ATROCIOUS MASSACRE. . 131 



men fled to the enemy, leaving liim and about 

 twenty-five trusty friends to make their es- 

 cape in the best way they could. Knowing 

 that they would not be safe in Santa Fe, the 

 refugees pursued their flight southward, but 

 were soon overtaken by the exasperated Pue- 

 blos ; when the Governor was chased back to 

 the suburbs of the city, and savagely put to 

 death. His body was then stripped and 

 shockingly mangled : his head w^as carried as 

 a trophy to the camp of the insurgents, who 

 made a foot-ball of it among themselves. I 

 had left the city the day before this sad catas- 

 trophe took place, and beheld tlie Indians 

 scouring the fields in pursuit of their victims, 

 though I was yet ignorant of their barbarous 

 designs. I saw them surround a house and 

 drag from it the secretary of state, Jesus Maria 

 Alarid, generally known by the sobriquet of 

 El Chico. He and some other principal cha- 

 racters who had also taken refuge among the 

 ranchos were soon afterwards stripped and 

 scourged, and finally pierced through and 

 through with lances, — a mode of assassination 

 stjied in the vernacular of the country, a Ian- 

 zadas. Don Santiago Abreu, formerly gov- 

 ernor, and decidedly the most famed charac- 

 ter of N. Mexico, was butchered in a still more 

 barbarous manner. They cut oS liis hands, 

 pulled out his eyes and tongue, and otherwise 

 mutilated his body, taunting him aU the wMe 

 with the crunes he was accused of, by shaking 

 the shorn members in his face. Thus per- 

 ished nearly a dozen of the most conspicuous 



