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13.

Lords and Victims

If the early governors of the river came to poor ends, they were not alone in their last bitterness at the inscrutability of strange lands, the resistance of betrayed natives and the ingratitude of governments. There was hardly a conqueror for the Spanish crown who after his prodigies (whether of success or failure did not matter, for the very scale of colonial operations was prodigious in itself) was not stripped of power, or tried, or impoverished by fines, or imprisoned, or subjected to all these together. What amounted each time to a passion for probity in the crown’s affairs reached out to take hold of the adventurous lords of the conquests—but only after they had done their grandiose best or worst.

Of the administrators of the Rio de las Palmas, two were saved by death—Garay in the terrible mercies of Cortés, Narváez in the tempests of the Gulf.

Of the others, Nuño de Guzmán died first, in 1544, in Spain, penniless, while attempting to defend himself against grave charges of maladministration. Cortés was in Spain at the time and, hearing of the trials of his old rival who hated him, offered him money. In bitter pride the offer was refused.

The years between 1540 and 1547 Cortés passed in Spain on the profitless enterprise of trying to recall himself to the memory of a king who as a matter of policy preferred to forget him. If the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a great man before whom a hemisphere had trembled, he was yet not so great a man as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Spain. In vain Cortés submitted plans for new conquests, petitioned, presented himself at court, reminded the currents of cold air about the throne of what he had accomplished. The court officials were sensitive members that extended the monarch’s capacity to know; and in just the same relation carried as in gelid nerves the monarch’s messages to enact. Cortés never reached the Emperor—until one day as the royal coach was passing through the streets he detached himself from the crowd and before he could be prevented threw himself upon it, clinging to its leather straps, at last face to face again with the source of power or misery.

“Who is this man?” inquired the king who years before had seated him at his right hand, had ennobled him, and had known him well enough to deprive him of power.

“I am the man who brought Your Majesty more kingdoms than your father left you towns,” cried the desperate old conqueror.

The embarrassing scene ended quickly. The coach jolted on. Cortés fell back among the street idlers. However much longer he might live, he had come to the end. On December 2, 1547, in the village of Castillejo de la Cuesta, near Seville, while on his way to embark again for Mexico, he died at the age of sixty-two.

And in Mexico, where out of all his preferments he was left with only his membership on the city council, the Captain-General Francisco Vásquez de Coronado lived for twelve years after his return from the river. He was tried on various charges of crime and error in the conduct of his command, but was absolved, and the attorney for the Crown was enjoined by the court “to perpetual silence, so that neither now nor at any time in the future may he accuse or bring charges against him for anything contained… in this our sentence.” The judgment was handed down in February, 1546.

In the following year an amazing creature appeared in the streets of Mexico City. His hair was extraordinarily long, and his beard hung down in braids. What he had to tell soon became news everywhere. He was Andres Do Campo, the Portuguese soldier from the Tiguex River who had gone to the plains with Fray Juan de Padilla when the General turned toward home. For five years he had struggled to return to Mexico. One year he spent in captivity, the rest in wandering ever southward. He could speak of having witnessed a martyrdom, for five years before, when the Franciscan’s party were come to the land of Quivira, they encountered Indians who made it plain that they were going to kill the hardy priest. Fray Juan ordered his companions to retire out of reach of danger. They fell back to a little rise of land, and watched what followed. Falling to his knees Fray Juan began to pray, and prayed until pierced with arrows he fell dead upon the earth. His companions were permitted to return and bury him where he fell. Ten months later Do Campo and the oblates Lucas and Sebastián, escaped with two dogs. On their backs the fugitives carried wooden crosses with which to invoke grace for themselves and for the Indians whom they met in their travels. Their dogs hunted rabbits for them. Somewhere near the site of Eagle Pass they came to the lower reaches of the same long river in whose pueblo valley far away they had spent two wretched winters. Making their way southeast across Mexico, they reached the coast, and the town of Pánuco, and civilization.

The General must have heard the story, for it was discussed widely. It was the last report of his venture, and it reminded its hearers of the tales of Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, by which the venture had been conceived.

Some years later other news of the river was talked about in Mexico. A certain group of twenty ships had left Veracruz for Cuba and Spain with the spring sailings of 1553. They touched at Havana and sailed again, but were blown from their course by a furious storm that drove them almost all the way back across the Gulf of Mexico. Only three of the ships ever got to Spain, one returned to Veracruz, and the remainder were lost at sea or wrecked on the Gulf Coast. Three hundred survivors, including five Dominican friars, found themselves ashore without food and poorly clad. They started to march on foot to the south following the coast, hoping to reach the Pánuco and safety. To protect their large company of men, women and children the only arms they had were two crossbows. Indians soon discovered the toiling procession and followed it making little attacks. Crossing a stream, the fugitives lost their crossbows, and now the Indians knew the strangers to be defenseless. Two days later they captured two Spaniards and took away their clothes, sending them back naked to their friends.

What did this mean? Did it mean that the Indians, naked themselves, resented anyone else clothed? The Spaniards thought so, and in confusion and desperation all stripped themselves naked and left their clothes for the Indians to find. But the sacrifice of modesty was useless, for the attacks continued, and many people fell from Indian arrows, illness, despair, until there were only two hundred left. They came along the coast to the mouth of a large river. It was the Rio de las Palmas. On the near bank they found a canoe and used it to help ferry some of the company across, while the Indians attacked in great fury. It was a running fight which continued on the other bank, for the Indians crossed over also leaving many dead and wounded Spaniards behind.

Among these were two badly wounded Dominican friars, Fray Diego de la Cruz and Fray Hernando Méndez. They saw the party vanish along the misty beach to the south and resolved to recover from their wounds and remain on the River of Palms to find and convert the Indians who lived on its banks in little villages. When they could, the two friars returned to the northern bank of the river to start their mission, but Fray Diego could not go on. He lay down in weakness. Fray Hernando gave him the Last Sacraments and, when he died, buried him on the bank of the river, and went on his way.

Up the river he met another survivor, a man named Vásquez, and later the two met a third, a Negress. In spite of her shame at their common nakedness, they joined forces and went along the river digging for roots. Fray Hernando was growing weaker from his wounds, and they fed him what they could, but he died and they buried him. The Negress was killed by Indians. Vásquez left the river to overtake his retreating companions.

Meanwhile the two Dominican fathers were missed among the party of exhausted and hurrying Spaniards along the beaches. The other three friars turned back to find them, accompanied by two sailors. They returned to the cross of the river, found the same canoe as before, and climbed in to paddle upstream. Coming to two small islands where they would feel safe resting for a while, they touched shore on one to land, when the islands sank with commotion, capsizing the canoe and throwing the men into the river. They then saw with astonishment that the islands reappeared, and were two whales, which swam down the river toward the sea. The Spaniards swam to another island which was real, and on it fell exhausted. The next day they contrived a raft out of driftwood, crossed to the south bank, and set out from the Rio de las Palmas to overtake the party moving south on the shore. After they joined their countrymen, all faced another hard Indian attack in which many more were killed, including two of the three remaining Dominicans. The remaining one, Fray Marcos de Mena, survived to reach Mexico City, and to tell this tale.

If the General heard it, it was the last story he ever heard out of the wilds. He had never regained his health, and he died an old man in his forty-fourth year on the night of September 22, 1554, and was buried in the church of Santo Domingo in the city of Mexico.