History of New Mexico
Encyclopedia
Evidence from archaeologists conveys the existence of natives back to approximately 9200 BC. However, the history of New Mexico
was not officially recorded until the arriving of the Conquistadors, who encountered Native American Pueblo
s when they explored the area in the 16th century. Since that time, the area has been under the control of Spain, Mexico, and the United States.
stretches back at least 11,000 years to the Clovis culture
of hunter-gatherers. They left evidence of their campsites and stone tools. After the invention of agriculture
, the land was inhabited by the Ancient Pueblo Peoples
, who built houses out of stone or adobe bricks. They experienced a Golden Age
around AD 1000, but climate change led to migration and cultural evolution. From those people arose the historic Pueblo people
s who lived primarily along the few major rivers of the region. The most important rivers are the Rio Grande
, the Pecos
, the Canadian, the San Juan, and the Gila
.
PREHISTORIC NEW MEXICANS>
CULTURE OR GROUP
TIME
LOCATION FOUND
IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT
Clovis
9200 BC
Eastern Plains
Hunted big game
Folsom
8200 BC
American Southwest
Hunted big game
Desert Culture I
6000 to 2000 BC
American Southwest
Hunted small game; gathered seeds. nuts, and berries
Desert Culture II
2000 to 500 BC
American Southwest
Developed early gardening skills, baskets, and milling stones
Mogollon
300 BC to AD 1150
West-central and southwestern New Mexico
Farmed crops, made pottery, and lived in pit house villages
Anasazi: Basketmaker
AD 1 to 500
Northwestern New Mexico
Used the atlatl, gathered food, and made fine baskets
Modified Basketmaker
AD 500 to 700
Northwestern New Mexico
Lived in pit house villages, used the mano and metate, learned pottery-making, and used bows and arrows
Developmental Pueblo
AD 700 to 1050
Northwestern New Mexico
Built adobe houses, used cotton cloth and infant cradleboards
Great Pueblo
AD 1050 to 1300
Northwestern New Mexico (Chaco Canyon, Aztec)
Built mulitstories pueblos, practiced irrigation, and laid out road systems
Rio Grande Classic
AD 1300 to 1600
West-central New Mexico, Rio Grande Valley, Pecos
Abandoned northwestern New Mexico sites, migrated to new areas of settlement, and changed building and pottery style
built a flourishing sedentary culture in the 13th century, 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 16th century. 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 Spanish 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 Zuñi
, Santo Domingo
, and Laguna
. There are three different languages spoken by the nineteen foxes.
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 consistent from the 16th century to the 19th century. The one consistent name was the name the people called themselves which was Dine'. The Navajo and Apache made up the largest non-Pueblo Indian group in the Southwest. These two tribes led semi-nomadic lifestyles and spoke a similar language.
Some experts estimate that the semi-nomadic Apaches were in New Mexico in the 13th century. Spanish records indicated that they traded with the Pueblos and various bands or tribes participated in the Southwestern Revolt against the Spanish in the 1680s. By the early 18th century the Spanish had to build a series of over 25 forts to protect themselves and subjugated populations from traditional raiding parties of Athabaskans.
The Navajo, which is the largest tribe in the United States, live in present-day northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. The Mescalero Apache live east of the Rio Grande. The Jicarilla Apache live west of the Rio Grande. The Chiricahua Apache lived in southwestern New Mexico until the late 19th century.
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 Sinaloa, 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 hundreds of head of sheep and cattle as a portable food supply. Coronado's men found several adobe
pueblos (towns) in 1541 but found no rich cities of gold. Further widespread expeditions http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/national_parks/coronado_expedition.jpg 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. Coronado, however, was highly unlikely to have been the source of the horses that Plains Indians later adopted as the cornerstone of their culture. Only two of Coronado's horses were mares,
Over 50 years after Coronado, Juan de Oñate
came north from Mexico with 500 Spanish settlers and soldiers and 7,000 head of livestock and founded the first Spanish settlement in New Mexico on July 11, 1598. The governor named the settlement San Juan de los Caballeros. This means "Saint John of the Knights". San Juan was in a small valley. Nearby the Chama River
flows into the Rio Grande. Oñate pioneered the grandly named El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, "The Royal Road," 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 Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico
. The Native Americans at Acoma
revolted against this Spanish encroachment but faced severe suppression. In battles with the Acomas, Oñate lost 11 soldiers and two servants, killed hundreds of Indians, and punished every man over 25 years of age by the amputation of their left foot. The Franciscans found the pueblo people increasingly unwilling to consent to baptism by newcomers who continued to demand food, clothing and labor. Acoma is also known as the oldest continually inhabited city in the United States.
Oñate's capital of San Juan proved to be vulnerable to "Apache" (probably Navajo) attacks and a later governor, Pedro de Peralta, moved the capital and established the settlement of Santa Fe
in 1609 at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
. 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-17th century. Missionaries attempted to convert the natives to Christianity, but had little success.http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/pueblo/indianpueblohistory.htm
The objective of Spanish rule of New Mexico was exploitation of the native population and resources. "Governors were a greedy and rapacious lot whose single-minded interest was to wring as much personal wealth from the province as their terms allowed. They exploited Indian labor for transport, sold Indian slaves in New Spain, and sold Indian products...and other goods manufactured by Indian slave labor." The exploitative nature of Spanish rule involved them in nearly continuous raids and reprisals with nomadic Indian tribes on the borders, especially the Apache
, Navajo
, and Comanche
.
Franciscan
missionaries came to New Mexico with Onate and a struggle ensued between secular and religious authorities. Both colonists and the Franciscans depended upon Indian labor, mostly Pueblos, and competed with each other to control an Indian population decreasing because of European diseases and exploitation. The struggle between the Franciscans and the civil government came to a head in the late 1650s. Governor Bernardo Lopez de Mendizabal and his subordinate Nicolas de Aguilar
forbade the Franciscans to punish Indians or employ them without pay and granted the Pueblos permission to practice their traditional dances and religious ceremonies. Lopez and Aguilar were arrested, turned over to the Inquisition
, and tried in Mexico City. Thereafter, the Franciscans reigned supreme in the province. Pueblo dissatisfaction with the rule of the clerics was the main cause of the Pueblo revolt.
s 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.
(or Po-pay) planned and orchestrated the Pueblo Revolt. Popé moved to Taos after being freed from Spanish control and planned a Pueblo war against the Spaniards. 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 13, before the uprising could be put down.
Knowing that the Spaniards had learned of their plans, the Pueblo Indians began their attack before August 11, 1680. One Spaniard was killed on August 9. The full fury of the revolt then began to be felt on August 10. 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 did not participate in the rebellion. Believing themselves the only survivors, the refugees at Isleta left for El Paso del Norte
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.
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.
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 hacienda
s and communities along the lower Rio Grande. They constructed the Iglesia de San Felipe Neri (1706). The thorough development of ranching and some farming in the 18th century laid the foundations for the state's still-flourishing Hispanic culture.
