This book chronicles the life and frontier career of Don Juan de Onate, the first colonizer of the old Spanish Borderlands. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico, in the mid-sixteenth century, Don Juan was the prominent son of an aristocratic silver-mining family.In 1598, in his late forties, Onate led a formidable expedition of settlers, with wagons and livestock, on an epic march northward to the upper Rio Grade Valley of New Mexico. There he established the first European settlement west of the Mississippi, launching a significant chapter in early American history.
In his activities he displayed qualities typical of Spain's sixteenth-century men of action; in his career we find a summation of the motives, aspirations, intentions, strengths, and weaknesses of the Hispanic pioneers who settled the Borderlands.
- ISBN10 0585168792
- ISBN13 9780585168791
- Publish Date 13 May 2014 (first published 1 May 1991)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Oklahoma Press
- Edition Revised ed.
- Format eBook
- Pages 219
- Language English