sm amid the pueblos of the South.
Spanish _conquistadores_ have been represented as wading through blood
to victory, with the sword in one hand, the cross in the other; but that
picture is only half the truth. Let it be remembered that the Spanish
were the only conquerors in America who gave the Indians perpetual
title, intact and forever, to the land occupied when the Spanish
came--which titles the Indians hold to this day. Also, while rude
soldiers, or even officers, might be guilty of such unprovoked attacks
as occurred at Bernalillo in Coronado's expedition of 1540, the crown
stood sponsor for the well-being and salvation of the Indian's soul.
Wherever the conqueror marched, the sandaled and penniless Franciscan
remained and too often paid the penalty of the soldier's crimes. In the
Tusayan Desert, at Taos, at Zuni, at Acoma, you will find Missions that
date back to the expedition of Coronado; and at every single Mission the
_padres_ paid for their courage and their faith with their lives.

But Taos traditions date back farther than the coming of the white man.
Christians have their Christ, northern Indians their Hiawatha, and the
pueblo people their Bah-tah-ko, or grand cacique, who led their people
from the ravages of Apache and Navajo in the far West to the Promised
Land of verdant plains and watered valleys below the mighty mountains of
Taos. Montezuma was to the Southwest, not the Christ, but the Adam, the
Moses, the Joseph. Casa Grande in southern Arizona was the Garden of
Eden, "the place of the Morning Glow;" but when war and pestilence and
ravaging foe and drouth drove the pueblos from their Garden of Eden, the
Bah-tah-ko was the Moses to lead them to the Promised Land at Taos. When
did he live? The oldest man does not know. The pueblos had been at Taos
thousands of years, when the Spanish came in 1540; and, it may be added,
they live very much the same to-day at Taos as they did when the white
man first came. The men wear store trousers instead of woven linen ones;
some wear hats instead of a red head band; and there are wagons instead
of drags attached to a dog in shafts. But apart from these innovations,
there is little difference at Taos between 1912 and 1540. The
whitewashed Mission church stands in the center of the pueblo; but the
old _estufas_, or _kivas_, are still used for religious ceremony, and
election of rulers, and maintenance of Indian law. You can still see the
Indians threshing their grain