De Vargas’s 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 control. 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 gradually became mounted on Spanish horses by raiding Spanish ranches and stealing horses from Spanish missions in New Mexico. By trade and raid the Indian horse culture quickly spread throughout western America. Navajo and Apache raids for horses on Spanish and Pueblo settlements began in the 1650s or earlier. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 saw another large number of horses falling into Indian hands. By the 1750s the Plains Indians horse culture was well established from Texas
to Alberta
Canada. The Navajo, in addition to being among the first mounted Indians in the U.S., were unique in developing a herding culture based on sheep captured from the Spanish. Early in the 18th century the Navajo were reported to own herds of sheep.
. Hämäläinen calls it an empire. Confronted with Spanish, Mexican, Rench, and American outposts on their periphery in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Mexico, they worked to increase their own safety, prosperity and power. The Comanches used their military power to obtain supplies and labor from the Americans, Mexicans, and Indians through thievery, tribute, and kidnappings. Although powered by violence, the Comanche empire was primarily an economic construction, rooted in an extensive commercial network that facilitated long-distance trade. Dealing with subordinate Indians, the Comanche spread their language and culture across the region. In terms of governance, the Comanches created a decentralized political system, based on a raiding, hunting and pastoral economy and a hierarchical social organization in which young men could advance through success in war.
In 1706, the Comanche first came to the attention of the colonists of New Mexico and by 1719 they were raiding the colony as well as the other Indian tribes. The other tribes had primarily raided for plunder, but the Comanche introduced a new level of violence to the conflict. Other Indians were among their victims. The Comanche were pure nomads, well mounted by the 1730s. They were thus more elusive and mobile than the semi-nomadic Apache and Navajo, who were dependent upon agriculture or herding for part of their livelihoods.
The Comanche both raided and traded with the New Mexicans. They were especially prominent at the annual Taos
trade fair where they exchanged hides, meat and captives peacefully while at the same time raiding other Spanish and Pueblo settlements. By the 1770s, the Comanche threatened the survival of New Mexico, stripping the colony of horses, forcing the abandonment of many settlements, and killing, in 1778, 127 Spanish settlers and Pueblo Indians. Punitive expeditions by the Spanish and their Indian allies against the Comanche were usually ineffective, but in 1779 a Spanish and Pueblo Indian force of 560 men, led by Juan Bautista de Anza
, surprised a Comanche village near Pueblo, Colorado
and killed Cuerno Verde (Green Horn) the most prominent of the Comanche war leaders. The Comanche subsequently sued for peace with New Mexico, joined the New Mexicans in expeditions against their common enemy, the Apache, and turned their attention to raiding Spanish settlements in Texas and northern Mexico. The New Mexicans on their part took care not to re-antagonize the Comanche and lavished gifts on them. The peace between New Mexico and the Comanche endured until the American conquest of the province in 1846.
Peace with the Comanche stimulated a growth in the population of New Mexico and the expansion of the New Mexican settlements eastward onto the Great Plains
. The inhabitants of these new settlements were mostly genizaros, Indians and the descendants of Indians who had been ransomed from the Comanche.
Navajo and Apache raids continued to plague the province until the Navajo were defeated in 1864 by Kit Carson
and the surrender of the Apache leader Geronimo
in 1886. The Utes had earlier allied themselves with the New Mexicans for mutual protection against the Comanche.
The Comanche empire collapsed when their villages were repeatedly decimated by epidemics of smallpox and cholera, especially in 1849; their population plunged from about 20,000 in the 18th century to just 1,500 by 1875 when they surrendered to the U.S. Government. The Comanches were no longer able to deal with the U.S. Army and the wave of white settlers which encroached on their region in the decades after the Mexican American War ended in 1848.
's orders were to find the headwaters of the Arkansas
and Red
rivers. He was to explore the southwestern part of the Louisiana Purchase
. In 1807, when Pike and his men crossed into the San Luis Valley
of northern New Mexico they were arrested and taken to Santa Fe, and then sent south to Chihuahua
where they appeared before the Commandant General Salcedo. After four months of diplomatic negotiations, Pike and his men were returned to the United States, under protest, across the Red River
at Natchitoches
.
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. In 1819 the Adams-Onís Treaty
set the border between the United States and the Spanish North American territories leaving present-day New Mexico on the Spanish side. As a part of New Spain
, the claims for the province of New Mexico passed to independent Mexico following the 1810-1821 Mexican War of Independence
. During the 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 grant
s (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.
Captain William Becknell of Franklin, Missouri, arrived in Santa Fe in 1821. 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 ran 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 (1,260 km) 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 Bent's Fort.
In the Revolt of 1837
the citizens of Chimayo
rebelled against the government after they had concluded that their complaints about unfair taxation had been ignored. They occupied Santa Fe and executed the governor, Albino Pérez
. Manuel Armijo
fielded a force of about 1,000 soldiers from Chihuahua and from the former Santa Fe detachment who marched north and restored the government.
seceded from Mexico in 1836 and claimed but never controlled territory as far south and west as the Rio Grande
. While most of the northwestern territory was then the Comancheria
, it would have included Santa Fe and divided New Mexico. The only attempt to realize the claim was Texian
President Mirabeau Lamar's Santa Fe Expedition
, which failed spectacularly. The wagon train, supplied for a journey of about half the actual distance between Austin and Santa Fe, followed the wrong river, back-tracked, and arrived in New Mexico to find the Mexican governor restored and hostile. Surrendering peaceably upon a pledge to be allowed to return the way they came, the Texians found themselves bound at gunpoint and their execution put to a vote of the garrison. By one vote, they were spared and marched south to Chihuahua and then Mexico City
.
and his army of 300 cavalry men of the First Dragoons, about 1600 Missouri volunteers in the First and Second Regiments of Fort Leavenworth, Missouri Mounted Cavalry 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, appointing Charles Bent, a Santa Fe trail trader living in Taos, as acting civil governor. He 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 approximately 800 men; a second group under Colonel Alexander William Doniphan
, with a little over 800 men was ordered to capture El Paso
, in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico and then join up with General Wool Kansas University; the third, of about 300 dragoons mounted on mules, he led under his command to California. The Mormon Battalion
, mostly marching on foot under Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke
, was directed to follow Kearny with wagons to establish a new southern route to California.
When Kearny encountered Kit Carson
, traveling East and bearing messages that California had already been subdued, he sent nearly 200 of his dragoons back to New Mexico. 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 had taken control of the approximately 7,000 Californios from San Diego to Sacramento
. New Mexico territory, which then included present-day Arizona, was under undisputed United States control, but 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 protected citizens in the new US territories under a form of martial law called the Kearny Code
; it was essentially Kearny and the U.S. Army's promise that the US would respect existing religious and legal claims, and maintain law and order. The Kearny Code became one of the bases of New Mexico's legal code during its territorial period, which was one of the longest in United States history.
Kearny's arrival in New Mexico had been essentially without conflict; the governor surrendered without battle, and the Mexican authorities took the money they could find and retreated into southern Mexico. After Kearny's departure, a rebellion
of New Mexicans and several Native American tribes arose in the pueblo of Taos. The Taos rebels, nearly all Pueblo Indians, attacked and killed acting Governor Charles Bent and about ten other American officials 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 thick-walled adobe
church. US forces breached a wall and directed concentrated cannon fire into the church, where they killed about 150 rebels. Close fighting followed and they captured about 400 men. Six rebel leaders were arraigned, and tried. Five were convicted of murder and one of treason; all were hanged in April 1847. Additional executions followed.
