Search was first made for the Mexican deputies who had been with the Spaniards, but they had gone away and had only left their attendants. The chief officers of Cholula were no longer to be seen in the Spanish headquarters, and Cortés had two priests called and questioned in his presence. Presents, cross-questionings, and threats were employed to extort a confession that the destruction of the Spaniards was contemplated. Cortés immediately sent word through these priests to the chiefs of the tribe to come to him, and they came. The Spanish commander reproached them courteously for their reserve, asked them why they had estranged themselves from him in such a way, and intimating to them that he would start for Mexico on the following day, asked for a number of their soldiers to escort him, and for porters. His request was very readily granted, even with professions of lively pleasure. But while Cortés was thus treating with them, messengers arrived from his Indian allies with urgent communications. Both Tlascalans and Indians from Cempohual, of whom a few hundred accompanied the Spaniards, brought reports that threatening proceedings were going on outside of the Spanish quarter. The people were collecting more stones on the roofs, and were barring and building up the passages. Pits had been discovered in the streets, or rather in the vacant spaces between the quarters, lightly covered with limbs of trees and earth. If was certain that all non-combatants had been sent away. Everything pointed to an impending outbreak of hostilities. The Spaniards, not being acquainted with the Indian custom of making no assault at night except under the most favorable circumstances, or in case of necessity, expected to be attacked immediately after dark. The number of men in the previously deserted space around the Spanish quarter was visibly increasing, and among them were some armed. As night came on, Cortés assembled his men for anxious consultation. Some proposed to evacuate Cholula and retire to Huexotzinco; but the majority, perceiving that it was too late for that, favored attacking the Cholulans on the next morning, before they could strike a blow.

While these measures were being determined upon, two Indians of the place, an old woman and her son, came secretly to the Marina whom we have mentioned. She was regarded, by virtue of her origin and her language, as belonging to the Nahuatls, and as she was, besides, a good-looking girl, and made considerable display of the presents which she had acquired from the Spaniards, she was regarded among her countrymen as desirable for marriage. The woman came to the girl in order to warn her and save her, and at the same time to secure her for one of her sons. Marina obtained from her a relation, to the minutest detail, of the whole plan of the conspiracy, how the Spaniards were to be attacked in the ravines and roads on their march to Mexico, and other particulars. Her story fully confirmed the statements of the priests. Marina detained the woman under the pretext that she wished to prepare to go away, and ran to Cortés to tell him all. The poor wife-hunter was consequently brought before the commander, closely questioned, and confined for the night with her son, while the Spanish soldiers prepared to march.

When morning broke, all was ready for departure, and armed Cholulans gathered around the lately deserted quarter, ostensibly to accompany the Spaniards, but really in order to attack them at the first opportunity. Both sides were alike ready, and the only question was, which should be first. The Spaniards had the advantage of knowing the designs of their perfidious hosts, while the latter had no suspicion that the whites were aware of their treachery. As soon as the Spanish guards permitted it, the court of the quarter was filled with Indians. They exhibited all the signs of satisfaction, in the false fancy that their success was assured. Cortés was already on his horse, with Marina by his side, the cavalry were mounted, and the infantry held their guns ready to fine. Orders had been sent to the Tlascalans during the night to hasten up on the first alarm. When the chiefs of Cholula had gathered around Cortés, he plainly told them through the mouth of the Indian interpreter that he had penetrated their designs. He said to them, without passion, that he knew all, and that, as they were bound to the Spanish Crown, having voluntarily made their submission to it, they should therefore be punished, according to Spanish law, as traitors and rebels. Before the Indians could recover from their astonishment, he gave the signal for attack, and the fight began with the firing of muskets into the throng. It lasted about five hours.

