Читать книгу The Rosas Affair - Donald L. Lucero - Страница 5

1

His Lordship the Governor

MEXICO CITY, KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN,

JANUARY 1637

A footman, acting in place of the duke’s equerry, stood on the path below the garden. “All’s ready, don Luis” he said to the man waiting on the tread of the terrace. “Do you wish for me to bring up the carriage?”

“A moment yet,” replied the governor-applicant, Luis de Rosas, glancing at the landau awaiting him in the courtyard. A moment yet, he thought to himself, one further moment.

The day was bright and clear, crisp winter weather under a brilliant sun. Behind him, the eaves of the two doors leading from a series of palatial halls onto the red-tiled terrace were bright in the morning sun. The eave’s porches of blue tiles and the walls up to the open-eaved roof were decorated with azulejo tiles and chiaroscuro frescos in the Italian design of fronds and foliage spilling from two-handled vases. Before him, his view swept over the walls of the courtyard to a high church and to the huge square façade of the viceregal palace almost transparent in the dazzling light. He could have walked to the palace, but protocol required that on this, his final meeting with the viceroy, he must ride in a carriage.

Rosas, who knew the importance of symbols, bore himself with dignity. He was clad in a rose-colored doublet of rich material worked with rows of silver crescents that sparkled in the sun. In full court dress sans hat, sword, belt, and spurs, his dark, bearded face bordered in a small ruff, he showed only slightly the marks of the pox that had afflicted him as a child. He appeared handsome and rugged with the type of masculine vigor appealing to men. Although sickly in childhood, and suffering all his life with gastric troubles, he showed no outward sign of these ailments or of the tertian fevers with which he was plagued and appeared to be in the peak of health. His medical problems had perhaps impinged on the development of his personality, however. Imbued with a considerable sense of his own importance—although he was, by all accounts, only the son of a merchant—he had been difficult as a child, sullen as a young man, taciturn and stubborn as an adult. Now often rageful and filled with arrogance, his measured bearing on this occasion, would, he felt, show the curious and expectant assembly he was about to meet, that here was a governor possessing presence and energy worthy of their attention.

Rosas knew it was imperative to arrive at the appointed hour. His actions would be observed from the instant his carriage entered the viceregal grounds. And when it did, as the lone occupant of the vehicle, he must appear to be in complete command of the moment. It was early, and, therefore, he waited. He stood at the top of the stairs examining the trappings of his horse, a prancing charger of the finest Spanish breed, waiting impatiently for him to spring onto his back. His horse would, instead, be led behind his carriage from the ducal palace where he had been staying while in negotiation with the viceroy, to the viceregal palace from which he would ride in triumph once he had the cedula (royal decree) confirming his appointment as governor of New Mexico. The preparations for his investiture were a pantheon of symbols, the symbols required of life—and death—in Spanish service. His 15 years of military service as a captain of cuirassiers (cavalry soldiers) in Flanders had taught him the importance of symbols. His attention to these, as well as his keen mind, had assisted him in his rise through the ranks, making him now the confidant and protégé to New Spain’s new viceroy, the Marques de Cadereyta, a knight of Sant’ Iago (St. James). Rosas, as one of the gentlemen in the viceroy’s train, had come with the marques from Spain in 1635. Now, almost two years later—and following the payment of a considerable bribe—his patience in awaiting a lucrative assignment was finally to be rewarded. With a final survey of the duke’s winter garden in which a myriad of rose bushes anticipated a welcome spring, he finished a mental tally of the preparations necessary regarding his horse and carriage.

“You may bring them up now,” he said to the footman.

* * *

The defensive courtyard of the Patio de Armas into which Luis de Rosas rode was flanked on one side by the imposing stables of the viceregal palace containing 30 of New Spain’s finest studs, horses constituting the viceroy’s one obsession. In the stable among these beautiful creatures were the carriages and horses that had brought the members of the audiencia (high court). Opposite the stables, and completing two wings of the patio’s surround, were the offices of the viceroy’s staff. Making a tight circle at the center of the courtyard, Rosas’s carriage made its approach to the palace, arriving square on.

Dismounting before a stone archway in a windowless façade, the governor elect was ushered into the building through its only entrance, a covered loggia or arcade beyond which were broad, open, double-doors, thickly studded and hung with iron. The walls of this gallery were decorated with a rich cloth of raised designs, Italian broccatos (brocades), and painted frescoes whose stiff, geometric patterns reflected European inspiration. A door leading off the entrance hall was held open by two liveried pages, one of whom politely asked Rosas to stand on the threshold of the room’s carved and ornate doorway until he was announced. Waiting at the entrance as he had been asked, Luis stood beneath the doorway’s stone lintel, observing the room’s interior, and dwarfed by its majesty.

Inside the hall, amid a forest of garlanded pillars, palmers, armed with fronds of pine and willow, fanned air that was scented by sprigs of herbs and spices. Rosas admired with great interest the viceroy’s brocade baldachino, a canopy that was erected above the viceroy’s chair. This sign of royalty, the use of which had been denied preceding viceroys, was now being used to accentuate the fact that the viceroy, as the sovereign’s deputy, ruled in New Spain in the king’s stead. As Luis looked at the viceroy’s banner of vermilion on a background of gold damask, he thought that he, too, would have one similarly designed and set out.

The crimson uniforms of viceregal servants, the dazzling short coats of heralds, and the violet jackets of attendants, all cast a regal glow on the walls of the reception hall. The room blazed with the brilliance of their raiments.

Standing beside the viceroy’s chair was a master of ceremonies who briefly glanced in Rosas’s direction before crying out, “Don Luis de Rosas, your Lordship!”

Rosas was ushered into the Salon de Coronas, a great reception hall distinguished by a dado (wainscoting) of azulejo tiles decorated with graceful blue and white designs, and a wooden ceiling, heavily beamed and decorated with radiant crowns. The viceroy, don Lope Diez de Armendariz, Marques de Cadereyta, a self-possessed gentleman with an animated look upon his face, rose from his chair. Twelve other men of honor, all beautifully dressed in their long black robes with ruffled sleeves, joined him in standing to receive Luis de Rosas. Rosas made a motion as to bend his knee.

The viceroy, gentle and pleasant to those with whom he had a close association, reached out with both of his hands and said, “We’ve no need for that, don Luis. Come. Come join us! We’ve been anxiously awaiting your arrival. May I offer you something to drink? A glass of wine perhaps?” He motioned for a servant. “It would be well to have something warm in your belly before meeting with these old men.” The viceroy chuckled at the men standing before him who joined him in his laughter.

“Your health and welfare are all I ask, your Lordship, and if God will maintain these, I shall want for nothing more.”

Elegant in bearing and comely in person, the viceroy was, as the king’s representative, magnificently clothed and jeweled having been exempted from the canon prohibiting Knights of Santiago to wear anything but unadorned rough wool, although he was still obliged to say 15 Mysteries of the Rosary, daily, an imperative which he devotedly observed. He wore the grand, white satin robes of a Knight Commander of the military order of Saint James, his body concealed by the mantle’s cumbrous plaits. With a bright, attractive face and deep-set dark eyes he had a remarkable presence. He introduced Luis de Rosas to each member of the audiencia, with special attention given to its president, Bishop don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, royal troubleshooter and visitor general. For each member of the high court, he offered a brief resume of titles, lineage, and history in Spanish service. The viceroy then motioned for Rosas to occupy the chair of honor to his right. Rosas moved there, standing between the table and his chair awaiting the viceroy’s signal for all to sit.

The visitor general, don Juan de Palafox, whose chair was directly across from that of the governor-applicant, eyed Luis de Rosas with suspicion. Naturally hot-tempered, impatient and proud—and even, perhaps, a bit contemptuous in his manner—he was, nevertheless, one of the viceroy’s most trusted advisors, and he questioned the selection of this particular individual as New Mexico’s tenth governor. The viceroy, Bishop Palafox knew, was a Spanish grandee who, ruling in place of the king, followed the simple and ancient theory of the “hungry falcon.” This was the practice of placing comparatively unknown men into positions of leadership where their ambitions, plus their reliance upon and gratitude toward the individual who had bestowed the honor, could be counted upon to keep them productive and loyal. It was a method followed by Their Catholic Majesties, Fernando and Isabella, who, upon assuming their thrones, had kept tiny notebooks with the names of individuals they met throughout their travels who might be useful to them. The Catholic sovereigns often solicited the advice of these obscure individuals, ultimately inviting some to join their court. However, the sovereigns’ appointees, like those of the viceroy’s, had not always responded as expected.

And had it not been so with the viceroy’s previous selection of governor of New Mexico? thought the visitor general. Was it not Francisco de Martinez de Baeza about whom the New Mexican priest, Antonio de Ibargaray, had been speaking when he wrote:

From the moment he became governor he has attended only to his own profit, causing grave damage to all these recently converted souls. He has commanded them to weave and paint great quantities of mantas and hangings. Likewise, he has made them seek out and barter for many tanned skins and haul quantities of pinon nuts. As a result, he has now loaded eight carretas with what he has amassed and is taking them and as many men from [New Mexico] to drive them to New Spain, thwarting everything His Majesty has ordered in his royal ordinance.

Stiff charges, Palafox thought. Although loath to have others render such scathing judgments regarding one in royal service, he suspected that much of what Ibargaray had written was true. Martinez has proven to be little more than a drummer, he said to himself. We cannot have a repeat of his misrule. We must do a better job in selecting the new governor.

* * *

Distrusting both the Church and his overseas officers, the king, Philip IV, who had ascended to the throne in 1621, had established in New Spain three royal bureaucracies. Designed as somewhat autonomous but interdependent entities with a complicated system of checks and balances, these branches had ill-defined and overlapping jurisdictional boundaries with little definition as to how they were to share power. The first of these entities was the viceroyalty which wielded authority through a number of provincial governors and which administered in all matters civil and military. The viceroy, therefore, in selecting the governor of New Mexico, did not require the approval of the audiencia, the second of the three entities which constituted the district court of appeals. The third entity, the episcopate, the system of church government by bishops, was charged with ecclesiastical administration. The king knew that litigation among the three resulting from petty jealousies and jurisdictional disputes would check the power of each, while keeping him informed of affairs in the most remote corners of the Spanish empire.

* * *

Kind to his friends, cruel to his enemies, the viceroy was a man of practical skills. To assure that civil and military authority remained in his control, he sought the advice of others but ruled alone. Astute and unusually accurate in his judgment of men and other matters, he had the ultimate responsibility of choosing the new governor, and he wanted Luis de Rosas.

Looking around the room at the men who were gathered there the viceroy placed his right hand on top of Rosas’s left hand and said, “Senores, as you’re aware, don Luis and I have been meeting to work out the various aspects of his contract as governor of New Mexico, and I’m convinced that I have the right man for this assignment. But do not think that we’re here for you merely to ratify my choice. I earnestly seek your advice and counsel in the selection of governor for New Mexico. And I especially request your assistance in the instructions he is to receive relative to the conduct of his office. In the Lord’s name,” he said, as he smiled at those before him, “I now ask for your advice and assistance.”

Don Juan de Palafox, visitor general and president of the audiencia, whose velvet stockings and matching slippers were briefly visible beneath his black cassock, gazed about the room. He knew that it was his responsibility to set the tone for the inquiry, since few of the others would question the viceroy’s choice in the selection of governor. If, therefore, his was the only voice the viceroy and governor-applicant might hear, he had to ask the questions the other members of the audiencia were reluctant to express.

The duo, Rosas and Palafox, observed one another shrewdly, each trying to deduce the thoughts of the other. The pause gave Rosas and the president time to evaluate the gap that lay between them and the audiencia members, time to advise one another as to where their advantage and security lay.

There was a long moment before the president spoke. “I wonder if you truly understand the honor and responsibility being placed upon your shoulders?” His intelligent eyes betraying his wariness of the viceroy’s selection, he added in a contemptuous manner, “I wonder if a man of such meager experience can be truly aware of the difficulties he’ll encounter as governor of such a remote province.” He moved to the front of his chair. “There’s an oft-quoted adage regarding the physical and political climate of New Mexico that expresses it well, don Luis,” he stated, looking directly at the governor applicant. “ ‘Ocho meses de invierno y cuatro de infierno!’ Yes, eight months of winter and four of hell, for New Mexico is but a spare and unproductive land,” he said, “blistering hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter. And although covered in abundant forests, its trees are not subject to forestation, for there are no roads or bridges. Communication is poor, and you’ll be almost totally isolated, cut off from succor or aid.” He paused, and then continued, “The land is colonized by an ignorant and vulgar people, don Luis, a people utterly obsessed with their rights and privileges. A vain-glorious people, bloated with a quite unjustifiable pride in the purity of their blood and in their nobility. You’ll not be welcome among them, for they’re uncourteous to strangers, regarding them with suspicion, if not with outright hostility. They live in mean dwellings, domesticated strong-houses with heavily gated doors reflecting a harsh way of life and built only for defense. These doors will not be opened to you, don Luis, for you’ll not be welcome there,” he repeated. “They’re a tight-knit group,” he continued, “so knotted up through intrigue and intermarriage as to form an intricate web of family relationships impossible to penetrate and difficult to unravel so that it’s impossible to determine where their loyalties lie. It will be of no avail to speak to them regarding their obligations toward royal governors, for even their priests defy proper authority, administering the sacraments to the native converts—and to the faithful as well—in complete disobedience to the holy Council.1 A colony of cousins, they’re a troublesome and obstinate lot, don Luis, full of animus and deception, dedicated to land and family aspirations. They feel they can only count on themselves, and so distant are they from royal authority, that they’ll not easily subject themselves to central control and will not participate in governmental affairs.”

Palafox waited then, waited for his pronouncements to sink in and to be fully appreciated by the governor-applicant who sat there quietly, attentive to the cleric’s words. After a moment, Palafox said, “I apprise you of these things not to discourage you, but to make sure that you’re aware of the extraordinary difficulties you’ll encounter as governor of so remote a province. Do you think you’re ready for this?”

Rosas, who knew the importance of his answers, especially in gaining the approval of those who might be wavering in their support, waited a long and painful moment before replying, his words and tone then calculated to make the greatest impact. After a bit, he said, “I have served on the frontier and have lived the life of a soldier.” Looking at Bishop Palafox straight on and then at each of the men spread about the room, he went on, “And being but a poor soldier, I consider my potential appointment as governor an exceptional honor and will accept it with justifiable pride, and with complete awareness of the burden being placed upon me.”

The viceroy, who had been listening quietly, sat for a long time in silence, surveying the room. His eyes scanned the faces of the members of the audiencia looking for suggestions of approval or disapproval but seeing neither. He asked the president, “Perhaps you’d like to include questions regarding his instructions as part of your inquiry?”

His hands flat before him, Palafox pushed himself to the back of his chair. “Yes, I think that would be helpful,” he responded.

The viceroy’s instructions, previously developed in conjunction with the audiencia, filled seven pages of the book the president now laid before Rosas.

“These,” the president said, “are only the most urgent. If appointed to the position of governor of New Mexico, you will be given more complete details before the departure of your train. Your primary responsibility upon assuming your post would be to re-establish royal command and authority by your personal attention to martial law,” the president said in reference to the New Mexico colonists who seemed to be holding on tenaciously to a medieval dream. “You’ll have to oversee the selection of a new cabildo (town council). At present, some of the councilmen are in confederation with brigands, while other members have intimidated some. We need representatives who are willing to listen to the suggestions we might make for the improvement of our northern kingdom. And we need priests who will allow someone other than their sacred selves to suggest them.

“Equal to that,” the president continued, “is the re-establishment and expedition of Royal justice. In that regard, the governor elect will be required to conduct Martinez’s residencia, the mandatory judicial review of one’s administration. I’m afraid that we’ll find much there that will be of concern to us. And we, of course, look forward to the determinations you might make. Are you equal to these tasks?” the president asked.

Rosas had heard of the passion with which the New Mexican colonists asserted their rights and their independence from royal authority, attitudes exacerbated by the apparent failure of his predecessor, Martinez de Baeza, to assert his control. “I know of these people and of their kabylistic tendency to divide themselves into clans, even into different tribes,” he said, echoing a sentiment previously articulated by the viceroy in reference to the relationship of the early Iberians to the people of the Kabyl tribes. “Some have expressed this tendency as a matter of race, while I see it as an artifact of our ancient times, for they, like us, are shepherds by choice when they’re not soldiers. Their psychology is that of wanderers who will forever fight central authority. Their natural tendency is toward disruption and disunion, which, I believe, can only be contained by the most vigorous, if not the most restrictive, exercise of authority. For no matter their protests to the contrary,” he said, gazing about the room, “New Mexico is not a seigniorial regime in which its lords rule their lands and the tenants on them. New Mexico may be a nation of shepherds and remote beyond compare, a land where sheep are used in place of money, but in one way or another, and with the help of God, I will restore order and authority there and will punish those who are causing difficulty. Your Excellencies may be certain that in anything that involves His Majesty’s service, I shall not be found wanting,” he said gravely, again scanning the faces before him. “I’ll do whatever’s required to clean out the Augean stable you’ve described. And when all is said and done, the colonists will get what they deserve.”2

These were the right words and the members of the audiencia smiled and nodded their assent. The bishop, who could wield a sword with both hands, determined to give his vote to the avowedly anti-clerical Rosas, but also to keep his eye on him. Looking across the table with solemnity, his long face, sharp nose, and high forehead, reflecting his gentle birth, he spoke politely and with sentiment, saying, “I have every faith that you’ll do your work well.” He then looked at the viceroy, nodded his head in agreement at the viceroy’s choice, and speaking to Rosas directly, said, “You may now wear a hat.”

The members of the audiencia stood and a great silence invaded the hall. Placed before the viceroy were the symbols of Rosas’s office, his sword, helmet, and spurs. President and Bishop Juan de Palafox, who had risen from his chair with the others, walked around the table and with much gravity grasped Rosas’s sword and belt and assisted the new governor in putting them on. Kneeling before Rosas, a page affixed the governor’s long silver spurs to his high riding boots, while the governor, assisted by President Juan de Palafox, placed a small hat of crushed velvet upon his head.

After this was accomplished, the viceroy said, “Senores y Caballeros, Gentlemen, I give you don Luis de Rosas, military commander, captain-general, governor of New Mexico!”

Rosas knelt at the feet of the viceroy who had remained seated throughout his investiture. The governor’s induction completed, Rosas removed his bonnet and laid it courteously in the viceroy’s hands signifying, thereby, that he was the king’s man. The viceroy accepted his hat and placed it aside. Then, putting his hands in the viceroy’s palms, and swearing to defend his lord faithfully and to protect the New Mexican kingdom from its enemies, Luis de Rosas waited for what seemed an eternity for the viceroy’s response to his gesture of vassalage.

“You’ll meet with Fray Tomas Manso, procurador-general of the province, who is responsible for the missionary supply service and will proceed as he advises you,” the viceroy said to Rosas. And then to the members of the audiencia who had remained on their feet, the viceroy said, “We will honor the governor’s request to dispense with the festivities and entertainments this occasion would ordinarily require. Governor don Luis de Rosas has asked only that we share a glass of wine with him and that he be allowed to proceed with arrangements for going to his new home.” Finally releasing Rosas from his grasp, he stood, raised the governor to his feet, and embraced him most graciously and affectionately. Wine was poured for all present. Several toasts were offered.

“We wish to hear of your progress as you go along your way until you are beyond sight and sound,” the viceroy said. “Please make sure that we do so. Go with God, my dear Rosas!” He then gave the governor the kiss of peace and dismissed him from his chambers.

Several of the men with whom Luis had met followed the new governor through the heavy oaken doors of the viceregal palace and into the courtyard, ablaze in winter light. These so-called hombres ricos (the rich and powerful moguls), trim and haughty gentlemen carrying fluttering banners and Toledo blades, mounted horses that were now being brought to them. Their horses were caparisoned with silver-studded saddles, silver horseshoes, and bridles.

The governor’s friend, the duque de Segorbe, at whose home Rosas had been staying while engaged in his many meetings with the viceroy, sprang from his own horse and held the governor’s stirrup so that he could mount. Luis hesitated for a moment, his left hand grasping the pommel of his saddle, looking down at the gentleman who knelt at his feet. Theirs was friendship of convenience only, with little pretense of affection or loyalty, and the duke, Rosas knew, would throw him to the wolves if it provided the duke with an advantage. But that was all right, Luis thought, for I would do the same. However, this incredible gesture of humility, so uncharacteristic and unexpected of a royal knight, pleased him immensely. He had arrived in New Spain without position or prospects, and was now, with the duke’s assistance, to be the ninth individual to serve as governor of New Mexico. He thanked the duke for his gesture, truly gratified that Segorbe had sought to put the stamp of importance on the event, for Rosas had only Segorbe with whom to share the proud moment. There was no one else.

Rosas lifted himself into his saddle glittering with gold gaud interspersed with red. The governor’s boots were now adorned with the silver spurs, and he was girdled with a sword, its pommel of acacia wood wrapped in silver. On his head he wore the hat he had retrieved from the viceroy. Made by hand with the flora and fauna of his adobe kingdom sewed in with gold embroidery, it was one of the most important symbols of his office. He wielded a rod of holly in place of his lance as he and his small retinue clattered out of the courtyard.

* * *

On their return from the Zocalo, the central plaza around which the governor and the other members of his slight entourage had briefly ridden, Segorbe and Rosas retired to the duke’s study where they sat before his blazing fireplace. The duke smiled at the fledgling governor, a man with whom he had fought in Flanders and with whom he was now engaged in the mercantile business in New Spain. The new governor, the duke knew, was in every way excessive, headstrong, and ambitious, one of the lowest grade, who, because of his successes in battle while in Flanders, had grown so proud and arrogant that he had become insufferable to his men. Glorying in the spectacle of battle where the prize goes to the bold and the brave, he had become coarse and dogmatic, lacking any of the refinements he had pretended to when he had presented himself at the viceregal palace. He was, nevertheless, the pawn in the duke’s opening move or gambito in the duke’s attempt to gain economic advantage in Spain’s most remote Northern Kingdom. The viceroy, who had waited a long time before replacing Martinez as governor of New Mexico, had found in Luis de Rosas a ruthless soldier who would again assert civil and military control in the Northern Kingdom. This pawn, Rosas, the duke thought to himself, has reached the eighth row on the chessboard without being captured by a member of any opposing army we fought. He deserves this promotion, if not a “queening,” then a governorship. Self-styled as a grandmaster in the game of political chess, Rosas might, as the king’s knight’s pawn, eventually have to be sacrificed, as Martinez de Baeza had been, in the crown’s struggles with New Mexico’s recalcitrant colonists and priests. Segorbe’s gloomy prediction for Rosas was that he would not long endure among the New Mexican settlers. But while he survives, the duke thought, the governor’s single-mindedness and strength of purpose, uncluttered by peripheral issues, can be counted upon to make both the governor and myself a sizeable fortune.

“Martinez is as good as dead,” the duke said to Luis while grasping and ringing the small bell that sat on his table. “You may, in conducting his residencia, appear kind and benevolent while taking whatever you damn well please.”

“I think I can do that,” Rosas said with a broad grin. “I think I feel benevolence coming on. Almost like a seizure,” he said with a satisfied smile. “Or perhaps it’s flatulence, I don’t know. I get those two mixed up,” he added laughingly, as he requested another glass of wine from the servant who had arrived at the duke’s summons.

The two men waited for the servant to leave before continuing their conversation regarding New Mexico. After a time the duke said in a more earnest tone, “You know, don Luis, the power is in your hands. Martinez will do whatever’s necessary to save his worthless neck, pay whatever’s required for a favorable report. He’s as good as dead,” Segorbe repeated. “And that being true, you may take the best animal in his herd.” A short pause, then he went on, “The Indians of New Mexico are required to pay tribute and Martinez knows the business of maize and mantas and skins. He can be made to pass the business on to you. That’s the way it is,” he said emphatically. “You’re to be paid two thousand pesos annually for your service as governor of New Mexico, hardly enough to get you there and to support you in anything befitting your position, and certainly less than the eight thousand you paid to secure the post. And, by the way,” he added, pointing a long bony finger at the new governor, “don’t forget that you owe me four thousand of that. We have to make a profit on our investment. And both the crown and the viceroy are prepared to tolerate our business enterprises so long as the sounds of weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth do not reach their ears. The decade of exemption for the Pueblos has passed,” he added, “and a workforce in New Mexico, both unpaid and forced, is readily available. Your plan should be as we sketched it: to divide and conquer. It shouldn’t be difficult, Luis. The colonists and Indians there carry either a candle or a club. Your goal should be as we outlined it, to castrate the colonists while separating both the colonists and the Indians from their priests. I look forward to receiving your mantas and skins when your carretas return with the wagon train,” he said again, smiling, while reaching for a bag that he had placed beneath the table and rising to his feet. “I give you this as a token of our contract.” The duke handed the governor a velvet bag in which a chess set had been placed. “To New Mexico!” he said as he raised his glass in a toast. “May it reward us greatly!”

2

Fray Tomas Manso and the Service of Missionary Supply

The governor dismounted from his horse in the shadow of the convento and proceeded to its gate, slapping at his thigh with the short whip he carried in his hand. Reaching the porteria (convento gate) of the walled enclosure, he tapped on it lightly with the butt of his crop, then more soundly, finally beating on its wooden staves with his closed fist. “Goddamn it!” he yelled, as the door opened to reveal a curious face. “Were you waiting for Father Francis’s steward to announce my arrival?” he asked repeating a proverb often used in Castile. “You did expect me, did you not?” he shouted, as he rudely brushed by the portero (gatekeeper) who had opened the door.

“Yes, your Lordship,” the servant responded meekly. “The fathers are at prayer. The walls are thick, your Lordship, and the cells are beyond the walls of the courtyard so that I did not hear you,” he explained apologetically with smiling scrapes and bows as he ushered the governor into an inner chamber. “Fray Manso will be with you in a moment.”

“In a moment,” the governor muttered to himself. “Tell him that I’m waiting!” he said emphatically, slapping at his thigh.

Procurator-General Fray Tomas Manso, who was responsible for purchasing and stockpiling missionary supplies for the northern kingdom, finally appeared in the doorway, his eyes sharp, discerning. Having never experienced the manner in which he had been summoned, the well-respected friar stood there surveying the man who had demanded his presence saying, finally, and with ill-disguised annoyance, “Please come with me.”

Fray Manso led the governor into the convento’s interior patio and then to a storeroom whose lock he opened with a large key kept on a chain that was hanging around his neck. Flecks of dust floated in the sunlight as he opened the storeroom’s huge oaken doors. Two 200-pound bronze bells partially blocked the entrance. Working their way around the bells, Fray Manso and the governor stepped inside.

Arrayed alongside one of the storeroom’s inner walls were oil paintings of saints in gilded frames and several huge illuminated choir books which Fray Manso said contained introits and antiphonies for various saints’ days. “These piles over here,” Manso said of the mounds heaped against the opposite wall, “contain forty pairs of sandals; twelve large latches for church doors with their locks, keys, and ring staples; and one-hundred and twenty Sevillian locks with their keys for the cells, or private rooms for my brethren. Those other piles,” he said, pointing to the back wall, “contain replacement parts, the supplies required for rebuilding our wagons, such as, spare axels, extra spokes, extra iron tires, and the tools required for their construction. And there is the equipment required for building a church, axes, adzes, small hand saws, long two-man saws, chisels, augers and planes, as well as the spikes, nails, pins, and tacks required to hold it together.”

“What’s in these?” Rosas asked, as he rapped on one of the many barrels arrayed about the room.

“The dry casks contain raisins, almonds, sugar, saffron, pepper, and cinnamon,” responded Fray Manso, “while the wet casks are filled with olive oil, peach and quince preserves, syrup, honey, wine, and vinegar. And these, of course,” he said of the damask vestments hanging from pegs on the wall, “are required by my brothers in their ministries. The colors alone should dazzle the natives,” he said with a satisfied smile.

They walked about the room with Fray Manso dutifully showing and explaining the need for each object. The governor, largely silent but in deep thought, tested the heft of the metal goods provided, lifting one of the lighter ones above his head and then dropping it onto its pile.

“And how many wagons will we have?” the governor questioned.

“We’ll have thirty-two wagons traveling in two groups of sixteen, two of the wagons allocated for your belongings.”

“I’ll need four wagons in addition to those I have,” the governor said.

“That’s impossible,” Fray Manso answered abruptly, his patrician face and lined forehead now betraying his anger. “What you see here is the result of eighteen months of work,” said the priest, brushing at the pale fringe of his hair. “We’re the only regularly scheduled freight and mail service to the Northern Kingdom, and we only go every three years. I’m sure that you would not ask that the friars be denied food or clothing merely to accommodate you,” he added in a haughty manner, while kicking at one of the large bells with a sandaled foot. “We can spare no more than two wagons,” he stated. “Perhaps you can purchase some of the things you’ll need from Governor Martinez. He may be happy to leave his possessions there so as to give him more room for the hides, salt, paintings, and pinon nuts he seeks to bring back.”

“I’ll not have cast-offs in my home,” the governor said, “nor will I wear bits and pieces or hand-me-downs. You must remember that I have a distinguished station to uphold or imperial influence will suffer. Whose wagons are these anyway?” he asked angrily.

“Well, it’s not all that easy to say,” Manso responded while shaking his head. “Initially, the cost of each wagon and its sixteen mules was paid for by the crown. To be exact, three hundred seventy-four pesos and four tomines. But we’re to assume the upkeep of the wagons and the replacement of mules, so is it a shared responsibility and ownership?” he asked with a shrug. “I don’t know. But as far as I’m concerned, they’re ours. They belong to the Custody.”

“Well, I don’t really give a shit who they belong to as long as I get my share,” responded the governor in kind. “I must have at least three of your wagons and where you put these other things is of no concern to me. My equipment and gear will be on your carts when we leave,” the governor said as they exited the storeroom.

Fray Manso placed the padlock in its hasp and did not respond, walking quickly through the patio and then down the hallway with the governor, leading him to the exit.

3

Francisco Gomez and the Baggage Train

The fardage, or baggage train, was composed of beasts and wooden carts, some of which contained the dishes, bedding, tapestries, and other possessions of the governor’s household. It was spread out in the courtyard of the Convento Grande, the Principal House of the Holy Gospel, where Fray Tomas Manso was inspecting it.

The wagons—heavy, four-wheeled, iron-tired freight wagons drawn by teams of sixteen mules—were each capable of hauling two tons of equipment and merchandise. Inspecting the train with Fray Manso was Captain Francisco Gomez, a heavy-set individual with red hair, beard, and a flowing mustache, all streaked with gray, who, with a detachment of fourteen soldiers, had been sent from New Mexico to escort the governor to his adobe kingdom. A handsome man with light-colored eyes and a wound mark above his right eyebrow, Gomez was a natural leader and confidently assumed his responsibility for the train.

“He has everything on his carts, even, I suspect, stones for his mangonel,” remarked Fray Manso shaking his head in disgust.

Before them, were seven wagons bearing the governor’s personal things—his bed furnishings, garments, books and documents—tied up in hide-bound sacks or stored in chests. His kitchen, appointed with numerous pots and pans, was slung beneath one of his wagons. Two additional carts, which the governor had placed behind his personal wagon, contained articles of foodstuff and wine for the lengthy journey. Then came several canvas-topped carts burdened with baskets and chests containing carpets and wall hangings for the governor’s lodging. Twelve pack mules bearing the governor’s table service as well as other household items were also burdened with a heavy oak table and its chairs, and a banquet service of twelve silver dishes and cups. Guards attended by several alferezes (ensigns) bearing the governor’s armor and tack brought up the rear.

Gomez, a Portuguese soldier formerly in service to the Onates, and one who gave his first allegiance to the king’s man whoever he was, said, “I’m sure that he’ll become a more reasonable traveler as we go along.”

“You think so?” Fray Manso asked with a smile.

“We can only hope,” answered the 61-year old Gomez who had seen it all.

* * *

With the sun rising over their right shoulders, and with prayers rendered to God for a safe journey, the members of the wagon train set out. They rode aboard freight wagons, and astride saddle mules and horses, their faces set northward toward the mining town of Zacatecas. The whip-cracking muleteers on the train’s 36 heavy, groaning wagons damned their mule teams and their misfortune at drawing this assignment. Assorted retainers, an extra team of 16 mules for each wagon, and meat on the hoof, brought up the rear.

Blas de Miranda, who, like Francisco Gomez, had been a member of several previous wagon escorts, was asked by Gomez to divide the train into smaller and more manageable units: two squadrons of eighteen wagons each, broken down into four nine-wagon divisions, with each squadron under the command of a wagon master. With the assistance of Nicolas Ortiz, who had also been a member of previous wagon trains, Miranda now made that division. The two lead wagons rumbling side-by-side flew banners displaying the governor’s coat of arms, their teams distinctively caparisoned and wearing bells on their harnesses. The two young wagon masters, Miranda and Ortiz, rode beside their lead wagons, while Gomez, as mayordomo or conductor of the train, trailed behind.

“That man—Gomez?” Rosas asked of one of his aides, as they rode beside the governor’s lead wagons. “What do you know of him?”

“Little,” his aide responded. “Only that he’s an encomendero, or ‘estate holder,’ one of the kingdom’s most prominent soldiers, and the strongest defender of royal authority as vested in the governor. I think that he has no love for Governor Martinez,” his aide continued, “yet Martinez can count on Gomez’s loyalty until the day he leaves office, for that, they say, is the manner of the man.” His aide, who was attending to his horse that had stumbled on uneven ground, continued, “Some say that he’s an alborayco, the son or grandson of a Jew from Portugal forcibly converted to Christianity.”

“And you know little of him, is that right?” the governor laughed. “With what you’ve told me I could either give him the kiss of peace or send him to the gallows. Tell him that when we camp at Queretaro, I’d like him to take council with me.”

“Yes, your Lordship,” his aide answered as he slowed his horse’s pace to drop in with the rear guard. “I’ll tell him!” he shouted.

* * *

At Queretaro, the first important station on their way north, they made their camp. Ringed about with mountains, Queretaro lay in a wide rolling plain, open during the day to the winter sun. On the move, with just a night’s camp expected, the governor had only the canvas of his field tent erected within which he now sat, a velvet robe draped across his shoulders against the evening’s chill. His servants entered and unfolded a day bed and draped it with several portable and lightweight sarapes del campo. These utilitarian camp blankets of natural dark-colored wool, striped with small bands of red, provided the only color in the canvas room. The servants then brought in a small writing desk, candles, a firebox full of radiant coals, wine and glasses. Also among their kitchen paraphernalia, were two large bowls, several spoons, a ladle, a kettle of soup and a tureen into which to pour it. The servants, having made things inviting with furnishings and food, removed themselves, pulling the flap of the tent closed behind them.1

In the last of twilight, Francisco Gomez watched the fog that back-dropped the encampment, hesitating at the entrance of the field tent before calling out and then lifting the flap. “Your Lordship,” Gomez said in a verbal salute, “you requested I meet with you?”

“Don Francisco,” the governor responded appearing at the door like a cowled monk with his robe draped about his shoulders. “Please, please, come in and add your warmth to my poor household,” he said as he sat on one of the large cushions arranged about the canvas room. “And you may dispense with formal titles while we’re on the road,” he added as he beckoned Gomez to take a seat. “You may call me don Luis.”

“I wouldn’t be comfortable addressing you in that manner, your Lordship,” Gomez responded, speaking politely, but without excessive deference.

“Governor, then,” Rosas responded with some annoyance. “You may call me governor.”

Gomez declined the bison robe offered him for warmth and waited for the governor to continue, thinking that the manner in which Rosas was looking at him suggested that he was disturbed about something. Gomez looked directly at the governor, trying to discern in Rosas’s countenance the nature of his annoyance, turning over in his mind the many possibilities. He waited.

“I understand from Fray Manso that we’ll be at least four months on the road, and I mean to make use of every moment of that time to learn the secrets of New Mexico,” the governor said.

“And how may I be of service to you?” Gomez asked.

“I’ve been told that you’re the most outstanding military official in the kingdom,” Rosas said, further drawing his robe about his shoulders. “I don’t say this to flatter you, but to tell you that I expect much from you—as one soldier to another.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to assist you, your Lordship—pardon me,” Gomez laughed, “Governor.”

“Soup?”

“Yes, please. May I serve it?” Gomez asked.

“This I can do myself,” Rosas responded, as he ladled the contents of the tureen into two bowls and placed them side by side on the small writing desk before continuing. “This should compare favorably to your usual fare,” the governor exclaimed, knowing that Gomez’s typical food was the same as that enjoyed by his men: a scanty repast of one meal a day consisting of a small piece of meat, red chile, beans, and tortillas (maize cakes), with a cup of chocolate and a piece of bread in the late evening. “I have much to ask,” Rosas continued, “but first, tell me a little about yourself. I like to know with whom I’m dining.”

Gomez waited a long moment before responding. Clearly uncomfortable in speaking about himself, he stroked his graying mustache with the tips of his fingers saying, finally, “The facts are few, Governor. My origins are in Portugal. In Coina, five leagues from Lisbon. You may know it.”

“Lisbon, yes, but not Coina,” the governor responded. “A port city, I assume?”

“On the interior a bit,” Gomez responded, “with access to the sea like Lisbon, but much smaller, of course.” He waited before continuing, looking about the tent, choosing his words carefully as he said. “I’m the son of Manuel Gomez and Ana Vicente, both of whom died when I was a child. I was raised and schooled by my older brother, Fray Alvaro Gomez, a Franciscan in the Convento Grande in Lisbon and Commissary of the Holy Office. When I was thirteen,” he went on, speaking deliberately “I passed into the service of don Alonso de Onate at the Court of Madrid. He was there pleading the case of his brother, don Juan de Onate, regarding don Juan’s New Mexico contract. He brought me with him to Mexico when he returned there.”

“And when was that?” Rosas asked politely, as the two dipped into their soup.

“It was in sixteen four or five,” Gomez responded with uncertainty, “a year before I joined don Juan in New Mexico.

“Juan de Onate? New Mexico’s first governor?” Rosas asked rhetorically.

“Yes, New Mexico’s adelantado,” Gomez responded regarding the honorific office Onate had held. “I first served with don Juan, and then with Governor Felipe de Sotelo, whom I also escorted to New Mexico. I’ve been in service to the office of the governor since my arrival there.”

“As an encomendero?” Rosas asked. “As the recipient of an encomienda, one sworn to answer the governor’s call to arms when requested?”

“Yes, one of thirty-five in the colony,” Gomez responded. “My encomienda, good for three lifetimes in succession,2 is at the pueblo of the Pecos,” Gomez went on, giving no hint of the breadth of his extensive holdings which included New Mexico’s best-watered lands, tribute from its most prosperous Indian villages, and access to trade.

“The entire pueblo?” the governor asked incredulously. “Was the entire pueblo given to you?”

“Not the use of native land or labor, Governor, but the collection of tribute as personal income. I am allowed to collect tribute from the entire pueblo of Pecos, except for twenty-four houses which are held by the Maese de campo, my friend, Pedro Lucero de Godoy. Also from two and a half parts of the pueblo of Taos, half of the Hopi pueblo of Shongopovi, half of the pueblo of Acoma except for twenty houses, half of the pueblo of Abo,” he continued, “and the entire pueblo of Tesuque, although I receive services from the people there in lieu of tribute.” 3

The governor rubbed his hands together, looked at Gomez, raised his eyebrows, and blew between pursed lips. “And what do the other thirty-four have” he asked of the remaining encomenderos, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I won’t attempt to justify the amount of tribute I’ve been allotted, your Lordship,” Gomez said, flushing slightly and reverting to the governor’s more formal title, “except to say that I’ve been deeply honored to have carried out many commissions for the governors under whom I’ve served. My services have been very generously rewarded, far in excess of what I deserve. There are, however, over forty thousand Christianized Indians living in forty-three pueblos in New Mexico, and the range of our responsibilities is enormous.”

“And the tribute consists of . . . ?”

“Maize and a manta or animal skin, collected twice a year,” Gomez responded. “The manta is a piece of cotton cloth six palms square, reckoned in price at six reales. A buckskin, bison hide, or a light or heavy elk skin of the same value, may be substituted for a manta,” Gomez said, “with cloth and skins collected in May and a fanega of corn in October after the harvest.” 4

“And what do the Indians get for all of this?” Rosas asked.

“It’s difficult to say, Governor,” Gomez responded pensively. “As vassals of the crown they’re required to pay tribute. And the king has granted us encomiendas for our pledge to defend the land at our own expense. Those of us who have been designated as encomenderos are to maintain arms and horses, live in Santa Fe, and respond to the governor’s call to arms at a moment’s notice. We ride escort, serve as guards, and command levies from colonists and Indian auxiliaries in the colony’s defense. We like to think we make the kingdom a safer place to live, but in truth, your Lordship, I think the Indians get little from what we offer. We defend them from the vaqueros as best we can, but there are few of us, many of them, and millions of miles to cover. We assure the safety of the friars so that the Pueblos 5 are instructed in Christianity and in the ways of civilization, but, really, the Indians want little of that. They do not get much of what they truly want or need from Spanish authority.”

“Are all the pueblos allotted?” Rosas asked. “My instructions say only that the crown has reserved the right to collect tribute from principal towns and seaports, and I know there are none of the latter there.”

“Tribute from the native settlements has been conceded by the crown to the colonists themselves. Approximately sixty so-called ‘units of ‘entrustment’ have been allotted during the past forty years,” Gomez explained.

“There was a time, Governor, when the number of pueblos may have exceeded the one hundred and thirty-four named by Onate. These were small and large villages containing from twenty to seven hundred and fifty rooms, some with defensive walls such as at Pecos. But the Pueblos were constantly on the move,” he explained, “uniting and then dispersing like bees in a hive. Whole tribes have disappeared, extinguished by warfare and by assimilation, some of the latter forced on them by us. In the fifty years from the initiation of the colonization by Onate to your administration, the number of pueblos has been reduced by two-thirds, so that now there are fewer than fifty of them left. Several of these pueblos are unassigned, but the fact that they have not been allotted undoubtedly means that they have little to offer in the way of tribute. Still, Governor, they’re there. And they may be awarded by you to whomever you wish so long as your awards do not compromise the awards of your predecessors,” he concluded, warning the governor by his words that he knew the authority under which he held his claims.

The governor looked at Gomez in deliberation, saying finally, “There’s much to consider regarding these encomiendas, much to consider. Your thoughts and the information you’ve provided have been of considerable assistance to me. I’d like these discussions regarding New Mexico to continue as we go along our way.” He waited a long moment before continuing, saying finally, “But please, finish your soup. Take the rest of it. I need something more. Something to deal with this god-damned constipation,” he added while rubbing his distended stomach. “Would you like some more?” he asked, regarding the soup.

“No, thank you, Governor.”

“When your work allows,” Rosas continued, “I’d like you to dine with me.”

“When my work allows,” Gomez responded. Taking the governor’s words and tone as a cue for his dismissal, he rose from his cushion, excused himself, and moved toward the entrance where he said. “You might have one of your servants find some acacia, agave or algerita, your Lordship. All of them are good for constipation. If they can’t identity these plants,” he added, “tell them to ask one of my men. Have them make a tea of it,” he added as he left the tent.

4

On the Trail

ZACATECAS. THREE WEEKS LATER

What’s that ahead—Zacatecas?” asked the governor regarding the hump-backed mountain somewhat resembling a hog bladder which loomed on the northern horizon.

“The home of the Onates,” Francisco Gomez responded, pointing to the promontory of La Bufa crowned by bare greenish rock. “Its mines, perhaps the best ever found in the Americas, helped to finance the settlement of your New Mexican Kingdom.” He brought his horse up so that he was riding beside the governor. “There was a time, Governor, not so long ago,” he continued, “when we could not have approached this villa without arms. The Chichimecas, or the dirty, uncivilized dogs, as we were prone to call them, were incredibly fierce warriors—cannibals even—who inhabited the deserts and sierras of this region just a short time ago. They’re largely gone now,” Gomez said, “killed or shipped off to the docks at Vera Cruz or to mines throughout the kingdom, men who’ve been changed from lions into hens. It’s too bad,” he said in rueful admiration. “They had much to admire, for they possessed courage inferior to no one, and before our arrival, they never knew slavery or servitude. We may see a few of those remaining in the market place or along the road, their bodies clothed now, and their voices stilled. We may see them, but they will not be the people they once were, for we took what they had and left them a sad and broken people with no interest in, or aptitude for, village life. They’re neither civilized nor productive members of the Spanish community,” he said as he reigned up at the train’s approach to an obvious fork in the road. “Do you wish to enter the city?” he asked of the governor. “Your host here will be the local superior or father guardian at the Parroquia de San Francisco de Zacatecas. The convento itself, however, is in open country at some distance from the town, so that unless you wish to do so, we’re not required to enter the city to visit the parroquia which is just down this road.”

“I don’t think it will be necessary to go into the city and I’ll take advantage of the guardian’s generosity as long as I don’t have to do the stations,” Rosas laughed, registering his dislike for visiting churches. We’ll take advantage of the fathers’ hospitality, but I’d like to be on our way again as soon as possible.”

“As you wish, Governor.”

SANTA BARBARA

Leaving the Custody of Zacatecas where its father guardian had sought to instruct Luis de Rosas about a governor’s proper relationship to the Church, the party passed through Sombrerete and Durango. Trudging ever northward, the caravan finally crossed the Nazas, a fast, wide, deep, sediment-laden river, the color of rust, which raced through a broad, fertile valley below Santa Barbara. This was the jumping-off point for the New Mexican Kingdom. It was from this mining town, founded among the Conchos Indians by Rodrigo del Rio de Losa, that the most important New Mexican expeditions had embarked.

“The expeditions of Agustin Rodriguez and Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado, Bernardino Beltran and Antonio de Espejo left from this town, and Juan de Onate’s second inspection was conducted here,” Gomez said. “It was here, too, that his retreating colonists, when deserting the kingdom only four years later, sought shelter in the arms of Nueva Vizcayan authorities. This is where it all came apart for don Juan,” Gomez added, “here in these mesquite groves, among these naked and poor Indians. I pray that, in your quest for an orderly and decent life in the New Mexican Kingdom, that you’ll be more successful.”

“Is there anything to be learned from all of this?” The governor asked.

“Only that New Mexico presents an incredible challenge for one who would attempt to govern it,” Gomez said, “for New Mexico is not a castle, but an island, Governor, an island whose very isolation is seen by its eight hundred Spanish colonists as being to their advantage. Its governance requires maintaining a precarious balance between the wishes and needs of the clergy, the settlers, the Pueblo and Plains Indians, and Spanish authority, with each having incredible determination and will as deeply rooted in them as in any people. I would not presume to tell you how to conduct your office,” Gomez continued, “but if one is to be successful in governing New Mexico, the needs and desires of the three estates must be kept in perfect balance with the promises and difficulties presented by the Indians. Neither Onate nor anyone else has been successful in achieving that balance.”

“And you, Gomez, do you speak of yourself when you speak of the New Mexican character?”

“Yes, I guess I do,” Gomez responded thoughtfully, “for I am, like you, a descendant of the Iberians, fearless soldiers who fought courageously but never learned to hold their shields together in combat. We learned, though, those of us from Spain and from Portugal, to fight together. Learned to hold our shields together in an impenetrable phalanx and have thus become among the greatest soldiers on earth. What we have not learned is how to live or work together as a people. And our independence and separatism, our stubborn refusal to be welded into a uniform dominion, are, perhaps, both our strength and our weakness. But our shortcomings, or what others see as our shortcomings, have made us who we are, and the qualities that are ridiculed as our faults are really the bases of our superiority. I was not a first colonist, Governor, not one of Onate’s soldiers of fifteen ninety-eight or sixteen hundred, but I am one of them. So, yes, in terms of tenacity and will and pride, I am one with the New Mexico colonists and they are both the root of my successes as well as my failures.”

Gomez was quiet for a long time, seemingly contemplating it all, saying finally, “This is the last measure of civilization we’ll find before entering the wilderness. The country above Santa Barbara is referred to as ‘The Beyond,’ and you’ll find little there. If you wish to correspond with anyone in the city of Mexico, or elsewhere, this will likely be your last opportunity.”

* * *

Governor Luis de Rosas looked over Santa Barbara’s extensive lands of mesquite and grass plains, a land bathed in the winter colors of sienna, gold, and burnt umber, viewing the many arroyos and verdant valleys of the foothills region leading to the Rio Conchos. He took his final opportunity to communicate with his business partner, the duque de Segorbe, and, also, as required, with his “Most Illustrious Sir,” and with the audiencia, sending back with a returning caravan, his final notes. “Before me,” he wrote to the viceroy, “lies a desolate land without convenience or refuge, offering every means of misfortune and peril. We will, nevertheless, keep our pace of ten or fifteen leagues a day and find our provisions along the way.” And to the duke he wrote: “I see little of promise here, even my digestive difficulties have worsened. But perhaps things will improve as we go north.”

DEL PASO

Trudging through sand dunes, the caravan continued northward along a route as ragged as the bed of a stream. Above La Toma del Rio del Norte (where Juan de Onate had, in 1598, first entered the new land) the caravan crossed the watercourse at a gorge the river had carved between two oddly shaped hills. The pass, referred to by the Indians as a “gateway” or “mountain gap” (the Spanish equivalent of which was “Los Puertos”), was, for the traveler of the period, the gateway north. Beyond “the pass,” or “del paso,” the train encountered a cascade of rapids. Beside the brown torrent were grassy banks in narrow strips, which at various intervals, spread out into small meadows with dense stands of emerald-hued willows growing along their edges. On either side of the river were rolling stony hummocks and higher knolls of naked earth.

* * *

In the opening days of the New Mexican spring, the train moved up the east side of the Rio Grande Valley, its route devised so as to avoid soft and sandy ground and steep inclines. Lofty mountain ranges were strewn here and there both to the east and to the west of the river, with barren plains waiting just beyond the river’s banks. The days were hot and a cloud of dust billowed behind their many beasts as the men of the wagon train rode along.

The river, offering appealing trailside marshes, coves, and pools, was a corridor for the millions of migratory birds the travelers saw as the birds made their annual relentless passage northward, moving from winter food in the south to their northern breeding grounds. Following the birds, the members of the caravan pointed the noses of their mounts northward and continued their journey.

* * *

At a bend in the river, five leagues above del Paso, they spent their first night at the Ancon de Fray Garcia where they went into camp. Here the scene changed. Over this stretch travel was slow and difficult for the ground was rough and they had repeatedly to skirt washouts and plough through marshes. On either side of the river ran ranges of barren hills. When they reached their tops they looked out upon a broad expanse of desolate plains edged on the east by the rugged peaks of the Sierra de Los Organos. Camping in turn at El Estero Largo, El Estero Redondo, the Pools of Fray Blas, La Yerba del Manso, and Robledo el Chico, the train moved forward.

EL PARAJE DE LA CRUZ DE ROBLEDO

At a point 22 leagues north of del Paso, in a bleak expanse offering little inducement to encampment, the caravan rode parallel to, but somewhat removed from, the river. The soldiers of the supply train stood in their stirrups, peering this way and that, obviously looking for something. “I promised my wife that I’d add a stone in prayer for her, so I must find it,” Gomez said to the governor, regarding the stone cairn for which they were searching. “But you have no responsibility to come with me,” he said to Rosas and to the men of the escort who rode beside his horse.

“We see it as our responsibility, too,” said Blas de Miranda. “He may have been your wife’s grandfather, but he was also the first colonist to die in New Mexico. It’s important that we keep his memory alive.” He, Nicolas Ortiz, Gomez and the governor broke away from the train and rode down toward a great, bare, roundish mountain on the west bank of the river.

“The original cairn was built almost four decades ago by Juan de Onate and one of his captains to mark a special place,” Gomez explained to the governor. “Every year-and-a-half or so, as supply caravans pass though here on their way to or from Santa Fe, some of us who ride escort for the train do our best to rebuild it. It’s incredible how much damage can accrue to a stone structure in such a short time,” Gomez added. “If, in our passage, we didn’t rebuild it, the cairn would soon lose its definition, its stones merging with those of the landscape. It would be lost.”

“And who is the man we honor?” the governor asked as they rode across the rolling hills of a broad gap between the Caballo and San Andres Mountains.

“Pedro Robledo,” Gomez responded, “an alferez in Onate’s troop who died during the entrada of fifteen ninety-eight. A soldier from Carmena,” Gomez said, “he was my wife’s grandfather, a sixty-year-old gentleman, wearing mail and carrying the arms of Spanish authority who, with his wife and six children, came here as a settler. He provided four sons for the expedition,” Gomez continued, “a number only equaled once as the largest number of soldiers provided by one family. The Indians at the pueblo of Acoma killed one son during the same year. We see the father and his family as symbolic of who we are as a Spanish colony,” Gomez said, “and, therefore, we honor him.”

Scrambling over rocks and through the tangles of brambles and thorns along the brown austerity of a wretched and miserable desert stretch, later to be known as the Jornada del Muerto, the Dead Man’s Route, the soldiers of the escort finally found the gravesite. It looked very much like the so-called Kuba Rumia in Algiers, a curious circular stone monument said to be a Christian burial site, about which there had been much speculation.

“It’s larger than I would have expected,” the governor said, regarding the stone structure they had found.

“Four decades of stones,” Gomez responded, “and the good wishes and prayers provided by the men of twenty-six trains. The site is known as the Cruz or Paraje de Robledo, the Robledo campsite. We’ll rebuild the cairn for the settlers and soldiers of future trains to find and will camp here tonight.”

* * *

Above Robledo, the river wound between steep banks intersected continually by transverse gullies. The gullies, whether shallow or deep, mired the wheels of their carts at every turn. Seeking better ground, the caravan left the river and continued northward.

OJO DEL PERRILLO

The members of Rosas’s train rode through warm days beneath azure skies along the worn and tattered track of the royal road. Their course after leaving the river at Robledo took them through a seemingly waterless stretch of nearly 90 miles that would save them a day or more of travel. The lack of water and the choking dust brought them all—horse, man, mule, and foodstock—to the utmost limit of their endurance.

At one of the few springs the travelers found, they met a small group of Indians who, demonstrating their friendly intentions, knelt in the mud surrounding the spring, crossing themselves as a means of mutual recognition. Drawing their right hand from forehead to breast and then from shoulder to shoulder, they returned their hands to their mouths afterward signifying they required food.

“There are Christianized Indians here?” asked Rosas about the tattooed and painted Indians they found at the spring. “I’ve seen no churches or conventos. Are they members of a hunting party or nomads?”

“They’re a Plains people, Governor,” Gomez responded, “members of the Jumanos or Rayados whom we refer to as the Apaches del Perrillo. They live in three large pueblos which we’ll find north of here near the pass of Abo, and, if people of the same tribe, in rancherias on the Rio Colorado far to the east. They come to the Rio Grande villages for purposes of trade,” he said as they unloaded food from one of the wagons. “The friars tell of a miracle which occurred among these people,” Gomez added continuing his discussion regarding the Jumanos. “Approximately two decades ago, as the friars tell it, the Jumanos were the subject of a supernatural conversion. The priests tell of visits by at least two nuns who were miraculously transported here from Spain for the purpose of preaching God’s word and who assisted the friars in the Indians’ conversions. One, a sister named Luisa de la Ascencion, an old nun of Carrion, had the power to become young and beautiful and to transport herself in a trance state to any part of the world where there were souls to be saved. The second nun, who was able to do much the same thing, was Maria de Jesus, the abbess at the convent of Agreda, who, the friars say, was carried here by the heavenly hosts. She was able to make several round trips in a single day.”

“Do you believe any of this?” Rosas asked with a sneer. “That nuns can fly?”

“I’m not sure what to believe regarding these stories, Governor, so I’ve tried to suspend judgment,” Gomez responded. “When Custos Salas, whom you’ll meet at Santo Domingo, was at the Pueblo of Isleta, where he built the church and convento, he developed a special relationship with the Jumanos who came there to trade. They told him this story and Salas believes it. He went among them with another priest named Diego Lopez, and tells of the miracles of conversion they were able to achieve because of the work of these nuns. The number of conversions was so great that they had to baptize the Indians by swirling a fleece soaked in holy water over their heads. My brother would believe these stories without question,” he said regarding the flying nuns, “but I respond better to fact than fancy.”

“Then you believe the stories to be a fiction?” Rosas asked.

“I place the Indians’ visions in the same category as the mirages one might see on the desert or at sea,” Gomez responded, “those on the desert appearing as ripples on a lake ruffled by the wind, or of trees materializing upside down. I think the apparitions are like the so-called, Fata Morgana, the mirage of a city which my brother and I saw on the Strait of Messina. None of these images is real and yet they’re there as plain as the nose on one’s face. I think I’ll suspend judgment until I know more.”

The governor laughed at Gomez’s statements regarding the Indians’ visions while throwing food at the poor Jumanos who knelt before him attempting to pluck the morsels from the water before they sank into the mud.

* * *

Above the Ojo del Perrillo (Little Dog Spring), where the members of the caravan had found the Jumanos, the caravan continued its northward journey across a harsh, partially denuded landscape of awesome silence and immeasurable distances. It stretched before them, a desert plain with thickets of withered cactus and patches of wild pumpkin, the foliage of which consisted of long, sharp, arrow-shaped leaves, matted clumps of scrubby brush frosted over with silver and greasewood.

* * *

The distances from one paraje, or official campsite, to another were well known, for at some earlier time a soldier had been assigned the unenviable task of counting the steps or paces in each day’s march. The camping sites offered in weary progression included La Cruz de Aleman, Las Penuelas, La Laguna del Muerto, El Alto del Cerrillo, La Cruz de Anaya, El Alto de Las Tusas, and El Paraje de Fra Cristobal. The last site metioned, located six leagues below the inhabited district, should have offered some promise of relief, but it did not. For above it—above the southern pueblos of Senecu, San Pasqual, Teypana, and Alamillo—the Rosas train still had to negotiate “las vueltas.” These were “the turns” where the river doubled back upon itself, making travel extremely difficult.

* * *

Above the turns, the caravan began at last to see daylight. The river, presenting sharply cut embankments, rolling hills, and a widening valley, now offered tiny, greening fields across its flood-plain. And, areas of Spanish habitation were also found. The train stopped briefly at the wine and brandy-producing vineyards of the Gomez estancia at San Nicolas de las Barrancas. Here the governor refilled the leather flask that was always with him. The train stopped for a lengthier period at the Pueblo of Puaray to repair their equipment, badly damaged by the road, and by deterioration resulting from the arduous journey. Then it was on to Sandia, San Felipe, and finally, the Pueblo of Santo Domingo, the ecclesiastical capital of New Mexico.

5

Custos Juan de Salas and Santo Domingo

We’ll go ahead of the train and leave our livestock here,” Gomez said in explanation of his plan to approach the pueblo with only the small contingent of individuals with whom he rode. “We’re forbidden to have our livestock within three leagues of the village.”

“Forbidden?” the governor asked. “Forbidden by whom, I’d like to know? I’ll run my stock wherever I damn well please!”

“You could do that, Governor,” Gomez responded as they rode along a ridge in the vicinity of the pueblo, “but it’s one of the few rules we have that actually makes sense. We could take our animals into the village as you’ve stated, but then my men and I would have to spend our time here keeping our stock out of the villagers’ fields. We’ll take the wagons in, the ones carrying supplies for the missions, but it’s best to leave the rest of the train here where the livestock can find other forage,” he concluded as he, the governor, and Fray Manso broke away from the train and headed toward the village.

As the three rode toward the pueblo, set beyond clean gravel hills, its rich irrigated lands lying below in the valley of the Great River, Francisco Gomez lagged behind with the governor who was surveying the adobe village, viewing its corrals, its extensive orchards, and its produce gardens greening behind adobe walls.

“The pueblo might look like it’s always been here,” Gomez remarked of the village whose brown hulk loomed on the edge of the river, “but, like many of the pueblos on the river and elsewhere, it’s been moved several times. This, I believe, is at least their third village,” he said. “Previous villages built on the banks of the Galisteo and the Great River were destroyed by flood. And there’s something else here which you may wish to make note of,” Gomez added, pointing to structures which appeared physically and psychologically removed from the life of the village. “Notice the location of the churches,” he said. “They’re at least three hundred varas from the edge of the pueblo. They were placed there for strategic purposes,” Gomez added. “It’s a simple formula which you’ll see repeated again and again at each of the pueblos you’ll visit. The distance of the church from the center of the pueblo is in direct relationship to the resistance by Indians there to Spanish rule. As you can see, the Indians here are very resistant, and the structures themselves, their placement and fortifications, attest to the presence of enemies against Spanish authority both within and without the village.”

Rosas nodded in understanding as he examined the three structures that rose before them. Adjoining the south wall of the principal church, a large structure with a central bell-tower and a balcony over its main entrance, was a modest multi-room adobe convento. Its rooms were arranged around an interior courtyard. A covered walkway encircling the interior of the enclosure secluded a claustro, or square court. On the west, the convento itself was of two stories.

Parallel to the main church and abutting it on the north was a smaller church with a window above a large doorway. Fronting the three parallel structures was an atrio, a walled and fortified enclosure of large size, which appeared to double as an exterior chapel and cemetery. Taking a large swig from his leather wine skin, Rosas and Gomez, dismounted and walked through the atrio, where they were met by Custos Juan de Salas, principal of the Santo Domingo church and convento and dean of New Mexico’s ministry. An individual with an attractive face topped by a high forehead, he stood there with Fray Manso who had ridden ahead of the two men. Formal greetings followed, after which the four walked through the convento’s archive room which was finished with wood—and, Rosas thought, set with remarkably fine furnishings—to a small table that had been placed in the patio by an Indian porter. Additional Indians, cooks, gardeners, and waiters, could be seen in the patio and through the open doorways of interior rooms as the Salas party, passing through a dimly lit labyrinth of passageways, made its circuitous way to the patio. Upon entering the interior court, they were surrounded by birds of every description, flitting over, underneath, and through the covered walkway, landing to eat seed that had been spread for them and for a beautiful wing-clipped parrot hopping happily about the flagstone court. A large garden, grape arbor, two peach trees, and a stone-lined well graced the southern end of the compound. Fray Salas bid the group sit on the chairs the Indian porter had also carried there.

When they were seated, Rosas provided the opening salvo saying, “Two churches and an atrio! You must have an enormous number of worshipers, Father.”

“Yes, we do,” Salas responded with pride, “we’ve been very successful in our conversions here and at our visita of Cochiti, and, also, among the Jumanos of the plains where our work was assisted by the Mother of Agreda. We use the atrio as an accessory chapel from which to administer the sacraments on Sundays and on other occasions when the faithful cannot be accommodated within the church.”

“Facing the mihrab, I assume,” Rosas remarked disrespectfully smiling first at Fray Manso and then at Custos Salas.

“Not Mecca,” Salas responded, answering the taunt, “but God. Outdoor worship violates the idea of the mystical body of the Church, but it’s what’s required here by our circumstances.” He smiled first at Fray Manso, and then at Francisco Gomez and the governor. “We’ve had to make many accommodations here,” he added. “Undoubtedly, he said, speaking directly to the governor, “your Lordship will find that he must do the same.”1

“I’ll do whatever’s required to place civil government and secular authority on a secure footing, even if I have to find a demented nun to assist me in my pursuits,” Rosas said, smiling again but getting no response to his irreverent comments.

* * *

Bread and ripe apples, grapes, wine and fresh cheese were placed before them, the cheese taken from a box that was kept in the cool well where it was held in reserve, along with meat, milk, butter, and other food. They continued with their meeting in brilliant sunshine.

* * *

“I don’t know how much you’ve been told, or what questions you’ve asked of Fray Manso as you’ve come on your journey, your Lordship,” Custos Salas said politely, “so please forgive me if I repeat anything you may have already been told regarding our ministry.” Determined, urbane, and politically cunning, the former Provincial of Jalisco and Michoacan—whose office was analogous to that of territorial governor—Salas had served his various apprenticeships well leading to his present position, to which he had been recently assigned, as custodian of his Order. He cleared his throat and began with the details of the Franciscan ministry, memorized for delivery to each of the dignitaries who came up the trail.

“Previously,” he said, “the ecclesiastical superior in the colony held the title of comisario, which implied temporary authority only, delegated by our mother Province of the Holy Gospel in the city of Mexico. Fray Juan de Escalona, who is buried in our church here, held that title. We’re set up differently now,” he explained, while looking about the table at the three men. “We’re now an autonomous unit, with a chapter, definitors, and our own prelate and father custos, or custodian, an administrator elected by the Holy Gospel Province in Mexico. I hold the titles of prelate and father custos now,” he said, while chewing on a new apple, “but others in our Custody of St Paul, most recently Fray Esteban de Perea, who founded the mission of La Concepcion at the Pueblo of Quarai, and who presently serves New Mexico as agent for the Holy Office, have been previously honored—or burdened, I know not which—by these responsibilities.”

“And how many priests are you now?” the governor asked, glancing at the cowled figures he saw throughout the courtyard.

“The Crown has agreed to subsidize the work of sixty-six missionaries, your Lordship, most of whom are now in place, grouped in twenty-five missions or conventos, spread up and down the valley of the Rio del Norte and in pueblos far distant from here.”

“So why are you here at this pueblo, rather than in Santa Fe?” Rosas asked rudely, “is the villa so bad that you have to hide here?”

Custos Salas, who appeared to be censoring what he wished to say, waited a long moment before responding, seemingly looking for assistance from his fellow cleric.

Finally Fray Manso interjected, “The decision to separate our headquarters from those of the governor was made by our prelate, Fray Alonso de Peinado, more than two decades ago,” Manso explained, “to establish Santo Domingo as the ecclesiastical capital of our adobe kingdom. It seemed best, I’ve been assured, to separate civil and religious authority here. It was, I think, the best solution to the difficulties previously encountered.”

“Difficulties?” Rosas asked. “Of what difficulties do you speak?”

“Difficulties between Church and State,” Salas responded. “Difficulties such as those presented by Governor Eulate in his administration of the kingdom,” he said, while brushing crumbs from the table and then scattering them along the flagstone floor for the birds to eat. Salas waited for a long moment before continuing, careful, it appeared, to ensure that the Indian servants who worked around them would not hear his remarks. He continued then in a dark tone. “He was a petulant, tactless, irreverent soldier whose actions were motivated by an open contempt for the Church and its ministers and by an exaggerated concept of his own authority as the representative of the Crown. When I spoke with him regarding this—his authority as representative of the Crown—he said, ‘The king is my patron.’ The king is my patron!” Salas railed before catching himself and then continuing in a more guarded tone. “Can you even imagine one speaking in that manner?” he asked in exasperation. “He was a man more suited to operating a junk shop than to holding the office of governor!” No longer able to contain his anger, he exploded, “A bag of arrogance and vanity without love of God or zeal for His divine honor or for the King’s. A man of evil example in word and deed, he did not deserve to be governor but was rather a hawker and a creature of his vile pursuits!”2

“Of what vile pursuits do you speak?” Rosas asked with undisguised interest.

“Of authorizing slavery, forced labor, and sweatshops,” Salas whispered. “And he attempted to undermine the priests in their work here.” Continuing in a whisper, Salas added, “He said that we didn’t work and that all we did was sleep and eat, while married men went about diligently working to earn their necessities. When I think of his words,” he said sadly, “I think of my brothers, Fray Francisco de Letrado and Fray Martin de Arvide, who were killed by the Zuni just five years ago, and of Fray Francisco de Porras who was poisoned at Hopi just a year later. My priests did not enslave the Indians as he did,” Salas said angrily, the volume returning to his voice. “Rather, they died in ministering to them. Governors Mora and Martinez were in much the same vein,” Salas continued, “greedy and avaricious. Today, we hope for better,” he said faking a confiding smile.3

“The pope is the head in Christian society,” he said. “Authority flows from Christ to Peter to the pope, and from him, to us. The members of the clergy are, therefore, heads of the body politic and supreme over all provincial matters. We, as the representatives of the Custody of Saint Paul, see our roles here—those of the governor, the priests, and the settlers—as constituting a type of mystical body, with the governor and soldier-settlers as the arms and hands, which protect the Church from heretics and other enemies, and the Indians as the feet, which sustain and carry the weight of the entire body. We look forward to your assistance and cooperation in our work with the Indians, the provision of escorts, the loan of oxen to haul rock and dirt for the construction of our missions, and your condemnation of Martinez’s misrule.”4

* * *

What followed was a silence more damning than words in which Rosas seemed to be studying the birds and the distant mountains. Then he said in a measured tone, “We see our roles very differently, Father. I see the king as a warrior who carries two swords, one temporal, the other spiritual, the spiritual blade in the form of concessions of royal patronage5 given to him by the pope almost 150 years ago. Therefore, it is he and not the pope who is the Vicar of Christ, a role that has been extended to the viceroy and through him, to me as provincial governor. Thus, jurisdiction over military, judicial, legislative, and commercial matters, as well as the administration of the Church, ultimately falls to me and not to you. But we’ll see,” he said. “We’ll have to see.” Then, changing the subject entirely, he asked, “And the Indians here at Santo Domingo, are they difficult?”

Salas waited for a long moment before responding, questioning whether he should further pursue a clarification of their roles, but ultimately deciding against that course of action. Instead, he followed the governor’s lead in pursuing his discussion regarding the Indians. “The Keres of Santo Domingo are reputed to be the most difficult in the kingdom,” Salas responded, “secretive and withdrawn from the surrounding civilization. Occasionally, they still make us tortillas from urine and mice meat, but we’re getting used to the taste,” he said, smiling at Fray Manso. “We cut their hair as punishment, but we’ve been unable to stop them from making bread in that manner, for mice and urine abound.”

Observing the other three as they ate their cheese and drank their wine in New Mexican sunshine, Salas sensed that there was nothing more to be accomplished by their meeting, or by attempting to further crush the grapes, knowing the mash to be sour. He asked, “Would you like to see the church?”

On the outside of the principal church was a balcony formed by the projection of choir loft timbers and by the overhang of the nave roof. The balcony was available only through a small choir-loft window that was covered over with heavy timbers and barred from the inside. On the inside of the church the dimness of the nave was relieved by light provided by two small and inaccessible gridiron windows in which sheets of mica or talc had been set. These splayed apertures, presenting sloping or beveled surfaces, were placed high in the north wall. A transverse clerestory window also provided light. This was a source of illumination that was apparently of the friars’ invention, for Rosas had not previously seen a window of this construction. This window was placed where the nave joined the apse, its blue-tinged light masked by the grime of time.

There was little decoration. An ornamented wooden bed molding, placed underneath the corbel course of the roof and upon which the corbels rested, was made of carved poles, laid end-to-end, projecting slightly from the surface of the wall. The molding, a rope motif patterned after the Franciscan cord symbolizing the vow of chastity, was ornamental and perhaps structural, too, serving to bind and strengthen the wall at its points of greatest load.

The sacristy was a modest room with a cupboard, a small altar, a rack for liturgical instruments, and a small fireplace. There was also an internal well four varas wide and over 40 varas deep, with a curb of earth and stone, and a wooden bucket sitting precariously on its rim.

In an anteroom near the front of the church there was a baptismal font built of adobes and consisting of a large olla, a wide-mouthed clay pot or jar that rose from the center of the earthen floor. There was little else, no pews, no hangings, nothing to burn.

What Rosas had toured was a fortress with thick, high, adobe walls offering no projections to hide an enemy. It had been designed to offer shelter but also constraint, to inspire feelings of well-being, calm, awe, or oppression, as the friars wished. The enormous space provided them with the capacity required to enhance their word, gesture, or the musical accompaniment of Catholic ritual.6

“One could hold out here forever,” the governor remarked. Salas looked at him and smiled but did not respond.

* * *

“Are we to prepare accommodations here for the governor while the men of the supply train repair their wagons?” asked Salas’s assistant.

Salas, who had found in the new governor an arrogant, irreverent, and uncompromising person, rather than the cooperative, if not actually weak and pliant individual he had hoped to find, said, “I wouldn’t give him as much as an egg unless I was allowed to sprinkle it with ashes to dull his palate or dilute it with water to smother its taste. I don’t know where they find these men, Father,” he added in exasperation. “At least Governors Ceballos and Ossorio were admirals—even though we have no need for a navy here. But this one? What is he? A Frenchman from Auvergne? A Gavache from Gevaudon? God only knows! No wonder his wife and child deserted him while he was in Flanders,” he said, repeating a bit of gossip he had heard from Fray Manso. “Perhaps he’s a franchone, one of those foreigners who roams about Spain as a beggar, a peddler, a knife-grinder, or as a castrator of animals! No. We will not prepare accommodations. And if he rings the bell requesting entrance to the convento, Father, please pretend you don’t hear him. Perhaps he’ll go away.”

6

Nicolas and Maria

After we leave Cochiti and have negotiated the cliffs at La Majada,” said Nicolas Ortiz to the wagon master, Francisco Gomez, “I ask for permission to ride ahead and to inform the senior judge and the members of the cabildo of our arrival.”

“And to see your Maria, too, I assume,” said Blas de Miranda, smiling knowingly at his friend who had presented his request to Gomez.

“I must admit that’s an added incentive,” Ortiz laughed, his large, luminous eyes glowing with delight. “But the welcome for a new governor is traditional,” he added, further justifying his request, “and Antonio Baca must be told.”

“Well, I’m sure he knows we’re coming,” Gomez said, “although the exact day may still be unknown to him. Today’s Friday, is that right?” Gomez asked rhetorically, as he worked at rearranging the wood of their campfire with the heel of his boot. “We’ll need your help in climbing the cliffs tomorrow,” he said to Ortiz, “but once we’ve reached the mesa you may go ahead. Tell don Antonio that we’ll be there within two days.”

“I owe you!” Ortiz said.

“You owe me nothing,” Gomez replied laughingly. “Besides, you’ll be lucky if her papa doesn’t shoot you.”

Nicolas laughed at Gomez’s remark, recalling these exact words as spoken by Blas de Miranda on the day he first met her.

* * *

In a stunning dawn, crisp and unblemished except for an enormous cloud hanging over the eastern mountains, Nicolas left his party on the mesa above La Majada, a sheltered place on the Camino Real (Royal Road) where shepherds with their flocks of sheep put up for the night. Riding ahead of the wagon train, which had just negotiated a series of black basaltic cliffs dividing the lower and upper regions of the Rio Grande, Nicolas, who knew how to press horses to their limit, bypassed the ancient lava beds of quemado.

Nicolas approached the Tano pueblo at La Cienaga (The Marsh), where the Rio de Santa Fe, a tributary of the Rio Grande, completes its underground course and again comes to the surface. There he struggled through a forest of bogs, their odors a musky redolence of cedar and mildewed grass. The bogs, widened here by beaver dams, were a series of tranquil pools clogged with logs, branches, brush, and rocks all plastered together, which his horse could not penetrate. I should not have tried to cross here, he said to himself, realizing that in his haste to reach the capital, he had merely slowed his progress. Backtracking through a jungle of thorn bushes and impenetrable willows, he finally regained the southern edge of the bogs and, above them, to the east, the Santa Fe River.

Following the cottonwood-bordered Rio de Santa Fe toward the royal villa, Nicolas rode across an alluvial plain, barren, rocky, fringed with coarse gray scrub, and rising to snowy peaks on this, the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo range. The pale peaks of mountains to the north, serrated and scalloped in their birth, gave to the region a sense of majesty and expanse. This was the part of New Mexico that had given to the kingdom its greatest challenges, its primal beauty, its demand of stoic endurance from its inhabitants. The sky behind the peaks was ugly, turbulent, with an occasional rumble of high thunder as Nicolas rode on.

Nicolas continued on across a sunlit landscape whose sagebrush land eventually turned into pinon and juniper foothills. Buzzards flying in tight circles above him glided on wings borne by unseen currents of air. Before him, he could see what the buzzards were contemplating, a dead coyote lying in the open before a stand of chamisa (rabbitbrush). While he watched, a large buzzard, its enormous wings outstretched to slow its descent, guttered to an ungainly landing beside the carcass. Suddenly, the seemingly dead coyote leaped to its feet, lunging at the startled bird that attempted to turn and take to the sky. The clever coyote leaped into the air and wrestled the bird to the ground where, with a quick bite to the base of the buzzard’s neck, the coyote ended its struggle. Nicolas smiled to himself, thinking, you can never tell. Death leaps up when you least expect it.

Outside of the villa, which had been built on a sheltered bank of the Rio de Santa Fe, Nicolas left the woods that grew thickly alongside the river and rode toward the still uncompleted parish church. This occupied an entire block and was being built away from the plaza according to the king’s ruling. Set within a half circle of carnelian-colored hills, it was the most prominent point on the eastern horizon.

The cultivated fields of Las Milpas de San Miguel (The Maize Fields of St. Michael) and Barrio de Analco were on the river’s southern bank. Within the six vecindades, or villa districts on the northern bank a haphazard collection of low, flat-roofed houses were clustered around small fields and the royal palace. As he rode, he looked beyond the oxen, horses, and mules grazing within the defensive walls of la muralla, to the scattered ranches partially hidden among the eastern hills. Most prominent among these homes—which Governor Martinez had often referred to as the casas de malicia (houses of evil intent1)—was that of Maria’s father, Simon Perez de Bustillo. His home, a fortified and walled compound of over 20 rooms surrounding two enclosed placitas (little plazas) was one with the landscape. Among the rose-colored hills back-dropping the royal villa, were additional homes of the Baca and Perez de Bustillo clan. Grouped along the banks of the river where they huddled within their own adobe walls, they looked as through they had been positioned to parry an assault. Nicolas bypassed the path leading to Maria’s home and rode down to the river that raged through a narrow gorge along a boulder-strewn canyon. He longed desperately to see Maria, but he had to inform her uncle, the villa’s senior judge and leading administrator, of the impending arrival of the train.

SHELTERED FROM THE CENTURIES

The Baca home, situated among an extensive stand of spiny, tree-like cactuses, was a grand compound of many rooms. Sprawled along the southern slope of the canyon, Baca had chosen a spot outside the walls of the compound for the placement of a new cellar for his home. This is where Nicolas had first met Maria almost three years before.

* * *

Employed by Antonio Baca to excavate the soterrano, or root cellar, Nicolas had been working there with Maria’s brother, Nicolas Perez. They had been digging among a stand of cholla (a spiny tree-like cactus) and saltbush, foliage that often marked the site of a prehistoric ruin. In the work they had accomplished, they had found an incredible cache of beautiful artifacts secreted within what had been a small niche in the wall of a pit house or ancient kiva (lodge house and ritual chamber). Providentially, some of the eroding material—stone, earth, clay, and crockery—had covered the bottom two thirds of the underground structure preserving from destruction what had been hidden. Their find was additional evidence for the presence of Indian encampments and villages along the banks of their river for over seven centuries. It was in an area which the villa’s Tewa Indian informants had told the colonists was known as the “bead water place.”2 The Ortiz and Perez find, which, among other artifacts contained a Red Mesa bowl, a Wijo canteen, and several black-on-white pottery mugs, also included a perfectly preserved ceremonial jar containing a beautiful but fragile shell necklace. It was the latter find that the Nicolases had just unearthed when Maria appeared on the edge of their excavation.3

Dressed in a long, white, sleeveless dress, a short work apron, and boots of cordovan leather, she had stood quietly on the edge of their pit, a lovely silhouette against the sun. Although masking her appearance, the sun had, through the thin layer of homespun that she wore, revealed the essence of her beneath her clothing and Nicolas Ortiz was both embarrassed and disturbed by the fact that Maria’s brother, Nicolas Perez, could also see.

Maria’s brother had said, “You’d better get out of the sun,” and she had responded by drawing the skirt of her ankle-length dress tightly about her long slim legs.

“Can I see it?” she had asked her brother in a question that was just short of a command.

“You might as well,” responded her brother who knew that with his sister, to wish was to get what she wanted. “You will anyway,” he said.

She took off her new boots and placing them neatly aside, jumped into the excavation where she knelt between the shirtless men. Although she appeared to be unaware of her surroundings as she carefully examined the shells that she held in her slender fingers, Nicolas Ortiz had been acutely conscious that she was there. Her skin was white and fresh and a mass of auburn hair toned with copper was piled high atop her head where it was held in place by a large pin. Hair too fine to be worked into her bun lay in ringlets at the nape of her long, white neck. She had hazel eyes, tending toward green, a lithesome flow of arms, and legs. He could smell her; feel the cool skin of an exposed arm touching his as they knelt in the moist earth. He could almost taste her, the scent of apples on her sweet breath. She smiled at him and he was filled with wonder!

Grasping his ankles and leaning back against his calves, he peered at Nicolas Perez, pleading for an introduction. When it came, Perez had said, “This is my sister, Maria.” And when she looked up from the necklace and gazed into Nicolas’s eyes, Perez said, “And this is my friend Nicolas Ortiz.”

* * *

That’s the way it began. Three years ago when she was 13. Under ordinary circumstances, he would not even have met a girl of her social class, yet he had not only met her, but had spoken with her and been immediately smitten. Unfortunately, he knew that she was quite unavailable to him.

But the 13-year-old Maria had vigorously pursued him, ignoring her father’s admonishments that she was not to do so, seemingly unconcerned that Ortiz was an individual of meager prospects, a day laborer and ranch hand from Zacatecas, a guard and a member of the wagon escort.

Maria and Nicolas Perez de Bustillo, on the other hand, were “hijos de algo,” the “children of a someone,” individuals of gentle birth, which was first among the nobility’s claim to precedence and leadership in New Mexico. They were the children and grandchildren of Simon and Juan Perez de Bustillo, two of New Mexico’s original settlers who, upon completion of their decade of tenure as first colonists, had been given land and aristocratic titles as hidalgos, a royal designation which had been granted to them by the crown so that a memory would remain of them as first settlers. Both their titles and land, the roots of their social superiority over others in the colony, were jealously guarded by them and by the 15 or 20 other families who also held these benefices. Because of the differences in their social class, Nicolas Ortiz had not been allowed to openly pursue Maria. However, he had found that his friendship with Nicolas Perez, and his work among the wealthy and prominent Baca and Perez de Bustillo families, had given him ample opportunity to be with her. He would not be able to see her tonight, but tomorrow, after the wagon train had entered the villa, he would meet her in the woods above her home.

7

A Place as Parent

The riverside forest of cottonwood was full and cast a darkening shadow along the river corridor. In the groves the bottomlands were replete with the rich marish drift of the river, an earthy scent from which one could derive a sense of pleasure, place, and well-being. The sounds of the river could be heard far along the cottonwood passageway, its honeyed flow a roar and babble of fast water in dappled light.

The homes of several members of the Baca and Perez de Bustillo clan were clustered along the margins of the river where family members engaged in the common pursuit of ranching. Grazing in the foothills, and tended by herders from not one, but several ranches, were the families’ cattle and sheep, the numbers of which were nearly doubling every 15 months. Sheepfolds and corrals to enclose these animals when not at pasture lay near the individual compounds.1

Above these homes and lost in the upper reaches of the crystalline stream was a presa, or rock-filled dam, diverting water from the parent river to acequia madres, one on each side of the watercourse. The acequia madres, or so-called “mother canals,” were barely three feet wide and half that deep and were full of numbingly cold snowmelt from the 10,000-foot peaks in the distance. The gentle gravity-fed canals, gurgling slowly along their grassy banks, were hidden beneath tall stands of cottonwoods and lazy willows. Meandering past plots of beans, squash, chile, and alfalfa, the small streams splashed through creaking headgates on their ramble along the canyon walls. Although partially drained of their life-giving waters by their parciantes (ditch members)—all of whom were family members asserting their right to a full derecho (a share of water)—the small streams nevertheless returned sufficient amounts of water to the parent stream. The waters thus diverted were but a small portion of the full river. The main stream ran down through the canyon over a white-rocked bottom, with cottonwood, green willows, deep hay grass, and wild flowers growing in profusion along its banks. Evening primrose, fire- and butterfly weed, grew brilliantly among the sedges.

So slender and overgrown by weeds that it was invisible from a distance, the northern canal, and its lateral ditches, could be traced by the green ribbons of vegetation trailing them through the valley. Apple, peach, October pear, black plum, and apricot orchards grew along the margins of the river, and next to the orchards was the home of the Simon Perez de Bustillos. The adobe structure had grown through the years as the family had grown. All rooms faced inwards toward the security of its courtyards, its outer walls facing a forest of orchards as well as open country. A wide, double-doored entrance the depth of a room, led into it. The doors of this covered passageway, or zaguan, were barred and secured from the inside with a massive oaken beam.

Beginning with a series of rooms that had been built around a large, square patio and its well, the initial home, now almost 30 years old, had grown into a second house to accommodate the Perez children, as well as the many Indian servants the family had obtained. The walls of the rooms and compound, three feet thick and invulnerable to penetration, were built of huge adobe blocks, covered over with mud mixed with straw. The rooms’ transverse rafters, or vigas, were made of heavy cedar logs, overlaid by aspen saplings (savinos), all of one size, lying close together in a herringbone design. By day, the rooms were cool and dim, illuminated by deep-set, tiny sheets of fused mica (known as talc lights). These windows, which were further covered by wooden shutters and Indian-tanned hides, or gamuza (chamois), were additionally shaded on the outside by the overhang of a porch. By night, the rooms were illuminated by candles and by the blaze of a fireplace in each room. The floors, except for those in the great room and kitchen, were of rammed earth. This was black earth mixed with fine sand and moisture and spread on the ground with the palm of the hand. The floors were then polished until they shone. The kitchen was a long room where the family’s criados (servants) worked and where the family sat down to meals. Near it were larders and panaries, granaries and banks for dried fruits, pinon nuts, cider, both fresh and hard, applejack, round-bottom jars containing olive oil and wine, wheat and corn. The river house of the Simon Perez de Bustillos threw its high adobe walls around all the purposes and needs of its existence.

* * *

Maria fingered the edge of a trough-shaped wooden bowl and thought how much she loved it. Carved from cottonwood and smoothed by years of loving use, it was, she thought, one of the few things she had been given that had belonged to her maternal grandmother. Taking an apple from the batea (wooden bowl) and holding it in the fist of her left hand, she worked at it with a small knife, turning it around and around in a random fashion, holding the knife steady and at an angle, letting the blade do the work of removing the peel. She botched the job, however, which resulted in large chunks of the fruit lying on the table, and here and there, the green of unpeeled sections staring back at her. Her mind was obviously elsewhere.

“Where are you?” asked her mother, who was standing before an open cabinet. “You look like you’re a million miles away.”

“Oh, I was just thinking, Mama,” she responded pensively. “Why can’t we have a window there?” she asked as she pointed to the room’s eastern wall. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have light coming through that wall?” Leaning across a trestle-supported pine-plank table, she placed the apple on a wooden tray in front of the bench where her mother had been sitting, and dreamily took another from the wooden bowl.

Although the cocina, or kitchen was in many ways the richest room in the house, it was dimly lit for its patio windows, which were made of translucent, but not transparent selenite, were deep, and low, and shaded by the overhang of the porch. Against a wall stood three armarios or tinajeros, tall wooden cabinets (often called trasteros) with locked double doors whose upper panels were latticed revealing the wealth inside. Maria’s mother was replacing dishes in one of these. “We’re just going to have to give some of this away,” she said regarding the dishes she was attempting to fit into the cabinet. On its wooden shelves, among the jugs and bowls that had been secured from the pueblos, were rows of white, crystal and green dishes. There, too, among the glassware and pottery, were a silver platter, several silver trays, and two silver dishes. Although treasured, the silver bore the little pits and dents of daily use, for to eat in the kitchen on silver was both don Simon’s earthy simplicity and his pride.

“Don’t you dare give them away, Mama,” Maria said to her mother who had again taken a seat at the table. “I’m not like Catcha and Juliana, wanting only things that are new. I want the old things, too, the things they wouldn’t have in their homes. I want them all. Not only the silver ones, but the other ones, too,” she repeated, “especially if they were Grandma’s.”

“When you get married,” her mother said, “I’ll give you the silver ones, but not now. You may have the glasses if you want. Do you want to pack them?” she questioned as Maria’s father entered the room.

“Hello, Papa, Maria said in a wistful voice.

“There’s not going to be anything between you and Ortiz,” her father responded sternly as he took a cup from one of the armarios. Then, sitting next to his wife with the empty cup in his hand, he said, “You’re not to see him anymore! Do you understand that, Maria? You must remember that the men who work here or at the home of your uncle or other family members are not of your calidad and are not men with whom you’re to have any contact. They have nothing to offer you,” her father continued, as Maria looked at him apprehensively, unable to understand what she had done to provoke her father’s comments. “Their only responsibility is to keep the required number of horses, for God’s sake! And those without land may only earn three or four hundred pesos a year, hardly enough to feed themselves and their horses, much less raise a family. When the time comes,” he continued, while waving off his wife who had attempted to fill his cup, “—and I don’t know why we’re even speaking of this now, for you’re too young to marry—I’ll find you a proper husband, one marked out above the rest, a Dominguez, or a Lucero, a Gomez, or a Chavez, a man with land, and livestock and a name!”

“You let both Catalina and Juliana marry a man of their choice,” Maria challenged.

“Well, that’s no different from what I’m telling you,” her father responded, his dark features flushed red with annoyance. “I allowed them a voice in the selection of their husband, but I made the choice. Pedro Marquez—God rest his soul—was an hidalgo. His father and four brothers were also first colonists. He left your sister a widow at the age of twenty-five, but a rich one, Maria! A young widow with land and livestock at La Canada! She did well for herself under her husband’s will,” he continued, “getting back the whole of her dowry, as well as half of the amount to which Pedro had added. That would not have happened had I not chosen well. And your sister, Juliana,” her father continued. “Blas may be a member of the wagon escort, as is your Nicolas Ortiz, but Blas has lands at Taos. I did well by her also,” her father responded congratulating himself on his selection of proper mates. “I retained their honor and social positions by marrying them to the right men. You must not forget that,” he said, while looking at Maria who was now silent. “That’s who we are, Hita!”2 he added in a more conciliatory tone. “We’re members of the nobility. We can’t allow others who have neither title nor rank to enter our group. When you become interested in a man,” he said, “you must always ask, ‘Do we marry them?’ There’s no use in your becoming interested in someone you will never be allowed to marry. There are rules about this sort of thing!”

Taking a deep and expressive lungful of air, he looked at Maria and smiled, reaching across the table and touching her hand. Then, taking a more affectionate tone with her, his youngest child, he said, “When you marry, Maria, your brother will become heir to our land. Your husband will provide your land. You’ll be given Tula and your other servants and enough stock to start your own flocks and herds. You’ll retain the right to a quarter of the vigas in our home, and some of the trees in the orchards will also be yours. But it will be your husband’s family who will provide you with land.” He pounded his empty cup on the table. “Before love, comes our name and reputation. That’s the way it is. And that’s the way it’s going to be, in this house, and in this family, and don’t you forget it!” he said as he rose from the table.3

“Dios mio, Simon!” Maria’s mother exclaimed, “Why are you speaking to her like that? Hers is but a meaningless flirtation, por Dios! No harm can come from it! Would you not have her speak to the men who work here?”

“Yes! That’s it exactly!” he bellowed. “I don’t want her speaking to them,” he said to his wife, in a strict and stern manner. “I want her to know her place. We would not have been allowed to marry had we not been of equal calidad. And so it will be with Maria,” he said, glancing in her direction. “I don’t care that she’s judged Nicolas to be strong, or handsome, or ambitious,” he said. “We must preserve the purity of our blood, and that’s that!”

“Ay, God!” his wife said in exasperation, as her husband moved toward the door. “I’m glad you’re riding out with Nicolas. I think that you need the air!”

Maria’s mother waited until Maria’s father had left the room before continuing, shaking her head and saying, “He’s back, you know,” she said in regard to Nicolas Ortiz. “Your papa said that he rode in last night.”

“Oh, Mama!” Maria squealed. “Where? Where is he?” she asked, while opening the door and running into the placita.

“Come back here and calm down. You don’t want your papa to see you like this,” her mother said as she grasped Maria’s elbow and led her back into the fire lit room. “He’s not here, and I don’t think your papa’s going to let him work here any more because of the two of you. Nicolas came to tell your Uncle Antonio that the caravan will be here today. I’m sure that he’s still involved with the train. But he’ll be free tomorrow.

“Can we go down to the plaza to see the entrada?” Maria asked excitedly. “I’ll go with Nicolas, or with you, or with anyone!” she cried while attempting to contain herself.

“Your papa and Nicolas will be among those who are riding out to meet the new governor,” her mother said, “but we can walk to the plaza. It’s a beautiful day!”

* * *

Maria and her mother, followed by a retinue of their Indian servants, hurried west along the path and road of the river canyon, and then north along the villa’s one quasi-street to the plaza.

8

The Adventus

APRIL 18, 1637

The broad bogs of La Cienaga receded behind them as the members of the wagon train caught their first glimpse of the adobe village of Santa Fe just coming into view. Stream and fields stretched out before them to the mountains blue on the horizon.

To the outskirts of the royal villa they came: the departing governor, Francisco Martinez de Baeza, the villa’s regidores, (councilmen) including its alcalde ordinario or justicia mayor (chief magistrate), its Maese de campo, (Field marshal) other members of the cabildo, and many of the villa’s 250 citizens, all in gorgeous attire and arranged on horseback. Governor Martinez, about whom the young Fray Antonio de Ibargaray had so bitterly complained, was riding a white horse and wearing a ferreuelo, a short cloak without a cape across which was a repostero, a covering ornamented with his coat of arms. Governor don Luis de Rosas, whom the Spanish citizenry were here to meet, was similarly dressed, wearing a doublet of brocade, a small pleated collar stiffened in the neck with buckram, a flowing short coat, and tall boots of Cordovan leather. Before the kingdom’s royal standard, a banner hung on a processional staff bearing the royal arms of Leon and Castile on one side and the image of Our Lady of Remedies on the other, Rosas rode uncovered, his baton in hand. His pages carried his damascened helmet, his carved Italian cuirass, his lance and his sword. Great salvos were fired from artillery and from a multitude of harquebuses (matchlocks). And like a ripple expanding in a quiet pool, the news of welcome spread in every direction from the Villa Real de Santa Fe.1

With the blue peak of Picacho Mountain looming before them, the two governors, Rosas and Martinez, rode up the long approach from the west. The men of their escort, wagons, horses and lumbering mules followed them. The two lead wagons flew banners, and their mule teams, specially caparisoned, wore neck bells. Amid the jangle of bells from the harnesses of the burdened mules, the train rode past houses interspersed among fields of corn, wheat, beans, and chile, past La Cieneguilla (Little Cienaga), along the Calle de Agua Fria (Cold Water Road), and toward the royal palace. Entering the southern end of the plaza, which was an open space of mud and dirt, Governor Rosas looked at the royal buildings of the casas reales, the governor’s official residence. The adobe fortress displayed four defensive towers and buttressed walls fronting the north side of the plaza. He reined up, looked back over his right shoulder at La Tetilla, a peak which marked the terminus of the route he had followed along the 1,000-mile Camino Real, and then forward again toward the adobe fortress. Blowing between pursed lips, he said out loud and to anyone who might be listening, “My royal palace! My God, it’s ugly! I had expected more.”

A large group of gray friars (Franciscans) came in procession from the parroquia (parish church), which had, since 1628, been housed at the Hermita de San Miguel. They were carrying lighted candles and a large cross, singing hymns of praise and benediction akin to those with which they greeted the Blessed Sacrament on the feast of Corpus Christi. Custos Salas, holed up at Santo Domingo in a fit of pique, was not among them. The friars joined the men of the governor’s escort who now stood in ranks in front of the royal palace. Once the friars were in place, the governor dismounted.2

Also standing in front of the royal palace along with the capital’s 250 Spanish citizens, were many of its 700 or so Indian servants. Among the Espanoles were the villa’s settlers with established households. These vecinos, or landed citizens, were individuals with full civic rights. In front of the vecinos were the villa’s four regidores and the additional members of its cabildo, who had been with those who had ridden out to meet the new governor. Rosas was struck by the appearance of these men, 50 of whom bore arms. Wearing broad-brimmed hats, long flowing capes over brocaded doublets, and bloused buskins, they appeared to be rugged frontiersmen, yet were noble in their bearing and presentation. They think of themselves as noblemen, Rosas said to himself, noblemen who will soon be demanding their fueros, asserting their rights, and demanding their privileges. His reaction, although nothing but a knee jerk, was one which the Italian chess master, Giocchino Greco, would have supported regarding the opening stages of a game: “Establish a senior position so as to control the center of the board,” Greco had written.

In a prominent place before the casas was the villa’s most important official, its alcalde or justicia mayor, Antonio Baca. A civil official with judicial, executive, and legislative responsibilities, he held before him his diploma of office. Rosas waited a long moment before speaking, taking the measure of the man who faced him. Then, completely ignoring the so-called “ritual of courtesy,” Rosas asked rudely, “Did you kiss it?” referring to Baca’s document. “Did you place it upon your head as a token of respect?”

Baca, his mouth fixed, his expression restrained, withdrew his hand and said, “No, I did not, your Lordship. And may I introduce myself.” It was not a question. “I am Antonio Baca, a regidore, alcalde ordinario of the villa, one who serves the province as justicia mayor, a councilman who holds an elective position. Our laws are based upon the principals of our ancestral government and our concepts of personal and familial worth and good conduct. Our common law has grown out of habit, custom, and the special rights and privileges that were given us to encourage the settlement of these lands. They are laws ordained by public sanction, rather than laws arbitrarily made by kings, viceroys, or royal governors. I am not, therefore, appointed by the governor, but am elected by my fellow citizens,” he stated, ignoring the fact that he served at the governor’s pleasure. “I offered my patent of office as a courtesy only,” he said. “Do you wish me to withdraw it?”3

Rosas, who saw even in this first encounter, a battle from which he must emerge victorious, continued as though mastering a wild and obstinate horse. He twisted his features into a wry expression. “No! No, of course not, don Antonio,” he said, while smiling broadly at the observing crowd. “You’ve brought it so far. Presented it so nicely. But you may give it to me later,” he concluded in a patronizing manner, while again looking at the waiting crowd. Then, in a tone that suggested he was dismissing those who stood before him, he said, “I need a bath,” to all, but to no one in particular. “Perhaps we may speak later,” he threw out in Baca’s direction. And then to one of his aides, he added, “Please see me to my quarters.”

