By the orders of General Kearney a flag-staff one hundred feet high was raised in the plaza for the American flag, and the oath of allegiance was taken by the officials of the town. They were willing enough to take it, since their new masters left them in office, while the people, who had been told that they would be robbed and mercilessly treated, hailed the Americans as deliverers rather than as enemies. The same was the case with all the surrounding people, who, when they found that they would be paid for their provisions and be left secure in their homes, settled down in seeming high good will under the new rule. [Illustration: OLDEST HOUSE IN THE UNITED STATES, SANTA FE.] OLDEST HOUSE IN THE UNITED STATES, SANTA FE. Santa Fé at that time contained about six thousand inhabitants. After St. Augustine it was the oldest city within the limits of the United States. When the Spaniards founded it in 1582, it was built on the site of one of the old Indian pueblos, whose date went back to the earliest history of the country. The Spanish town—The Royal City of the Holy Faith, _La Villa Real del Santa Fé_, as they called it—was also full of the flavor of antiquity, with its low adobe houses, and its quaint old churches, built nearly three centuries before. These were of rude architecture and hung with battered old bells, but they were ornamented with curiously carved beams of cedar and oak. The residences were as quaint and old-fashioned as the churches, and the abundant relies of the more ancient Indian inhabitants gave the charm of a double antiquity to the place. From Santa Fé as a centre General Kearney sent out expeditions to put down all reported risings through the province, one of the most important of these being to the country of the warlike Navajo Indians, who had just made a raid on New Mexico, driving off ten thousand cattle and taking many captives. The answer of one of the Navajo chiefs to the officers of the expedition is interesting. "Americans, you have a strange cause of war against the Navajos," he said. "We have waged war against the New Mexicans for several years. You now turn upon us for attempting to do what you have done yourselves. We cannot see why you have cause of quarrel with us for fighting the New Mexicans in the West, while you do the same thing in the East. We have no more right to complain of you for interfering in our war than you have to quarrel with us for continuing a war we had begun long before you got here. If you will act justly, you will allow us to settle our own differences."