USA > California > The Spanish Pioneers And The California Missions > Part 7
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In the spring of 1541, when the handful of an army was all gathered at Bernalillo, and Coronado
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THE GREATEST AMERICAN TRAVELLER .:
set out to chase the fatal golden myth of the Qui- vira, Fray Padilla accompanied him. In that march of one hundred and four days across the barren plains before they reached the Quiviras in north- eastern Kansas, the explorers suffered tortures for water and sometimes for food. The treacherous guide misled them, and they wandered long in a circle, covering a fearful distance, - probably over fifteen hundred miles. The expedition was mounted, but in those days the humble padres went afoot. Finding only disappointment, the explorers marched all the way back to Bernalillo, - though by a less cir- cuitous route, - and Fray Padilla came with them.
But he had already decided that among these hostile, roving, buffalo-living Sioux and other In- dians of the plains should be his field of labor ; and when the Spanish evacuated New Mexico, he remained. With him were the soldier Andrés Do- campo, two young men of Michuacan, Mexico, named Lucas and Sebastian, called the Donados, and a few Mexican Indian boys. In the fall of 1542 the little party left Bernalillo on its thou- sand-mile march. Andres alone was mounted ; the missionary and the Indian boys trudged along the sandy way afoot. They went by way of the pueblo of Pecos, thence into and across a corner of what is now Colorado, and nearly the whole length of the great State of Kansas. At last, after a long and weary tramp, they reached the temporary lodge- villages of the Quivira Indians. Coronado had planted a large cross at one of these villages, and
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here Fray Padilla established his mission. In time the hostile savages lost their distrust, and "loved him as a father." At last he decided to move on to another nomad tribe, where there seemed greater need of his presence. It was a dangerous step ; for not only might the strangers receive him murder- ously, but there was equal risk in leaving his present flock. The superstitious Indians were loath to lose the presence of such a great medicine-man as they believed the Fray to be, and still more loath to have such a benefit transferred to their enemies, - for all these roving tribes were at war with one another. Nevertheless, Fray Padilla determined to go, and set out with his little retinue. One day's journey from the villages of the Quiviras, they met a band of Indians out on the war-path. Seeing the approach of the savages, the good Father thought first for his companions. Andrés still had his horse, and the boys were fleet runners.
"Flee, my children !" cried Fray Padilla. " Save yourselves, for me ye cannot help, and why should all die together? Run !"
They at first refused, but the missionary insisted ; and as they were helpless against the savages, they finally obeyed and fled. This may not seem, at first thought, the most heroic thing to do, but an under- standing of their time exonerates them. Not only were they humble men used to give the good priests implicit obedience, but there was another and a more potent motive. In those days of earnest faith, mar- tyrdom was looked upon as not only a heroism but
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a prophecy ; it was believed to indicate new tri- umphs for Christianity, and it was a duty to carry back to the world the news. If they stayed and were slain with him, -as I am sure these faithful followers were not physically afraid to do, - the lesson and glory of his martyrdom would be lost to the world.
Fray Juan knelt on the broad prairie and com- mended his soul to God; and even as he prayed, the Indians riddled him with arrows. They dug a pit and cast therein the body of the first Kansas martyr, and piled upon it a great pile of stones. This was in the year 1542.
Andrés Docampo and the boys made their escape at the time, but were soon captured by other Indians and kept as slaves for ten months. They were beaten and starved, and obliged to perform the most labori- ous and menial tasks. At last, after long planning and many unsuccessful attempts, they escaped from their barbarous captors. Then for more than eight years they wandered on foot, unarmed and alone, up and down the thirsty and inhospitable plains, enduring incredible privations and dangers. At last, after those thousands of footsore miles, they walked into the Mexican town of Tampico, on the great Gulf. They were received as those come back from the dead. We lack the details of that grim and matchless walk, but it is historically established. For nine years these poor fellows zigzagged the deserts afoot, beginning in northeastern Kansas and coming out far down in Mexico.
Sebastian died soon after his arrival in the Mexi-
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can State of Culiacan; the hardships of the trip had been too much for even his strong young body. His brother Lucas became a missionary among the Indians of Zacatecas, Mexico, and carried on his work among them for many years, dying at last in a ripe old age. As for the brave soldier Docampo, soon after his return to civilization he disappeared from view. Perhaps old Spanish documents may yet be discovered which will throw some light on his subsequent life and his fate.
