Juan de Oñate, 1596 
361 
You** lordship should also take notice that however little success may 
be had in keeping the people together, it will have to be for a long time if 
one is to wait until the Count of Bailén, who is petitioning the conduct of 
the expedition, arrives from Spain. For even though it should be for no 
longer time than that which he needs to travel from Vera Cruz to this city 
[Mexico] and from it, after being commissioned by your lordship, to 
Santa Bárbara, it must necessarily occupy the whole winter, and the expe¬ 
dition could not be commenced until the spring of next year. From this, 
very great difficulties would follow, chiefly those arising, as a result of 
the delay of the expedition, to the souls who might be converted and saved 
if it were quickly done, and those difficulties which might result from not 
repairing in time the injuries committed by Captain Leyva 36 and his men 
in their entrance into that country, all of which are worthy of much con¬ 
sideration. Likewise they will result in daily injury to me and the 
expedition itself, for, since the number of people who are assembled and 
are each day assembling is large, and since they have all been eating at my 
expense for the more than two months that they have taken to arrive at 
the place where I was, it has been necessary to use up and consume not 
only the provisions of bread and meat which there are in this country and 
district—all of which cost me much more than the rightful price—but also 
those which I have prepared for the journey, so that if it be commenced 
at the time that I say, in the spring, all of the said provisions will have 
been consumed, and it will be necessary, without any possibility of avoid¬ 
ing it, to wait, for lack of them, until the crops of next year are harvested. 
All of this redounds to the disservice of God and his Majesty, to the injury 
and delay of the expedition itself and of the results which are hoped from 
it, and to my own great prejudice and hurt—which it is right should be 
earnestly considered, likewise [it should be considered] whether his 
Majesty and your lordship can, with the approval of your consciences, 
allow these injuries and difficulties. Although your lordship tells me in 
your letter that I should limit myself and hold my hand in the expenses 
of freights and new purchases it does not seem to me possible to do that, 
even though I should wish to do so, under penalty of using up all the 
cattle and provisions which I have, prepared and ready for the journey, 
or that all the people shall abandon me, because provisions are lacking to 
them, they having none except what I give them. As Don Lope and those 
with him can testify, all the companies which have come to my camp 
have arrived without a grain of maize, or any powder, or flour, for it 
seems they calculated what they would need thus far too scantily, and, 
although it is true that by my contract and agreement I am not under 
obligation to support them except from Santa Bárbara on, it would not 
serve God, nor our lord, the king, if I should carry this out with such 
exactness that through failure to succor them in their necessity they should 
return and the expedition be broken up. On the contrary, I believe that 
by having aided and sustained them thus far and until his Majesty orders 
otherwise I am doing him no small service and am carrying out my own 
obligations. It remains to his Majesty to reward it, for the zeal with 
which I am supporting it is such that, remembering the needy state in 
which the companies now gathered in this camp arrived, and foreseeing 
