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21.

The Battle of Ácoma

He received their official opinion on the following day.

“What conditions,” he had asked them, “are necessary in order to wage a just war? In the event of such a war, what steps may be taken against those warred upon and against their possessions?”

In reply to the first question the learned friars made several points.

To begin with, there must be authority to wage war, as in the cases of Popés, emperors and kings, and those acting in their stead. The Governor was a delegate of the Crown. Plainly, he had authority.

And then there must be a just cause. The friars listed “to punish those who are guilty of wrongdoing, or have violated the laws of the land,” which clearly covered the crime of treacherous insurrection. The friars added that the final just cause for war was to establish peace, “for peace is the principal object of war.” The Governor could feel that he had more than one just cause.

Moreover, they stated, war must be waged with good faith, and without covetousness, malice, hate, or ambition for power. The Governor examined his conscience.

As to the second question, though several points were analyzed, the pertinent one seemed to be that about war against wrongdoers, and the opinion declared that “they and their possessions are at the mercy of their conqueror according to the laws of the land,” and could be “treated by divine and civil law, as law and justice require,” but any punishment visited upon the vanquished must be taken “to carry into effect the requirements of justice.” The Governor noted this respect for due process.

Finally, said the friars, “as the purpose of war is to establish peace, then it is even justifiable to exterminate and destroy those who stand in the way of that peace.”

The Governor could hear his duty clearly. If he had known doubt before he knew none now. He ordered public proclamation in the capital that “war by blood and fire” was declared against the Indians of Ácoma, and announced that he would himself lead the punitive army. Immediate protests of concern for his safety made him change his mind about taking personal command, and instead he named Vicente de Zaldívar to lead the return to Ácoma.

On the same day—December 22, 1598—a Requiem Mass was held for Juan de Zaldívar and all who had died with him. The cold, narrow, dark, clay church above the riverbanks resounded with the offices of the dead. It was, the church, as plain as a coffin and the spirit of all there that day filled it with fierce thoughts and prayers upon the reality of death.

But three days later came the great feast of Christmas, and the birth of life and purity in the world. All worked hard, and rededicated themselves in the midst of hazard, loneliness and loss; and resolve grew with the preparations for war.

Seventy picked soldiers made up the army against Ácoma. Each had his coat of mail, double strength. They had shields which when not in use hung from the shoulder. The lancers carried many designs in their tall weapons. Some had points called partisans, like sharp leaves facing both ways. There were glaives, which carried a plain, long knife with a sudden curve at the tip like an eagle’s beak. The halberds had an axe facing one way, a steel beak another, and at the very top, a long sharp point. All these the soldiers polished and tightened and sharpened. The firearms were taken apart, the springs tested, oiled and reassembled. Some musketeers carried the harquebus, others the petronel, which was fired with its butt against the breast. Colonel de Zaldívar had two pieces of brass artillery to take with him—culverins with the Spanish Crown engraved above their touchholes. The artillerymen polished them inside and out until they shone green with the blue sky. Gunpowder was sifted and spread thin to dry in the sun. The heavy fixed maces and the morning stars from Germany with a spiked ball hung by a short chain from the mace-staff were scrubbed with river sand. All riding equipment was inspected, repaired with rawhide thongs, and inspected again—bridles, reins, saddles, stirrups. The horses had heavy steel breastplates, and these were burnished. Every man’s knapsack was filled with his issue of emergency rations, gunpowder, bullets. With so much at stake, proper preparation was essential. As the men worked day by day, after Christmas, and into the New Year, they came to love their weapons and equipment. They worked as absorbed as children in ritual play. Their common purpose, their similar tasks, the buried excitement of awaiting danger, made them happy in a way that they could never expose. They were soldiers getting ready for a soldier’s job.

By order of the Governor all men went to confession and communion before leaving with the army—all but one, “who, despite the urgings of his commander, would have nothing to do with the holy sacraments.” He was called “an abandoned wretch.”

On the morning of January 12, 1599, the army against Ácorna left the capital on the river. It took nine or ten days to reach Ácoma. On arriving, Vicente de Zaldívar was under orders to call upon the Ácomese for peace and submission. If these were denied, he was to attack. It would take nine or ten days for news to come back to the river after that. The Governor and the colony could only wait, hope and pray as January passed.

