Prehistoric Amerindian ruins
indicate a presence at modern Santa Fe. Caves in the Sandia
Mountains near Albuquerque contain the remains of some of the
earliest inhabitants of the New World. The Pueblo people built a
flourishing sedentary culture in the 1200s, constructing small
towns in the valley of the Rio Grande and pueblos nearby.
The Spanish encountered Pueblo
civilization and elements of the Athabaskans in the 1500s. Cabeza
de Vaca in 1535, one of only four survivors of the Panfilo de
Narvaez expedition of 1527, tells of hearing Indians talk about
fabulous cities somewhere in New Mexico. Fray Marcos de Niza
enthusiastically identified these as the fabulously rich Seven
Cities of Cíbola, the mythical seven cities of gold. Francisco
Vásquez de Coronado led a massive expedition to find these cities
in 1540–1542. Coronado camped near an excavated pueblo today
preserved as Coronado National Memorial in 1541. The Spainish
maltreatment of the Pueblo and Athabaskan people that started with
their explorations of the upper Rio Grande valley led to hostility
that impeded the Spanish conquest of New Mexico for centuries.
The three largest pueblos of New
Mexico are Zuni, Santo Domingo, and Laguna.
The major Southern Athabaskans
(historically better called Apachean) groups today are generally
called Navajo and Apache but they were not unified tribes in the
modern sense. Early histories tended to call the different groups
of Apaches and Navajos by various names that were not consistant
from 1500s to the 1800s.
Some experts estimate that the
semi nomadic Apachean were in this New Mexico in the 1200s AD.
Spanish records indicated they traded with the Pueblos and various
bands or tribes participated in the Southwestern Revolt against
the Spanish in the 1680s. By the early 1700 the Spanish had to
build a series of over 25 forts to protect themselves
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
assembled an enormous expedition at Compostela, Mexico in 1540–1542
to explore and find the mystical Seven Golden Cities of Cibola as
described by Cabeza de Vaca who had just arrived from his
eight-year ordeal traveling from Florida to Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca
and three companions were the only survivors of the Panfilo de
Narvaez expedition of June 17, 1527 to Florida, losing 80 horses
and all the rest of the explorers. These four survivors had spent
eight arduous years getting to Sinoloa, Mexico on the Pacific
coast and had visited many Indian tribes. Coronado and his
supporters sank a fortune in this ill-fated enterprise taking 1300
horses and mules for riding and packing and 100s of head of sheep
and cattle as a portable food supply. Coronado's men found several
mud baked pueblos in 1541 but found no rich cities of gold.
Further wide spread expeditions [1] found no fabulous cities
anywhere in the Southwest or Great Plains. A dispirited and now
poor Coronado and his men began their journey back to Mexico
leaving New Mexico behind. Probably Coronado's greatest legacy was
his loss of several horses and cattle into the plains of America.
Doubling in number about every five years these animals grew well
in the wild and soon became the precursors of nearly all the
horses rode by the Indians 100-150 years later as well as wild
herds of Spanish cattle.
Over 50 years after Coronado,
Juan de Oñate founded the San Juan colony on the Rio Grande in
1598, the first permanent European settlement in the future state
of New Mexico. Oñate pioneered the grandly named El Camino Real,
"The Royal Road" as a 700 mile (1,100 km) trail from the
rest of New Spain to his remote colony. Oñate was made the first
governor of the new Province of New Mexico. The Native Americans
at Acoma revolted against this Spanish encroachment but faced
severe suppression. In battles with the Acomas, who refused
subordination, he lost 11 soldiers and two servants, killed
hundreds of Indians and punished 24 with amputation of a foot. The
Franciscans found the pueblo people increasingly unwilling to
consent to baptism by newcomers who continued to demand food,
clothing and labor.
In 1609, Pedro de Peralta, a
later governor of the Province of New Mexico, established the
settlement of Santa Fe at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains. As the seat of government of New Mexico since its
founding, Santa Fe is the oldest capital city in the United
States. Peralta built the Palace of the Governors in 1610.
