The Making of the Great West (Illustrated Edition). Samuel Adams Drake
made the Spaniards wonder not a little at the skill and foresight shown in planning and building these natural fortresses, which nothing but famine could conquer. All the water was kept in cisterns. But this was not all the aptitude these people showed in overcoming obstacles or supplying needs. Their cornfields lay at some distance from the town. In this country it hardly ever rains. So the want of rain to make the corn grow was supplied by digging ditches to bring the water from a neighboring stream into the fields. We therefore see how conditions of soil and climate had taught the Indians the uses of irrigation.12
Turning out of the valley of the Rio Grande, to the west, the explorers at length came to the province of Zuñi, where many Spanish crosses were found standing just as Coronado had left them forty years before. Here our Spaniards heard of a very great lake, situated at a great distance, where a people dwelt who wore bracelets and earrings of gold. Part of the company were desirous of going thither at once, but the rest wished to return into New Biscay in order to give an account of all they had seen and heard. So only the leader with a few men went forward, meeting everywhere good treatment from the natives, who in one place, we are told, showered down meal before the Spaniards, for their horses to tread upon, feasting and caressing their strange visitors as long as they remained among them.
ORGAN MOUNTAINS.
These explorers returned to Old Mexico in July, 1583, by the valley of the Pecos,13 to which stream they gave the name of River of Oxen, because they saw great herds of bison14 feeding all along its course.
Out of these discoveries and reports came new attempts to plant a colony on the Rio Grande. Nothing prospered, however, until 1598, when Juan de Oñate15 invaded New Mexico at the head of a force meant to thoroughly subdue and permanently hold it. Oñate was named governor under the viceroy. These Spaniards established themselves on the Rio Grande, not far from where Santa Fé now is. Most of the village Indians submitted themselves to the Spaniards, whose authority over them was, at best, little more than nominal, though the roving tribes, the fierce Apaches and warlike Navajoes, never forgot their hereditary hatred to the Spaniards, with whom they kept up an incessant warfare.
With this expedition came a number of Franciscan missionaries who, as soon as a town was gained over, established a mission for the conversion of the natives. In 1601 Santa Fé was founded and made the capital. In thirty years more the Catholic clergy had established as many as fifty missions which gave religious instruction to ninety towns and villages.
New Mexico had now reached her period of greatest prosperity under Spanish rule. For fifty years more the country rather stood still than made progress. The Spaniards were too overbearing, and the old hostility too deep, for peace to endure. Then, the system of bondage which the Spaniards brought with them from Old Mexico, and most unwisely put in practice here, bore its usual bitter fruit. Determined to be slaves no longer, in 1680 the native New Mexicans rose in a body, and drove the invaders out of the country with great slaughter. Upon the frontier of Old Mexico the fugitives halted, and then founded El Paso del Norte, which they considered the gateway to New Mexico, and so named it. It took the Spaniards twelve years to recover from this blow. By that time little was left to show they had ever been masters of New Mexico. But a new invasion took place, concerning which few details remain, though we do know it resulted in a permanent conquest before the end of the century.
EL PASO DEL NORTE.
As far back as 1687 Father Kino had founded a mission on the skirt of the country lying round the head of the Gulf of California, to which the Spaniards gave the name of Pimeria.16 It will be noticed that once again they were following up the traces of Father Marco and Coronado. When the Spaniards took courage after this defeat, and again entered New Mexico, Kino (1693) founded other missions in the Gila country which in time grew to be connecting links between New Mexico and California, in what is now Arizona.17
Footnotes
1. By Land and Sea. As rivals, both Cortez and Mendoza strove to be beforehand with each other. Cortez despatched Ulloa from Acapulco, northward, July, 1539. Alarcon, sailing by Mendoza's order in 1540, goes to the head of the Gulf of California, and so finds the Colorado River, while a land force, under Coronado, marched north to act in concert with Alarcon.
2. Survivors of Narvaez' Expedition (Florida, 1528). The chief among these was Alvar Nuñez, sometimes called Cabeça de Vaca (literally cow's head), who had been treasurer to the expedition of Narvaez.
3. Cibola. The Zuñi country of our own day. Supposed to be derived from Cibolo, the Mexican bull, and therefore applied to the country of the bison. Cibola is on an English map of 1652 in my possession. Zuñi is thirty miles south of Fort Wingate.
4. Poor Barefooted Friar was Marco de Niza (Mark of Nice), a friar of the Franciscan order. For a long time his story was doubted. It is, in fact, an exaggerated account of what is, clearly, a true occurrence.
5. Vasquez de Coronado. (See note 1.)
6. Colorado (Co-lor-ah´-doe) Spanish, meaning ruddy or red. First called Tizon, meaning a firebrand.
7. Gila, pronounced Hee'la.
8. Rio Grande del Norte, Spanish, Great River of the North. Usually called, simply, Rio Grande.
9. New Biscay. Northernmost province of Mexico, capital Chihuahua (Shee´wah´wah).
10. By Christians. Cabeça de Vaca and his companions.
11. Acoma, one of the seven cities of Cibola; forty-five miles south of old Fort Wingate.
12. Irrigation. Without it, it would hardly be possible to raise crops in New Mexico to-day.
13. Valley of Pecos. East of, and parallel with that of the Rio Grande.
14. Bison. Cabeça de Vaca is the first to mention this animal. One is said to have been kept as a show in Montezuma's garden, where the Spaniards saw it for the first time. See note 3.
15. Juan de Oñate. Hopeless confusion exists concerning the proper date of this invasion.
16. Pimeria essentially corresponds