By order of Governor de Oñate they were already building their church.
19.
Duties
It was a dry summer. Late in August, 1598, the Governor was at his mess table one day when he heard unearthly wailing from many voices. He sent an officer to inquire who returned to report that the Indians were making lamentations to their gods because there had been no rain, in spite of the many dances for rain that the pueblo had performed during the summer. It was already very late, and the crop of corn would wither and die and the people would hunger unless rain came. Through four centuries it was a familiar condition along the river in certain years.
The Father President and his assistant Fray Cristóbal spoke to the Indians and calmed them, saying that he and his brothers would offer prayers to God that rain might come and the corn be saved. An officer heard the promise, and sarcastically remarked that the Indians ceased their frightful wailing immediately, “like little children who hush when they are given the things they have cried for.” All the rest of the day, and that night, and the following day, the Indians watched the sky, which was “as clear as a diamond,” until suddenly it rained. Torrents fell. They were moved and awed. The corn was saved.
But the Indians were not the only residents of San Juan who showed dissatisfaction and fear on occasion. Some forty-five soldiers and officers, including Captain de Aguilar who had once had his life spared by the Governor’s clemency, felt aggrieved on several counts. The Governor was aware of their feelings. They had come expecting to get rich, and they were not rich. He said, with his heavy irony, that they expected to find whole platters of silver lying on the ground waiting to be picked up. Failing that, they were not even allowed to take what they liked of the Indian properties, or do as they wished with the Indian persons. They were disgusted with the country, or, said the Governor, “to be more exact, with me,” and they resolved to mutiny and desert the colony, stealing slaves and clothing in their flight. The plot failed. The Governor put Aguilar and two soldiers in arrest, and condemned them to die by the garrote. It was a shocking event with which to begin life in the new capital, and once again, as at the entrance to the Dead Man’s March, down the river, the Governor was entreated to pardon the condemned.
Life was as easily spared as taken. He consented, ordered a week of jubilee, and work on the church was hastened, and on the eighth of September, the first Mass was sung before San Juan’s own altar. The heads of all the pueblos had been invited to the celebrations. A messenger had visited them all in their provinces, carrying with him the Governor’s diary, which the Indian chiefs acknowledged as his emblem of office—the pages bearing the marks of his own hands. All had accepted the Governor’s invitation but the chief of Ácoma, who chose to be represented in another way. He sent spies who lost themselves among the other Indians but saw everything.
The colonists gave a new comedy specially written for the feast (was Captain Farfán at work again?) and a mounted tournament was staged, and bullfights, and a pageant and sham battle representing the wars of the Moors and Christians, in which brave salvos of firearms were discharged, concluding with a “thunderous discharge of artillery”—but all with gunpowder without shot.
The Ácoma spies watched. How was it that though the soldiers fired, nobody fell and died? The firearms of the white men, though noisy and smoky, must be harmless. It was useful to Ácoma to know this.…
On the following day, September ninth, a solemn event was celebrated in the church. The Governor rose to address the chiefs of the Indian provinces. Behind him were the Father President and the other priests. As the Governor spoke the royal secretary noted down his words.
He spoke of his love for the Indian people, and came to them with a grave duty. He must tell of his Divine Lord, and the rewards of heaven, and the punishments of hell, that came to all according as they chose well or ill in the life of the world. But man needed guidance and was provided with God’s ministers who could give it. To receive it, all must swear allegiance to the royal crown, and could never after withdraw. Many benefits of body and spirit would come to those who swore. Would they swear?
The Indian leaders would swear.
The secretary then prepared the necessary papers, and all were appropriately signed “amid great rejoicings.”
Now the Father President came forward and proposed their salvation to them, in the name of “Christ, God and man, who died and was buried for the redemption of mankind.” Would they be saved?
They considered, and presently gave their answer. First, they desired to be instructed in all he had proposed; and second, if they liked what they learned, they would gladly follow his teachings; but third, if they did not like them, it would not do to be forced to accept something they did not understand.
The example of the apostles was before the Franciscans. It was enough. The Father President, Fray Alonso Martinez, rededicated his brother Franciscans in their calling, and assigned to them one by one the parishes over which each would preside. He called them forward in turn:
“Father Fray Francisco de Miguel”—and to him gave the province of Pecos that lay beyond the mountains to the east, and included forty towns, the roving peoples of the cow plains, and the great salines where the Indians went for salt;
“Father Fray Juan Claros”—and to him, all the towns of the Tigua language along the Rio del Norte to the south in number close to sixty;
“Father Juan de Rosas”—the province of the Keres language, on the river and westward, excepting Ácoma, which was assigned to another parish;
“Father Fray Cristóbal de Salazar”—the Tewa towns to the north;
“Father Fray Francisco de Zamora”—the province of the Picuries, and Taos, and the river towns to the north, together with the Apaches north and east of the snowy mountains;
“Father Fray Alonzo de Lugo”—the Jemez province of nine towns and all the Apaches west of the river;
“Father Fray Andres Corchado”—the city of Ácoma on its rock, the Sia province, and the towns of the Zuñis and Hopis far to the west.
Each was to go alone with only Indians to his parish, which was so vast that it could contain mountain, desert and river, all three; and so far from the comfort of familiar life and reassuring knowledge common to all, that a journey of many days by horse or weeks on foot would be needed to bring the priest from his parish to the capital.
They prayed at San Juan, received their commissions and, guided by Indians who had attended the Governor’s convocation, went forth into wilderness through their own human trepidation empowered by that which was greater than both.
Four other men left the colony soon after. They were horse thieves and deserters, unreconciled since the Aguilar mutiny. The Governor could not countenance insurrection and the loss of horses. He sent two captains, Pérez de Villagrá and Márques, to arrest the fugitives and bring them back. Expecting them to return in a day or two, the Governor waited at San Juan. But they did not come. He busied himself with organizing an expedition to go east to the buffalo plains, under the command of Vicente de Zaldívar, with “many droves of mares and other supplies,” which departed on September sixteen, to look for all that nobody before them had ever found. September passed, and the first days of October, and still the fugitives had not been returned in arrest. The Governor could wait no longer. He was ready to go forth himself to visit the salines east of the mountains, and then turn west across the river and explore possible trails to the South Sea where there were certain to be pearls. He left orders. Pérez de Villagrá was to overtake him after arriving at
