The tradition is no longer credited that Cabeza de Vaca in his marvellous journey of eight years from the Florida coast across perilous lands to New Spain actually saw any part of what is now New Mexico. Nevertheless, it was the tales he had gathered on the way, of the Northern Mystery and the Seven Cities, that eventually brought both these localities into history. Vaca reached Culiacán (Mexico) in the late spring of 1536. Men stared to hear of Narváez’ ill-fated attempt to “explore, conquer and colonize the country between Florida and the Rio Grande.” They were staggered at the story of all that had befallen in the intervening years, by way of hardship, imprisonment, and slavery, the four survivors of the gallant three hundred who had entered the continent eight years earlier. When Vaca arrived in the capital he related his story to the viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza. Here was great news for the silk-stockinged official. Eager to gain for himself and his king the glory of new discoveries of territory and of unlimited riches that were said to be buried in the northern regions, he made immediate preparations for exploration.[36]

First a preliminary reconnaissance was undertaken. To lead it the viceroy chose Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan friar, who had served a difficult apprenticeship in Peru under Pizarro. Mendoza directed him to go north with one lay-brother, Onorato, and a small number of Indians. Coronado, Governor of New Galicia, accompanied them as far as Culiacán. The instructions with which Mendoza outfitted them were “a model of careful and explicit directions.” Estévan, a negro servant who had come with Vaca, was interpreter, and varying bodies of native Indians made up the party. They left Culiacán on March 7, 1539. At Petatlán, Fray Onorato became ill and was left behind, after which Fray Marcos was the only white man in the expedition. In the Sonora valley they halted while Estévan was sent ahead to reconnoiter.

Estévan was to send back Indian messengers with crosses, whose size would indicate the value of the country found. After four days, a runner appeared bearing “a cross as tall as a man.” This assured Fray Marcos that Estévan had news of cities equal to those from which they had started in New Spain. The runner confirmed the impression by telling of a province ahead with large cities built up with houses of stone and lime, and all under one lord.

Eager now, Fray Marcos started ahead. Soon he met with Indians wearing fine turquoises in their ears and noses, or on their waist belts. These folk, eager to see the strangers pass on, told of houses farther north that had their doorways studded with gold and turquoises. To the infinite embarrassment of the friar, gifts of this stone and of skins, such as served the natives for raiment, were pressed upon him. Other Indians that were met wandering inland from the seacoast, talked of pearls that could be gathered in quantity.

Estévan had been told to wait for Fray Marcos. Instead he pressed on down the San Pedro valley. In Cíbola he excited the anger of the native population, probably by posing as a great medicine man and using, very likely, the gourds or rattles of a hostile tribe. According to the Zuñi legend, he was taken beyond the pueblo precincts and there given “a powerful kick which sped him through the air back to the south whence he came.”[37]

When the friar arrived late in May (1539) within sight of the first of the Seven Cities of Cíbola he found the inhabitants in no mood to receive another alien visitor, and, like Moses, forbidden to enter the promised land, he could but look into it from a near-by eminence on the south. Alone, and unarmed, he had no other choice than to turn back, thankful, no doubt, to escape from death himself, since he was known to be the responsible chief of Estévan. By hasty marches, “with far more fright than food,” the friar reached New Spain once more. There he reported to the viceroy all that he had seen. What is more valuable, he scrupulously differentiated between this and what he had been told of treasures in the region beyond.

The Zuñis still talk of the “Black Mexican” and point out K’iakima, a ruin on a bluff at the southwest angle of To-yo-ál-a-na (Thunder Mountain) as the place of his murder. Hodge, who has followed Cushing[38] in very careful and important work at Zuñi, is satisfied that Háwikuh was the village first seen by Estévan and that there he met his death; also that it “was the city of Cíbola rising from the plains which Niza and his Piman guides viewed from the southern heights in 1539; moreover that it was the pueblo which Coronado stormed in the summer of the following year, seems indisputable.”[39]

Háwikuh, to-day a ruin of great interest, lies fifteen miles southwest of modern Zuñi. On our way thither we overtook and passed an Indian pointed out as the prize man in the foot-race that is of special ritual significance to this tribe. A hardy, compact figure, he was no longer young, but never failed to do his daily stint of dog-trot practice which would keep him in condition for the annual competition. Háwikuh was built on the slopes of a round and not very elevated hill. The most noticeable of the many excavations are those of the kiva and mission church, not far separated from each other, thus perfectly exemplifying the dual religious allegiance that has prevailed from the first baptism of an Indian by Spanish padres until the present day. A great plain stretches out on every side, sparsely dotted with the familiar stunted herbage of the desert. Standing on the summit of the mound, the middle distance is broken toward the south by a range of moderate height and steepness. On some one of its projecting cliffs the friar might well have stood to look upon the coveted goal to which he might not win. Vast horizons encompass the plain and far off the twin peaks of the Zuñi buttes pierce the sky. It is a lonely scene but the more easy for that reason to re-people with the figures of a vanished past.

