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Our Catholic Heritage in Texas
that he escaped and went to one of the Pecos pueblos, where he was found by Onate to whom he related the incidents of the Bonilla-Humana expedition, identifying later many of the places visited, when he guided his new master across the plains in 1601 to Quivira. 57 Humana and his men seem to have been killed by the Indians beyond the large river, in a big plain, where they were surprised by a multitude of_hostile Indians while they slept. Just before dawn the savages set fire to the prairie grass and charged the small group of survivors so vigorously that only a Spaniard named Alonso Sanchez and a mulatto girl, who was seriously singed by the flames, escaped. Ofiate, who visited the very spot where the massacre occurred, to which he gave the name of La Matanza, heard that Sanchez had become a great chief among the Indians of the plains and was still living, as well as the mulatto girl, but he did not see either one of them. The significance of this unauthorized expedition for the history of Texas lies in the fact that Bonilla and Humana with their companions traveled over a large portion of Texas in the Panhandle, along the Cana- dian River and the great plains. The sole survivor of this expedition, the Indian Jusephe, was destined to lead Ofiate over the same route to Quivira, which in all probability was in the Panhandle, near the Texas- Oklahoma boundary, as will be shown in the remainder of this chapter. Oiiate's explorations in West Texas. While Humafia wandered over the great plains, the contest for the appointment as conqueror of the new lands grew in intensity. Finally in 1595, Juan de Ofiate was awarded a contract for the conquest and settlement of New Mexico. The new governor and adelantado came from an illustrious family, who had ren- dered signal service to the King in Mexico since the time of Cortes. But three years were to elapse before Onate at last set out to settle in the region of the pueblos of New Mexico. On February 7, 1598, after seemingly endless delays, many embarrassments, and incredible diffi- culties, the expedition set out for San Geronimo on the Conchos River. Four hundred men, of whom one hundred and thirty had their families, took up the march. In the baggage train there were eighty-three wagons and carts besides a herd of more than seven thousand head of stock. The long caravan did not follow the tortuous course of the Conchos River as previous expeditions, but cut across directly to El Paso. Three S7"Relaci6n que dio un indio de la salida que hicieron Umana y Leyba del Nuevo Mexico." MS. cited by Bolton, o;. cu., 201, note. A transcript of the original is in the Lowery Collection at the Library of Congress.
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