A History of American Literature

The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 19

the cross to announce that Spain had taken possession of the legendary Seven Cities

of gold. Mastery of souls and mastery of the land shared a story and a vocabulary;

they were part of one great imperial project.

That project was also the subject of and inspiration for the first American epic

poem of European origin, Historia de la Nueva Mexico, published in 1610. The poem

was written by Gaspar Perez de Villagra (1555–1620), who was the official chronicler

of the expedition led by Juan de Onate that established Spanish settlements in north

central New Mexico. “I sing of arms and the heroic man,” the poem begins, echoing

the opening lines of the Aeneid, the epic poem by Virgil celebrating the founding of

Rome. That captures the form, style, and the fundamental aim of the Historia. The

conventions of the traditional epic poem, and high rhetoric, are deployed here to

celebrate the founding of a new empire, the mission of which is to civilize the

wilderness and convert its native inhabitants. Addressing the “great King” of Spain

in these opening lines, Villagra asks him to lend “attentive ear” while the poet tells

him about

the load of toil

Of calumny, affliction under which

Did plant the evangel holy and the Faith of Christ

That Christian Achilles whom you wished

To be employed in such heroic work.

The “Christian Achilles” is, of course, Onate; and Villagra presents his expedition as

an early religious version of Manifest Destiny. Conversion is seen, in other words, as

part of the destined westward expansion of the Catholic Church, moving from

Jerusalem to Asia Minor to Rome and, now, to “nations barbarous, remote / From

the bosom” of the true faith. What may seem surprising about this poem is that it

allows the “barbarous” people whom Onate has to civilize, the Acomas, an epic dig-

nity. During the battles with the Spanish, the Acomas are presented as courageous.

Prior to one battle, Zutapacan the Acoma leader – who, for the most part, is the chief

villain of the poem – is even allowed a romantic episode, as he takes leave of his

bride with elaborate expressions of regret and admiration for her beauty: her eyes,

he declares, offer “peace and light” to him, her lips conceal “lovely, oriental pearls.”

But this, after all, is the dignity of the noble savage, whose strength and weakness

derive precisely from his simplicity and simple ignorance of the true faith. To a large

extent, the native inhabitants of the West are treated in this poem just as, tradition-

ally, the peoples of the East have been by European writers: as strange, exotic, and

above all “other.” This is surely why the eventual leveling of the Acoma village, the

killing of eight hundred Acomas, and the enslavement of many more are all seen as

not only inevitable but right. It is part of an imaginative venture that, like the

historical enterprise it celebrates, refuses to see the Native Americans and their

culture on anything like their own terms.

Where there was closer contact between the early Spanish settlers and native

peoples the story could, however, get more complicated. That closer contact often

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