asked the governor regarding the hump-backed mountain somewhat resembling a hog bladder which loomed on the northern horizon.
“The home of the Onates,” Francisco Gomez responded, pointing to the promontory of La Bufa crowned by bare greenish rock. “Its mines, perhaps the best ever found in the Americas, helped to finance the settlement of your New Mexican Kingdom.” He brought his horse up so that he was riding beside the governor. “There was a time, Governor, not so long ago,” he continued, “when we could not have approached this villa without arms. The Chichimecas, or the dirty, uncivilized dogs, as we were prone to call them, were incredibly fierce warriors—cannibals even—who inhabited the deserts and sierras of this region just a short time ago. They’re largely gone now,” Gomez said, “killed or shipped off to the docks at Vera Cruz or to mines throughout the kingdom, men who’ve been changed from lions into hens. It’s too bad,” he said in rueful admiration. “They had much to admire, for they possessed courage inferior to no one, and before our arrival, they never knew slavery or servitude. We may see a few of those remaining in the market place or along the road, their bodies clothed now, and their voices stilled. We may see them, but they will not be the people they once were, for we took what they had and left them a sad and broken people with no interest in, or aptitude for, village life. They’re neither civilized nor productive members of the Spanish community,” he said as he reigned up at the train’s approach to an obvious fork in the road. “Do you wish to enter the city?” he asked of the governor. “Your host here will be the local superior or father guardian at the Parroquia de San Francisco de Zacatecas. The convento itself, however, is in open country at some distance from the town, so that unless you wish to do so, we’re not required to enter the city to visit the parroquia which is just down this road.”
“I don’t think it will be necessary to go into the city and I’ll take advantage of the guardian’s generosity as long as I don’t have to do the stations,” Rosas laughed, registering his dislike for visiting churches. We’ll take advantage of the fathers’ hospitality, but I’d like to be on our way again as soon as possible.”
“As you wish, Governor.”
SANTA BARBARA
Leaving the Custody of Zacatecas where its father guardian had sought to instruct Luis de Rosas about a governor’s proper relationship to the Church, the party passed through Sombrerete and Durango. Trudging ever northward, the caravan finally crossed the Nazas, a fast, wide, deep, sediment-laden river, the color of rust, which raced through a broad, fertile valley below Santa Barbara. This was the jumping-off point for the New Mexican Kingdom. It was from this mining town, founded among the Conchos Indians by Rodrigo del Rio de Losa, that the most important New Mexican expeditions had embarked.
“The expeditions of Agustin Rodriguez and Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado, Bernardino Beltran and Antonio de Espejo left from this town, and Juan de Onate’s second inspection was conducted here,” Gomez said. “It was here, too, that his retreating colonists, when deserting the kingdom only four years later, sought shelter in the arms of Nueva Vizcayan authorities. This is where it all came apart for don Juan,” Gomez added, “here in these mesquite groves, among these naked and poor Indians. I pray that, in your quest for an orderly and decent life in the New Mexican Kingdom, that you’ll be more successful.”
“Is there anything to be learned from all of this?” The governor asked.
“Only that New Mexico presents an incredible challenge for one who would attempt to govern it,” Gomez said, “for New Mexico is not a castle, but an island, Governor, an island whose very isolation is seen by its eight hundred Spanish colonists as being to their advantage. Its governance requires maintaining a precarious balance between the wishes and needs of the clergy, the settlers, the Pueblo and Plains Indians, and Spanish authority, with each having incredible determination and will as deeply rooted in them as in any people. I would not presume to tell you how to conduct your office,” Gomez continued, “but if one is to be successful in governing New Mexico, the needs and desires of the three estates must be kept in perfect balance with the promises and difficulties presented by the Indians. Neither Onate nor anyone else has been successful in achieving that balance.”
“And you, Gomez, do you speak of yourself when you speak of the New Mexican character?”
“Yes, I guess I do,” Gomez responded thoughtfully, “for I am, like you, a descendant of the Iberians, fearless soldiers who fought courageously but never learned to hold their shields together in combat. We learned, though, those of us from Spain and from Portugal, to fight together. Learned to hold our shields together in an impenetrable phalanx and have thus become among the greatest soldiers on earth. What we have not learned is how to live or work together as a people. And our independence and separatism, our stubborn refusal to be welded into a uniform dominion, are, perhaps, both our strength and our weakness. But our shortcomings, or what others see as our shortcomings, have made us who we are, and the qualities that are ridiculed as our faults are really the bases of our superiority. I was not a first colonist, Governor, not one of Onate’s soldiers of fifteen ninety-eight or sixteen hundred, but I am one of them. So, yes, in terms of tenacity and will and pride, I am one with the New Mexico colonists and they are both the root of my successes as well as my failures.”
Gomez was quiet for a long time, seemingly contemplating it all, saying finally, “This is the last measure of civilization we’ll find before entering the wilderness. The country above Santa Barbara is referred to as ‘The Beyond,’ and you’ll find little there. If you wish to correspond with anyone in the city of Mexico, or elsewhere, this will likely be your last opportunity.”
* * *
Governor Luis de Rosas looked over Santa Barbara’s extensive lands of mesquite and grass plains, a land bathed in the winter colors of sienna, gold, and burnt umber, viewing the many arroyos and verdant valleys of the foothills region leading to the Rio Conchos. He took his final opportunity to communicate with his business partner, the duque de Segorbe, and, also, as required, with his “Most Illustrious Sir,” and with the audiencia, sending back with a returning caravan, his final notes. “Before me,” he wrote to the viceroy, “lies a desolate land without convenience or refuge, offering every means of misfortune and peril. We will, nevertheless, keep our pace of ten or fifteen leagues a day and find our provisions along the way.” And to the duke he wrote: “I see little of promise here, even my digestive difficulties have worsened. But perhaps things will improve as we go north.”
DEL PASO
Trudging through sand dunes, the caravan continued northward along a route as ragged as the bed of a stream. Above La Toma del Rio del Norte (where Juan de Onate had, in 1598, first entered the new land) the caravan crossed the watercourse at a gorge the river had carved between two oddly shaped hills. The pass, referred to by the Indians as a “gateway” or “mountain gap” (the Spanish equivalent of which was “Los Puertos”), was, for the traveler of the period, the gateway north. Beyond “the pass,” or “del paso,” the train encountered a cascade of rapids. Beside the brown torrent were grassy banks in narrow strips, which at various intervals, spread out into small meadows with dense stands of emerald-hued willows growing along their edges. On either side of the river were rolling stony hummocks and higher knolls of naked earth.
* * *
In the opening days of the New Mexican spring, the train moved up the east side of the Rio Grande Valley, its route devised so as to avoid soft and sandy ground and steep inclines. Lofty mountain ranges were strewn here and there both to the east and to the west of the river, with barren plains waiting just beyond the river’s banks. The days were hot and a cloud of dust billowed behind their many beasts as the men of the wagon train rode along.
The river, offering appealing trailside marshes, coves, and pools, was a corridor for the
