Fray Francisco was an old man and very zealous. Unquestionably, he antagonized the native priests. It is as certain that, at first welcoming him, they gradually came to look upon his religion as no less that of mortal men than their own, and to regard its magic and power of appeal to the gods as of small account in the making of rain or the quelling of war and sorcery. Wherefore, although baptized by dozens as they had been, they brooked but ill the compulsory attendance at mass and other observances and the constant interferences of the father and his soldiers (for a small escort, unluckily, accompanied him) with their own acts of worship. When in the winter of 1630 Fray Martin de Arvide joined Fray Letrado at Háwik’uh, on the way to establish missions among the Zipias, a pueblo people said by the Zuñis to have lived considerably to the southwestward of them at that time, and called by them Tsípiakwe ("People-of-the-coarse-hanging-hair"), he foresaw for his brother and himself speedy martyrdom. He had but fairly departed when, on the Sunday following, the people delayed attending mass, and Fray Francisco, going forth to remonstrate with them, met a party of the native religionists armed with bows and arrows and in mood so menacing that in expectancy of death he knelt where he had stood, clinging to his crucifix, and, continuing to entreat them, was transfixed by many arrows. Thus speedily was slain the first resident priest of Zuñi; thus were the Zuñis themselves disillusionized of their belief in the more than mortal power of the Spaniard and the deific character of his religion; for they broke up the ornaments of the altar, burned the church, and then sallied forth to follow Fray Martin. They overtook him at night five days later, attacked his party while in camp, overawed and killed outright his two soldiers, and, joined by his traitorous "Christian Indians," one of whom, a half-blood, cut off his hand and scalped him, they killed also this venerable friar and hastened back to their town. There the ceremonial of the scalp dances of initiation were performed over the scalps of the two friars, an observance designed both as a commemoration of victory and to lay the ghosts of the slain by completing the count of their unfinished days and making them members by adoption of the ghostly tribe of Zuñi. The scalp-dance is also supposed to proclaim in song, unto the gods and men, that thenceforward their people are of the enemy, and unto the gods of the enemy that the gods of Zuñi are victors over them, whereof and wherefore it will be well for them to beware. Thus the estimation in which the Spaniard, and especially his religious representatives, were ever afterward to be held was fixed on those fatal days at the close of February, 1630.