He led early Spanish expeditions to the Great Plains and Lower Colorado River Valley, encountering numerous indigenous tribes in their homelands there.

This series of events transpired after Oñate sent his nephew, Juan de Zaldívar, to ask Acoma Pueblo to submit to the Spanish throne and Catholocism.

[5][6] On June 15, 2020, the statue of Oñate in Alcalde, New Mexico was temporarily removed by Rio Arriba County workers at the direction of officials.

Oñate's mother, Doña Catalina Salazar y de la Cadena,[8] had among her ancestors Jewish-origin New Christians who "served in the royal court of Spanish monarchs from the late 1300s to the mid-1500s.

Her father was Gonzalo de Salazar, leader of several councils that governed New Spain while Hernán Cortés was traveling to Honduras in 1525–26.

[12][13] The agreement with Viceroy Velasco tasked Oñate with two goals; the better-known aim was to explore and colonize the unknown lands annexed into the New Kingdom of León y Castilla (present day New Mexico) and the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

In March 1598, Oñate's expedition moved out and forded the Rio Grande (Río del Norte) south of present-day El Paso and Ciudad Juárez in late April.

On the Catholic calendar day of Ascension, April 30, 1598, the exploration party assembled on the south bank of the Rio Grande.

In an Ascension Day ceremony, Oñate led the party in prayer, as he claimed all of the territory across the river for the Spanish Empire.

Oñate's original terms would have made this land a separate viceroyalty to the crown in New Spain; this move failed to stand after de Zúñiga reviewed the agreement.

[citation needed] All summer, Oñate's expedition party followed the middle Rio Grande Valley to present-day northern New Mexico, where he engaged with Pueblo Indians.

[15] In October 1598, a skirmish erupted when a squad of Oñate's men stopped to trade for food supplies at the Acoma Pueblo.

[18][19] Of the 500 or so survivors,[20] at a trial at Ohkay Owingeh, Oñate sentenced all men and women older than 12 to twenty years of forced "personal servitude".

[21] In Onate's personal journal, he specifically refers to the punishment of the Acoma warriors as cutting off "las puntas del pie" (the points of the foot, the toes).

Leaving the river behind in a sandy area where his ox carts could not pass, he went across country, and the land became greener, with more water and groves of Black walnut (Juglans nigra) and bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) trees.

The Escanjaques told Oñate that Etzanoa, a large city of their enemies, the Rayado Indians, was located only about twenty miles away.

They attempted to enlist the assistance of the Spanish and their firearms, alleging that the Rayados were responsible for the deaths of Humana and Leyva a few years before.

He spoke of fertile land, much better than that through which he had previously passed, and pastures "so good that in many places the grass was high enough to conceal a horse.

It contained "about twelve hundred houses, all established along the bank of another good-sized river which flowed into the large one [the Arkansas].... the settlement of the Rayados seemed typical of those seen by Coronado in Quivira in the 1540s.

[27] Oñate and his men returned to San Juan de los Caballeros, arriving there on November 24, 1601[28] without any further incidents of note.

[29] A minority view would be that the Escanjaque encampment was on the Ninnescah River and the Rayado village was on the site of present-day Wichita, Kansas.

The Wichita at this time were not unified, but rather a large number of related tribes scattered over most of Kansas and Oklahoma, so it is not implausible that the Rayados and Escanjaques spoke the same language, but were nevertheless enemies.

The evident purpose of the expedition was to locate a port by which New Mexico could be supplied, as an alternative to the laborious overland route from New Spain.

After finishing plans for the founding of the town of Santa Fe, he resigned his post and was tried and convicted of cruelty to both natives and colonists.

[36] The street that runs through the historic central business district of Española, New Mexico, is named Paseo de Oñate.

A local filmmaker, Chris Eyre, was contacted by one of the two perpetrators, saying "I'm back on the scene to show people that Oñate and his supporters must be shamed."

The memorial was meant to be a tri-cultural collaboration (Hispanic, Anglo, and Tewa Pueblo Native American), with Reynaldo "Sonny" Rivera, Betty Sabo, and Nora Naranjo Morse.

[42] Rivera and Sabo did a series of bronze statues of Oñate leading the first group of Spanish settlers into New Mexico titled "La Jornada," while Naranjo-Morse created an abstract land art from the desert itself of a large dirt spiral representing the Native American perspective titled "Numbe Whageh" (Tewa interpretation: Our Center Place).

When King Phillip of Spain heard the news from Acoma, Oñate was brought up on 30 charges of mismanagement and excessive cruelty.

The statue was completed in early 2006, transported in pieces on flatbed trailers to El Paso during the summer, and installed in October.