Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá (1555–1620) was a captain in Juan de Oñate’s expedition that first colonized New Mexico in 1598. He was born in Puebla de los Angeles. Villagra went on to college a the University of Salamanca in Spain and then moved to New Spain. In that role, Villagrá served as the unofficial chronicler of the expedition. He composed the epic of New Mexico history, Historia de la Nueva México (1610), regarded as the first epic poem of European origin generated in the present United States, predating John Smith of Jamestown’s General History of Virginia by at least fourteen years. In his epic, Villagrá describes Oñate’s conquest of New Mexico’s indigenous peoples, including the capture of Acoma Pueblo in 1599.
Villagrá's vision of the conquest as a glorious march of the cross, however, is starkly contrasted by Native American account. The Hopi narrative presents an unflattering picture of the Franciscan missionizing. (Wiget, 21)