The Spanish Pioneers Part 4

TWO CONTINENTS MASTERED.

This, then, was the situation in the New World at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Spain, having found the Americas, had, in a little over a hundred years of ceaseless exploration and conquest, settled and was civilizing them. She had in the New World hundreds of towns, whose extremes were over five thousand miles apart, with all the then advantages of civilization, and two towns in what is now the United States, a score of whose States her sons had penetrated. France had made a few gingerly expeditions, which bore no substantial fruit; and Portugal had founded a few comparatively unimportant towns in South America. England had pa.s.sed the century in masterly inactivity,--and there was not so much as an English hut or an English man between Cape Horn and the North Pole.

That later times have reversed the situation; that Spain (largely because she was drained of her best blood by a conquest so enormous that no nation even now could give the men or the money to keep the enterprise abreast with the world's progress) has never regained her old strength, and is now a drone beside the young giant of nations that has grown, since her day, in the empire she opened,--has nothing to do with the obligation of American history to give her justice for the past. Had there been no Spain four hundred years ago, there would be no United States to-day. It is a most fascinating story to every genuine American,--for every one worthy of the name admires heroism and loves fairplay everywhere, and is first of all interested in the truth about his own country.

By 1680 the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico was beaded with Spanish settlements from Santa Cruz to below Socorro, two hundred miles; and there were also colonies in the Taos valley, the extreme north of the Territory. From 1600 to 1680 there had been countless expeditions throughout the Southwest, penetrating even the deadly Llano Estacado (Staked Plain). The heroism which held the Southwest so long was no less wonderful than the exploration that found it. The life of the colonists was a daily battle with n.i.g.g.ard Nature--for New Mexico was never fertile--and with deadliest danger. For three centuries they were ceaselessly harried by the fiendish Apaches; and up to 1680 there was no rest from the attempts of the Pueblos (who were actually with and all about the settlers) at insurrection. The statements of closet historians that the Spaniards enslaved the Pueblos, or any other Indians of New Mexico; that they forced them to choose between Christianity and death; that they made them work in the mines, and the like,--are all entirely untrue. The whole policy of Spain toward the Indians of the New World was one of humanity, justice, education, and moral suasion; and though there were of course individual Spaniards who broke the strict laws of their country as to the treatment of the Indians, they were duly punished therefor.

Yet the mere presence of the strangers in their country was enough to stir the jealous nature of the Indians; and in 1680 a murderous and causeless plot broke out in the red Pueblo Rebellion. There were then fifteen hundred Spaniards in the Territory,--all living in Santa Fe or in scattered farm settlements; for Chamita had long been abandoned.

Thirty-four Pueblo towns were in the revolt, under the lead of a dangerous Tehua Indian named Pope. Secret runners had gone from pueblo to pueblo, and the murderous blow fell upon the whole Territory simultaneously. On that bitter 10th of August, 1680, over four hundred Spaniards were a.s.sa.s.sinated,--including twenty-one of the gentle missionaries who, unarmed and alone, had scattered over the wilderness that they might save the souls and teach the minds of the savages.

Antonio de Otermin was then governor and captain-general of New Mexico, and was attacked in his capital of Santa Fe by a greatly-outnumbering army of Indians. The one hundred and twenty Spanish soldiers, cooped up in their little adobe city, soon found themselves unable to hold it longer against their swarming besiegers; and after a week's desperate defence, they made a sortie, and hewed their way through to liberty, taking their women and children with them. They retreated down the Rio Grande, avoiding an ambush set for them at Sandia by the Indians, and reached the pueblo of Isleta, twelve miles below the present city of Albuquerque, in safety; but the village was deserted, and the Spaniards were obliged to continue their flight to El Paso, Texas, which was then only a Spanish mission for the Indians.

In 1681 Governor Otermin made an invasion as far north as the pueblo of Cochiti, twenty-five miles west of Santa Fe, on the Rio Grande; but the hostile Pueblos forced him to retreat again to El Paso. In 1687 Pedro Reneros Posada made another dash into New Mexico, and took the rock-built pueblo of Santa Ana by a most brilliant and b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sault.

But he also had to retire. In 1688 Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate--the greatest soldier on New Mexican soil--made an expedition, in which he took the pueblo of Zia by storm (a still more remarkable achievement than Posada's), and in turn retreated to El Paso.