Price fought three more engagements with the rebels, which included many Pueblo Indians, who wanted to push the Americans from the territory. By mid-February he had the revolt well under control. President Polk promoted Price to a brevet rank of Brigadier General for his service. Total fatalities amounted to more than 300 New Mexican native rebels and about 30 Anglos, as they called American troops and settlers.
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. Texas was also recognized as a part of the United States under this treaty. Mexico also received $15 million cash, plus the assumption of slightly more than $3 million in outstanding Mexican debts. New Mexico, the new name for the region between Texas and California, became a territory. 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 treaty promised to protect the ownership rights of the heirs of the land grants. 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. All residents could leave for Mexico, or remain and be full U.S. citizens. Apart from Mexican government officials, the great majority remained.
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.
In the United States House of Representatives
the Committee of Thirty-Three
on January 14, 1861 reported that it had reached majority agreement on a constitutional amendment
to protect slavery where it existed and the immediate admission of New Mexico Territory
as a slave state
. This latter proposal would result in a de facto extension of the Missouri Compromise
line for all existing territories below the line.
After the Peace Conference of 1861
, a bill for New Mexico statehood was tabled by a vote of 115 to 71 with opposition coming from both Southerners and Republicans.
. The most important radio station since its founding in 1922 has been KKOB (AM) in Albuquerque. With 50,000 watts of transmitter power on a clear channel it reaches audiences in most of New Mexico and parts of neighboring states. Locally important daily papers include the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Las Cruces Sun-News, and the Farmington Daily Times and Deming Headlight.
, Confederate troops from Texas commanded by Gen. Henry Sibley
briefly occupied southern New Mexico in July 1861, pushing up the Rio Grande valley as far as Santa Fe
by February 1862. Defeated in the Battle of Glorieta Pass
, they were forced to withdraw south. Union troops from California under Gen. James Carleton re-captured the territory in August 1862. 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.
and the Navajo
continue to plague New Mexico. In 1864, the U.S. Army trapped and captured the main Navajo forces, forcing them onto a small reservation in eastern New Mexico is what is called the Long Walk of the Navajo
, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. This put an end to their livestock raids on New Mexican farms, ranches, and Indian pueblos. After several years of severe hardships that saw many Navajos die, they were allowed to return to most of their lands in 1868. Sporadic Apache small-scale raiding continued until Apache chief Geronimo
finally was captured and imprisoned in 1886.
After the Civil War, the Army set up a chain of forts to protect the people and the caravans of commerce. Most tribes were relocated on reservations near the forts, where they were given food and supplies by the federal government.
In 1851 the Vatican appointed Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814–1888), a French cleric, as bishop of the diocese of Sante Fe. There were only nine priests at first; Lamy brought in many more. In 1875 it was upgraded to the status of archdiocese, with supervision over Catholic affairs in New Mexico and Arizona.He build St. Francis Cathedral along French lines, between 1869 and 1886.
To provide the forts and reservations with food, the federal government contracted for thousands of head of cattle, and Texas cattlemen began entering New Mexico with their herds. Rancher Charles Goodnight blazed the first cattle trail through New Mexico in 1866, extending from the Pecos River northward into Colorado and Wyoming. Over it more than 250,000 head of cattle trailed to market. John Chisum also brought his herds up the Pecos and, as employer of the desperado Billy the Kid
, figured prominently in the Lincoln County War
of 1878-1880. This was only one of the many struggles between cattle herders and territorial officials, among rival cattle barons, and between sheep ranchers and cattle ranchers during this period. The longest of the cattle trails, the Butterfield Trail, had its first important stop in New Mexico at Fort Fillmore. It began operations in 1858 and gave way to the railroad in 1881.
The Santa Fe Railroad reached New Mexico in 1878, with the first locomotive crossing Raton Pass that December. It reached Lamy, New Mexico
, 16 miles (26 km) from Santa Fe in 1879 and Santa Fe itself in 1880, and Deming in 1881, thereby replacing the storied Santa Fe Trail
as a way to ship cattle to market. The new town of Albuquerque, platted in 1880 as the Santa Fe Railroad extended westward, quickly enveloped the old town. The rival Southern Pacific was completed between the Rio Grande valley and the Arizona border in 1881.
From 1880 to 1910 the territory grew rapidly. With the coming of the railroad, many homesteaders moved to New Mexico. In 1886 the New Mexico Education Association of school teachers was organized; in 1889 small state colleges were established at Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Socorro; and in 1891 the first effective public school law was passed. An irrigation project in the Pecos River valley in 1889 marked the first of many such projects to irrigate farms in the dry state. Discovery of artesian waters at Roswell in 1890 gave both farming and mining a boost. The power of the cattle barons faded as much land was fenced in at the expense of the open range. The cattle ranchers and sheep ranchers also learned to tolerate one other, and both the cattle and sheep industries expanded. Mining became even more important, especially gold and silver. Coal mining developed during the 1890s, primarily to supply the railroads, and oil was discovered in Eddy County in 1909. The population of New Mexico reached 195,000 in 1910.
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.
admitted New Mexico as the 47th state of the Union. The admission of the neighboring State of Arizona
on February 14, 1912 completed the contiguous 48 states. Thousands of Mexicans fled north during the civil war that broke out in Mexico in 1911. In 1916 Mexican military leader Pancho Villa
led an invasion across the border into Columbus, New Mexico
, where they burned some homes and killed several Americans. New Mexico contributed some 17,000 men to the armed services during World War I.
gave the Hispanics the opportunity to prove their full American citizenship. Like the "new immigrants" in eastern cities who also constructed dual identities, members of the Nuevomexicano middle class exuberantly participated in the war effort. They melded images of their heritage with patriotic symbols of America, especially in the Spanish-language press. Nuevomexicano politicians and community leaders recruited the rural masses into the war cause overseas and on the home front, including the struggle for woman suffrage. Support from New Mexico's Anglo establishment aided their efforts. Their wartime contributions improved the conditions of minority citizenship for Nuevomexicanos but did not entirely eliminate social inequality. For example, no Hispanics—not even the son of a regent—was allowed in a fraternity at the state university.
The Anglos and Hispanics cooperated because both prosperous and poor Hispanics could vote and they outnumbered the Anglos. Around 1920, the term "Spanish-American" replaced "Mexican" in polite society and in political debate. The new term served both the interests of both groups. For Spanish speakers, it evoked Spain, Not Mexico, recalling images of a romantic colonial past and suggesting a future of equality in Anglo-dominated America. For Anglos, on the other hand, it was a useful term that upgraded the state's image, for the old image as a "Mexican" land suggested violence and disorder, and had discouraged capital investment and set back the statehood campaign. The new term gave the impression that "Spanish Americans" belonged to a true American political culture, making the established order appear all the more democratic.
ers who sought to modernize the state as fast as possible programs, soldiers and airmen from all over who came for training at the many military bases, famous scientists who came to Los Alamos to build a super weapon, and stayed on, retirees from colder climes. They brought money and new ideas, with the eventual loss of a quaint uniqueness and the submergence into a standard national culture.