There was no slaughter of unarmed women and children. The non-combatants had been sent out of the way long before by the Cholulans to a place of security, with the exception of those in the remote quarters, who did not participate in the contest and were not harmed by the Spaniards. It was a house and street fight between armed whites who had anticipated likewise armed Indians, and had therefore secured to themselves the advantage of the assault. Many Indians were killed in the court—a relatively large number, it is said, perhaps more than a hundred men. This part of the affair occurred where the present Calle de Chalingo passes into the Calle Real, and the place is still called the “Ezcoloc,” or the place of the flowing and crossing of meandering streams of blood. According to tradition, Cortés had his headquarters in the same system of houses. The action could not last long in the court, for the Cholulans, after the first volleys, rushed out of the trap into the open space, which they could easily do, as no doors prevented their exit. But they could not be allowed to go unpunished even outside, for the Spaniards were exposed to the danger of a siege by starvation. They also rushed out, and their enemies, driven by their guns, fled to the “Cerro de la Cruz,” a sacrificial mound still partly standing, about 1100 feet east of the spot where the fight began. Here, according to the pictures at Cuauhtlantzinco, the principal engagement took place, in the storming of the artificial height. After this, all was over. The Cholulans who were involved in the conspiracy and were surprised belonged to three of the six principal quarters, while the three other quarters had been neutral and now interceded for peace. Cortés contented himself with this short chastisement, and did not permit his people to scatter—prudently, for that might have been very disastrous. In the afternoon he drew his troops back into the quarter, and the negotiations were begun which established peace and a good understanding.

In the meantime, when the fight was already on the wane, the Tlascalans rushed up in thick masses. They eagerly overran the empty houses in order to plunder them. It is self-evident that none of the inhabitants who fell into their hands were spared. But there were not many, for the unarmed had long ago betaken themselves to places of security; the soldiers were busy with the Spaniards, and the heroes of Tlascala did not venture against non-participants and their closed houses. Like genuine Indians, they contented themselves with robbery and the destruction of property: there was no extensive conflagration; the “smoking ruins” of Prescott could not exist where roof-beams loaded with earth and plaster were the only combustibles. Such a laying waste of Cholula as is represented by some authors would require pulling it down, and that could not be accomplished in so short a time as five hours. Yet five hours after the first shot was fired, Cortés stopped the proceedings of his companions. Many of them undoubtedly continued to steal privately; and on the next day reënforcements came from Tlascala for the purpose of recompensing themselves from the Cholulans and their property, but they were prevented from doing this by the strict orders of the Spanish commander. Andrés de Tápia speaks of a two days’ destruction, but Cortés, in a letter which he wrote a year after the affair, affirmed that the place was again full of women and children on the next day.[92]

Cortés stated that about three thousand of the enemy were killed. In 1529 Nuño de Guzman accused him of having caused four thousand Indians to be slain in a large court in Cholula. The witnesses whom Cortés brought forward swore that a “few” Indians were indeed punished there with death. Las Casas, whose statements cannot be trusted on account of his strong passion, speaks of six thousand dead. The local conditions speak more definitely, and, above all, the duration of the battle. It is hardly conceivable that even if the conflict lasted five hours, five hundred Spaniards could have killed so large a number of Indians in that time. The first volleys may have been murderous, but after them the affair became a skirmish, with single brief and bloody combats at close quarters. The Tlascalans had no time to kill many.

I am very doubtful, especially when I recollect that the battle was fought on a space not an English quarter of a mile in length, whether more than five hundred men fell. Certainly nothing like what is called a “decline” of Cholula was caused by the massacre. The Indian population of the district is still as large as it was then, notwithstanding fatal epidemics have prevailed. The only difference between the past and present conditions of population is that the tribe has now dispersed into the country, while in the year 1519 it dwelt together in a group of complexes.

But even if only one Indian was killed without just cause, it would be a serious crime. Yet from a military point of view the conduct of Cortés is entirely justified. He was obliged to proceed in that way, to surprise the Indians, if he would not himself be surprised and destroyed. The reproach brought against him is not based upon the Cholula incident, but lies against the conquest in general, against every aggression of the kind, and against our own conduct toward the Indians.

Only the pretexts have changed with the times, while the means have become, through the advance of knowledge, surer and more destructive. The Spaniards took and held the land, and saved its inhabitants: in the United States we have destroyed the people to get their land. The Spaniards subdued the aborigines openly: we approach them in the disguise of neighbors, pursue them and vex them, often for years at a time, till the desired offence is committed which affords us a pretext for removing them or exterminating them. The history of Arizona since the United States forcibly incorporated that territory into its domain furnishes much worse and more blameworthy transactions than the “bloodbath” of Cholula. If we can excuse these and other wrongs, and can justify our whole systematic robbery and destruction of the Indians under the pretence of progress, then we cannot be judges against the Conquest. The Spaniards planted the European civilization of their time in the place of the rude semi-civilization that existed, and adapted the natives to it: we plant our present civilization without taking a thought for the continued existence of the Indians.

