Tribes Tell Oñate Outlandish Tales of Neighbors

By Miguel Encinias
For the Journal
After finding a land route from New Mexico to the Gulf of California, Gov. Juan de Oñate and his group began the long trip back to his capital city, San Gabriel.
The party stopped at a place upriver from the gulf called Vacecha, where the garrulous and friendly chief volunteered information about the surrounding area and its inhabitants.
The chief and his people were either very naive or had a great time pulling the Spaniards' legs, judging from the stories they told.
The chief recounted, and the people around him confirmed, that there was a nation of people further north and west with ears so long that they dragged the ground.
Further on, he reported, lived men with "virile members so long that they wound them around the waist four times."
Still another group, which lived on the shore of a lake, slept under water at night.
As if that were not enough, the Spaniard's hosts told of a people who slept in trees and others who sustained themselves solely on the odor of the food they cooked.
Fray Francisco de Escobar reported that he didn't really buy their stories but believed he had to report them anyway because he had no way to verify or disprove them. Since the few horses they had were so thin and worn out, the group could not make the trip into an apparently barren land.
Besides, he said, "even though those things may be so strange in themselves, whoever reflects on the marvels which God continuously performs in this world will not find it hard to believe them."
On the way back to New Mexico, the expedition retraced the route it had taken on the way out.
Once again the travelers passed through the land of the Cruzados, the Hopis and Zunis. Upon being asked, the people of those tribes said they also had heard stories of strange people up north.
On April 25, 1605, the weary party reached San Gabriel. They had been away six months, but the restless Oñate decided he would take the report of the expedition to the viceroy himself.
By Aug. 7, Oñate, accompanied by Escobar and a small escort, were in the northern outpost of San Bartolome. From there the governor wrote a letter to the viceroy, Marquis de Montesclaros, asking his permission to proceed to Mexico City.
By the time a reply came back, Oñate had changed his mind, fearful of a hostile reception. He asked the priest to deliver the report for him, and on Oct. 25, 1605, Escobar did so.
Unfortunately, the fantastic stories contained in the report served only to trivialize the trek to the "South Sea."
In a letter to King Phillip III, the viceroy characterized the expedition as "a fairy tale."
NEXT: Disappointment and resignation.

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