Читать книгу Great River - Paul Horgan - Страница 37

16.

Possession

Late one morning in April, 1598, a party of eight armed and mounted men came to the river from the south through heavy groves of cottonwoods. They were emaciated and wild with thirst. On seeing the water they lost their wits, men and horses alike, and threw themselves into it bodily. The current was swift. Two of the horses thundered far out into the stream and were carried away and drowned. Two others drank so much so fast that, as they staggered to the bank from the shallows, their bellies broke open and they died.

The men drank and drank in the river. They took the water in through their skins and they cupped it to their mouths and swollen tongues and parched throats. When they could drink no more they went to the dry banks and fell down upon the cool sand under the shade of the big trees. In their frenzied appetite for survival itself, they had become bloated and deformed, and they lay sprawled in exhaustion and excess. One of their company, looking upon himself and them, said they were all like drunkards abandoned on the floor of an inn, and that they looked more like toads than like men.

Numbed with simple creature pleasures they took their ease in the shade. In the bounteous trees overhead many birds sang. There were bees in the wildflowers of spring, and the surviving horses grazed in near-by meadows. The river looked calm and peaceful. All such sounds and sights were deeply restful to the squad of men. Their clothes were ragged, their boots were worn through, and their bellies were hungry; for they had come for fifty days through deserts with thorns, mountains with rocks, and nothing to eat but roots and weeds. For the last five days they had not had a drop of water. In finding the river, they not only saved their lives; they fulfilled their assignment—to break a new trail to the Rio del Norte from the south, that would bypass the Junta de los Rios, to bring the colony directly to its New Mexican kingdom with one hundred and thirty families, two hundred and seventy single men, eighty-three wagons and carts, eleven Franciscan friars, seven thousand cattle herded by drovers on foot, and all commanded by the Governor, Captain-General and Adelantado Don Juan de Oñate.

The little advance detachment was headed by Vicente de Zaldívar, sergeant major of the colony, and nephew of the Governor. Among his seven men was Captain Don Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, from Salamanca, a former courtier of King Philip II, and a scholar with a classical education who later wrote the history of the colony’s first year in thirty-four rhymed Virgilian cantos. When they set out on their mission Villagrá said they were all without scientific knowledge of the heavens by which to set their course. He doubted if there was one among them who, “once the sun had set, could with certainty say, ‘There is east, there is west’.” They marched with hunger and thirst and once were captured by Indians who freed them unharmed having enjoyed their fright. But with the next dawn the eight Spaniards charged the large camp of their tormentors from all sides, firing their arms, and scattering all but a handful of Indians, whom they captured, holding two as guides, releasing the others. Now they also had rations—venison, badger, rabbit meat, along with herbs and roots. They moved on to the north, again running out of water. The guides brought them to six shallow water holes where all horses and men drank selfishly and greedily but one—Zaldívar, the leader, who waited till all were done, at the risk of there being no water left; then last in turn by his own choice, he drank his fill. Advancing over a plain where they could see far, they asked the guides where lay the river they sought? One did not understand. The other smoothed the ground and at once drew a circle, and “marked the four cardinal points… the two oceans, the islands, mountains, and the course of the river we sought. He seemed to act with the knowledge and experience of an expert cosmographer. As we watched him it seemed as though he was tracing the Arctic and Antarctic seas, the signs of the Zodiac, and even the degrees and parallels. He marked the different towns of New Mexico and the road we should follow and where along the journey we should find water. He then explained to us the direction we should take and where we would be able to ford the mighty river.” It was reassuring to have such a guide; but by the next day the Indians had escaped and the Spaniards were adrift in the desert, “trusting in God to bring us with safety to the river’s shore.” There was always too much water or too little. They passed through a whole week of uninterrupted rain; and then there was thirst again, like that of the last five days that brought them to the river.

But now they rested and recovered their strength. They fished in the river, and shot ducks and geese, and on April 20, saw with pride and joy the best results of their efforts, for then arrived the mounted vanguard of the main body, led by the Governor. The wagons and the herds were following more slowly. That evening the trail blazers and the Governor’s great cavalcade celebrated their meeting with a feast. They built a roaring fire, and in it roasted meat and fish. Afterward there were speeches. The Sergeant Major described the adventures of his little party. The Governor then rose to tell of all that his people had endured, and they listened thirstily to his accounts of their heroism, and knew all over again the burning days, the cold nights, the thorns, the hunger, the fear, the bewildered privation of children, the courage of women, and the power of prayer to bring them rain when they were parched. At the end of his speech, the Governor was pleased to make them all a gift which only he could make. It was a whole day of rest in which all might do as they wished, to recover themselves before the journey up the river was resumed.

On April 26 the rest of the expedition arrived. All were reunited, and moved together up the south bank of the river a few more leagues.

There was a sense of great occasion in this arrival and encampment at the Rio del Norte. The wastes of northern Mexico were behind them all now, and the path to the north was more familiar from this point on. To select the ford to the north bank the Sergeant Major detailed a party of five men, all good swimmers. They found a shallow wide place, and returning to make their report met with an Indian encampment where four friendly Indians agreed to return with them. The Governor received the Indian visitors, gave them clothes and many gifts to take back to their people. It was not long before the Indians were back again, with many of their friends, bringing fish in quantities, which were welcome for the celebrations and feasts that were approaching. The river flowed through the gates of the kingdom of New Mexico. The army would enter through them only after suitable observances.

