Chapter IX: The Work of Traitors 284 (3)

That later times have reversed the situation; that Spain (largely because she was drained of her best blood by a conquest so enormous that no nation even now could give the men or the money to keep the enterprise abreast with the world's progress) has never regained her old strength, and is now a drone beside the young giant of nations that has grown, since her day, in the empire she opened,--has nothing to do with the obligation of American history to give her justice for the past. Had there been no Spain four hundred years ago, there would be no United States to-day. It is a most fascinating story to every genuine American,--for every one worthy of the name admires heroism and loves fairplay everywhere, and is first of all interested in the truth about his own country.

By 1680 the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico was beaded with Spanish settlements from Santa Cruz to below Socorro, two hundred miles; and there were also colonies in the Taos valley, the extreme north of the Territory. From 1600 to 1680 there had been countless expeditions throughout the Southwest, penetrating even the deadly Llano Estacado (Staked Plain). The heroism which held the Southwest so long was no less wonderful than the exploration that found it. The life of the colonists was a daily battle with niggard Nature--for New Mexico was never fertile--and with deadliest danger. For three centuries they were ceaselessly harried by the fiendish Apaches; and up to 1680 there was no rest from the attempts of the Pueblos (who were actually with and all about the settlers) at insurrection. The statements of closet historians that the Spaniards enslaved the Pueblos, or any other Indians of New Mexico; that they forced them to choose between Christianity and death; that they made them work in the mines, and the like,--are all entirely untrue. The whole policy of Spain toward the Indians of the New World was one of humanity, justice, education, and moral suasion; and though there were of course individual Spaniards who broke the strict laws of their country as to the treatment of the Indians, they were duly punished therefor.

Yet the mere presence of the strangers in their country was enough to stir the jealous nature of the Indians; and in 1680 a murderous and causeless plot broke out in the red Pueblo Rebellion. There were then fifteen hundred Spaniards in the Territory,--all living in Santa Fe or in scattered farm settlements; for Chamita had long been abandoned.

Thirty-four Pueblo towns were in the revolt, under the lead of a dangerous Tehua Indian named Pope. Secret runners had gone from pueblo to pueblo, and the murderous blow fell upon the whole Territory simultaneously. On that bitter 10th of August, 1680, over four hundred Spaniards were assassinated,--including twenty-one of the gentle missionaries who, unarmed and alone, had scattered over the wilderness that they might save the souls and teach the minds of the savages.

Antonio de Otermin was then governor and captain-general of New Mexico, and was attacked in his capital of Santa Fe by a greatly-outnumbering army of Indians. The one hundred and twenty Spanish soldiers, cooped up in their little adobe city, soon found themselves unable to hold it longer against their swarming besiegers; and after a week's desperate defence, they made a sortie, and hewed their way through to liberty, taking their women and children with them. They retreated down the Rio Grande, avoiding an ambush set for them at Sandia by the Indians, and reached the pueblo of Isleta, twelve miles below the present city of Albuquerque, in safety; but the village was deserted, and the Spaniards were obliged to continue their flight to El Paso, Texas, which was then only a Spanish mission for the Indians.

In 1681 Governor Otermin made an invasion as far north as the pueblo of Cochiti, twenty-five miles west of Santa Fe, on the Rio Grande; but the hostile Pueblos forced him to retreat again to El Paso. In 1687 Pedro Reneros Posada made another dash into New Mexico, and took the rock-built pueblo of Santa Ana by a most brilliant and bloody assault. But he also had to retire. In 1688 Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate--the greatest soldier on New Mexican soil--made an expedition, in which he took the pueblo of Zia by storm (a still more remarkable achievement than Posada's), and in turn retreated to El Paso.

At last the final conqueror of New Mexico, Diego de Vargas, came in 1692. Marching to Santa Fe, and thence as far as ultimate Moqui, with only eighty-nine men, he visited every pueblo in the Province, meeting no opposition from the Indians, who had been thoroughly cowed by Cruzate. Returning to El Paso, he came again to New Mexico in 1693, this time with about one hundred and fifty soldiers and a number of colonists. Now the Indians were prepared for him, and gave him the bloodiest reception ever accorded in New Mexico. They broke out first at Santa Fe, and he had to storm that town, which he took after two days' fighting. Then began the siege of the Black Mesa of San Ildefonso, which lasted off and on for nine months. The Indians had removed their village to the top of that New Mexican Gibraltar, and there resisted four daring assaults, but were finally worn into surrender.

Meantime De Vargas had stormed the impregnable citadel of the Potrero Viejo, and the beetling cliff of San Diego de Jemez,--two exploits which rank with the storming of the Penol of Mixton[7] in Jalisco (Mexico) and of the vast rock of Acoma, as the most marvellous assaults in all American history. The capture of Quebec bears no comparison to them.

These costly lessons kept the Indians quiet until 1696, when they broke out again. This rebellion was not so formidable as the first, but it gave New Mexico another watering with blood, and was suppressed only after three months' fighting. The Spaniards were already masters of the situation; and the quelling of that revolt put an end to all trouble with the Pueblos,--who remain with us to this day practically undiminished in numbers, though they have fewer towns, a quiet, peaceful, Christianized race of industrious farmers, living monuments to the humanity and the moral teaching of their conquerors.

