USA > California > The Spanish Pioneers And The California Missions > Part 8
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THE STORMING OF THE SKY-CITY.
fogones ; 1 and soon a stifling smoke hung over the town, from which issued the shrieks of women and babes and the defiant yells of the warriors. The humane Zaldivar made every effort to save the women and children, at great risk of self; but numbers perished beneath the falling walls of their own houses.
This fearful storming lasted until noon of Jan- uary 24. Now and then bands of warriors made sorties, and tried to cut their way through the Span- ish line. Many sprang in desperation over the cliff, and were dashed to pieces at its foot ; and two In- dians who made that incredible leap survived it as miraculously as had the four Spaniards in the earlier massacre, and made their escape.
At last, at noon of the third day, the old men came forth to sue for mercy, which was at once granted. The moment they surrendered, their re- bellion was forgotten and their treachery forgiven. There was no need of further punishment. The ringleaders in the murder of Zaldivar's brother were all dead, and so were nearly all the Navajo allies. It was the most bloody struggle New Mexico ever saw. In this three days' fight the Indians lost five hun- dred slain and many wounded ; and of the surviving Spaniards not one but bore to his grave many a ghastly scar as mementos of Acoma. The town was so nearly destroyed that it had all to be rebuilt ; and the infinite labor with which the patient people had brought up that cliff on their backs all the stones
1 Fireplaces.
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and timber and clay to build a many-storied town for nearly a thousand souls was all to be repeated. Their crops, too, and all other supplies, stored in dark little rooms of the terraced houses, had been destroyed, and they were in sore want. Truly a bitter punishment had been sent them by "those above " for their treachery to Juan de Zaldivar.
When his men had sufficiently recovered from their wounds Vicente de Zaldivar, the leader of probably the most wonderful capture in history, marched vic- torious back to San Gabriel de los Españoles, taking with him eighty young Acoma girls, whom he sent to be educated by the nuns in Old Mexico. What a shout must have gone up from the gray walls of the little colony when its anxious watchers saw at last the wan and unexpected tatters of its little army pricking slowly homeward across the snows on jaded steeds !
The rest of the Pueblos, who had been lying de- mure as cats, with claws sheathed, but every lithe muscle ready to spring, were fairly paralyzed with awe. They had looked to see the Spaniards de- feated, if not crushed, at Acoma; and then a swift rising of all the tribes would have made short work of the remaining invaders. But now the impossible had happened ! Ah'ko, the proud sky-city of the Queres ; Ah'ko, the cliff-girt and impregnable, -- had fallen before the pale strangers ! Its brave warriors had come to naught, its strong houses were a chaos of smoking ruins, its wealth was gone, its people nearly wiped from off the earth ! What use
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THE STORMING OP THE SKY-CITY.
to struggle against "such men of power," - these strange wizards who must be precious to "those above," else they never could have such superhuman prowess? The strung sinews relaxed, and the great cat began to purr as though she had never dreamt of mousing. There was no more thought of a re- bellion against the Spaniards ; and the Indians even went out of their way to court the favor of these awesome strangers. They brought Oñate the news of the fall of Acoma several days before Zaldivar and his heroes got back to the little colony, and even were mean enough to deliver to him two Queres refugees from that dread field who had sought shel- ter among them. Thenceforth Governor Onate had no more trouble with the Pueblos.
But Acoma itself seemed to take the lesson to heart less than any of them. Too crushed and broken to think of further war with its invincible foes, it still remained bitterly hostile to the Span- iards for full thirty years, until it was again con- quered by a heroism as splendid as Zaldivar's, though in a far different way.