THE AGE OF THE CITY OF SANTA FE.

Concurrently with the belief that Santa Fé is the oldest city in New Mexico prevailed the legend that it occupied the site of a populous Indian settlement, of a native seat of government for all the pueblos of the Province. This fable is wholly destitute of documentary proof, and is not supported by any traditional or archæological evidence. The present city covers the ruins of an Indian village, and the earthworks of old Fort Marcy have partly obliterated the remains of another, older one. The older village contained hardly five hundred inhabitants; the more modern one, of which one house besides San Miguel’s Church is still standing, numbered seven hundred souls in the year 1630. The plateau of Santa Fé contains besides these two ruins only four sites of remains of Indian dwelling-places or pueblos. Five miles south are two, one smaller and one larger, on the banks of the usually dry “Arroyo Hondo.” The small village contained not quite two hundred, the larger one—which is called “Cua-Kaa” by the Tanos, to whom it belongs—less than eight hundred souls. Both were deserted before the middle of the sixteenth century. Twelve miles southwest lie the ruins of “Tzigu-ma,” near the place called “Ciénega.” This village also, which was abandoned after 1680, never numbered one thousand inhabitants. Lastly, there is San Marcos, or “Yaa-tze,” eighteen miles south-southwest of Santa Fé, near the so-called “Cerrillos.” In the year 1680 it contained six hundred Indians, and the extent of the ruins leads me to the conclusion that this number was not at any time doubled. The plain of Santa Fé, which includes an area of hardly one hundred square miles, thus never held more than three thousand settled inhabitants before the advent of the Spaniards, and these were distributed among not more than four villages inhabited at one time. None of these villages could compare in population with Pecos, Hauicu, Pilabó (or Socorro), Teypaná (or Quivira), etc., or with the Zuñi of to-day.

Those villages were inhabited in the sixteenth century and from a long time before by the Indians called “Tanos.” The Tanos were Tehuas; they constituted the southern half of that great linguistic stock; and their territory extended from Pojuaque (“P’ho-zuang-ge”), seventeen miles north of Santa Fé, to San Pedro (“Cua-Kaa”), forty miles southwest. Their traditions are fully confirmed by the archæological remains; but these traditions make not the slightest mention of a “center of population,” or of a New Mexican “Indian capital,” at Santa Fé.

The pueblo on the ruins of which Santa Fé stands is called “Cua-P’ho-o-ge,” or “Cua-Pooge” (mussel-pearl-place-on-the-water). That the place, and even the district, played no prominent part in the sixteenth century, appears from the fact that no Spanish document specially mentions it till after the founding of the capital.

The plateau is dry and barren. The little Rio de Santa Fé sinks into the sand not far from the present capital, and issues from it again at the “Ciénega,” or the entrance to what is called the “Bocas.” The Arroyo Hondo is entirely dry; the village of Cua-Kaa, as well as San Marcos, get their water from a spring situated near them. The scarcity of water, which is still very much felt, would make any aggregation of native settlers around Santa Fé absolutely impossible.

The historians of Coronado hardly mention the region. Probably Cua-Pooge was one of the seven villages which Casteñeda mentions as lying near the snowy mountains.[93] The accounts of the eight Spanish soldiers who went in the year 1580 with the unfortunate Franciscan monks Fray Augustin Rodriguez, Fray Juan Lopez, and Fray Juan de Santa Maria to Bernalillo on the Rio Grande, prove that neither the escort nor the missionaries set foot upon the Santa Fé plateau.