Fray Marcos not only saw Háwikuh, but he also heard of Ácoma. The Indian with whom Estévan had talked told the friar that, besides these Seven Cities, there were other territories which they called Marata, Acus, and Totonteac. Acus was described as an independent kingdom and province. Its people went encaconados: that is, with turquoises hanging from their noses and ears. The turquoise they called “Cacona.” The village called “Ácuco” or “Tutahaco” lay between Cíbola and the streams running to the southwest, entering the “Sea of the North.” Ácuco was Ácoma,[40] which therefore came into history only twenty years after Cortés entered the City of Mexico.

When Fray Marcos returned to Culiacán in the late summer of 1539, his accounts of what he had seen, and what he had heard, were sufficient to inflame the imagination of the Spaniards there, who were longing for conquest, for wealth, and for fame. It did not take long to raise a volunteer army, nor to excite the viceroy to do all in his power to further an expedition that might be expected to bring much renown to himself, to the King of Spain, and to Holy Church. For it is never to be forgotten that the soldier armies of Spain were always supplemented by smaller armies of priests.

The Royal Council of the Indies decreed that a new attempt to explore the north should be made both by sea and by land (1540). Hernando de Alarcón was given command of two vessels, and he was ordered to keep near the coast so as to be able easily to coöperate with the land force. As a matter of fact the two divisions never did meet or communicate.

Don Francisco Vásquez Coronado was chosen captain-general of the overland expedition to the north. He was accompanied by a gallant troop of four hundred Spaniards and eight hundred Indians. It must have been a brilliant spectacle when this cavalcade, with its gaily caparisoned horses, its mule train, and its herds of cattle and sheep for food supply, finally set forth from Compostela on Shrove Tuesday, February 23, 1540. The chief of the religious was Fray Juan de Padilla, once a soldier but now a Franciscan, destined to become the proto-martyr of the North. Among others who bore distinguished names three are of especial interest to us, since they have left tangible evidence of their exploits. The standard-bearer of the army, Don Pedro de Tobar, discovered the Tusayán settlements (Hopi) and heard “of a giant People and a mighty river.” Don García López de Cárdenas first saw the great gorge known to-day as the “Grand Cañon” of the Colorado. Hernando de Alvarado, first of white men, saw Ácoma and talked with its inhabitants.

While encamped at Zuñi the white strangers were naturally objects of the utmost curiosity to the native peoples. Among others who came to observe them were some from Cicuyé (Pecos) seventy leagues eastward. They were led by their cacique. He was handsome and well formed, and because of his great mustaches the Spaniards called him “Bigotes.” On the body of one of his Indians was painted a picture of a humpbacked cow (the buffalo).[41] Coronado was told that great herds of these animals roamed the plains. To test the story Coronado sent Alvarado and twenty other Spaniards with the Indians charged to report again at Zuñi in eighty days. For five days they marched eastward. They then “arrived at a town called Ácuco, a very strange place built upon a solid rock, the inhabitants of which were great brigands and much dreaded by all the province.”

It was Ácoma, now first seen by white men. The Crag was described as very high, and on three sides the ascent was perpendicular. The only way to reach the top was by a trail cut in the solid rock. The first flight was of two hundred steps, “which could be ascended without much difficulty, when a second flight of one hundred more commenced. These steps were narrower and more difficult than the first, and when surmounted, there remained twelve feet to the top which could only be ascended by putting hands and feet in the holes cut in the rocks.” It was evidently the difficult trail near the eastern limit of the village. On the top great piles of stones were kept, to hurl upon an approaching enemy. No better proof is needed of the importance to the sedentary Indians of self-defense against the roving tribes than such a fortress pueblo, difficult to reach and easily defended.