THE WAR OF THE ROCK.
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III.
THE WAR OF THE ROCK.
S OME of the most characteristic heroisms and hardships of the Pioneers in our domain clus- ter about the wondrous rock of Acoma, the strange sky-city of the Queres 1 Pueblos. All the Pueblo cities were built in positions which Nature herself had fortified, - a necessity of the times, since they were surrounded by outnumbering hordes of the deadliest warriors in history ; but Acoma was most secure of all. In the midst of a long valley, four miles wide, itself lined by almost insurmountable precipices, towers a lofty rock, whose top is about seventy acres in area, and whose walls, three hundred and fifty-seven feet high, are not merely perpendicu- lar, but in most places even overhanging. Upon its summit was perched - and is to-day -the dizzy city of the Queres. The few paths to the top-whereon a misstep will roll the victim to horrible death, hun- dreds of feet below - are by wild, precipitous clefts, at the head of which one determined man, with no other weapons than stones, could almost hold at bay an army.
1 Pronounced Káy-ress.
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This strange aerial town was first heard of by Europeans in 1539, when Fray Marcos, the dis- coverer of New Mexico, was told by the people of Cibola of the great rock fortress of Hakuque, - their name for Acoma, which the natives them- selves called Ah'ko. In the following year Coro- nado visited it with his little army, and has left us an accurate account of its wonders. These first Europeans were well received there; and the su- perstitious natives, who had never seen a beard or a white face before, took the strangers for gods. But it was more than half a century later yet before the Spaniards sought a foothold there.
When Oñate entered New Mexico in 1598, he met no immediate resistance whatever ; for his force of four hundred people, including two hundred men- at-arms, was large enough to awe the Indians. They were naturally hostile to these invaders of their domain ; but finding themselves well treated by the strangers, and fearful of open war against these men with hard clothes, who killed from afar with their thunder-sticks, the Pueblos awaited results. The Quéres, Tigua, and Jemez branches formally submit- ted to Spanish rule, and took the oath of allegiance to the Crown by their representative men gathered at the pueblo of Guipuy (now Santo Domingo) ; as also did the Tanos, Picuries, Tehuas, and Taos, at a similar conference at the pueblo of San Juan, in September, 1598. At this ready submission Oñate was greatly encouraged; and he decided to visit all the principal pueblos in person, to make them
THE ROCK OF ACOMA
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securer subjects of his sovereign. He had founded already the first town in New Mexico and the second in the United States, -San Gabriel de los Españoles, where Chamita stands to-day. Before starting on this perilous journey, he despatched Juan de Zaldivar, his maestro de campo,1 with fifty men to explore the vast, unknown plains to the east, and then to follow him.
Oñate and a small force left the lonely little Spanish colony, - more than a thousand miles from any other town of civilized men, - October 6, 1598. First he marched to the pueblos in the great plains of the Salt Lakes, east of the Man- zano mountains, - a thirsty journey of more than two hundred miles. Then returning to the pueblo of Puaray (opposite the present Bernalillo), he turned westward. On the 27th of the same month he camped at the foot of the lofty cliffs of Acoma. The principales (chief men) of the town came down from the rock, and took the solemn pledge of allegiance to the Spanish Crown. They were thoroughly warned of the deep importance and meaning of this step, and that if they violated their oath they would be regarded and treated as rebels against his Majesty; but they fully pledged themselves to be faithful vassals. They were very friendly, and repeatedly invited the Spanish com- mander and his men to visit their sky-city. In truth, they had had spies at the conferences in Santo Domingo and San Juan, and had decided
1 Commander in the field : equivalent to our colonel.
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that the most dangerous man among the invaders was Oñate himself. If he could be slain, they thought the rest of the pale strangers might be easily routed.