Then came the last century, a dismal hundred years of ceaseless harassment by the Apaches, Navajos, and Comanches, and occasionally by the Utes,--a harassment which had hardly ceased a decade ago. The Indian wars were so constant, the explorations (like that wonderful attempt to open a road from San Antonio de Bejar, Texas, to Monterey, California) so innumerable, that their individual heroism is lost in their own bewildering multitude.

More than two centuries ago the Spaniards explored Texas, and settlement soon followed. There were several minor expeditions; but the first of magnitude was that of Alonzo de Leon, governor of the Mexican State of Coahuila, who made extensive explorations of Texas in 1689. By the beginning of the last century there were several Spanish settlements and _presidios_ (garrisons) in what was to become, more than a hundred years later, the largest of the United States.

The Spanish colonization of Colorado was not extensive, and they had no towns north of the Arkansas River; but even in settling our Centennial State they were half a century ahead of us, as they were some centuries ahead in finding it.

In California the Spaniards were very active. For a long time there were minor expeditions which were unsuccessful. Then the Franciscans came in 1769 to San Diego Bay, landed on the bare sands where a million-dollar American hotel stands to-day, and at once began to teach the Indians, to plant olive-orchards and vineyards, and to rear the noble stone churches so beautifully described by the author of "Ramona," which shall remain as monuments of a sublime faith long after the race that built them has gone from off the face of the earth.

California had a long line of Spanish governors--the last of whom, brave, courtly, lovable old Pio Pico, has just died--before our acquisition of that garden-State of States. The Spaniards discovered gold there centuries, and were mining it a decade, before an "American" dreamed of the precious deposit which was to make such a mark on civilization, and had found the rich placer-fields of New Mexico a decade earlier yet.

In Arizona, Father Franciscus Eusebius Kuehne,[8] a Jesuit of Austrian birth but under Spanish auspices, was first to establish the missions on the Gila River,--from 1689 to 1717 (the date of his death). He made at least four appalling journeys on foot from Sonora to the Gila, and descended that stream to its junction with the Colorado. It would be extremely interesting, did space permit, to follow fully the wanderings and achievements of that class of pioneers of America who have left such a wonderful impress on the whole Southwest,--the Spanish missionaries. Their zeal and their heroism were infinite. No desert was too frightful for them, no danger too appalling. Alone, unarmed, they traversed the most forbidding lands and braved the most deadly savages, and left in the lives of the Indians such a proud monument as mailed explorers and conquering armies never made.

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The foregoing is a running summary of the early pioneering of America,--the only pioneering for more than a century, and the greatest pioneering for still another century. As for the great and wonderful work at last done by our own blood, not only in conquering part of a continent, but in making a mighty nation, the reader needs no help from me to enable him to comprehend it,--it has already found its due place in history. To record all the heroisms of the Spanish pioneers would fill, not this book, but a library. I have deemed it best, in such an enormous field, to draw the condensed outline, as has now been done; and then to illustrate it by giving in detail a few specimens out of the host of heroisms. I have already given a hint of how many conquests and explorations and dangers there were; and now I wish to show by fair "sample pages" what Spanish conquest and exploration and endurance really were.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Pronounced Mish-ton.

[8] Often misspelled Kino.

II.

SPECIMEN PIONEERS.

I.

THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER.

The achievements of the explorer are among the most important, as they are among the most fascinating, of human heroisms. The qualities of mind and body necessary to his task are rare and admirable. He should have many sides and be strong in each,--the rounded man that Nature meant man to be. His body need not be as strong as Samson's, nor his mind as Napoleon's, nor his heart the most fully developed heart on earth; but mind, heart, and body he needs, and each in the measure of a strong man. There is hardly another calling in which every muscle, so to speak, of his threefold nature will be more constantly or more evenly called into play.

It is a curious fact that some of the very greatest of human achievements have come about by chance. Many among the most important discoveries in the history of mankind have been made by men who were not seeking the great truth they found. Science is the result not only of study, but of precious accidents; and this is as true of history. It is an interesting study in itself,--the influence which happy blunders and unintended happenings have had upon civilization.

In exploration, as in invention, accident has played its important part. Some of the most valuable explorations have been made by men who had no more idea of being explorers than they had of inventing a railroad to the moon; and it is a striking fact that the first inland exploration of America, and the two most wonderful journeys in it, were not only accidents, but the crowning misfortunes and disappointments of the men who had hoped for very different things.

Exploration, intended or involuntary, has not only achieved great results for civilization, but in the doing has scored some of the highest feats of human heroism. America in particular, perhaps, has been the field of great and remarkable journeys; but the two men who made the most astounding journeys in America are still almost unheard of among us. They are heroes whose names are as Greek to the vast majority of Americans, albeit they are men in whom Americans particularly should take deep and admiring interest. They were Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, the first American traveller; and Andres Docampo, the man who walked farther on this continent than any other.

_See page 135._]

In a world so big and old and full of great deeds as this, it is extremely difficult to say of any one man, "He was the greatest" this or that; and even in the matter of journeys there have been bewilderingly many great ones, of the most wonderful of which we have heard least. As explorers we cannot give Vaca and Docampo great rank; though the latter's explorations were not contemptible, and Vaca's were of great importance. But as physical achievements the journeys of these neglected heroes can safely be said to be without parallel. They were the most wonderful walks ever made by man. Both men made their records in America, and each made most of his journey in what is now the United States.

