USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 9
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Alarcon made report that he laid the groundwork for the conversion of these people and received generous supplies of corn and other provisions. But constant inquiries concerning Cíbola and the march of the Coronado expedition met with no satisfactory response till he had traveled far up the river. Then was found a man from whom was learned that Cibola was a month's journey away by a good trail. This Indian seems to have told a thoroughly straight story concerning the Cíbola dwellers, whom he said he had visited simply in curiosity after hearing of the great wealth of the land. Also were heard tales of people who lived further away than Cibola, who had houses of wood for win- ter and who lived in pavilions during the summer and of great animals, that may have been the buffalo.
Later Alarcon received satisfactory intelligence through Indian sources that Coronado had reached Cíbola, but was unable to find a man of all his force willing to undertake an overland journey as bearer of a message to the land commander. So the expedition returned to the ship, taking only two and a half days to accomplish a distance that had consumed over fifteen days on the upward journey.
With replenished supplies, Alarcon then made a second up-river journey, starting September 14 and again was towed by the friendly Indians. He esti- mates that he traveled abont eighty-five leagues to a point which probably took
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ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
him past The Needles and to the beginning of the canon, where rapids turned him back. He erected a cross at his northernmost point and chose to call the stream El Rio de Buenaguia. Near the mouth of the river, where one of the ships had been careened on shore, was built a chapel in honor of Nuestra Señora de Buenaguia (Our Lady of Good Guidance.)
One of the principal resting places for the army of Coronado was in a little province, probably near the Sonora River, called by Cabeza de Vaca, Cora- zónes, because the people there had offered him the hearts of animals. There was founded a settlement named San Hieronimo de los Corazónes, but this was abandoned and moved to a valley which had been named Señora, possibly the origin of the latter-day name of Sonora. From this point several expeditions were made to the westward, one of them led by the doughty Captain Melchior Diaz, who found giant Indians who lived in big communal huts that held often 100 persons and of whom was told, "on account of the great cold they carry a firebrand ("tison") in their hands when they go from one place to the other, with which they warm the other hand and the body as well, and in this way they keep shifting it over now and then." Hence, the name given the Colorado River, "Rio del Tison," described as two leagues wide at its mouth. Fifteen leagues up the river, on a tree, was found written, "Alarcon reached this place; there are letters at the foot of this tree." The letters were found in a sealed jar and told how Alarcon had been unable to proceed farther and had returned with his ships to New Spain, explaining that the Gulf of Cali- fornia was a bay and not a strait as had been thought. Alarcon told how he had been there in the year 1540 and, having waited for many days without news from Coronado, he had been obliged to depart, because the ships were being eaten by the teredo, the marine worm. Captain Diaz crossed the river with men and luggage in large wicker baskets, which had been so coated with gum that they did not leak. He marched westward for four days but found only the desert, growing worse as he proceeded. He returned into northern Sonora on his way to the Corazónes Valley. On the journey he was fatally wounded with his own lance, of which the butt end pierced his groin, and he died before reaching the settlement. Thus ended the life of one of the sturdiest of the Spaniards and, probably, one of the best.
SPANISH SETTLEMENT OF NEW MEXICO
Two-score years had passed after the expedition of Coronado before its failure had been so mellowed by time that further explorations were undertaken. Then it was not the thought of gold that served to inspire the explorers, but the mis- sionary spirit of the devoted friars. In 1581 Padre Agustin Rodriguez secured church and secular permission for a journey to the northward and, in company with two other Franciscans, Francisco Lopez and Juan de Santa Maria, set out from San Bartolomo in northeastern Mexico. With him went a guard of soldiers under Captain Chamuscado and a number of Indians. The soldiers went as far as a pueblo village just north of Albuquerque in the Rio Grande Valley and then started back, the captain dying on the way, but the Franciscans carried their cross still farther. They found so many natives and so much work to do that Padre Juan de Santa Maria was sent back to ask for more clergy. The messenger was murdered by Indians while resting under a tree. Fol. I-5
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Lopez, about the same time and Rodriguez soon afterward, received crowns of martyrdom in Indian villages in north-central New Mexico.
