Two lives for Oñate

465 Pages·1997·1.17 MB·English

by  Miguel Encinias

title: Two Lives for Oñate Pasâo Por Aquâi
author: Encinias, Miguel.
publisher: University of New Mexico
isbn10 | asin: 0826317820
print isbn13: 9780826317827
ebook isbn13: 9780585207544
language: English
Oñate, Juan de,--1549?-1624--Fiction,
subject
New Mexico--History--To 1848--Fiction.
publication date: 1997
lcc: PS3555.N37T96 1997eb
ddc: 813/.54
Oñate, Juan de,--1549?-1624--Fiction,
subject:
New Mexico--History--To 1848--Fiction.
Page iii
Two Lives For Oñate
Miguel Encinias
PASÓ POR AQUÍ SERIES ON THE
NUEVOMEXICANO LITERARY HERITAGE
EDITED BY GENARO M. PADILLA AND
ERLINDA GONZALES-BERRY
University of New Mexico Press
Albuquerque
Page iv
To Cristina, a lovely and brave child, and to my family who wondered what
I was doing writing and reading day and night without any apparent results.
Here is part of the answer.
© 1997 by University of New Mexico Press.
All rights reserved.
FIRST EDITION.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encinias, Miguel.
Two lives for Oñate / Miguel Encinias. 1st ed.
p. cm.(Pasó por aquí)
ISBN 0-8263-1777-4.ISBN 0-8263-1782-0 (pbk.)
1. Oñate, Juan de, 1549?1624Fiction.
2. New MexicoHistoryTo 1848Fiction.
I. Title,
II. Series.
PS3555.N37T96 1997
812'.54dc20 96-35687
CIP
Page v
Note from the Series Editors
It is no accident that the publication of Two Lives for Oñate coincides
with the cuatrocentennial of Juan de Oñate's arrival and the
establishment of the first permanent Spanish colony in the region.
Miguel Encinias self-consciously timed the writing of this text so that
it would be ready for release in 1998. His express intent was to
educate the people of New Mexico regarding a particular moment in
the development of their history. And being the good educator that he
is, he has chosen to transmit his lesson through a medium that is at
once instructional and engaging. To this end, Encinias has wed
meticulous research, intelligent prose and skillful character
development.
As is to be expected, Encinias treats his protagonist with a good deal
of sympathy, yet, he does not gloss over the atrocities attributed to
Oñate's command. He, in fact, succeeds in depicting a complex man,
tormented by his own desires, self-interest, obligations, and social
codes. In the end the reader cannot help but feel empathy for Oñate,
but neither can s/he forget his less noble deeds. And herein lies the
value of this book. A catalyst for celebratory remembrance, it is also
an invitation to the reader to reflect on the cost of Oñate's venture in
terms of human lives, freedom, and repression of native peoples. And
for those of us who are here because Oñate and his people came here,
this text will give us a greater appreciation of what it took to survive
in the land they came to "conquer," a land that conquered their hearts
and never let them go.
The primary function of the Pasó por Aquí Series is one of recovery
and dissemination of Hispanic literature that has been forgotten or
ignored by literary historians who, until recent years, exercised
narrow criteria in their definition of "American" literature. While Two
Lives for Oñate, because it is a new work, does not conform to our
recovery mission, it does meet our general goal of offering profound
recognition of the
Page vi
Hispanic contribution to arts and letters in the region. As such, we are
very pleased to include Miguel Encinias' historical novel in our series.
GENARO M. PADILLA, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-
BERKLEY
ERLINDA GONZALES-BERRY, UNIVERSITY OF NEW
MEXICO
PASÓ POR AQUI SERIES, GENERAL EDITORS
Page viii
Page 1
Chapter One
The church bells had started tollingintermittently, as if reluctant to
spoil the cool, resplendent morning. The birds appeared to be
competing with the lugubrious tones for the mood of the day.
Don Juan de Oñate sat in the inner balcony of his palatial home and
looked eastward at Bufa Peak, his feelings oscillating between
enervating sadness and physical well-being as the cool air filled his
lungs and the distant hubbub of daily life intruded into his
consciousness. Drawn by the tolling bells, yet hardly conscious of
what he was doing, he rose from his chairfor the time had come. The
church, Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, where his wife's body lay,
was nearby, but to don Juan it suddenly seemed as far away as it had
appeared to him when he was a child. Time had also taken a new
dimension since his wife had fallen ill. Scenes of his courtship and
marriage to Isabel flashed into his mind, but they seemed remote, as if
from another era.
Their wedding had been a momentous event in Zacatecas and even
throughout New Spain. Scion of a family that had amassed one of the
greatest fortunes in the New World, son of Cristóbal de Oñate who
had campaigned with the great Cortés, and who had been a hero in the
Mixtón War, one of the founders of Guadalajara, and discoverer of
fabulously rich silver mines, Juan de Oñate had taken for wife Isabel
de Tolosa Cortés y Moctezuma. She was equally rich and as
aristocratic as one could be, for she was the great granddaughter of the
magnificent, but ill-fated, emperor of the Aztecs, Moctezuma II, and
the granddaughter of the great Cortés, his conqueror.
After Moctezuma's death, his only legitimate daughter, Tecuichpotzin,
who survived la noche triste when the Spaniards were expelled from
the palace grounds, and the diseases that broke out during the
subsequent siege of Tenochtitlán by the Spaniards, was married to her
uncle Cultlahuac, who succeeded his brother as emperor. When he
died, she was married to Cuauhtémoc, her first cousin and nephew to
Mocte-
Page 2
zuma. When Cuauhtémoc, the last of the Aztec emperors, was killed
by the Spaniards, she was taken by them and christened Isabel. In
1526 she was married to a Spanish captain who died three years later.
Cortés then moved her under his roof, and in 1529 she gave birth to a
daughter by him. She was named Leonor. Around 1550 a marriage
was arranged between Leonor and Juanes de Tolosa, discoverer of the
rich Bufa silver mine in Zacatecas, and one of the founders of the city.
Circa 1585 Isabel, their daughter was wed to Juan de Oñate.
Now, as he walked to see his wife for the last time, he looked down at
his five-year-old son, who was holding his hand in a tight grip as if
afraid that he too would go away. His throat became constricted, and
his eyes welled at the sight of the bewildered boy. His glance turned to
his infant daughter, María, who was being carried by a servant
accompanied by Vicente de Zaldívar, don Juan's athletic, twenty-four-
year-old nephew. In the background he heard the birds and in the
periphery of his sight he caught the magnificence of the day. He felt a
surge of unbidden joy at the grand morning around him and at the
freshness and beauty of his children.
Despite himself, his thoughts turned away from death and toward life.
He thought of the campaigns against the unpacified Indians of the
north with don Luis de Velasco, son of one of the greatest viceroys
ever to rule New Spain. He thought mainly of the freedom he had felt
at leaving the monotonous life of Zacatecas for the open country
where the Chichimecas lived, of sleeping under the stars, and of the
excitement that each succeeding day promised.
As his wife had lain in her sickbed he had often longed for that kind
of freedom. He had been torn between love and compassion born of a
life together and the desperate need to escape the stifling world of
affluence and privilege into which he felt himself being drawn more
and more.