The men drank and drank in the river. They took the water in through their skins and they cupped it to their mouths and swollen tongues and parched throats. When they could drink no more they went to the dry banks and fell down upon the cool sand under the shade of the big trees. In their frenzied appetite for survival itself, they had become bloated and deformed, and they lay sprawled in exhaustion and excess. One of their company, looking upon himself and them, said they were all like drunkards abandoned on the floor of an inn, and that they looked more like toads than like men.
Numbed with simple creature pleasures they took their ease in the shade. In the bounteous trees overhead many birds sang. There were bees in the wildflowers of spring, and the surviving horses grazed in near-by meadows. The river looked calm and peaceful. All such sounds and sights were deeply restful to the squad of men. Their clothes were ragged, their boots were worn through, and their bellies were hungry; for they had come for fifty days through deserts with thorns, mountains with rocks, and nothing to eat but roots and weeds. For the last five days they had not had a drop of water. In finding the river, they not only saved their lives; they fulfilled their assignment—to break a new trail to the Rio del Norte from the south, that would bypass the Junta de los Rios, to bring the colony directly to its New Mexican kingdom with one hundred and thirty families, two hundred and seventy single men, eighty-three wagons and carts, eleven Franciscan friars, seven thousand cattle herded by drovers on foot, and all commanded by the Governor, Captain-General and Adelantado Don Juan de Oñate.
The little advance detachment was headed by Vicente de Zaldívar, sergeant major of the colony, and nephew of the Governor. Among his seven men was Captain Don Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, from Salamanca, a former courtier of King Philip II, and a scholar with a classical education who later wrote the history of the colony’s first year in thirty-four rhymed Virgilian cantos. When they set out on their mission Villagrá said they were all without scientific knowledge of the heavens by which to set their course. He doubted if there was one among them who, “once the sun had set, could with certainty say, ‘There is east, there is west’.” They marched with hunger and thirst and once were captured by Indians who freed them unharmed having enjoyed their fright. But with the next dawn the eight Spaniards charged the large camp of their tormentors from all sides, firing their arms, and scattering all but a handful of Indians, whom they captured, holding two as guides, releasing the others. Now they also had rations—venison, badger, rabbit meat, along with herbs and roots. They moved on to the north, again running out of water. The guides brought them to six shallow water holes where all horses and men drank selfishly and greedily but one—Zaldívar, the leader, who waited till all were done, at the risk of there being no water left; then last in turn by his own choice, he drank his fill. Advancing over a plain where they could see far, they asked the guides where lay the river they sought? One did not understand. The other smoothed the ground and at once drew a circle, and “marked the four cardinal points… the two oceans, the islands, mountains, and the course of the river we sought. He seemed to act with the knowledge and experience of an expert cosmographer. As we watched him it seemed as though he was tracing the Arctic and Antarctic seas, the signs of the Zodiac, and even the degrees and parallels. He marked the different towns of New Mexico and the road we should follow and where along the journey we should find water. He then explained to us the direction we should take and where we would be able to ford the mighty river.” It was reassuring to have such a guide; but by the next day the Indians had escaped and the Spaniards were adrift in the desert, “trusting in God to bring us with safety to the river’s shore.” There was always too much water or too little. They passed through a whole week of uninterrupted rain; and then there was thirst again, like that of the last five days that brought them to the river.
But now they rested and recovered their strength. They fished in the river, and shot ducks and geese, and on April 20, saw with pride and joy the best results of their efforts, for then arrived the mounted vanguard of the main body, led by the Governor. The wagons and the herds were following more slowly. That evening the trail blazers and the Governor’s great cavalcade celebrated their meeting with a feast. They built a roaring fire, and in it roasted meat and fish. Afterward there were speeches. The Sergeant Major described the adventures of his little party. The Governor then rose to tell of all that his people had endured, and they listened thirstily to his accounts of their heroism, and knew all over again the burning days, the cold nights, the thorns, the hunger, the fear, the bewildered privation of children, the courage of women, and the power of prayer to bring them rain when they were parched. At the end of his speech, the Governor was pleased to make them all a gift which only he could make. It was a whole day of rest in which all might do as they wished, to recover themselves before the journey up the river was resumed.
On April 26 the rest of the expedition arrived. All were reunited, and moved together up the south bank of the river a few more leagues.
There was a sense of great occasion in this arrival and encampment at the Rio del Norte. The wastes of northern Mexico were behind them all now, and the path to the north was more familiar from this point on. To select the ford to the north bank the Sergeant Major detailed a party of five men, all good swimmers. They found a shallow wide place, and returning to make their report met with an Indian encampment where four friendly Indians agreed to return with them. The Governor received the Indian visitors, gave them clothes and many gifts to take back to their people. It was not long before the Indians were back again, with many of their friends, bringing fish in quantities, which were welcome for the celebrations and feasts that were approaching. The river flowed through the gates of the kingdom of New Mexico. The army would enter through them only after suitable observances.
Under a river grove they built an altar. There on the morning of the last day of April in the presence of the whole army and the families, a solemn High Mass was sung by the Franoiscan priests. Candle flames dipped and shone in the dappled shady light under the trees that let moving discs of sunlight in upon the gold-laced vestments, the bent heads of the people, their praying hands. At Mass the Father Commissary, Fray Alonso Martinez, preached a learned sermon.
After Mass came an entertainment. It was a play composed for the occasion by Captain Don Marcos Farfán de los Godos, who came from Seville and in his forty years had seen much of the theatre. He understood the drama as a habit of occasion, a proper part of any festival. He was a man of good stature, with a chestnut-colored beard, and his sense of amenity was becoming to a soldier who was also a colonist. His play, hurriedly prepared and rehearsed, showed how the Franciscan fathers came to New Mexico; crossed the land, so; met the poor savages, so; who were gentle and friendly, and came on their knees, thus, asking to be converted; and how the missionaries then baptized them in great throngs. So the colony showed to themselves a great purpose of their toil. The audience adjourned in high spirits to prepare for the next episode of the celebrations.
Men with horses now went to mount, and came in formation shining with arms, armor and all their richest dress. The rest of the colony took up formal ranks, and when all was ready the Governor came forward accompanied by the crucifer, the standard-bearer, the trumpeters and the royal secretary of the expedition to perform the most solemn of acts.
All knew what a great man the Governor was. He was supposed to be one of the five richest men in Mexico. His father the Count de Oñate had been a governor before him—in New Galicia. During the four years of preparations, delays, starts and stops which the expedition had already endured, they said the Governor had spent one million dollars of his own fortune, for salaries, supplies, equipment, and running expenses. The Governor was magnificent on both sides of his household, for his wife was a granddaughter of the Marquis of the Valley, Cortés, the conqueror; and the great-granddaughter of the Emperor Montezuma himself. Her father was Don Pedro de Tovar, who had gone and returned with Coronado. As a child she must have heard him tell of his adventures in the north. All such great connections were matters of pride to the colony, but since opinion was always divided in human affairs, there were those who had heard things. They said the Governor had squandered and mismanaged his great patrimony so that he actually owed more than thirty