La Historia de la Nueva Mexico - Article from El Palacio Magazine

The Museum of New Mexico Magazine, El Palacio presents:

The Cuartocentenario of Juan de Oñate
By Thomas E. Chávez

I sing of arms and heroic man,
The being, courage, care, and high emprise
Of him whose unconquered patience,
Though cast upon a sea of cares,
In spite of envy slanderous,
Is raising to new heights the feats,
The deeds, of those brave Spaniards who,
In the far India of the West,
Discovering in the world that which was hid,
'Plus Ultra' bravely saying
By force of valor and strong arms,
In war and suffering as experienced
As celebrated now by pen unskilled.

--Capitán Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá
From La Historia de la Nueva México, Canto I, 1-13

The year 1998 marks the 400th anniversary of explorer Juan de Oñate's successful expedition to establish Spanish control of New Mexico. From the expedition's departure to the claiming of land for the Spanish crown to the establishment of the first permanent European settlement, the genesis of Spanish colonial New Mexico was documented by one who was there. In 34 cantos that chronicle Oñate's New Mexico odyssey, Capitán Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá penned his eyewitness account, casting it in the classic literary form of Homer's tribute to Ulysses.

Villagrá's La Historia de la Nueva México, one of the first travel journals of its kind to be published, is full of the hopes, dreams and bravura of those who traveled with Oñate into unknown territory that 314 years later would become the state of New Mexico. Today, few copies of the epic poem remain from the initial printing in Spain in 1610, but one rare first-edition belongs to the Museum of New Mexico and is on exhibit in Another Mexico: Spanish Life on the Upper Rio Grande at the Palace of the Governors.

The Museum also has a unique transcription of the poem rendered by Swiss archaeologist Adolph Bandelier. In 1881, Bandelier (who lived in Santa Fe at the time) was commissioned by Santa Fe attorney Thomas B. Catron and sent to Mexico City to transcribe a copy of the poem kept at Museo National de la Ciudad de México. With help from his wife, Fanny, Bandelier made two reproductions. One was sent to Harvard, where it is in the Hemenway Collection of the Peabody Museum, and the other - with Bandelier's own hand-drawn illustrations which appear on these pages - was kept by Catron. Later, his grandson, also Thomas B. Catron, donated it to the Museum of New Mexico, and that copy is in the collection of the Palace of the Governors' Fray Angélico Chávez History Library and Photographic Archives.

Since its first printing in 1610, La Historia de la Nueva México has been published in Spain and Mexico and in the United States, where it is becoming recognized as one of the earliest accounts of America's European heritage. [U.S. publications include a bilingual version of the poem by Miguel Encinas, Alfred Rodríquez and Joseph P. Sánchez (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1992). Their English translation of the poem is used in this article.] Villagrá's writing predates Captain John Smith's History of Virginia by 14 years, just as Oñate's exploration and settlement in 1598 preceded that of the Pilgrims by more than two decades. It firmly establishes Oñate's place in New Mexico history - and Latin American and U.S. history as well. But just why Villagrá chose to write about the leader that he himself eventually deserted remains a question. Many historians argue that the poem's favorable bias shows that Villagrá wrote it simply to support the man he had followed to the end of the Spanish world. I believe that Villagrá composed the cantos to explain--even defend--his own behavior.

The expedition to settle New Mexico began in 1598, but only after years of waiting. Royal approval was granted for settling the area known as New Mexico as early as 1583, but 15 years would pass before an expedition leader was selected and given permission to embark. In 1595, Juan de Oñate petitioned Viceroy don Luis de Velasco to consider him to lead the settlers. Oñate's past service, wealth, willingness and family name made him the prime candidate: he had two decades of experience on the northern frontier of New Spain, fighting the Chichimeca Indians and others; he was the son of don Cristóbal de Oñate, a prominent and wealthy citizen of the northern mining district of New Spain; he was able to recruit and pay the salaries of 200 men; he would contract for supplies and livestock. From the Crown he wanted only five priests and two lay brothers, some artillery, a six-year loan of six thousand pesos, the title captain-general, and, if successful in settling New Mexico, the title of adelantado. (Among his competition for the job was Cristóbal Martín, who requested much more, including two warships. Such a request recalls the long-held geographical hope - finally dashed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-6 - that a natural waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans existed and would be found. The passage would have been a direct route to the lucrative Asian trade.)

