Note I'-15 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: THROUGH NEW MEXICO ON THE RIO GRANDE TO EL PASO, FEB. 27TH-MAR. 21ST, 1807.

Marked "S Dies 500" on the map, on the E. side of the Rio Grande, to which Pike recrossed from San Felipe. The Spanish form would be San Diaz, but the pueblo is best known as Sandia or Zandia, a name also applied to the great mountain which rises on the E. As a Spanish word, sandia means "watermelon," and appeared in print as the name of this village in 1626. The aboriginal name of the pueblo is Nafiap, and its mission name was Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de Sandia. This is a Tañoan town, with a present population of about 150. The situation is 12 m. above Albuquerque. Pike speaks of two small hamlets he passed to reach St. Dies. In 1864, when I passed over the road, there was a mean place called Algodones, of 30 or 40 houses and some 200 or 300 people, and 6 m. below this was a rather better one named Bernalillo. This is doubtless what Pike charts as "S Bernilla 500." Bernalillo is present name of a station of the A., T., and S. F. R. R. Simpson relates that when he passed Sandia in 1849 he noticed in the space of a mile northward from the pueblo some 60 or 70 piles of stones which were said to mark the places where as many Navajos had fallen in battle with the Pueblonians some years before.