Cabeza de Vaca was the first European really to penetrate the then "Dark Continent" of North America, as he was by centuries the first to _cross_ the continent. His nine years of wandering on foot, unarmed, naked, starving, among wild beasts and wilder men, with no other attendants than three as ill-fated comrades, gave the world its first glimpse of the United States inland, and led to some of the most stirring and important achievements connected with its early history. Nearly a century before the Pilgrim Fathers planted their noble commonwealth on the edge of Massachusetts, seventy-five years before the first English settlement was made in the New World, and more than a generation before there was a single Caucasian settler of _any_ blood within the area of the present United States, Vaca and his gaunt followers had trudged across this unknown land.

It is a long way back to those days. Henry VIII. was then king of England, and sixteen rulers have since occupied that throne. Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was not born when Vaca started on his appalling journey, and did not begin to reign until twenty years after he had ended it. It was fifty years before the birth of Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia; a generation before the birth of Shakspere, and two and a half generations before Milton. Henry Hudson, the famous explorer for whom one of our chief rivers is named, was not yet born. Columbus himself had been dead less than twenty-five years, and the conqueror of Mexico had seventeen yet to live. It was sixty years before the world had heard of such a thing as a newspaper, and the best geographers still thought it possible to sail through America to Asia. There was not a white man in North America above the middle of Mexico; nor had one gone two hundred miles inland in this continental wilderness, of which the world knew almost less than we know now of the moon.

The name of Cabeza de Vaca may seem to us a curious one. It means "Head of a Cow." But this quaint family name was an honorable one in Spain, and had a brave winning: it was earned at the battle of Naves de Tolosa in the thirteenth century, one of the decisive engagements of all those centuries of war with the Moors. Alvar's grandfather was also a man of some note, being the conqueror of the Canary Islands.

Alvar was born in Xeres[9] de la Frontera, Spain, toward the last of the fifteenth century. Of his early life we know little, except that he had already won some consideration when in 1527, a mature man, he came to the New World. In that year we find him sailing from Spain as treasurer and sheriff of the expedition of six hundred men with which Panfilo de Narvaez intended to conquer and colonize the Flowery Land, discovered a decade before by Ponce de Leon.

They reached Santo Domingo, and thence sailed to Cuba. On Good Friday, 1528, ten months after leaving Spain, they reached Florida, and landed at what is now named Tampa Bay. Taking formal possession of the country for Spain, they set out to explore and conquer the wilderness. At Santo Domingo shipwreck and desertion had already cost them heavily, and of the original six hundred men there were but three hundred and forty-five left. No sooner had they reached Florida than the most fearful misfortunes began, and with every day grew worse. Food there was almost none; hostile Indians beset them on every hand; and the countless rivers, lakes, and swamps made progress difficult and dangerous. The little army was fast thinning out under war and starvation, and plots were rife among the survivors. They were so enfeebled that they could not even get back to their vessels. Struggling through at last to the nearest point on the coast, far west of Tampa Bay, they decided that their only hope was to build boats and try to coast to the Spanish settlements in Mexico. Five rude boats were made with great toil; and the poor wretches turned westward along the coast of the Gulf. Storms scattered the boats, and wrecked one after the other. Scores of the haggard adventurers were drowned, Narvaez among them; and scores dashed upon an inhospitable shore perished by exposure and starvation. The living were forced to subsist upon the dead. Of the five boats, three had gone down with all on board; of the eighty men who escaped the wreck but fifteen were still alive. All their arms and clothing were at the bottom of the Gulf.

The survivors were now on Mal Hado, "the Isle of Misfortune." We know no more of its location than that it was west of the mouth of the Mississippi. Their boats had crossed that mighty current where it plunges out into the Gulf, and theirs were the first European eyes to see even this much of the Father of Waters. The Indians of the island, who had no better larder than roots, berries, and fish, treated their unfortunate guests as generously as was in their power; and Vaca has written gratefully of them.

In the spring his thirteen surviving companions determined to escape. Vaca was too sick to walk, and they abandoned him to his fate. Two other sick men, Oviedo and Alaniz, were also left behind; and the latter soon perished. It was a pitiable plight in which Vaca now found himself. A naked skeleton, scarce able to move, deserted by his friends and at the mercy of savages, it is small wonder that, as he tells us, his heart sank within him. But he was one of the men who never "let go." A constant soul held up the poor, worn body; and as the weather grew less rigorous, Vaca slowly recovered from his sickness.

For nearly six years he lived an incomparably lonely life, bandied about from tribe to tribe of Indians, sometimes as a slave, and sometimes only a despised outcast. Oviedo fled from some danger, and he was never heard of afterward; Vaca faced it, and lived. That his sufferings were almost beyond endurance cannot be doubted. Even when he was not the victim of brutal treatment, he was the worthless encumbrance, the useless interloper, among poor savages who lived the most miserable and precarious lives. That they did not kill him speaks well for their humane kindness.