On the night of the twenty-first while the Governor was in his quarters at San Juan disturbances broke out among the Indians in the twin pueblo over the river. Sentries reported hostile announcements. Defiant reports came of how all the pueblos of the river country were marching in arms to destroy the Spanish colony. The Governor personally took charge of doubling the sentinels on guard, with a captain at each of the four gates to San Juan. Fires were lighted to see by. It was a cold night. The army must have just about then come to Ácoma, for they had left nine days before. Here on the river, and there far to the west, were they all in danger tonight?

The Governor making his rounds saw the rooftops of his own town full of people who should be inside. Who were they? He sent two officers to find out. They returned to report that the roofs were thronged by the wives, the mothers, the widows of the colony, under the leadership of Doña Eufemia de Sosa Peñalosa, wife of the royal ensign. They had all decided that they must in the common peril help their soldier menfolk to defend their common home, the capital city. The Governor was touched at such spirit, and confirmed Doña Eufemia’s command of the roofs. The women of the garrison “walked up and down the housetops with proud and martial step.”

The vigil lasted all night, but no attack came, then, or in the days following. It was hard to wait and to wonder, but they could do nothing else at San Juan, though a curious thing happened in the late afternoon of January twenty-fourth. A very old Indian woman came to see the Governor and was admitted. She was accustomed to the respect which her people always gave to the aged and the ancestors, and she expected it from the Spaniards. She had something to tell the Governor and she told it with gravity. She made references to distance, westward, wide country, vastly high rock, so, long and sheer. Her little crabbed hands whirled in gestures of battle and strife one against the other. The war at Ácoma. The soldiers with brave swords, the Indians with arrows, the air full of fury. The battle came and went. It lasted three long days. It was over just today, she said. There was much death amidst the Indians. There came smoke, the town was burning. There was a vision in the air. Quiet came. The soldiers were victorious. She nodded many times, nodding with her whole drawn, eroded and folded person in emphatic confirmation of what she knew and told.

The Governor thanked her and dismissed her. Her recital hardly allayed his impatience to hear what really had happened.

But at last nine days afterward, the quartermaster Diego de Zubia came riding to San Juan from the battle of Ácoma with information and two prisoners. The prisoners he put into a kiva under guard and went to report to the Governor. He announced an overwhelming victory at once. The details followed.

Late in the afternoon of January twenty-first the army was greeted at Ácoma by fearful sights and sounds. On the rock overhead, the Indians, men and women, were naked, figuring obscene gestures, and shrieking like devils out of hell. Vicente de Zaldívar sent the secretary and Thomas, the interpreter, to demand peaceful submission and delivery of the murderers of December, only to be greeted with vileness and scorn. Night falling, the army camped below the rock while Zaldívar completed his battle plan. When the sun rose on the morning of January twenty-second he took eleven men unseen to one of the rocks of Ácoma while the rest of the army marched in plain view to the other announcing their attack. The Indian defenders swarmed to fight the main army, while Zaldívar and his little squad scaled the far rock to gain an all-important foothold. Four hundred Indians discovered them and attacked them with stones and arrows, but without driving them off the cliff. Zaldívar called on his patron Saint Vincent and gave battle. Soon he saw an Indian dressed in his brother Juan’s clothes, and in valorous rage he killed him with one blow. The army at the other rock, and other soldiers on the ground far below, attacked with all their power so that the Indians found themselves defending three fronts. Many Indians were killed by fire from below, and fell from the edge of the island “leaving their miserable souls up in their lofty fortress.” The battle raged all the first day and was ended only by the cold January nightfall, with Vicente down on the ground in camp again, making plans for the second day, while his squad retained their safe position on top of the first rock. The army once more confessed to the chaplain, all but the “abandoned wretch,” and received communion from the Father President before sunrise on the second morning, January twenty-third. A large force then went to the first rock, scaled the cliff and were received by the soldiers on top. The pueblo on the islands looked deserted. Thirteen soldiers carrying a heavy timber to bridge the chasm between the rocks advanced and crossed, and pulled their bridge with them to use again farther ahead. The Indians then broke from hiding to attack. The rest of the army saw their comrades cut off from them beyond the abyss. Captain Pérez de Villagrá superbly ran, leaped the chasm and heaved the great log up, restoring it as a bridge, upon which the soldiers crossed to the reinforcement of their fellows, while the trumpeter blew his trumpet and all felt great new strength. A harque-busier, firing wildly, shot four times through the body of his comrade the “abandoned wretch,” who then called for God’s forgiveness and heroically made his way to the camp below, where he confessed to the Father President and died. The two brass culverins were brought up, and each was loaded with two hundred balls and fired into a front of three hundred Indians who were advancing, and did fearful damage. A squad of soldiers went behind the battle and set fire to the city of Ácoma, so that smoke and flame rose to obscure the sun. Peace demands were made repeatedly by the attackers and refused. Some Indians in despair threw themselves from the rock, and others walked into the burning houses to die, and others hanged themselves. In the third day an Ácoma ancient came forward walking with a staff, pleading for peace, offering the surrender for his people, which was accepted by the Colonel. Zaldívar asked what had happened to the bodies of the soldiers murdered in December, and the old man led him to the place where all had been gathered and burned in a savage funeral pyre. There Zaldívar prostrated himself to weep and pray, saying to the soldiers with him, “Here is another Troy.” He raised a cross at the site. After the surrender of every Indian was certain, the soldiers saw the women of the pueblo rush forward with sticks and fall to beating a dead body that lay on the stone until it was a mound of formless flesh. They explained in their rage that they were punishing Zutucupan, the treacherous chief who had led the Ácomas into the terrible revolt from the beginning. Finally as the stillness of the third evening came, the Indians asked the soldiers who was the mighty warrior who rode to battle above them in the sky, mounted on a white charger, carrying a fiery sword, wearing a long white beard, and accompanied by a maiden of heavenly beauty, robed in blue and crowned with stars. Hearing this Zaldívar and his men made the sign of the cross and declared that their arms had been triumphant through the support of Saint James of Compostela on his white horse, and of the Queen of Heaven herself. Colonel de Zaldívar shortly afterward sent the news of all these events to the Governor at San Juan by his courier the quartermaster Diego de Zubia, who reported thus. Zaldívar, the army and their captives would arrive in a few days.

