Chapter V: Quivira (3)

The collection is the remains of the archives of the Franciscan order in New Mexico, the “_Custodia de la conversion de San Pablo de la Nueva-Mexico_,” which have lain here for more than thirty years, or since the time when the old military chapel (called _Castruenza_) of Santa Fé was condemned as unsafe. Such of the documents and church-books stored there as were not immediately needed were securely deposited in Santa Clara; for a priest then lived in the pueblo, and Santa Clara formed a parish by itself. When the parish was discontinued and the seat of the pastorate was removed to Santa Cruz, the archives were left. No one having any use for them, they remained in an old cupboard of the ruined convent till an Indian, who could neither read nor write, but had a clear head and respect for the old and venerable, proposed to commit the care of the papers to private hands. It took long and solemn meetings for consultation before the _Principales_ of the pueblo would agree to such an innovation. They would keep the documents, indeed, as something having an incomprehensible sanctity, but to remove them from the ruins, where they were given up to mold and decay, seemed at first a doubtful step. Those above, the “Shiuana,” might be displeased at it. The spiritual powers were finally consulted, and their decision was in favor of the innovation. The Franciscan archives were thus carried into the dark back-room of an Indian house, where a blind man was their first guardian; but they are now in charge of an intelligent, tolerably clear-seeing citizen of the village.

I tried in 1886 to obtain access to these old manuscripts, but was at once refused. It is of no use to importune an Indian. If he denies a request he is fixed in it, and one must wait. I waited two years, provided myself with a most urgent letter of introduction from the archbishop and an order from the priest of Santa Cruz, and went again. At last the prohibition was withdrawn, and after three protracted visits to Santa Clara, the last of which lasted twenty days, I was able to say that I had exhausted all the material and had accurate and complete copies of all the documents which had any important bearing on the history of New Mexico. It was no easy work, for the hand-writing was often nearly illegible, and the ink had faded and the paper grown yellow, and become almost rotten.

The contents of the archives of Santa Clara may be divided into three classes. The first class consists of documents not strictly ecclesiastical, among which I found much that was valuable; the second, of the special church books, including registers of baptism, marriage, and death, many of the last of which begin with the date of 1694. Many valuable facts were also found in these. The papers called _Diligencias Matrimoniales_, or _Informaciones_, official inquiries to determine the civil standing of the contracting parties, which preceded every marriage, were the most numerous. Many of these are very long; some of them are of the seventeenth century, and they unfold an extremely instructive picture of the customs of those times. There are hardly any documents left in New Mexico of the period before the great insurrection of 1680, and I have the few that have been saved. But I found in Santa Clara a large number of details concerning the years preceding the insurrection, although contained in manuscripts that were composed one or two years after the troubles broke out. There have come to light little “court histories” of the governor of the time, scenes from the private life of long-vanished families which were then playing an important part in the troubled world called the Spanish Colony of New Mexico; notices of many an event which is never mentioned in the printed annals, and which was still of great importance. The real life of the people has taken shape out of these obscure writings of the monks, and many a striking revelation has been obtained from them. One of the discoveries made in them has given occasion to the present paper.

Among the _Diligencias_ or _Informaciones_ was one the superscription of which read, “Information of Pedro Meusnier--a Frenchman--1699.” It was strange to meet with a Frenchman in New Mexico in 1699; and on reading the document it appeared that Pedro or Pierre Meusnier, or Meunier, at the time a soldier in the garrison at Santa Fé, born in Paris, had come to America in the year 1684 with the flotilla commanded by Monsieur de la Sala. Meunier brought forward two witnesses, one of whom was named Santiago Grolee, the other Juan de Archeueque. Both were French, and both declared that they had come across the sea with Meunier in the flotilla which the same “Monsieur de la Sala” commanded; and Grolee said that he was born at La Rochelle.