Already, however, the story told by the soldiers on their return had affected the piety and pride of Antonio de Espejo, a wealthy mine owner of Santa Bar- bara, who, late in 1582, started northward into New Mexico by way of Chihuahua. Not till they had passed Isleta did the expedition learn of the murder of the friars.
Espejo was a man of high spirit and enterprise. With only two followers he explored towards the northeast into the buffalo country, then up the Rio Grande and westerly with his whole command, to the towns of the Jemez Indians, continuing to the pueblo of Acoma, where he was very kindly received. Three days later he started westward again, proceeding to Zuñi, which was identified as Cíbola, finding three Mexican Indians, who had been left from the Coronado expedition, Andres of Culiacan, Gaspar of Mexico and Antonio of Guadalajara. The trio told Espejo that to the westward was a rich country full of precious metals and in it a' great lake. So, with nine soldiers, Espejo pressed on. At twenty-eight leagues he came, at Awatobi, to the Moqui villages, where he claimed he found 50,000 people, a large overestimate. Securing Indian guides and looking for mines, he is supposed to have penetrated nearly as far as the site of Prescott. In this region he found a silver vein, from which he brought back rich specimens. His Indian guides told him of the Colorado River, asserting that it was eight leagues wide. It is probable there was meant the Grand Cañon, which in places is nearly as broad as represented. The great lake must have been wholly in their imagination, however, unless it were the Great Salt Lake, far to the northward.
Espejo went no farther westward, however, but made fairly thorough ex- ploration of the present New Mexico, returning by way of the Pecos River to his home, which he reached September 20, 1583. His expedition had cost 10,000 ducats and was wholly at his own expense, and as Twitchell justly observes, he had accomplished as much as had Coronado and his army.
Seven years later another expedition made its way up the Salado River (the Pecos), under the leadership of Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, then Lientenant Gov- ernor of Nuevo Leon. Sosa, when in northern New Mexico, rejoicing over the news of reinforcements, found a force of Spanish soldiers had followed only to arrest him for having undertaken exploration without proper authority. So both parties returned to Mexico forthwith.
In 1595 the expedition of Francisco Leiva Bonilla was sent into Texas against Indian raiders. Bonilla appears to have satisfactorily accomplished his mission of revenge and then to have started on his own account to find and enjoy the riches of Quivira. He was murdered by a subordinate, one Juan de Humana, who assumed the command. Save for two members, the entire expedition was ambushed and destroyed a few weeks later, somewhere on the plains.
The first real settlement of the Rio Grande Valley was made by Juan de Oñate of Zacatecas. Oñate was not only wealthy but very well connected and had married a granddaughter of Hernando Cortez. With ten Franciscan friars, about 130 soldiers and a number of colonizing families, under royal warrant, he started his expedition from San Bartolomo in January, 1598, after a year of vexatious official delays. In May the Rio Grande was crossed below El Paso
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ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
and the land was formally declared taken into the Spanish kingdom. Oñate in his capacity as governor, established his capital on the west side of the Rio Grande near its junction with the Chama. He named the new settlement San Gabriel. There in August, when the slower traveling colonists came, was erected the first Christian church in New Mexico. Oñate, like Espejo, was a great traveler and, himself and by representatives, explored almost every nook of the Southwest. His principal trouble with the Indians was with the arrogant people of Acoma, a pueblo town considered impregnable, on the top of an almost inac- cessible mesa. The people of Acoma had killed Oñate's nephew, Captain Saldi- var, and a number of his men in most treacherous manner. Against the vil- lage were sent seventy men headed by Vicente de Saldivar, a brother of the murdered captain. He gained the summit of the cliff by strategy and there was terrible retribution at the hands of the mail-clad Spaniards. Only 600 sur- vived of the 3,000 inhabitants of Acoma. There was no further threat of rebel- lion for a while among the Pueblo villagers.
