Read Kachina and the Cross Online

Authors: Carroll L Riley

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Page 83
the Tompiro pueblos, some time around midyear 1600, led to an uprising that was put down with considerable brutality. Zaldívar was on his way to the ''South Sea'' (that is, the Gulf of California, a trip for which no records whatsoever remain) and so notified Oñate of the problem before pushing on. Oñate marched to the Salinas area, but the fighting was inconclusive, for early in 1601 he found it necessary to send Zaldívar back in force. According to later testimony (admittedly by a hostile witness, Gasco de Velasco), this led to hundreds of people being killed, though in which of these three operations is not clear.
Meanwhile, the relief expedition arrived from the south with seventy-three officially listed colonists, a considerable amount of supplies, and seven missionaries, including a new commissary, Fray Juan de Escalona, and additional friars, Damián Escudero, Lope Izquierdo, Alonso de la Oliva, Luis Mairones, Gastón de Peralta, and Francisco de Velasco. The colonists included mostly Europeans but also Indians and blacks in various mixtures. The expedition reached the New Mexico capital on Christmas Eve. However, all three of the captains sent by OñatePinero, Farfán, and Villagráhad defected, Pérez de Villagrá actually taking refuge in a church to avoid being forcibly returned to New Mexico. Nor did the two missionaries return. Fray Cristóbal de Salazar had died on the way to Mexico, and Martínez was reassigned. Whether the Franciscan commissary actually requested this reassignment is not clear, but he did suffer from gout (see chapter 4), and perhaps the hardships of New Mexico were becoming too much for him.
In spite of new blood, the situation at San Gabriel continued to be tense. Oñate, leading a party of retainers, did rid himself of one enemy, Captain Pablo de Aguilar, by ambushing him and fatally stabbing him. A second officer, Captain Alonso de Sosa, who tried to return to the south, was attacked and killed by Zaldívar.
Although feelings must have been running high in the colony, Oñate now prepared for a major expedition to the Plains. He set out from San Gabriel on June 23 with seventy or more men (possibly as many as ninety-four), several hundred animals, and six carts. Second in command was Vicente de Zaldívar, who now combined the titles of camp master and sargento mayor. Along was Fray Francisco de Velasco, who reported on the journey, and who like the late Fray Cristóbal was a cousin to Oñate. A second religious on the journey was Fray Pedro de Vergara, a lay brother who had been in the original group of Franciscans in Oñate's New Mexico. The group took the route by Galisteo and then probably south and east via the Cañón Blanco to the Pecos. This stream was called the Cicuye by Coronado, while the Espejo expedition in 1583 renamed itreasonably enough, considering the bison herds in the vicinitythe Río de
Page 84
las Vacas. To Castaño de Sosa, the stream was the Salado, a name also reflected in the Martínez map of 1602. Oñate, curiously, gave the river yet another name, Río San Buenaventura. Gradually, both the river and the pueblo of Cicuye became known as Pecos.
The day following the crossing of the Pecos River, Oñate and his group reached a river they called the Bagres because of the many catfish. This was likely the Gallinas. The party pushed on slightly north of east and reached the Magdalena (Canadian), following its course eastward. Eventually the group met Apaches, who gave them a friendly reception. Then the party pushed on into the Plains, still following the Magdalena River. They gradually pushed north by east reaching into present-day western Kansas. Here Zaldívar discovered a very large village of seven thousand people, a group Oñate called
Escanjaque
. It is not entirely clear just who were the Escanjaques. They might have been Caddoan-speaking or perhaps Apachean or even Tonkawa. At any rate, they do not seem to have been Quiviran, the modern Wichita.
Oñate did reach a Quivira settlement and described it as consisting of clusters, thirty or forty houses a quarter of a mile apart, with the larger comprehensive settlement extending over three leagues (seven or eight miles). This village may have been on Walnut Creek near the present Kansas-Oklahoma border, and Quivira territory seems to have extended into the Great Bend of the Arkansas. In the course of exploration, Oñate came across a Quiviran chief named Catarax. The term
catarax
is a Wichita word for "chief" and is obviously the same word for the leader Tatarrax, mentioned by López de Gómara for the Coronado expedition.
