Friar Marco thus describes Cevola from report: -- "It is a great city, inhabited by a great store of people, and having many streets and market-places; in some parts of this city there are certain very great houses, five stories high, wherein the chief of the city assemble themselves at certain days of the year. The houses are of lime and stone; the gates and small pillars of the principal houses are of turquoises; and all the vessels wherein they are served and other ornaments of their houses are of gold. The other six cities are built like unto this, whereof some are bigger, and Ahacus is the chiefest of them. At the south-east there is a kingdom called Marata where there were wont to be many great cities, which were all builded of houses of stone, with divers lofts. And these have and do wage war with the lord of the seven cities, through which war the kingdom of Marata is for the most part wasted, although it yet continueth and maintaineth war against the other.
"Likewise the kingdom of Totonteac lieth towards the west -- a very mighty province, replenished with infinite store of people and riches; and in the said kingdom they wear woollen cloth, made of the fleece of those beasts previously described; and they are a very civil people." He told also of another kingdom, called Acus. Here they showed him a hide half as big again as the hide of an ox, which they said belonged to a beast with one horn. The colour of the skin was like that of a goat, and the hair was a finger thick.
The inhabitants requested him to stay here three or four days, because from this place they were "four days" journey into the desert, and from the first entrance into the same desert unto the city of Cevola are fifteen great days' journey more" Accompanied by thirty of the principal Indians, with others to carry their provisions, he entered this second desert on the 9th of May. He travelled the first day by a very broad and beaten way, and came to dinner unto a water, and at night unto another water, where the Indians provided him with a cottage and victuals. In this manner he travelled twelve days' journey. At that point he met one of Stephen's Indians, who, "in great fright and covered with sweat," informed him that the people of Cevola had at first imprisoned, and afterwards killed the negro.
Father Marco himself then became fearful of trusting his life in the hands of that people. But he told his companions that he "purposed to see the city of Cevola, whatever came of it." So he ascended a mountain and viewed the city. He describes it as "situated upon the plain at the foot of a round hill, and maketh show to be a fair city, and is better seated "than any that he has seen in these parts. The houses "were builded in order" according as the Indians had told him, "all made of stone, with divers stories and flat roofs. The people are some-what white; they wear apparel, and lie on beds; their weapons are bows; they have emeralds and other jewels, although they esteem none so much as turquoises, wherewith they adorn the walls of the porches of their houses, and their apparel and vessels; and they use them instead of money through all the country. Their apparel is of cotton and of ox-hides, and this is their most commendable and honourable apparel." They use vessels of gold and silver, for these metals are found in greater abundance here than in Peru. They buy the same for turquoises in the province of Pintados, where there are said to be mines of great abundance.
Of other kingdoms he says he could not obtain such particular information. When he told the Indian chiefs that were with him what a goodly city Cevola seemed, they answered him that it was the least of the seven cities, and that Totonteac was the greatest and best of them all, because it had so many houses and people that there was no end to them. Having set up a cross and made a heap of stones,, he named that country El Nuevo Regno de San Francisco.
Then, "with more fear than victuals" he returned. In two days he overtook the people he had left behind, crossed the desert, hurried from the valley, and passed the second desert. Having arrived at the valley of the Gila, he determined to visit the great plain he had been informed of towards the east; but, for fear of the Indians, did not go into it. At its entrance he saw "but seven towns "of a reasonable size, which were afar off, in a low valley, being very green, and having a most fruitful soil, out of which ran many rivers.
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adapted from A. W. Bell
"On the Native Races of New Mexico"
1869 (Journal of the Ethnological Society of London)
