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24.

The Promises

Close to eight hundred people were left at the river capital. Not long after the Governor’s departure they began to air certain disagreements.

First of all, the friars spoke out against the cruelties shown by the Governor to the Indians, and the robberies of Indian food, clothing and other possessions which many of the colonists seemed to consider privileged acts. Certainly no firm action against such unjust behavior was taken by the government. The Indians were close to starvation because the colonists had despoiled them of so much food. It was not to be condoned. Better no city, no province at all, than one so godless.

Other complaints came from other sources. There were charges of misrepresentation of the whole nature of New Mexico and even of the purpose of the expedition. Where was the quick return in wealth and personal fortune that all had believed in? A man put all he owned into a venture of this sort, and he deserved a proper return on his risk and his investment. What did he get here? He owed something to himself and his family. Back in Mexico, they had at least had a home of their own and something to eat.

Many men disdained to work in the colony to develop its modest but life-sustaining yield. They had come to make a fortune, not an irrigation ditch, a bean patch or a slaughter pen.

It appeared to the majority that one after another, the Governor’s explorations up the river, west of the river, east of the river, all founded on promises, showed nothing in the end but battle and burning pueblos. He himself seemed disappointed, but that helped nobody, for his temper only grew shorter, his rule more strict, and his methods more cruel. (After all, if what was going around was true, somebody had ordered the assassination of Aguilar and Sosa Albernoz.) Perhaps he was desperate to prove his whole venture a success. The question remained as to how long others should be expected to pay for things as they were.

In July a mass meeting was called at San Juan to give all such opinion a chance to crystallize. The Governor had his defenders who pointed out the happier facts overlooked by the discontented—there was plenty of food if farmers farmed, the plains were stocked with buffalo if hunters hunted, wheat and corn crops of the year were excellent.

Very well, cried the opposition, if the colony could be sustained on its river, then let the Governor stay at home, keep his soldiers here, and work hard to develop the new city where people could live decently. All those forays over the country brought nothing, took away man power, interrupted family life, and led to conflicts with the Indians.

The Governor’s supporters picked up the attacks of the friars and flung them back. If the friars stormed over the treatment of the Indians, some of the friars themselves were not doing their whole duty in their far-flung missionary parishes. Let them go back to their outlying pueblos, and do their work, and then talk.

The debates were full and bitter, and out of them came two documents. One, representing the great majority, filed fifty-seven charges against the Governor. The other, signed by his supporters, defended him. Both papers were sent by courier to the Viceroy in Mexico, and through the remaining weeks of summer, all but a small part of the colony made ready to take the road down the river to Mexico and older homes. At the end of September, 1601, they departed. Their journey took them two months, and as they arrived home at Santa Barbara near the head of the Conchos River in Mexico, the Governor was approaching his capital from yet another crossing of the plains of Quivira.

He brought a meagre return for all his pains. In his fifty-nine days of travel he saw nothing that had not been reported before. He learned one thing he was eager to know, and that was the fate of Humaña, the murderer, and his fellow deserters. Indians far eastward told how the Spanish renegades had been captured, surrounded with fire on the plains, and burned to death. Pace. For the rest of it, spirit and courage had run out of Oñate’s men, who hearing warnings of hostile Indians in vast numbers farther east presented a written petition to the Governor to turn homeward, as the “horses and mules were tired out and exhausted.” The petition bravely went on to say that in any case, “the chief purpose of our journey had been achieved,” which was merely to learn “the wonders of this land,” so they could be reported to the King in Madrid. The wonders were now detailed in terms not of gold, silver and jewels but of soil and innumerable cattle, yielding suet, hides and tallow. Confronted by homely realities, the Governor assented. Turning homeward, his party had to battle an Indian ambush. Many soldiers were wounded, many Indians killed. One Indian was taken prisoner, assigned the name Michael, and carried back to New Mexico to “give information.” He made a map of Quivira and described its treasures. Once again an Indian talked about gold in the east and Spaniards listened. But they continued westward toward the river. There remained little else to say of the plains, except that “the carts went over the country… very nicely,” which would interest anyone who had not heard that the plains were flat.

