There are few figures in the early history of this country so gallant or so picturesque as that of Juan de Oñate, son of Cristóbal Oñate, the man who discovered the rich mines of Nueva Galicia, thereby laying the foundation of one of the first fortunes of North America. The son, Juan, added lustre to the name by his marriage with the houses both of Montezuma and of Cortés, so it is scarcely to be wondered at that the viceroy Velasco chose him from the crowd of hungry applicants to be the leader of a fresh expedition to the new province.

Oñate was accompanied by three others whose names and fortunes are fitted to thrill those to whom the real human hero is a figure more full of true romance than the characters of fiction. These were the two nephews of Oñate, Juan de Zaldívar, maestro de Campo; Vicente Zaldívar, sarjento-mayor; and Captain Gaspar de Villagrá, procurador-general.

Villagrá proved himself not only valiant in arms but a poet of no mean rank. Eleven years after the event, Villagrá published in Seville a rhymed account of the whole of the first Oñate expedition. When Bancroft consulted it in 1877, as a mere literary curiosity, he found instead “A complete narrative of remarkable historic accuracy ...” and he adds, “Of all the territories of America, New Mexico alone may point to a poem as the original authority for its early annals.”

Don Gaspar begins his epic in true Virgilian manner:

Bancroft regrets that the petition and contract granted to Oñate by the viceroy Velasco were unattainable.[53] Since his writing they have been discovered.[54] His contract to colonize New Mexico was made in 1595. Oñate agreed to supply at his own cost not only two hundred men, but all their equipment, and the live-stock, merchandise, and provisions for the support of the colony for a year. They started forth with eighty-three wagons, seven thousand head of stock, and one hundred and thirty persons. In return for this, besides emoluments of land and titles, free from crown taxation, Oñate was to be governor, adelantado, and captain-general of the province. He asked the government also for the support of six friars with proper church furnishings, and likewise full instructions concerning the conversion of the Indians, and the tributes he had the right to exact from them.

A change of viceroys brought about most annoying delays—even a leisurely investigation into Oñate’s fitness for the task. There seem to have been no limits to the official obstacles put in his path, including false calumnies whose refutation was not easily established. But, according to Villagrá,[55] the general never for one moment dreamed of relinquishing his enterprise.

Finally, on January 26, 1598, nearly three years after the first award of the contract, Oñate actually started north from Santa Barbara. In four days he reached the Conchos River. Here the unwelcome visitador[56] was finally got rid of, and Fray Alonso Martínez with ten Franciscans was assigned as the religious aid of the pioneers. Oñate’s own equipment almost staggers the imagination in its elaborate and complete detail.

“The lucky-starred Vicente” Zaldívar opened up a new and shorter highway from Mexico to the Rio Grande, straight to “El Paso,”[57] and here on the last day of April, 1598, Oñate took formal possession of New Mexico and “all the adjoining provinces” for God, the King of Spain, and himself, with even more than the usual grandiloquent ceremonial deemed essential for such an event. In addition to the customary religious service, a comic drama written by Captain Farfán was enacted. The theme chosen depicted a conflict between Christians and Moors, in which, through the aid of Santiago, the Christians were victorious. El Paso is therefore the original home of European drama in the Southwest.

One of the duties given Oñate was to capture any wanderers he might find of the unauthorized exploring ventures that had left New Spain during the preceding years, and by good fortune he did secure two men, left by Castaño, who understood three languages—Aztec, Spanish, and one of the New Mexican tongues. Later, a more valuable aid was the Indian Jusephe, who had been with Humaña and whom Oñate found with the Picuris tribe. With these men as interpreters he could proceed more successfully. The next thing was to force the submission and obedience of the natives.

Beyond El Paso short excursions were made, to explore or to secure maize for food. Crossing the river, Oñate went ahead of the lumbering caravan to “pacify the land”—taking sixty of his men with him. By the twenty-fifth of June the company reached Puaray, where the friars were given lodgings in a newly painted room. Imagine their astonishment next morning when they faced upon the walls sketches which fresh paint had failed to obliterate and which they recognized as portraits of Friars López and Rodríguez, martyred seventeen years before.

In a kiva ceremony at Santo Domingo, the chiefs of thirty-five tribes knelt to kiss the hands of Oñate and of Padre Martínez. Thus an “erstwhile free and sovereign people” became subjects of Philip III of Spain and converts to Holy Roman Church.