Although the colony failed to prosper, some missions survived.
Spanish settlers arrived at the site of Albuquerque in the
mid-1600s. Missionaries attempted to convert the natives to
Christianity but had little success. [2].
Many of the Pueblo people
harbored a latent hostility toward the Spanish, primarily due to
their denigration and prohibition of the traditional religion. The
traditional economies of the pueblos were likewise disrupted, the
people having been forced to labor on the encomiendas of the
colonists. Some Pueblo people may have been forced to labor in the
mines of Chihuahua. However, the Spanish had introduced new
farming implements and provided some measure of security against
Navajo and Apache raiding parties. As a result, they lived in
relative peace with the Spanish since the founding of the Northern
New Mexican colony in 1598.
In the 1670s, drought swept the
region, which not only caused famine among the Pueblo, but also
provoked increased attacks from neighboring nomadic
tribes--attacks against which Spanish soldiers were unable to
defend. At the same time, European-introduced diseases were
ravaging the natives, greatly decreasing their numbers.
Unsatisfied with the protective powers of the Spanish crown and
the god of the church it imposed, the people turned to their old
gods. This provoked a wave of repression on the part of Franciscan
missionaries.
Following his is arrest on a
charge of witchcraft and subsequent release, Popé (or Po-pay)
planned and orchestrated the Pueblo Revolt. While a fugitive from
the Spanish authorities for complicity in several murders, Popé
sought refuge at Taos Pueblo. Popé dispatched runners to all the
Pueblos carrying knotted cords, the knots signifying the number of
days remaining until the appointed day for them to rise against
the Spaniards in unison.
The day for the attack had been
fixed for the August 18, 1680 but the Spaniards learned of the
revolt after capturing two Tesuque Pueblo youths entrusted with
carrying the message to the pueblos. Popé then ordered the
execution of the plot on the feast day of Saint Lawrence (San
Lorenzo), August 10, before the uprising could be put down.
The attack was commenced by the
Taos, Picuris, and Tewa Indians in their respective pueblos.
Eighteen Franciscan priests, three lay brothers, and three hundred
and eighty Spaniards, counting men, women and children, were
killed. Spanish settlers fled to Santa Fe, the only Spanish city,
and Isleta Pueblo, one of the few pueblos that didn't participate
in the rebellion. Believing themselves the only survivors, the
refugees at Isleta left for El Paso on September 15. Meanwhile
Popé's insurgents besieged Santa Fe, surrounding the city and
cutting off its water supply. New Mexico Governor Antonio de
Otermín, barricaded in the Governor’s Palace, called for a
general retreat, and on September 21 the Spanish settlers streamed
out of the capital city headed for El Paso del Norte.
The Piro Pueblo, along with the
Isleta, accompanied the Spanish to El Paso, presumably because
they would be seen as Spanish sympathizers. The people of Isleta
founded the settlement of Ysleta, Texas, and live there to this
day.
The retreat of the Spaniards left
New Mexico in the power of the Indians. Popé ordered the Indians,
under penalty of death, to burn or destroy crosses and other
religious imagery, as well as any other vestige of the Roman
Catholic religion and Spanish culture, including Spanish livestock
and fruit trees. He also forbade the planting of wheat and barley.
Popé went so far as to command those Indians who had been married
according to the rites of the Catholic church to dismiss their
wives and to take others after the old native tradition. Popé set
himself up in the Governor’s Palace as ruler of the Pueblos and
collected tribute from the each Pueblo until his death in
approximately 1688.
Following their success, the
different Pueblo tribes, separated by hundreds of miles and six
different languages, quarreled as to who would occupy Santa Fe and
rule over the country. These power struggles, combined with raids
from nomadic tribes and a seven year drought, weakened the Pueblo
resolve and set the stage for a Spanish reconquest.
