The Gilded Man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America

by Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

Coronado not only supported the attempt of his officers, but proceeded to still further and more offensive acts of violence. He required the Tiguas to furnish a considerable quantity of cotton goods for his soldiers. They certainly were in great need of covering, for it was bitterly cold, and snow-falls were frequent, but the manner in which the articles were demanded and obtained deserves the severest reprobation. The pueblos on both sides of the river were ravaged and plundered, and outrages were committed against the women. The Tiguas would not endure this long; the whole tribe rose against the strangers and seized some of their horses. Coronado was obliged to take the field against them, even before his main force could join him. A bloody war arose, that lasted fifteen days, in which the Spaniards lost several officers and a number of men. Two pueblos were captured after a long siege, the taking of the first of which was followed by an atrocious massacre of prisoners. Coronado and his company behaved on this occasion with a cruelty that fixes an indelible stain on their memory, and which demanded in requital in later days the sacrifice of innocent persons. The Tiguas did not submit, but fled to the mountains, and notwithstanding Coronado’s efforts to pacify them and recover their confidence, did not return to the Rio Grande so long as the Spaniards remained in the country.

It is true that this was the only instance during the whole continuance of the expedition in New Mexico in which the Spaniards behaved barbarously and cruelly, but their treatment of the Tiguas is not easier to explain on that account. I can find no ground of excuse for it; and the behavior of Coronado is in so complete contradiction with his previous and subsequent course that I cannot easily understand it, unless it be that necessity drove him to the first summary measures, and the severe cold (the Rio Grande was frozen) and the scarcity of provisions then provoked his soldiers to wild excesses. Yet single events occurred during the war with the Tiguas that indicated that cruelties were perpetrated in cold blood. First among them was the slaughter of the prisoners who surrendered in the first pueblo. Let it be said in behalf of Coronado that he was not privy to this atrocity, which was ordered by Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas, at the time in command in his stead. He was in quarters, and had just received the army which had come from Zuñi under Arellano, when the blood-stained conqueror returned. “It was snowing heavily, and the weather was bad for two months,” says Casteñeda. Intense cold and a few heavy snow-storms occur every winter on the Rio Grande, but I have never known of continued severe weather there of so long duration. The first months of the year 1541 were unusually cold in New Mexico, for it is said that one could cross the Rio Grande on the ice during four months. I very much doubt the correctness of the statement as to the length of time.

Coronado did not hesitate, however, to extend the exploration of the country even while the hostilities against the Tiguas were still in full progress. He was impelled to it, not only by the desire to become acquainted with the region, but also by the fear of a general rising of all the natives, which would have been fatal for him and his company. The Pecos had first to be pacified, and with that object he went to the pueblo and gave up to the people, who met him with demonstrations of a peaceful character, their captured officers. By this measure the former friendly relation was restored. After his return to the Rio Grande, he formed connections with a village called “Cia,” situated four leagues, or eleven miles, west of the river; and six Spaniards visited and quieted the Indians of “Quirix,” a group of seven pueblos joining the Tiguas on the north and partly scattered along the great river. Cia, properly Tzia, is not more than twenty miles in a straight line from the Rio Grande. Still nearer, and situated on the same branch (the Rio de Jemez), was the pueblo of Santa Ana (Tâ-ma-ya). The same language is spoken in both, and they are in frequent communication. They belong to the numerous group of the “Queres,” with which the Quirix of Coronado are identical.

It is easy to identify the eight pueblos which Casteñeda mentions. Following the eastern shore of the Rio Grande, we meet first “Oâ-tish-tye” (San Felipe, now, and since 1630, on the west side) and “Gui-pu-i” (Santo Domingo, now called “Tihua,” and formerly situated a mile northeast). On the western shore lies, six miles north of Santo Domingo, “Oô-tyi-ti” (Cachiti). On the Jemez River, six miles from San Felipe, stands “Tâ-ma-ya” (Santa Ana), and farther up Tzia, or Cia. The other three villages may be sought for in the vicinity of Cia, where their ruins are still standing.

Cia is now going down into decay, after having been, till 1688, one of the largest Indian villages in New Mexico. Its inhabitants speak a dialect of the Queres tongue, somewhat like that of Acoma. All the pueblos of the Queres formed, and still form, like the other groups, autonomous communities. The common language does not prevent hostilities between neighboring villages, but should an enemy from without threaten one of them, it has the right to call the others to its aid, and in that case the war-chief of the threatened village, the “Tzyâ-u-yu-qiu,” or capitan de la guerra, takes the chief command. The Queres held a passive attitude toward the Spaniards until the insurrection of 1680, in which they were very active.