Oñate was chosen, but before don Luis de Velasco could complete the arrangement, a new viceroy was named. Don Gaspar de Ziñiga y Acevedo, Conde de Monterrey, gave Oñate only tentative permission to prepare, and Oñate seized the indefinite moment by pulling together men, livestock and supplies and moving the colony up the trail even as he waited for the definite word to go on. By 1597, he was still waiting - and losing money he was spending to hold the colony together, and recruits who had grown weary of waiting and of harassing inspections. Villagrá's description of the slow-to-start expedition alludes to an earlier epic poem, La Araucana, in which Alonso Ercilla y Zuñiga wrote of his 1555 adventures in South America, fighting the Araucano Indians in what today is Chile:

And others, likewise, were deserting us,
Being unable to endure such trials,
Like that gallant and noble dame
Who, on the summit of the memorable ridge
Of that unconquered, proud Arauco,
Brought into shame the little strength
And sorry cowardice of all the city,
So this great matron in loud voice,
Within the drilling field, stated:
"Most noble misguided soldiers,
Tell me, of what good, the noble worth
Of those hearts that you showed
When offering yourselves for doughty war,
… and continues,
If now, without embarrassment or shame,
As you were women, you do turn
Your backs on work so Honorable?

--Canto VIII, 271-289

Oñate's persistence paid off when on January 25, 1598, the expedition of 129 soldiers and their families, 83 wagons and 7,000 head of stock was finally able to leave Santa Barbara, the town at the end of the Camino Real and the beginning of the unknown. In the first four months they traveled over some of Mexico's harshest and most unforgiving territory:

And now the horses, being blind,
Did give themselves most cruel blows
And bumps against the unseen trees,
and we, as tired as they,
Exhaling living fire and spitting forth
saliva more viscous than pitch,
Our hope given up, entirely lost,
Were almost all wishing death.

- Canto XIV, 92-99

Since leaving Mexico City, they had crossed mountains of Durango, deserts of Chihuahua, dunefields of Samalayuca, and the Rios Parral, Conchos and San Pedro, opening a new section of the Camino Real nearly all the way to El Paso del Norte, the northern pass into New Mexico. At the Rio Grande on April 30, 1598, Oñate decided to stop, rest, give thanks, and claim all the land beyond for his King and God - an act equivalent to the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth Rock 23 years later. He and his colony were near present-day San Elizario, Texas (about 15 miles southeast of El Paso), when they celebrated mass and the first European-style thanksgiving meal on what would become United States soil. It was there, too, that the first-known European play was performed: "a great drama the noble Capitán Marcos Farfán had composed … ."

However well deserved, the respite was not long, and the difficult journey was far from over, yet Villagrá's account records not a single voice of discontent along the trail. Perhaps a love of adventure so prevalent then pushed them on, as it had so many other Spaniards who had explored and claimed other lands. This expedition came during a period of Spain's greatest power and prestige. Under the Hapsburg dynasty, 1516-1700, the country controlled an empire that included most of South America, Central America, Mexico, western North America, the Philippines, part of Europe and smaller territories in Africa and Asia. Perhaps, too, the presence of 10 Franciscan friars (eight priests and two lay brothers) was a constant reminder of a higher goal. The expedition owed its existence in part to arguments by the clergy that the word of God must be continued with the Indians. In fact, by law - the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas - the Crown was obliged to oversee the Catholic conversion of all people encountered by Spanish exploration and settlement. And so, Oñate was to settle New Mexico as a missionary field. The tediously slow progress up the Rio Grande Valley came to a standstill as the priests and expedition officers tried to institute Spanish authority at each Pueblo.