In July of 1692, Diego de Vargas
returned to Santa Fe. De Vargas surrounded the city before dawn
and called on the Indians to surrender, promising clemency if they
would swear allegiance to the King of Spain and return to the
Christian faith. The Indian leaders gathered in Santa Fe, met with
De Vargas, and agreed to peace. On September 14, 1692, de Vargas
proclaimed a formal act of repossession.
While developing Santa Fe as a
trade center, the returning settlers founded the old town of
Albuquerque in 1706, naming for the viceroy of New Spain, the Duke
of Albuquerque. Prior to its founding, Albuquerque consisted of
several haciendas and communities along the lower Rio Grande. They
constructed the Church of San Felipe de Nerí (1706). The thorough
development of ranching and some farming in the 1700s laid the
foundations for the state's still-flourishing Hispanic culture.
De Vargas’ repossession of New
Mexico is often called a "bloodless reconquest."
However, de Vargas mounted several military campaigns against the
Pueblo peoples in the years that followed in an attempt to
maintain the peace. For instance, a Second Pueblo Revolt was
attempted in 1696, resulting in the death of five missionaries and
twenty-one Spaniards, but was effectively thwarted. By the end of
the century, the Spanish reconquest was essentially complete.
While their independence from the
Spaniards was short-lived, the Pueblo Revolt granted the Pueblo
Indians a measure of freedom from future Spanish efforts to
eradicate their culture and religion following the reconquest.
Moreover, the Spanish issued substantial land grants to each
Pueblo and appointed a public defender to protect the rights of
the Indians and argue their legal cases in the Spanish courts.
The southwestern Indians as they
gradually became mounted on Spanish horses by catching feral
horses in the beginning started raiding Spanish ranches and
stealing horses from Spanish missions in New Mexico. By trade and
raid the Indian horse culture quickly spread throughout all of
western America. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was the beginning of
another large numbers of horses falling into Indian hands. By
mid-1700, a few Indians as far away as Canada were making forays
deep into the Spanish southwest, stealing horses and driving them
back to Canada.
In this manner the Spanish horse
was gradually dispersed from tribe to tribe by trade or theft
until nearly all the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi river
in North America that could support horses were mounted on horses
brought to the New World by the Spaniards. The Lewis and Clark
expedition traded with the Indians for some of the offspring of
these horses in 1803 and 1804. The geographically isolated tribes
in California would not see horses or cattle until introduced by
the Spanish settlers and missionaries in the 1780s.
Following Lewis and Clark many
men started exploring and trapping in the Southwest and western
parts of the U.S.
In 1807 Lt. Zebulon Pike,
exploring for the U.S. government the Louisiana Purchase led an
expedition to Santa Fe where he was briefly detained before
returning through Texas.
Fur traders like Manuel Lisa,
Anthony Glass and James McLanahan explored the American southwest
starting about 1810. [3]
Jedediah Smith (1799-1831)
mountain man, explorer extraordinaire in his short life starting
1822 he probably explored more of the West and Southwest than any
other man. He mapped out most of the so called Old Spanish Trail.
He is believed to be the first white man to cross Nevada's Great
Basin, the first to traverse Utah from north to south and from
west to east; the first American to enter California by one
overland route and leave by still another.
Kit Carson at 14, left
home in 1826 joining with a wagon train heading west to Santa Fe.
Between 1828 and 1840, Carson used Taos as a base camp for many
fur-trapping expeditions throughout the mountains of the West,
from California's Sierra Nevadas to the Colorado Rockies. He
gained renown for his honesty, courage and unassuming manner.
According to one acquaintance, his "word was as sure as the
sun comin' up." In 1842 Carson happened to meet John C.
Fremont on a Missouri Riverboat. Fremont hired Carson as guide for
his first expedition to map and describe Western trails to the
Pacific Ocean. After returning to Taos from California in 1843,
Carson married his third wife, Maria Josefa Jaramillothen.
Over the next few years, Carson's
service guiding Fremont across the deserts and mountains of the
American West -- documented in Fremont's widely-read reports of
his expeditions -- made Kit Carson a national hero. He would
continue on to serve with distinction.
