DECEMBER 3:

1991 Ottawa Ontario - Denis Desautels issues Annual Report; criticizes farm aid, Indian Affairs, investment of government pension funds; new Auditor-General of Canada.

1738 North Dakota - Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de La Vérendrye 1685-1749 travels south to Mandan country with sons Louis-Joseph and François; reaches main Mandan village on the Missouri River.

December 3, 1598:   Zaldivar "discovers" Acoma.
 
 
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~ablair2/acoma.html
 
 

The Acoma, Aacqu, or Aacqumeh hanoh
 

The Acoma are a tribe of the Keres. They are made up of clans, some connected to Hopi and Zia Pueblos. The name Acoma comes from "Ako", meaning white rock and "Ma", meaning people. Their origin belief is of two sisters, Ia'tik and Nao'tsiti, emerging into the world from underground.

The Acoma are widely known for the village of Acoma, called the Sky city. It is situated on a mesa, 357ft above ground. It can be accessed now by a staircase and vehicular road. Before the Europeans arrived it was accessed by a primitive staircase and hand and toe holes. It is one of the oldest continually inhabited communities in US (the other is the Hopi Pueblo of Oraibi in Arizona). It is at least 1,000 years old and the tribe believes it was inhabited before the time of Christ. Some elders claim that the name Acoma does not mean what is stated above, but rather a "place that always was."

The settlement was first seen by Europeans in 1540 during don Fransisco de Coronado's Expedition. As Simon Ortiz says in his poem "No More Sacrifices" the Europeans came looking for a rumored rich kingdom like those of the Aztecs or Incas.

Juan de Oñate was contracted in 1598 to "conquer and pacify New Mexico." One of his captains, Don Juan de Zaldivar, and some soldiers went to Acoma for cornmeal the Indians had offered. Juan and a small group went up to the top of the rock. They were attacked and Juan and 12 others were killed. Four out of five soldiers managed to survive a jump off the rock (150 feet) and met up with the remaining soldiers at camp. They raced back to tell the Spaniards.

Oñate sent Juan's brother Vincente to punish the Acoma. The Spanish destroyed the village, killing 600 and taking almost 600 captives. Seventy warriors were killed one-by-one and thrown off the rock. The remaining 500 marched to Santo Domingo for trial. They were found guilty. The punishment was as follows: Males 25+: one foot cut off and 20 years of servitude to Spanish; Males 12-25 and Females 12+: 20 years servitude; Children under 12: judged "free and innocent", which meant they were placed in care of priests who would "distribute them in the kingdom or elsewhere in monasteries or other places where ... they may attain the knowledge of God and the salvation of their souls."

In 1629, Fr. Juan Ramirez, became the Acoma's first permanent resident priest. Even today, he is held in great respect. There are two different stories regarding how he won that trust. One is that as he climbed up the Mesa for the first time, a woman dropped her infant, Fr. Ramirez caught the child and delivered it unharmed. The other is that some time after his arrival, he revived a dead child with holy water and prayer. He is remembered for rebuilding the destroyed village, building the new staircase, and building the church.

In 1680, Popé, a Taos Pueblo, organized a revolt of every Pueblo. The Acoma killed nearly 500, targeting anyone and anything Spanish. The Surviving Spaniards fled for Mexico.

Don Diego de Vargas persuaded the Acoma to agree to peace in 1682. There were a few more skirmishes before the Acoma formally accepted Spainish rule in 1699.

Mexico won its independence from the Spanish in 1821. Mexican Governor Mariano Martinez (~1844) was very inclusive of native cultures, even inviting them to dance at Mexico's independence day celebrations. One of the people under him once commented on these "scandalous pagan dances." Gov. Martinez is credited with saying, we must "respect the customs of the pueblos as they are observed, without making an issue of these dances which they frequently hold, achieving a better end through the example and good morality which they introduce into civilization and which is to be desired."

In 1848 the United States gained possession of New Mexico. As Ortiz notes in "No More Sacrifices", the US went about breaking treaties and criss-crossing the land with railroads.

The Acoma have elected civil officials since 1620. Their governor was given a cane by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and now this cane serves as the Badge of Office of the Acoma governor. The governor carries it in public during the Fiesta of San Estevan on September 2nd.

The Fiesta of San Estevan is the Acoma's biggest festival, others include: San Pedro, June. St James day and CornDances of Santa Ana's day, July. In the 1970's the local schools began teaching the Acoma-Keresan language. The area's first hospital opened in 1978. It serves the Acoma, Canoncito, and Laguna reservations. The hospital's native staff is in direct proportion to reservations served. The hospital even includes a ritual curing room (medicine-man room).

