Saturday, January 24, 1998
History Unkind to Colonization Leader
Juan de Oñate came to New Mexico seeking honor; instead
he lost his money and titles and was reviled by his followers
By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
The man who colonized New Mexico has gone down in history as an
insignificant footnote.
Lost in the sea of more daring adventurers -- true conquistadores
like Cortez, De Soto, Coronado and Cabeza de Vaca -- Juan de Oñate
is unknown in Spain, uncelebrated in Mexico and only a murky memory
in the land he claimed for the crown.
When a sculptor set out to memorialize Oñate in a bronze
that would sit in the northern New Mexico territory of Onate's
first settlement, he was forced to go on instinct and paintings
of Don Diego de Vargas, another more memorable emissary from Spain.
No drawings or written descriptions of Oñate existed.
One of the explorer's direct descendants in Spain, Madrid lawyer
Manuel Guillón y Oñate, remembers no mention of
his ancestor in Spanish history classes and found precious little
information available when he embarked on a personal quest as
an adult. "History," his ancestor says, "does not
treat Oñate very well."
And historian Marc Simmons, who chose Oñate as the subject
of a biography in 1991, was stung by the indifference generated
by the Oñate name. "It was a flop," Simmons admits.
"It went nowhere."
Before he gave up lecturing about early New Mexico history to
high school and college classes, Simmons used to make a point
of polling students on their knowledge of Oñate.
"No one," he said, "had ever heard of him. And
this is in New Mexico."
New World developer
Oñate was not a renegade risking his life for riches, nor
a conquering soldier, nor an adventurer galloping toward the unknown.
He was a businessman, a rich scion of a silver-mining family,
whose primary quest was for honor and title -- the twin hungers
he could quench only through service to the Spanish king.
Oñate came north to New Mexico years after the myth of
glittering cities of gold had been discounted and after the Spanish
government had ceased allowing pillaging expeditions by maverick
conquistadores.
His arrangement with the Spanish crown was that of a contract
developer. Using his own fortune and money he borrowed to fund
the expedition, his job was to subdue native people through conversion
to Catholicism and to give Spain a foothold for exploration in
the New World. His reward, in addition to the coveted titles,
would be a share of tax revenue the new kingdom would produce.
Ten years after the first wooden wagon wheel turned northward,
Oñate was out of money and patience and took a quill to
ink to write his resignation letter.
Historian Thomas A. Chávez, director of the Palace of the
Governors in Santa Fe, sums up Oñate's decade as governor
in terms most New Mexicans can understand. The governor, Chávez
says, "did a pretty half-assed job."
Oñate and his wagon train arrived in the new lands nearly
out of supplies and just in time for the end of a summer of drought
followed by a long, cold winter.
At San Juan Pueblo, so named by Oñate and the Franciscans
after St. John the Baptist, little remains of the original Spanish
settlement. Colonists' quarters have been covered by centuries
of river silt. The original church, put up within weeks of the
Spaniards' arrival, is long gone.
Herman Agoyo, a member of the pueblo's tribal council, understands
why the Spaniards chose to change history in this place. The view
400 years ago was not obscured by the cottonwoods and salt cedars
that hug the riverbank today, and attackers would have to cross
the river to reach the colonists.
When Agoyo pictures the moment Oñate and his lieutenants
rode into the village, in velvet and armor and trailing horses
and wagons, he does not imagine relief on the part of the Spaniards
at completing their journey, only the fear that must have overcome
the Indian villagers.
"You're looking at horses, armor and guns," says Agoyo,
an employee of the tribe's real estate office. "It had to
be overwhelming."
Eight friars, two lay brothers, 129 men and several dozen women
and children made the trip in 80 wagons. Although the men arrived
in fighting gear, the Indians mounted no defense.
Instead of a battle, the settlers were immediately distracted
by disappointment. Although their stated mission was the arduous
task of building a colony, the people who had thrown their lot
with Oñate had expected to find more than dust and hard
work at the end of the trail.
Only days after their arrival, Oñate faced down a mutiny
attempt by about half the settlers.
Oñate explained the problem in a letter to the viceroy.
The settlers, he said, "in anger at not finding bars of silver
on the ground right away and resentful because I did not allow
them to abuse the natives either in their persons or property,
became dissatisfied with the land, or rather with me."
It took the execution of two of the mutiny's ringleaders to quell
the uprising.