The thirteen who escaped had fared even worse. They had fallen into cruel hands, and all had been slain except three, who were reserved for the harder fate of slaves. These three were Andres Dorantes, a native of Bejar; Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, a native of Salamanca; and the negro Estevanico, who was born in Azamor, Africa. These three and Vaca were all that were now left of the gallant four hundred and fifty men (among whom we do not count the deserters at Santo Domingo) who had sailed with such high hopes from Spain, in 1527, to conquer a corner of the New World,--four naked, tortured, shivering shadows; and even they were separated, though they occasionally heard vaguely of one another, and made vain attempts to come together. It was not until September, 1534 (nearly seven years later), that Dorantes, Castillo, Estevanico, and Vaca were reunited; and the spot where they found this happiness was somewhere in eastern Texas, west of the Sabine River.

But Vaca's six years of loneliness and suffering unspeakable had not been in vain,--for he had acquired, unknowingly, the key to safety; and amid all those horrors, and without dreaming of its significance, he had stumbled upon the very strange and interesting clew which was to save them all. Without it, all four would have perished in the wilderness, and the world would never have known their end.

While they were still on the Isle of Misfortune, a proposition had been made which seemed the height of the ridiculous. "In that isle," says Vaca, "they wished to make us doctors, without examining us or asking our titles; for they themselves cure sickness by blowing upon the sick one. With that blowing, and with their hands, they remove from him the disease; and they bade us do the same, so as to be of some use to them. We laughed at this, saying that they were making fun, and that we knew not how to heal; and for that they took away our food, till we should do that which they said. And seeing our stubbornness, an Indian said to me that I did not understand; for that it did no good for one to know how, because the very stones and other things of the field have power to heal,... and that we, who were men, must certainly have greater power."

This was a characteristic thing which the old Indian said, and a key to the remarkable superstitions of his race. But the Spaniards, of course, could not yet understand.

Presently the savages removed to the mainland. They were always in abject poverty, and many of them perished from starvation and from the exposures incident to their wretched existence. For three months in the year they had "nothing but shell-fish and very bad water;" and at other times only poor berries and the like; and their year was a series of wanderings hither and thither in quest of these scant and unsatisfactory foods.

It was an important fact that Vaca was utterly useless to the Indians. He could not serve them as a warrior; for in his wasted condition the bow was more than he could master. As a hunter he was equally unavailable; for, as he himself says, "it was impossible for him to trail animals." Assistance in carrying water or fuel or anything of the sort was impossible; for he was a man, and his Indian masters could not let a man do woman's work. So, among these starveling nomads, this man who could not help but must be fed was a real burden; and the only wonder is that they did not kill him.

Under these circumstances, Vaca began to wander about. His indifferent captors paid little attention to his movements, and by degrees he got to making long trips north, and up and down the coast. In time he began to see a chance for trading, in which the Indians encouraged him, glad to find their "white elephant" of some use at last. From the northern tribes he brought down skins and _almagre_ (the red clay so indispensable to the savages for face-paint), flakes of flint to make arrow-heads, hard reeds for the shafts, and tassels of deer-hair dyed red. These things he readily exchanged among the coast tribes for shells and shell-beads, and the like,--which, in turn, were in demand among his northern customers.

On account of their constant wars, the Indians could net venture outside their own range; so this safe go-between trader was a convenience which they encouraged. So far as he was concerned, though the life was still one of great suffering, he was constantly gaining knowledge which would be useful to him in his never-forgotten plan of getting back to the world. These lonely trading expeditions of his covered thousands of miles on foot through the trackless wildernesses; and through them his aggregate wanderings were much greater than those of either of his fellow-prisoners.

It was during these long and awful tramps that Cabeza de Vaca had one particularly interesting experience. He was the first European who saw the great American bison, the buffalo, which has become practically extinct in the last decade, but once roamed the plains in vast hordes,--and first by many years. He saw them and ate their meat in the Red River country of Texas, and has left us a description of the "hunchback cows." None of his companions ever saw one, for in their subsequent journey together the four Spaniards passed south of the buffalo-country.

Meanwhile, as I have noted, the forlorn and naked trader had had the duties of a doctor forced upon him. He did not understand what this involuntary profession might do for him,--he was simply pushed into it at first, and followed it not from choice, but to keep from having trouble. He was "good for nothing but to be a medicine-man." He had learned the peculiar treatment of the aboriginal wizards, though not their fundamental ideas. The Indians still look upon sickness as a "being possessed;" and their idea of doctoring is not so much to cure disease, as to exorcise the bad spirits which cause it.

This is done by a sleight-of-hand rigmarole, even to this day. The medicine-man would suck the sore spot, and pretend thus to extract a stone or thorn which was supposed to have been the cause of trouble; and the patient was "cured." Cabeza de Vaca began to "practise medicine" after the Indian fashion. He says himself, "I have tried these things, and they were very successful."

When the four wanderers at last came together after their long separation,--in which all had suffered untold horrors,--Vaca had then, though still indefinitely, the key of hope. Their first plan was to escape from their present captors. It took ten months to effect it, and meantime their distress was great, as it had been constantly for so many years. At times they lived on a daily ration of two handfuls of wild peas and a little water. Vaca relates what a godsend it seemed when he was allowed to scrape hides for the Indians; he carefully saved the scrapings, which served him as food for days. They had no clothing, and there was no shelter; and constant exposure to heat and cold and the myriad thorns of that country caused them to "shed their skin like snakes."