But Oñate knew nothing of their intended treach- ery ; and on the following day he and his handful of men - leaving only a guard with the horses - climbed one of the breathless stone " ladders," and stood in Acoma. The officious Indians piloted them hither and yon, showing them the strange terraced houses of many stories in height, the great reservoirs in the eternal rock, and the dizzy brink which every- where surrounded the eyrie of a town. At last they brought the Spaniards to where a huge ladder, pro- jecting far aloft through a trapdoor in the roof of a large house, indicated the estufa, or sacred council- chamber. The visitors mounted to the roof by a smaller ladder, and the Indians tried to have Oñate descend through the trapdoor. But the Spanish governor, noting that all was dark in the room be- low, and suddenly becoming suspicious, declined to enter; and as his soldiers were all about, the In- dians did not insist. After a short visit in the pueblo the Spaniards descended the rock to their camp, and thence marched away on their long and dangerous journey to Moqui and Zuñi. That swift flash of prudence in Oñate's mind saved the history of New Mexico ; for in that dark estufa was lying a band of armed warriors. Had he entered the room, he would have been slain at once; and his death was to be the signal for a general on-
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slaught upon the Spaniards, all of whom must have perished in the unequal fight.
Returning from his march of exploration through the trackless and deadly plains, Juan de Zaldivar left San Gabriel on the 18th of November, to follow his commander-in-chief. He had but thirty men. Reaching the foot of the City in the Sky on the 4th of December, he was very kindly received by the Acomas, who invited him up into their town. Juan was a good soldier, as well as a gallant one, and well used to the tricks of Indian warfare; but for the first time in his life - and the last - he now let himself be deceived. Leaving half his little force at the foot of the cliff to guard the camp and horses, he himself went up with sixteen men. The town was so full of wonders, the people so cordial, that the visitors soon forgot whatever suspicions they may have had; and by degrees they scattered hither and yon to see the strange sights. The natives had been waiting only for this; and when the war-chief gave the wild whoop, men, women, and children seized rocks and clubs, bows and flint- knives, and fell furiously upon the scattered Span- iards. It was a ghastly and an unequal fight the winter sun looked down upon that bitter afternoon in the cliff city. Here and there, with back against the wall of one of those strange houses, stood a gray- faced, tattered, bleeding soldier, swinging his clumsy flintlock club-like, or hacking with desperate but unavailing sword at the dark, ravenous mob that hemmed him, while stones rained upon his bent
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visor, and clubs and cruel flints sought him from every side. There was no coward blood among that doomed band. They sold their lives dearly ; in front of every one lay a sprawling heap of dead. But one by one the howling wave of barbarians drowned each grim, silent fighter, and swept off to swell the murderous flood about the next. Zal- divar himself was one of the first victims; and two other officers, six soldiers, and two servants fell in that uneven combat. The five survivors - Juan Tabaro, who was alguacil-mayor, with four sold- iers - got at last together, and with superhuman strength fought their way to the edge of the cliff, bleeding from many wounds. But their savage foes still pressed them; and being too faint to carve their way to one of the "ladders," in the wildness of desperation the five sprang over the beetling cliff.
Never but once was recorded so frightful a leap as that of Tabaro and his four companions. Even if we presume that they had been so fortunate as to reach the very lowest point of the rock, it could not have been less than one hundred and fifty feet ! And yet only one of the five was killed by this in- conceivable fall ; the remaining four, cared for by their terrified companions in the camp, all finally recovered. It would be incredible, were it not es- tablished by absolute historical proof. It is prob- able that they fell upon one of the mounds of white sand which the winds had drifted against the foot of the cliffs in places.
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Fortunately, the victorious savages did not attack the little camp. The survivors still had their horses, of which unknown brutes the Indians had a great fear. For several days the fourteen soldiers and their four half-dead companions camped under the overhanging cliff, where they were safe from missiles from above, hourly expecting an onslaught from the savages. They felt sure that this massacre of their comrades was but the prelude to a general uprising of the twenty-five or thirty thousand Pueblos; and regardless of the danger to themselves, they decided at last to break up into little bands, and separate, - some to follow their commander on his lonely march to Moqui, and warn him of his danger; and others to hasten over the hundreds of arid miles to San Ga- briel and the defence of its women and babes, and to the missionaries who had scattered among the savages. This plan of self-devotion was successfully carried out. The little bands of three and four apiece bore the news to their countrymen ; and by the end of the year 1598 all the surviving Spaniards in New Mexico were safely gathered in the hamlet of San Gabriel. The little town was built pueblo- fashion, in the shape of a hollow square. In the Plaza within were planted the rude pedreros - small howitzers which fired a ball of stone - to command the gates; and upon the roofs of the three-story adobe houses the brave women watched by day, and the men with their heavy flintlocks all through the winter nights, to guard against the expected at- tack. But the Pueblos rested on their arms. They
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were waiting to see what Onate would do with Acoma, before they took final measures against the strangers.