“Monsieur de la Sala” could have been nobody else than the famous brave discoverer of the mouths of the Mississippi--Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The date agrees with this supposition, for La Salle crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the last time in 1684, to found a French colony on the coast of Texas. There came also with the expedition Jacques Grollet, a sailor, and a certain Jean l’Archévèque. It was the latter who, on March 18, 1687, led the unfortunate commander into the trap which his confederates Duhaut and Liotot had set, and in which La Salle was killed. Grollet was in the plot, but took no part in the murder. The supposition seems at least well founded that Juan de Archeueque was the traitor L’Archévèque, and Santiago Grolee was his accessory in a lesser degree, the sailor Grollet. I wrote at once to Mr. Francis Parkman, the historian of Canada, and received the answer that my supposition seemed to him perfectly well founded, although all that is known concerning the fate of the two men after La Salle’s death is that they were found among the Indians in 1689 by Alonzo de Leon, commanding a Spanish expedition to Texas, and were taken to New Mexico. They were sent from Mexico to Spain where they were supposed to have ended their lives in the galleys.

The last supposition was soon shown to be erroneous. The Jesuit father Andrés Cavo, author of the work “_Los tres siglos de Mexico_,” says:[94] “After a number of days the messengers [whom Leon had sent to the Indians] came back with two Frenchmen, whose names were Jacob Grollet and Juan l’Archiveque.... After Monclova returned, the governor [Leon] sent the two Frenchmen to the viceroy, and they legitimated themselves before him. The Conde de Galve, convinced that the affair was of particular importance, sent them both to the court of Charles II. under the care of Captain Don Andrés Perez.[95]... In this year [1691] Don Andrés Perez came back from Madrid with both of the Frenchmen.” This is now also confirmed by the deposition of Santiago Grolee himself, which I found in Santa Clara in the investigation (_Informacion_) concerning his own person. It is of the year 1699, and he said in it: “We remained lost in that country five years among the wild infidel Indians, and after we had at last escaped from their power we went to Spain by the order of the Viceroy Conde de Galve, in order to give an account of our persons and of that country.” He said nothing of La Salle’s death and of his own participation in the murder.

Satisfied that in the persons of Archeueque and Grolee I had found the notorious L’Archévèque and the sailor Grollet, two of the accomplices in the killing of La Salle, I made further investigation in the case. Members of a family named Archibeque still live in different parts of New Mexico; and as this one wrote his name that way in the later papers, I thought that these Archibeques might be descendants of the ill-famed Frenchman. In Santa Clara, and with the help of the general surveyor’s archives at Santa Fé, I succeeded in restoring a tolerably complete picture of the life of Jean l’Archévèque. I shall now limit myself to this picture, and avoid the tedious details of documentary research. With the exception of the participation in the death of La Salle and the voyage to Spain, the facts are new and the results of local investigations.

Jean l’Archévèque was born in Bayonne, in southern France, in the year 1671. His parents were Claude l’Archévèque and Marie d’Armagnac. Both died in 1719. When thirteen years old, in 1684, he went with Robert Cavelier de La Salle to the coast of Texas and shared the fortunes of that unfortunate expedition. He entered the service of the notorious Duhaut, who, equally with the surgeon Liotot, was chief of the conspiracy to which La Salle fell a victim. His relation to Duhaut and his youth, he being only sixteen years old in 1687, explain, or at least partly excuse, the criminal part which he performed on the morning of the 18th of March. It was he who stood on the river-bank and when La Salle came over and inquired for his nephew, who was already murdered, answered the commander in insolent tones, and led him towards the ambush, where Duhaut and Liotot were hidden in the high grass. Mr. Parkman has described the scene from the best sources and with his accustomed vividness; and I therefore refer to his work, “La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,” for the details of the affair. This historian also gives a very intelligible account of L’Archévèque’s behavior immediately after the murder. Whether repentance or a sudden coming back to his senses after the act or uncertainty concerning the real intentions of his associates determined him to it, L’Archévèque seems to have afterward gradually separated himself from the murderers. He thus escaped the vengeance which the freebooter Hiens inflicted on Duhaut and Liotot. The adherents of the murdered man also seem to have considered him less guilty. But he did not join the little company which set out on its extensive wanderings northward under the lead of Joutel. With Grollet and some others, among whom was Meunier, he stayed among the Indians of Texas till 1689, when Alonzo de Leon ransomed him. Fray Isidro Espinosa gives the details of this ransoming in his “_Crónica seráfica y apostólica_” (first part); but he does not mention L’Archévèque, although he names Pedro Muñi (or Meunier).