At last, in August, 1535, the four sufferers escaped to a tribe called the Avavares. But now a new career began to open to them. That his companions might not be as useless as he had been, Cabeza de Vaca had instructed them in the "arts" of Indian medicine-men; and all four began to put their new and strange profession into practice. To the ordinary Indian charms and incantations these humble Christians added fervent prayers to the true God. It was a sort of sixteenth-century "faith-cure;" and naturally enough, among such superstitious patients it was very effective. Their multitudinous cures the amateur but sincere doctors, with touching humility, attributed entirely to God; but what great results these might have upon their own fortunes now began to dawn upon them. From wandering, naked, starving, despised beggars, and slaves to brutal savages, they suddenly became personages of note,--still paupers and sufferers, as were all their patients, but paupers of mighty power. There is no fairy tale more romantic than the career thenceforth of these poor, brave men walking painfully across a continent as masters and benefactors of all that host of wild people.

Trudging on from tribe to tribe, painfully and slowly the white medicine-men crossed Texas and came close to our present New Mexico. It has long been reiterated by the closet historians that they entered New Mexico, and got even as far north as where Santa Fe now is. But modern scientific research has absolutely proved that they went on from Texas through Chihuahua and Sonora, and never saw an inch of New Mexico.

With each new tribe the Spaniards paused awhile to heal the sick. Everywhere they were treated with the greatest kindness their poor hosts could give, and with religious awe. Their progress is a very valuable object-lesson, showing just how some Indian myths are formed: first, the successful medicine-man, who at his death or departure is remembered as a hero, then as a demigod, then as divinity.

In the Mexican States they first found agricultural Indians, who dwelt in houses of sod and boughs, and had beans and pumpkins. These were the Jovas, a branch of the Pimas. Of the scores of tribes they had passed through in our present Southern States not one has been fully identified. They were poor, wandering creatures, and long ago disappeared from the earth. But in the Sierra Madre of Mexico they found superior Indians, whom we can recognize still. Here they found the men unclad, but the women "very honest in their dress,"--with cotton tunics of their own weaving, with half-sleeves, and a skirt to the knee; and over it a skirt of dressed deerskin reaching to the ground, and fastened in front with straps. They washed their clothing with a soapy root,--the _amole_, now similarly used by Indians and Mexicans throughout the Southwest. These people gave Cabeza de Vaca some turquoise, and five arrow-heads each chipped from a single emerald.

In this village in southwestern Sonora the Spaniards stayed three days, living on split deer-hearts; whence they named it the "Town of Hearts."

A day's march beyond they met an Indian wearing upon his necklace the buckle of a sword-belt and a horseshoe nail; and their hearts beat high at this first sign, in all their eight years' wandering, of the nearness of Europeans. The Indian told them that men with beards like their own had come from the sky and made war upon his people.

The Spaniards were now entering Sinaloa, and found themselves in a fertile land of flowing streams. The Indians were in mortal fear; for two brutes of a class who were very rare among the Spanish conquerors (they were, I am glad to say, punished for their violation of the strict laws of Spain) were then trying to catch slaves. The soldiers had just left; but Cabeza de Vaca and Estevanico, with eleven Indians, hurried forward on their trail, and next day overtook four Spaniards, who led them to their rascally captain, Diego de Alcaraz. It was long before that officer could believe the wondrous story told by the naked, torn, shaggy, wild man; but at last his coldness was thawed, and he gave a certificate of the date and of the condition in which Vaca had come to him, and then sent back for Dorantes and Castillo. Five days later these arrived, accompanied by several hundred Indians.

Alcaraz and his partner in crime, Cebreros, wished to enslave these aborigines; but Cabeza de Vaca, regardless of his own danger in taking such a stand, indignantly opposed the infamous plan, and finally forced the villains to abandon it. The Indians were saved; and in all their joy at getting back to the world, the Spanish wanderers parted with sincere regret from these simple-hearted friends. After a few days' hard travel they reached the post of Culiacan about the first of May, 1536, where they were warmly welcomed by the ill-fated hero Melchior Diaz. He led one of the earliest expeditions (in 1539) to the unknown north; and in 1540, on a second expedition across part of Arizona and into California, was accidentally killed.

After a short rest the wanderers left for Compostela, then the chief town of the province of New Galicia,--itself a small journey of three hundred miles through a land swarming with hostile savages. At last they reached the City of Mexico in safety, and were received with great honor. But it was long before they could accustom themselves to eating the food and wearing the clothing of civilized people.

The negro remained in Mexico. On the 10th of April, 1537, Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, and Dorantes sailed for Spain, arriving in August. The chief hero never came back to North America, but we hear of Dorantes as being there in the following year. Their report of what they saw, and of the stranger countries to the north of which they had heard, had already set on foot the remarkable expeditions which resulted in the discovery of Arizona, New Mexico, our Indian Territory, Kansas, and Colorado, and brought about the building of the first European towns in the inland area of the United States. Estevanico was engaged with Fray Marcos in the discovery of New Mexico, and was slain by the Indians.

