Expedition Searches for Silver, Souls

The Journal is publishing a biweekly series of history articles to commemorate the settlement of New Mexico by Juan de Oñate in 1598. This one covers the Rodriguez-Chamuscado Expedition of 1581.

By Miguel Encinias
For the Journal
Communication in 16th-century New Spain was sparse and inconsistent, consequently events considered important at one time were forgotten only decades later.
Such was the case with the 1540 Coronado expedition. Since it produced nothing to follow up on, not even the useful knowledge of its failure remained outside of the archives. Would-be explorers still regarded "La Tierra Nueva" as a kind of wonderland.
Francisco de Ibarra was governor of Nueva Vizcaya in the late 1500s, a territory that extended to the Rio Grande but practically only to the area of the mining outposts just south of modern Chihuahua.
Ibarra named the region north of the river "La Nueva Mexico," still thinking of it as a new Aztec empire.
Restless fortune seekers -- accompanied by the ubiquitous friars seeking their kind of fortune: human souls -- flocked to the northern outposts where silver had been discovered in abundance.
The most popular sites were in the region of Santa Barbara near modern Parral. When a convent was built at San Bartolome (now Allende), Fray Agustin Rodriguez was assigned to it.
There was perhaps too much interest in mining and not enough in evangelization to suit the friar. At any rate he started thinking of the neglected souls in La Nueva Mexico.
In the late 1570s he obtained a commission from Viceroy Suarez de Mendoza for an evangelical mission to the northern lands. Father Rodriguez recruited Capt. Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado as leader of a military escort.
The small party of three friars, nine soldiers and 19 Indian servants set out north from Santa Barbara on June 5, 1581, intercepting the Conchos River and eventually the Rio del Norte (Rio Grande).
They apparently didn't know of the Coronado route and had only a vague notion of what to expect.
On Aug. 21 they encountered their first pueblo south of modern Socorro and gave it the name of San Felipe. The next recorded pueblo, in the Tiguex area near Albuquerque, was given the name Caceres.
These were villages which figured mightily in the Coronado expedition, but which had apparently forgotten that bitter experience.
For an unknown reason, probably in pique, at this time one of the friars, Juan de Santa Maria, left the expedition unescorted to return to New Spain. The others pressed on as far as the buffalo plains.
On Jan. 31, 1582, the tiny group left Puaray, a pueblo in the Bernalillo area, to return home.
But the group would leave without Friars Agustin and Francisco who, over the soldiers' protests, chose to remain to fulfill their mission of evangelization.
Those returning to New Spain learned that Fray Juan de Santa Maria was killed three days after leaving his companions. A similar fate befell the other two priests, but that was not learned until the subsequent expedition.
NEXT: The Espejo expedition.

Miguel Encinias is an Albuquerque historian. His novel, "Two Lives for Oñate," was recently published by the University of New Mexico Press.