The appearance of Sir Francis Drake, who landed on the California coast in 1579, galvanized the Crown into settling New Mexico to prevent England from encroaching on it. The Spanish thought Drake had found a passage through North America, connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific and that New Mexico would be close enough to this passage to control it.11
The Crown appointed Juan de Onate to carry out its preemptive colonization of New Mexico. Onate had inherited wealth from his father, Cristobal de Onate, who had discovered the fabled silver lodes of Zacatecas, and this made him ideal for the task. He hoped to find mineral wealth on a par with Zacatecas. The Franciscans promoted the expedition, since they sought to convert the sedentary Indians living in New Mexico.12
In exchange for his financing the expedition, the Crown promised Onate the governorship of New Mexico, tax exemptions, and encomiendas that would last for three generations. Notions of geography were so vague that Onate’s instructions directed him to survey New Mexico’s coastline and harbors. Many Spaniards still clung to the notion that somewhere not far to the north there lay a water route connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific.13
Onate’s colonizing expedition left Chihuahua in 1598, with some 500 people, including eight Franciscan priests, two Franciscan lay brothers, and 129 soldiers, as well as wives, children, personal servants, herders, and drivers of various ethnic backgrounds. The expedition consisted of eighty-three supply wagons and a thousand head of stock—sheep, cattle, oxen, horses, and mules— some for work and some for nourishment.14
Once Onate had established a colony, it became apparent there was disappointingly little wealth the Spanish could appropriate. However, the Spanish did not abandon New Mexico, since that would have removed the strategic barrier that prevented other European powers from making incursions directed at the rich mines of northern Mexico. Nor did the Spanish want to abandon Indians that they had Christianized to reprisals by heathens.15
World History
