t sure that this massacre of their comrades was but the
prelude to a general uprising of the twenty-five or thirty thousand
Pueblos; and regardless of the danger to themselves, they decided at
last to break up into little bands, and separate,--some to follow their
commander on his lonely march to Moqui, and warn him of his danger; and
others to hasten over the hundreds of arid miles to San Gabriel and the
defence of its women and babes, and to the missionaries who had
scattered among the savages. This plan of self-devotion was successfully
carried out. The little bands of three and four apiece bore the news to
their countrymen; and by the end of the year 1598 all the surviving
Spaniards in New Mexico were safely gathered in the hamlet of San
Gabriel. The little town was built pueblo-fashion, in the shape of a
hollow square. In the Plaza within were planted the rude
_pedreros_--small howitzers which fired a ball of stone--to command the
gates; and upon the roofs of the three-story adobe houses the brave
women watched by day, and the men with their heavy flintlocks all
through the winter nights, to guard against the expected attack. But the
Pueblos rested on their arms. They were waiting to see what Onate would
do with Acoma, before they took final measures against the strangers.

It was a most serious dilemma in which Onate now found himself. One need
not have known half so much about the Indian character as did this gray,
quiet Spaniard, to understand that he must signally punish the rebels
for the massacre of his men, or abandon his colony and New Mexico
altogether. If such an outrage went unpunished, the emboldened Pueblos
would destroy the last Spaniard. On the other hand, how could he hope to
conquer that impregnable fortress of rock? He had less than two hundred
men; and only a small part of these could be spared for the campaign,
lest the other Pueblos in their absence should rise and annihilate San
Gabriel and its people. In Acoma there were full three hundred warriors,
reinforced by at least a hundred Navajo braves.

But there was no alternative. The more he reflected and counselled with
his officers, the more apparent it became that the only salvation was to
capture the Queres Gibraltar; and the plan was decided upon. Onate
naturally desired to lead in person this forlornest of forlorn hopes;
but there was one who had even a better claim to the desperate honor
than the captain-general,--and that one was the for