Absent leader
Desperate to justify his existence and pacify his party, he rode
great distances east and west, from present-day Kansas to California,
searching for silver, gold, pearls and salt. Oñate was
not tilting at windmills: His father had explored similar territory
in northern Mexico for the Spanish king and been rewarded with
the richest silver mines in the new world.
But Oñate did not find silver on his travels. Instead,
he ranged through Indian lands, demanding, as was his mission,
their allegiance to his king. In battles with the Acomas, who
refused subordination, he lost 11 soldiers and two servants, killed
hundreds of Indians and punished 24 with amputation of a foot.
Three years after arriving, Oñate had this to show for
his risk and investment: A church at San Juan Pueblo, a debilitated
army, angry pueblo neighbors and about two dozen hungry, cold
and disenchanted colonists. The rest had decided to put an end
to their part of the miserable colonization effort and had headed
back down the Camino Real.
In 1953, the University of New Mexico Press published a hefty
two-volume collection of English translations of correspondence
regarding the Oñate entrada. Although the reports are centuries
old, they read like a modern tale of a crumbling political empire
and a failing man desperate to hold it together.
From frustrated Franciscan priests to colonists worried about
the welfare of their wives and children, the accounts all point
the finger of blame at Oñate.
Fray Juan de Escalona wrote to the viceroy in New Spain, what
is now Mexico, in 1601, to report on the sorry condition of the
settlement. "The governor has oppressed his people so that
they are all discontented and anxious to get away," he wrote.
The settlement, Capt. Gregorio Céssar echoed, "is
lacking in everything essential to support human life."
Céssar had cause to worry. He had brought his wife and
seven children along. Bedbugs, lice, snow and wind combined to
sap the settlers of their enthusiasm. They hated New Mexico, describing
it as "eight months of winter and four months of hell."
Not only the settlers were dissatisfied. The Franciscans found
the pueblo people increasingly unwilling to consent to baptism
by newcomers who continued to demand food, clothing and labor.
Even though he had spent months away from the settlement on forays
into the New World, Oñate as the governor was held accountable
for the manner in which the colony was subsisting on the backs
of the natives.
"From the time he came here to the moment of this statement,"
Fray Francisco de San Miguel reported, "his conscience has
ever been disturbed by the mistreatment of these natives. The
fact is that in order to induce the Indians to furnish corn for
food, it has been necessary to torture the chieftains, even hanging
and killing them. We find ourselves in extreme need of food and
see the natives starving to death, eating whatever filth there
is in the fields, even the twigs from the trees, dirt, coal and
ashes."
Escalon concluded that it was impossible to save souls under the
circumstances: "We cannot preach the gospel now," he
wrote, "for it is despised by these people on account of
our great offenses and the harm we have done them."
Oñate did not resist the temptation to escape the increasingly
troubled colony at San Juan and search for silver. He roamed as
far as present-day Kansas, the Grand Canyon and the Gulf of California,
weighing down his saddlebags with ore samples and describing in
reports to New Spain the great promise of mineral wealth held
by the mountains of Nuevo México and the abundant herds
of buffalo on the great plains to the east.
"He was out exploring," says historian Chávez.
"He wasn't taking care of the colony."
With most of the men -- 50 at a time -- gone from the small colony
for months on end, there was no one to build houses, farm or gather
firewood.
Colonists lived in houses abandoned by the Indians and fed themselves
from the pueblo's stores of corn.
Oñate returned from each expedition to a poorer, more fractured
community.
"When things started falling apart," says Chávez,
"he kind of panicked. He became kind of brutal. He lost control."
Faith in crown
Oñate's considerable pride would have no doubt been wounded
by the prospect of obscurity and defeat in the winter of 1597-1598
as he camped on the banks of the Rio Concho in what is now northern
Mexico, awaiting permission to travel north.
Already delayed for two years by political wranglings and quickly
losing his fortune to the upkeep of an army of stranded colonists,
Oñate was 46 years old, a rich man, and accustomed to accomplishment,
not frustration.
Although he had been born in New Spain and had never set foot
on the European fatherland, Oñate was a true Spaniard,
devoted to the church and king and the expansion of the empire.
Whatever else Oñate believed, he had unsinkable faith in
the importance of his mission.
Upon embarking with 80 carts and several hundred people trailing
him northward in January 1598, he penned a letter to the king.
"I trust to God," he wrote, "that what I am pursuing
will be of great consequence."