In the year 1583 Antonio de Espejo, going east from the Queres villages on the Rio Grande, arrived at the Tanos and Galistéo. He called them “Ubates”—a corruption of the word “Puya-tye,” by which the Queres now designate the Tanos. He there touched upon the southern part of the plain of Santa Fé. He mentions five Tanos pueblos, and estimates their population at 20,000 souls. Espejo was a careful and intelligent observer, except that his estimates of population are always exaggerated at least four times. The exaggerations arise from the fact that whenever the Spaniards visited a village not only the people of that village, but those also of the neighboring pueblos, were present to greet their strange animals, and this multitude followed them as long as they continued in the territory of the tribe. This was a result more of curiosity than of fear. Moreover, an Indian village, in consequence of the peculiar structure of its buildings, always appears at least twice as large as it really is.

The founding of Santa Fé has been ascribed to Espejo. The error is the result of inaccurate, extremely superficial historical inquiry. The mere reading of Espejo’s account would satisfy any one that he marched all through New Mexico and northern Arizona with only fourteen soldiers; that his expedition was a mere reconnoissance and no scheme of colonization; and that he arrived again, with all his men, in Santa Barbara in southern Chihuahua on the 20th of September, 1583. The story of the founding of Santa Fé by Espejo in the year 1583, aside from the one which fixed the origin of the capital in 1550—which suggested the spurious “Tertio millennial jubilee” of 1883—furnishes a most emphatic proof of the want of thought and of scientific care with which the history of Spanish colonization is still written. After his return Espejo made a proposition to the Crown concerning the settlement of New Mexico (April 23, 1584) but he died in 1585, before the government had examined his plan.

The first Spanish settlement in New Mexico was founded in the year 1598 by Juan de Oñate. It was not, however, where Santa Fé now stands, but thirty miles north of that place, on the tongue of land formed by the junction of the Rio Grande with the Rio Chama, opposite the present Indian village of San Juan de los Caballeros. It was therefore very near the station Chamita, on the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. Oñate marched from San Marcos to San Ildefonso on the Rio Grande, barely touching the southwest corner of the Santa Fé plateaus, and paid no attention whatever to the little village of Cua-Pooge. The well-watered, highly fertile valley near San Juan, on the contrary, attracted him at once, and he began the building, opposite that pueblo, of a chapel and a Spanish headquarters, which he called “San Francisco de los Españoles,” on the 23d of August, 1598. The chapel was consecrated on the 8th of September of the same year. This first colony was called San Gabriel in 1599, and that has continued till now to be the name given to the place by the Mexicans, although every trace of the buildings disappeared long ago. Ruins were still visible about 1694.

San Gabriel remained the only settlement of Europeans in New Mexico till 1608. In that year the Crown fixed the governmental regulations of the new possession and assigned a regular salary of 2000 ducats a year to the governor, and he immediately departed for Santa Fé. More exact statements concerning the date of this settlement are not accessible, although they probably exist in the Spanish archives; but it is certain that Santa Fé was not founded till after the year 1607. Twenty years afterward two hundred and fifty Spaniards dwelt there, including soldiers; and when the Indians rose and drove out the whites in 1680, the whole district contained not more than one thousand Europeans, about half of whom lived in Santa Fé.

All the other towns in New Mexico, the Indian villages excepted, are of much later origin than Santa Fé. Albuquerque, for example, dates from 1701, Las Vegas from 1835, Bernalillo from 1701, Socorro—the old pueblo was destroyed in 1681—from 1817. The oldest Indian missions in Arizona—“Tubac,” “Tumacacori,” etc.—date from the close of the seventeenth century. Tucson was still in 1772 a small village of the Pimas. Santa Fé is therefore the oldest existing city in the two Territories, and the second oldest European town in the United States that is still inhabited.

The first church in Santa Fé was begun in 1622 and completed in 1627. It stood on the site of the present cathedral, and the remains of the walls of the old “Parroquia,” or parish church, probably belonged to that oldest temple. Of San Miguel, the walls are of the middle of the seventeenth century. The roof and towers were built after 1694. The old house by the side of it is of the same age. The oldest churches in New Mexico still standing and in use are those in the Indian villages San Ildefonso and Santa Clara; the oldest abandoned houses of worship are those of Pecos, San Diego de Jemez, and perhaps Abó and Cuaray. All these buildings were erected in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

JEAN L’ARCHEVEQUE.

