Don Juan de Onyate y Salazar ( Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar ; 1550 , Zacatecas (now Mexico ) - 1626 , Guadalcanal , Spain ) - Spanish conquistador, governor of the provinces of New Mexico and New Spain . He founded numerous cities in the southwest of the current USA .
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Born in the city of Zacatecas . He began his career fighting against the North American Indians in the territory of the colony of New Spain [1] . Married to Isabel de Tolosa Cortes de Moktesum [1] .
In 1595 he received an order from the King of Spain, Philip II, to colonize the northern coast of the Rio Grande River , which was previously explored by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado in 1540. The purpose of the expedition was to spread the Catholic faith and to establish new missions for the conversion of the Indians [2] .
He founded the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico City or just New Mexico (now the state of New Mexico as part of the United States ), becoming its first governor. Onyate sent Vicente de Saldivar to fight the Akoma Indians; he killed 500 people, and either put the survivors into slavery, or, if they were over 21 years old, ordered them to chop off their feet [3] . As a result of the expedition against the Indians of the Tampiro tribe, 800 Indians were killed, and their settlements were wiped off the face of the earth [4] . Onyate gained a reputation as a bloodthirsty ruler, in connection with which numerous Indians fled from their settlements to the mountains, where they often died from cold and hunger. An autograph of Onyate is discovered on the rock of El Morro .
In 1606, Onyate was called to Mexico City for a court hearing related to his actions. The court found him guilty of cruelty towards both Indians and colonists. However, after the appeal, all charges were dropped from him. After a while, he left for Spain, where the king appointed him to the post of chief inspector of mining throughout Spain.
He died in Spain in 1626. Sometimes it is called "The Last Conquistador " [5] .
Literature
- Angie Debo, Histoire des Indiens des États-Unis , Paris, Albin Michel , 1994.
- George Peter Hammond, Don Juan de Oñate and the founding of New Mexico , Santa Fe, NM, El Palacio Press 1927.
- Robert McGeagh, Juan de Oñate's colony in the wilderness: an early history of the American Southwest , Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press, 1990.
- Marc Simmons, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1991
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 McGeagh, p. 27
- ↑ McGeagh, p. 28
- ↑ Debo, p. 55
- ↑ Debo, p. 56
- ↑ Simmons, Marc. The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1991