had done. Instead they remained in their houses and had others ready for us. They were all seated and had their faces turned toward the wall, their heads lowered and their hair in front of their eyes, with all their possessions piled in the middle of the room. From here on, they began to give us many animal skin blankets, and gave us everything they had.

These people had the best physiques of any we saw. They were the liveliest and most skillful, and the ones who understood and answered our questions best. We called them the Cow People, because the greatest number of buffalo die near there, and for fifty leagues up the river they kill many buffalo. These people walk around totally nude, like the first ones we encountered. The women cover themselves with deerskins, as do a few men, especially those who are too old for battle. The country is fairly well populated. We asked them why they did not plant corn. They told us it was because they did not want to lose what they planted, since the rains had not come for two years in a row. The weather was so dry that they had lost their corn to moles. They said they would not try planting again until after a lot of rain. The asked us to tell the sky to give rain and beg it to do so, and we promised them we would do that. We wanted to know where their com had come from. They told us that it had come from the direction of the setting sun and that there was corn throughout that land, but that the nearest was in that direction.

We asked them to tell us how to go there, since they did not want to go themselves. They told us to go up along that river towards the North, saying that for seventeen days the only food we would find is a fruit called chacan, which they crush between stones, and even then it is too bitter and dry to eat. They proved this by showing us some, which we could not eat.