For the first 25 years of statehood, the state Supreme Court
operated in cramped quarters in the Capitol building. Not until 1937 as a result of a Public Works Administration
(PWA) New Deal
project, did the Supreme Court get its own building. That year, there was a diphtheria epidemic in Santa Fe resulting in 20 deaths before serum was flown in to end it.
New wealth came from the discovery of oil in the 1920s.
The top secret remote Los Alamos Research Center
opened in 1943 and the scientists and engineers invented the world's first atomic bomb. The first test at Trinity site in the desert on the White Sands Proving Grounds
near Alamogordo
on July 16, 1945 ushered in the atomic age, and moved New Mexico to the forefront of world-class science.
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
.
As a state dependent on both smokestack industry and scenic tourism, New Mexico was at the center of the debates over clean air legislation, particularly the Clean Air Act of 1967 and its amendments in 1970 and 1977. The Kennecott Copper Corporation, operated a large the smelter at Hurley, New Mexico
, which was responsible for thick clouds air pollution, led the opposition to the environmentalists, represented by the New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water. Eventually the company was forced to comply with fairly strict standards, but they often managed to delay the compliance process for years by threatening economic repercussions such as plant closings and unemployment.
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
was not officially recorded until the arriving of the Conquistadors, who encountered Native American Pueblo
Pueblo
Pueblo is a term used to describe modern communities of Native Americans in the Southwestern United States of America. The first Spanish explorers of the Southwest used this term to describe the communities housed in apartment-like structures built of stone, adobe mud, and other local material...
s when they explored the area in the 16th century. Since that time, the area has been under the control of Spain, Mexico, and the United States.
Native American settlements
Human occupation of New MexicoNew Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
stretches back at least 11,000 years to the Clovis culture
Clovis culture
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture that first appears 11,500 RCYBP , at the end of the last glacial period, characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools...
of hunter-gatherers. They left evidence of their campsites and stone tools. After the invention of agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, the land was inhabited by the Ancient Pueblo Peoples
Ancient Pueblo Peoples
Ancient Pueblo People or Ancestral Pueblo peoples were an ancient Native American culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the United States, comprising southern Utah, northern Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and southern Colorado...
, who built houses out of stone or adobe bricks. They experienced a Golden Age
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...
around AD 1000, but climate change led to migration and cultural evolution. From those people arose the historic Pueblo people
Pueblo people
The Pueblo people are a Native American people in the Southwestern United States. Their traditional economy is based on agriculture and trade. When first encountered by the Spanish in the 16th century, they were living in villages that the Spanish called pueblos, meaning "towns". Of the 21...
s who lived primarily along the few major rivers of the region. The most important rivers are the Rio Grande
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...
, the Pecos
Pecos
Pecos may refer to:* Pecos Bill, a mythical American cowboy, immortalized in numerous tall tales* Pecos Classification, a division of all known Ancient Pueblo Peoples culture into chronological phases...
, the Canadian, the San Juan, and the Gila
Gila
- Animals :*Gila, a genus of cyprinid fish known as western chubs*Gila monster, a venomous lizard*Gila trout, a trout native to the Southwestern United States*Gila Woodpecker, a species of woodpecker found in the Southwestern United States- Geography :...
.
PREHISTORIC NEW MEXICANS>
Clovis culture
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture that first appears 11,500 RCYBP , at the end of the last glacial period, characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools...
Folsom tradition
The Folsom Complex is a name given by archaeologists to a specific Paleo-Indian archaeological culture that occupied much of central North America...
Basketmaker (culture)
The Basketmaker culture of the Ancient Pueblo People began about 1500 BC and continued until about AD 500 with the beginning of the Pueblo I Era...
Basketmaker (culture)
The Basketmaker culture of the Ancient Pueblo People began about 1500 BC and continued until about AD 500 with the beginning of the Pueblo I Era...
Pueblo I Era
The Pueblo I Era, from AD 750 to 900, was the first period in which Ancient Pueblo People began living in pueblo structures and realized an evolution in architecture, artistic expression, and water conservation...
Pueblo II Era
The Pueblo II Era, AD 900 to 1150, was the second pueblo period of the Ancient Pueblo People of the Four Corners region of the American southwest. During this period people lived in dwellings made of stone and mortar, enjoyed communal activities in kivas, built towers and water conversing dams,...
Pueblos
The Pueblo peoplePueblo people
The Pueblo people are a Native American people in the Southwestern United States. Their traditional economy is based on agriculture and trade. When first encountered by the Spanish in the 16th century, they were living in villages that the Spanish called pueblos, meaning "towns". Of the 21...
built a flourishing sedentary culture in the 13th century, constructing small towns in the valley of the Rio Grande
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...
and pueblos nearby.
The Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
encountered Pueblo civilization and elements of the Athabaskans in the 16th century. Cabeza de Vaca in 1535, one of only four survivors of the Panfilo de Narvaez
Pánfilo de Narváez
Pánfilo de Narváez was a Spanish conqueror and soldier in the Americas. He is most remembered as the leader of two expeditions, one to Mexico in 1520 to oppose Hernán Cortés, and the disastrous Narváez expedition to Florida in 1527....
expedition of 1527, tells of hearing Indians talk about fabulous cities somewhere in New Mexico. Fray Marcos de Niza
Marcos de Niza
Fray Marcos de Niza was a Franciscan friar. He was born in Nice , which was at that time under the control of the Italian House of Savoy....
enthusiastically identified these as the fabulously rich Seven Cities of Cíbola
Quivira and Cíbola
Quivira is a place first mentioned by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado in 1541, who visited it during his searches for the mythical "Seven Cities of Gold". The location and identity of the "Quivirans" has been much debated over a wide area, including Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri...
, the mythical seven cities of gold. Francisco Vásquez de Coronado
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado y Luján was a Spanish conquistador, who visited New Mexico and other parts of what are now the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542...
led a massive expedition to find these cities in 1540–1542. Coronado camped near an excavated pueblo today preserved as Coronado National Memorial
Coronado National Memorial
The Coronado National Memorial commemorates the first organized expedition into the Southwest by conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. The memorial is located in a natural setting on the international border on the southeast flank of the Huachuca Mountains south of Sierra Vista, Arizona...
in 1541. The Spanish 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 Zuñi
Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico
Zuni Pueblo is a census-designated place in McKinley County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 6,367 at the 2000 census...
, Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo Pueblo, New Mexico
Santo Domingo Pueblo, also known as Kewa Pueblo , is an Indian pueblo and a census-designated place in Sandoval County, New Mexico, in the United States. The pueblo is located approximately southwest of Santa Fe west of Interstate 25. As of the 2000 census, the CDP population was 2,550...
, and Laguna
Laguna Pueblo
Laguna is a Native American tribe of the Pueblo people in west-central New Mexico, USA. The name, Laguna, is Spanish and derives from the lake located on their reservation. The real Keresan name of the tribe is Kawaik. The population of the tribe exceeds 7,000 , making it the largest Keresan...
. There are three different languages spoken by the nineteen foxes.
Athabaskans-Apachean
The major Southern Athabaskan (also called Apachean) groups today are generally called NavajoNavajo people
The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
and Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
, 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 consistent from the 16th century to the 19th century. The one consistent name was the name the people called themselves which was Dine'. The Navajo and Apache made up the largest non-Pueblo Indian group in the Southwest. These two tribes led semi-nomadic lifestyles and spoke a similar language.
