Oñate, Juan de (c. 1550–c. 1630)

Juan de Oñate was the founder and first governor of New Mexico (1598–1609). Born in New Spain, he was the son of the Basque Cristóbal de Oñate, the developer of the Zacatecas silver mines. Oñate negotiated a contract with Viceroy Luis de Velasco in 1595 for the pacification of New Mexico, receiving the privileges of adelantado in return for the heavy investment of his family consortium. He led his colonizing caravan of several hundred people, among them ten Franciscan missionaries, north across the Chihuahua desert, striking the Rio Grande downriver from present-day El Paso, where he took formal possession of the colony on 30 April 1598. Some 350 miles up river, he established a settlement near San Juan Pueblo. When the Indians of Acoma killed his nephew in an open challenge to the Spaniards, Oñate dispatched seventy armed men to punish them, which, even though outnumbered, they succeeded in doing. Hoping to discover an exploitable resource to help support his colony, he ventured far out into the Great Plains and to the Gulf of California; he failed in his mission.

In 1607, with the colony in poor condition and financial distress, Oñate resigned his office but remained to complete the establishment of the town of Santa Fe. The year before, accusations against Oñate of cruelty to both Indians and colonists had reached King Philip III; the king appointed a new governor and, in 1608, ordered Oñate to Mexico City. In 1613 Oñate was fined and banished from New Mexico for life, and from Mexico City for four years. Over subsequent years he attempted to clear his name and was at least partly successful. He eventually traveled to Spain, where, on a tour as royal inspector of mines, he died.

See alsoAdelantado; Franciscans; New Mexico; Philip III of Spain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gaspar Pérez De Villagrá, History of New Mexico by Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, Alcalá, 1610, translated by Gilberto Espinosa (1933).

George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, eds., Don Juan de Oñate, Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595–1628, 2 vols. (1953).

Marc Simmons, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Crespo-Francés y Valero, José Antonio. El legado de Juan de Oñate: Los últimos días de adelantado. Seville, Spain: Arboleda Ediciones, 2003.

Millares Carlo, Agustín. "Repertorio bibliográfico de los archivos mexicano y de los europeos y norteamericanos de interés para la historia de México." Instituto Bibliográfico Mexicano 24 (1959): 367.

                                          John L. Kessell