But Oñate knew nothing of their intended treachery; and on the following day he and his handful of men—leaving only a guard with the horses—climbed one of the breathless stone "ladders," and stood in Acoma. The officious Indians piloted them hither and yon, showing them the strange terraced houses of many stories in height, the great reservoirs in the eternal rock, and the dizzy brink which everywhere surrounded the eyrie of a town. At last they brought the Spaniards to where a huge ladder, projecting far aloft through a trapdoor in the roof of a large house, indicated the estufa, or sacred council-chamber. The visitors mounted to the roof by a smaller ladder, and the Indians tried to have Oñate descend through the trapdoor. But the Spanish governor, noting that all was dark in the room below, and suddenly becoming suspicious, declined to enter; and as his soldiers were all about, the Indians did not insist. After a short visit in the pueblo the Spaniards descended the rock to their camp, and thence marched away on their long and dangerous journey to Moqui and Zuñi. That swift flash of prudence in Oñate's mind saved the history of New Mexico; for in that dark estufa was lying a band of armed warriors. Had he entered the room, he would have been slain at once; and his death was to be the signal for a general onslaught upon the Spaniards, all of whom must have perished in the unequal fight.
Returning from his march of exploration through the trackless and deadly plains, Juan de Zaldivar left San Gabriel on the 18th of November, to follow his commander-in-chief. He had but thirty men. Reaching the foot of the City in the Sky on the 4th of December, he was very kindly received by the Acomas, who invited him up into their town. Juan was a good soldier, as well as a gallant one, and well used to the tricks of Indian warfare; but for the first time in his life—and the last—he now let himself be deceived. Leaving half his little force at the foot of the cliff to guard the camp and horses, he himself went up with sixteen men. The town was so full of wonders, the people so cordial, that the visitors soon forgot whatever suspicions they may have had; and by degrees they scattered hither and yon to see the strange sights. The natives had been waiting only for this; and when the war-chief gave the wild whoop, men, women, and children seized rocks and clubs, bows and flint-knives, and fell furiously upon the scattered Spaniards. It was a ghastly and an unequal fight the winter sun looked down upon that bitter afternoon in the cliff city. Here and there, with back against the wall of one of those strange houses, stood a gray-faced, tattered, bleeding soldier, swinging his clumsy flintlock club-like, or hacking with desperate but unavailing sword at the dark, ravenous mob that hemmed him, while stones rained upon his bent visor, and clubs and cruel flints sought him from every side. There was no coward blood among that doomed band. They sold their lives dearly; in front of every one lay a sprawling heap of dead. But one by one the howling wave of barbarians drowned each grim, silent fighter, and swept off to swell the murderous flood about the next. Zaldivar himself was one of the first victims; and two other officers, six soldiers, and two servants fell in that uneven combat. The five survivors—Juan Tabaro, who was alguacil-mayor, with four soldiers—got at last together, and with superhuman strength fought their way to the edge of the cliff, bleeding from many wounds. But their savage foes still pressed them; and being too faint to carve their way to one of the "ladders," in the wildness of desperation the five sprang over the beetling cliff.
Never but once was recorded so frightful a leap as that of Tabaro and his four companions. Even if we presume that they had been so fortunate as to reach the very lowest point of the rock, it could not have been less than one hundred and fifty feet! And yet only one of the five was killed by this inconceivable fall; the remaining four, cared for by their terrified companions in the camp, all finally recovered. It would be incredible, were it not established by absolute historical proof. It is probable that they fell upon one of the mounds of white sand which the winds had drifted against the foot of the cliffs in places.