Some experts estimate that the semi-nomadic Apaches were in New Mexico in the 13th century. Spanish records indicated that they traded with the Pueblos and various bands or tribes participated in the Southwestern Revolt against the Spanish in the 1680s. By the early 18th century the Spanish had to build a series of over 25 forts to protect themselves and subjugated populations from traditional raiding parties of Athabaskans.
The Navajo, which is the largest tribe in the United States, live in present-day northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. The Mescalero Apache live east of the Rio Grande. The Jicarilla Apache live west of the Rio Grande. The Chiricahua Apache lived in southwestern New Mexico until the late 19th century.
Spanish exploration and colonization
Francisco Vázquez 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 NarvaezPánfilo de Narváez
Pánfilo de Narváez was a Spanish conqueror and soldier in the Americas. He is most remembered as the leader of two expeditions, one to Mexico in 1520 to oppose Hernán Cortés, and the disastrous Narváez expedition to Florida in 1527....
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 Sinaloa, 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 hundreds of head of sheep and cattle as a portable food supply. Coronado's men found several adobe
Adobe
Adobe is a natural building material made from sand, clay, water, and some kind of fibrous or organic material , which the builders shape into bricks using frames and dry in the sun. Adobe buildings are similar to cob and mudbrick buildings. Adobe structures are extremely durable, and account for...
pueblos (towns) in 1541 but found no rich cities of gold. Further widespread expeditions http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/national_parks/coronado_expedition.jpg 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. Coronado, however, was highly unlikely to have been the source of the horses that Plains Indians later adopted as the cornerstone of their culture. Only two of Coronado's horses were mares,
Over 50 years after Coronado, Juan de Oñate
Juan de Oñate
Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar was a Spanish explorer, colonial governor of the New Spain province of New Mexico, and founder of various settlements in the present day Southwest of the United States.-Biography:...
came north from Mexico with 500 Spanish settlers and soldiers and 7,000 head of livestock and founded the first Spanish settlement in New Mexico on July 11, 1598. The governor named the settlement San Juan de los Caballeros. This means "Saint John of the Knights". San Juan was in a small valley. Nearby the Chama River
Chama River
The Río Chama , is one of the main rivers of the state of Mérida in Venezuela. The headwaters of the Chama are the Mifafí high lands, in the Andes Range, near the town of Apartaderos. Its outlet is at Lake Maracaibo....
flows into the Rio Grande. Oñate pioneered the grandly named El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, "The Royal Road," a 700 mile (1,100 km) trail from the rest of New Spain
New Spain
New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...
to his remote colony. Oñate was made the first governor
Spanish governors of New Mexico
The following is a list of governors of the Province of New Mexico under the Viceroyalty of New Spain.*Juan de Oñate *Cristóbal de Oñate *Pedro de Peralta *Bernadino de Ceballos...
of the new province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico
Santa Fe de Nuevo México
Santa Fe de Nuevo México was a province of New Spain and later Mexico that existed from the late 16th century up through the mid-19th century. It was centered on the upper valley of the Rio Grande , in an area that included most of the present-day U.S. state of New Mexico...
. The Native Americans at Acoma
Acoma Pueblo
Acoma Pueblo is a Native American pueblo approximately 60 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico in the United States. Three reservations make up Acoma Pueblo: Sky City , Acomita, and McCartys. The Acoma Pueblo tribe is a federally recognized tribal entity...
revolted against this Spanish encroachment but faced severe suppression. In battles with the Acomas, Oñate lost 11 soldiers and two servants, killed hundreds of Indians, and punished every man over 25 years of age by the amputation of their left foot. The Franciscans found the pueblo people increasingly unwilling to consent to baptism by newcomers who continued to demand food, clothing and labor. Acoma is also known as the oldest continually inhabited city in the United States.
Oñate's capital of San Juan proved to be vulnerable to "Apache" (probably Navajo) attacks and a later governor, Pedro de Peralta, moved the capital and established the settlement of Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
in 1609 at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
Sangre de Cristo Mountains
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are the southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains. They are located in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico in the United States...
. Santa Fe is the oldest capital city in the United States. Peralta built the Palace of the Governors
Palace of the Governors
The Palace of the Governors is an adobe structure located on Palace Avenue on the Plaza of Santa Fe, New Mexico between Palace Avenue and Washington Street. It is within the Santa Fe Historic District and it served as the seat of government for the State of New Mexico for centuries...
in 1610. Although the colony failed to prosper, some missions survived. Spanish settlers arrived at the site of Albuquerque in the mid-17th century. Missionaries attempted to convert the natives to Christianity, but had little success.http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/pueblo/indianpueblohistory.htm
The objective of Spanish rule of New Mexico was exploitation of the native population and resources. "Governors were a greedy and rapacious lot whose single-minded interest was to wring as much personal wealth from the province as their terms allowed. They exploited Indian labor for transport, sold Indian slaves in New Spain, and sold Indian products...and other goods manufactured by Indian slave labor." The exploitative nature of Spanish rule involved them in nearly continuous raids and reprisals with nomadic Indian tribes on the borders, especially the Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
, Navajo
Navajo
Navajo or Navaho may refer to:* Navajo people* Navajo Nation, the governmental entity of the Navajo people* Navajo language, spoken by the Navajo people-Places in the United States:* Navajo, San Diego, California* Navajo, New Mexico...
, and Comanche
Comanche
The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Historically, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian...
.
Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
missionaries came to New Mexico with Onate and a struggle ensued between secular and religious authorities. Both colonists and the Franciscans depended upon Indian labor, mostly Pueblos, and competed with each other to control an Indian population decreasing because of European diseases and exploitation. The struggle between the Franciscans and the civil government came to a head in the late 1650s. Governor Bernardo Lopez de Mendizabal and his subordinate Nicolas de Aguilar
Nicolas de Aguilar
Nicolas de Aguilar a Mestizo, was a Spanish official in New Mexico. He was tried for heresy and found guilty by the Inquisition.-Early life:...
forbade the Franciscans to punish Indians or employ them without pay and granted the Pueblos permission to practice their traditional dances and religious ceremonies. Lopez and Aguilar were arrested, turned over to the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
, and tried in Mexico City. Thereafter, the Franciscans reigned supreme in the province. Pueblo dissatisfaction with the rule of the clerics was the main cause of the Pueblo revolt.
Pueblo Revolt
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 encomiendaEncomienda
The encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas to regulate Native American labor....
s 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
Navajo people
The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
and Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
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
Spanish monarchy
The Monarchy of Spain, constitutionally referred to as The Crown and commonly referred to as the Spanish monarchy or Hispanic Monarchy, is a constitutional institution and an historic office of Spain...
and the god of the Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
it imposed, the people turned to their old gods. This provoked a wave of repression on the part of Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
missionaries.
Popé
Following his arrest on a charge of witchcraft and subsequent release, PopéPopé
Popé or Po'pay was a Tewa religious leader from Ohkay Owingeh , who led the Pueblo Revolt against Spanish colonial rule in 1680.-Background:...