It was a most serious dilemma in which Oñate now found himself. One need not have known half so much about the Indian character as did this gray, quiet Spaniard, to understand that he must signally punish the rebels for the massacre of his men, or abandon his colony and New Mexico altogether. If such an outrage went unpunished, the emboldened Pueblos would destroy the last Spaniard. On the other hand, how could he hope to conquer that impregnable fortress of rock? He had less than two hundred men; and only a small part of these could be spared for the campaign, lest the other Pueblos in their absence should rise and annihilate San Gabriel and its people. In Acoma there were full three hundred warriors, reinforced by at least a hundred Navajo braves.
But there was no alternative. The more he re- flected and counselled with his officers, the more apparent it became that the only salvation was to capture the Queres Gibraltar ; and the plan was de- cided upon. Oñate naturally desired to lead in per- son this forlornest of forlorn hopes; but there was one who had even a better claim to the desperate honor than the captain-general, - and that one was the forgotten hero Vicente de Zaldivar, brother of the murdered Juan. He was sargento-mayor1 of the little army; and when he came to Oñate and 1 Equivalent to lieutenant colonel.
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begged to be given command of the expedition against Acoma, there was no saying him nay.
On the 12th of January, 1599, Vicente de Zaldivar left San Gabriel at the head of seventy men. Only a few of them had even the clumsy flintlocks of the day ; the majority were not arquebusiers but piquiers, armed only with swords and lances, and clad in jackets of quilted cotton or battered mail. One small pedrero, lashed upon the back of a horse, was the only " artillery."
Silently and sternly the little force made its ardu- ous march. All knew that impregnable rock, and few cherished an expectation of returning from so desperate a mission; but there was no thought of turning back. On the afternoon of the eleventh day the tired soldiers passed the last intervening mesa,1 and came in sight of Acoma. The Indians, warned by their runners, were ready to receive them. The whole population, with the Navajo allies, were under arms, on the housetops and the commanding cliffs. Naked savages, painted black, leaped from crag to crag, screeching defiance and heaping insults upon the Spaniards. The medicine-men, hideously dis- guised, stood on projecting pinnacles, beating their drums and scattering curses and incantations to the winds ; and all the populace joined in derisive howls and taunts.
Zaldivar halted his littte band as close to the foot of the cliff as he could come without danger. The indispensable notary stepped from the ranks, and at 1 Huge " table " of rock.
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the blast of the trumpet proceeded to read at the top of his lungs the formal summons in the name of the king of Spain to surrender. Thrice he shouted through the summons; but each time his voice was drowned by the howls and shrieks of the enraged savages, and a hail of stones and arrows fell danger- ously near. Zaldivar had desired to secure the sur- render of the pueblo, demand the delivery to him of the ringleaders in the massacre, and take them back with him to San Gabriel for official trial and punish- ment, without harm to the other people of Acoma ; but the savages, secure in their grim fortress, mocked the merciful appeal. It was clear that Acoma must be stormed. The Spaniards camped on the bare sands and passed the night - made hideous by the sounds of a monster war-dance in the town-in gloomy plans for the morrow.
THR STORMING OF THE SKY-CITY.
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IV.
THE STORMING OF THE SKY-CITY.
A T daybreak, on the morning of January 22, Zaldivar gave the signal for the attack ; and the main body of the Spaniards began firing their few arquebuses, and making a desperate assault at the north end of the great rock, there absolutely impregnable. The Indians, crowded along the cliffs above, poured down a rain of missiles; and many of the Spaniards were wounded. Meanwhile twelve picked men, who had hidden during the night under the overhanging cliff which protected them alike from the fire and the observation of the Indians, were crawling stealthily around under the precipice, dragging the pedrero by ropes. Most of these twelve were arquebusiers; and besides the weight of the ridiculous little cannon, they had their ponderous flint-locks and their clumsy armor, - poor helps for scaling heights which the unencum- bered athlete finds difficult. Pursuing their toilsome way unobserved, pulling one another and then the pedrero up the ledges, they reached at last the top of a great outlying pinnacle of rock, separated from the main cliff of Acoma by a narrow but awful chasm. Late in the afternoon they had their how-
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itzer trained upon the town; and the loud report, as its cobble-stone ball flew into Acoma, signalled the main body at the north end of the mesa that the first vantage-ground had been safely gained, and at the same time warned the savages of danger from a new quarter.