At last the final conqueror of New Mexico, Diego de Vargas, came in 1692. Marching to Santa Fe, and thence as far as ultimate Moqui, with only eighty-nine men, he visited every pueblo in the Province, meeting no opposition from the Indians, who had been thoroughly cowed by Cruzate. Returning to El Paso, he came again to New Mexico in 1693, this time with about one hundred and fifty soldiers and a number of colonists. Now the Indians were prepared for him, and gave him the bloodiest reception ever accorded in New Mexico. They broke out first at Santa Fe, and he had to storm that town, which he took after two days'

fighting. Then began the siege of the Black Mesa of San Ildefonso, which lasted off and on for nine months. The Indians had removed their village to the top of that New Mexican Gibraltar, and there resisted four daring a.s.saults, but were finally worn into surrender.

Meantime De Vargas had stormed the impregnable citadel of the Potrero Viejo, and the beetling cliff of San Diego de Jemez,--two exploits which rank with the storming of the Penol of Mixton[7] in Jalisco (Mexico) and of the vast rock of Acoma, as the most marvellous a.s.saults in all American history. The capture of Quebec bears no comparison to them.

These costly lessons kept the Indians quiet until 1696, when they broke out again. This rebellion was not so formidable as the first, but it gave New Mexico another watering with blood, and was suppressed only after three months' fighting. The Spaniards were already masters of the situation; and the quelling of that revolt put an end to all trouble with the Pueblos,--who remain with us to this day practically undiminished in numbers, though they have fewer towns, a quiet, peaceful, Christianized race of industrious farmers, living monuments to the humanity and the moral teaching of their conquerors.

Then came the last century, a dismal hundred years of ceaseless hara.s.sment by the Apaches, Navajos, and Comanches, and occasionally by the Utes,--a hara.s.sment which had hardly ceased a decade ago. The Indian wars were so constant, the explorations (like that wonderful attempt to open a road from San Antonio de Bejar, Texas, to Monterey, California) so innumerable, that their individual heroism is lost in their own bewildering mult.i.tude.

More than two centuries ago the Spaniards explored Texas, and settlement soon followed. There were several minor expeditions; but the first of magnitude was that of Alonzo de Leon, governor of the Mexican State of Coahuila, who made extensive explorations of Texas in 1689. By the beginning of the last century there were several Spanish settlements and _presidios_ (garrisons) in what was to become, more than a hundred years later, the largest of the United States.

The Spanish colonization of Colorado was not extensive, and they had no towns north of the Arkansas River; but even in settling our Centennial State they were half a century ahead of us, as they were some centuries ahead in finding it.

In California the Spaniards were very active. For a long time there were minor expeditions which were unsuccessful. Then the Franciscans came in 1769 to San Diego Bay, landed on the bare sands where a million-dollar American hotel stands to-day, and at once began to teach the Indians, to plant olive-orchards and vineyards, and to rear the n.o.ble stone churches so beautifully described by the author of "Ramona," which shall remain as monuments of a sublime faith long after the race that built them has gone from off the face of the earth.

California had a long line of Spanish governors--the last of whom, brave, courtly, lovable old Pio Pico, has just died--before our acquisition of that garden-State of States. The Spaniards discovered gold there centuries, and were mining it a decade, before an "American"

dreamed of the precious deposit which was to make such a mark on civilization, and had found the rich placer-fields of New Mexico a decade earlier yet.

In Arizona, Father Franciscus Eusebius Kuehne,[8] a Jesuit of Austrian birth but under Spanish auspices, was first to establish the missions on the Gila River,--from 1689 to 1717 (the date of his death). He made at least four appalling journeys on foot from Sonora to the Gila, and descended that stream to its junction with the Colorado. It would be extremely interesting, did s.p.a.ce permit, to follow fully the wanderings and achievements of that cla.s.s of pioneers of America who have left such a wonderful impress on the whole Southwest,--the Spanish missionaries.

Their zeal and their heroism were infinite. No desert was too frightful for them, no danger too appalling. Alone, unarmed, they traversed the most forbidding lands and braved the most deadly savages, and left in the lives of the Indians such a proud monument as mailed explorers and conquering armies never made.