In 1629 Fray Juan Ramirez, "the Apostle of Acoma," left Santa Fé alone to found a mission in that lofty home of fierce barbarians. An escort of soldiers was offered him, but he declined it, and started unaccompanied and on foot, with no other weapon than his crucifix. Tramping his foot- sore and dangerous way, he came after many days to the foot of the great " island " of rock, and began the ascent. As soon as the savages saw a stranger
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of the hated people, they rallied to the brink of the cliff and poured down a great flight of arrows, some of which pierced his robes. Just then a little girl of Acoma, who was standing on the edge of the cliff, grew frightened at the wild actions of her people, and losing her balance tumbled over the precipice. By a strange providence she fell but a few yards, and landed on a sandy ledge near the Fray, but out of sight of her people, who presumed that she had fallen the whole height of the cliff. Fray Juan climbed to her, and carried her unhurt to the top of the rock; and seeing this apparent mira- cle, the savages were disarmed, and received him as a good wizard. The good man dwelt alone there in Acoma for more than twenty years, loved by the natives as a father, and teaching his swarthy con- verts so successfully that in time many knew their catechism, and could read and write in Spanish. Besides, under his direction they built a large church with enormous labor. When he died, in 1664, the Acomas from being the fiercest Indians had become the gentlest in New Mexico, and were among the furthest advanced in civilization. But a few years after his death came the uprising of all the Pueblos; and in the long and disastrous wars which followed the church was destroyed, and the fruits of the brave Fray's work largely disap- peared. In that rebellion Fray Lucas Maldonado, who was then the missionary to Acoma, was butch- ered by his flock on the 10th or 11th of August, 1680. In November, 1692, Acoma voluntarily sur-
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THE STORMING OF THE SKY-CITY.
rendered to the reconqueror of New Mexico, Diego de Vargas. Within a few years, however, it rebelled again ; and in August, 1696, Vargas marched against it, but was unable to storm the rock. But by de- grees the Pueblos grew to lasting peace with the humane conquerors, and to merit the kindness which was steadily proffered them. The mis- sion at Acoma was re-established about the year 1700 ; and there stands to-day a huge church which is one of the most interesting in the world, by rea- son of the infinite labor and patience which built it. The last attempt at a Pueblo uprising was in 1728; but Acoma was not implicated in it at all.
The strange stone stairway by which Fray Juan Ramirez climbed first to his dangerous parish in the teeth of a storm of arrows, is used by the people of Acoma to this day, and is still called by them el camino del padre (the path of the Father).
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V.
THE SOLDIER POET.
B UT now to go back a little. The young officer who made that superb leap across the chasm at Acoma, pushed back the bridge-log, and so saved the lives of his comrades, and indirectly of all the Spanish in New Mexico, was Captain Gaspar Perez de Villagran.1 He was highly educated, being a graduate of a Spanish university ; young, ambitious, fearless, and athletic ; a hero among the heroes of the New World, and a chronicler to whom we are greatly indebted. The six extant copies of the fat little parchment-bound book of his historical poem, in thirty-four heroic cantos, are each worth many times their weight in gold. It is a great pity that we could not have had a Villagran for each of the campaigns of the pioneers of America, to tell us more of the details of those superhuman dangers and hardships, - for most of the chroniclers of that day treat such episodes as briefly as we would a trip from New York to Brooklyn.
The leaping of the chasm was not Captain Villa- gran's only connection with the bloody doings at Acoma in the winter of 1598-99. He came very 1 Pronounced Veel-yah-grahn.
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near being a victim of the first massacre, in which Juan de Zaldivar and his men perished, and escaped that fate only to suffer hardships as fearful as death.
