The collection is the remains of the archives of the Franciscan order in New Mexico, the “Custodia de la conversion de San Pablo de la Nueva-Mexico,” which have lain here for more than thirty years, or since the time when the old military chapel (called Castruenza) of Santa Fé was condemned as unsafe. Such of the documents and church-books stored there as were not immediately needed were securely deposited in Santa Clara; for a priest then lived in the pueblo, and Santa Clara formed a parish by itself. When the parish was discontinued and the seat of the pastorate was removed to Santa Cruz, the archives were left. No one having any use for them, they remained in an old cupboard of the ruined convent till an Indian, who could neither read nor write, but had a clear head and respect for the old and venerable, proposed to commit the care of the papers to private hands. It took long and solemn meetings for consultation before the Principales of the pueblo would agree to such an innovation. They would keep the documents, indeed, as something having an incomprehensible sanctity, but to remove them from the ruins, where they were given up to mold and decay, seemed at first a doubtful step. Those above, the “Shiuana,” might be displeased at it. The spiritual powers were finally consulted, and their decision was in favor of the innovation. The Franciscan archives were thus carried into the dark back-room of an Indian house, where a blind man was their first guardian; but they are now in charge of an intelligent, tolerably clear-seeing citizen of the village.
I tried in 1886 to obtain access to these old manuscripts, but was at once refused. It is of no use to importune an Indian. If he denies a request he is fixed in it, and one must wait. I waited two years, provided myself with a most urgent letter of introduction from the archbishop and an order from the priest of Santa Cruz, and went again. At last the prohibition was withdrawn, and after three protracted visits to Santa Clara, the last of which lasted twenty days, I was able to say that I had exhausted all the material and had accurate and complete copies of all the documents which had any important bearing on the history of New Mexico. It was no easy work, for the hand-writing was often nearly illegible, and the ink had faded and the paper grown yellow, and become almost rotten.
The contents of the archives of Santa Clara may be divided into three classes. The first class consists of documents not strictly ecclesiastical, among which I found much that was valuable; the second, of the special church books, including registers of baptism, marriage, and death, many of the last of which begin with the date of 1694. Many valuable facts were also found in these. The papers called Diligencias Matrimoniales, or Informaciones, official inquiries to determine the civil standing of the contracting parties, which preceded every marriage, were the most numerous. Many of these are very long; some of them are of the seventeenth century, and they unfold an extremely instructive picture of the customs of those times. There are hardly any documents left in New Mexico of the period before the great insurrection of 1680, and I have the few that have been saved. But I found in Santa Clara a large number of details concerning the years preceding the insurrection, although contained in manuscripts that were composed one or two years after the troubles broke out. There have come to light little “court histories” of the governor of the time, scenes from the private life of long-vanished families which were then playing an important part in the troubled world called the Spanish Colony of New Mexico; notices of many an event which is never mentioned in the printed annals, and which was still of great importance. The real life of the people has taken shape out of these obscure writings of the monks, and many a striking revelation has been obtained from them. One of the discoveries made in them has given occasion to the present paper.
Among the Diligencias or Informaciones was one the superscription of which read, “Information of Pedro Meusnier—a Frenchman—1699.” It was strange to meet with a Frenchman in New Mexico in 1699; and on reading the document it appeared that Pedro or Pierre Meusnier, or Meunier, at the time a soldier in the garrison at Santa Fé, born in Paris, had come to America in the year 1684 with the flotilla commanded by Monsieur de la Sala. Meunier brought forward two witnesses, one of whom was named Santiago Grolee, the other Juan de Archeueque. Both were French, and both declared that they had come across the sea with Meunier in the flotilla which the same “Monsieur de la Sala” commanded; and Grolee said that he was born at La Rochelle.
“Monsieur de la Sala” could have been nobody else than the famous brave discoverer of the mouths of the Mississippi—Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The date agrees with this supposition, for La Salle crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the last time in 1684, to found a French colony on the coast of Texas. There came also with the expedition Jacques Grollet, a sailor, and a certain Jean l’Archévèque. It was the latter who, on March 18, 1687, led the unfortunate commander into the trap which his confederates Duhaut and Liotot had set, and in which La Salle was killed. Grollet was in the plot, but took no part in the murder. The supposition seems at least well founded that Juan de Archeueque was the traitor L’Archévèque, and Santiago Grolee was his accessory in a lesser degree, the sailor Grollet. I wrote at once to Mr. Francis Parkman, the historian of Canada, and received the answer that my supposition seemed to him perfectly well founded, although all that is known concerning the fate of the two men after La Salle’s death is that they were found among the Indians in 1689 by Alonzo de Leon, commanding a Spanish expedition to Texas, and were taken to New Mexico. They were sent from Mexico to Spain where they were supposed to have ended their lives in the galleys.
