The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 10, July 1906 - April, 1907 Page: 313
ix, 354 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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A Study of the Route of (Jabeza De Vaca.
them. The herb that Cabeza calls chacan, Oviedo speaks of as
masarrones, and he notes that they found on the way few people,
the others having gone to eat cows three days' journey from there
on a plain among mountains, which latter came from above toward
the sea. Note that it does not follow that these people were the
full nine days up, since he says that they found them on the way.
"And thus they [the Spaniards] went along up that river fifteen
days' journey without resting, .. . and they crossed from
there to the west, and went more than other twenty [days' jour-
ney] to the maize" eating powdered herbs and hares, resting on
this stage sometimes, as had been their custom, and coming at
length to the first houses where they had maize, which was more
than two hundred leagues from Culiacan.
This is Oviedo's interesting and helpful story of this great stage
of this journey which we may examine further hereafter.
From the second group of permanent houses on the Rio Grande
Cabeza says that they went seventeen days up the river before
crossing, instead of the fifteen, which we may understand Oviedo
to include as his whole stage here. Cabeza has the same words for
"along up that river." Just how Judge Coopwood can insist that
there were more than one river here, or translate the expression
"aquel rio" in the Naufragios of Cabeza as "that other river,"1
since there is no otro in either Cabeza or Oviedo when speaking of
the stream here, I can not see. His rendering is in no sense justi-
fied by lexicon or location.
But Cabeza mentions another route, from near the mouth of the
Conchas, which the Indians here suggested to him as being the bet-
ter. He had asked them "to tell us how to go." "They said we
should travel up the river toward the north." Literally they said
"the way was along up that river toward the north .. . but
that . . it seemed to them that we ought not to take that
road [canino]."2 Cabeza does not record the Indians as giving
any reason for this suggestion; but they had just told him that he
would find nothing to eat directly up the river but chacan, an
abominable food, and in Cabeza's further statement we can see that
they had advised him to go out from the river, to the right and to
the more direct north, where he would pass through the cow country,'THE QUARTERLY, II., 192.
20Cf. Nanfragion, ed. 1555, fol. xliiii.313
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 10, July 1906 - April, 1907, periodical, 1907; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101040/m1/351/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.