In warlike mood the Indians came down to the plain to meet the Spaniards. Drawing a line in the sand, just as those at Tusayán had done, they forbade the strangers to cross it. Persuasion was first tried. This failing, Alvarado decided to attack. Seeing such preparations, the Indians showed willingness to make peace by “approaching the horses to take their perspiration and rub the whole body with it, and then to make a cross with the fingers.”[42] They also crossed their hands, an act considered inviolable. Castañeda mentions a cross at Ácuco, “near a fountain, two palms high and a finger in thickness. The wood was squared and around it were dried flowers, and little staves ornamented with feathers.” Alvarado reported to Coronado that, on his way eastward to the villages of Tiguex, he passed Ácuco. “It is one of the strongest places we have seen, because the city is on a very high rock with a rough ascent, so that we repented having gone up the place.”

There is a curious conflict between the description by Castañeda of this first encounter with the Ácomas and that of another contemporary writer who apparently formed a different impression of the dwellers on the Peñol. In the anonymous “Relación del Suceso”[43] we read, that Alvarado “found a rock with a village on top, the strongest position that ever was seen in the world, which was called Ácuco in their language. They came out to meet us peacefully though it would have been easy to decline to do this and to have stayed on their rock, where we would not have been able to trouble them. They gave us cloaks of cotton, skins of deer and of cows, and turquoises, and fowls and other food which is the same as in Cíbola.”

Such is the story of the first sight by Europeans of the Sky City of the desert. In December, when the ground was covered with three feet of snow, Coronado’s main army marched from Cíbola to Tiguex, and so passed Ácuco, as Alvarado had done. The inhabitants furnished them with provisions in friendly fashion. The Spaniards gazed at the settlement on its summit with much interest, but could not ascend (or they said they could not—it is not stated that they tried) without helping one another, while the Indians went up and down easily, and even their women would do so carrying heavy burdens. From this we infer that the Spaniards ascended the Peñol, for after describing as before the “toe-and-finger trail,” the chronicler continues, “there was a wall of large and small stones at the top, which they could roll down without showing themselves, so that no army could possibly be strong enough to capture the village. On the top they had room to sow and store a large amount of corn and cisterns to collect snow and water. They made a present of a large number of (turkey) cocks with very big wattles, much bread, tanned deerskins, piñon nuts, flour and corn.”[44] There was undoubtedly room enough to “store” provisions, but then as now there was never a particle of garden soil in which to “sow” even a little corn unless carried from the valley.

Epoch-making were the results that came from the Coronado expedition, in the discovery of Cíbola,[45] of the Grand Cañon, and of the buffalo on the Plains. The discovery of the Colorado River was recognized as of the first importance. This is shown by a map made by one of Alarcón’s pilots, for the Ulpius globe of 1542 and the map of Sebastian Cabot of 1544 were changed by reason of this discovery. Yet Coronado took back to Spain no material wealth, and no promise of any except such as might be gained from the cultivation of a good soil by permanent settlers, and by some means, at that time undiscoverable, of transportation for its products. Hence Coronado was regarded not only as an unsuccessful explorer, but almost as a disgraced man, who had wasted the wealth of the realm.

So great was the disappointment over this result and so absorbed were the men of New Spain by the new mineral discoveries in Nueva Vizcaya, as well as by the confusion produced by the Mixton War, that forty years passed before there was another successful attempt to penetrate the northern country. Such sporadic raids as took place in this interval were either personal adventures of individual Spaniards or slave-hunting forays to fill the shortage of laborers at the mines. These adventurers had little interest in true exploration of the country they crossed while the slave-catching aroused fear in the native mind and made further entradas more difficult. A new generation of Spanish explorers and settlers had arisen, to whom Cíbola and Ácuco and Quivira were practically myths, before any fresh interest was aroused to explore the wilderness beyond.

Four decades after Coronado’s exploration, a party of adventurous spirits made a fresh attempt to penetrate the northern wilderness. They were only twenty-eight in number, counting soldiers, three friars and Indian servants. They were organized by a lay brother of St. Francis, Fray Augustin Rodríguez. Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado commanded the soldiers. On the whole, they met little opposition from the native peoples and on their side appear also to have dealt considerately with them.