And now arriving at San Juan on November twenty-fourth the Governor found his capital deserted by all but a few loyal families and officials. His lieutenant governor was still there, and the Father President. As to the others two months gone he could hardly believe his ears. In rage he commanded Zaldívar to ride out with a troop, overtake the deserting colonists and return them to San Juan for punishment. He filed legal charges against them. It was all useless. The Mexican authorities ruled that the returned colonists need not go back to New Mexico, though the colony as presently constituted was to be continued.

The Governor found himself with a skeleton town, a mere cadre for an army, and a waning reputation. His fortunes were reversed. He had promised wealth out of the north, the east and the west. Only the west remained. There beckoned the pearl fisheries of the Californios of which Indians gave reports, and the harbors for the Orient trade, where surely the Governor’s own ships could unload treasure. These things had to be real. He proceeded in the certainty that they were. But to make them come true, he would need more people—soldiers, and pilots, and men with special skills; and he would need money and supplies. There was small chance that the Viceroy of Mexico would grant him what he asked. There remained only one to whom to turn, and in 1602, from the little clay hive on the banks of the Rio del Norte in remotest New Mexico, the Governor sent Vicente de Zaldívar, who had never failed him, to the great city of Madrid across the ocean to see the King.

Zaldívar pursued his mission in the chambered perspectives of the Madrid government. He asked for four hundred soldiers, a detachment of skilled shipbuilders to construct vessels for the New Mexico-Orient trade, a money loan, and men with families. Papers passed from the Council of the Indies to the Casa de Contratación, and the four hundred became forty, and difficulties developed about ocean passage for men with families, and affairs sometimes required reconsideration. Meanwhile, in secret, the Crown had ordered an investigation into the charges brought against the Governor. The very existence of the colony trembled in the balance. Now it was abolished by royal decree, and again it was confirmed. Zaldívar returned to his uncle empty-handed. The reduced colony and the small army then were made to serve one more reach that never found its grasp. In the autumn of 1604 the Governor led a detachment westward determined to find pearls and harbors. He returned to San Juan in April, 1605, having reached the Gulf of Lower California at the mouth of the Colorado River. It was his last expedition and like his others it was a failure, in terms of what he sought.

In the following year King Philip III instructed the Viceroy in Mexico to order all exploration to cease in New Mexico. It was a profitless region and the colony was a poor enterprise—though it should not be abolished. “And,” continued the royal letter, “you shall, with tact and discretion, cause the said Don Juan de Oñate to be recalled for some sufficient reason, as seems best to you, so that he may come without disturbance; as soon as he has come you will detain him in the City of Mexico, disband whatever military force he may have, and appoint a satisfactory governor, discreet and Christian, to govern what has been discovered in the said New Mexico, and you will endeavor to maintain it in justice and peace, and to protect and treat with kindness the native Indians, providing them with religious fathers to instruct them, and if any of these wish to go into the interior of the country to teach with Christian zeal you will permit it, so that fruit may be drawn from it and by this means certain information of what is to be found in that province may be had without recourse to arms.…”

There were delays, suspicions, acts of obedience and revolt and again submission, but the end so inexorably spelled out by the royal letter came to pass. The Governor left San Juan forever. Going south to oblivion he suffered yet one more blow from the hard country of his lost dominion. As he crossed the Dead Man’s March with his little company, he encountered Indians who gave challenge. In the skirmish that followed a young soldier was killed. He was the Governor’s only son. The father buried him there and moved on to Mexico and the courts. Behind him, up the river, his colony survived him. In 1610 a new governor took the capital away from the river to a mountain plateau to the east, where he founded Santa Fe. The period of exploration after treasure was at an end. Another motive began to know its own full expression.