LITMIR.BIZ

      Outline of Spanish-Zuñi History

       Table of Contents

      The first discovered of the Seven Cities of Cibola or Zuñiland, called by the Zuñis themselves Shíwona, was by native account the most easterly of their towns, the K‘yä´kime of tradition and the Caquima of later Spanish record. According also to native tradition it was entered by Estevanico, the negro spy of Fray Marcos de Niza, and the Black Mexican of Zuñi story, in the spring of 1539. The negro was forthwith killed by the inhabitants; but the friar, following him shortly after, saw from the mesa heights to the southward one of the seven villages, and, making good his escape, reported his discovery to the viceroy of Mexico, Don Antonio de Mendoza.

      Only a year later the largest of the westerly towns, Háwik’uh (Aquico) was stormed and its inhabitants partly subdued, partly driven away to the great tribal stronghold, Thunder mountain, by that valiant knight, Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, and his vanguard of hardy mail-clad soldiers. The little army occupied as headquarters, for several months, the town they had captured, and later the more numerous rear of the army were quartered at the more central and eastern town of Mátsaki (Muzaque). During this time Coronado and his comrades in arms were able to reassure and pacify the natives, insomuch that when, two years afterward, they were returning through Zuñiland en route to Mexico from the conquests of the farther Pueblos and their vain search for the golden province of Quivira, they were entreated to remain and join the tribes. But Fray Juan de Padilla, the heroic priest of the expedition, had found more fertile fields to the eastward, and only three or four Mexican Indian allies of the Spaniards were fain to stay.

      When, in 1581-'82, Francisco Chamuscado and his 9 soldiers recklessly penetrated those vast and lonely wilds of the southwest (in 1888 I sketched his graven signature and those of many of his successors on El Moro, or the Rock Mesa of Inscriptions, 35 miles east of Zuñi) and passed through the country of Cibola, he was not hindered by its people. And when Antonio de Espejo, in 1582, with scarcely more of a company, was on his way toward Tusayan or the Hopi country, in the northwest, he stopped at the central town of Alona (Hálona) and was well received. To this day the marks, said by the Zuñis to have been made by the "iron bonnets of his tall warriors," are shown on the rafters of one of the low, still used prehistoric rooms facing the great northern court (once the central and main one) of Zuñi, and attest to the hospitality so long ago accorded them there.

      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

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