I have not been able to determine the date when the three Frenchmen went from Mexico to New Mexico. It was probably with Don Diego de Vargas, the reconqueror of the province. L’Archévèque and Meunier were soldiers, while Grollet came as a settler. All three were in Santa Fé as early as 1696. In the next year L’Archévèque was married to Antonia Gutierrez, who was born at Tezonco, near the City of Mexico, and was the widow of a certain Tomas de Yta, who had been murdered three years previously near Zacatecas. In the year 1701 he bought a land estate in Santa Fé, but still continued a soldier, and in that capacity visited in the next year the distant Indian villages of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuñi. His wife died in the first year of the eighteenth century, and he continued a widower till 1719, when he married as his second wife the daughter of the Alcalde Mayor Ignacio de Roybal. The second marriage was solemnized in the church of the pueblo of San Ildefonso, and the governor of New Mexico at the time, General Don Antonio Valverde Cosio, was one of the witnesses. L’Archévèque, or, as he now began to call himself, Captain Juan de Archibeque, stood in high credit. He had left the military service with honor, and had become a successful trader, or peddler. His trading journeys extended to Sonora, and he occasionally visited the City of Mexico on business. His notes[96] were current everywhere, and were even accepted and endorsed by men connected with the government. He was a man in easy circumstances--for New Mexico, a wealthy man. His son by his first marriage, Miguel de Archibeque, assisted him faithfully in his business affairs, and a natural son, Augustin de Archibeque, likewise helped, by his labor and his watchful care of his interests, in the accumulation of his wealth. Everything went on according to his desire.

Jean l’Archévèque celebrated his second marriage on the 16th of August, 1719, with a daughter of one of the first families of New Mexico. A year afterward, on the same day of the same month, Jean l’Archévèque was a bleeding corpse.

The “Captain” and former soldier, Juan de Archibeque, enjoyed with the Spanish military officers no less a degree of confidence than was reposed in him as a merchant by the same officers and the people in general. He was consulted concerning all important enterprises; and the minutes are in my hand of several war councils in which his views were influential. When, therefore, in the spring of 1720, Governor Don Antonio Valverde Cosio was contemplating the preparation of an expedition by order of the viceroy to the far northeast, in order to establish commercial relations with the Prairie Indians of Kansas, as well as to make a military reconnoissance in a direction in which an approach of the French was apprehended, L’Archévèque gave his opinion that the expedition should be dispatched at once. Among the reasons which in his view should commend it to the Spaniards, he emphasized the approach of “his countrymen, the French.” The campaign was organized; Don Pedro de Villazur was given the command of the fifty armed men who formed the corps, and Jean l’Archévèque, or Archibeque, went along as one of his staff. The march led through the great plains to the banks of the Arkansas River, which the force reached about August 14th. There they confronted a large camp or village of the Pananas (Pawnees). When the Pananas returned an obscure and therefore suspicious answer to a peaceful message of the Spanish commander, Villazur went back with his men and crossed the Arkansas, in order to have the river between himself and his presumed enemies. During the night between the 15th and 16th of August, the Spanish guards and the Indians of the company heard a splashing in the river, as if men were swimming across; and the guards were captured. A dog barked, but no attention was paid to that sign. At daybreak, when the horses had been collected and the command was about to mount, an attack was made upon them from the high grass. The horses took fright at the first shots, which were fired from a very short distance, and were aimed mainly at the tent of the commander. Some of the soldiers succeeded in catching the fugitive animals, but only for their own deliverance. The effect of the enemy’s fire was so quick and murderous that nothing else than flight was thought of. Five or six of the fifty armed men escaped. Among the dead were the commander, Don Pedro de Villazur, and Jean l’Archévèque. It is probable his own countrymen, the French, of whom there were several with the Pananas, shot him. His personal servant, although himself bleeding from six wounds, stayed with him till he ceased to breathe, and then saved himself “by a miracle,” as he declares, with one of the horses of the deceased. The betrayer of La Salle had fallen, on the anniversary of his second marriage, at the hands of his own countrymen or their allies.