(or Po-pay) planned and orchestrated the Pueblo Revolt. Popé moved to Taos after being freed from Spanish control and planned a Pueblo war against the Spaniards. 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
Calendar of saints
The calendar of saints is a traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the feast day of said saint...
of Saint Lawrence
Saint Lawrence
Lawrence of Rome was one of the seven deacons of ancient Rome who were martyred during the persecution of Valerian in 258.- Holy Chalice :...
(San Lorenzo), August 13, before the uprising could be put down.
Knowing that the Spaniards had learned of their plans, the Pueblo Indians began their attack before August 11, 1680. One Spaniard was killed on August 9. The full fury of the revolt then began to be felt on August 10. The attack was commenced by the Taos, Picuris
Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico
Picuris Pueblo is a census-designated place in Taos County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 86 at the 2000 census. The Pueblo people are from the Tiwa ethnic group of Native Americans. Picurís Pueblo is a member of the Eight Northern Pueblos.Picuris village has occupied its present...
, 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
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
, the only Spanish city, and Isleta Pueblo
Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo
Ysleta del Sur Pueblo is a Puebloan Native American tribal entity in the Ysleta section of El Paso, Texas, comprising a formerly Southern Tiwa-speaking people who were displaced from New Mexico in 1680 and 1681 during the Pueblo Revolt against the Spaniards.-Tigua:In Spanish the people and...
, one of the few pueblos that did not participate in the rebellion. Believing themselves the only survivors, the refugees at Isleta left for El Paso del Norte
Ciudad Juárez
Ciudad Juárez , officially known today as Heroica Ciudad Juárez, but abbreviated Juárez and formerly known as El Paso del Norte, is a city and seat of the municipality of Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Juárez's estimated population is 1.5 million people. The city lies on the Rio Grande...
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
Antonio de Otermín
Antonio de Otermín was the Spanish Governor of the northern New Spain province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, today the U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona, from 1678 to 1682. Otermín was governor at the time of the Pueblo Revolt, during which the religious leader Popé led the Pueblo people in a...
, barricaded in the Governor’s Palace
Palace of the Governors
The Palace of the Governors is an adobe structure located on Palace Avenue on the Plaza of Santa Fe, New Mexico between Palace Avenue and Washington Street. It is within the Santa Fe Historic District and it served as the seat of government for the State of New Mexico for centuries...
, called for a general retreat, and on September 21 the Spanish settlers streamed out of the capital city headed for El Paso del Norte.
Popé's kingdom
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. Kivas (rooms for religious rituals) reopened and Popé ordered all Indians to bathe in soap made of yucca root. 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.
"Bloodless" reconquest
In July of 1692, Diego de VargasDiego de Vargas
Diego de Vargas Zapata y Luján Ponce de León y Contreras , commonly known as Don Diego de Vargas, was a Spanish Governor of the New Spain territory of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, today the U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona, titular 1690 – 1692, effective 1692 – 1696 and 1703 – 1704...
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 hacienda
Hacienda
Hacienda is a Spanish word for an estate. Some haciendas were plantations, mines, or even business factories. Many haciendas combined these productive activities...
s and communities along the lower Rio Grande. They constructed the Iglesia de San Felipe Neri (1706). The thorough development of ranching and some farming in the 18th century laid the foundations for the state's still-flourishing Hispanic culture.
De Vargas’s 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 control. 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.
Spanish Relations with Nomadic Indians
From the date of its founding the Pueblo Indians and the Spanish settlers in the colony of New Mexico were plagued by hostile relationships with nomadic and semi-nomadic Navajo, Apache, Ute, and Comanche Indians. Spanish slave raids were an important factor contributing to this hostility.The southwestern Indians gradually became mounted on Spanish horses by raiding Spanish ranches and stealing horses from Spanish missions in New Mexico. By trade and raid the Indian horse culture quickly spread throughout western America. Navajo and Apache raids for horses on Spanish and Pueblo settlements began in the 1650s or earlier. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 saw another large number of horses falling into Indian hands. By the 1750s the Plains Indians horse culture was well established from Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
to Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
Canada. The Navajo, in addition to being among the first mounted Indians in the U.S., were unique in developing a herding culture based on sheep captured from the Spanish. Early in the 18th century the Navajo were reported to own herds of sheep.
Comancheria
After the Pueblo revolt, the most serious threat to the survival of the colony of New Mexico came from the Comanche. Scholar Hämäläinen (2008) argues that from the 1750s to the 1850s, the Comanches were the dominant group in the Southwest, and the domain they ruled was known as ComancheriaComancheria
The Comancheria is the name commonly given to the region of New Mexico, west Texas and nearby areas occupied by the Comanche before the 1860s.-Geography:...
. Hämäläinen calls it an empire. Confronted with Spanish, Mexican, Rench, and American outposts on their periphery in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Mexico, they worked to increase their own safety, prosperity and power. The Comanches used their military power to obtain supplies and labor from the Americans, Mexicans, and Indians through thievery, tribute, and kidnappings. Although powered by violence, the Comanche empire was primarily an economic construction, rooted in an extensive commercial network that facilitated long-distance trade. Dealing with subordinate Indians, the Comanche spread their language and culture across the region. In terms of governance, the Comanches created a decentralized political system, based on a raiding, hunting and pastoral economy and a hierarchical social organization in which young men could advance through success in war.
In 1706, the Comanche first came to the attention of the colonists of New Mexico and by 1719 they were raiding the colony as well as the other Indian tribes. The other tribes had primarily raided for plunder, but the Comanche introduced a new level of violence to the conflict. Other Indians were among their victims. The Comanche were pure nomads, well mounted by the 1730s. They were thus more elusive and mobile than the semi-nomadic Apache and Navajo, who were dependent upon agriculture or herding for part of their livelihoods.
The Comanche both raided and traded with the New Mexicans. They were especially prominent at the annual Taos
Taos, New Mexico
Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico, incorporated in 1934. As of the 2000 census, its population was 4,700. Other nearby communities include Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, and El Prado. The town is close to Taos Pueblo, the Native American...
trade fair where they exchanged hides, meat and captives peacefully while at the same time raiding other Spanish and Pueblo settlements. By the 1770s, the Comanche threatened the survival of New Mexico, stripping the colony of horses, forcing the abandonment of many settlements, and killing, in 1778, 127 Spanish settlers and Pueblo Indians. Punitive expeditions by the Spanish and their Indian allies against the Comanche were usually ineffective, but in 1779 a Spanish and Pueblo Indian force of 560 men, led by Juan Bautista de Anza
Juan Bautista de Anza
Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto was a Novo-Spanish explorer and Governor of New Mexico for the Spanish Empire.-Early life:...
, surprised a Comanche village near Pueblo, Colorado
Pueblo, Colorado
Pueblo is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Pueblo County, Colorado, United States. The population was 106,595 in 2010 census, making it the 246th most populous city in the United States....
and killed Cuerno Verde (Green Horn) the most prominent of the Comanche war leaders. The Comanche subsequently sued for peace with New Mexico, joined the New Mexicans in expeditions against their common enemy, the Apache, and turned their attention to raiding Spanish settlements in Texas and northern Mexico. The New Mexicans on their part took care not to re-antagonize the Comanche and lavished gifts on them. The peace between New Mexico and the Comanche endured until the American conquest of the province in 1846.
