Cabeza de Vaca may have entered New Mexico during his trek from East Texas to the West coast of Mexico in the 1530’s. He certainly was in view of some of the mountains along the southern edge of New Mexico. From his report and companions' information of “golden cities” to the north, Coronado set forth an expedition in 1540 from the West coast of Mexico to explore to the North. Entering New Mexico from what is now Arizona near the Zuni pueblo, he and his men rather thoroughly explored the area, including the Grand Canyon, all of northern New Mexico, wintering in Albuquerque for two years, with a winter encampment found near Lubbock, Texas, in recent years. The exact route of his tour into Kansas has yet to be established. No gold was found, though his route across the Ortiz Mountains NE of Albuquerque went up a drainage where a major gold strike was made around 1823. His men walked over one of the more significant gold producing areas of the state without finding their quest! By about 1563 this area was being called New Mexico by the Spanish.
His return to Mexico was considered a failure. The priests left in the Pueblo’s were quickly killed. In the next 58 years several expeditions, legal and otherwise, entered into New Mexico. It is reported that an inscription of a priest dating from the 1580’s has been found NE of Albuquerque. However, as it is on Pueblo land, research is being discouraged. The mineralization of the Cerrillos Hills was documented by the late 1580’s. Before 1590 one unauthorized settlement was removed by the Spanish authorities, and the settlers returned to the Durango, Mexico, area with instructions never to return to New Mexico.
In 1598 Don Juan de Onate led a large expedition North for permanent settlement. This included cattle, horses, four-horned sheep, goats, and even pigs driven up the road. Both one axle carts and two axle wagons were used, making this 1598 road, El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the oldest major wagon road in North America. Sections of this road, used until replaced by the railroad in the 1880’s, are still visible in both New Mexico and Mexico. It is suspected that many of the settlers who accompanied him were previous settlers forcibly removed for illegal entry into New Mexico a few years before.
The first settlement was made on the West side of the Chama river just upstream from its junction with the Rio Grande. This was across the river from the Ohkay Owinge pueblo and constituted land which had been developed by the pueblo. Onate did not find the gold which was the desire of many of his party. His Friars did not make the number of conversions they desired. Finally, Onate’s troops extracted a revenge attack on Acoma pueblo which, while militarily successful, left him open to charges of violation of the Law of the Indies, the Spanish law established to protect the rights of the Native Americans. As this law was established a little before the time Onate was starting North, it is possible that he had no knowledge of the law. Nevertheless, he was called back to New Spain (Mexico) and tried under its terms. His successor, with the authorities aware of the poor relations with the pueblo’s, was instructed to move the settlement away from the center of pueblo activities around Espanola. Thus between 1607 and 1610 the Villa of Santa Fe was established on the location of a prior but abandoned pueblo site.
The Spanish governing system required the Native Americans to work so many days a month for the Spanish landowners. The Friars did their best to stop the previous ways of worship of the pueblos. The civilians after gold and land and the friars after converts spied and argued with one another, both sending conflicting reports back to New Spain. Resentment grew until on 12 August 1680 the pueblo rose in revolt. Some notice of this planning got to the authorities, but the revolt was so well planned that many of the outlying farms were lost, 21 of the friars were massacred, and the remaining Spanish gathered in Santa Fe only to flee in a body back down the Camino Real to what is now Juarez, Mexico. This was the most successful resistance to Spanish conquest by any native peoples in the Western Hemisphere. The reported leader of the revolt, known as “Popé,” was never found some 14 years later during the reconquest. Some scholars have suggested that this was a fictional leader as the pueblo leadership by this time included a number of men who had Spanish fathers and the beginnings of a fair education. Popé was an excuse to protect the identity of the real leadership. However, one of the two statutes in the rotunda of the Capitol in DC granted to each state for their significant leaders is of Popé.
The re-conquest was rather peaceful. The threat to the pueblo’s from raids by other Native American peoples and certain compromises paved the way for this.
First, the system of required service by the pueblo people to the Spanish was abolished. In addition, formal recognition was given to each pueblo by the Spanish crown of legal status under Spanish law as a town owning no extra allegiance to nearby Spanish holdings. Second, the church was required to respect the pueblo people’s religious traditions, though they could convert them they could not forbid traditional practices. This policy still applies. Third, the threat from Apache, Navajo, and Comanche had greatly increased so that the Spanish and pueblo needed each other to resist the pressure from the surrounding peoples.
The goals of Spanish and pueblo complemented each other to a certain extent. The pueblo was a dirt farmer, often with flood irrigation. The Spanish wanted to be a rancher, a hildalgo, if gold could not be found, a man on horseback. Don Quixote is a good example of this mentality. Granted that most of the Spanish wound up being dirt farmers, the goal remains of being a man on horseback. Mutual new crops added to this, like the fruits, vegetables, grains, and even the mud “horno” ovens in which to bake bread, coming via the Moslem conquests from the Near East. Silver work, sheep and more elaborate weaving methods, using straw to strengthen adobe, and grapes made into wine were added, all complemented the joint culture, though the grapes were brought in against the Spanish rules giving total profit of wine, particularly for communion, to providers in Spain. In this case the friars also worked to subvert the Spanish colonial rules.
The great governor of the Spanish administration was Juan Bautista de Anza who later founded San Francisco. He was not only an able administrator, he may have been the most able military leader on the northern frontier of New Spain. He assembled a combined force of Spanish, Pueblo and Ute for a campaign to the South, taking out the Llano Apache, who were a very serious threat to communications to Mexico City. Then he turned Northwest and pushed the Navajo back further from the Spanish and Rio Grande pueblos. He then turned on his Ute allies and forced them to give the pueblo and Spanish more maneuver room. Finally he made a winter campaign along the West side of the San Luis valley, without building fires to attract attention, and came down out of the mountains to catch the Comanche in winter camp on Fountain Creek below Colorado Springs, resulting in a draw battle and treaty which led to a mostly commercial relationship with Spanish New Mexico and the Comanche to the East which was observed until Yankee occupation.
The height of Spanish power ended with the defeat of the Armada in 1580, 18 years before Onate came north. By the late 1700’s Spain was clearly on the decline. New Mexico traded in wool and hides, not riches enough to justify Spanish investment. Texas was colonized to protect from the French in Louisiana and California to protect from the Russians, also in California. New Mexico had limited garrisons because of both French and British activity to the north, but this was not adequate to really protect from the surrounding native Americans. The later mineral wealth was not found or not accessible due to Apache in the mountains where the minerals were located.
Albuquerque was founded in 1706 as a way station on the Camino Real which was between active pueblos so agricultural land was available for development. Las Golondarinas, the first night’s stop on the Camino Real South of Santa Fe, is a living museum of both the trail and of the Spanish/Mexican influence over the last 400 years. The archives in Mexico City and in Sevilla, Spain, are excellent in preserving this information, lacking only cataloging to be found. Santa Fe’s museums, in buildings dating from 1610, are very impressive. The book “My Penitente Land” is an interesting introduction to Spanish New Mexico. The Mexican period has a large Anglo influence, so it will be included in the next lecture.