This strange aerial town was first heard of by Europeans in 1539, when Fray Marcos, the discoverer of New Mexico, was told by the people of Cibola of the great rock fortress of Hakuque,--their name for Acoma, which the natives themselves called Ah'ko. In the following year Coronado visited it with his little army, and has left us an accurate account of its wonders. These first Europeans were well received there; and the superstitious natives, who had never seen a beard or a white face before, took the strangers for gods. But it was more than half a century later yet before the Spaniards sought a foothold there. When Onate entered New Mexico in 1598, he met no immediate resistance whatever; for his force of four hundred people, including two hundred men-at-arms, was large enough to awe the Indians. They were naturally hostile to these invaders of their domain; but finding themselves well treated by the strangers, and fearful of open war against these men with hard clothes, who killed from afar with their thunder-sticks, the Pueblos awaited results. The Queres, Tigua, and Jemez branches formally submitted to Spanish rule, and took the oath of allegiance to the Crown by their representative men gathered at the pueblo of Guipuy (now Santo Domingo); as also did the Tanos, Picuries, Tehuas, and Taos, at a similar conference at the pueblo of San Juan, in September, 1598. At this ready submission Onate was greatly encouraged; and he decided to visit all the principal pueblos in person, to make them securer subjects of his sovereign. He had founded already the first town in New Mexico and the second in the United States,--San Gabriel de los Espanoles, where Chamita stands to-day. Before starting on this perilous journey, he despatched Juan de Zaldivar, his _maestro de campo_,[11] with fifty men to explore the vast, unknown plains to the east, and then to follow him.