Governor de Oñate could be proud and thankful. The victory was prodigious—seventy soldiers against thousands of Indians on their rocky fastness. He marvelled. Almost a thousand Indians were killed, and only two soldiers. And the city burning, and the vision in the sky? The Governor regarded all Indians, including that old woman who had come to him on the twenty-fourth, as superstitious creatures. How had she known on the very last day of battle what the courier took nine days to bring him? The Indians believed all old people wise unless crazy. Who knew?

He thanked the quartermaster, who mentioned the two Indian prisoners whom he had brought and who were now detained in a kiva at San Juan.

Who were they and what were they about?

Zubia explained that he had taken them as they were fleeing Ácoma. They told him they were Indians from elsewhere who had been attacked and robbed by the Ácomas. They asked him for food and help. He gave them what they needed and they were now awaiting attention in the kiva.

The Governor made inquiries. Friendly Indians reported to him that the two men in the kiva were not fugitives from Ácorna at all, but were actually two Ácoma Indians who had not surrendered. An extraordinary affair followed, a miniature of the battle of Ácoma itself. The two in the kiva when asked to come out refused. For three days they threw stones at all who tried to reach them. They lurked in the dark kiva emanating baleful energy, like wild animals dangerously trapped. Finally their bodies yielded but not their wild spirits. They asked for daggers with which to kill themselves, as they disdained to surrender to the Spaniards. The Governor and his Indian friends besought them to come out and be baptized. The reply came in vile abuse from the dark round cave. The Governor shrugged, and ordered then that instead of daggers, ropes be thrown to them, with which if they chose they might hang themselves. Silence followed for some time. The soldiers stood listening in the bright sunlight while mortal exasperation gathered its powers out of sight in the kiva. At last there was a sound, the scratch of body on packed clay, and the two emerged wearing their nooses already around their necks. Permitted to pass, they went to a sizable cottonwood tree like all those that cast shade by the river. In and out of sunlight they climbed to a topmost branch where the golden winter leaves quivered about their dry brown bodies. Knotting their ropes to the tree, they were silent, and after that they stared at the Governor and the others who watched from below. Finally one of the Ácomas spoke. With pride and scorn he declared that the two of them would die and dying would leave the soldiers free to ravage the land. “Our towns, our things, our lands are yours,” he said bitterly, and promised vengeance, if anyone could ever return from the dead. And with that, he and his comrade dropped from their bough with the spittle of fury on their lips. They hung swaying and ugly with bent necks and swollen faces as they died.

Looking up in awe and fascination, the soldiers, the Governor, witnessed there in the river cottonwood at San Juan the end of the battle of Ácoma.