In mid-June 1598, Oñate, who had gone ahead of the priests, established his first headquarters for the Kingdom of New Mexico at Ohke Pueblo (in Tewa called Okeh Owinge) north of present-day Española, christening the Pueblo San Juan de los Caballeros. Within two years, he moved his colony across the river to the partially abandoned Pueblo of Yuque Yunque, renaming it San Gabriel. It was an unsettling time: once in New Mexico Oñate had problems with the clergy, the Pueblo Indians and his own colonists. What had begun as a good working relationship between the Spanish and the Indians deteriorated almost immediately with the full colony's arrival: more people meant food shortages; Indians became resentful; colonists started to question Oñate's leadership to the point of mutiny, and four men tried to desert. Oñate enlisted Villagrá's help:

The Governor ordered that at once
I go after them and make haste,
And so that thing should be done well
He ordered Juan Medel, Ribera, and Márquez,
As always loyal in well serving you,
To punish so great, infamous, a crime
Should also go as help for me,
And that wherever we should capture them
We should in that place take their lives
With which command we then went on
For fourteen days, always posthaste, …
Suffering many trials, too …
and continued further on after the deserters
were apprehended.
So we ordered those two beheaded there,
And two more freely escaped us …

-Canto XVI 139-150, 156-157

Villagrá had allowed the two--Spanish brothers--to escape; the two who were executed were Portuguese. In time, Oñate was tried in absentia for these executions and other abuses of power, including those that followed the battle of Acoma when the Spanish forces exacted revenge for the ambush and killing of Oñate's nephew and officer, Juan de Zaldívar, and other soldiers. The battle was bloody and demonstrated that Oñate could be brutal. In losing, many of the Acoma Indians refused to surrender and killed themselves as their village was burned to the ground.

And now the fire kept sending up
A ruddy vapor, bit by bit,
Attacking all the sad houses …
It crackled in the roofs and in a thousand spots …
And like the most ardent of volcanoes
They poured out, whirling toward the sky
Great store of embers and sparks.
And thus, those wild and mad barbarians,
Seeing themselves now conquered, 'gan to kill
Each other, and did so in such fashion
That sons from fathers, fathers from their loved children,
Took life away, and further, more than this,
Others in groups did give aid to the fire
So that it might leap up with more vigor,
Consume the pueblo and destroy it all.

-Canto XXXI 239-242, 245-259

Oñate had decided to make the Pueblo an example. In addition to completely destroying Acoma, he consigned 500 to 600 Acoma Indians to punishment and captivity. The total defeat of Acoma was to be a visual lesson for all Pueblo Indians - it also was a tragic chapter in Spanish-American history.

This is where Villagrá's accounts of events ends. Shortly after the battle of Acoma, Villagrá was sent back to Mexico to recruit more colonists and lead them to the New Mexico settlement. Once the additional recruits were gathered and ready to depart for New Mexico, Villagrá refused to return with them and took refuge in a local church. After years of following Oñate and helping him to establish the first permanent settlement in New Mexico, Villagrá abandoned him. The Mexican-born Villagrá went to Spain where he wrote and published his poem for the crown and posterity, concluding with words that imply he planned, or already had penned, more.

And if your famous Majesty
Should wish to see the end of this story
I beg upon my knees that you will wait
And pardon me, also, if I delay,
For 'tis a thing difficult for the pen
to lose all shyness instantly,
Having to serve you with the lance.

-Canto XXXIV, 383-389

Eventually, criticism of Oñate's management style reached the viceroy, who considered abandoning the enterprise entirely. But the Franciscans, arguing on behalf of the many newly converted Indian people, persuaded him to maintain the settlements in New Mexico. The man who had led the colonists to those settlements, however, would have to be recalled.