His reports to the viceroy and the king continued to paint promising
pictures even when his assaying turned up poor silver ore and
his foray to the Gulf of California did not return pearls.
Four years after the colonists and priests sent their letters
-- and seven years into the settlement -- support from above also
eroded.
The viceroy in New Spain collected the reports of starvation and
torture, weighed them with Oñate's predictions of imminent
discoveries of great lands and great riches, and recommended to
the king that Oñate be dismissed and the settlement be
allowed to disband.
"I cannot help but to inform your majesty that this conquest
is becoming a fairy tale," viceroy Marquis de Montesclaros
told the king. "Less substance is being revealed every day."
In the return mail came the king's order to recall Oñate.
Two years later followed the order to suspend the discovery and
exploration of New Mexico.
Oñate took it upon himself to resign, and in his letter
to the viceroy in 1607 he did not hide his feelings of betrayal
by the crown he had pledged to serve:
"As far as I am concerned, matters have moved in such a way
that my feelings have been greatly hurt, in view of the fact that
those who fled from this camp have gone entirely unpunished."
Defeated, Oñate blamed "the devil" for his string
of setbacks.
"Unable to overcome my zeal and good purpose," he wrote,
"(the devil) has exhausted my resources and I find myself
unable to explore any further at a moment when the reports are
most promising and encouraging."
Spain did not abandon New Mexico when it abandoned Oñate.
Buoyed by sudden reports from the priests that some 7,000 natives
had been baptized, in 1609 Spain replaced Oñate with a
new governor, Pedro de Peralta. New Mexico went on to become an
important piece of Spanish real estate in the new world.
The foundation, however crumbling it seemed at the beginning of
the 17th century, had been laid, and Oñate gets the credit
-- or the blame -- for setting the ball in motion.
Put on trial and convicted of a number of charges, including cruelty
at Acoma, he was stripped of his titles and ordered never to return
to New Mexico. Oñate spent the rest of his life trying
to rehabilitate his reputation and reclaim titles so he could
pass them on to his grandson.
Saturday, January 31, 1998
Oñate Anniversary a Painful Event for Acomas
Some say the trials of colonization should be remembered, but
the pueblo will not take part in the observation
Spanish Chroniclers Tell Different Tales
By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
ACOMA PUEBLO -- The wind blows on the top of the rock, and black
ravens circle like sentinels. It seems in the silence of a winter
day like a perfect fortress, high, steep and alone, hundreds of
feet above the surrounding desert. It was not impenetrable, though.
Over there, Spanish soldiers sent by colonizer Juan de Oñate
scrambled up a side and began to wage war. Here, on the steepest
northern edge of the rock, Acomas fell to their deaths.
All around, blood soaked the yellowing sandstone.
Historians and Spanish and Indian descendants continue to debate
whether it was a legitimate war among equals or a vengeful massacre
of the weak by the strong. But by all accounts, the three-day
battle at Acoma village in 1599 was a gory, smoky marathon of
sword play, rage and cannon fire -- a fight to the finish 367
rocky feet above the desert floor.
And four centuries later, it is not forgotten.
Chris Garcia, a guide who takes tourists through the old Acoma
village, known as Sky City, makes a point of showing visitors
the steep cliff where some accounts of the battle describe Acoma
men being gored and thrown off.
He tells of the trial held by the Spanish weeks later and the
punishment of slavery and the amputation of a foot for each of
24 Acoma men.
"We should not commemorate a man," Garcia says, "who
tried to destroy my people."
Thriving culture
It is obvious, though, that Acoma was not destroyed. Men and women
escaped from slavery and returned to the rock to start over. Evidence
of their survival is in the pueblo's stone government buildings,
in the school where children learn the Keresan language of their
ancestors and in the shiny new buses that take tourists to the
top of the old Acoma village.
Acoma is a traditional pueblo where decisions are still made by
religious leaders inside the kiva, and tribal business is rarely
discussed with outsiders. It faces unparalleled scrutiny this
year, as New Mexicans mark the 400th year of European influence,
and the attention is an unwelcome intrusion.
Pueblo officials today will not talk about the battle or the punishments
of slavery and amputation, and the pueblo has no plans at this
time to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the expedition that
led to one of the darkest chapters in the pueblo's long history.