Santa Clara is situated on a sandy prominence which overlooks the course of the Rio Grande del Norte from a height of about fifty feet. The village is not more than five hundred paces in a straight line from the river-bank. The view from the dune on which it stands is therefore not without attractions, but the immediate vicinity is bare and treeless. Fields, green in summer, desolate in winter, lie around it, while in the west the side of a barren table-land rises to shut off every view in that direction. Only the highest peaks of the mountains of Abiquin look down furtively, as it were, upon the barren hillside of rubbish and gravel.

A broad view is spread out toward the east. The course of the Rio Grande is visible from north to south for a length of ten English miles. A dark mesa, the Mesa de la Canoa, shuts off the northern horizon, while the river is lost sight of in the south at the foot of a grand isolated rock of dark lava—the Mesa de San Ildefonso. A narrow but fertile valley forms the eastern shore, on the other side of which stretches the chain of the high mountains—the wild Sierra de la Truchas, the massive flat dome of the Sierra de Nambe, and the Pico de la Laguna. The range descends in terraces to the south, where the city of Santa Fé lies hidden at its foot. All these peaks exceed twelve thousand, the Truchas thirteen thousand, feet in height, and they are often crowned by snow-fields in summer.

If one stands, in the evening, when the sun is setting and the shadows are already cast over the valleys, on the swell above the church of Santa Clara, he will see the snow-peaks glowing for a little while in fiery red. The crags of the Truchas blaze like flowing ore. An Alpine lustre is displayed, less soft in colors than that of the central mountains of Europe, but much more intense and longer lasting. The mountains stand out ghostly pale as soon as the last glow is extinguished, and a white shroud appears to rest upon the landscape.

In this homely Indian village has lain concealed for many years a treasure of historical knowledge, an archive rich for America, so poor in archives, of the history of New Mexico. The Indians preserve and guard the treasure with superstitious care. It was entrusted to them years ago; and although their care for it has been limited to a superstitious guardianship and a cautious preservation, and no catalogue exists and no thought is taken of the greedy mice, the papers are still tolerably well preserved, and might safely lie there for yet many a year, suspiciously watched by men to whom the text is still a puzzle—for to them reading is a mystery, and the art of writing seems a kind of magic.

The collection is the remains of the archives of the Franciscan order in New Mexico, the “Custodia de la conversion de San Pablo de la Nueva-Mexico,” which have lain here for more than thirty years, or since the time when the old military chapel (called Castruenza) of Santa Fé was condemned as unsafe. Such of the documents and church-books stored there as were not immediately needed were securely deposited in Santa Clara; for a priest then lived in the pueblo, and Santa Clara formed a parish by itself. When the parish was discontinued and the seat of the pastorate was removed to Santa Cruz, the archives were left. No one having any use for them, they remained in an old cupboard of the ruined convent till an Indian, who could neither read nor write, but had a clear head and respect for the old and venerable, proposed to commit the care of the papers to private hands. It took long and solemn meetings for consultation before the Principales of the pueblo would agree to such an innovation. They would keep the documents, indeed, as something having an incomprehensible sanctity, but to remove them from the ruins, where they were given up to mold and decay, seemed at first a doubtful step. Those above, the “Shiuana,” might be displeased at it. The spiritual powers were finally consulted, and their decision was in favor of the innovation. The Franciscan archives were thus carried into the dark back-room of an Indian house, where a blind man was their first guardian; but they are now in charge of an intelligent, tolerably clear-seeing citizen of the village.

I tried in 1886 to obtain access to these old manuscripts, but was at once refused. It is of no use to importune an Indian. If he denies a request he is fixed in it, and one must wait. I waited two years, provided myself with a most urgent letter of introduction from the archbishop and an order from the priest of Santa Cruz, and went again. At last the prohibition was withdrawn, and after three protracted visits to Santa Clara, the last of which lasted twenty days, I was able to say that I had exhausted all the material and had accurate and complete copies of all the documents which had any important bearing on the history of New Mexico. It was no easy work, for the hand-writing was often nearly illegible, and the ink had faded and the paper grown yellow, and become almost rotten.