While this expedition was going on, there was trouble back in the Rio Grande Valley. The new Franciscan commissary, Fray Juan de Escalona, was critical of Oñate, and the newcomers were shocked by the lack of food and the bitter cold of a northern New Mexico winter. From the descriptions, the winter of 1600-1601 seems to have been exceptionally severe in the San Gabriel region. In 1600 the settlers at San Gabriel, in an attempt to alleviate the food crisis, planted about 100 fanegas (around 880 acres) of wheat, up from 50 the previous year. By this time they also had a mill for grinding wheat.
But the affairs of the colony were in a turmoil, and the murders of Aguilar and Sosa added to the tension. A mutiny quickly flared up at San Gabriel, led by the friars who argued that Spanish settlers' callousness to the Indians was making conversion impossible. A number of senior officers joined them, claiming that New Mexico was not worth the troubles and hardships of colonization. Oñate's loyal followerstwenty-five soldiers, some with families and servantsrefused to leave the new province. With them stayed the lieutenant governor, Francisco de Sosa Peñalosa (whose sympathies seems to have been with the rebel group but
Page 85
whose office made it impossible for him to depart) and the Franciscan Escalona, who also felt duty-bound to remain. But the remainder of the colonists, around the beginning of October, moved southward to Santa Bárbara. Sosa Peñalosa sent a self-pitying letter to the viceroy, and Escalona one with scathing criticism of Spanish misdeeds toward the natives. The loyalists sent their own representative, Captain Gerónimo Márquez, to present the case for Oñate.
The outcome of all this was further confused by Philip III's actions. In early 1602, before the turmoil in the colony was known in Spain, the king had granted Oñate the position of adelantado. The king now vacillated, ordering Viceroy Monterrey to investigate and report on the situation in New Mexico. There was considerable maneuvering, with Vicente de Zaldívar being sent to Spain to help argue Oñate's case. A new viceroy, Marquis de Montesclaros, who had arrived in Mexico City in the summer of 1603, was directed by the king to continue the investigation.
Meanwhile, Oñate, perhaps trying desperately to find new sources of income for his colony, decided to make the long-planned trip to the Gulf of California, or as the Spaniards referred to it, the South Sea. Leaving some fifty soldiers to hold San Gabriel, Oñate departed with thirty men and a new Franciscan commissary, Fray Francisco de Escobar, on October 7, 1604. The Oñate party traveled by way of Zuni and Hopi, then southwestward through the Verde region and the Bill Williams River valley to the Colorado. There they explored the lower Colorado region, with its heavy population of Yuman-speaking Indians. The Spaniards failed to find any sort of riches, however; although the Colorado River natives traded in shell and coral, they had no silver or gold. The silver vessels reported by Fray Francisco, which he said were obtained from the California coast, most likely were vessels of steatite, perhaps traded from Santa Catalina Island.
One of Oñate's reasons for going to the coast was to establish a seaport from which New Mexico could be supplied by ships from New Spain and Peru, and which would provide even a closer and easier access to China. This had been discussed in his letter to Viceroy Monterrey dated March 2, 1599. Again it showed the woeful ignorance of the Spaniards as to the actual geography of the Southwest. The trip from the Southwest to the lower portions of the Colorado finally made it clear to Oñate that the dream of a southwestern seaport was a chimera.
Indeed, it was not until the American occupation of the old Spanish Southwest that a maritime presence was established on the Colorado River. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) allowed Americans to enter the Colorado without paying the heavy Mexican duty, and shipment by sea and river was important until the arrival of the railroads beginning in the late 1870s. Yuma
Page 86
became a transshipment point for supplies and machinery, especially mining equipment, but shallow-draft river steamers could reach as far north as Hardyville, three hundred miles upstream from Yuma.
On his return from the lower Colorado in 1605, Oñate decided to touch base with authorities in Mexico City. With him was the Franciscan commissary, Francisco de Escobar, who in October 1605 presented his report on the large populations of the Colorado River to the viceroy. Montesclaros, however, was not impressed, and the Crown was already thinking of replacing the adelantado. In June 1606, the king ordered Viceroy Montesclaros to recall Oñate and to appoint a new governor for New Mexico. The following year, Oñate sent a letter of resignation to the incoming viceroy, his old friend Luis de Velasco, who had returned from Peru to take charge in Mexico. In 1608 Velasco appointed as governor Juan Martínez de Montoya, who had come to New Mexico in 1600 and was a magistrate on the cabildo, or town council, of San Gabriel. Martínez de Montoya is interesting in that he seems to have established some sort of settlement in the vicinity of the later Santa Fe between 1605 and 1607. In fact, by 1608 there may have been a discussion as to the advisability of moving the capital from the Chama-Rio Grande junction to the relatively empty Santa Fe Valley.