Fortunately, the victorious savages did not attack the little camp. The survivors still had their horses, of which unknown brutes the Indians had a great fear. For several days the fourteen soldiers and their four half-dead companions camped under the overhanging cliff, where they were safe from missiles from above, hourly expecting an onslaught from the savages. They felt sure that this massacre of their comrades was but the prelude to a general uprising of the twenty-five or thirty thousand Pueblos; and regardless of the danger to themselves, they decided at last to break up into little bands, and separate,—some to follow their commander on his lonely march to Moqui, and warn him of his danger; and others to hasten over the hundreds of arid miles to San Gabriel and the defence of its women and babes, and to the missionaries who had scattered among the savages. This plan of self-devotion was successfully carried out. The little bands of three and four apiece bore the news to their countrymen; and by the end of the year 1598 all the surviving Spaniards in New Mexico were safely gathered in the hamlet of San Gabriel. The little town was built pueblo-fashion, in the shape of a hollow square. In the Plaza within were planted the rude pedreros—small howitzers which fired a ball of stone—to command the gates; and upon the roofs of the three-story adobe houses the brave women watched by day, and the men with their heavy flintlocks all through the winter nights, to guard against the expected attack. But the Pueblos rested on their arms. They were waiting to see what Oñate would do with Acoma, before they took final measures against the strangers.
It was a most serious dilemma in which Oñate now found himself. One need not have known half so much about the Indian character as did this gray, quiet Spaniard, to understand that he must signally punish the rebels for the massacre of his men, or abandon his colony and New Mexico altogether. If such an outrage went unpunished, the emboldened Pueblos would destroy the last Spaniard. On the other hand, how could he hope to conquer that impregnable fortress of rock? He had less than two hundred men; and only a small part of these could be spared for the campaign, lest the other Pueblos in their absence should rise and annihilate San Gabriel and its people. In Acoma there were full three hundred warriors, reinforced by at least a hundred Navajo braves.
But there was no alternative. The more he reflected and counselled with his officers, the more apparent it became that the only salvation was to capture the Quéres Gibraltar; and the plan was decided upon. Oñate naturally desired to lead in person this forlornest of forlorn hopes; but there was one who had even a better claim to the desperate honor than the captain-general,—and that one was the forgotten hero Vicente de Zaldivar, brother of the murdered Juan. He was sargento-mayor[12] of the little army; and when he came to Oñate and begged to be given command of the expedition against Acoma, there was no saying him nay.
On the 12th of January, 1599, Vicente de Zaldivar left San Gabriel at the head of seventy men. Only a few of them had even the clumsy flintlocks of the day; the majority were not arquebusiers but piquiers, armed only with swords and lances, and clad in jackets of quilted cotton or battered mail. One small pedrero, lashed upon the back of a horse, was the only "artillery."
Silently and sternly the little force made its arduous march. All knew that impregnable rock, and few cherished an expectation of returning from so desperate a mission; but there was no thought of turning back. On the afternoon of the eleventh day the tired soldiers passed the last intervening mesa,[13] and came in sight of Acoma. The Indians, warned by their runners, were ready to receive them. The whole population, with the Navajo allies, were under arms, on the housetops and the commanding cliffs. Naked savages, painted black, leaped from crag to crag, screeching defiance and heaping insults upon the Spaniards. The medicine-men, hideously disguised, stood on projecting pinnacles, beating their drums and scattering curses and incantations to the winds; and all the populace joined in derisive howls and taunts.
Zaldivar halted his little band as close to the foot of the cliff as he could come without danger. The indispensable notary stepped from the ranks, and at the blast of the trumpet proceeded to read at the top of his lungs the formal summons in the name of the king of Spain to surrender. Thrice he shouted through the summons; but each time his voice was drowned by the howls and shrieks of the enraged savages, and a hail of stones and arrows fell dangerously near. Zaldivar had desired to secure the surrender of the pueblo, demand the delivery to him of the ringleaders in the massacre, and take them back with him to San Gabriel for official trial and punishment, without harm to the other people of Acoma; but the savages, secure in their grim fortress, mocked the merciful appeal. It was clear that Acoma must be stormed. The Spaniards camped on the bare sands and passed the night—made hideous by the sounds of a monster war-dance in the town—in gloomy plans for the morrow.