The pueblo's former governor, Ron Shutiva, wanted to use the 400th
anniversary to call attention to the pueblo's survival. He proposed
inviting President Clinton and the king and queen of Spain to
the pueblo, not to complain about past events but to reaffirm
that Acoma is alive and independent today.
While many tribal members liked the idea, others thought it would
stir up painful memories or be misinterpreted as an acceptance
of the events of 400 years ago. The idea was dropped last year.
Shutiva, who served three years as governor before being replaced
last
December by the pueblo's caciques, or religious leaders, still
believes the pueblo should not sit silently this year.
"It needs to be known," says Shutiva. "There's
no way to turn back that hand of time. You can't change what happened.
Maybe we just need to acknowledge that those things did happen
and that is it."
He has joined Albuquerque's committee coordinating events to honor
the 400 years of Spanish presence in New Mexico.
Shutiva, a 44-year-old businessman and a kiva leader at the pueblo,
remembers no mention of the battle or the amputation punishment
when his elders told him stories when he was a child.
"Maybe we were too proud to talk about punishment and to
talk about defeat," he says. "But it needs to be told
so that my kids, my grandkids know their true origins, their history."
Legacy of pain
From the Spanish soldiers' perspective, the battle was a fair
and declared war. They had claimed New Mexico for the king of
Spain and, in their view, the Acomas sparked a war when they killed
13 members of a Spanish scouting party.
To the Acomas, it was a massacre, unjust retribution for the Acomas'
refusal to hand over food and supplies to the invading Spanish.
Official correspondence of the expedition shows that Oñate
used Acoma as an example to surrounding pueblos. He would raze
and burn the Indians' greatest fortress and divide its people,
teaching a lesson in obedience to the Indians.
At battle's end in 1599, the surviving woman and children were
taken into slavery by the Spanish. The surviving 24 men were put
on trial by the Spanish, found guilty of war crimes and each sentenced
to 20 years slavery and the amputation of a foot.
The foot, 400 years later, has become a symbol of the brutality
of the Spanish-Indian encounter. Late last year when vandals defaced
New Mexico's only statue of Oñate, a large bronze at the
Oñate Center in Alcalde, they cut off its foot. The preliminary
design for an Oñate artwork that the city of Albuquerque
is paying for includes pairs of moccasins, with one shoe symbolically
missing.
Oñate's actions seem, in history's hindsight, to have been
without conscience, although brutal punishment was the reality
of 16th century Spain.
"I think we have to consider him in terms of what conditions
were 400 years ago, not in terms of today," says Estevan
Arellano, director of the Oñate Center. "I'm not defending
what he did at Acoma, but it was different then."
'Need for reconciliation'
The issue is difficult for New Mexicans of Spanish descent as
well as for Acomas.
Antonio Trujillo grew up in the village of San Rafael in Cibola
County, less than 30 miles from the rock where his Spanish ancestors
did battle with the ancestors of his Acoma friends and classmates.
Today, he is 39 and the Catholic priest who serves the three churches
at Acoma. He celebrates Mass every Wednesday in the big adobe
church the Acomas were forced to build by the Spanish friars after
they returned to Sky City.
"Of all of the pueblos, Acoma had the most atrocities against
them," says Trujillo. "There's a lot of emotion, and
it shows there is a need for reconciliation. When there isn't
reconciliation, we become prisoners. We become caught in the past."
Before the idea of commemoration activities was dropped, Trujillo
worked with former governor Shutiva to involve the church. He
still feels the year should not pass without some gesture of apology
by a representative of people of Spanish descent or the Catholic
Church.
Standing around a bonfire with kiva leaders outside the church
on Sky City last Christmas Eve, Trujillo began to think about
the possibility of reconciling one person at a time.
"There were atrocities, and we should never forget those
atrocities because they can always be repeated," Trujillo
says. "We need to say we did do those things, and we're sorry
and ask forgiveness. I would like to apologize, personally. I
want this reconciliation. All cultures are here to stay, like
it or not. What are we going to do to live together?"
As matriarch of the pueblo's antelope clan, 66-year-old Velma
Chino is the tribe's chief religious woman, the mother of all
Acomas.
Avoiding debate or blame this year, she prefers to retell the
Acoma story of the creation of the world.
In the beginning, the story says, the creator made two women,
sisters. One stood close to the rising sun and turned dark skinned.
She would be the mother of the Indian people. The other was shielded
from the sun's rays and stayed light skinned. She would be the
mother of non-Indians. Chino remembers the story whenever history
of the battle with the Spanish begins to cloud relationships today.