They reached the pueblo of Caypa on July 11th, and here Oñate made his headquarters until the spring of 1599, but changed the name to San Juan de los Caballeros, to celebrate the knightly company who had successfully achieved their task. In the words of Villagrá,

At San Juan, in the province of New Mexico, there was founded therefore the second permanent colony in what is now the United States, nine years before Jamestown and more than twenty years before Plymouth.

Not all was made serene and easy for the conquerors, and because the ground was not paved with silver, many of the frontiersmen became turbulent; others deserted, making their escape on stolen horses. To capture such, Captain Marquéz and Villagrá were sent in hot pursuit. While they were absent, Oñate, accompanied by Father Martínez and a suitable escort, went forth to visit the more western pueblos in order to receive their formal submission. As his representative at San Juan, Don Juan Zaldívar was appointed commandant of the troops and governor of the colony, but with orders to hand over this control to his brother Vicente so soon as the latter should return from the buffalo plains.

Meanwhile Oñate himself visited, among other places, the Peñol of Ácoma, where he was received with much apparent cordiality, and was given “maize, water and turkeys.” According to the usual custom, surrender and fealty to the rule of the lieutenants of the Spanish monarch was demanded of the natives. Although up to this time few hints are given of any hostility from the Indians, Oñate was far too wary to risk surprise, and forbade his men to separate from each other while on the mesa. The cacique, Zutucapán, whom we may picture to ourselves a man of intelligence, crafty enough to mask his intent behind keen, penetrating eyes, came forward to offer the white lord the supreme honor within his gift: Would the señor descend to their holy of holies, the subterranean Kiva in the rock? There he would receive signal proofs of the desire of the Ácomas to become worthy subjects of this all-great sovereign. Oñate, closely surrounded by his men, very probably looked down the hatchway from which tall, mast-like poles of the entrance ladder protruded. Was it the silent darkness of the great hole, or did some prophetic warning of danger hold him back? At all events, with courteous disclaimers he refused the honor and went his way, all unaware, it would appear, how narrowly he had escaped death from savages waiting at the ladder’s foot to give him short shrift.

Villagrá, upon reaching San Juan, found Oñate gone to Zuñi, there to await Zaldívar and the thirty soldiers with whom he hoped to realize his dream of reaching the western sea. Consequently he hastened on unattended to report to the general his success in bringing back the deserters from the army. Like his chief, Villagrá was met at Ácoma with friendly entreaty by Zutucapán, who, however, was something too persistent in his questioning, so that the Spanish captain took alarm and apparently did not leave his mount. Assuring the cacique that he was merely the avant-courier of a very large Spanish force hastening to join the general, he managed, though pursued, to escape.

Toward nightfall, man and beast faltered with exhaustion. Throwing himself on the bare ground, Villagrá slept, but awakened while it still was dark to find himself covered by a blanket of snow. The day must not betray him. Mounting his tired horse, he started forward. Only a short distance farther on both fell into a deep pit prepared by the Ácomas for unwary strangers, well screened by brush and now also hidden by the falling snow. Half stunned, Villagrá crawled out, but his horse was dead. For four days thereafter Villagrá tells us he staggered on, with a favorite dog for sole companion, foodless and waterless, since the snow had ceased and only the arid earth was visible. At length he laid himself down to die, when by rare good fortune he was discovered by some of Oñate’s men searching for lost horses. Carried to camp, and nursed to health again, he played his heroic part only a little later in the assault and capture of the great Sky City. By so narrow a margin has posterity inherited his priceless history of the great adventure.

Don Vicente de Zaldívar, having arrived at San Juan, took over the command of the colony as ordered. On the 18th of November, his brother Don Juan started for his western journey, with thirty soldiers, to join Oñate at Zuñi. Meanwhile the bitter disappointment of Zutucapán, foiled by Oñate and again by Villagrá, had had time to ferment into more diabolical designs against the next coming of white usurpers of the land. As Zaldívar approached Ácoma, he was met by the cacique and his confederates in friendliest guise. They seem not only to have urged the Spaniards to visit their sky city but to have promised ample provisions for the further journey. Quite unsuspicious of the evil in their hearts, Don Juan with sixteen companions went up the steep footway in the rocks. The others remained below with the horses. Still off-guard, Don Juan allowed his men to separate on the mesa-top, beguiled by plausible invitations to one or another point of interest.