The last supposition was soon shown to be erroneous. The Jesuit father Andrés Cavo, author of the work “Los tres siglos de Mexico,” says:[94] “After a number of days the messengers [whom Leon had sent to the Indians] came back with two Frenchmen, whose names were Jacob Grollet and Juan l’Archiveque.... After Monclova returned, the governor [Leon] sent the two Frenchmen to the viceroy, and they legitimated themselves before him. The Conde de Galve, convinced that the affair was of particular importance, sent them both to the court of Charles II. under the care of Captain Don Andrés Perez.[95]... In this year [1691] Don Andrés Perez came back from Madrid with both of the Frenchmen.” This is now also confirmed by the deposition of Santiago Grolee himself, which I found in Santa Clara in the investigation (Informacion) concerning his own person. It is of the year 1699, and he said in it: “We remained lost in that country five years among the wild infidel Indians, and after we had at last escaped from their power we went to Spain by the order of the Viceroy Conde de Galve, in order to give an account of our persons and of that country.” He said nothing of La Salle’s death and of his own participation in the murder.
Satisfied that in the persons of Archeueque and Grolee I had found the notorious L’Archévèque and the sailor Grollet, two of the accomplices in the killing of La Salle, I made further investigation in the case. Members of a family named Archibeque still live in different parts of New Mexico; and as this one wrote his name that way in the later papers, I thought that these Archibeques might be descendants of the ill-famed Frenchman. In Santa Clara, and with the help of the general surveyor’s archives at Santa Fé, I succeeded in restoring a tolerably complete picture of the life of Jean l’Archévèque. I shall now limit myself to this picture, and avoid the tedious details of documentary research. With the exception of the participation in the death of La Salle and the voyage to Spain, the facts are new and the results of local investigations.
Jean l’Archévèque was born in Bayonne, in southern France, in the year 1671. His parents were Claude l’Archévèque and Marie d’Armagnac. Both died in 1719. When thirteen years old, in 1684, he went with Robert Cavelier de La Salle to the coast of Texas and shared the fortunes of that unfortunate expedition. He entered the service of the notorious Duhaut, who, equally with the surgeon Liotot, was chief of the conspiracy to which La Salle fell a victim. His relation to Duhaut and his youth, he being only sixteen years old in 1687, explain, or at least partly excuse, the criminal part which he performed on the morning of the 18th of March. It was he who stood on the river-bank and when La Salle came over and inquired for his nephew, who was already murdered, answered the commander in insolent tones, and led him towards the ambush, where Duhaut and Liotot were hidden in the high grass. Mr. Parkman has described the scene from the best sources and with his accustomed vividness; and I therefore refer to his work, “La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,” for the details of the affair. This historian also gives a very intelligible account of L’Archévèque’s behavior immediately after the murder. Whether repentance or a sudden coming back to his senses after the act or uncertainty concerning the real intentions of his associates determined him to it, L’Archévèque seems to have afterward gradually separated himself from the murderers. He thus escaped the vengeance which the freebooter Hiens inflicted on Duhaut and Liotot. The adherents of the murdered man also seem to have considered him less guilty. But he did not join the little company which set out on its extensive wanderings northward under the lead of Joutel. With Grollet and some others, among whom was Meunier, he stayed among the Indians of Texas till 1689, when Alonzo de Leon ransomed him. Fray Isidro Espinosa gives the details of this ransoming in his “Crónica seráfica y apostólica” (first part); but he does not mention L’Archévèque, although he names Pedro Muñi (or Meunier).
I have not been able to determine the date when the three Frenchmen went from Mexico to New Mexico. It was probably with Don Diego de Vargas, the reconqueror of the province. L’Archévèque and Meunier were soldiers, while Grollet came as a settler. All three were in Santa Fé as early as 1696. In the next year L’Archévèque was married to Antonia Gutierrez, who was born at Tezonco, near the City of Mexico, and was the widow of a certain Tomas de Yta, who had been murdered three years previously near Zacatecas. In the year 1701 he bought a land estate in Santa Fé, but still continued a soldier, and in that capacity visited in the next year the distant Indian villages of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuñi. His wife died in the first year of the eighteenth century, and he continued a widower till 1719, when he married as his second wife the daughter of the Alcalde Mayor Ignacio de Roybal. The second marriage was solemnized in the church of the pueblo of San Ildefonso, and the governor of New Mexico at the time, General Don Antonio Valverde Cosio, was one of the witnesses. L’Archévèque, or, as he now began to call himself, Captain Juan de Archibeque, stood in high credit. He had left the military service with honor, and had become a successful trader, or peddler. His trading journeys extended to Sonora, and he occasionally visited the City of Mexico on business. His notes[96] were current everywhere, and were even accepted and endorsed by men connected with the government. He was a man in easy circumstances—for New Mexico, a wealthy man. His son by his first marriage, Miguel de Archibeque, assisted him faithfully in his business affairs, and a natural son, Augustin de Archibeque, likewise helped, by his labor and his watchful care of his interests, in the accumulation of his wealth. Everything went on according to his desire.
Jean l’Archévèque celebrated his second marriage on the 16th of August, 1719, with a daughter of one of the first families of New Mexico. A year afterward, on the same day of the same month, Jean l’Archévèque was a bleeding corpse.