y conquest-violence that

the ordinances theoretically prohibit: Our provisions were exhausted fifty leagues before we reached the first settlements. We were in such extreme need that the governor [sent] men ahead to the first pueblos with eighty pack animals to bring maize . . . although it was against the wishes of the natives and to their

great grief . . . Because of this and other annoyances, the Indians fear us so much that, on seeing us approach ... they flee to the mountains, abandoning their homes, and so we take whatever we wish from them. (DJO 609-10) Note that Onate himself, arriving well after his men,

does not "conquer"; following the wanton pillage and brutal "annoyances" of his soldiers, he instead "invites" the terrorized Indians to appreciate the Christian

• mission of the visitors, and asks them to participate in the official Acts of Vassalage and Obedience (a reading of an even more edited version of the Requerimiento). If the Pueblo Indians show no visible signs of resistance throughout this ceremony, the conquistador concludes, that they thereby "demonstrate" their "willingness" to be subjects of the king (DJO 340). The key performative gesture that punctuates and sells the "act of vassalage" for the Spanish is, of course, the one originally developed by Cortes
• : after the speech, the Indians are made to kneel before the friars. For each Pueblo, Onate instructs the caciques that to demonstrate "their desire to offer obedience to God and the King, they should fall o
• n their knees, as a sign that it [is] indeed true and as proof of vassalage and submission, and kiss the hand of the father commissary, in the name of God" (DJO 340).'¨ Onate relies on this historically charged gesture to seal his (non)conques