L’Archévèque left a property of 6118 pesos, a considerable sum for the time. Besides his sons--his legitimate son Miguel and his natural son Augustin--he left a daughter, Marie, by his first marriage. His widow three years afterward married Bernardino Sena. From the two sons are derived the present families of Archibeque in New Mexico.

It is hardly possible to determine how far L’Archévèque was knowingly accessory to the murder of La Salle. His youth lends favor to the supposition that he may have acted ignorantly or thoughtlessly when he led the great discoverer into the ambush. But his whole character, as it was afterward unfolded, indicates an early maturity of mind, a considerable capacity, and great resolution, as well as unusual sagacity. His hand-writing, which I have often read, shows that he had been taught in school; and he could have received his instruction only in France. The manner of his death is very suggestive of a later requital for his earlier offence.

Of Meunier I could learn nothing further; and of Grollet only that he settled at Bernalillo, on the Rio Grande, there married Elena Galuegos in the year 1699, and was still living six years later.

The three persons on whose fate a light has been so curiously thrown by the archives of Santa Clara were the first French settlers on New Mexican territory. Driven there in consequence of a murder, one of them at least, L’Archévèque, played a notable part in the history of the country. His descendants know little or nothing of the deeds and adventures of their ancestor, and are quiet, modest people; who yet seldom fail to insist that they are of French origin. The church in which Archévèque was married a second time, a year before his tragical death, cannot be seen from the barren dune on which Santa Clara stands. The high mesa of San Ildefonso hides the pueblo, although it can be barely five miles from Santa Clara. That isolated lava cliff also, with the perpendicular precipices around its summit, bears a memory of the betrayer of La Salle. As a Spanish soldier he made several unsuccessful attempts to take the Black Mesa, as it was called, by storm.

From Santa Clara the view is very beautiful; but a taint of blood adheres to the rocks and to the valley which thence the eye looks down upon. Elsewhere throughout New Mexico, in places of ancient habitation, it is the same: for the history of this region is darkened by a sombre melancholy, the inevitable outcome of its blood-stained past.

THE END

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] While we may look for the former treasure region in Sumatra, the latest researches make it probable that Ophir represented not only Sofala, but also the coasts and interior of East Africa south of it, including Mozambique, Monomotapa, and the country of the ruins of Zimbabue (Mashonaland). This conclusion appears more credible than the opinion persistently maintained by Montesino that Ophir was Peru. The difficulties of a long sea-voyage from Ezion-Geber to the western coast of South America would be partly removed if we could accept Professor Haeckel’s hypothesis of a continent of Lemuria having once stood in the Indian Ocean, and should also suppose the Western Atlantis to have existed--which the natives of Australia sought in the eastern part of their quarter of the globe.

[2] Journal of the Admiral, published by Navarrete, from the “_Historia apologética de las Indias_” of Bartolomeo de Las Casas, MSS. at Madrid.

[3] Decada iii.

[4] Emeralds may also have been shown to the Spaniards then; for in the capitulation with Ojeda, on his second voyage, July 5, 1501, islands are mentioned, near Quiquevacoa, on the mainland, where the green stones were of which specimens had been brought to him. Quiquevacoa, or Coquivacoa, was the Indian name for the country around the Gulf of Venezuela.

[5] The name of “The Rich Coast,” Costa Rica, is still attached to that part of Central America north of Chiriqui.

[6] Ojeda and Diego de Nicuesa.

[7] Quintana, and Herrera, dec. i. lib. x. cap. iii.

[8] The discovery of Mexico by Córdova and its conquest afterward by Cortés affected the Spanish colonies south of the Isthmus very little. The influence of the colonization of the Mexican table-land extended no farther than to Yucatan, Guatemala, and a part of Honduras. The booty which the Spaniards gained there, partly in gold, was not great. The presents which the chiefs at Tenochtitlan sent to the seacoast to Cortés were lost at sea, and all the treasures which the Mexicans had accumulated in their great “pueblo” in the lagoon were ruined by the inundation during the retreat of July 1, 1519, or were burned during the subsequent attack.

[9] Decada i., p. 267.

[10] “_Relacion de los sucesos de Pedrarias Davila_,” etc.

