THE STORMING OF THE SKY-CITY.

At daybreak, on the morning of January 22, Zaldivar gave the signal for the attack; and the main body of the Spaniards began firing their few arquebuses, and making a desperate assault at the north end of the great rock, there absolutely impregnable. The Indians, crowded along the cliffs above, poured down a rain of missiles; and many of the Spaniards were wounded. Meanwhile twelve picked men, who had hidden during the night under the overhanging cliff which protected them alike from the fire and the observation of the Indians, were crawling stealthily around under the precipice, dragging the pedrero by ropes. Most of these twelve were arquebusiers; and besides the weight of the ridiculous little cannon, they had their ponderous flintlocks and their clumsy armor, poor helps for scaling heights which the unencumbered athlete finds difficult. Pursuing their toilsome way unobserved, pulling one another and then the pedrero up the ledges, they reached at last the top of a great outlying pinnacle of rock, separated from the main cliff of Acoma by a narrow but awful chasm. Late in the afternoon they had their howitzer trained upon the town; and the loud report, as its cobble-stone ball flew into Acoma, signalled the main body at the north end of the mesa that the first vantage-ground had been safely gained, and at the same time warned the savages of danger from a new quarter.

That night little squads of Spaniards climbed the great precipices which wall the trough-like valley on east and west, cut down small pines, and with infinite labor dragged the logs down the cliffs, across the valley, and up the butte on which the twelve were stationed. About a score of men were left to guard the horses at the north end of the mesa; and the rest of the force joined the twelve, hiding behind the crags of their rock-tower. Across the chasm the Indians were lying in crevices, or behind rocks, awaiting the attack.

At daybreak of the 23d, a squad of picked men at a given signal rushed from their hiding-places with a log on their shoulders, and by a lucky cast lodged its farther end on the opposite brink of the abyss. Out dashed the Spaniards at their heels, and began balancing across that dizzy “bridge” in the face of a volley of stones and arrows. A very few had crossed, when one in his excitement caught the rope and pulled the log across after him.

It was a fearful moment. There were less than a dozen Spaniards thus left standing alone on the brink of Acoma, cut off from their companions by a gulf hundreds of feet deep, and surrounded by swarming savages. The Indians, sallying from their refuge, fell instantly upon them on every hand. As long as the Spanish soldier could keep the Indians at a distance, even his clumsy firearms and inefficient armor gave an advantage; but at such close quarters these very things were a fatal impediment by their weight and clumsiness. Now it seemed as if the previous Acoma massacre were to be repeated, and the cut-off Spaniards to be hacked to pieces; but at this very crisis a deed of surpassing personal valor saved them and the cause of Spain in New Mexico. A slender, bright-faced young officer, a college boy who was a special friend and favorite of Onate, sprang from the crowd of dismayed Spaniards on the farther bank, who dared not fire into that indiscriminate jostle of friend and foe, and came running like a deer toward the chasm. As he reached its brink his lithe body gathered itself, sprang into the air like a bird, and cleared the gulf! Seizing the log, he thrust it back with desperate strength until his companions could grasp it from the farther brink; and over the restored bridge the Spanish soldiers poured to retrieve the day.

Then began one of the most fearful hand-to-hand struggles in all American history. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, lost in a howling mob of savages who fought with the frenzy of despair, gashed with raw-edged knives, dazed with crushing clubs, pierced with bristling arrows, spent and faint and bleeding, Zaldivar and his hero-handful fought their way inch by inch, step by step, clubbing their heavy guns, hewing with their short swords, parrying deadly blows, pulling the barbed arrows from their quivering flesh. On, on, on they pressed, shouting the gallant war-cry of Santiago, driving the stubborn foe before them by still more stubborn valor, until at last the Indians, fully convinced that these were no human foes, fled to the refuge of their fort-like houses, and there was room for the reeling Spaniards to draw breath. Then thrice again the summons to surrender was duly read before the strange tenements, each near a thousand feet long, and looking like a flight of gigantic steps carved from one rock. Zaldivar even now wished to spare unnecessary bloodshed, and demanded only that the assassins of his brother and countrymen should be given up for punishment. All others who should surrender and become subjects of “Our Lord the King” should be well treated. But the dogged Indians, like wounded wolves in their den, stuck in their barricaded houses, and refused all terms of peace.

The rock was captured, but the town remained. A pueblo is a fortress in itself; and now Zaldivar had to storm Acoma house by house, room by room. The little pedrero was dragged in front of the first row of houses, and soon began to deliver its slow fire. As the adobe walls crumbled under the steady battering of the stone cannon-balls, they only formed great barricades of clay, which even our modern artillery would not pierce; and each had to be carried separately at the point of the sword. Some of the fallen houses caught fire from their own fogones; and soon a stifling smoke hung over the town, from which issued the shrieks of women and babes and the defiant yells of the warriors. The humane Zaldivar made every effort to save the women and children, at great risk of self; but numbers perished beneath the falling walls of their own houses.

This fearful storming lasted until noon of January 24. Now and then bands of warriors made sorties, and tried to cut their way through the Spanish line. Many sprang in desperation over the cliff, and were dashed to pieces at its foot; and two Indians who made that incredible leap survived it as miraculously as had the four Spaniards in the earlier massacre, and made their escape.

