Popé was a medicine-man of no mean capacity. His story of the wrongs of his people fell on eager ears, and it was not long ere his plan to exterminate the Spaniards received support from all the northerly Pueblo tribes. The day of reckoning was to have been August 13th, while the mystic means of communication was a knotted yucca cord which was dispatched by fleet runners to the outlying tribes. Although all were enjoined to the strictest secrecy, treachery lurked in the Indian ranks, and before the time allotted for the outbreak the Spaniards became aware of its approach through neophytes loyal to their cause. Popé saw that immediate action was necessary to the fulfilment of his designs; news that the secret had been divulged was heralded afar in true Indian fashion, and on August 10th, three days before the time originally fixed, more than four hundred of the twenty-five hundred settlers, soldiers, and friars were cruelly massacred. On the 13th the refugees at Santa Cruz were taken to Santa Fé, and on the day following the enemy appeared in the suburb of Analco, in the vicinity of the present chapel of San Miguel, which had been erected for the Tlascalan or Mexican members of the colony. A parley was held with a deputation of the Indians, who bore a white cross of peace and a red cross of war: of these they gave the Spaniards their choice, but on condition that if the former were selected their country must be immediately evacuated. Every effort was made by the Spaniards to bring about peace, but the Indians, encouraged by the success of their bloody enterprise, were determined to drive the Spaniards forever from the home of their fathers. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, Governor Otermin endeavored to dislodge the natives from the outskirts; but already the warriors had arrived by hundreds, and the first desperate effort of the Spaniards to drive off the natives resulted in their own retirement to the great adobe Palace where the surviving women and children had already taken refuge.