Finally, on January 26, 1598, nearly three years after the first award of the contract, Oñate actually started north from Santa Barbara. In four days he reached the Conchos River. Here the unwelcome _visitador_[56] was finally got rid of, and Fray Alonso Martínez with ten Franciscans was assigned as the religious aid of the pioneers. Oñate’s own equipment almost staggers the imagination in its elaborate and complete detail. “The lucky-starred Vicente” Zaldívar opened up a new and shorter highway from Mexico to the Rio Grande, straight to “El Paso,”[57] and here on the last day of April, 1598, Oñate took formal possession of New Mexico and “all the adjoining provinces” for God, the King of Spain, and himself, with even more than the usual grandiloquent ceremonial deemed essential for such an event. In addition to the customary religious service, a comic drama written by Captain Farfán was enacted. The theme chosen depicted a conflict between Christians and Moors, in which, through the aid of Santiago, the Christians were victorious. El Paso is therefore the original home of European drama in the Southwest. One of the duties given Oñate was to capture any wanderers he might find of the unauthorized exploring ventures that had left New Spain during the preceding years, and by good fortune he did secure two men, left by Castaño, who understood three languages—Aztec, Spanish, and one of the New Mexican tongues. Later, a more valuable aid was the Indian Jusephe, who had been with Humaña and whom Oñate found with the Picuris tribe. With these men as interpreters he could proceed more successfully. The next thing was to force the submission and obedience of the natives. Beyond El Paso short excursions were made, to explore or to secure maize for food. Crossing the river, Oñate went ahead of the lumbering caravan to “pacify the land”—taking sixty of his men with him. By the twenty-fifth of June the company reached Puaray, where the friars were given lodgings in a newly painted room. Imagine their astonishment next morning when they faced upon the walls sketches which fresh paint had failed to obliterate and which they recognized as portraits of Friars López and Rodríguez, martyred seventeen years before. In a _kiva_ ceremony at Santo Domingo, the chiefs of thirty-five tribes knelt to kiss the hands of Oñate and of Padre Martínez. Thus an “erstwhile free and sovereign people” became subjects of Philip III of Spain and converts to Holy Roman Church. They reached the pueblo of Caypa on July 11th, and here Oñate made his headquarters until the spring of 1599, but changed the name to San Juan de los Caballeros, to celebrate the knightly company who had successfully achieved their task. In the words of Villagrá,