Again the country of the north, New Mexico in particular, emerged in both fact and dream. Coronado’s failure was forgotten, his hope remembered. Explorers were still talking of the vast river (the Mississippi) beyond the plains, adding now that it was salty, and spoke of a great lake with canoes whose prows carried decorations of “brass-colored” metal. The South Sea (the Pacific) was assuredly rich in pearls. New Mexico, as it lay between all these promises, must be worth the labor, the distance, the danger, to colonize as a base of operations. The government in Mexico City was besieged with applications to forward to the Crown, each begging for the honor and opportunity of leading a colony to New Mexico, and serving God and the King at private expense as governor and captain-general, and signed with piety, humble duty and rubric, duly notarized. Strict laws governed the terms by which a colony might be launched forth. Applicants made elaborate cases for themselves. All papers went to Madrid to pass over the worktable of King Philip II to await, sometimes for months, his personal attention. News of his pleasure, coming by sea, subject to the winds, could be hurried or delayed, or lost in disaster. The applicants could only wait.
But seven years after Espéjo with his soldiers marched down the Pecos on his way home, another, and much larger, procession followed it to the north. Acting apparently in good faith under the colonial laws which with certain requirements allowed any governor to settle lands already discovered, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa came to the Rio del Norte near the site of modern Del Rio in September, 1590, with one hundred seventy people, a long supply train, and two brass fieldpieces. The company were the whole population of the mining town of Almadén, now Monclova in Nuevo Leon. Castaño de Sosa was lieutenant governor of his province. At the river he found no settlements. He camped for three weeks in the low sandy hills and heavy greenery of late summer along the banks. On the first of October he started out again, following the south bank until near Eagle Pass he found the ford, crossed over, and went upstream to the Pecos. The canyon of this tributary was too deep to follow from this point to the north. He forded it, marched on to the passes of the Davis mountains, and found the Pecos again in its high plains character, and followed it to the pueblo of Pecos where he halted toward the end of December. His supplies were depleted, the weather was bitter, and it was time to be made welcome, but the people of Pecos were defiant before his resounding overtures of colonial kindliness. Night fell before the negotiations were completed, and when day came again, the colonists saw that the town had been silently abandoned during the dark. Entering in, Castaño de Sosa found rich supplies of corn in the storage cists of the cellular houses. Taking what they needed, the invaders went on their way westward to the Rio Grande del Norte. Once again the river towns submitted to Spanish expeditioners, let them have food, clothing, watched them raise crosses, saw them go exploring east and west of the river. Now and then there was hostility—at a parley before a pueblo, a soldier of Castaño de Sosa’s company spoke out for peace, at which an Indian came forth on his terrace, with throngs of his own people clustered about him on the rooftops, and in a gesture small in size but great in power, threw a pinch of ashes at the soldier. At this, as on a signal, the other Indians raised their voices in imprecation, and the soldier departed.
Near the pueblo later called Santo Domingo the new colony made its capital in camp. Castaño de Sosa, sure of his governorship now, sent couriers with news of his march and achievement to the Viceroy at Mexico City, to claim that what no one had yet done, he had succeeded in doing. In his river capital there were men, women and children, domestic animals, a government, a new land—in fact, a colony. Farms must come, he saw Indians growing cotton and several kinds of beans. In reporting to the Viceroy, he was complying with one of the most important requirements of the laws of colonial administration. Knowing its importance, he had been careful to acquaint the Viceroy of all his plans even before leaving Almadén. His report of later progress could only improve his position with the Viceregal Court. With it he sent requests for reinforcements—more soldiers, more families, more supplies.
Meanwhile, at his river outpost Castaño de Sosa was scrupulous to enforce all regulations protecting native peoples. Many of his followers wanted to use their superior armaments and habitual sense of command to despoil the Indians of property and require labor of them. The leader refused to approve such plans. As a result his life was in danger from his own people. A plot to kill him was exposed. He gave any man or woman freedom to return to Mexico as they liked, but he would remain. The cabal died away. He went to Pecos again for more corn from the stores. He explored his country north on the river, and west, and returned to his capital which was no better fed or clothed or protected against all strangenesses than Coronado’s Alcanfor. There he had news of a Spanish detachment marching up the river and went out rejoicing to meet his reply from the Viceroy—the reinforcements, the honors, he must have.
What he met instead was a warrant of arrest at the hands of an officer, Juan Morlete, who came to take him prisoner and to disband his colony. His report to the Viceroy from the river had been the first word of his adventures, his presumptions, to reach the government. The law was plain. He had entered the north without a royal commission, such as even then many great captains were hoping to receive from the King. They had been waiting for it, and would be waiting for it, for years. Castaño de Sosa’s disgrace was inescapable. Captain Juan Morlete led him down the river. His people were dispersed—Thomas and Christopher, two Mexican Indians, remained at Puaray to live, the rest straggled back to old homes and lost satisfactions. Castaño de Sosa was entered into the infinitely slow mercies of viceregal justice, which was merely a lever touched by the royal hand in Madrid.
The King: to the president and oidores of my royal audiencia which resides in the City of Mexico in New Spain: I have been informed that Gaspar Castaño… entered New Mexico with a company which he collected upon his own authority without order or license to do so. This having come to the attention of yourself, the viceroy, and you learning that those men had committed many disorders and abuses and had taken certain Indians as slaves, you sent in pursuit of them Captain Juan Morlete, who entered New Mexico and took prisoners Captain Gaspar Castaño and his companions. Since it is just that such a bold and dishonorable act should be punished, I command you to… proceed against them judicially.… Dated at Madrid, January 17, 1593. I THE KING.
Castaño was tried, found guilty, and exiled to China.
In the same year, two officers led a small detachment of soldiers on a mission to subdue Indian disorders in northern Mexico. The task accomplished, they were supposed to return south to their home garrison; but across the deserts of northern Mexico was the river, and up the river was what so many had gone for—Coronado, Chamuscado, Espéjo, Castaño—and the two officers proposed to their men that they too, though without orders, enter the north. Some of the men refused. Others agreed, and followed Captain Francisco Leyda de Bonilla and Captain Antonio Gutierrez de Humaña along the Conchos, up the Rio del Norte, and out of living knowledge. Word of their defection was circulated; they were famous deserters, lawbreakers. Their capture or voluntary return was awaited with all propriety. They would not be forgotten by the courts.
The courts, in fact, also remembered Castaño de Sosa and his case. Before a final decision was made in respect to applications before the King for the governorship of New Mexico, the case of Castaño was revived. Reconsideration of all its aspects led to a reversal of the earlier verdict. He was exonerated and ordered home from exile to become the first royally authorized governor of New Mexico. His recall went to China, where it arrived too late. He had been killed shortly before while dealing with a shipboard mutiny.
So through many weighings, intrigues, hesitations and refinements of policy, the question of the colony for New Mexico aged with the last decade of the sixteenth century; until the decision was finally made, the captain-general named once and for all, the expedition authorized, and the northward toil undertaken over a new route to the river in 1598.
16.
Possession
Late one morning in April, 1598, a party of eight armed and mounted men came to the river from the south through heavy groves of cottonwoods. They were emaciated and