The foregoing is a running summary of the early pioneering of America,--the only pioneering for more than a century, and the greatest pioneering for still another century. As for the great and wonderful work at last done by our own blood, not only in conquering part of a continent, but in making a mighty nation, the reader needs no help from me to enable him to comprehend it,--it has already found its due place in history. To record all the heroisms of the Spanish pioneers would fill, not this book, but a library. I have deemed it best, in such an enormous field, to draw the condensed outline, as has now been done; and then to ill.u.s.trate it by giving in detail a few specimens out of the host of heroisms. I have already given a hint of how many conquests and explorations and dangers there were; and now I wish to show by fair "sample pages" what Spanish conquest and exploration and endurance really were.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] p.r.o.nounced Mish-ton.

[8] Often misspelled Kino.

II.

SPECIMEN PIONEERS.

I.

THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER.

The achievements of the explorer are among the most important, as they are among the most fascinating, of human heroisms. The qualities of mind and body necessary to his task are rare and admirable. He should have many sides and be strong in each,--the rounded man that Nature meant man to be. His body need not be as strong as Samson's, nor his mind as Napoleon's, nor his heart the most fully developed heart on earth; but mind, heart, and body he needs, and each in the measure of a strong man.

There is hardly another calling in which every muscle, so to speak, of his threefold nature will be more constantly or more evenly called into play.

It is a curious fact that some of the very greatest of human achievements have come about by chance. Many among the most important discoveries in the history of mankind have been made by men who were not seeking the great truth they found. Science is the result not only of study, but of precious accidents; and this is as true of history. It is an interesting study in itself,--the influence which happy blunders and unintended happenings have had upon civilization.

In exploration, as in invention, accident has played its important part.

Some of the most valuable explorations have been made by men who had no more idea of being explorers than they had of inventing a railroad to the moon; and it is a striking fact that the first inland exploration of America, and the two most wonderful journeys in it, were not only accidents, but the crowning misfortunes and disappointments of the men who had hoped for very different things.

Exploration, intended or involuntary, has not only achieved great results for civilization, but in the doing has scored some of the highest feats of human heroism. America in particular, perhaps, has been the field of great and remarkable journeys; but the two men who made the most astounding journeys in America are still almost unheard of among us. They are heroes whose names are as Greek to the vast majority of Americans, albeit they are men in whom Americans particularly should take deep and admiring interest. They were Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, the first American traveller; and Andres Docampo, the man who walked farther on this continent than any other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE ZALDIVAR STORMED THE CITY.

_See page 135._]

In a world so big and old and full of great deeds as this, it is extremely difficult to say of any one man, "He was the greatest" this or that; and even in the matter of journeys there have been bewilderingly many great ones, of the most wonderful of which we have heard least. As explorers we cannot give Vaca and Docampo great rank; though the latter's explorations were not contemptible, and Vaca's were of great importance. But as physical achievements the journeys of these neglected heroes can safely be said to be without parallel. They were the most wonderful walks ever made by man. Both men made their records in America, and each made most of his journey in what is now the United States.

Cabeza de Vaca was the first European really to penetrate the then "Dark Continent" of North America, as he was by centuries the first to _cross_ the continent. His nine years of wandering on foot, unarmed, naked, starving, among wild beasts and wilder men, with no other attendants than three as ill-fated comrades, gave the world its first glimpse of the United States inland, and led to some of the most stirring and important achievements connected with its early history. Nearly a century before the Pilgrim Fathers planted their n.o.ble commonwealth on the edge of Ma.s.sachusetts, seventy-five years before the first English settlement was made in the New World, and more than a generation before there was a single Caucasian settler of _any_ blood within the area of the present United States, Vaca and his gaunt followers had trudged across this unknown land.

It is a long way back to those days. Henry VIII. was then king of England, and sixteen rulers have since occupied that throne. Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was not born when Vaca started on his appalling journey, and did not begin to reign until twenty years after he had ended it. It was fifty years before the birth of Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia; a generation before the birth of Shakspere, and two and a half generations before Milton. Henry Hudson, the famous explorer for whom one of our chief rivers is named, was not yet born. Columbus himself had been dead less than twenty-five years, and the conqueror of Mexico had seventeen yet to live. It was sixty years before the world had heard of such a thing as a newspaper, and the best geographers still thought it possible to sail through America to Asia. There was not a white man in North America above the middle of Mexico; nor had one gone two hundred miles inland in this continental wilderness, of which the world knew almost less than we know now of the moon.

The name of Cabeza de Vaca may seem to us a curious one. It means "Head of a Cow." But this quaint family name was an honorable one in Spain, and had a brave winning: it was earned at the battle of Naves de Tolosa in the thirteenth century, one of the decisive engagements of all those centuries of war with the Moors. Alvar's grandfather was also a man of some note, being the conqueror of the Canary Islands.