On August 24, 1607, Oñate resigned as governor of New Mexico, and while he waited to be ordered back to Mexico some of his colonists moved south to a new site that they named Santa Fé (Holy Faith). A few years later, Oñate was recalled to Mexico City to face charges of abuse of authority. The residencia, or official review of his term of office, took two years, and in the end Oñate was disciplined. The first governor of New Mexico was sentenced to perpetual banishment from his distant settlement and four years' banishment from Mexico City and its environs. He also lost the coveted title of adelantado and was fined six thousand pesos - the exact amount that the government had given him to help finance the expedition.

Several of Oñate's officers also were implicated, among them Villagrá, who was sentenced to six years' banishment from New Mexico and two years' from Mexico. He also was barred from government service for two years and ordered to pay court costs. Villagrá wrote his poem, served his sentence and died in 1620 while traveling back to the Americas from Spain to be mayor of Zapotitlán, Guatemala.

Oñate took a different path, appealing his sentence and, after the death of his wife in 1621, pursuing his appeal from Mexico to Spain where he pleaded his case before the Council of the Indies. The Council recommended to King Felipe IV that Oñate be absolved of all charges, and the King partially concurred. On August 11, 1623, King Felipe reversed the results of the residencia by restoring Oñate's title and reimbursing him the fine, but he refused to lift Oñate's banishment from New Mexico, which was considered a serious affront to a soldier's honor.

The ever-loyal Oñate spent his last years in Spain, serving as Royal Inspector of Mines and during his tenure paid for the publication of new Spanish mining regulations under the title Nuevas leyes y ordenanzas, or New Laws and Ordinances.

During that time, Oñate also commissioned pre-eminent poet Francisco Murcia de la Llana to compose a poem about his only son, Cristóbal, who had been with him on the expedition to New Mexico. The poem meant to immortalize his son was published in 1623, 13 years after La Historia de la Nuevo Mexico, Villagrá's homage to Oñate. (There is no evidence that Oñate ever read the record of his exploration, but many others have since its numerous republications and citings by lecturers and writers. Among them is acclaimed Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who sees such poetic journals as the basis of the magical realism so prevalent in current Hispano-American works, including his own The Time of the Hero and The War and the End of the World, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, written by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.)

Oñate was admitted into the Order of Santiago in 1626, and he died that same year at the age of 76, in the town of Guadalcanal in southern Spain. The founder of New Mexico was an ocean away from the land he once claimed for God and King with these words, transcribed by Villagrá:

I say that in the voice and in the name of the most Christian King Don Felipe, our lord, only defender and protector of the Holy Mother Church and its true son, and for the crown of Castile and of the kings who of his glorious stock may reign in it, and for the aforesaid my government I take and seize one, two, and three times, one, two, and three times, one, two, and three times, and all those which I can and ought, the Royal tenancy and possession, actual, civil, and criminal, at this aforesaid River of the North, without excepting anything and without any limitation, with the meadows, glens, and their pastures and watering places. And I take this aforesaid possession, and I seize upon it, in the voice and name of the other lands, towns, cities, villas, castles, and strong houses and dwellings, which are now founded in the said kingdoms and provinces of New Mexico, and those neighboring to them, and shall in future time be founded in them, with their mountains, glens, watering places, and all its Indian natives, who in it may be included and comprehended, and with the civil and criminal jurisdiction, high and low, gallows and knife, mere mixed power, from the leaf on the mountain to the rock in the river and sands of it, and from the rock and sands of the river to the leaf on the mountain.

Historian and Palace of the Governors Director Thomas E. Chávez, Ph.D, is the recipient of the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities 1997 Humanities Service Award. Chávez has published four books -- Manuel Alvarez (1794-1856): A Southwestern Biography, Conflict and Acculturation: Manuel Alvarez' 1842 Memorial, Quest for Quivera: Spanish Explorers on the Great Plains, 1540-1821, and An Illustrated History of New Mexico - and is working on three more.