"I've got two Spanish son-in-laws, and I love them dearly,"
Chino says.
"We should not just look at the differences. We should just
continue living in harmony and peace. We truly are brothers and
sisters.
"I see some of what is happening this year, and I think we
should not fight. Our mother would not like it."
Chino's son, television newsman Conroy Chino, is also a member
of the antelope clan and a pueblo cacique. He has protested the
use of public money to pay for a statue of Oñate, but in
a speech at the Roundhouse last week to kick off the state's 400th
anniversary activities, he counseled New Mexicans to remember
Oñate's deeds but not to be bound by them.
"We should use this time to draw on one another for emotional
support, bridge our worlds and replenish that spiritual bond between
us," he said. "We may have been enemies 400 years ago,
but now our only enemies should be racism, prejudice and ignorance."
The Journal is publishing a biweekly series of history articles
to commemorate the settlement of New Mexico by Juan de Oñate
in 1598. This one covers the expeditions of Espejo in 1582 and
Castaño de Sosa in 1590.
By Miguel Encinias
For the Journal
Antonio de Espejo came to New Spain with Chief Inquisitor Pedro
Moya de Contreras, who had come to the viceroyalty of Mexico to
establish a separate Inquisition for the New World.
But Espejo and his brother Pedro de Espejo soon developed wanderlust
and headed to the northern frontier, where they became fairly
wealthy cattle ranchers.
After making their fortune, the Espejo brothers became implicated
in a killing, after an argument with a cowboy employee. Pedro,
who had actually done the killing in a gunfight, was jailed. Antonio
was assessed a fine, which he refused to pay.
Instead he fled even further north to the remote mining outposts
near San Bartolome.
There he met members of the returning Rodriguez-Chamuscado expedition,
a small group of soldiers and friars that explored New Mexico
in 1581.
The returning soldiers expressed concern about the friars who
had stayed behind at a pueblo near Albuquerque.
The Franciscans at San Bartolome demanded a rescue mission. They
became impatient with delays in such a mission being planned by
the viceroy and attempted to get permission for one of their own
from their superior in Durango.
Permission did not materialize, but a permit of sorts was obtained
from an alcalde mayor of a small frontier town.
Espejo, who was helping organize the mission and paying expenses,
became the leader, but without portfolio, because the expedition
was illegal.
A small band accompanied by only one friar, Bernardino Beltran,
left San Bartolome on Nov. 1, 1582. They followed what had by
now become the usual route to the Conchos River, then headed on
to the Rio Del Norte (Rio Grande).
After crossing the river, the group continued on northward to
the Tiguex area, near present-day Bernalillo, where they looked
for traces of friars Francisco Lopez and Agustin Rodriguez.
Not finding any trace, they visited the Keres Pueblos, then headed
west to Zuni and Hopi lands, going as far as Oraibe. The group
returned to the Galisteo basin, then headed to Pecos and finally
entered Humano territory on the east slope of the Manzano Mountains.
After crossing the mountains back to the river, they headed home,
reaching San Bartolomé on Sept. 10, 1583.
The quick, but thorough, exploration inspired a flurry of curiosity
about the much-explored and still-intriguing north land, but it
would be seven years before another group made the trek.
Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, lieutenant governor of Nuevo Leon,
was the first to move when the governor Luis de Carbajal was arrested
by the newly established Inquisition. Castaño, with the
entire town of Almaden, his headquarters, started moving north.
Castaño had become discontented with Nuevo Leon because
it had not produced the expected wealth.
This and the recurring dream of the great cities to the north
moved him to action after a perfunctory attempt to get official
permission.
The good-sized train composed of women and children left on July
27, 1590, intercepting the Rio del Norte in the general area of
modern Del Rio, Mexico. They crossed the river and started looking
for the Rio Salado (Pecos River).
They floundered in ravines, canyons and mountains in the unimaginably
rough terrain until they found the river, but they could not get
to it because it was in an inpenetrably deep canyon.
The travellers went on for three weeks with the river in sight
before they were able to use its waters.
They followed along the east bank changing sides frequently, depending
on the terrain.
Castaño sent his second-in-command, Cristobal de Heredia,
ahead to look for the pueblos. When he returned, he reported having
reached Pecos, where he received a good reception at first, but
when the Spaniards got careless, they were attacked, and barely
escaped with their lives.
