Kachina and the Cross (16 page)

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Authors: Carroll L Riley

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extended family were organized, we have no real information. Coronado (who called the group Teya), Espejo, and Castaño all visited the Jumano but tell us next to nothing. Fray Alonso de Benavides, in New Mexico during the 1620s, was very interested in the Jumano, but his goal was conversion. His account is heavy on Christian miracles, but it gives no information on the indigenous religious life of the group.
The same problem exists when considering the religion of those hunting and gathering, and sometimes agriculturalist, neighbors of the Pueblos, the Navajo-Apache. Even the scanty evidence from the Spanish documents is mainly later and may represent some sort of accommodation of native systems to the new European power in the Southwest. Documents that describe the situation up to, say, the 1620s are mainly silent on religious and ceremonial matters. The Querechos, later called Apaches, were visited by Coronado, Chamuscado, Espejo, Zaldívar, and Oñate. These Indians had Benavides's enthusiastic attention for he was eager to convert them, but aside from saying that the Apache worshipped the sun and moon, he gave no religious information about them.
Common to all the Apachean groups today are two monster-killing culture heros associated with sun or fire and with water, respectively, and there are also trickster tales with Coyote as protagonist. Sun and moon are important throughout the Apachean world. All Apachean groups have an important role for the shaman, a religious entrepreneur who heals by manipulating spirit power or by reestablishing the ceremonial balance of the universe. Certain Apachean groupsthe Navajo, Western Apache, Jicarilla, and Lipantell a story of emergence from the underworld that is most likely Pueblo in its genesis. The Navajo, in particular, are rich in ceremonialism, costumes, color-direction concepts, and mythology that seem to be drawn from the Pueblo world. It is unclear just when these elements appeared, but some of them may be prehistoric. Several of the Apache groups utilized masked dancers. These god impersonators likely derive from the Pueblos. The well-known
Yeis
of the Navajo are certainly Puebloan in origin; though not specifically kachinas, they probably borrowed from the kachina cult.
The Apachean basic social unit was the matrilocal extended family. A series of these families stayed together on the annual round and formed what is often referred to as a
local group
, each with its own leader. A confederation of local groups who lived in more-or-less contiguous areas formed a named "band" with a prestigious local group headman functioning also as band leader. Originally these were civil chiefs, but in later days war chiefs were added, though they usually were subordinate to the highest civil authority. At least in historic times, the named bands were weakly developed among the Navajo, perhaps because of the
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The Pueblos and their neighbors in 1598
differential distribution patterns imposed by sheep herding, which the Navajo had picked up from the Spaniards by the end of the seventeenth century. Or quite possibly sheep herding was diffused to the Navajo from the Pueblos either during the seventeenth-century mission days or in the interregnum period after
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1680. The loom itself was presumably a Pueblo import into Navajo life, though just when it came is not known. In 1583, what I take to be ancestral Navajo in the Acoma area were
trading
for cotton cloth. In any case, the tribes and nations of the modern Apachean world are a latter-day phenomenon, dating from the American period and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Perhaps beginning in pre-Spanish times but continuing on during the historical period, the Western Apache and the Navajo had developed matrilineal clans, most likely from western Pueblo neighbors. The Jicarilla of north-central New Mexico today have a moiety system that was borrowed from the northern Rio Grande Pueblos. Some of this borrowing was post-Conquest in nature, though in many cases it is very difficult to sort out the date, whether early or late, of a given trait.
The Espejo party saw ''Querechos'' in 1583 in the area around Hopi and at Acoma. The Querechos were probably among the Jemez during this same time period. The descriptions of Espejo and of Luxán clearly indicate a flourishing trade between Pueblos and Querechos, whom Espejo refers to as "mountain dwellers." There was an active trade with the Acoma and probably the Jemez people, the Querechos providing salt, various game (deer, rabbit, and hare are specifically mentioned), and dressed "chamois" skins. Espejo describes a rather Puebloan-sounding ceremonial dance and implies that it was performed by the Querechos. However, Bernardino de Luna, a member of Espejo's party, seems to identify this particular dance as Pueblo, probably Acoma.
In any case, it sounds as if the Querechos had been living in the region between Hopi and the Jemez Mountains for some time. It is generally assumed that they were
not
there in Coronado's day because of the lack of mention in documents of that period. However, negative evidence is somewhat risky, and it simply may be that the Querechos were intimidated by the large Coronado party and hid in their mountain fastnesses. Even if these Apacheans were post-Coronado, they surely were in the western regions a generation or so before Espejo.