I have followed Casteñeda’s statements exclusively in these last researches. Jaramillo says that Cia, Uraba, and Ciquique were situated on the same river, a stream which flowed into the Rio Grande from the northwest. This river is undoubtedly the Jemez. He goes on to speak of the “Rio Cicuique” as another stream, situated northeast of the former one, and seven days’ journey distant from it. He is, as he concedes, very confused in his narrative, and is therefore not to be relied upon on these points. Mota-Padilla calls Cicuyé “Coquite.” Herrera copies Jaramillo. Only Casteñeda is clear and consistent, and his statements agree perfectly with the country and with the relics left by its former inhabitants.

Coronado, with an energy to which due recognition cannot be refused, notwithstanding the outrages that attended his proceedings at Bernalillo, thus in a short time brought Central New Mexico within the compass of his knowledge, and obtained the first correct information of the Village Indians of six linguistic stocks; but his attention was still chiefly directed toward the east, of the great wealth of which “the Turk” continued to talk to him and the Spaniards. What he had so far seen of New Mexico did not appear sufficiently favorable for him to be satisfied to devote himself to its settlement. The Valley of the Rio Grande is, indeed, not very inviting in winter, especially in so severe a winter as that of 1540-41 seems to have been. The clearer the sunshine and the deeper the blue of the arch of the sky, the more dreary in their barrenness are the dunes that border alternately both sides of the river, and the more welcome is the sight of the black mesas and of the peaks of volcanic stone which in groups and singly interrupt the monotonous profile. Still more gloomy is the waterless plateau which extends from the eastern edge of the river valley to the foot of the Sierra de Sandía, and farther south to the Sierra de Manzano and the Puerto de Abó—a gray flat, twenty miles wide and fifty miles long from north to south, without brook, spring, or pond. The Sandía Mountain towers over it like a gigantic wall, with awful clefts and cliffs rising perpendicularly 5000 feet above the river. The chain of the Manzano, less steep but treeless, is still 2000 feet higher. The river valley itself, seldom more than two miles wide, passes in summer like a green band among the dunes, which are then tinged with green, but in winter the fields are barren and the trees are leafless, and stand on the heights like white skeletons on a vast, bare waste.

When it is stormy on the Rio Grande, the dark-blue sky and the dazzling light vanish, the clouds sink low down to the foot of the high mountain range, and it is gloomy, cold, and oppressive. Sand whirls chase one another along the stream, break up and dash whistling upon the gravel hills. Dust and sand add to the darkness of the atmosphere, and one is relieved to see the snow begin to fall thick and then thicker, while the roaring of the wind is lulled to a mournful sigh. When the snow has ceased and the clouds have disappeared from the slopes of the mountain, a thin white sheet covers the ground, which at night glows in the starlight with phosphorescence. The snow does not stay long, for the sandy ground soon absorbs all moisture.

This sandy soil in the Valley of the Rio Grande is fruitful, extraordinarily productive. When it can be watered it rewards, and that always bountifully, even the feeble efforts which Indian agriculture puts forth. No doubt the Spaniards were not specially attracted by the view of an agriculture which did not, with more labor and in a more difficult because colder climate, afford them all the products of the tropical climate they had left, and into which they would have to introduce the grains and fruits of the temperate zone. Cattle and sheep raising might have appeared more promising to them, but a long time would have to pass before they could establish those industries and a safe, accessible market could be built up for their stock. This could certainly not be expected in the first generation, while every one wanted first of all to be rich himself.

Only productive mining could be profitable in a short time, but the Spaniards, who lacked neither desire for the metals nor practical skill in discovering them, did not suffer themselves to be misled by the traces, universally present, of malachite and carbonate of copper. They indeed recognized the existence of silver ore in the rocks, but shrewdly doubted as to the paying quality of the mineral. The Indians did not possess, nor were they acquainted with, gold, silver, copper, or iron. Green stones, kalaite[85] and malachite,[86] colored flints and obsidian, gypsum for whitewashing, iron-ochre for painting pots, faces, and feathers, were their mineral treasures. Coronado soon perceived that New Mexico was a poor country, which could not be developed in the immediate future, a land fit only for commonplace work and minor industries. The Spaniards had not made the long, dangerous journey from the sunny south for such a purpose as that. To compensate them for their pains they must find more.