Again, in the autumn of 1598, Juan de Oñate and his more considerable force of soldiers and priests, after their general tour of formal conquest in the other Pueblo provinces, were met as they approached the Zuñi towns by delegations of singing priests and warriors, and were received with such showers of white prayer-meal on entering that they had to protect themselves from these offerings, as they supposed, of peace. This incident, and that of the ceremonial hunt and feast given them afterward, signifies conclusively the estimation in which, up to that time, the Spaniards had been held by the priestly elders of Zuñiland. Precisely as the returning Kâ´kâkwe, or mythic-dance dramatists, personating gods and heroes of the olden time are received twice yearly (before and after the harvest growth and time), so were these soldiers and friars received, not as enemies nor as aliens, but as veritable gods or god-men, coming forth at the close of autumn from out the land of day, whence come the ripening breaths of the Frost gods!
As yet, the Franciscan friars, although sometimes baptizing scores of the Zuñi—much to their gratification, doubtless, as quite appropriate behavior on the part of such beings when friendly,—had not antagonized their ancient observances or beliefs; and the warriors who accompanied them had never, since the first of them had come, and after fighting had laid down their dreadful arms and made peace and left hostages, albeit mortals like themselves, with their forefathers—had never again raised their fearful batons of thunder and fire or their long blades of blue metal like lightning.
But all this was soon to change. When, nearly a quarter of a century later still, Fray Alonzo de Benavides became father-custodian of New Mexico, he undertook to establish missions throughout the country. More than twenty missionaries were introduced into the Pueblo provinces by him, and soon afterward Esteban de Perea brought thirty more from Spain and old Mexico. Among the latter were Fray Martin de Arvide and Fray Francisco de Letrado. Fray Letrado was assigned to Zuñi some time after 1628. By the end of the following year the Indians had built for him at Hálona the little Church of the Purification or of the Immaculate Virgin, and at Háwik’uh the church and conventual residence of the Immaculate Conception.
Fray Francisco was an old man and very zealous. Unquestionably, he antagonized the native priests. It is as certain that, at first welcoming him, they gradually came to look upon his religion as no less that of mortal men than their own, and to regard its magic and power of appeal to the gods as of small account in the making of rain or the quelling of war and sorcery. Wherefore, although baptized by dozens as they had been, they brooked but ill the compulsory attendance at mass and other observances and the constant interferences of the father and his soldiers (for a small escort, unluckily, accompanied him) with their own acts of worship. When in the winter of 1630 Fray Martin de Arvide joined Fray Letrado at Háwik’uh, on the way to establish missions among the Zipias, a pueblo people said by the Zuñis to have lived considerably to the southwestward of them at that time, and called by them Tsípiakwe ("People-of-the-coarse-hanging-hair"), he foresaw for his brother and himself speedy martyrdom. He had but fairly departed when, on the Sunday following, the people delayed attending mass, and Fray Francisco, going forth to remonstrate with them, met a party of the native religionists armed with bows and arrows and in mood so menacing that in expectancy of death he knelt where he had stood, clinging to his crucifix, and, continuing to entreat them, was transfixed by many arrows.
Thus speedily was slain the first resident priest of Zuñi; thus were the Zuñis themselves disillusionized of their belief in the more than mortal power of the Spaniard and the deific character of his religion; for they broke up the ornaments of the altar, burned the church, and then sallied forth to follow Fray Martin. They overtook him at night five days later, attacked his party while in camp, overawed and killed outright his two soldiers, and, joined by his traitorous "Christian Indians," one of whom, a half-blood, cut off his hand and scalped him, they killed also this venerable friar and hastened back to their town. There the ceremonial of the scalp dances of initiation were performed over the scalps of the two friars, an observance designed both as a commemoration of victory and to lay the ghosts of the slain by completing the count of their unfinished days and making them members by adoption of the ghostly tribe of Zuñi. The scalp-dance is also supposed to proclaim in song, unto the gods and men, that thenceforward their people are of the enemy, and unto the gods of the enemy that the gods of Zuñi are victors over them, whereof and wherefore it will be well for them to beware. Thus the estimation in which the Spaniard, and especially his religious representatives, were ever afterward to be held was fixed on those fatal days at the close of February, 1630.
Now again, after this demonstration, the Zuñis, as in the days of the great flood, when men had disobeyed the gods, as when Coronado advanced on Háwik’uh, so soon as they had completed the rites of purifying and baptizing the scalps, betook themselves to Thunder mountain and thereon intrenched themselves.
It was not until after two years had passed that they were attacked there, but not overcome, by Tomas de Albizu and his soldiery and induced by the priests who accompanied him, and whom the Indians, knowing them to be unarmed, allowed to approach, to hold parley. It is probable that Don Tomas, finding it impossible to storm their rock successfully, promised that if they would yield the wretched mestizo who had cut off the hand and torn away the scalp of Fray Martin, he and his people would leave them in peace. At any rate, the mutilator of the friar was yielded, and in due course was hanged by the Spanish authorities.
Then gradually the Zuñis descended from their stronghold and a few years later were peacefully reoccupying the largest four of their towns. More than thirty years elapsed before the missions of the Purification at Hálona and the Immaculate Conception at Háwik’uh were reestablished. In 1670 Fray Juan Galdo was the resident priest at the one, and at the other Fray Pedro de Avila y Ayala. But in the autumn of the year named a numerous band of Apache-Navajo attacked the town of Háwik’uh, and, making for the lower courts where stood the church and convent, they dragged Fray Avila from the altar, at which he had sought refuge, clinging to the cross and an image of the Virgin, and, stripping him, beat him to death with one of the church bells at the foot of the cross in the courtyard hard by. They then plundered and burned the church, threw the image of the Virgin into the flames, and, transfixing the body of the priest with more than 200 arrows, cast upon it stones and the carcasses of three dead lambs. The mutilated corpse was thus found the following day by Fray Galdo and carried to Hálona for sepulture in the Church of the Purification there.
After this tragic occurrence the pueblo of Háwik’uh was abandoned by the missionaries and for a short time at least by its native inhabitants as well. Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that other Zuñis, if not indeed some of the townspeople themselves, had to do with the tragic affair just related, for there is no evidence that, although the people of Háwik’uh were numerous, any of them came to the rescue of the father, or that their town was sacked, whereas the church was plundered and burned.
They do not seem, however, to have done injury to the priest of Hálona, for just previously to the summer of 1680 when they, in common with all the other Pueblo Indians, joined in the revolt against Spanish rule and religion, they were tolerating the presence of Fray Juan de Bal at this town and of another priest, it seems, at Háwik’uh.