One of the expeditions of Oñate was to the Zuñi and Moqui pueblos and to the Colorado. With Chaplain Pedro Escobar, he reached the Colorado down the valley of a stream which he called San Andrés, probably Bill Williams Fork of the present day, for he could hardly have made his way through the Colorado Cañon. He followed the Colorado to its mouth, renamed it Rio Grande de Buena Esperanza (Good Hope) and made notation of the different tribes of Indians. The mouth of the river he named Puerto de la Conversion de San Pablo. He crossed the Gila and on the Gulf of California, January 25, 1605, found a fine harbor around an island. About the same road was taken on the return trip, which was accompanied with grave hardships. The soldiers had eaten all of their horses by the time they had made their way back to San Gabriel, April 25, 1605.
In this same year the capital was removed to Villa Real de Santa Fé de San Francisco (which, variously is noted as settled from 1582) apparently with lit- tle ceremony and without any record left that tells the reason for such an im- portant change. Soon thereafter was built the church of San Miguel, which still stands, probably the oldest Christian church structure within the United States. Three years later Oñate was succeeded as Governor by Pedro de Peralta, but seemed to have retained some authority and to have continued his exploring trips. There is a record that Vicente de Saldivar made a trip to the Grand Cañon in 1618.
A number of Spanish Governors succeeded in rather rapid succession, in- cluding a romantic character, Diego de Peñalosa, a Peruvian, who took office in 1660. There would appear to have been more or less disorganization. In 1679, when Antonio Otermin became Governor, there had been complaint of years of severity toward the Indians, both by the Spanish soldiery and by the priest- hood. Of especial mention was the punishment of a large number of Indians, at the instance of officials of the Inquisition, for maintaining their ancient rites. As early as 1645, forty Indians had been hanged for witchcraft.
NEW MEXICAN INDIAN REBELLION OF 1680
August 10, 1680, following a plan that had been prearranged by a Pueblo Indian "wizard" named Popé, the Pueblo towns revolted and Spaniards
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about 400 in number, save a few of the young women, were massacred in the outlying pueblos. But nearly 2,000, including 155 Spanish soldiers, assembled at Santa Fé, which was fortified against a horde of thousands of Indians. August 19 the Spaniards made a sortie and captured forty-seven Indians, who were executed on the public plaza. The next day, however, it became evident that the town could not be held and so retreat was commenced with only a few horses to carry goods or the sick. The Indians were content to see their foes leaving and offered no further molestation, though it is told that the Spaniards were followed for seventy miles down the river, that the Indians might be assured they were really leaving the country. The refugees made winter quarters about thirty miles north of El Paso, at San Lorenzo, from which point most of them later made their way to the settlements in Chihuahua.
No less than twenty-one members of the Franciscan order died on the day of the insurrection, nearly all of them suffering horrible deaths, for the priests especially were blamed by the Indians for the suppression of ancient tribal rites. The churches were burned and the garments of the priesthood and the decorations of the altars were flaunted by Indians in the plaza in dances that for years had been proscribed. The baptized Indians were washed with soapweed in the rivers and they returned to their Indian names and rejected all Spanish customs and the use of the Spanish tongue.
Otermin organized an unsuccessful attempt to regain the country, at the head of a large force from Paso del Norte, but, with a short intermission, Popé retained supreme authority, a veritable savage emperor among the Pueblos, until he died, in 1688.
