silky to the south. The Spaniards were near the site of the modern Indian town of Isleta.
The river they named the River of Our Lady, because they had discovered it on the eve of her feast day—the Rio de Nuestra Señora.
Alvarado ordered his tent pitched, and at once sent Indian guides bearing a cross to the river towns of the north, to announce his coming.
The march from Vásquez de Coronado’s headquarters at Granada had taken a week, during which they had passed other towns, notably Ácoma, the citadel on the rock. Alvarado declared that it was one of the strongest ever seen. The town, of three- and four-storied houses, sat on a great mesa of red rocks four hundred feet high, or, as Spaniards measured, about as many feet as a shot from a harquebus would travel. The ascent was so difficult that, he said, they were sorry they tried it. It was a well-provisioned town, with corn, beans and turkeys. They passed on eastward and came to a big lake with abundant trees that reminded them of those of Castile. And then they reached the river.
On the next day came Indians from twelve pueblos with friendly greetings. They formed a little procession and came to Alvarado’s tent, the group from each pueblo following in turn. An Indian played on a flute as they marched. After circling the tent, they entered and presented the Captain with food, skins and blankets, and an old man spoke for all of them. In return Alvarado gave them little gifts, and they withdrew.
Alvarado pursued such a good beginning. His party moved northward along the river. They saw its groves of cottonwoods and its wide fields, and the twelve towns of the province where they were, which was called Tiguex, and the two-storied houses built of mud. In the fields by the towns they saw cotton plants, and they took notice of the rich produce of melons, beans, corn, turkeys and other foods that the people raised, and they saw that the people, following the ways of the farmer, were more peaceable than warlike. Here the people did not go naked, but wore mantles of cotton and robes of dressed hides, and cloaks of turkey feathers. Their hair was worn short. Among them, the governing power lay with the elders of the town, who made certain odd statements, such as that they could rise to the sky at their pleasure. Alvarado believed that they must be sorcerers.
Lying all about the river country were other provinces with eighty scattered towns. From these the leaders came to greet Alvarado in peace. With Bigotes guiding him, he continued his progress up the river from town to town until he came to a black canyon cutting through a high plain. He ascended the plain for there was no passage in the canyon. On the plain he came to a town remarkable for its size and the number of its stories, and for the fact that it lay in two parts, with a creek running between. He understood it to be called Braba, and was invited to lodge there. But he declined with thanks, and camped without. It was the pueblo of Taos. He thought it had fifteen thousand people. The weather was cold. It appeared that the people worshipped the sun and the water.
Wherever they went, Alvarado’s company planted crosses and taught the people to venerate them. In the bare ground before the towns, the large crosses stood, and to them the Indians prayed in their fashion. They freed sprinkles of corn meal and puffs of pollen before the crosses. They brought their prayer sticks of feathers and flowers. To reach the arms of the cross, an Indian would climb on the shoulders of another, and others brought ladders which they held while another climbed, and then with fibres of yucca they were able to tie their offerings to the cross, bunches of sacred feathers and wild roses.…
All this Captain de Alvarado and Fray Juan de Padilla wrote to the General at Granada, telling him of good pasture land for the horses and domestic animals, and sending him a buffalo head and several loads of Indian clothing and animal skins, and a map of the country they had seen, and advising him to bring the army to the River of Our Lady for the winter, as it was much the best country they had yet seen. The report was dispatched by courier.
With this first duty done, Alvarado with his own men and the Indian guides departed from the river to go east to see the cattle plains.
His report to the General brought early and positive results. Don García López de Cárdenas, captain of cavalry, with thirteen or fourteen cavalrymen and a party of Indian allies from Mexico and Hawikuh, came to the river with orders to prepare winter quarters for the whole army. The main body of the army was moving up from northern Mexico to join the General at Granada, and would come to the river in good order and season when preparations were completed. The campaign was proceeding in all propriety.
Cárdenas came to the twelve towns of Tiguex, and near the most southerly, on the west bank, he began to prepare campsites in the open, opposite the site of modern Bernalillo. It was October, and the bosky cottonwoods were turning to pale bronze above the brown run of the river. The days were golden and warm, but the nights were beginning to turn cold. The soldiers shivered in their open camp.
Now and then, when the light was gone, and all was quiet, and the smokes of evening no longer dawdled in the still air above the pueblo near-by, an Indian here, and another there, would quietly appear among the soldiers in their camp. They looked to see where the sentries were, and if they were on guard. In their expressionless way the Indians would seek out soldiers and communicate a suggestion to them. Did they want to wrestle? And a soldier or two, off duty, would get up, and with every appearance of good will, take up the challenge. The wrestling pairs went at their game. Something about the way of the Indian wrestlers made the Spaniards think. It was almost as though the Indians with a buried idea were trying out the strength of the soldiers. The nights were cold. The soldiers shivered.
A hard winter was coming. One October night the snow fell on the soldiers in the open fields. What would the whole army do when it arrived to camp on the river?
Cárdenas presented himself to the chief of the near-by pueblo on the west bank, which was called Alcanfor, and asked him to move his people into other pueblos of the province, to leave the Spaniards a town to themselves, where not only the small advance guard but the main body of the army, when it arrived, could be given shelter. The Indian governor gazed upon him and finally agreed to do as he asked. Taking nothing but their clothes the Indians left their houses, and the soldiers moved in, settling themselves and making arrangements for the arrival of the General. The garrison—only fourteen cavalry soldiers and a handful of Indian infantry from the west and south—hoped for the early arrival of the General and the whole army. Amidst the pueblos they felt alien and uneasy.
One day an Indian from Arenal, a town a few miles up the river, came to Alcanfor accompanied by the elders of his pueblo. He asked to see Captain López de Cárdenas. He was received, and at once launched into a vigorous complaint, making eloquent signs and enactments with his hands, his arms, his body. The elders with him seemed to sustain his case. Cárdenas strained to understand, and gradually the story of the visitors began to come clear.
They said that a soldier came on a horse to Arenal and presently rode up to the walls and saw a woman on the terrace with her husband. The soldier dismounted and called up to the man if he would come down and hold his horse for him. The man went down the ladder to the ground to hold the horse, and watched as the soldier climbed up to the roof. Since all rooms were entered from the roof, the man was not surprised when the soldier like all visitors went there and vanished into a room from the top. The man patiently waited holding the horse. He heard a commotion somewhere in the pueblo, but thought nothing of it at the time. In a while, the soldier reappeared, came down the ladder, mounted his horse and rode away. The man then went to his part of the pueblo and found to his horror that his wife had been carnally assaulted by the soldier. When she resisted, there followed the commotion heard below and outside. The soldier seized at her garments as if to tear them from her. He had presented himself violently upon her, and if he had not actually ravished her, he had tried to. It was an outrage. The man who told the story, here with the elders, was the woman’s husband. He demanded punishment and redress. The elders supported him.
It was grave news for Cárdenas to hear. He agreed that if true, the outrage must be