In the fall of 1598 four soldiers deserted Oñate's little army at San Gabriel ; and the governor sent Villagran, with three or four soldiers, to arrest them. It is hard to say what a sheriff nowadays would think if called upon to follow four desperadoes nearly a thousand miles across such a desert, and with a posse so small. But Captain Villagran kept the trail of the deserters ; and after a pursuit of at least nine hundred miles, overtook them in southern Chihuahua, Mexico. The deserters made a fierce resistance. Two were killed by the officers, and two escaped. Villagran left his little posse there, and retraced his dangerous nine hundred miles alone. Arriving at the pueblo of Puaray, on the west bank of the Rio Grande, opposite Bernalillo, he learned that his commander Oñate had just marched west, on the perilous trip to Moqui, of which you have already heard. Villagran at once turned westward, and started alone to follow and overtake his country- men. The trail was easily followed, for the Spaniards had the only horses within what is now the United States ; but the lonely follower of it was beset with continual danger and hardship. He came in sight of Acoma just too late to witness the massacre of Juan de Zaldivar and the fearful fall of the five Spaniards. The survivors had already left the fatal spot ; and when the natives saw a solitary Spaniard approaching, they descended from their rock citadel
IO
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to surround and slay him. Villagran had no fire- arms, nothing but his sword, dagger, and shield. Although he knew nothing of the dreadful events which had just occurred, he became suspicious of the manner in which the savages were hemming him in; and though his horse was gaunt from its long journey, he spurred it to a gallant effort, and fought his way through the closing circle of Indians. He kept up his flight until well into the night, making a long circuit to avoid coming too near the town, and at last got down exhausted from his exhausted horse, and laid himself on the bare earth to rest. When he awoke it was snowing hard, and he was half buried under the cold, white blanket. Remounting, he pushed on in the darkness, to get as far as possible from Acoma ere daylight should betray him. Suddenly horse and rider fell into a deep pit, which the Indians had dug for a trap and covered with brush and earth. The fall killed the poor horse, and Villagran himself was badly hurt and stunned. At last, however, he managed to crawl out of the pit, to the great joy of his faithful dog, who sat whining and shivering upon the edge. The soldier-poet speaks most touchingly of this dumb companion of his long and perilous journey, and evidently loved it with the affection which only a brave man can give and a faithful dog merit.
Starting again on foot, Villagran soon lost his way in that trackless wilderness. For four days and four nights he wandered without a morsel of food or a drop of water, - for the snow had already dis-
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THE SOLDIER POET.
appeared. Many a man has fasted longer under equal hardships; but only those who have tasted the thirst of the arid lands can form the remotest conception of the meaning of ninety-six hours with- out water. Two days of that thirst is often fatal to strong men; and that Villagran endured four was little short of miraculous. At last, fairly dying of thirst, with dry, swollen tongue, hard and rough as a file, projecting far beyond his teeth, he was reduced to the sad necessity of slaying his faithful dog, which he did with tears of manly remorse. Calling the poor brute to him, he dispatched it with his sword, and greedily drank the warm blood. This gave him strength to stagger on a little farther; and just as he was sinking to the sand to die, he spied a little hollow in a large rock ahead. Crawling feebly to it, he found to his joy that a little snow-water remained in the cavity. Scattered about, were a few grains of corn, which seemed a godsend ; and he devoured them ravenously.
He had now given up all hope of overtaking his commander, and decided to turn back and try to walk that grim two hundred miles to San Gabriel. But he was too far gone for the body longer to obey the heroic soul, and would have perished miserably by the little rock tank but for a strange chance.
As he lay there, faint and helpless, he suddenly heard voices approaching. He concluded that the Indians had trailed him, and gave himself up for lost, for he was too weak to fight. But at last his ear caught the accent of Spain ; and though it was
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spoken by hoarse, rough soldiers, you may be sure he thought it the sweetest sound in all the world. It chanced that the night before, some of the horses of Oñate's camp had strayed away, and a small squad of soldiers was sent out to catch them. In following the trail of the runaways, they came in sight of Cap- tain Villagran. Luckily they saw him, for he could no longer shout nor run after them. Tenderly they lifted up the wounded officer and bore him back to camp ; and there, under the gentle nursing of bearded men, he slowly recovered strength, and in time be- came again the daring athlete of other days. He accompanied Oñate on that long, desert march ; and a few months later was at the storming of Acoma, and performed the astounding feat which ranks as one of the remarkable individual heroisms of the New World.
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THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES.
VI.
THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES.
TO O pretend to tell the story of the Spanish pio- neering of the Americas without special atten- tion to the missionary pioneers, would be very poor justice and very poor history. In this, even more than in other qualities, the conquest was unique. The Spaniard not only found and conquered, but converted. His religious earnestness was not a whit behind his bravery. As has been true of all nations that have entered new lands, - and as we ourselves later entered this, - his first step had to be to subdue the savages who opposed him. But as soon as he had whipped these fierce grown- children, he began to treat them with a great and noble mercy, -a mercy none too common even now, and in that cruel time of the whole world almost unheard of. He never robbed the brown first Americans of their homes, nor drove them on and on before him; on the contrary, he protected and secured to them by special laws the undisturbed possession of their lands for all time. It is due to the generous and manly laws made by Spain three hundred years ago, that our most interesting and advanced Indians, the Pueblos, enjoy to-day full
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security in their lands ; while nearly all others (who never came fully under Spanish dominion) have been time after time ousted from lands our govern- ment had solemnly given to them.