Under a river grove they built an altar. There on the morning of the last day of April in the presence of the whole army and the families, a solemn High Mass was sung by the Franoiscan priests. Candle flames dipped and shone in the dappled shady light under the trees that let moving discs of sunlight in upon the gold-laced vestments, the bent heads of the people, their praying hands. At Mass the Father Commissary, Fray Alonso Martinez, preached a learned sermon.

After Mass came an entertainment. It was a play composed for the occasion by Captain Don Marcos Farfán de los Godos, who came from Seville and in his forty years had seen much of the theatre. He understood the drama as a habit of occasion, a proper part of any festival. He was a man of good stature, with a chestnut-colored beard, and his sense of amenity was becoming to a soldier who was also a colonist. His play, hurriedly prepared and rehearsed, showed how the Franciscan fathers came to New Mexico; crossed the land, so; met the poor savages, so; who were gentle and friendly, and came on their knees, thus, asking to be converted; and how the missionaries then baptized them in great throngs. So the colony showed to themselves a great purpose of their toil. The audience adjourned in high spirits to prepare for the next episode of the celebrations.

Men with horses now went to mount, and came in formation shining with arms, armor and all their richest dress. The rest of the colony took up formal ranks, and when all was ready the Governor came forward accompanied by the crucifer, the standard-bearer, the trumpeters and the royal secretary of the expedition to perform the most solemn of acts.

All knew what a great man the Governor was. He was supposed to be one of the five richest men in Mexico. His father the Count de Oñate had been a governor before him—in New Galicia. During the four years of preparations, delays, starts and stops which the expedition had already endured, they said the Governor had spent one million dollars of his own fortune, for salaries, supplies, equipment, and running expenses. The Governor was magnificent on both sides of his household, for his wife was a granddaughter of the Marquis of the Valley, Cortés, the conqueror; and the great-granddaughter of the Emperor Montezuma himself. Her father was Don Pedro de Tovar, who had gone and returned with Coronado. As a child she must have heard him tell of his adventures in the north. All such great connections were matters of pride to the colony, but since opinion was always divided in human affairs, there were those who had heard things. They said the Governor had squandered and mismanaged his great patrimony so that he actually owed more than thirty thousand dollars, all of it borrowed in bad faith, with the creditors evaded by tricks ever since. Everybody knew he was only a private individual, and thus had no place in the government to command respect for him. How would anybody obey him? In fact, once before, leading soldiers, he had been treated disrespectfully and disobeyed. Would anybody but wastrels and thugs enlist to go with him? But for all such opinion there was plenty of the opposite, which held that the delays and frustrations that had so many times during the past four years prevented the Governor from actually marching forth with his army had come from the Devil, whose purpose it was to prevent the colony from going to convert the heathen Indians, and it was plain that those who worked against the Governor worked for the Prince of Darkness. Many said that nobody was better fitted for the command than the Governor, with his virtue, his human understanding and the nobility of his character; his efficiency and his place in the affections of the soldiers; and the fact that he was the son of his father, who was the beloved “refuge of soldiers and poor gentlemen in this kingdom.”

When he now came forward to face the army and with them all to signalize their common achievement, all hearts lifted to him in unity. He was a fine-looking man in middle life, wearing one of his six complete suits of armor. He held many closely written pages of parchment on which were written over three thousand words of solemn proclamation. Bareheaded, in the presence of the cross and the royal standard, he began to read aloud.

He invoked the trinity in “the one and only true God… creator of the heavens and earth… and of all creatures… from the highest cherubim to the lowliest ant and the smallest butterfly.” He called upon the Holy Mother of God and upon Saint Francis. He set forth the legal basis of his authority, and declared, “… finding myself on the banks of the Rio del Norte, within a short distance from the first settlements of New Mexico, which are found along this river… I desire to take possession of this land this 30th day of April, the feast of the Ascension of Our Lord, in the year fifteen hundred and ninety-eight.…” He commemorated the Franciscan martyrs of earlier years up the river, and showed how their work must be taken up and continued. Turning to other purposes of his colony, he listed many—the “need for correcting and punishing the sins against nature and against humanity that exist among these bestial nations”; and the desirable ends “that these people may be bettered in commerce and trade; that they may gain better ideas of government; that they may augment the number of their occupations and learn the arts, become tillers of the soil and keep livestock and cattle, and learn to live like rational beings, clothe their naked; govern themselves with justice and be able to defend themselves from their enemies.… All these objects I shall fulfill even to the point of death, if need be. I command now and will always command that these objects be observed under penalty of death.” Mentioning the presence of his reverend fathers and of his officers, and the name of the King, he declared:

“Therefore… I take possession, once, twice, and thrice, and all the times I can and must, of the… lands of the said Rio del Norte, without exception whatsoever, with all its meadows and pasture grounds and passes… and all other lands, pueblos, cities, villas, of whatsoever nature now founded in the kingdom and province of New Mexico… and all its native Indians.… I take all jurisdiction, civil as well as criminal, high as well as low, from the edge of the mountains to the stones and sand in the rivers, and the leaves of the trees.…”

He then turned and took the cross beside him, and advancing to a tree he nailed the cross to it and knelt down to pray, “O, holy cross, divine gate of heaven and altar of the only and essential sacrifice of the blood and body of the Son of God, pathway of saints and emblem of their glory, open the gates of heaven to these infidels. Found churches and altars where the body and blood of the Son of God may be offered in sacrifice; open to us a way of peace and safety for their conversion, and give to our king and to me, in his royal name, the peaceful possession of these kingdoms and provinces. Amen.”

And the royal secretary then read his certification of the deed, and the trumpets blew a tremendous voluntary, and the harquebusiers fired a salute together, and the Governor planted with his own hands the royal standard in the land near the river.