The Home employment of the Acoma includes traditional dry and irrigation farming, stock raising, and pottery. Tourism provides much money to the area. Along highway there are bread making and curio stores, pottery vendors all catering to the tourist. Pottery-making has increased dramatically from demand by tourists. Because of this the quality is falling. Locals fear that very little of the "old way" remains as people take shortcuts, such as not using the correct clay, color, or firing techniques.

For food, clothes, automobiles, the locals travel to nearby larger towns Grants and Albuquerque.

The sewage problem created by Grants is mentioned in Ortiz's "No More Sacrifices". Since that writing the Acoma have sued the city of Grants. Grants has stopped polluting and has paid compensatory damages. In 1991, according to Acoma, Pueblo in the Sky, Grants was in the process of building a new treatment plant.
 

***
 

Simon Ortiz, San Diego State University, April 1978

"Land is the source of physical and spiritual life. People reaffirm their relationship to the land by telling of this relationship, making the telling their document for owning, protecting, or fighting for it. Never a moment, never a day passes by without telling something about the land. And not only how to plant it, not only its spiritual and religious nature, but giving it a political nature too. That's what oral tradition does. It constantly reaffirms, it constantly gives substance to our development."
 
 

*****
 

>From http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/ZZ/fza7.html
 
 

Vicente de Zaldivar (c 1573-?).

Vicente de Zaldívar, the younger, Spanish explorer and soldier, was probably born in Zacatecas, a mining town on the frontier of northern Mexico, about 1573. He and Juan de Zaldívarqv were sons of Vicente de Zaldívar, the elder, and Magdalena de Mendoza y Salazar. Through a series of marriages, the Zaldívar and Oñate families of Zacatecas had become so intricately related that Juan de Oñate,qv the future colonizer of New Mexico, was both uncle and second cousin to the Zaldívar brothers, and he later became the father-in-law of Vicente. In September 1595 Juan de Oñate received a royal contract to colonize New Mexico, and he began immediately to recruit officers and men. He enlisted his young kinsmen in his command. Vicente de Zaldívar received the position of sargento mayor, a rank below that of his brother, Juan. Through no fault of Oñate's, final approval of his contract by the king's agent did not come until early 1598. The expedition's point of departure was the frontier town of Santa Bárbara, situated near the headwaters of the Río Conchos in southern Chihuahua. On previous occasions Spaniards en route to New Mexico had followed the Conchos to its confluence with the Rio Grande and then proceeded upstream along the course of the larger river to the province. This circuitous route had the advantage of ample water along the way. But Oñate, made impatient by delays, sought a shortcut and ordered a reconnaissance to that end by Vicente de Zaldívar. Zaldívar, at the head of a small party, spent nearly a month in the field, but he returned with knowledge of a more direct route, which afforded some water, through formidable sand dunes. Following the new trail blazed by Zaldívar, the full expedition reached "El Paso," the ford in the Rio Grande, on May 4, 1598. It then continued along the course of the river to New Mexico.

By the fall of 1598 Spanish settlers in New Mexico had become sorely disappointed by the lack of readily exploitable wealth. Zaldívar, with apparent talent for pathfinding, was dispatched to reconnoiter the buffalo plains of eastern New Mexico and western Texas. It seems unlikely, however, that he reached the present borders of Texas. Shortly after his return with ample supplies of buffalo jerky, Juan de Zaldívar was killed in an Indian revolt atop the great rock at Acoma. Oñate promoted Vicente to his deceased brother's position of maestre de campo and ordered him to subdue the Acomas. In January 1599 Vicente de Zaldívar crushed the Acoma revolt. He later participated in the trial and drastic punishment of surviving Acomas. After his command ended in New Mexico Zaldívar returned to Zacatecas, where before 1620 he married Juan de Oñate's daughter, María de Oñate. They had at least one son. In 1626 Zaldívar was admitted to the prestigious military order of Santiago. He prospered for some years in the silver mine business but then suffered financial losses in the 1630s. The circumstances of his death are not known, but he was deceased by 1650.
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Herbert Eugene Bolton, ed., Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706 (New York: Scribner, 1908; rpt., New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959). Donald E. Chipman, "The Oñate-Moctezuma-Zaldívar Families of Northern New Spain," New Mexico Historical Review 52 (October 1977). George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, eds., Don Juan de Oñate: Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595-1628 (Santa Fe: Patalacio, 1927; rpt., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1953). Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, Historia de la Nueva México, 1610; trans. Gilberto Espinosa as A History of New Mexico (Los Angeles: Quivira Society, 1933; rpt., Chicago: Rio Grande Press, 1962). Marc Simmons, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
 

Donald E. Chipman