The contents of the archives of Santa Clara may be divided into three classes. The first class consists of documents not strictly ecclesiastical, among which I found much that was valuable; the second, of the special church books, including registers of baptism, marriage, and death, many of the last of which begin with the date of 1694. Many valuable facts were also found in these. The papers called Diligencias Matrimoniales, or Informaciones, official inquiries to determine the civil standing of the contracting parties, which preceded every marriage, were the most numerous. Many of these are very long; some of them are of the seventeenth century, and they unfold an extremely instructive picture of the customs of those times. There are hardly any documents left in New Mexico of the period before the great insurrection of 1680, and I have the few that have been saved. But I found in Santa Clara a large number of details concerning the years preceding the insurrection, although contained in manuscripts that were composed one or two years after the troubles broke out. There have come to light little “court histories” of the governor of the time, scenes from the private life of long-vanished families which were then playing an important part in the troubled world called the Spanish Colony of New Mexico; notices of many an event which is never mentioned in the printed annals, and which was still of great importance. The real life of the people has taken shape out of these obscure writings of the monks, and many a striking revelation has been obtained from them. One of the discoveries made in them has given occasion to the present paper.

Among the Diligencias or Informaciones was one the superscription of which read, “Information of Pedro Meusnier—a Frenchman—1699.” It was strange to meet with a Frenchman in New Mexico in 1699; and on reading the document it appeared that Pedro or Pierre Meusnier, or Meunier, at the time a soldier in the garrison at Santa Fé, born in Paris, had come to America in the year 1684 with the flotilla commanded by Monsieur de la Sala. Meunier brought forward two witnesses, one of whom was named Santiago Grolee, the other Juan de Archeueque. Both were French, and both declared that they had come across the sea with Meunier in the flotilla which the same “Monsieur de la Sala” commanded; and Grolee said that he was born at La Rochelle.

“Monsieur de la Sala” could have been nobody else than the famous brave discoverer of the mouths of the Mississippi—Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The date agrees with this supposition, for La Salle crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the last time in 1684, to found a French colony on the coast of Texas. There came also with the expedition Jacques Grollet, a sailor, and a certain Jean l’Archévèque. It was the latter who, on March 18, 1687, led the unfortunate commander into the trap which his confederates Duhaut and Liotot had set, and in which La Salle was killed. Grollet was in the plot, but took no part in the murder. The supposition seems at least well founded that Juan de Archeueque was the traitor L’Archévèque, and Santiago Grolee was his accessory in a lesser degree, the sailor Grollet. I wrote at once to Mr. Francis Parkman, the historian of Canada, and received the answer that my supposition seemed to him perfectly well founded, although all that is known concerning the fate of the two men after La Salle’s death is that they were found among the Indians in 1689 by Alonzo de Leon, commanding a Spanish expedition to Texas, and were taken to New Mexico. They were sent from Mexico to Spain where they were supposed to have ended their lives in the galleys.

The last supposition was soon shown to be erroneous. The Jesuit father Andrés Cavo, author of the work “Los tres siglos de Mexico,” says:[94] “After a number of days the messengers [whom Leon had sent to the Indians] came back with two Frenchmen, whose names were Jacob Grollet and Juan l’Archiveque.... After Monclova returned, the governor [Leon] sent the two Frenchmen to the viceroy, and they legitimated themselves before him. The Conde de Galve, convinced that the affair was of particular importance, sent them both to the court of Charles II. under the care of Captain Don Andrés Perez.[95]... In this year [1691] Don Andrés Perez came back from Madrid with both of the Frenchmen.” This is now also confirmed by the deposition of Santiago Grolee himself, which I found in Santa Clara in the investigation (Informacion) concerning his own person. It is of the year 1699, and he said in it: “We remained lost in that country five years among the wild infidel Indians, and after we had at last escaped from their power we went to Spain by the order of the Viceroy Conde de Galve, in order to give an account of our persons and of that country.” He said nothing of La Salle’s death and of his own participation in the murder.