SPANISH FRONTIER ADMINISTRATION
Santa Fé was recaptured in September, 1692, by Governor Diego de Vargas, who had been sent with several hundred Spaniards to return New Mexico to the dominion of the Spanish crown. Vargas appears to have been a diplomat, and his first expedition was successful throughout and untarnished by blood. He visited practically all of the pueblos, marching even as far westward as the Moqui towns, in all promising pardon from the King and absolution by the church. The latter was given by a priest who accompanied each expedition. In December, 1693, however, on a second entrada in force, the Tanos Indians re- fused to evacuate Santa Fé, where the houses were needed by the shivering Spanish soldiery and so were driven out. It is told that at daybreak the Span- iards broke through the defenses and slaughtered hundreds of the inhabitants. Bolsas, the Indian leader, and seventy of his warriors were executed on the plaza and 400 women and children were distributed among the Spaniards as slaves.
Vargas had the usual reward of patriots, for in 1696 he was deposed as Gov- ernor and his enemy, Pedro Rodriguez Cubero, placed in his stead. Vargas, indeed, spent about three years in prison in Santa Fé, charged with peculation in office, though the King, in remote Spain, had ordered him given the thanks of the Crown and a choice between the titles of Marquis and Count. When the word of the King finally came, Vargas was re-established as Gubernador, with the added dignity of Marquez de la Nava de Brazinas. But his renewed honors failed to protect him from death, which came in April, 1704, while he was leading an expedition against the Navajo.
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An ad interim Governor, Francisco Cuervo, is to be credited with the estab- lishment, in 1706, of the Villa de San Francisco de Alburquerque, named after the Governor's patron, at the time Viceroy of New Spain. The Viceroy modestly altered the name to San Felipe, in honor of King Philip, but Albuquerque today is the name of New Mexico's most populous city.
Few of the twenty-seven succeeding administradores of New Mexico seem historically material. It is probable the rapid successsion of appointment within New Spain meant that official loot had to be gathered quickly before some courtier arrived from Mexico or Madrid to succeed to the office and its prerogatives. There are records of many political quarrels, complicated by disagreements with the clergy, of expeditions against many sorts of Indians and of trouble with the Indians of the missions. Twitchell, in his admirable work on New Mexico, de- clares that at no time did the Church or the Inquisition have the power of life or death over the Indians. Charges of witchcraft, with possible penalty of death, were heard before civil or military tribunals. It would appear that the mis- deeds of the simple natives were extended leniency in much larger degree than given offending Europeans.
It was during the administration of Gov. Joaquin de Real Allencastre, in 1807, that Pike made his famous, though involuntary, trip through New Mexico. Lieut. Facundo Melgares, the same who had charge of Pike's escort to the City of Chihuahua, was the last Spanish Governor of New Mexico. Pike had observed in his notes that this Spanish officer was the only one he had met who seemed to be really loyal to the King.
FRENCH CLAIMS IN THE SOUTHWEST
For fifty or more years there was friction in the Southwest between the Span- ish and French. The latter, on the discovery rights of La Salle's expedition completed in 1682, claimed in their Province of Louisiana the land westward from the Mississippi, north of the Red River, extending to a point not far east of Santa Fé, possibly to the Pecos, before the line bent to the northwest. In Bancroft, without comment, is found a statement that in 1698 the French almost anni- hilated a Navajo force of 4,000 men, from which could be inferred that the French had penetrated, and in force, their new territory to some point within or near the present area of Arizona. But the story is most improbable. It is more likely that there was a fight between the Indians and a comparatively few of the ad- venturous French trappers of the day. From a number of sources have been picked up the following items : In 1700 the French destroyed a village of Jumanos, in northern New Mexico. In 1719 Governor Valverde, while on an expedition to the northward, was told of a battle between the Apaches and French, the latter having Pawnees and Jumanos as allies. The Apaches were of the Jicarilla branch, that ranged at that time as far eastward as the Kansas plains. In 1720 a Spanish expedition of fifty men into the valley of the Arkansas, in southern Colo- rado, was said to have been annihilated by French and Pawnees. That the French · had succeeded in establishing trade in the Southwest is shown by an order of the Spanish King in 1723 prohibiting any traffic between the French and the outlying colonies of New Spain. In 1727 the French raided the Indian village of Cuar- telejo, 130 leagues north of Santa Fé. In 1739 nine French Canadians arrived at Santa Fé, where several of them established themselves. In 1743 one of them was
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shot after trial and conviction on a charge of trying to incite rebellion among the Indians. In 1747 warfare against the Spanish was incited by thirty-three French, who had sold firearms to the Jicarillas. This border skirmishing was concluded in 1762, when France ceded to Spain all her possessions west of the Mississippi. It should be remembered, however, that Spain in 1800 turned Louisiana back to France and that only three years later Napoleon, to spite England and for a pay- ment of $15,000,000, turned this enormous western empire over to the United States.