The Querechos were still in the Acoma area during 1598 and 1599, for after the destruction of Acoma by the Spaniards, some of the older Acoma Indians were farmed out to them. It seems to me that the evidence on the "western Querechos" of Espejo and Oñate indicates that they were Navajo. A group on the Little Colorado south of the Hopi, identified by Oñate in 1605 as the Tacabuy, were also probably Navajo. The Navajo were operating in the Jemez Mountains in the seventeenth century, and they were united with the Jemez Indians in various anti-Spanish activities in 1614 and again in 1639. In 1630 Benavides mentioned people, whom he specifically identified as Navajo, residing fifty leagues north of the Xila Apache of the upper Gila drainage.
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Zárate Salmerón, who arrived in New Mexico in 1621, was among the Jemez some time before 1623 and contacted the Navajo there. By 1626-27 he had already coined the term
Apaches de Navajo.
From Zárate Salmerón's description, it would seem that the Navajo lived near Zuni and Hopi, perhaps also in the region around Mount Taylor and, possibly, on or around the San Juan River. They clearly extended eastward to the Jemez Mountains, for in 1629 they threatened the pueblo of Santa Clara on the eastern edge of these mountains. Benavides said that the Navajo territory stretched from east to west some 300 leagues, "and we do not know where it ends."
As we have seen, the first mention of the Navajo, using that term, comes in the writings of Zárate Salmerón, likely dating to the early 1620s. To Fray Benavides at the end of this decade, the word
Navajo
referred to the "great planted fields" of the Apaches de Navajo. Assuming that the Espejo period Querecho were Navajo, they may already have been experimenting with agriculture, even though they were still described as hunters in Espejo's day. Agriculture surely did not come to them without the ceremonialism that both donors and recipients would have regarded as essential. I think it very likely that the heavy religious and ceremonial influence on the Navajo (and to a lesser degree other Apaches) came before the Spanish missionaries put an end to the overt practice of Pueblo religion. This is probably especially true of the Navajo, for at least by the early seventeenth century, these people were becoming sedentary and agricultural as well as the inheritors of much Pueblo ceremonialism and social organization. Agriculture, loom use, animal husbandry (turkey), matrilineal clans, color-direction symbolism, sand paintings, masked dances, and much other religious and ceremonial behavior are probably of Pueblo origin. My own belief is that much of the Pueblo flavor of Navajo life appeared before Oñate's time, and probably before Coronado's time. The Navajo continued to borrow Pueblo cultural items during the seventeenth century, especially through contacts with Jemez but likely with other Pueblos as well.
In other words, by 1598 the Navajo were already well on their way to being acculturated. Had the Spaniards not come to the Southwest, the Apaches de Navajo would havewithin a century or sobecome the first Athapascan Pueblos. The Spanish introduction of sheep and the adaption of sheep herding in the seventeenth and eighteenth century led the Navajo onto another path. It was one they continued to follow throughout later historic times.
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Chapter Six
The First Decade in Spanish New Mexico
The main Oñate party arrived on August 18, 1598, to find that the governor, using fifteen hundred Indians as laborers, had already begun construction of an irrigation ditch for the new colony. The settlers immediately started to move into part of the house blocks of the Tewa pueblo of Okeh (or Oké) and began to construct a church, San Juan Bautista, which was consecrated on September 8. Okeh was part of the pueblo complex now known collectively as San Juan. It was sited on the east side of the Rio Grande, while its other half, Yungue, was west of the river. A few months later the Spaniards began calling their settlement San Gabriel del Yungue, though it is unclear whether at this time they actually physically shifted the settlement across the river. According to modern information from the San Juan people, Okeh was the home of the winter moiety, while Yungue housed the summer division.
In early August Oñate had visited the Towa pueblos of the Jemez River drainage and found one of the village leaders in possession of a silver paten (a shallow plate used to hold the consecrated wafer during Mass). A small hole had been drilled in the middle, and the Jemez native was wearing the paten around his neck. Believing it to have originally belonged to one of the martyred missionaries from Chamuscado's time, Oñate traded for it with the idea of making it a sacred relic at the altar of the new church.
