The earliest knowledge of the existence of the sedentary Indians in New Mexico and Arizona reached Europe by way of Mexico proper; but it is very doubtful whether or not the aborigines of Mexico had any positiveinformation to impart about countries lying north of the present State of Querétaro. The tribes to the north were, in the language of the valley-confederates, "Chichimecas,"—a word yet undefined, but apparently synonymous, in the conceptions of the "Nahuatl"-speaking natives, with fierce savagery, and ultimately adopted by them as a warlike title. .Indistinct notions, indeed, of an original residence, during some very remote period of.