[11] “_Historia general del nuevo Reyno de Granada, 1688._”

[12] Zamora treats these ceremonies as fabulous, but they are vouched for by Piedrahita, Pedro Simon, and others, as having once existed.

[13] A group of ten golden figures has been found in the lagoon of Siecha, representing the _balsa_ with the _dorado_.

[14] Bacatá--the extreme cultivated land.

[15] Dec. iv. lib. iv. cap. i., p. 101.

[16] Dr. Clements R. Markham supposes, following Oviedo y Baños (“_Historia de Venezuela_,” 1728), that Dalfinger died from a wound in 1530; but this appears to be erroneous, as is the assertion, too, of the same author that Dalfinger got no farther than the Rio Cesar. As to the latter point, Herrera, who is very exact in relating the deeds of the Europeans, mentions very plainly his reaching the cool country (_adonde halló tierra fria_). Dalfinger’s death can hardly have taken place before 1532. Nicolaus Federmann, Dalfinger’s provincial successor, says that he went to San Domingo in 1530 to be cured of a fever. When Federmann returned, in 1532, from his first expedition (southward to the plain of Meta), the governor was still living. Herrera’s statement (dec. iv. lib. ii. cap. ii.) that Dalfinger died at Coro in 1532 is the probable one. Federmann went back to Europe, but we shall see him later seeking for the _dorado_. Hans Seissenhoffer (Juan Aleman) succeeded him as governor of Coro, but died soon afterward without having undertaken anything. His successor, Georg von Speyer, was likewise inactive till the year 1535.

[17] Called Motolinia, “the poor” “_Historia de los Indios de Nueva España._”

[18] “_Hist. gen. y nat. de Indias_,” lib. xxiv. cap. i.

[19] Herrera, dec. v. lib. ii. cap. i.

[20] The knowledge of this river was so imperfect at this time that we cannot be sure this statement is correct, although Herrera says (dec. iv. lib. x. cap. ix.): “Diego de Ordás reached the Rio Marañon with the intention of beginning his explorations there.”

[21] From _arna_, tiger.

[22] Herrera, dec. iv. lib. x. cap. x.

[23] Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. vii.

[24] According to Oviedo there were two San Miguels: the “house of contention,” where D’Ortal landed, “_en aquel golpho é costa de Paria_” (lib. xxxiv. cap. viii.); and the later San Miguel de Neveri, east of Piritú. Oviedo and Herrera do not agree concerning the latter post.

[25] Huyapari was one of the many names of the Orinoco. It is also written Biapari and Uiapari.

[26] The height of water in the Orinoco in the interior of Guiana varies from twenty-eight to thirty-four feet annually.

[27] Oviedo.

[28] Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. xv.

[29] Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. xvi.

[30] “_Relacion de Nicolaus Federmann le Jeune_,” cap. ii. Translated by Ternaux-Compans. The original was printed at Haguenau in 1557. We here follow almost exclusively the story of Federmann himself. Oviedo does not mention Federmann’s next campaign, but says that he was in Coro during the rest of Dalfinger’s life. Herrera also says nothing about it. Hence his own account is our only authority.

[31] Probably near the present Barquicimeto.

[32] We should add to this that nobody but Federmann mentions these dwarfs.

[33] They are: Ananas; Cobéus (man-eater); Piraiurus (fish-snout); Pisas (net); Tapurus (tapir); Uaracus (fish); Tucunderas (ant); Jacamis (trumpet-bird); Mucuras (opossum); Taiassus (hog); Tijucos (mud); Arapassos (woodpecker); Tucanas (pepper-eater); Uacarras (crane); Ipecas (duck); Gis (axe); Coua (wasp); Corocoro (green ibis); Armadillos (armadillo); Tatus; Penimbucas (ashes). These names are somewhat similar to the designations which the Iroquois chose for their gentes, and prove, by the use of the names of peculiar animals, that the tribe of the Uaupés was certainly formed or divided up within tropical America.

[34] This story related to the unfortunate expedition of Herrera.

[35] The former sings in “Araucana” of Chili; the latter of La Plata in “Argentina.”

[36] Dec. v. lib. viii. cap. xiv.