Martínez de Montoya never served as governor; indeed, quite possibly, he never wanted to be governor. The cabildo, perhaps at the behest of Oñate, rejected Martínez, choosing instead Cristóbal, the young son of Juan de Oñate. A much later petition by a descendant of Martínez de Montoya suggests that Cristóbal may have been a sort of shadow official for a few months. It also states that Martínez de Montoya actually took part in an expedition against the Apaches led by young Oñate. There is also some slight evidence that Cristóbal was titular acting governor during his father's trip to the lower Colorado regions in 1604-5. A later poetical book of tribute, the
Canciones Lugubres
, does call him lieutenant governor and captain general. The young man, however, had no future of any sort for he was soon dead. Lansing B. Bloom claims that he was killed by Indians in 1610 while traveling with his father southward from New Mexico. Bloom cites no evidence for this statement, and it seems more likely that Cristóbal died of natural causes, probably after the return to Mexico. One of the writers of the
Canciones
, Alonso de Salas Barbadillo, says that he died at the age of twenty-two. If this is true, it would put Cristóbal's death around 1612.
In any case, this "appointment" of a youth (Cristóbal was seventeen or eighteen at this point) was never taken seriously in either Mexico City or Spain. In fact, by 1608 the whole enterprise of New Mexico was at a crisis point. In March of that year the viceroy advised the king to bring the entire colonization scheme to a stop.
Page 87
The missionaries had not been successful, there were virtually no precious metals, and the distances involved made it hard to reinforce and defend New Mexico. The serious remaining question was the disposition of Christianized Pueblo Indians, and on this matter King Philip (in a letter dated September 3, 1608) instructed the viceroy to use his own judgment.
At this critical juncture, Father Lázaro Ximénez, who had given an earlier negative report to the viceroy, returned a second time from San Gabriel. Arriving with him was Friar Isidro Ordóñez, and the two brought news that seven thousand Indians had been baptized. Apparently, faced with the shutdown of the colony, the Franciscans were now frantically performing baptisms. Philip III, with that underlying piety so characteristic of the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Spanish kings, now reversed his decision and decided to make New Mexico a royal province, and one in which missionization would be the primary purpose. A new governor, Pedro de Peralta, was appointed in 1609 although he probably did not actually arrive in New Mexico until early 1610. With him came a new contingent of missionaries and a new direction for New Mexico.
In spite of the considerable documentation on the Oñate period, it is hard to objectively evaluate Juan de Oñate. He had certain leadership traits: he was tenacious, brave, and generally decisive in his actions. Nevertheless, Oñate had difficulty in maintaining loyalty among his followers. By the end, most of his original circle of officers had deserted him, and the missionaries were generally hostile. In fact, Oñate's support among both missionaries and the army seems to have been anchored in relatives such as Velasco and the Zaldívars.
But regardless of his personal virtues and faults, Oñate's efforts were probably bound to fail. His colonists came to New Mexico expecting rich mines and a docile native population. They found neither, and in addition had to suffer through the harsh winters and scorching summers of a northern mountainous region. Many of them felt betrayed by Oñate, and their resentful actions reflected that fact.
Oñate was eventually tried by a new viceroy, the Marquis of Guadalcázar, and found guilty of a number of charges including the use of excessive force in the attack on Acoma. The penalties included perpetual banishment from New Mexico and the payment of a considerable fine. Oñate spent much of the rest of his life attempting to have the penalties expunged and to obtain new honors. He stayed on in Mexico for a time, but after the death of his wife, Doña Isabel, around 1620, he decided to return to Spain. In 1622 the volume of
Canciones lugubres
, mentioned above, was published in Madrid. Purporting to be a memorial to Oñate's son, now dead for a decade, it had very little information on
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