Napoleon Bonaparte of France sold
the vast unsettled and undeveloped Louisiana Purchase, which
extended into the northeastern corner of New Mexico, to the United
States in 1803. As a part of New Spain, the claims for the
remainder of the province of New Mexico passed to independent
Mexico following the 1810-1821 Mexican War of Independence. During
the brief 26 year period of nominal Mexican control Mexican
authority and investment in New Mexico were weak as their often
conflicted government had little time or interest in a New Mexico
that had been poor since the Spanish settlements started.
Some Mexican officials, saying
they were wary of encroachments by the growing United States, and
wanting to reward themselves and their friends began issuing
enormous land grants (usually free) to groups of Mexican families
as an incentive to populate the province.
Small trapping parties from the
United States had previously reached and stayed in Santa Fe, but
the Spanish authorities officially forbade them to trade. Trader
William Becknell returned to the United States in November 1821
with news that independent Mexico now welcomed trade through Santa
Fe.
William Becknell left
Independence, Missouri, for Santa Fe early in 1822 with the first
party of traders. The Santa Fe Trail trading company headed by the
brothers Charles Bent and William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain, was
one of the most successful in the West. They had their first
trading post in the area in 1826 and by 1833 they had built their
adobe fort and trading post called Bent's Fort on the Arkansas
River. This fort and trading post, located about 200 miles east of
Taos New Mexico, was the only place settled by Whites along the
Santa Fe trail before it hit Taos. Ceran St. Vrain run branches of
their business in Taos and Santa Fe. Wagon caravans of up to 400+
wagons, grouped for protection, thereafter made the 40 to 60-day
annual trek along the 780 mile Santa Fe Trail, usually leaving in
early spring and returning after a 4 to 5 week stay in New
Mexico.
The trail divided into Mountain
and Cimarron Divisions southwest of Dodge City, Kansas. The rugged
Mountain Division passed over Raton Pass and rejoined the more
direct Cimarron Division near Fort Union, New Mexico. The dry
southern Cimarron route offered poor short grass and little
wildlife. The Santa Fe National Historic Trail follows the route
of the old trail, with many sites marked or restored.
The Spanish Trail from Los
Angeles California to Santa Fe, New Mexico was primarily used by
Hispanos, white traders and ex-trappers living part of the year in
or near Santa Fe. Started in about 1829 the trail was an arduous
2400 mile round trip pack train sojourn that extended into
Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California and back allowing only one
hard round trip per year. The trade consisted primarily of
blankets and some trade goods from Santa Fe being traded for
horses in California. Since the horses grew nearly wild in
California and had almost no market there they were cheaply
traded.
The trail had many parts where
water could not be obtained for several days and was littered in
many sections with the bones of animals that had died along the
way. Mountain men like Peg Leg Smith drove thousands of Spanish
horses and mules (often rustled) over the Spanish Trail to Santa
Fe, Taos and Bents Fort.
The Republic of Texas claimed the
mostly vacant territory north and east of the Rio Grande when it
successfully seceded from Mexico in 1836. New Mexico authorities
captured a group of Texans who embarked an expedition to assert
their claim to the province in 1841.
American General Stephen W.
Kearny and his army of 300 cavalry men of the First Dragoons,
about 1600 Missouri volunteers in the First and Second Regiments
of Missouri Mounted Calvary and the 500 man Mormon Battalion
marched down the Santa Fe Trail and entered Santa Fe without
opposition in 1846 during the Mexican-American War. Kearny
established a joint civil and military government with Charles
Bent, a Santa Fe trail trader living in Taos, as acting civil
governor. He then divided his forces into four commands: one,
under Colonel Sterling Price, appointed military governor, was to
occupy and maintain order in New Mexico with his approximate 800
men; a second group under Colonel Alexander William Doniphan, with
a little over 800 men was ordered to capture El Paso, Chihuahua
Mexico and then join up with General Wool [4]; the third of about
300 dragoons mounted on mules, under his own command, headed for
California.