Cabeza de Vaca, as a reward for his then unparalleled walk of much more than ten thousand miles in the unknown land, was made governor of Paraguay in 1540. He was not qualified for the place, and returned to Spain in disgrace. That he was not to blame, however, but was rather the victim of circumstances, is indicated by the fact that he was restored to favor and received a pension of two thousand ducats. He died in Seville at a good old age.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Pronounced Hay-ress.

II.

THE GREATEST AMERICAN TRAVELLER.

The student most familiar with history finds himself constantly astounded by the journeys of the Spanish Pioneers. If they had done nothing else in the New World, their walks alone were enough to earn them fame. Such a number of similar trips over such a wilderness were never heard of elsewhere. To comprehend those rides or tramps of thousands of miles, by tiny bands or single heroes, one must be familiar with the country traversed, and know something of the times when these exploits were performed. The Spanish chroniclers of the day do not dilate upon the difficulties and dangers: it is almost a pity that they had not been vain enough to "make more" of their obstacles. But however curt the narrative may be on these points, the obstacles were there and had to be overcome; and to this very day, after three centuries and a half have mitigated that wilderness which covered half a world, have tamed its savages, filled it with convenient stations, crossed it with plain roads, and otherwise removed ninety per cent of its terrors, such journeys as were looked upon as everyday matters by those hardy heroes would find few bold enough to undertake them. The only record at all comparable to that Spanish overrunning of the New World was the story of the California Argonauts of '49, who flocked across the great plains in the most remarkable shifting of population of which history knows; but even that was petty, so far as area, hardship, danger, and endurance went, beside the travels of the Pioneers. Thousand-mile marches through the deserts, or the still more fatal tropic forests, were too many to be even catalogued. It is one thing to follow a trail, and quite another to penetrate an absolutely trackless wilderness. A big, well-armed wagon-train is one thing, and a little squad on foot or on jaded horses quite another. A journey from a known point to a known point--both in civilization, though the wilderness lies between--is very different from a journey from somewhere, through the unknown, to nowhere; whose starting, course, and end are all untrodden and unguessed wilds. I have no desire to disparage the heroism of our Argonauts,--they made a record of which any nation should be proud; but they never had a chance to match the deeds of their brother-heroes of another tongue and another age.

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The walk of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, the first American traveller, was surpassed by the achievement of the poor and forgotten soldier Andres Docampo. Cabeza de Vaca tramped much more than ten thousand miles, but Docampo much over _twenty_ thousand, and under as fearful hardships. The explorations of Vaca were far more valuable to the world; yet neither of them set out with the intention of exploring. But Docampo did make a fearful walk voluntarily, and for a heroic purpose, which resulted in his later enormous achievement; while Vaca's was merely the heroism of a very uncommon man in escaping misfortune. Docampo's tramp lasted nine years; and though he left behind no book to relate his experiences, as did Vaca, the skeleton of his story as it remains to us is extremely characteristic and suggestive of the times, and recounts other heroism than that of the brave soldier.

When Coronado first came to New Mexico in 1540, he brought four missionaries with his little army. Fray Marcos returned soon from Zuni to Mexico, on account of his physical infirmities. Fray Juan de la Cruz entered earnestly into mission-work among the Pueblos; and when Coronado and his whole force abandoned the Territory, he insisted upon remaining behind among his dusky wards at Tiguex (Bernalillo). He was a very old man, and fully expected to give up his life as soon as his countrymen should be gone; and so it was. He was murdered by the Indians about the 25th of November, 1542.

The lay-brother, Fray Luis Descalona, also a very old man, chose for his parish the pueblo of Tshiquite (Pecos), and remained there after the Spaniards had left the country. He built himself a little hut outside the great fortified town of the savages, and there taught those who would listen to him, and tended his little flock of sheep,--the remnants of those Coronado had brought, which were the first that ever entered the present United States. The people came to love him sincerely,--all save the wizards, who hated him for his influence; and these finally murdered him, and ate the sheep.

Fray Juan de Padilla, the youngest of the four missionaries, and the first martyr on the soil of Kansas, was a native of Andalusia, Spain, and a man of great energy both mentally and physically. He himself made no mean record as a foot-traveller, and our professional pedestrians would stand aghast if confronted with the thousands of desert miles this tireless apostle to the Indians plodded in the wild Southwest. He had already held very important positions in Mexico, but gladly gave up his honors to become a poor missionary among the savages of the unknown north. Having walked with Coronado's force from Mexico across the deserts to the Seven Cities of Cibola, Fray Padilla trudged to Moqui with Pedro de Tobar and his squad of twenty men. Then plodding back to Zuni, he soon set forth again with Hernando de Alvarado and twenty men, on a tramp of about a thousand miles more. He was in this expedition with the first Europeans that ever saw the lofty town of Acoma, the Rio Grande within what is now New Mexico, and the great pueblo of Pecos.