That was the beauty of an Indian policy which was ruled, not by politics, but by the unvarying prin- ciple of humanity. The Indian was first required to be obedient to his new government. He could not learn obedience in everything all at once; but he must at least refrain from butchering his new neighbors. As soon as he learned that lesson, he was insured protection in his rights of home and family and property. Then, as rapidly as such a vast work could be done by an army of missionaries who devoted their lives to the dangerous task, he was educated to citizenship and Christianity. It is almost impossible for us, in these quiet days, to comprehend what it was to convert a savage half- world. In our part of North America there have never been such hopeless tribes as the Spaniards met in Mexico and other southern lands. Never did any other people anywhere complete such a stupendous missionary work. To begin to under- stand the difficulties of that conversion, we must look into an appalling page of history.
Most Indians and savage peoples have religions as unlike ours as are their social organizations. There are few tribes that dream of one Supreme Being. Most of them worship many gods, -" gods " whose attributes are very like those of the worshipper ; "gods " as ignorant and cruel and treacherous as he.
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, "JEWEL OF THE MISSIONS" Present condition Preserved by the Landmarks Club
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THE SPANISH PIONEERS.
security in their lands ; while nearly all others (who never came fully under Spanish dominion) have been time after time ousted from lands our govern- ment had solemnly given to them.
That was the beauty of an Indian policy which was ruled, not by politics, but by the unvarying prin- ciple of humanity. The Indian was first required to be obedient to his new government. He could not learn obedience in everything all at once; but he must at least refrain from butchering his new neighbors. As soon as he learned that lesson, he was insured protection in his rights of home and family and property. Then, as rapidly as such a vast work could be done by an army of missionaries who devoted their lives to the dangerous task, he was educated to citizenship and Christianity. It is almost impossible for us, in these quiet days, to comprehend what it was to convert a savage half- world. In our part of North America there have never been such hopeless tribes as the Spaniards met in Mexico and other southern lands. Never did any other people anywhere complete such a stupendous missionary work. To begin to under- stand the difficulties of that conversion, we must look into an appalling page of history.
Most Indians and savage peoples have religions as unlike ours as are their social organizations. There are few tribes that dream of one Supreme Being. Most of them worship many gods, -" gods " whose attributes are very like those of the worshipper; "gods " as ignorant and cruel and treacherous as he.
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, "JEWEL OF TIIE MISSIONS" Present condition Preserved by the Landmarks Club.
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THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES.
It is a ghastly thing to study these religions, and to see what dark and revolting qualities ignorance can deify. The merciless gods of India, who are sup- posed to delight in the crushing of thousands under the wheels of Juggernaut, and in the sacrificing of babes to the Ganges, and in the burning alive of girl- widows, are fair examples of what the benighted can believe; and the horrors of India were fully paral- leled in America. The religions of our North Amer- ican Indians had many astounding and dreadful features; but they were mild and civilized compared with the hideous rites of Mexico and the southern lands. To understand something of what the Span- ish missionaries had to combat throughout Amer- ica, aside from the common danger, let us glance at the condition of affairs in Mexico at their coming.
The Nahuatl, or Aztecs, and similar Indian tribes of ancient Mexico, had the general pagan creed of all American Indians, with added horrors of their own. They were in constant blind dread of their innumerable savage gods, - for to them everything they could not see and understand, and nearly every- thing they could, was a divinity. But they could not conceive of any such divinity as one they could love; it was always something to be afraid of, and mor- tally afraid of. Their whole attitude of life was one of dodging the cruel blows of an unseen hand; of placating some fierce god who could not love, but might be bribed not to destroy. They could not conceive a real creation, nor that anything could be without father and mother: stones and stars and
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winds and gods had to be born the same as men. Their " heaven," if they could have understood such a word, was crowded with gods, each as individual and personal as we, with greater powers than we, but with much the same weaknesses and passions and sins. In fact, they had invented and arranged gods by their own savage standards, giving them the powers they themselves most desired, but unable to attribute virtues they could not understand. So, too, in judg- ing what would please these gods, they went by what would please themselves. To have bloody ven- geance on their enemies ; to rob and slay, or be paid tribute for not robbing and slaying ; to be richly dressed and well fed, - these, and other like things which seemed to them the highest personal ambi- tions, they thought must be likewise pleasing to " those above." So they spent most of their time and anxiety in buying off these strange gods, who were even more dreaded than savage neighbors.
