Conquistadors' Capital

Beneath the cornfields of an Indian pueblo, diligent diggers last week worked to uncover a half-forgotten chapter of U.S. history. Led by Professor Florence Ellis of the University of New Mexico, 60 student archaeologists are bringing to light the long lost site of San Gabriel de Yunque, first capital of New Mexico. It was founded in 1598--ten years before the first permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown, Va., and 22 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

When the students first started to dig three years ago, they almost gave up when they came upon their first find: a couple of beer bottles and a decayed horse collar. Had they merely stumbled on the dismal debris of some 20th century squatters? Nothing daunted, Dr. Ellis persuaded everybody to dig further.

Bugs & Mice. In 1595 the Viceroy of New Spain (Mexico) granted a wealthy mining man named Don Juan de Onate the right to found, at his own expense, a colony on the upper Rio Grande in what is now New Mexico. Onate set out for his new domain leading an army of 400 Spanish settlers and soldiers, 83 wagons and carts, 7,000 head of livestock, eight priests and a poet named Villagra, who wrote a flowery epic about the expedition. Leaving the wagon train near the site of modern El Paso, Don Juan and a party of adventurers pressed up the Rio Grande. In July 1598 they reached two Indian pueblos, Yuque and Yunque, on opposite sides of the river. They chased the Indians out of Yuque and moved in, renaming the place San Juan de los Caballeros (St. John of the Gentlemen) and declaring it the capital of the new colony. A short time later, they shifted to the other pueblo across the river; they named that one San Gabriel de Yunque.

The Spaniards cut windows and doors in the blank adobe walls of the first-floor rooms, which the Indians had entered through the ceilings. In the first few weeks they built and consecrated a makeshift church and laid out a plaza in the conventional Spanish fashion. Buildings gradually grew around the plaza. But San Gabriel de Yunque did not thrive. Its settlers were plagued by bedbugs and lice, and their crops were destroyed by field mice. After failing to find gold or other valuable minerals, Onate left his colony. The capital was moved to Santa Fe, the buildings crumbled, and when the Indians of San Juan pueblo planted crops where once stood adobe walls, the sites were forgotten.

But though corn crops covered Yuque and Yunque for years, it was the patches of wild morning-glories growing there that piqued Professor Ellis. Since the flower grew nowhere else around, she took it as an indication that the soil beneath was different in some way. Her students attacked the spot, and soon struck a layer of adobe. As the surface dirt was removed, more and more walls appeared, revealing the remains of a 25-room pueblo.

Frontier Foothold. It was no ordinary Indian pueblo. Out of the dirt came objects that had been used by 16th century Spaniards: bits of chain mail, parts of a helmet, an iron cannon ball, a carved piece of bone, a bronze candlestick base and the cover of a copper vessel probably used in celebrating Mass. Further digging exposed the plan of the old plaza, including the tracks of two dogs that had run across it once, at a time when rain turned the soil to mud.

Digging is still in full swing. The foundations of more buildings are showing through the soil, and with them appear fragments of glass that may have been parts of medicine bottles that the Spanish colonists carried with them into the wilderness. Nothing spectacular or beautiful is likely to be found, for San Gabriel was the crudest sort of frontier foothold. But enough has been located already to bring to life the days when the armored conquistadors rode up the great river from Mexico.

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