Disappointed by the explorers’ failure to discover riches in North America, the Spanish monarchy insisted that a few settlements be established in Florida and New Mexico to give a token of reality to Spain’s territorial claims. Settlements in Florida would have the additional benefit of protecting Spanish ships from pirates and privateers who lurked along the southeastern coast, waiting for the Spanish treasure fleet sailing toward Spain.

In 1565, the Spanish king sent Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to found St. Augustine in Florida, the first permanent European settlement within what became the United States. By 1600, St. Augustine had a population of about five hundred, the only remaining Spanish beachhead on North America’s vast Atlantic shoreline.

More than sixteen hundred miles west of St. Augustine, Spaniards founded another outpost in 1598. Juan de Oñate led an expedition of about five hundred people to settle northern Mexico, now called New Mexico, and claim the booty rumored to exist there. Oñate had impeccable credentials for both conquest and mining. His father helped to discover the bonanza silver mines of Zacatecas in central Mexico, and his wife, Isabel Tolsa Cortés Montezuma, was the granddaughter of Cortés and the great-granddaughter of Montezuma. When Oñate and his companions reached pueblos near present-day Albuquerque and Santa Fe, he sent out scouting parties to find the legendary treasures of the region and to locate the ocean, which he believed must be nearby. Meanwhile, many of his soldiers planned to mutiny, and relations with the Indians deteriorated. When Indians in the Acoma pueblo revolted against the Spaniards, Oñate ruthlessly suppressed the uprising, killing eight hundred men, women, and children. Oñate’s response to the Acoma pueblo revolt reconfirmed Spaniards’ military superiority, but he did not bring peace or stability to the region. After another pueblo revolt occurred in 1599, many of Oñate’s settlers returned to Mexico, leaving New Mexico a small, dusty assertion of Spanish claims to the North American Southwest.