And now we see the stage set for the tragic sequel. Bare rocky floor. Grim eyeless blocks of building. An illimitable sky, grey and pitiless. On one side a horde of fierce barbarians consumed by primeval passion to resist the entry of an alien force. On the other, a handful of white soldiers, who though armed can make no concerted defence because they have foolishly drawn apart from one another. There is no path of escape, no possible signal for help to those below. Suddenly a hideous war-cry rends the air, and every Spaniard is assailed by mad savages with war-clubs or is pierced with arrows. From house-tops huge stones are hurled. Brave and alert, the Spaniards sell their lives dearly in a terrible hand-to-hand struggle. Don Juan and Zutucapán meet in mortal combat and the valiant officer falls beneath the blow of a massive war-club. Swift and short we may believe the onset, till, breathless, the few Spaniards still alive succeed in getting together. Wounded, but not beyond effort, Captain Tobar and four of the soldiers, pushing and being pushed, finally reach the edge of the abrupt cliffs at the same moment. With a last desperate effort, and we may think by common though unspoken consent, they determine to die by throwing themselves over the precipice, since to die seems all that is left them. By what even then was deemed a miracle, only one of the five was killed in that fearful jump of one hundred and fifty feet. It is supposed that they must have landed on the sand that is heaped at certain places against the base of the cliffs. At all events, the other four were rescued by their companions below, and, probably because of the fear still felt by the Indians for horses, the camp was left unmolested by the victorious savages long enough for the Spaniards to regain some strength; being under the overhanging rocks they were safe from missiles thrown from above.

But fear lest this treachery of the Ácomas was only the prelude to a general uprising of all the pueblos made the Spaniards decide to break camp at once. Separating into small bands of three or four men, they went by different routes, some to warn Oñate of his peril, and others over the arid miles to San Juan, to provide such defence as was possible there for the women and children.

The scheme succeeded, and by the end of the year 1598 all the Spaniards in New Mexico were assembled at San Juan. Oñate, waiting at Zuñi for Zaldívar, had become anxious, and had retraced his path so far as a camp called El Agua de la Peña. There he was met by Bernabé de las Casas,[59] “who with six companions had come with the sad news of the occurrence at Ácoma, and of the death of Don Juan de Zaldívar with other captains and soldiers.”[60]

A serious problem now faced Oñate. The Indians could not go unpunished, nor must the plan of punishment fail—for should it do so, New Mexico would have to be abandoned. Other pueblos, watching to see the result of the revolt of what was considered by them an impregnable fortress of their race, would certainly rise in unison, and there would result a war, possibly one of extermination. There were available but two hundred white men—whereas in Ácoma there were not less than three hundred warriors, and some additional Navajos. Moreover, Oñate could use only a fraction of his own force, because the other pueblos would assuredly rise if the settlements of Spaniards should be left unprotected.

But war was inevitable, and Oñate showed shrewdness in first getting opinions from the padres as to what constitutes a justifiable war, so that he would be supported against all censure of viceroy and monarch should his desperate case prove also a ruined one.

The reply of the comisario and other priests is set forth in long detail and is of eminent worth.[61] It seemed but just and fair that the brother of the slain Zaldívar should lead the avengers of the massacre—and to Vicente de Zaldívar therefore was given the command. With him was Farfán, and another was the soldier-poet Villagrá, whose rhymed history of the siege and capture of the redoubtable rock is the basis of our information.[62] Oñate made the men a moving address of farewell, cautioning them against an over-zealous spirit of revenge, and recommending that they should all be confessed and receive the Communion before they started on their perilous task. Only one man, not named, refused, and so did not go.

Vicente and the dauntless comisario, Father Alonso Martínez, with a band of seven captains and seventy soldiers, left San Juan January 12, 1599, and on the twenty-first arrived at Ácoma. They were greeted from afar by the exultant savages, dancing stark naked on their cliff, while their medicine men, hideously painted, beat the drums and hurled curses and incantations upon the besiegers, and all the inhabitants joined in shrieking insults.

Zaldívar came as near as he dared, and the notary through an interpreter named Tomás, according to a prescribed and usual formula, thrice summoned the Ácomas to surrender. Instead of meek obedience came a shower of stones and arrows. The savages, certain of their own security, had even rejected the counsel of some of their own men to remove the women and children, and now howled defiance at the Spaniards.

While the hideous din of a war dance filled the night with sound, the little band of courageous men encamped below the mesa and planned their coming fight for supremacy.

