Oñate’s Effort to Gain Political Autonomy for New Mexico
To Don Juan de Oiate belongs the honor of having been the founder and first governor of New Mexico. Long before the Pilgrims, on the other side of the continent, sought refuge in a "new" England, he had established the first settlements in the great southwest. Ofiate, as is well known, had been preceded by Coronado and his followers who in the 1540's made the pioneer exploration of this area. For a thousand miles beyond Tepic up the west coast of Mexico, and from the Colorado River to Kansas, Coronado had searched diligently for the treasures hinted at by Cabeza de Vaca a dozen years earlier. But fate was against Coronado. The treasures he sought did not exist. The fertile plains that he crossed had little attraction for him, and the Pueblo Indians of New M/fexico were modest farmers without the riches of this world.' Nearly a half-century after Coronado's time, while Ofiate and others were still occupied in exploitation of the mines of Zacatecas, miners and cattlemen again drew attention to the north when they heard rumors of the Pueblo Indians, a people who were said to live in great houses and to possess turquoise, which seemed to indicate vast wealth. To investigate these stories, two parties reexplored the New Mexico area in the 1580's and on their return told anew of the docile Indians, the evidences of mineral outcroppings, and the hopes of still greater riches farther on.2 Since these explorers had revived the dream of finding another Mexico in this northern region, the king, on the viceroy's recommendation, issued a cedula in 1583 providing for the conquest and pacification of this new land.3 And when half a dozen bidders had failed to satisfy the crown of their ability to perform the task, Don Juan de Ofiate of Zacatecas, descendant of a famous family of conquerors in New Spain and himself a veteran of