Alvar was born in Xeres[9] de la Frontera, Spain, toward the last of the fifteenth century. Of his early life we know little, except that he had already won some consideration when in 1527, a mature man, he came to the New World. In that year we find him sailing from Spain as treasurer and sheriff of the expedition of six hundred men with which Panfilo de Narvaez intended to conquer and colonize the Flowery Land, discovered a decade before by Ponce de Leon.

They reached Santo Domingo, and thence sailed to Cuba. On Good Friday, 1528, ten months after leaving Spain, they reached Florida, and landed at what is now named Tampa Bay. Taking formal possession of the country for Spain, they set out to explore and conquer the wilderness. At Santo Domingo shipwreck and desertion had already cost them heavily, and of the original six hundred men there were but three hundred and forty-five left. No sooner had they reached Florida than the most fearful misfortunes began, and with every day grew worse. Food there was almost none; hostile Indians beset them on every hand; and the countless rivers, lakes, and swamps made progress difficult and dangerous. The little army was fast thinning out under war and starvation, and plots were rife among the survivors. They were so enfeebled that they could not even get back to their vessels. Struggling through at last to the nearest point on the coast, far west of Tampa Bay, they decided that their only hope was to build boats and try to coast to the Spanish settlements in Mexico. Five rude boats were made with great toil; and the poor wretches turned westward along the coast of the Gulf. Storms scattered the boats, and wrecked one after the other. Scores of the haggard adventurers were drowned, Narvaez among them; and scores dashed upon an inhospitable sh.o.r.e perished by exposure and starvation. The living were forced to subsist upon the dead. Of the five boats, three had gone down with all on board; of the eighty men who escaped the wreck but fifteen were still alive. All their arms and clothing were at the bottom of the Gulf.

The survivors were now on Mal Hado, "the Isle of Misfortune." We know no more of its location than that it was west of the mouth of the Mississippi. Their boats had crossed that mighty current where it plunges out into the Gulf, and theirs were the first European eyes to see even this much of the Father of Waters. The Indians of the island, who had no better larder than roots, berries, and fish, treated their unfortunate guests as generously as was in their power; and Vaca has written gratefully of them.

In the spring his thirteen surviving companions determined to escape.

Vaca was too sick to walk, and they abandoned him to his fate. Two other sick men, Oviedo and Alaniz, were also left behind; and the latter soon perished. It was a pitiable plight in which Vaca now found himself. A naked skeleton, scarce able to move, deserted by his friends and at the mercy of savages, it is small wonder that, as he tells us, his heart sank within him. But he was one of the men who never "let go." A constant soul held up the poor, worn body; and as the weather grew less rigorous, Vaca slowly recovered from his sickness.

For nearly six years he lived an incomparably lonely life, bandied about from tribe to tribe of Indians, sometimes as a slave, and sometimes only a despised outcast. Oviedo fled from some danger, and he was never heard of afterward; Vaca faced it, and lived. That his sufferings were almost beyond endurance cannot be doubted. Even when he was not the victim of brutal treatment, he was the worthless enc.u.mbrance, the useless interloper, among poor savages who lived the most miserable and precarious lives. That they did not kill him speaks well for their humane kindness.

The thirteen who escaped had fared even worse. They had fallen into cruel hands, and all had been slain except three, who were reserved for the harder fate of slaves. These three were Andres Dorantes, a native of Bejar; Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, a native of Salamanca; and the negro Estevanico, who was born in Azamor, Africa. These three and Vaca were all that were now left of the gallant four hundred and fifty men (among whom we do not count the deserters at Santo Domingo) who had sailed with such high hopes from Spain, in 1527, to conquer a corner of the New World,--four naked, tortured, shivering shadows; and even they were separated, though they occasionally heard vaguely of one another, and made vain attempts to come together. It was not until September, 1534 (nearly seven years later), that Dorantes, Castillo, Estevanico, and Vaca were reunited; and the spot where they found this happiness was somewhere in eastern Texas, west of the Sabine River.

But Vaca's six years of loneliness and suffering unspeakable had not been in vain,--for he had acquired, unknowingly, the key to safety; and amid all those horrors, and without dreaming of its significance, he had stumbled upon the very strange and interesting clew which was to save them all. Without it, all four would have perished in the wilderness, and the world would never have known their end.