Curiosity concerning these strange white invaders was mingled with fear born of the earlier forays made to capture slaves who were taken back to the mines. So soon as Fray Rodríguez made evident that he asked no more than fish and maize in exchange for such merchandise as had been brought along for this purpose, the people showed a child-like interest and pointed out the way to the north. In the Tigua country, more hostility was encountered. One of the priests, Fray Santa María, determined, against the protests of soldiers and padres, to return to beg additional help from the viceroy. “Children of the Sun,” the Spaniards had called themselves to these worshippers of the great Sun-Deity, and Santa María seems to have relied on the belief they had engendered hitherto in their invulnerability to attack. His departure excited the suspicion of the natives and, as he was entirely alone, he was easily killed within two days “while sleeping, by having a large stone placed upon him and left to die of suffocation.” Thus did the savages learn that Spaniards could be put to death like other men, and this knowledge proved a serious obstacle to the future progress of the invaders.

Constantly forced after this to be on their guard against plots and ambush, the explorers settled themselves for a time at Puaray (a little above the present city of Albuquerque), from which place excursions were made in various directions. On one of these, going westward, hoping to find Zuñi, they reached “a well-fortified pueblo named Ácoma, the best there is in Christendom.” It is described by their diarist as having five hundred houses of three and four storeys. This, then, is the next definite mention of the Peñol. Here they were told that with two days’ further march inland they would reach many pueblos and mines; consequently they did not linger at Ácoma or make any close examination of its people or their civilization.

With the remainder of this expedition[46] we have no further connection beyond the fact that, when they had returned to San Bartolomé and reported that they had reluctantly left behind their two friars, the order of St. Francis at once bestirred itself to attempt their rescue. On the tenth of December, 1582, the endeavor was inaugurated under the leadership of Antonio de Espéjo, who offered to finance the whole undertaking. One of the soldiers in Espéjo’s company, Miguel Sanchez Valenciano, took with him his wife, Doña Casilda de Amaya, and their two young children, an astonishing example of courage on her part. She was in consequence the first white woman to enter New Mexico, the heart of the continent, a third of a century before the Puritans brought their families to Massachusetts.

Espéjo knew full well about the death of Fray Santa María, for Bustamente and Gallegos, the two chroniclers, had already gone to Mexico City to report the whole story of their experiences.[47] There were rumors, too, that the other friars had been massacred since the soldiers left. But the uncertainty must be removed. It was, however, a full year later that Espéjo confirmed the truth of the massacres, when he reached Puaray. The avowed purpose of the entrada was now accomplished. Espéjo, however, was not without other ambitions, and finding that his religious adviser, Padre Beltrán, was in sympathy with him, he decided to make further advances into adjacent lands. One of the routes took them as far as Jémez and thence to Ácoma.

Espéjo’s narrative describes the fortress of Ácoma as follows:

Four days’ march from Ácoma to the westward brought the party as far as Cíbola (Zuñi), where they halted at the village of Hálona, the present pueblo of the tribe.[51]

The great achievement by Espéjo was the new approach, making the third pathway from Mexico to the north, and to this re-discovered province which he called Nueva Andalucía. Soon afterward it was permanently christened Nuevo Mexico.

The golden dream of the earlier explorers had been of a land bursting with riches and glorious in opportunities for lasting renown, in short, another “Peru” or another “Mexico.” Assuredly it had led them through dangers and hardships which to modern ears sound as much like fairy tales as the treasures these gallant men hoped to secure. If the reality was far from the dream, it was, nevertheless, a land of promise. There continued also a belief in the Strait of Anian, the long-hoped-for northwest passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and some of the claimants for the right to govern the northern territory, while speaking scornfully to the viceroy of the sterile deserts of Cíbola and Quivira, affirmed that the true wealth was beyond, and that by reaching that “beyond” there would also be discovered the shorter route between the two great seas.

Enough had been discovered by Espéjo and his men to stir the imagination and the cupidity of all New Spain. Quite naturally Espéjo felt himself entitled to the first chance. But there were many other aspirants, and Espéjo’s recommendation that the new province should be subject directly to the King of Spain and not to the viceroy of New Spain, was probably no help to the fulfillment of his ambition. In 1595 it was decided to make a fresh attempt to conquer and colonize on a much more complex and thoroughgoing scale than any of the others, and, beyond New Mexico, to reach the much-talked-of Quivira. The command was entrusted to the greatest of all those who went into the north, Juan de Oñate, who became the true founder of New Mexico. Bolton in commenting upon it says, “This was then the great epoch-making step toward both the Strait of Anian and the Sea; no less than the pushing forward of a frontier whose interstices it would take a hundred years to fill, even with military outposts.”