It is the spring of 1598, and after a long and arduous journey north from Mexico City the explorer conquistador Don Juan de Onate and his expedition of soldiers, priests, and settlers arrive on the Rio Grande and claim the vast and unexplored territory of Nuevo Mexico for Spain. One pueblo, Aco, lying atop a sheer-walled mesa, does rebel against the Spaniards, and for their resistance the Acoma are quickly and cruelly subjugated, the adult men mutilated by having one foot chopped off and, together with their women, sentenced to long years of servitude to Onate and his soldiers. Among the Acoma so sentenced is Rohona, a young man who awakens from a deadly fever to find himself a slave in the household of a gold-mad Spanish officer, Vicente de Vizcarra, and his gentle, highborn wife, Maria Angelica, who nurses Rohona back to health and fatefully falls in love with the Indian, a love that is fully reciprocated despite Rohona's abiding hatred for the conquerors of his people. From this forbidden love affair a child is born, and Maria Angelica and Rohona must, at the risk of their lives, protect their secret from her husband, from Spanish authorities - even from their son, who finds a love even more forbidden than that of his mother and father.