At last, at noon of the third day, the old men came forth to sue for mercy, which was at once granted. The moment they surrendered, their rebellion was forgotten and their treachery forgiven. There was no need of further punishment. The ringleaders in the murder of Zaldivar’s brother were all dead, and so were nearly all the Navajo allies. It was the most bloody struggle New Mexico ever saw. In this three days’ fight the Indians lost five hundred slain and many wounded; and of the surviving Spaniards not one but bore to his grave many a ghastly scar as mementos of Acoma. The town was so nearly destroyed that it had all to be rebuilt; and the infinite labor with which the patient people had brought up that cliff on their backs all the stones and timber and clay to build a many-storied town for nearly a thousand souls was all to be repeated. Their crops, too, and all other supplies, stored in dark little rooms of the terraced houses, had been destroyed, and they were in sore want. Truly a bitter punishment had been sent them by “those above” for their treachery to Juan de Zaldivar.

When his men had sufficiently recovered from their wounds Vicente de Zaldivar, the leader of probably the most wonderful capture in history, marched victorious back to San Gabriel de los Espanoles, taking with him eighty young Acoma girls, whom he sent to be educated by the nuns in Old Mexico. What a shout must have gone up from the gray walls of the little colony when its anxious watchers saw at last the wan and unexpected tatters of its little army pricking slowly homeward across the snows on jaded steeds!

The rest of the Pueblos, who had been lying demure as cats, with claws sheathed, but every lithe muscle ready to spring, were fairly paralyzed with awe. They had looked to see the Spaniards defeated, if not crushed, at Acoma; and then a swift rising of all the tribes would have made short work of the remaining invaders. But now the impossible had happened! Ah’ko, the proud sky-city of the Queres; Ah’ko, the cliff-girt and impregnable, had fallen before the pale strangers! Its brave warriors had come to naught, its strong houses were a chaos of smoking ruins, its wealth was gone, its people nearly wiped from off the earth! What use to struggle against “such men of power,” these strange wizards who must be precious to “those above,” else they never could have such superhuman prowess? The strung sinews relaxed, and the great cat began to purr as though she had never dreamt of mousing. There was no more thought of a rebellion against the Spaniards; and the Indians even went out of their way to court the favor of these awesome strangers. They brought Onate the news of the fall of Acoma several days before Zaldivar and his heroes got back to the little colony, and even were mean enough to deliver to him two Queres refugees from that dread field who had sought shelter among them. Thenceforth Governor Onate had no more trouble with the Pueblos.

But Acoma itself seemed to take the lesson to heart less than any of them. Too crushed and broken to think of further war with its invincible foes, it still remained bitterly hostile to the Spaniards for full thirty years, until it was again conquered by a heroism as splendid as Zaldivar’s, though in a far different way.

In 1629 Fray Juan Ramirez, “the Apostle of Acoma,” left Santa Fe alone to found a mission in that lofty home of fierce barbarians. An escort of soldiers was offered him, but he declined it, and started unaccompanied and on foot, with no other weapon than his crucifix. Tramping his footsore and dangerous way, he came after many days to the foot of the great “island” of rock, and began the ascent. As soon as the savages saw a stranger of the hated people, they rallied to the brink of the cliff and poured down a great flight of arrows, some of which pierced his robes. Just then a little girl of Acoma, who was standing on the edge of the cliff, grew frightened at the wild actions of her people, and losing her balance tumbled over the precipice. By a strange providence she fell but a few yards, and landed on a sandy ledge near the Fray, but out of sight of her people, who presumed that she had fallen the whole height of the cliff. Fray Juan climbed to her, and carried her unhurt to the top of the rock; and seeing this apparent miracle, the savages were disarmed, and received him as a good wizard. The good man dwelt alone there in Acoma for more than twenty years, loved by the natives as a father, and teaching his swarthy converts so successfully that in time many knew their catechism, and could read and write in Spanish. Besides, under his direction they built a large church with enormous labor. When he died, in 1664, the Acomas from being the fiercest Indians had become the gentlest in New Mexico, and were among the furthest advanced in civilization. But a few years after his death came the uprising of all the Pueblos; and in the long and disastrous wars which followed the church was destroyed, and the fruits of the brave Fray’s work largely disappeared. In that rebellion Fray Lucas Maldonado, who was then the missionary to Acoma, was butchered by his flock on the 10th or 11th of August, 1680. In November, 1692, Acoma voluntarily surrendered to the reconqueror of New Mexico, Diego de Vargas. Within a few years, however, it rebelled again; and in August, 1696, Vargas marched against it, but was unable to storm the rock. But by degrees the Pueblos grew to lasting peace with the humane conquerors, and to merit the kindness which was steadily proffered them. The mission at Acoma was re-established about the year 1700; and there stands to-day a huge church which is one of the most interesting in the world, by reason of the infinite labor and patience which built it. The last attempt at a Pueblo uprising was in 1728; but Acoma was not implicated in it at all.

The strange stone stairway by which Fray Juan Ramirez climbed first to his dangerous parish in the teeth of a storm of arrows, is used by the people of Acoma to this day, and is still called by them el camino del padre (the path of the Father).