Non paywall link:
To Native Americans, Oñate is known for having ordered the right feet cut off of 24 captive tribal warriors after his soldiers stormed the Acoma Pueblo’s mesa-top “sky city.”
Sounds like a great guy.....Who wouldn't want a statue to him? 
The foot-chopping is an urban myth, and it was the Indians who started the whole thing.
"In October 1598, a skirmish erupted when a squad of Oñate's men stopped to trade for food supplies from the
Acoma Pueblo. The Ácoma themselves needed their stored food to survive the coming winter. The Ácoma resisted and 11 Spaniards were ambushed and killed, including Oñate's nephew,
Juan de Zaldívar.
[15] In January 1599, Oñate condemned the conflict as an insurrection and ordered the
pueblo destroyed, a mandate carried out by Juan de Zaldívar's brother,
Vicente de Zaldívar, in an offensive known as the
Ácoma Massacre. An estimated 800–1,000 Ácoma died in the siege of the
pueblo. Much later, when King
Philip III of Spain heard the news of the massacre, and the punishments, Oñate was banished from New Mexico for his cruelty to the natives, and exiled from Mexico for five years, convicted by the Spanish government of using "excessive force" against the
Acoma people.
[2] Oñate later returned to Spain to live out the remainder of his life.
[16][17]
Of the 500 or so survivors,
[18] at a trial at
Ohkay Owingeh, Oñate sentenced all men and women older than 12 to twenty years of forced "personal servitude". In addition, men older than 25 (24 individuals) were to have a foot amputated.
[3] According to recent research, there is no evidence of this happening and that, at most, the prisoners lost some toes. This latter theory makes sense, for losing toes rather than a whole foot left the prisoners useful as servants.
[19] 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).
[20]"
Juan de Oñate - Wikipedia
www.latimes.com