When they returned half-starved, Castaño decided to go
see for himself with 20 of his men. Upon his arrival Dec. 31,
the natives refused to come out, so Castaño attacked, capturing
some of them to use as guides. He went on to the vicinity of San
Juan, then returned to the main body of the expedition, leading
it to the Galisteo valley, where he left it while he went back
to Pecos with 19 men. This time he was received in a friendlier
fashion.
Having in his mind established Spanish authority, he rejoined
the train and headed for Santo Domingo. He was planning to send
some of his men back to New Spain for reinforcements, but a bad
surprise awaited him, which would change his plans and his life.
Miguel Encinias is an Albuquerque historian. His
novel, "Two Lives for Oñate," was published this
year by the University of New Mexico Press.
Copyright © 1997, 1998 Albuquerque Journal
Sunday, June 21, 1998
The Journal is publishing a biweekly series
of history articles to commemorate the settlement of New Mexico
by Juan de Oñate in 1598. This one covers Oñate's
entrance into northern New Mexico in June and July 1598.
By Miguel Encinias
For the Journal
Juan de Oñate returned to his small group of scouts camped
near what is now San Marcial in Socorro County after trying with
limited results to settle discontent in the main body of the expedition,
which was approaching from the south.
Oñate and his party -- his nephews Vicente and Juan de
Zaldivar, Father Alonso Martinez and Capitán Diego de Zubia
-- didn't wait and resumed the northward trek.
The light party arrived at the pueblo of Teypana on June 14, 1598,
where they received a most gracious welcome.
Chief Letoc was not only very generous with his corn, but he also
provided the Spaniards with valuable information about the land
and people up ahead.
In gratitude they named the pueblo "Socorro," or "help,"
a name the village has today.
Four leagues of travel took them to a pueblo they baptized Nueva
Sevilla. There, a halt was called while the Zaldivar brothers
explored the area of Abo, to the northeast.
On June 21, after another short leg, they arrived at a newly built
pueblo they named San Juan Bautista. The natives had abandoned
it so quickly that they left behind a large store of maize and
many art objects.
Oñate and his party camped at the pueblo, and for recreation
conducted the "Moros y Cristianos" pageant.
Curiosity brought the natives back to watch the mock battle of
"Moors and Christians." Among them was an Indian who
went up to Oñate and recited the words "jueves, viernes,
sabado, domingo" -- the Spanish words for Thursday, Friday,
Saturday and Sunday.
The Spaniards did not know what to make of it, feeling that perhaps
the man was mocking them. The native said no more until he saw
that the newcomers were getting angry.
Then he uttered two more words -- "Tomas, Cristobal"
-- and pointed north.
The Spaniards soon understood from others who joined the strange
conversation that the names referred to two Indians who had come
from Mexico with Gaspar Castaño de Sosa and had stayed
behind when the renegade explorer was taken back in chains by
Juan de Morlete.
Oñate was so elated at the news -- which meant that he
would have two good interpreters -- that he decided to hurry on
to Puaray, a large pueblo in the area of modern Bernalillo hoping
to find them there.
When he arrived at Puaray on the June 27, he was told the would-be
interpreters were living at Guipui (Santo Domingo). When Captain
Zubia found the two Mexican Indians they were in bed, but they
went willingly to meet Oñate at Puaray, with a purpose.
They told the general that they were married, had children and
were not willing to go back to New Spain.
The governor told them he had no intention to force them to go
back, but only needed their help in getting to know the area natives
better.
After visiting Zia and San Felipe pueblos, Oñate convoked
a council at Santo Domingo of the seven chiefs he had already
met so they could pledge allegiance to the Spanish king.
Next on the itinerary was Bove, which the Spanish named San Ildefonso,
and San Marcos.
On July 11 the tiny troop reached Okhe, which Oñate would
name San Juan de los Caballeros because of the gentlemen he encountered
there. It was near San Juan that he would establish his capital.
As Gaspar de Villagrá says in his epic poem, "Historia
de la Nueva Mexico": "At the end of adventures and events
and times of sorrow, misadventures too, happy and in great pleasure
(they) did arrive at a fine pueblo, well laid out, to which they
gave the name San Juan, and 'de los caballeros.' ... Here all
the Indians with pleasure did share their houses with our folk.
And when, all lodged and settled down, we were endeavoring to
be good neighbors."
Copyright ©1998 Albuquerque Journal