Satisfied that in the persons of Archeueque and Grolee I had found the notorious L’Archévèque and the sailor Grollet, two of the accomplices in the killing of La Salle, I made further investigation in the case. Members of a family named Archibeque still live in different parts of New Mexico; and as this one wrote his name that way in the later papers, I thought that these Archibeques might be descendants of the ill-famed Frenchman. In Santa Clara, and with the help of the general surveyor’s archives at Santa Fé, I succeeded in restoring a tolerably complete picture of the life of Jean l’Archévèque. I shall now limit myself to this picture, and avoid the tedious details of documentary research. With the exception of the participation in the death of La Salle and the voyage to Spain, the facts are new and the results of local investigations.

Jean l’Archévèque was born in Bayonne, in southern France, in the year 1671. His parents were Claude l’Archévèque and Marie d’Armagnac. Both died in 1719. When thirteen years old, in 1684, he went with Robert Cavelier de La Salle to the coast of Texas and shared the fortunes of that unfortunate expedition. He entered the service of the notorious Duhaut, who, equally with the surgeon Liotot, was chief of the conspiracy to which La Salle fell a victim. His relation to Duhaut and his youth, he being only sixteen years old in 1687, explain, or at least partly excuse, the criminal part which he performed on the morning of the 18th of March. It was he who stood on the river-bank and when La Salle came over and inquired for his nephew, who was already murdered, answered the commander in insolent tones, and led him towards the ambush, where Duhaut and Liotot were hidden in the high grass. Mr. Parkman has described the scene from the best sources and with his accustomed vividness; and I therefore refer to his work, “La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,” for the details of the affair. This historian also gives a very intelligible account of L’Archévèque’s behavior immediately after the murder. Whether repentance or a sudden coming back to his senses after the act or uncertainty concerning the real intentions of his associates determined him to it, L’Archévèque seems to have afterward gradually separated himself from the murderers. He thus escaped the vengeance which the freebooter Hiens inflicted on Duhaut and Liotot. The adherents of the murdered man also seem to have considered him less guilty. But he did not join the little company which set out on its extensive wanderings northward under the lead of Joutel. With Grollet and some others, among whom was Meunier, he stayed among the Indians of Texas till 1689, when Alonzo de Leon ransomed him. Fray Isidro Espinosa gives the details of this ransoming in his “Crónica seráfica y apostólica” (first part); but he does not mention L’Archévèque, although he names Pedro Muñi (or Meunier).

I have not been able to determine the date when the three Frenchmen went from Mexico to New Mexico. It was probably with Don Diego de Vargas, the reconqueror of the province. L’Archévèque and Meunier were soldiers, while Grollet came as a settler. All three were in Santa Fé as early as 1696. In the next year L’Archévèque was married to Antonia Gutierrez, who was born at Tezonco, near the City of Mexico, and was the widow of a certain Tomas de Yta, who had been murdered three years previously near Zacatecas. In the year 1701 he bought a land estate in Santa Fé, but still continued a soldier, and in that capacity visited in the next year the distant Indian villages of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuñi. His wife died in the first year of the eighteenth century, and he continued a widower till 1719, when he married as his second wife the daughter of the Alcalde Mayor Ignacio de Roybal. The second marriage was solemnized in the church of the pueblo of San Ildefonso, and the governor of New Mexico at the time, General Don Antonio Valverde Cosio, was one of the witnesses. L’Archévèque, or, as he now began to call himself, Captain Juan de Archibeque, stood in high credit. He had left the military service with honor, and had become a successful trader, or peddler. His trading journeys extended to Sonora, and he occasionally visited the City of Mexico on business. His notes[96] were current everywhere, and were even accepted and endorsed by men connected with the government. He was a man in easy circumstances—for New Mexico, a wealthy man. His son by his first marriage, Miguel de Archibeque, assisted him faithfully in his business affairs, and a natural son, Augustin de Archibeque, likewise helped, by his labor and his watchful care of his interests, in the accumulation of his wealth. Everything went on according to his desire.

Jean l’Archévèque celebrated his second marriage on the 16th of August, 1719, with a daughter of one of the first families of New Mexico. A year afterward, on the same day of the same month, Jean l’Archévèque was a bleeding corpse.

