days before. Here on the river, and there far to the west, were they all in danger tonight?
The Governor making his rounds saw the rooftops of his own town full of people who should be inside. Who were they? He sent two officers to find out. They returned to report that the roofs were thronged by the wives, the mothers, the widows of the colony, under the leadership of Doña Eufemia de Sosa Peñalosa, wife of the royal ensign. They had all decided that they must in the common peril help their soldier menfolk to defend their common home, the capital city. The Governor was touched at such spirit, and confirmed Doña Eufemia’s command of the roofs. The women of the garrison “walked up and down the housetops with proud and martial step.”
The vigil lasted all night, but no attack came, then, or in the days following. It was hard to wait and to wonder, but they could do nothing else at San Juan, though a curious thing happened in the late afternoon of January twenty-fourth. A very old Indian woman came to see the Governor and was admitted. She was accustomed to the respect which her people always gave to the aged and the ancestors, and she expected it from the Spaniards. She had something to tell the Governor and she told it with gravity. She made references to distance, westward, wide country, vastly high rock, so, long and sheer. Her little crabbed hands whirled in gestures of battle and strife one against the other. The war at Ácoma. The soldiers with brave swords, the Indians with arrows, the air full of fury. The battle came and went. It lasted three long days. It was over just today, she said. There was much death amidst the Indians. There came smoke, the town was burning. There was a vision in the air. Quiet came. The soldiers were victorious. She nodded many times, nodding with her whole drawn, eroded and folded person in emphatic confirmation of what she knew and told.
The Governor thanked her and dismissed her. Her recital hardly allayed his impatience to hear what really had happened.
But at last nine days afterward, the quartermaster Diego de Zubia came riding to San Juan from the battle of Ácoma with information and two prisoners. The prisoners he put into a kiva under guard and went to report to the Governor. He announced an overwhelming victory at once. The details followed.
Late in the afternoon of January twenty-first the army was greeted at Ácoma by fearful sights and sounds. On the rock overhead, the Indians, men and women, were naked, figuring obscene gestures, and shrieking like devils out of hell. Vicente de Zaldívar sent the secretary and Thomas, the interpreter, to demand peaceful submission and delivery of the murderers of December, only to be greeted with vileness and scorn. Night falling, the army camped below the rock while Zaldívar completed his battle plan. When the sun rose on the morning of January twenty-second he took eleven men unseen to one of the rocks of Ácoma while the rest of the army marched in plain view to the other announcing their attack. The Indian defenders swarmed to fight the main army, while Zaldívar and his little squad scaled the far rock to gain an all-important foothold. Four hundred Indians discovered them and attacked them with stones and arrows, but without driving them off the cliff. Zaldívar called on his patron Saint Vincent and gave battle. Soon he saw an Indian dressed in his brother Juan’s clothes, and in valorous rage he killed him with one blow. The army at the other rock, and other soldiers on the ground far below, attacked with all their power so that the Indians found themselves defending three fronts. Many Indians were killed by fire from below, and fell from the edge of the island “leaving their miserable souls up in their lofty fortress.” The battle raged all the first day and was ended only by the cold January nightfall, with Vicente down on the ground in camp again, making plans for the second day, while his squad retained their safe position on top of the first rock. The army once more confessed to the chaplain, all but the “abandoned wretch,” and received communion from the Father President before sunrise on the second morning, January twenty-third. A large force then went to the first rock, scaled the cliff and were received by the soldiers on top. The pueblo on the islands looked deserted. Thirteen soldiers carrying a heavy timber to bridge the chasm between the rocks advanced and crossed, and pulled their bridge with them to use again farther ahead. The Indians then broke from hiding to attack. The rest of the army saw their comrades cut off from them beyond the abyss. Captain Pérez de Villagrá superbly ran, leaped the chasm and heaved the great log up, restoring it as a bridge, upon which the soldiers crossed to the reinforcement of their fellows, while the trumpeter blew his trumpet and all felt great new strength. A harque-busier, firing wildly, shot four times through the body of his comrade the “abandoned wretch,” who then called for God’s forgiveness and heroically made his way to the camp below, where he confessed to the Father President and died. The two brass culverins were brought up, and each was loaded with two hundred balls and fired into a front of three hundred Indians who were advancing, and did fearful damage. A squad of soldiers went behind the battle and set fire to the city of Ácoma, so that smoke and flame rose to obscure the sun. Peace demands were made repeatedly by the attackers and refused. Some Indians in despair threw themselves from the rock, and others walked into the burning houses to die, and others hanged themselves. In the third day an Ácoma ancient came forward walking with a staff, pleading for peace, offering the surrender for his people, which was accepted by the Colonel. Zaldívar asked what had happened to the bodies of the soldiers murdered in December, and the old man led him to the place where all had been gathered and burned in a savage funeral pyre. There Zaldívar prostrated himself to weep and pray, saying to the soldiers with him, “Here is another Troy.” He raised a cross at the site. After the surrender of every Indian was certain, the soldiers saw the women of the pueblo rush forward with sticks and fall to beating a dead body that lay on the stone until it was a mound of formless flesh. They explained in their rage that they were punishing Zutucupan, the treacherous chief who had led the Ácomas into the terrible revolt from the beginning. Finally as the stillness of the third evening came, the Indians asked the soldiers who was the mighty warrior who rode to battle above them in the sky, mounted on a white charger, carrying a fiery sword, wearing a long white beard, and accompanied by a maiden of heavenly beauty, robed in blue and crowned with stars. Hearing this Zaldívar and his men made the sign of the cross and declared that their arms had been triumphant through the support of Saint James of Compostela on his white horse, and of the Queen of Heaven herself. Colonel de Zaldívar shortly afterward sent the news of all these events to the Governor at San Juan by his courier the quartermaster Diego de Zubia, who reported thus. Zaldívar, the army and their captives would arrive in a few days.
Governor de Oñate could be proud and thankful. The victory was prodigious—seventy soldiers against thousands of Indians on their rocky fastness. He marvelled. Almost a thousand Indians were killed, and only two soldiers. And the city burning, and the vision in the sky? The Governor regarded all Indians, including that old woman who had come to him on the twenty-fourth, as superstitious creatures. How had she known on the very last day of battle what the courier took nine days to bring him? The Indians believed all old people wise unless crazy. Who knew?
He thanked the quartermaster, who mentioned the two Indian prisoners whom he had brought and who were now detained in a kiva at San Juan.
Who were they and what were they about?
Zubia explained that he had taken them as they were fleeing Ácoma. They told him they were Indians from elsewhere who had been attacked and robbed by the Ácomas. They asked him for food and help. He gave them what they needed and they were now awaiting attention in the kiva.
The Governor made inquiries. Friendly Indians reported to him that the two men in the kiva were not fugitives from Ácorna at all, but were actually two Ácoma Indians who had not surrendered. An extraordinary affair followed, a miniature of the battle of Ácoma itself. The two in the kiva when asked to come out refused. For three days they threw stones at all who tried to reach them. They lurked in the dark kiva emanating baleful energy, like wild animals dangerously trapped. Finally their bodies yielded but not their wild spirits. They asked for daggers with which to kill themselves, as they disdained to surrender to the Spaniards. The Governor and his Indian friends besought them to come out and be baptized. The reply came in vile abuse from the dark round cave. The Governor shrugged, and ordered then that instead of daggers, ropes be thrown to them, with which if they chose they might hang themselves. Silence
