Juan de Oñate, 1596 
363 
how the others coming behind, who are still more than fifty or sixty men, 
not counting the religious, who come last, would arrive, it has been neces¬ 
sary for me to leave for them at Peñol Blanca on the ranch of Hernando 
de Ontiberos all the flour which they would need as far as Santa Bárbara ; 
there it is, bought and paid for, for this purpose only, and I am leaving 
notice at all the mountain passes through which they have to go in order 
to get there and find it. Although I have been judged and spoken of as 
a man without means, and it is true that I was so when I began this expe¬ 
dition, God, whose cause it is, knows the spirit and zeal with which I 
began it and have continued it and have maintained it and do maintain it 
with a free hand for this and for all; for this reason I deserve that his 
Majesty and your lordship shall, in justice to me, favor me and my cause 
more than any other. 
Not the least of the troubles among those of which I have spoken, nor 
the least injurious to the expedition, is the great difficulty that must occur 
in keeping the horses and mules, being, as they are to-day, more than 
twelve hundred altogether, not to speak of the more than three hundred 
which in the last thirty days have strayed away from the camp. As there 
are so many and the country is so extensive and so full of wild mares, 
the delay of the expedition must be the cause, for this same reason, of the 
loss of all or the most of them; the soldiers, being left on foot, will not go 
on the expedition. 
And if these causes of delay and the difficulties which arise from them 
threaten without doubt or hope of repair, such a great break-up of the 
people, ammunition, and provisions, and in the purpose of the expedition 
itself—to my great prejudice and injury and that of the share and right 
that I have in it—I do not believe that your lordship will permit it, or 
will hold it as a discourtesy if, on the day when the person who is to take 
the expedition from me, after I have begun it and have it in the state 
where it is to-day, arrives by the fleet, I shall cease to appeal from it with 
the proper respect, as I am doing from now until then in my reply, through 
having made it in time and before having lost any of my rights in the 
said expedition to appeal to his Majesty for the fulfillment of what, in his 
royal name and by virtue of his royal decrees and articles and letters, your 
lordship has granted and committed to me. It is true that, although the 
señor viceroy, Don Luis de Velasco, had made a contract with me, and 
had given me the same right by the same authority, and had ordered that 
I should get ready as rapidly as possible for the said expedition, and 
although I had formally accepted it, in spite of all this, knowing that your 
lordship had succeeded him in the governorship, I did not wish to put hand 
to anything until after your lordship had reached this country, in good 
time, and I had given you welcome and the proper respect, together with 
an account of the business that had been committed to me, and until you 
had approved my appointment and the contract which I had made, as you 
did by the letter which you wrote to me from Oculma, a copy of which 
will be with this. By this your lordship not only approved and confirmed 
what had been done by the señor Don Luis de Velasco, but you ordered 
me to gather my provisions and ammunition in the shortest time possible 
for the said expedition, promising in the same letter to examine the articles 
of the agreement and send them to me, after correcting anything in them 