Just days after the arrival of the main party, a rebellion broke out involving some forty-five men who were plotting to return to New Spain. It is difficult to explain why, at the end of a long but generally successful trip to the Southwest, there was this sudden revolt involving a third of the fighting power of the colony. We do not have the rebels' version of events, but Oñate claimed that they expected to find silver strewn around and that they also resented the fact that he
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San Gabriel del Yungue (courtesy of the Museum of New Mexico, neg. no. 25)
did not allow them to abuse the Indians. Perhaps, in Oñate's absence, there had been growing discontent among the people in the wagon train. It is possible that certain members of Oñate's party thought in terms of a slaving operation, something still going on along the northern frontier in spite of the colonization laws of 1573. It also may be that enemies of Oñate who had contested his colonization plans were still operating. At any rate, Captain Pablo de Aguilar, who had already clashed with Oñate (see chapter 4) was one of the three ringleaders. The governor sentenced the three to death but was persuaded by the Franciscans and the army to pardon everybody. On August 21 Oñate staged what he called a "day of merciful punishment . . . the occasion of the famous sermon of tears, and of universal peace." Not to be reconciled were four men who on the twelfth of September deserted and fled southward. Oñate promptly sent two of his captains, Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá and Gerónimo Márquez, with three soldiers to apprehend the fugitives. They were eventually overtaken far to the south in Nueva Vizcaya, and two of them killed on the spot, the other two being allowed to escape. This action had little effect on the colony but figured into later investigations of Oñate's governorship.
On September 8 the new church of San Juan Bautista was dedicated and its altar consecrated by Fray Alonso Martínez, the Franciscan commissary. A sermon was preached by Fray Cristóbal de Salazar, one of the missionaries and cousin to Oñate. The church, finished as quickly as it was, must have been of rather flimsy construction, probably some sort of jacal structure plastered over.
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Today its location is unknown. The following day, Indians from various pueblos were assembled in "the main kiva" at San Juan Bautista and an Act of Obedience and Vassalage was read to them and accepted by them. Two months earlier (July 7), the Keresan Pueblos had agreed to a similar act at Santo Domingo.
Missionaries were now assigned by Oñate and the father commissary to various pueblos. Francisco de San Miguel was given Pecos, the Salinas region, the Apache region east of the Sierra Nevada (the Sangre de Cristo Mountains), and the Jumano settlements. Francisco de Zamora had as his assignment Picurís, Taos, and the Apaches west of the Sierra Nevada. Juan de Rozas received the Keres pueblos, and Alonso de Lugo, the Jemez group, Zia, and the Apaches of the surrounding area. Andrés de Corchado received Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi. Father Juan Claros was given Tiguex and the Piro pueblos. Cristóbal de Salazar was assigned the Tewa pueblos and was also to be the resident priest for the new Spanish city. The father commissary, Alonso Martínez himself, was not given a specific assignment and presumably intended to remain at the mission headquarters in Santo Domingo.
According to the obedience document, "All of the eight blessed Franciscan fathers volunteered joyfully to go to the nation and tribe assigned to them, not valuing their own lives when it was for the service of God and the king." With such large and diverse areas assigned, it is obvious that from the beginning additional missionaries were expected. When the serious work of missionization began in the post-Oñate years, a considerable number of missionaries were added.
The viceroy had given Oñate instructions to locate the survivors of the Gutiérrez de Humaña and Leyva de Bonilla expedition. According to the account of Humaña's Mexican Indian servant Jusepe, who had escaped and who was now with Oñate (see chapter 3), Humaña had murdered Leyva de Bonilla. To investigate this illegal expedition and to replenish his dwindling food supplies with a buffalo hunt, Oñate sent his nephew, Vicente Zaldívar, with a party of sixty men to the bison area of the southern Plains. Zaldívar left the headquarters on September 15; meanwhile, back in Spain, all unknown to the colonists, a momentous event had taken place. On September 13, the long reign of Philip II ended, and his son became king as Philip III. This had no immediate effect on the colony, though it may have been a factor in Oñate's later legal troubles, the new king being, perhaps, somewhat less sympathetic to the governor than his father had been. However, it
was
Philip III who confirmed Oñate's appointment as adelantado in 1602.
The Zaldívar party went by way of Pecos Pueblo, where Fray Francisco de San Miguel and the Towa-speaking lay brother Juan de Dios were left to begin the work of missionization. Zaldívar and his men then contacted the Apaches,

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