Onate, Juan de

(1550–1626) was a Spanish conquistador from New Spain, explorer, and colonial governor of the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México in the viceroyalty of New Spain. He led early Spanish expeditions to the Great Plains and Lower Colorado River Valley, encountering numerous indigenous tribes in their homelands there. Oñate founded settlements in the province, now in the Southwestern United States.
Today Oñate is known for the 1599 Acoma Massacre. Following a dispute that led to the ambush and death of thirteen Spaniards at the hands of the Ácoma, including Oñate’s nephew, Juan de Zaldívar, Oñate ordered a brutal retaliation against Acoma Pueblo. The Pueblo was destroyed Around 800–1000 Ácoma were killed.
Of the 500 or so survivors, at a trial at Ohkay Owingeh, Oñate sentenced most to twenty years of forced “personal servitude” and additionally mandated that all men over the age of twenty-five have a foot cut off. Recent research has indicated that there is no evidence of this happening and that, at most, the prisoners lost some toes. This latter theory makes sense, for losing toes rather than a whole foot left the prisoners useful as servants. In Onate’s personal journal, he specifically refers to the punishment of the Acoma warriors as cutting off “las puntas del pie” (the points of the foot, the toes). He was eventually banished from New Mexico and exiled from Mexico for five years, convicted by the Spanish government of using “excessive force” against the Acoma people.