The Mormon Battalion, mostly
marching on foot, under Lt. Col. Phillip St. George Cooke was
instructed to follow Kearny with wagons to establish a new
southern route to California. Almost 200 of Kearney's dragoons
were sent back to New Mexico when Kearny encountered Kit Carson,
traveling East, who was bearing messages that California had
already been subdued. In California about 400 men of the
California Battalion under John C. Fremont and another 400 men
under Commodore Robert Stockton of the U.S. Navy and Marines were
in control of the approximate 7,000 Californios from San Diego to
Sacramento.
New Mexico territory, which then
included present-day Arizona, was under undisputed United States
control. The exact boundary with Texas was uncertain. Texas
initially claimed all land North of the Rio Grande; but later
agreed to the present boundaries. Kearny also protected citizens
under a form of martial law called the Kearny Code, essentially
Kearny and the U.S. army's promise that religious and legal claims
would be respected by the United States and law and order
maintained. The Kearny Code became one of the bases of New
Mexico's legal code during its territorial period, one of the
longest in United States history.
Kearny's entrance into New Mexico
was essentially without conflict as the Mexican authorities took
all the money they could find and retreated into southern Mexico.
After Kearny's departure, a skirmish called the rebellion broke
out in the pueblo of Taos. The Taos rebels, nearly all Peublo
Indians, ambushed and killed acting Governor Charles Bent and
about ten other Americans or so living in the town on January 19,
1847. Reacting quickly, a U.S. detachment under Colonel Sterling
Price marched on Taos and attacked the rebels who retreated to a
strongly built church.
Concentrated cannon fire upon the
church killed about 150 rebels and led to the capture of 400 more.
Six rebel leaders were arraigned, tried and, on February 9, 1847
hanged for their role in the Taos Revolt. Price fought two more
engagements with rebels, which included many Pueblo Indians, and
by mid-February had the revolt well under control. President Polk
promoted Price to a brevet rank of Brigadier General for his
sterling service. Casualties totaled more than 300 rebels killed
and about thirty "Anglos," as American troops and
settlers were often called.
Under the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo of 1848, Mexico ceded much of its mostly unsettled
northern holdings, today known as the American Southwest and
California to the United States of America in exchange for an end
to hostilities, the evacuation of Mexico City and many other areas
under American control. Mexico also received $15 million cash,
plus the assumption of slightly more than $3 million in
outstanding Mexican debts.
New Mexico, the name given to the
territory between Texas and California, technically met the
population criteria to become a state. But congress declined to
make them a state. The Senate also struck out Article X of the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which said that vast land grants in
New Mexico (nearly always gifts by the local authorities to their
friends) would all be recognized. The decision to strike down
Article X remains an unpopular one, especially in some of the
region's Hispanic communities, as it eventually led to millions of
acres of land, timber, and water being removed from Mexican-issued
land grants and placed back in the public domain. Spanish-issued
land grants, including those made to the Pueblos, have nearly all
been respected as legitimate.
The Congressional Compromise of
1850 halted a bid for statehood under a proposed antislavery
constitution. Texas transferred eastern New Mexico to the federal
government, settling a lengthy boundary dispute. Under the
compromise, the American government established the New Mexico
Territory on September 9, 1850. The territory, which included all
of Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado, officially
established its capital at Santa Fe in 1851.
The U.S. territorial New Mexico
census of 1850 found 61,547 people living in all the territory of
New Mexico. The people of New Mexico would determine whether to
permit slavery under a proposed constitution at statehood, but the
status of slavery during the territorial period provoked
considerable debate.
The granting of statehood was up
to a Congress sharply divided on the slavery issue. Some
(including Stephen A. Douglas) maintained that the territory could
not restrict slavery, as under the earlier Missouri Compromise,
while others (including Abraham Lincoln) insisted that older
Mexican legal traditions, which forbade slavery, took precedence.
Regardless of its official status, slavery was rarely seen in New
Mexico. Statehood was finally granted to New Mexico on January 6,
1912.