[37] Father Gumilla says likewise in “_El Orinoco ilustrado_,” etc.: “Reports concerning the gilded king were current from the earliest times of the conquest at Santa Marta, as well as on the coast of Venezuela.”

[38] As Fray Pedro Simon records in the fragment of his “_Noticias historiales_” printed by Lord Kingsborough.

[39] In this act he abused his powers, which only permitted him to concede the whole government of Peru at pleasure, while single districts were put under the direction of commanders who could not be changed by him. See Herrera, dec. vi. lib. iii. cap. xi., and lib. viii. cap. vi.

[40] Herrera, dec. vi. lib. viii. cap. vi.

[41] It was probably the black cinnamon which Balmont de Bomaré” in his “_Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle_” of 1765 calls “_Canelle geroflée, Capelet ou Bois de Crabe_.”

[42] Oviedo says 230; Zarate, 200, and 4000 Indians.

[43] “_Historia del Descubrimiento y de la Conquista del Peru._”

[44] “_Une Barca llena de Bastimento._”

[45] Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, a Dominican, who went in Orellana’s voyage, says that the current was so strong that they travelled twenty-five leagues a day.

[46] On which a contemporary, Gómara, in his “_Historia General de las Indias_,” division, “_Rio de Orellana_,” lays special emphasis.

[47] The later Peruvian fable of the Paytiti is connected, as Von Humboldt has justly remarked, with the last concerted efforts of the Inca tribe to hold its position on the upper tributaries of the Amazon, and has therefore no connection the real _dorado_ legend.

[48] Herrera, dec. vii. lib. iv. cap. xii.

[49] Oviedo, lib. xxvi. cap. xxx.

[50] According to Oviedo (lib. xxv. cap. xvi.), 1262 pesos for the men and 1700 pesos for Von Speyer.

[51] Oviedo quotes from a report of Von Speyer’s dated Coro, October 9, 1538, which has not since received any attention. Possibly it no longer exists.

[52] Benzoni, “_Storia di Nuovo Mondo_,” etc., says that Von Speyer came to a tragical end, and was murdered in bed by the Spaniards. There is no further evidence on this point. Benzoni was in America, it is true, from 1541 to 1556, but his statements have not nearly the value of those of Oviedo, who was very much interested in Von Speyer, was personally acquainted with him, and would at least have spoken of such a crime with indignation, especially as Benzoni himself says the King of Spain caused the murderers to be punished. Benzoni has probably confounded Von Speyer’s death with some later bloody event.

[53] Oviedo.

[54] It appears that Welser’s agents were, besides, creditors of most of the soldiers who went in this campaign, so that their interests commanded them to give the men all possible assistance, in order that they might recover what was due them.

[55] Herrera, dec. vi. lib. ix. cap. iii.

[56] Lib. l. cap. xxiv.

[57] “_El Nuevo Descubrimiento del gran Rio de las Amazonas_,” Madrid, 1664.

[58] “_Historia del reyno de Quito._”

[59] The third of the able monsters of that name who lived in South America in the middle of the sixteenth century.

[60] “_Noticias historiales_” Part I., Noticia VI., cap. i.

[61] Cap. xviii.

[62] Cap. xxiii.

[63] “_Hist. Nat. general de las Indias_,” lib. ii. cap. vi.

[64] The Bay of Santa Cruz, in the present State of Florida, appears to have been the point where Narvaez landed.

[65] This province comprised the undefined northwest of Mexico, while New Biscay included the northeast, on the coast of the Mexican gulf.

[66] _Mar del Sur_, the Pacific Ocean, in distinction from _Mar del Norte_, the Northern Sea, the name by which the Atlantic Ocean was known in the sixteenth century.

[67] Particularly the first syllable, _Bac_, a corruption of _Bat Ki_--old house--as it often appears in the names of places in Arizona, e.g., _San Xavier del Bac_, _Tubac_, etc.

[68] The large former settlement of the Opatas at Casas Grandes, at the western foot of the Sierra Madre in Chihuahua, cannot be considered in connection with this discussion, for it was called “Hue-hueri-gi-ta,” and was already deserted in the sixteenth century.

[69] The application by the whites of foreign names to Indian tribes is very frequent in America.