Next morning, January 22, 1599, just two months after the massacre, with their war-cry of “Santiago! Santiago!” the small force of only sixty soldiers began the assault upon the fortress. They were met from above by a rain of arrows and stones that did their deadly work. But this was only a feint on the part of the Spaniards. During the previous night, under protection of the darkness and the clamor of the war dance on the mesa, the Spaniards had sent twelve men, chosen for their skill, with the one and only cannon in their possession, to make their way up the southern mesa. These men had crept stealthily around under the precipices and, though hampered by heavy armor, had successfully reached a great outlying ledge of rock on the uninhabited cliff of Ácoma, from which the other was separated by a narrow but fearful chasm. This they determined to bridge, and it took heroic effort.

Small pines which grew above the great precipices on the south had been cut. With superhuman effort they were dragged down, and across a troughlike valley, and then again up the perpendicular ledges to where the twelve men were perched with their cannon. All this was done in the night of the twenty-second. When the grey dawn came over the silent landscape on the twenty-third, all but a dozen, left to guard the horses, had joined their comrades, who were screened by pinnacles of rock from the sight of the Indians. Here, according to Villagrá,[64] Father Martínez offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Engelhardt[65] adds, “It was the first time that the holy Mysteries were celebrated on the lofty peñol of Ácoma. During this Holy Mass, all the Spaniards received Holy Communion: doubtless many supposed it was their Viaticum.” Then the comisario addressed the little band, adjuring them, while defending Church and King, to be chary of wantonness in killing.

At a given moment the Spaniards chosen for casting a log to bridge the chasm rushed forth, and luckily for them lodged its further end beyond the gulf. To keep a footing on that crazy log in the face of stones and arrows was no ordinary test of poise and daring. Unhappily, one man caught the rope and pulled the log after him. With yells of triumph the Indians fell upon the forlornly stranded group, when instantly an officer (who was Villagrá himself) flew out from the crowd of his fellows on the other side of the abyss and from its edge sprang into the air, clearing the space, and landing, seized the log and thrust it back, so that it was securely caught. Over it came pouring the Spanish soldiers.

Now the mesa top was again the scene of awful struggle and carnage—a hand-to-hand, merciless fight with knives and clubs and arrows of the savages, against the sword blades and gunstocks of the trained Spaniards.[66] Neither side gave way though bleeding and trampled and stunned, they fell to rise, or fell to die. But after a time the Indians seem to have thought these were perhaps no mortal foes, and they retreated into their fortress-like houses.

Having caught their breath, the besiegers at once began a fresh attack, house by house. Into the narrow calles they dragged the cannon, and the adobe walls crumbled as the stone balls fell upon them. Soon fire ran from house to house and the pueblo was doomed. But not until noontime of January 24 did the Indians yield. Then their old men sued for mercy, and Zaldívar at once ordered his men to cease. In fact, the Indians were persuaded they had been defeated by supernatural power, and after the surrender “they inquired for that valiant rider with the grey beard who on a brisk white steed and accompanied by a handsome queen was helping the Spaniards.”[67] The Spaniards, themselves hardly less given to superstition, now believed that their patron, Santiago, assisted by the Virgin, must have hovered, unseen, above them and brought them victory.

Thus ended the breathless, savage fight of a brave race for home and children, a fight accompanied by a heroism and a disregard of personal danger and injury such as few men have ever shown. Five hundred Indians lay dead, and not a living Spaniard but carried his scars of that fateful time to his death. According to Villagrá, the aged chieftain, Chumpo, who had counselled before the battle that the women and children should be removed from the Crag, was permitted to descend and settle in the plain.

The pity of it! Treachery had met its master, but we can hardly wonder that bitter hatred was engendered between the races, for in addition to death and fire and desolation, Zaldívar carried away eight of the Ácoma girls to be educated by the nuns in Mexico. Was his idea that of hostages to peace, or did he delude himself with the plea of Christian “civilization”?[68]

As told by an Eye Witness

Dr. Bolton has generously given permission to include here his own translation, as yet unpublished, taken from the “Itinerary from the Mines of Caxco,” by an anonymous diarist of the Oñate expedition to New Mexico, 1596 to 1598. This diary wonderfully confirms the accuracy of Villagrá’s rhymed history, and supplements it in various details, the most valuable of which is the list, not given elsewhere, of names of those men killed or wounded in the affray. The diarist’s account is as follows: