Читать книгу Great River - Paul Horgan - Страница 28

7.

Facing Battle

At Granada, to the west, by late November, the main body of the army had arrived from the south under command of Captain Tristan de Arellano. The General received them warmly, and gave orders that they should rest for twenty days and then follow him east to the river, for he was leaving with thirty men to establish his winter headquarters at Alcanfor. He took a different trail from that of Alvarado and Cárdenas, striking to the southeast, meeting cold weather and for three days finding no water. Just before coming to the river he passed through a province of eight pueblos called Tutahaco, where the people were peaceable. Hearing of further towns down the river, the General sent Captain Francisco de Ovando, perhaps his most popular officer, to explore them and rejoin him at Alcanfor in the Tiguex province. Then turning upstream the General made his way in the winter valley, with all its dry golden, earthen pink and river-brown colors, to the town commandeered by his advance guard, where he arrived in the afternoon of an early December day, pleased to see the garrison established under Cárdenas, and especially pleased to find Alvarado already returned from the cattle plains. The very first evening, the General sent for Alvarado to tell his story. Alvarado, who brought the Turk with him, made his report. The General then turned to the Turk. What, then, was this country like to the east of the cattle?

Oh, there was a vast river, two leagues across, where the fish were as big as the Spanish horses. On it floated great numbers of long canoes, carrying sails, with more than twenty oarsmen on each side. At their prows were large golden eagles. Under canopies at the stern the lords of the country took their ease. The ruler of that kingdom slept in the afternoons under a large tree in whose branches were hung countless little golden bells which beguiled him as they rang in the breeze.

The Turk spoke earnestly and openly. It was impossible not to believe him.

Was he sure of what he meant by gold?

Acochis, he replied. That was gold.

The General showed him some ornaments made of tin. Was this gold?

The Turk leaned over and smelled of the tin, and said that of course it was not gold, he knew gold and silver very well, and in fact, did not, as it happened, himself, care for any other metals.

Then there was silver, too?

Yes, all the ordinary table service was of silver, and larger pieces, like pitchers, bowls and platters, were of gold.

(Only twenty years before, the Emperor Montezuma had sent Cortés, at the seacoast, an image of the sun as large as a carriage wheel, and all of solid gold.…)

The General was enthralled.

What of the golden bracelet, then?

The Turk repeated that it had been wrested from him by Bigotes, and hidden at Pecos.

How could it be obtained?

Why, if they would let him go there alone, without Bigotes, the Turk would find it and bring it straight back to prove all he had been saying.

The General excused him, and he was led away. Alvarado advised strongly against releasing the Turk. He had long tried to escape from his enslavement; now could he be trusted to do as he promised? Bigotes, with the other captives, was at Alcanfor and could be questioned. With the advice of Fray Juan de Padilla, the General ordered him and Alvarado together to question Bigotes further. Much depended upon what they could learn from the young chief.

That night the Captain and the friar took the prisoner to the fields near the pueblo and interrogated him. Bigotes denied everything all over again. They concluded that he was lying. Alvarado knew what was commonly done in cases of that sort. He ordered some of the army’s dogs turned loose upon Bigotes. But even though bitten on an arm and both legs, the prisoner refused to confirm the Turk’s story. Later, the lacerated Bigotes, with Isopete and the Turk, was delivered in shackles to Cárdenas for safekeeping. Cacique, the fourth prisoner, an old man, though not chained was also retained in custody. The news of their treatment filtered through the pueblo settlements, behind whose impassive walls it made bitterness among the river people.

But now for the moment the General had more immediate problems to solve. The garrison was growing, and in less than three weeks his main force would arrive. Most of them were used to warmer southern climates. Already some of the Mexican Indians and Negroes with the army had died of the freezing weather. It was a sharp December in the river valley. He would need additional clothing for his troops. The Indian people seemed to have ample supplies of cloth of their own manufacture—cotton, and yucca fibre in which strips of rabbit fur were twisted. A requisition would have to be levied.

The General sent for an Indian who was called Juan Alemán, after a man in Mexico of the same name whom he resembled. Juan was a chief of Moho, a pueblo fifteen miles up the river. He had shown himself to be friendly. The General now asked him to collect from all twelve towns of Tiguex a requisition of three hundred articles of clothing or cloth with which to dress the soldiers.

Juan Alemán replied that he was unable to speak for more than one pueblo, as each was independently governed and would have to be approached separately.

With this, the General designated officers to visit the pueblos one by one and collect the levy. The order was promptly carried out. Some of the Spaniards did their duty considerately, others roughly. But in all cases the Indians had no chance to prepare for the demand, and time and again submitted by taking the clothes off their backs to hand to the soldiers, some of whom while foraging also took the opportunity to come away with corn, turkeys and other edibles. The river people lived from season to season, for the most part. Privation for them must follow the stern removal of their modest possessions, even though, in obedience to the strict command of the Viceroy, nothing was taken from the native people without reimbursement. But beads and little bells would not keep the people of Tiguex warm as winter fell, or feed their mouths as their harvest, gleaned with dances of thanksgiving, was so fast depleted by the strangers in their midst.

Thought moved behind the earthen brows within the earthen walls.

The soldiers were but men like others, as the playful wrestling had shown on those autumn evenings in the Spanish camp. Any man could die like another; but not so readily if he rode a huge beast that could trample over obstacles and people with furious power, and bear away its rider to safety faster than a man could run.

One day there came running from the Spanish pastures near Alcanfor a Mexican Indian wounded and bleeding who was one of the guards with the garrison’s herd of horses. He cried that another guard had been killed by arrows, and that the horses were being driven across the river and north toward the pueblo of Arenal by men of Tiguex.

In a very real sense the horses could mean life itself to the Spanish. Cárdenas, taking some men with him, galloped out in pursuit. Footprints led him across the river and as he went he came upon many horses already killed with arrows. Others were alive and scattering in the river groves. He rounded up all he could and started back to the corrals, passing the pueblo of Arenal, which was barricaded behind new palisades. Within there was a wild concert of yells, exhortations, sportive chorus. He heard captured horses braying and dashing wildly about. The Indians were driving them as in a bull ring, and shooting arrows at them. He made a demonstration outside the palisades, and got their attention. He offered them forgiveness and peace. They reviled him and mocked him with obscene motions. He returned to his own pueblo with the rescued portion of the herd and reported to the General.

Vásquez de Coronado called his staff together for a council of war. His captains and his two Franciscan chaplains sat with him. All factors were weighed. The main army was not yet at the river, though surely it must by then be on the march. With the river towns in revolt, it would be impossible to conduct any explorations of the cattle plains and beyond, where the real objective of the whole expedition seemed now to lie. The uprising must be put down or between the prizes of Quivira and the long road home to Mexico there would be unpredictable dangers. The advance garrison was not large; there was risk in giving battle at this point; yet there seemed greater risk in not doing so. The General asked for votes. Each captain in turn, and the friars, voted to make one more offer of peace and, if it were rejected, to fight.

Captains Diego López and Maldonado were ordered to go respectively to the pueblos of Arenal and Moho. There they made announcements in official style offering peace and asking for specific complaints as to any individual misbehavior on the part of the army. If evidence supported charges, the guilty soldiery would be punished in the presence of the Indians.

In answer, the Indians, from their terraces where they seethed in tumultuous crowds, with their ladders drawn up, cried their defiance to the sky and brandished like flags the tails of the Spanish horses they had killed. After the officers were nearly killed at both pueblos through trickery, they returned to the General and war orders went out.

Captain Don García López de Cárdenas would command a force to subdue and capture the pueblo of Arenal, without delay. Attention would be turned later to Moho and other rebellious towns.

Sixty cavalry, and an infantry detachment, including Mexican Indians, were ordered in readiness. Veterans of Mexico and Cortés among them knew all over again the feelings facing battle. All night long before great battles the soldiers one by one moved slowly forward in line to confess their sins to the chaplains with the army. Loosely buckled great rowelled spurs chased in gold and silver on metal openwork clanged and tinkled as the horsemen moved up in line to the field confessionals. When had Indians first learned that Spaniards could be killed like other men? Perish it, whenever! After battles in the war of Mexico the soldiers used to dress their own wounds with the fat of Indians. Who remembered the hot jungle night when it rained just before a battle in Mexico—against Narváez and his invaders who sought to overthrow Cortés—and how just at that instant in the heavy air above the ground, a multitude of fireflies appeared in the wet darkness, and to the soldiers of Narváez looked like the lighted matches of Cortés’s musketry, and seemed like a vast force?

In the cold valley of the Tiguex river hovered absolution and memory on the one hand, and on the other, a passion to protect an ancient breathing life within the hard-walled hives of the pueblos.