That night little squads of Spaniards climbed the great precipices which wall the trough-like valley on east and west, cut down small pines, and with infi- nite labor dragged the logs down the cliffs, across the valley, and up the butte on which the twelve were stationed. About a score of men were left to guard the horses at the north end of the mesa; and the rest of the force joined the twelve, hiding behind the crags of their rock-tower. Across the chasm the Indians were lying in crevices, or behind rocks, awaiting the attack.
At daybreak of the 23d, a squad of picked men at a given signal rushed from their hiding-places with a log on their shoulders, and by a lucky cast lodged its farther end on the opposite brink of the abyss. Out dashed the Spaniards at their heels, and began balancing across that dizzy " bridge " in the face of a volley of stones and arrows. A very few had crossed, when one in his excitement caught the rope and pulled the log across after him.
It was a fearful moment. There were less than a dozen Spaniards thus left standing alone on the brink of Acoma, cut off from their companions by a gulf hundreds of feet deep, and surrounded by swarming savages. The Indians, sallying from their
WHERE ZALDIVAR STORMED THE CITY
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refuge, fell instantly upon them on every hand. As long as the Spanish soldier could keep the Indians at a distance, even his clumsy firearms and ineffi- cient armor gave an advantage; but at such close quarters these very things were a fatal impediment by their weight and clumsiness. Now it seemed as if the previous Acoma massacre were to be repeated, and the cut-off Spaniards to be hacked to pieces ; but at this very crisis a deed of surpassing personal valor saved them and the cause of Spain in New Mexico. A slender, bright-faced young officer, a college boy who was a special friend and favorite of Oñate, sprang from the crowd of dismayed Spaniards on the farther bank, who dared not fire into that in- discriminate jostle of friend and foe, and came run- ning like a deer toward the chasm. As he reached its brink his lithe body gathered itself, sprang into the air like a bird, and cleared the gulf! Seizing the log, he thrust it back with desperate strength until his companions could grasp it from the farther brink; and over the restored bridge the Spanish soldiers poured to retrieve the day.
Then began one of the most fearful hand-to-hand struggles in all American history. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, lost in a howling mob of savages who fought with the frenzy of despair, gashed with raw-edged knives, dazed with crushing clubs, pierced with bristling arrows, spent and faint and bleeding, Zaldivar and his hero-handful fought their way inch by inch, step by step, clubbing their heavy guns, hewing with their short swords, parrying deadly
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blows, pulling the barbed arrows from their quiver- ing flesh. On, on, on they pressed, shouting the gallant war-cry of Santiago, driving the stubborn foe before them by still more stubborn valor, until at last the Indians, fully convinced that these were no human foes, fled to the refuge of their fort-like houses, and there was room for the reeling Span- iards to draw breath. Then thrice again the sum- mons to surrender was duly read before the strange tenements, each near a thousand feet long, and looking like a flight of gigantic steps carved from one rock. Zaldivar even now wished to spare un- necessary bloodshed, and demanded only that the assassins of his brother and countrymen should be given up for punishment. All others who should surrender and become subjects of "Our Lord the King " should be well treated. But the dogged Indians, like wounded wolves in their den, stuck in their barricaded houses, and refused all terms of peace.
The rock was captured, but the town remained. A pueblo is a fortress in itself; and now Zaldivar had to storm Acoma house by house, room by room. The little pedrero was dragged in front of the first row of houses, and soon began to deliver its slow fire. As the adobe walls crumbled under the steady battering of the stone cannon-balls, they only formed great barricades of clay, which even our modern artillery would not pierce ; and each had to be car- ried separately at the point of the sword. Some of the fallen houses caught fire from their own
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