be out of place to notice what is said
of this family by Sefior Isidro R. Gondra in what he wrote at re-
quest of Sefior Ignacio. Cumplido, editor of the Spanish edition of
Prescott's History of the Conquest. He says:
"The ,ancient and first inhabitants of New Spain, the Chichi-
mecas, were savages and barbarians, going completely nude, and
leading a wandering life, subsisting alone upon game without cul-
tivating the soil. 'The Nahuatlacas (people who -express, themselves
with clearness), people much more civilized, arrived from the North,
where New Mexico has since been ,discovered, in which country
there were two provinces, the ,one called Aztlan and the other Tecol-
oacan. The industrious and civilized inhabitants were divided into
seven nations, each of which had its separate territory. It is said
they came out 'of seven caverns about the year 820 o.f -the Christian
era, and that their journey to Mexico lasted eighty years, they not
having found the signs of the lands which their idols had foretold
to them. In their transit, they cultivated the soil and constructed
cabins in many places, leaving in them many people, especially old
persons and invalids.'"23
.While this may contain some truth, it is mixed with Chichimeca
and Aztec traditions not applicable to the Nahuatlacas, or Nohoa
family. It combines parts of the traditions of the two peregrina-
tions and adds that in reference to New Mexico front what the early
writers told about the Coronado expedition. However, if the In-
dians met 'by this expedition among the buffalo were Comanches,
they belonged to the Chichimeca family, ,and were not Nahuatlacas;
but on the other hand, if they were descendants of the Nahoa family,
then they were distinctt from both the Chichimecas and the Aztecs,
according to Gondara, and may have sprung from those left at
some one of -the cabins .on the route of the Nahoa family, whose

"Tradition of the Nahuatlacas, p. 22.