In the spring of 1541, when the handful of an army was all gathered at Bernalillo, and Coronado set out to chase the fatal golden myth of the Quivira, Fray Padilla accompanied him. In that march of one hundred and four days across the barren plains before they reached the Quiviras in northeastern Kansas, the explorers suffered tortures for water and sometimes for food. The treacherous guide misled them, and they wandered long in a circle, covering a fearful distance,--probably over fifteen hundred miles. The expedition was mounted, but in those days the humble _padres_ went afoot. Finding only disappointment, the explorers marched all the way back to Bernalillo,--though by a less circuitous route,--and Fray Padilla came with them.

But he had already decided that among these hostile, roving, buffalo-living Sioux and other Indians of the plains should be his field of labor; and when the Spanish evacuated New Mexico, he remained. With him were the soldier Andres Docampo, two young men of Michuacan, Mexico, named Lucas and Sebastian, called the Donados, and a few Mexican Indian boys. In the fall of 1542 the little party left Bernalillo on its thousand-mile march. Andres alone was mounted; the missionary and the Indian boys trudged along the sandy way afoot. They went by way of the pueblo of Pecos, thence into and across a corner of what is now Colorado, and nearly the whole length of the great State of Kansas. At last, after a long and weary tramp, they reached the temporary lodge-villages of the Quivira Indians. Coronado had planted a large cross at one of these villages, and here Fray Padilla established his mission. In time the hostile savages lost their distrust, and "loved him as a father." At last he decided to move on to another nomad tribe, where there seemed greater need of his presence. It was a dangerous step; for not only might the strangers receive him murderously, but there was equal risk in leaving his present flock. The superstitious Indians were loath to lose the presence of such a great medicine-man as they believed the Fray to be, and still more loath to have such a benefit transferred to their enemies,--for all these roving tribes were at war with one another. Nevertheless, Fray Padilla determined to go, and set out with his little retinue. One day's journey from the villages of the Quiviras, they met a band of Indians out on the war-path. Seeing the approach of the savages, the good Father thought first for his companions. Andres still had his horse, and the boys were fleet runners.

"Flee, my children!" cried Fray Padilla. "Save yourselves, for me ye cannot help, and why should all die together? Run!"

They at first refused, but the missionary insisted; and as they were helpless against the savages, they finally obeyed and fled. This may not seem, at first thought, the most heroic thing to do, but an understanding of their time exonerates them. Not only were they humble men used to give the good priests implicit obedience, but there was another and a more potent motive. In those days of earnest faith, martyrdom was looked upon as not only a heroism but a prophecy; it was believed to indicate new triumphs for Christianity, and it was a duty to carry back to the world the news. If they stayed and were slain with him,--as I am sure these faithful followers were not physically afraid to do,--the lesson and glory of his martyrdom would be lost to the world.

Fray Juan knelt on the broad prairie and commended his soul to God; and even as he prayed, the Indians riddled him with arrows. They dug a pit and cast therein the body of the first Kansas martyr, and piled upon it a great pile of stones. This was in the year 1542.

Andres Docampo and the boys made their escape at the time, but were soon captured by other Indians and kept as slaves for ten months. They were beaten and starved, and obliged to perform the most laborious and menial tasks. At last, after long planning and many unsuccessful attempts, they escaped from their barbarous captors. Then for more than eight years they wandered on foot, unarmed and alone, up and down the thirsty and inhospitable plains, enduring incredible privations and dangers. At last, after those thousands of footsore miles, they walked into the Mexican town of Tampico, on the great Gulf. They were received as those come back from the dead. We lack the details of that grim and matchless walk, but it is historically established. For nine years these poor fellows zigzagged the deserts afoot, beginning in northeastern Kansas and coming out far down in Mexico.

Sebastian died soon after his arrival in the Mexican State of Culiacan; the hardships of the trip had been too much for even his strong young body. His brother Lucas became a missionary among the Indians of Zacatecas, Mexico, and carried on his work among them for many years, dying at last in a ripe old age. As for the brave soldier Docampo, soon after his return to civilization he disappeared from view. Perhaps old Spanish documents may yet be discovered which will throw some light on his subsequent life and his fate.

III.

THE WAR OF THE ROCK.

Some of the most characteristic heroisms and hardships of the Pioneers in our domain cluster about the wondrous rock of Acoma, the strange sky-city of the Queres[10] Pueblos. All the Pueblo cities were built in positions which Nature herself had fortified,--a necessity of the times, since they were surrounded by outnumbering hordes of the deadliest warriors in history; but Acoma was most secure of all. In the midst of a long valley, four miles wide, itself lined by almost insurmountable precipices, towers a lofty rock, whose top is about seventy acres in area, and whose walls, three hundred and fifty-seven feet high, are not merely perpendicular, but in most places even overhanging. Upon its summit was perched--and is to-day--the dizzy city of the Queres. The few paths to the top--whereon a misstep will roll the victim to horrible death, hundreds of feet below--are by wild, precipitous clefts, at the head of which one determined man, with no other weapons than stones, could almost hold at bay an army.

This strange aerial town was first heard of by Europeans in 1539, when Fray Marcos, the discoverer of New Mexico, was told by the people of Cibola of the great rock fortress of Hakuque,--their name for Acoma, which the natives themselves called Ah'ko. In the following year Coronado visited it with his little army, and has left us an accurate account of its wonders. These first Europeans were well received there; and the superstitious natives, who had never seen a beard or a white face before, took the strangers for gods. But it was more than half a century later yet before the Spaniards sought a foothold there.