Their ideas of a god were graphically expressed in the great stone idols of which Mexico was once full, some of which are still preserved in the muse- ums. They are often of heroic size, and are carved from the hardest stone with great painstaking, but their faces and figures are indescribably dreadful. Such an idol as that of the grim Huitzilopochtli was as horrible a thing as human ingenuity ever invented, and the same grotesque hideousness runs through all the long list of Mexican idols.
These idols were attended with the most servile care, and dressed in the richest ornaments known to
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Indian wealth. Great strings of turquoise, -- the most precious " gem " of the American aborigines, - and really precious mantles of the brilliant feathers 'of tropic birds, and gorgeous shells were hung lav- ishly upon those great stone nightmares. Thousands of men devoted their lives to the tending of the dumb deities, and humbled and tortured themselves unspeakably to please them.
But gifts and care were not enough. Treachery to his friends was still to be feared from such a god. He must still further be bought off; everything that to an Indian seemed valuable was proffered to the Indian's god, to keep him in good humor. And since human life was the most precious thing an Indian could understand, it became his most im- portant and finally his most frequent offering. To the Indian it seemed no crime to take a life to please a god. He had no idea of retribution after death, and he came to look upon human sacrifice as a legitimate, moral, and even divine institution. In time, such sacrifices became of almost daily oc- currence at each of the numberless temples. It was the most valued form of worship; so great was its importance that the officials or priests had to go through a more onerous training than does any min- ister of a Christian faith. They could reach their position only by pledging and keeping up unceasing and awful self-deprivation and self-mutilation.
Human lives were offered not only to one or two principal idols of each community, but each town had also many minor fetiches to which such sacri-
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fices were made on stated occasions. So fixed was the custom of sacrifice, and so proper was it deemed, that when Cortez came to Cempohual the natives could think of no other way to welcome him with sufficient honor, and in perfect cordiality proposed to offer up human sacrifices to him. It is hardly necessary to add that Cortez sternly declined this pledge of hospitality.
These rites were mostly performed on the teocallis, or sacrificial mounds, of which there were one or more in every Indian town. These were huge arti- ficial mounds of earth, built in the shape of trun- cated pyramids, and faced all over with stone. They were from fifty to two hundred feet high, and some- times many hundreds of feet square at the base. Upon the flat top of the pyramid stood a small tower, - the dingy chapel which enclosed the idol. The grotesque face of the stone deity looked down upon a cylindrical stone which had a bowl-like cav- ity in the top, - the altar, or sacrificial stone. This was generally carved also, and sometimes with re- markable skill and detail. The famous so-called "Aztec Calendar Stone" in the National Museum of Mexico, which once gave rise to so many wild speculations, is merely one of these sacrificial altars, dating from before Columbus. It is a wonderful piece of Indian stone-carving.
The idol, the inner walls of the temple, the floor, the altar, were always wet with the most precious fluid on earth. In the bowl human hearts smoul- dered. Black-robed wizards, their faces painted
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black with white rings about eyes and mouth, their hair matted with blood, their faces raw from con- stant self-torture, forever flitted to and fro, keeping watch by night and day, ready always for the vic- tims whom that dreadful superstition was always ready to bring. The supply of victims was drawn from prisoners taken in war, and from slaves paid as tribute by conquered tribes ; and it took a vast supply. Sometimes as many as five hundred were sacrificed on one altar on one great day. They were stretched naked upon the sacrificial stone, and butchered in a manner too horrible to be described here. Their palpitating hearts were offered to the idol, and then thrown into the great stone bowl ; while the bodies were kicked down the long stone stair- way to the bottom of the great mound, where they were seized upon by the eager crowd. The Mexi- cans were not cannibals regularly and as a matter of taste ; but they devoured these bodies as part of their grim religion.
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