The “Captain” and former soldier, Juan de Archibeque, enjoyed with the Spanish military officers no less a degree of confidence than was reposed in him as a merchant by the same officers and the people in general. He was consulted concerning all important enterprises; and the minutes are in my hand of several war councils in which his views were influential. When, therefore, in the spring of 1720, Governor Don Antonio Valverde Cosio was contemplating the preparation of an expedition by order of the viceroy to the far northeast, in order to establish commercial relations with the Prairie Indians of Kansas, as well as to make a military reconnoissance in a direction in which an approach of the French was apprehended, L’Archévèque gave his opinion that the expedition should be dispatched at once. Among the reasons which in his view should commend it to the Spaniards, he emphasized the approach of “his countrymen, the French.” The campaign was organized; Don Pedro de Villazur was given the command of the fifty armed men who formed the corps, and Jean l’Archévèque, or Archibeque, went along as one of his staff. The march led through the great plains to the banks of the Arkansas River, which the force reached about August 14th. There they confronted a large camp or village of the Pananas (Pawnees). When the Pananas returned an obscure and therefore suspicious answer to a peaceful message of the Spanish commander, Villazur went back with his men and crossed the Arkansas, in order to have the river between himself and his presumed enemies. During the night between the 15th and 16th of August, the Spanish guards and the Indians of the company heard a splashing in the river, as if men were swimming across; and the guards were captured. A dog barked, but no attention was paid to that sign. At daybreak, when the horses had been collected and the command was about to mount, an attack was made upon them from the high grass. The horses took fright at the first shots, which were fired from a very short distance, and were aimed mainly at the tent of the commander. Some of the soldiers succeeded in catching the fugitive animals, but only for their own deliverance. The effect of the enemy’s fire was so quick and murderous that nothing else than flight was thought of. Five or six of the fifty armed men escaped. Among the dead were the commander, Don Pedro de Villazur, and Jean l’Archévèque. It is probable his own countrymen, the French, of whom there were several with the Pananas, shot him. His personal servant, although himself bleeding from six wounds, stayed with him till he ceased to breathe, and then saved himself “by a miracle,” as he declares, with one of the horses of the deceased. The betrayer of La Salle had fallen, on the anniversary of his second marriage, at the hands of his own countrymen or their allies.

L’Archévèque left a property of 6118 pesos, a considerable sum for the time. Besides his sons—his legitimate son Miguel and his natural son Augustin—he left a daughter, Marie, by his first marriage. His widow three years afterward married Bernardino Sena. From the two sons are derived the present families of Archibeque in New Mexico.

It is hardly possible to determine how far L’Archévèque was knowingly accessory to the murder of La Salle. His youth lends favor to the supposition that he may have acted ignorantly or thoughtlessly when he led the great discoverer into the ambush. But his whole character, as it was afterward unfolded, indicates an early maturity of mind, a considerable capacity, and great resolution, as well as unusual sagacity. His hand-writing, which I have often read, shows that he had been taught in school; and he could have received his instruction only in France. The manner of his death is very suggestive of a later requital for his earlier offence.

Of Meunier I could learn nothing further; and of Grollet only that he settled at Bernalillo, on the Rio Grande, there married Elena Galuegos in the year 1699, and was still living six years later.

The three persons on whose fate a light has been so curiously thrown by the archives of Santa Clara were the first French settlers on New Mexican territory. Driven there in consequence of a murder, one of them at least, L’Archévèque, played a notable part in the history of the country. His descendants know little or nothing of the deeds and adventures of their ancestor, and are quiet, modest people; who yet seldom fail to insist that they are of French origin. The church in which Archévèque was married a second time, a year before his tragical death, cannot be seen from the barren dune on which Santa Clara stands. The high mesa of San Ildefonso hides the pueblo, although it can be barely five miles from Santa Clara. That isolated lava cliff also, with the perpendicular precipices around its summit, bears a memory of the betrayer of La Salle. As a Spanish soldier he made several unsuccessful attempts to take the Black Mesa, as it was called, by storm.

From Santa Clara the view is very beautiful; but a taint of blood adheres to the rocks and to the valley which thence the eye looks down upon. Elsewhere throughout New Mexico, in places of ancient habitation, it is the same: for the history of this region is darkened by a sombre melancholy, the inevitable outcome of its blood-stained past.

THE END

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