Peace with the Comanche stimulated a growth in the population of New Mexico and the expansion of the New Mexican settlements eastward onto the Great Plains
Great Plains
The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...
. The inhabitants of these new settlements were mostly genizaros, Indians and the descendants of Indians who had been ransomed from the Comanche.
Navajo and Apache raids continued to plague the province until the Navajo were defeated in 1864 by Kit Carson
Kit Carson
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married...
and the surrender of the Apache leader Geronimo
Geronimo
Geronimo was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who fought against Mexico and the United States for their expansion into Apache tribal lands for several decades during the Apache Wars. Allegedly, "Geronimo" was the name given to him during a Mexican incident...
in 1886. The Utes had earlier allied themselves with the New Mexicans for mutual protection against the Comanche.
The Comanche empire collapsed when their villages were repeatedly decimated by epidemics of smallpox and cholera, especially in 1849; their population plunged from about 20,000 in the 18th century to just 1,500 by 1875 when they surrendered to the U.S. Government. The Comanches were no longer able to deal with the U.S. Army and the wave of white settlers which encroached on their region in the decades after the Mexican American War ended in 1848.
U.S. exploration
Following Lewis and Clark many men started exploring and trapping in the western parts of the United States. Sent out in 1806, Lt. Zebulon PikeZebulon Pike
Zebulon Montgomery Pike Jr. was an American officer and explorer for whom Pikes Peak in Colorado is named. As a United States Army captain in 1806-1807, he led the Pike Expedition to explore and document the southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase and to find the headwaters of the Red River,...
's orders were to find the headwaters of the Arkansas
Arkansas River
The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. The Arkansas generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's initial basin starts in the Western United States in Colorado, specifically the Arkansas...
and Red
Red River (Mississippi watershed)
The Red River, or sometimes the Red River of the South, is a major tributary of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers in the southern United States of America. The river gains its name from the red-bed country of its watershed. It is one of several rivers with that name...
rivers. He was to explore the southwestern part of the Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
. In 1807, when Pike and his men crossed into the San Luis Valley
San Luis Valley
The San Luis Valley is an extensive alpine valley in the U.S. states of Colorado and New Mexico covering approximately and sitting at an average elevation of above sea level. The valley sits atop the Rio Grande Rift and is drained to the south by the Rio Grande River, which rises in the San Juan...
of northern New Mexico they were arrested and taken to Santa Fe, and then sent south to Chihuahua
Chihuahua, Chihuahua
The city of Chihuahua is the state capital of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It has a population of about 825,327. The predominant activity is industry, including domestic heavy, light industries, consumer goods production, and to a smaller extent maquiladoras.-History:It has been said that the...
where they appeared before the Commandant General Salcedo. After four months of diplomatic negotiations, Pike and his men were returned to the United States, under protest, across the Red River
Red River (Mississippi watershed)
The Red River, or sometimes the Red River of the South, is a major tributary of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers in the southern United States of America. The river gains its name from the red-bed country of its watershed. It is one of several rivers with that name...
at Natchitoches
Natchitoches, Louisiana
Natchitoches is a city in and the parish seat of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States. Established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis as part of French Louisiana, the community was named after the Natchitoches Indian tribe. The City of Natchitoches was first incorporated on February...
.
Mexican territory
| Date | Spanish | Pueblo |
|---|---|---|
| 1600 | 700 | 80,000 |
| 1609 | 60 | ? |
| 1620 | 800 | 17,000 |
| 1638 | 800 | 40,000 |
| 1680 | 1,470 | 17,000 |
| 1749 | 4,353 | 10,658 |
| 1800 | 19,276 | 9,732 |
| 1820 | 28,436 | 9,923 |
| 1842 | 46,988 | 16,510 |
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
of France sold the vast unsettled and undeveloped Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
, which extended into the northeastern corner of New Mexico, to the United States in 1803. In 1819 the Adams-Onís Treaty
Adams-Onís Treaty
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty or the Purchase of Florida, was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that gave Florida to the U.S. and set out a boundary between the U.S. and New Spain . It settled a standing border dispute between the two...
set the border between the United States and the Spanish North American territories leaving present-day New Mexico on the Spanish side. As a part of New Spain
New Spain
New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...
, the claims for the province of New Mexico passed to independent Mexico following the 1810-1821 Mexican War of Independence
Mexican War of Independence
The Mexican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and the Spanish colonial authorities which started on 16 September 1810. The movement, which became known as the Mexican War of Independence, was led by Mexican-born Spaniards, Mestizos and Amerindians who sought...
. During the 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 grant
Land grant
A land grant is a gift of real estate – land or its privileges – made by a government or other authority as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service...
s (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
William Becknell
William Becknell was a freight operator who established the Santa Fe Trail.Becknell was born in Amherst County, Virginia. He left Franklin, Missouri in September 1821 on his first trip to the western US with a load of freight to deliver to Santa Fe, New Mexico...
returned to the United States in November 1821 with news that independent Mexico now welcomed trade through Santa Fe.
Captain William Becknell of Franklin, Missouri, arrived in Santa Fe in 1821. William Becknell
William Becknell
William Becknell was a freight operator who established the Santa Fe Trail.Becknell was born in Amherst County, Virginia. He left Franklin, Missouri in September 1821 on his first trip to the western US with a load of freight to deliver to Santa Fe, New Mexico...
left Independence, Missouri
Independence, Missouri
Independence is the fourth largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri, and is contained within the counties of Jackson and Clay. It is part of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area...
, for Santa Fe early in 1822 with the first party of traders. The Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1822 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial and military highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880...
trading company headed by the brothers Charles Bent
Charles Bent
Charles Bent was appointed as the first Governor of the newly acquired New Mexico Territory by Governor Stephen Watts Kearny in September 1846....
and William Bent
William Bent
William Wells Bent was a frontier trapper, trader, and rancher in the American West who mediated among the Cheyenne Nation, other Native American tribes and the expanding United States. With his brothers, Bent established a trade business along the Santa Fe Trail. In the early 1830s Bent built an...
and Ceran St. Vrain
Ceran St. Vrain
Ceran St. Vrain , also known as Ceran de Hault de Lassus de St. Vrain, was a major fur trader near Taos, New Mexico, where he and his partner William Bent established the trading post of Bent's Fort. St...
, 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
Arkansas River
The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. The Arkansas generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's initial basin starts in the Western United States in Colorado, specifically the Arkansas...
. 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 ran 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 (1,260 km) Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1822 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial and military highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880...
, 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
Dodge City, Kansas
Dodge City is a city in, and the county seat of, Ford County, Kansas, United States. Named after nearby Fort Dodge, the city is famous in American culture for its history as a wild frontier town of the Old West. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,340.-History:The first settlement of...
. The rugged Mountain Division passed over Raton Pass
Raton Pass
Raton Pass is a mountain pass on the Santa Fe Trail along the Colorado-New Mexico border in the United States. Raton Pass is a federally designated National Historic Landmark...
