In the year 1530, when Nuño de Guzmán was governor of New Spain, he had an Indian slave of whom he was very fond and who was likewise fond of his master. He was a good servant and different in many ways from all the other slaves in the palace, and it often pleased Nuño de Guzmán to talk with him.
“Tejos,” said De Guzmán to him one day, “tell me of your home when you were a boy, and tell me of your father and mother.”
Then Tejos turned away from his master and stood for a long time silent.
“Master,” he said at last, “when Tejos was a boy he lived not in this land, nor was he a slave. His home was in a land far, far to the northward. My lord, it was a great land. Beyond the home of my father there was yet another country greater still. In that farther land were seven great cities, and even the smallest of them was as great as this city of Mexico. So rich were the people of those cities that they made arrowheads of emeralds, and scraped the sweat from their bodies with scrapers made of gold, and put precious stones over their doors. Their houses were wide and high. My father carried to these people the feathers that they wore upon their heads, and in return they gave him gold and turquoises and emeralds. My father took Tejos with him twice, my lord, when he journeyed with feathers to those cities, and though Tejos was then but a small boy, he still remembers the long streets where were only the stores of jewelers who sold the precious stones and made them into ornaments for the people.”
“And where,” asked Nuño de Guzmán breathlessly, “where is this land?”
“It is far away from here, my lord,” answered Tejos, sadly. “Forty days you must journey to reach it, and the land through which you must travel is a desert lying between two seas, and there is neither water nor food to be had.”
Scarcely waiting to sleep, De Guzmán began to gather a force to march in search of this wonderful land. Far and wide the story spread and on all sides the talk was of
With four hundred Spaniards and twenty thousand Indians, De Guzmán marched from Mexico, and the people waited each day to hear that he had conquered a great empire in the north.
As he went, rumors of the Seven Cities kept coming to him, and his men were often so excited he could hardly get them to sleep enough. For days they pressed eagerly forward, hoping each day to find the Seven Cities at hand; but instead of this, the country each day grew more desolate, the mountains grew steeper and the roads harder to find, while the Seven Cities, instead of coming nearer, were always farther and farther to the north.