When Onate entered New Mexico in 1598, he met no immediate resistance whatever; for his force of four hundred people, including two hundred men-at-arms, was large enough to awe the Indians. They were naturally hostile to these invaders of their domain; but finding themselves well treated by the strangers, and fearful of open war against these men with hard clothes, who killed from afar with their thunder-sticks, the Pueblos awaited results. The Queres, Tigua, and Jemez branches formally submitted to Spanish rule, and took the oath of allegiance to the Crown by their representative men gathered at the pueblo of Guipuy (now Santo Domingo); as also did the Tanos, Picuries, Tehuas, and Taos, at a similar conference at the pueblo of San Juan, in September, 1598. At this ready submission Onate was greatly encouraged; and he decided to visit all the principal pueblos in person, to make them securer subjects of his sovereign. He had founded already the first town in New Mexico and the second in the United States,--San Gabriel de los Espanoles, where Chamita stands to-day. Before starting on this perilous journey, he despatched Juan de Zaldivar, his _maestro de campo_,[11] with fifty men to explore the vast, unknown plains to the east, and then to follow him.

Onate and a small force left the lonely little Spanish colony,--more than a thousand miles from any other town of civilized men,--October 6, 1598. First he marched to the pueblos in the great plains of the Salt Lakes, east of the Manzano mountains,--a thirsty journey of more than two hundred miles. Then returning to the pueblo of Puaray (opposite the present Bernalillo), he turned westward. On the 27th of the same month he camped at the foot of the lofty cliffs of Acoma. The _principales_ (chief men) of the town came down from the rock, and took the solemn pledge of allegiance to the Spanish Crown. They were thoroughly warned of the deep importance and meaning of this step, and that if they violated their oath they would be regarded and treated as rebels against his Majesty; but they fully pledged themselves to be faithful vassals. They were very friendly, and repeatedly invited the Spanish commander and his men to visit their sky-city. In truth, they had had spies at the conferences in Santo Domingo and San Juan, and had decided that the most dangerous man among the invaders was Onate himself. If _he_ could be slain, they thought the rest of the pale strangers might be easily routed.

But Onate knew nothing of their intended treachery; and on the following day he and his handful of men--leaving only a guard with the horses--climbed one of the breathless stone "ladders," and stood in Acoma. The officious Indians piloted them hither and yon, showing them the strange terraced houses of many stories in height, the great reservoirs in the eternal rock, and the dizzy brink which everywhere surrounded the eyrie of a town. At last they brought the Spaniards to where a huge ladder, projecting far aloft through a trapdoor in the roof of a large house, indicated the _estufa_, or sacred council-chamber. The visitors mounted to the roof by a smaller ladder, and the Indians tried to have Onate descend through the trapdoor. But the Spanish governor, noting that all was dark in the room below, and suddenly becoming suspicious, declined to enter; and as his soldiers were all about, the Indians did not insist. After a short visit in the pueblo the Spaniards descended the rock to their camp, and thence marched away on their long and dangerous journey to Moqui and Zuni. That swift flash of prudence in Onate's mind saved the history of New Mexico; for in that dark _estufa_ was lying a band of armed warriors. Had he entered the room, he would have been slain at once; and his death was to be the signal for a general onslaught upon the Spaniards, all of whom must have perished in the unequal fight.

Returning from his march of exploration through the trackless and deadly plains, Juan de Zaldivar left San Gabriel on the 18th of November, to follow his commander-in-chief. He had but thirty men. Reaching the foot of the City in the Sky on the 4th of December, he was very kindly received by the Acomas, who invited him up into their town. Juan was a good soldier, as well as a gallant one, and well used to the tricks of Indian warfare; but for the first time in his life--and the last--he now let himself be deceived. Leaving half his little force at the foot of the cliff to guard the camp and horses, he himself went up with sixteen men. The town was so full of wonders, the people so cordial, that the visitors soon forgot whatever suspicions they may have had; and by degrees they scattered hither and yon to see the strange sights. The natives had been waiting only for this; and when the war-chief gave the wild whoop, men, women, and children seized rocks and clubs, bows and flint-knives, and fell furiously upon the scattered Spaniards. It was a ghastly and an unequal fight the winter sun looked down upon that bitter afternoon in the cliff city. Here and there, with back against the wall of one of those strange houses, stood a gray-faced, tattered, bleeding soldier, swinging his clumsy flintlock club-like, or hacking with desperate but unavailing sword at the dark, ravenous mob that hemmed him, while stones rained upon his bent visor, and clubs and cruel flints sought him from every side. There was no coward blood among that doomed band. They sold their lives dearly; in front of every one lay a sprawling heap of dead. But one by one the howling wave of barbarians drowned each grim, silent fighter, and swept off to swell the murderous flood about the next. Zaldivar himself was one of the first victims; and two other officers, six soldiers, and two servants fell in that uneven combat. The five survivors--Juan Tabaro, who was _alguacil-mayor_, with four soldiers--got at last together, and with superhuman strength fought their way to the edge of the cliff, bleeding from many wounds. But their savage foes still pressed them; and being too faint to carve their way to one of the "ladders," in the wildness of desperation the five sprang over the beetling cliff.