TABULA CALIFORNIA Anno 1702. Ex autoptica observatione delineata a R.P. Chino è S.I.
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MAP OF PADRE KINO, 1702
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CHAPTER V MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES
The Jesuits Till Their Expulsion in 1767-Entry of the Franciscans-Padre Garces, His Travels and Martyrdom-Foundation of San Francisco by De Anza-San Xavier.
Following the return of Coronado, there appears to have been a lapse of nearly a century and a half wherein Pimeria Alta was left unvisited by white men. This is hardly to be believed, considering the zeal of the early missionaries and the adventurous character of the Spaniards, who had established themselves in so permanent a manner in the outposts of Sinaloa and lower Souora. Even the lure of the silver mines was not as strong as the attraction to the clergy toward the land where so many heathen yet remained in spiritual darkness.
In 1590, at the request of the Governor of Durango and Nueva Biscaya, the Jesuit order was called upon to furnish missionaries for Sinaloa. Fifty years later they had spread their work northward into the Yaqui country and along the Sonoran Gulf coast.
There was a long period of relative stagnation, both spiritual and temporal, till 1681, when Padre Eusebio Kino (Kuhn) was sent from Mexico to work with the tribes of Pimeria Alta, with the Rio Gila as the northern boundary of the territory thus assigned. He had been a professor in the University of Ingolstadt, Bavaria, where he had bound his life to the conversion of the American Indians if, through the intercession of St. Francis Xavier, he should recover from a fever. He did recover and he started soon thereafter for America.
In 1683, under a decree granting the ecclesiastical field of Lower California to the Society of Jesuits, a party of priests was sent to La Paz, where Admiral Isidro Otondo y Antillon renamed the country "La Provincia de la Santisima Trinidad de las Californias." This expedition has local importance mainly for the fact that one of these priests, named as cosmographer, was none other than Kino. He labored for seventeen months on the California peninsula, then returned to Sonora.
In 1687 Padre Kino had established four missions, his headquarters at San Juan de Dolores, San Ignacio de Caborca, San José de Imures and Los Remedios.
PRONUNCIATION-Spanish pronunciation is regular and can be learned easily. For the benefit of readers unfamiliar with the tongue, the following notations are presented : a has the sound of a in far ; e that of e in they ; ] that of ee in seen ; o that of o in so ; u that of oo in food ; j and x that of a harsh h; ñ that of ny in lanyard ; y or é (when standing alone, meaning "and") that of ee in see ; Il (a single letter in Spanish) generally that of y in yard. In words place inflection on accented vowels, as cantara. corazón ; where not accented, ending with a vowel or n or s, inflection is on the penultimate syllable, as canta' ra, cataclismo; where not accented, ending with a consonant, except n or s. inflection is on the last syllable, as principal', conocer'. In Mexico, b and v, pronounced as a labial v, and j and x, pronounced as a harsh h, seem interchangeable. H always is silent.
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These missions in 1690 were inspected by Reverend Juan Maria Salvatierra, who came from the City of Mexico and who was accompanied on his round hy Padre Kino. They then met many Indians of different tribes and were invited to go farther northward with the work. Some of these Indians were Papagos, who had come 120 miles. It was told that their pleading soon thereafter led to the estah- lishment of the mission of Guebabi, near the present Sonora frontier.
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