Navajo and Apache raids and
plundering led Kit Carson to abandon his intent to retire to a
sheep ranch near Taos after the Mexican American War. Carson
accepted an 1853 appointment as U.S. Indian agent with a
headquarters at Taos, and fought the Indians with notable success.
The United States acquired the
southwestern boot heel of the state and southern Arizona below the
Gila river in the mostly desert Gadsden Purchase of 1853. This
purchase was desired when it was found that a much easier route
for a proposed transcontinental railroad was located slightly
south of the Gila river. This territory had not been explored or
mapped when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was negotiated in
1848. The ever present Santa Anna was in power again in 1853 and
needed the money from the Gadsden Purchase to fill his coffers and
to pay the Mexican Army for that year. The Southern Pacific built
the second transcontinental railroad though this purchased land in
1881.
During the Civil War, Confederate
troops from Texas briefly occupied southern New Mexico. Union
troops re-captured the territory in early 1862. During the Civil
War as Union troops were withdrawn to fight elsewhere Kit Carson
helped to organize and command the 1st New Mexican Volunteers to
engage in campaigns against the Apache, Navajo, and Comanche in
New Mexico and Texas as well as participating in the Battle of
Valverde against the confederates. Confederate troops withdrew
after the Battle of Glorieta Pass where Union regulars, Colorado
Volunteers (The Pikes Peakers), and New Mexican Volunteers
defeated them. The Arizona Territory was split off as a separate
territory in 1863.
The Roman Catholic Church
established an archbishopric center in Santa Fe in 1875. The Santa
Fe Railroad reached Lamy, New Mexico, 16 miles (26 km) from Santa
Fe in 1879 and Santa Fe itself in 1880, replacing the storied
Santa Fe Trail. The new town of Albuquerque, platted in 1880 as
the Santa Fe Railroad extended westward, quickly enveloped the old
town.
The railway encouraged the great
cattle boom of the 1880s and the development of accompanying cow
towns. Cattlemen feuded between each other and with authorities,
most notably in the Lincoln County War. Outlaws included Billy the
Kid. The cattle barons could not keep out sheepherders, and
eventually homesteaders and squatters overwhelmed the cattlemen by
fencing in and plowing under the "sea of grass" on which
the cattle fed. Conflicting land claims led to bitter quarrels
among the original Spanish inhabitants, cattle ranchers, and newer
homesteaders. Despite destructive overgrazing, ranching survived
as a mainstay of the New Mexican economy.
Centuries of continued conflict
with the Apache and the Navajo plagued the territory. The The Long
Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo
in 1860-61 harshly repressed the Navajo but did put an end to
their raiding. The Navajo returned to most of their lands in 1868.
Sporadic Apache raiding continued until Apache chief Geronimo
finally surrendered in 1886.
Albuquerque, on the upper Rio
Grande, was incorporated in 1889.
Congress admitted New Mexico as
the 47th state in the Union on January 6, 1912. The admission of
the neighboring State of Arizona on February 14, 1912 completed
the contiguous 48 states.
The United States government
built the Los Alamos Research Center in 1943 amid the Second World
War. Top-secret personnel there developed the atomic bomb, first
detonated at Trinity site in the desert on the White Sands Proving
Grounds vaguely near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945.
Albuquerque expanded rapidly
after the war. High-altitude experiments near Roswell in 1947
reputedly led to persistent (unproven) claims by a few that the
government captured and concealed extraterrestrial corpses and
equipment. The state quickly emerged as a leader in nuclear,
solar, and geothermal energy research and development. The Sandia
National Laboratories, founded in 1949, carried out nuclear
research and special weapons development at Kirtland Air Force
Base south of Albuquerque and at Livermore, California.
Located in the remote Chihuahuan
Desert the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is located 26 miles
southeast of Carlsbad. Here nuclear wastes are buried deep in
carved out salt formation disposal rooms mined 2,150 feet
underground in a 2,000-foot thick salt formation that has been
stable for more than 200 million years. WIPP began operations on
March 26, 1999.
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