Zaldivar Leads Bloody Attack Against Acoma

By Miguel Encinias
For the Journal
On Jan. 12, 1599, Vicente de Zaldivar set out for Acoma with 70 soldiers.
Zaldivar was Gov. Juan de Oñate's nephew and brother to Juan de Zaldivar, who was slain along with his men on Dec. 4, 1598, while trying to trade goods for supplies at the pueblo.
Vicente de Zaldivar's small army arrived at 4 p.m. Jan. 21, a cold winter day.
Accounts of what happened next were given in a report signed by soldier/poet Gaspar de Villagra and four other officers who participated.
After surveying the layout of the mesa-top pueblo and its surroundings -- and attracting the attention of the villagers -- Zaldivar called out to them through an interpreter named Tomás that he had come to make peace and to find out why they had killed the Maese de Campo Juan de Zaldivar and 12 others. But the Acomans confidently and openly defied the Spaniards, answering with shouts and insults.
The next morning the Spaniards retired to a camp a safer distance from the pueblo.
Sometime that morning the commander gave orders for some horses to be led to water at some nearby pools by a rock. Some natives came out of a gully and shot arrows that killed two of the horses and wounded others.
The Spaniards countered, driving off the attackers. With this action, Zaldivar decided that the battle was on.
In a hasty council, a plan was devised to feign a frontal attack at the main approach at the west side of the mesa on which the pueblo stood. This assault was intended to draw the pueblo defenders to that side while Zaldivar and 12 men climbed up a crag to an unoccupied rock on the other side.
The plan worked, as Villagra states in his epic poem. Zaldivar and his squad found a sheltered spot on the crag in which to hide.
Meanwhile, Zaldivar sent orders for all the tents to be struck to heighten the impression that all of the soldiers were participating in the frontal attack.
By midafternoon the men in the crag came out of hiding, reached the summit and prepared to attack. The Acomans, discovering the ruse, rushed in large numbers to counterattack, but the soldiers already were in position.
Fierce fighting ensued as Spanish reinforcements clambered up the crag to join the original 13 soldiers.
At nightfall, when fighting was suspended, Zaldivar descended from the cliff to ponder the situation, particularly the fact that there were two large fissures in the rock that prevented the Spaniards from advancing.
He ordered two large beams placed over the fissures.
That night all but one of the soldiers made their confessions and at daybreak received Holy Communion.
Villagra, in his epic poem, described the bravery of an Acoman he called Gicombo who, though seriously wounded and despite his wife's entreaties, assumed leadership of the pueblo's fighters. Villagra, of course, had no way of knowing what was going on in the Acoma camp.
At daylight the battle resumed. Some of the Spaniards crossed over the fissures on the beams. In their excitement the soldiers took one of the beams with them, leaving the others stranded. Villagra says he volunteered to leap across the gap and put a beam in place, enabling the rest to cross over.
In the heat of the battle, Asencio de Arechuleta, while aiming at an advancing Acoman, accidently shot his friend Lorenzo Salado, who was ahead of him. Salado was the soldier who had declined to make a confession the night before. He was taken down from the mesa and was said to have made a confession shortly before he died.
Zaldivar, seeing the great number of pueblo defenders who had joined the battle, ordered two culverins (small cannon) brought up to his position on the mesa. They were loaded with two hundred nails each and fired.
Villagra would write later: "It was like watching a flock of magpies suddenly stop their chirping and croaking -- some escaping, some with broken legs, some dead, and others sweeping the ground with their wings."
At this point, Zaldivar called out for the defenders to surrender.
The fighting did stop, and negotiations began.
NEXT: Aftermath.

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