Another of the large landowners, Francisco Xavier, came with as an escort for the supply train that brought governor Bernardo López de Mendizábal north in 1658. He married Graciana Griego, granddaughter of Juan Griego, and rose as a military aide to the subsequent governors.
When he arrived, droughts were leading to famine among local peoples who were already turning to new gods, but the governor and the Franciscans spent their time feuding over who should receive tribute from the pueblos and how much laborers should be paid. Piñon nuts, food that fed people in bad times, were being shipped to México. Friars were more incensed by the governor not punishing the Chrsitian pueblos for kachina dances, than they were by heathen Apaches selling their children into slavery for food.
After López was arrested by the Inquisition, the governorship continued through men who were rarely allowed to finish their terms unmolested. Severe drought returned in 1666, which brought more raids by hungry Apache. Supply trains brought less food. The Piro and Salinas pueblos pillaged the conventos and their leaders were hung or sold into slavery.
Juan Bernal wrote his Franciscan superiors:
“For three years no crop has been harvested. Last year, 1668, a great many Indians perished of hunger, lying dead along the roads, in the ravines, and in their hovels...The same calamity still prevails, for, because there is no money, there is not a fanega of maize or wheat in the kingdom. As a result the Spaniards, men as well as women, have sustained themselves for two years on the cowhides they have in their houses to sit on. They roast them and eat them. And the greatest woe of all is that they no longer can find a bit of leather to eat, for their livestock is dying off.”
No relief was sent and Xavier became Secretary of Government and War, responsible for fighting the Apache. Volcanic activity and more sunspots led to warmer temperatures. Epidemics followed malnutrition. Pueblo Indians, whose religion is centered on ritual appeals to rain gods to ensure plentiful harvests, began to question the power of the Spanish god.
The year Juan Francisco Treviño arrived as governor, 1675, one Franciscan, Francisco de Ayeta, sent a message to México City warning the colony was doomed without relief. Another, Andrés Durán, claimed he’d been bewitched at San Ildefonso. Treviño sent Xavier and a cadre of men to arrest 47 religious leaders. He hung three. Others were sentenced to the lash and slavery.
While they were awaiting punishment, Xavier "gathered up many idols, powders, and other things which he took from the houses of the sorcerers and from the countryside." Armed men from the Tewa speaking pueblos forced Treviño to free their leaders.
Relief finally came in 1679 with the new governor, Antonio de Otermin. Heavy snows that winter promised more relief. But it was too late. Otermin needed Xavier as his military commander.
When the pueblos erupted on August 10, Picuris killed Francisco Blanco de la Vega and her son, mulattos belonging to Xavier.
By the fifth day, many of the houses in Santa Fé had been burned and water stopped from flowing through the acequia. Soldiers had been fighting warriors through the streets. Otermin wrote his superiors, that that evening “we directed our course toward the house of the maese de campo, Francisco Xavier, which was the place where (apparently) there were the most people and where they had been most active and boldest.”
Xavier managed to get to Guadalupe del Paso with his five children. The 54-year-old widower was allowed to return to México for health reasons. His son, Francisco Xavier, also returned south leaving his daughter, Josefa Xavier, with relatives. She returned with them as an orphan.
By the time Diego de Vargas entered Santa Fé in 1695, the Tano had heard Xavier was with him. They said "Give us Francisco Xavier, who is the reason we have risen, and we will remain in peace as before."
When Luis Pérez Granillo got to La Cañada, he saw his “houses are in ruins, though there is a small torreón standing. Although he lived on it alone, the site has ample lands for two families.”
Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Granillo, Luis. Report for 12 March 1695, included in Blood on the Boulders: The Journals of Don Diego De Vargas, New Mexico, 1694-97, volume 2, 1998, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.
Kessell, John L. Spain in the Southwest, a Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California, 2002, quotation from Bernal.
_____. Kiva, Cross and Crown, 1995, other quotations.
Otermin, Antonio de. Report, 13 September 1680, in C. W. Hackett, Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, vol. 3 , 1937.
Scurlock, Dan. From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin, 1998, on Apache selling their children.
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