ESPEJO-BELTRAN EXPEDITION
The glowing accounts of the new discoveries made by the Rodriguez-Sanchez expedition of 1581-82 spread rapidly throughout the northern frontier of the vice royalty of New Spain, fired imaginations, and stimulated activity. Moreover, in Santa Barbara there was the greatest concern for the safety of Fray Agustin Rodriguez and Fray Francisco Lopez, the two Franciscans who had remained in New Mexico to continue their missionary work. In Santa Barbara a Franciscan named Bernardino Beltran sought authority to send a rescue mission to New Mexico, and he began to search for a suitable leader to command the military escort. Residing in Santa Barbara at this time was Antonio de Espejo, a wealthy fugitive from justice accused of murder, who had taken refuge on the frontier and was looking for an opportunity to exonerate himself. Espejo therefore offered his services to Fray Beltran and agreed to join an expedition to rescue the two friars and to pay all expenses.

The Espejo-Beltran expedition, consisting of fourteen soldiers, their servants, 115 horses and mules, arms, munitions, and provisions, left San Bartolome, a mining outpost nine leagues north of Santa Barbara, on November 10, 1582. A month later the expedition reached the juncture of the Rio Conchos and the Rio Grande, which Espejo named the Rio del Norte. Up the river was a nation Espejo called the Jumanos, who lived in large pueblos with flat roofs, gave the Spaniards food, and told them that some years before three Christians and a Negro had passed through the area. In January 1583 the expedition approached the El Paso area, inhabited by the Suma and Manso Indians. They followed the Rio del Norte upstream, through a "mountain chain on each side of it, both of which were without timber," a possible reference to El Paso del Norte, as Spaniards later named it.

RODRiGUEZ-SaNCHEZ EXPEDITION
The advance of the northern frontier of the viceroyalty of New Spain in the sixteenth century led to the founding in 1567 of Santa Barbara, located in what is now southern Chihuahua on one of the tributaries of the Conchos River, which flowed northward to the Rio Grande. Santa Barbara thus became the primary base for the exploration and colonization of New Mexico in the remaining decades of the century. On June 5, 1581, three Franciscans-Agustin Rodriguez, Francisco Lopez, and Juan de Santa Maria-left Santa Barbara to explore missionary possibilities in the country to the north. They were accompanied by an armed escort of eight soldiers under the command of Francisco Sanchez (also called Chamuscado), nineteen Indian servants, ninety horses, and 600 head of stock. The party descended the Conchos River and at its junction with the Rio Grande entered the territory of the Cabris nation, described as a handsome, well-built, intelligent people, who gave the Spaniards food and told them that some years before four Christians had passed through the area -- no doubt Cabeza de Vaca and his companions. The Indians added that there were more, much larger settlements upstream.

The Rodriguez-Sanchez expedition continued along the west bank of the Rio Grande through the area of present El Paso and in August 1581 arrived at the Piro and Tigua pueblos of New Mexico. On August 21 the party took formal possession of the land for the king of Spain. For the remainder of the year it explored extensively in all directions, covering much of the same territory viewed by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado forty years before. In the meantime, Fray Santa Maria had ill-advisedly set out on his own to report to the viceroy and was killed by Indians in September 1581, though his companions did not learn of his fate until sometime later.