Baca could not be expected to take this slight to his honor without retaliation, especially since it was delivered by one whom he now firmly rejected as worthy of his respect. He said, “That was also our judgment, your Lordship. That you need a bath. Please remember that I offered my diploma as a gesture of friendship and with no strings attached. It will not be offered again. And as for speaking to us later? Well, perhaps, if we can work it into our schedule. We’ll leave you now to attend to your toilette,” he said as he turned to go, two fingers to the brim of his hat in a mock salute. Baca placed his patent within his brocaded doublet, remounted his horse and, with the remainder of the vecinos who had ridden out with him to welcome the new governor, clattered out of the plaza.

* * *

That evening, after the governor had successfully emptied his innards, the governors, Rosas and Martinez, walked over to a home on the plaza where the cabildo was holding its meeting. Told of Rosas impending arrival, the members of the council hastily adjourned leaving but their sheriff behind to greet him. “They were here, your Lordship, but now they’re gone,” said Nicolas Duran. “I’m sorry that there’s no one left with whom you might meet. We no longer have a quorum.”

“I don’t need a quorum,” Governor Rosas responded rudely. “I’m not here to transact business or to take a vote. Please tell the members of the council that they’ll no longer be burdened with the task of apportioning land,” he stated imperiously. “They may act as consultants in that regard,” he said, staring pointedly at his predecessor, Martinez, “but from this day forward, the final determination regarding land apportionment of any amount will be made by me. Tell them that,” he told Duran.

Duran, who knew that the alcaldes and councilmen had for 30 years been empowered by Governor Peralta and the king to apportion lots, fields, and 133 acres of land to each resident, stood there astonished, but said nothing.

Rosas made a cursory examination of the room in which the council met, and then, with Governor Martinez in tow, left the building.

It was an inauspicious beginning. Even Governor Martinez was appalled.

9

Maria’s Well

They referred to the water source as “Maria’s Well,” not because she had discovered it, but because she cherished it and had made it her own. A seep in a country where water was magical, it was a tiny rivulet of spring water flowing gently into the river from a forested slope. Running first into a willowed pool, and then into the roar and babble of the river, it was the heart of a sylvan retreat where wild things peered through the pine and bracken, and where they came to drink. The pool, flanked by sprigs of watercress and with the stones that Maria had removed to enlarge it, was littered with the miniscule shells of fresh water clams.

Above the pool and beneath the canopy of trees, Maria and Nicolas Ortiz lay on a bed of pine needles looking at the clouds, and for one brief moment, the world consisted only of this sunshine-filled place on a hillside, among the juniper and pinon trees, overlooking the river canyon. In the far distance, smoke rose from numerous chimneys. People, unseen, but making their presence known by their muted whistles and shouts, were working in the fields just beyond the forest, irrigating, hoeing and tending to their flocks. Looking down on black and white magpies drifting lazily over greening fields, Maria and Nicolas could see the big cottonwoods lining the river by her parents’ home which was itself shadowed by apple, plum, and apricot trees. The terraced hillside alongside her parents’ home dropped sharply into the canyon, and from the front zaguan of the family compound, nothing blocked the view toward the west. The air was filled with the clean, sweet scent of the orchards and with the sound of water.

“I wonder where it comes from?” Maria remarked dreamily regarding the river. “From the mountains to the east, I know, but where, exactly?” she questioned as she lay looking into the sky. She was quiet then. He waited patiently for her to proceed, observing the fine, peach-fuzz of hair on her arms and shoulders, and sensing, rather than seeing, the roundness of her young breasts partially revealed in the gape of her blouse. Aware of her breathing and of the rise and fall of her chest, he dared not look at her as she rested there beside him.

Rolling onto her side, she sat up and drew her knees tightly to her chest, wrapping her arms underneath them and holding her skirts tightly about her legs. She looked at him and said, “Several years ago, just after you left, I was so unhappy that my papa let me go with him and the other men to take the sheep to the high country. We eventually had to come back when Nicolas broke his arm in a fall from his horse, but while we were there, we followed the river upward to cow paths flowing as brooks of snowmelt, each stream to a smaller one, going up and up to God knows where. I wanted to get to the top, Nico,” she said, using one of the several pet names she used to differentiate him from her brother who was also named Nicolas. “My papa has a sheep station there,” she explained, “a safe house where the pastores stay when they take the sheep to summer pasture. Someday I’ll see it, and I’ll find the beginnings of our river,” she said reflectively. “I’m going to build a house there to look over this, the most beautiful place in the world. If a place could be a parent, Nico, this would be mine. This is where I belong.”

“This is beautiful, Maria, but you should see Zacatecas or the city of Mexico. They, too, are beautiful. Different from this.” he explained. “But with their own color and charm.”

“I’m sure that’s true, my Nico, and I want to see them, but I’d be very unhappy if I couldn’t return here. Not just because this is the home of my parents and where my grandparents are buried, but because this place is in my heart.”

“Then if you won’t run away with me,” he said, “we’ll just have to devise a different plan.”

10

The Controversial Fray Juan de Vidania

In a handsome wooden confessional erected upon a platform within the nave of the church, the air smelled vaguely of punche (tobacco) and ambergris. Nicolas, who knelt on one side of the small, enclosed space, waited for a small window to open.

Muffled voices from the other side of the booth told him that Fray Juan de Vidania was sitting between the two curtained enclosures hearing sins and giving absolution to the penitent with whom he was speaking. The voice he heard was that of an older woman, and, although he could not understand clearly the words she spoke, he wondered if the woman knew with whom she shared her secrets. He hoped that he had chosen his priest well—a reprobate, it was said, an unprincipled scoundrel, who might be willing to accede to his request.

“Say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys,” said Fray Juan de Vidania to the unseen woman who knelt on the other side of the confessional. “And now say an Act of Contrition and do not sin again!” he commanded, as he closed the small window on the other side of the booth.

Nicolas heard Fray Vidania moving about in his cubicle as he rearranged his seating. Then a prolonged silence ensued. Finally, a small window on Nicolas’s side of the box slid open to reveal a wooden trellis behind which sat Fray Juan de Vidania, a transfer from the Franciscan province of Michoacan, and one whom the Franciscan Order had unaccountably accepted into its ranks after his expulsion from the Society of Jesus.

“It’s Nicolas Ortiz, your Reverence,” Ortiz whispered, using the priest’s more formal title. “It’s exceedingly important that I speak with you.”

“And what is it, my son?” asked Fray Vidania.

“I came to make a request, Father, a request regarding Maria Perez de Bustillo,” Nicolas said. “It’s imperative that I speak with you,” he repeated, “but not here, Father. I only came here because I had been told that you were hearing confessions. May I speak with you in private?” he asked.

“About what?” Fray Vidania asked, with a note of irritation in his voice.

“About a gift and a promise of love, Father.”

Fray Vidania was quiet for a long moment, and then Nicolas saw the small door being slid along its waxed runners as the good father again covered the trellised aperture. Nicolas strained but could hear nothing more. Suddenly, Fray Vidania rose and stepped out from within the confessional, rudely brushed aside the curtain which had shielded Ortiz from view, and with his purple stole still prominently displayed against his gray cassock, demanded, “Come with me! I’ve heard enough sins for one day. These little old ladies dressed always in black, their sins are of little moment and will wait till tomorrow.” He grabbed Nicolas by his sleeve. “A gift and a promise of love?” he asked as he and Nicolas walked toward the door leading to the office that Vidania had established within the Hermita’s small sacristy.

“Yes, Father,” Nicolas said. “I want to give Maria a gift, something she’ll remember me by when I go on the wagon train. For when I leave, Father, I’ll be gone for three long years.”

They entered the office where Fray Vidania motioned for Ortiz to sit on a cushioned stool that had been drawn up for that purpose, the cleric himself taking a seat in a chair. Vidania, a gentleman of perhaps 50 years of age, lean and hard, and dressed in a drab cassock of enormous dimensions, gave the young Ortiz the once-over and then turned to his desk. “A prenda . . . a prenda,” he muttered to himself regarding the marriage pledge for which he was searching as he rummaged around within the desk. Pulling out drawers and then searching within them, he opened and then slammed them shut one by one, saying, “You could give her a small piece of jewelry . . . or a medal or some such. I’ve got one here someplace. One of Our Lady. Silver. The weight of a silver coin.” Shrugging and seemingly annoyed that he could not find what he was looking for, he said, “Or you could give her a poem. I’ve got one here.” He felt around within his cassock. “A takeoff on a lovely Jewish ballad I found that I’ve been rearranging for just such an occasion,” he said while taking from within the sleeve of his robes a folded slip of paper. Clearing his throat, he said, “The poem is called ‘There Is a Beautiful Lady,’ ” He read:

There is a beautiful lady,

No one is lovelier:

Her forehead is dazzling.

And her hair is like brass.

Her brow mother-of-pearl,

Her eyes, the shape of almonds,

are green,

Her nose fine as a feather,

Her cheeks are roses,

Her mouth very rounded,

Her teeth are pearls,

Slender her throat,

Her breasts, golden apples,

Her waist small, her body

Drawn fine like a cypress

When she comes to Mass

The church dances with light . . .1

He stopped then, looked at Nicolas and smiled, covering nicely the tinge of embarrassment he was experiencing—for had not his rendition been inspired by Nicolas’s Maria? He put the folded piece of paper back into the crease of his sleeve and said, “Or you could give her one of these,” pointing to a box full of rosaries. “They’d be fine,” he tossed off with a shrug. “But I’ve seen your Maria, Nicolas,” he said with a wide grin, speaking of the young beauty with the gaping blouse whom he had often seen kneeling on the stairs of the sanctuary. “She is lovely!” he exclaimed. “A jewel in herself! I think she should have something more, something better, something substantial.” Fray Vidania, who liked to think of himself as an expert in matters of love, then knelt on the cold flagstones of his office floor and pulled out from beneath his desk a small hidebound chest. He opened it and very carefully unwrapped a copy of the Traetatus, a book of courtly love, which in his inglorious departure from the Society’s motherhouse, he had stolen from the Jesuit library. “Nicolas,” he exclaimed, while holding the gilt-edged book before him, “it’s all here, devised by men who should know these things!” Taking the book, whose binding was laced and tied with a leather thong, he ruffled through several pages of the well-worn manuscript, leafing back and forth among the book’s many folios, the parchment of the ancient vellum crackling beneath his touch. Finally finding the exact passage for which he had been searching, he said, “These are the gifts a gallant might make to his lady.” He cleared his throat and read from the book:

. . . a handkerchief, a wreath of gold or silver, a brooch, a mirror, a purse, a tassel, a comb, sleeves, gloves, a ring, a powder box, little dishes, or any little thing which might be of use in the bath or in helping the lady to remember her lover, if it’s assured that the lady is without a trace of avarice . . .

“Avarice? Nicolas questioned. “I don’t know that word, Father.”

“Greed!” Fray Vidania exclaimed with great emotion. “Greed!”

“But it’s not a prenda I seek, Father. She’s to be my bride, not my mistress. She is referred to by her father as an infanta, or royal princess, but she knows nothing of greed.”

“Well, then, you’re a very lucky man!” responded Fray Vidania while replacing his cherished book within its velvet cover. “Have you asked for her hand?” he asked.

“That’s why I’m here, Father,” Nicolas said, “to consult with you regarding a gift and to ask you to marry us.” He waited a moment before continuing, saying finally, “Her father has said that she’s too young to marry and I fear what will happen to her in my absence.”

“Has he denied your request? Um, dealt you the calabazas as they say?” he asked with a wide grin.

“I haven’t made the request myself, Father, and I don’t have parents here who might make it for me. But the problem is this,” he said, leaning forward from his stool and speaking intently. “Maria’s father, don Simon Perez de Bustillo, has three daughters and only one son. His older daughters, Catalina and Juliana, married well. His wish is to further cement the alliances he now has with other prominent families by arranging advantageous marriages for the other two, for Nicolas and for Maria.”

“Like a feudal lord?” Vidania queried.

“Like an old colonist!” Nicolas said. “Like a moradore who, in contrast to an encomendero, does not have rights to Indian tribute and who must, therefore, maintain his superiority among the other colonists through marital alliances. I understand all of that, and I wish him well,” Nicolas said with passion. “However, his ambitions for his children are about to affect me greatly. The impediment to his arranging suitable marriages for his two remaining children is that the kingdom is small and almost everyone’s related. If Maria’s brother, Nicolas, marries well, she may be allowed greater leeway in the choice of her husband. But if Nicolas does not marry into land and wealth, little or no consideration will be given to her wishes.”2

“You’re right in all of that, Nicolas,” responded Fray Vidania as he sat back into his chair. “A misalliance for Nicolas Perez would lower the entire family’s rating and diminish the possibilities of securing an honorable partner for his sister. And a daughter, especially one who’s referred to by her father as an infanta, is always a potential liability, for don Simon or for any father. He must provide her with a dowry, stock, and money, which will detract, rather than add to his wealth. He may feel it best to send her to a cloister, or to dispose of her in some other manner as quickly and as quietly as possible and at minimal expense.”3

“The law says any female may marry at age eleven, and since Maria is sixteen, the age issue is merely a ploy. My fear is that don Simon will ask for a dispensation to marry her to one of her relatives, a cousin, perhaps, one who’s a member of the nobility.”

“But there are rules against that sort of thing, Nicolas. Such marriages are forbidden by Divine Law and are, therefore, ineligible for dispensation. I have a table here someplace . . . the table of Leviticus which outlines the prohibitions.”

“But Leviticus says nothing about cousins, Father. They may be dispensed as close relatives.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s true. The exception is known as pro honestis familiis. Uh huh. Uh huh,” he muttered to himself, seemingly contemplating it all. And then to Nicolas, he said, “You seem to be well versed in canon law, young man. Where did you get your information?”4

“From don Francisco Gomez, Father. His brother’s a Franciscan priest.”