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
Old Spanish Trail (trade route)
The Old Spanish Trail is a historical trade route which connected the northern New Mexico settlements near or in Santa Fe, New Mexico with that of Los Angeles, California and southern California. Approximately long, it ran through areas of high mountains, arid deserts, and deep canyons. It is...
from Los Angeles, California to Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
, 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 Bent's Fort.
Revolt of 1837 (New Mexico)
The Revolt of 1837, also known as the Chimayó Rebellion, was a popular insurrection in New Mexico against Albino Pérez, the Mexican governor at the time.-Background:Governor Pérez had arrived from central Mexico in 1835...
the citizens of Chimayo
Chimayo, New Mexico
Chimayo is a census-designated place in Rio Arriba and Santa Fe Counties in the U.S. state of New Mexico; the community's name is more correctly pronounced and spelled Chimayó, a name that derives from a Tewa name for a local landmark, the hill of Tsi Mayoh...
rebelled against the government after they had concluded that their complaints about unfair taxation had been ignored. They occupied Santa Fe and executed the governor, Albino Pérez
Albino Pérez
Albino Pérez was a Mexican soldier and politician.Pérez was appointed Governor of New Mexico in 1835. He was assassinated near the city of Santa Fe in 1837 during the Revolt of 1837 after he tried to impose taxes ordered by President Antonio López de Santa Anna.In June 2007 a monument...
. Manuel Armijo
Manuel Armijo
Manuel Armijo was a New Mexican soldier and statesman who served three times as governor of New Mexico. He was instrumental in putting down the Revolt of 1837, he led the force that captured the Texan Santa Fe Expedition and he surrendered to the United States in the Mexican-American War.-Early...
fielded a force of about 1,000 soldiers from Chihuahua and from the former Santa Fe detachment who marched north and restored the government.
Texas
The Republic of TexasRepublic of Texas
The Republic of Texas was an independent nation in North America, bordering the United States and Mexico, that existed from 1836 to 1846.Formed as a break-away republic from Mexico by the Texas Revolution, the state claimed borders that encompassed an area that included all of the present U.S...
seceded from Mexico in 1836 and claimed but never controlled territory as far south and west as the Rio Grande
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...
. While most of the northwestern territory was then the Comancheria
Comancheria
The Comancheria is the name commonly given to the region of New Mexico, west Texas and nearby areas occupied by the Comanche before the 1860s.-Geography:...
, it would have included Santa Fe and divided New Mexico. The only attempt to realize the claim was Texian
Texian
Texian is an archaic, mostly defunct 19th century demonym which defined a settler of current-day Texas, one of the southern states of the United States of America which borders the country of Mexico...
President Mirabeau Lamar's Santa Fe Expedition
Texas Santa Fe Expedition
The Texas Santa Fe Expedition was a commercial and military expedition to secure the Republic of Texas's claims to parts of Northern New Mexico for Texas in 1841. The expedition was unofficially initiated by the then President of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, in an attempt to gain control over the...
, which failed spectacularly. The wagon train, supplied for a journey of about half the actual distance between Austin and Santa Fe, followed the wrong river, back-tracked, and arrived in New Mexico to find the Mexican governor restored and hostile. Surrendering peaceably upon a pledge to be allowed to return the way they came, the Texians found themselves bound at gunpoint and their execution put to a vote of the garrison. By one vote, they were spared and marched south to Chihuahua and then Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
.
United States control
Mexican-American War
American General Stephen W. KearnyStephen W. Kearny
Stephen Watts Kearny surname also appears as Kearney in some historic sources; August 30, 1794 October 31, 1848), was one of the foremost antebellum frontier officers of the United States Army. He is remembered for his significant contributions in the Mexican-American War, especially the conquest...
and his army of 300 cavalry men of the First Dragoons, about 1600 Missouri volunteers in the First and Second Regiments of Fort Leavenworth, Missouri Mounted Cavalry and the 500 man Mormon Battalion
Mormon Battalion
The Mormon Battalion was the only religiously based unit in United States military history, and it served from July 1846 to July 1847 during the Mexican-American War. The battalion was a volunteer unit of between 534 and 559 Latter-day Saints men led by Mormon company officers, commanded by regular...
marched down the Santa Fe Trail and entered Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
without opposition in 1846 during the Mexican-American War. Kearny established a joint civil and military government, appointing Charles Bent, a Santa Fe trail trader living in Taos, as acting civil governor. He divided his forces into four commands: one, under Colonel Sterling Price
Sterling Price
Sterling Price was a lawyer, planter, and politician from the U.S. state of Missouri, who served as the 11th Governor of the state from 1853 to 1857. He also served as a United States Army brigadier general during the Mexican-American War, and a Confederate Army major general in the American Civil...
, appointed military governor, was to occupy and maintain order in New Mexico with his approximately 800 men; a second group under Colonel Alexander William Doniphan
Alexander William Doniphan
Alexander William Doniphan was a 19th-century American attorney, soldier and politician from Missouri who is best known today as the man who prevented the summary execution of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Jr. at the close of the 1838 Mormon War in that state...
, with a little over 800 men was ordered to capture El Paso
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...
, in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico and then join up with General Wool Kansas University; the third, of about 300 dragoons mounted on mules, he led under his command to California. The Mormon Battalion
Mormon Battalion
The Mormon Battalion was the only religiously based unit in United States military history, and it served from July 1846 to July 1847 during the Mexican-American War. The battalion was a volunteer unit of between 534 and 559 Latter-day Saints men led by Mormon company officers, commanded by regular...
, mostly marching on foot under Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke
Philip St. George Cooke
Philip St. George Cooke was a career United States Army cavalry officer who served as a Union General in the American Civil War. He is noted for his authorship of an Army cavalry manual, and is sometimes called the "Father of the U.S...
, was directed to follow Kearny with wagons to establish a new southern route to California.
When Kearny encountered Kit Carson
Kit Carson
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married...
, traveling East and bearing messages that California had already been subdued, he sent nearly 200 of his dragoons back to New Mexico. In California about 400 men of the California Battalion under John C. Fremont
John C. Frémont
John Charles Frémont , was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder...
and another 400 men under Commodore Robert Stockton of the U.S. Navy and Marines had taken control of the approximately 7,000 Californios from San Diego to Sacramento
Sacramento, California
Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...
. New Mexico territory, which then included present-day Arizona, was under undisputed United States control, but 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 protected citizens in the new US territories under a form of martial law called the Kearny Code
Kearny code
The Kearny Code is a legal code named after General Stephen W. Kearny. The Kearny Code was promulgated in Santa Fe, New Mexico on 22 September 1846 for use in the New Mexico Territory, as occupied by the United States Army during the U.S.-Mexican War. Four days later General Kearny left for Alta...
; it was essentially Kearny and the U.S. Army's promise that the US would respect existing religious and legal claims, and maintain law and order. The Kearny Code became one of the bases of New Mexico's legal code during its territorial period, which was one of the longest in United States history.
Kearny's arrival in New Mexico had been essentially without conflict; the governor surrendered without battle, and the Mexican authorities took the money they could find and retreated into southern Mexico. After Kearny's departure, a rebellion
Taos Revolt
The Taos Revolt was a popular insurrection in January 1847 by Mexicans and Pueblo allies against the United States' occupation of present-day northern New Mexico during the Mexican–American War. In two short campaigns, United States troops and militia crushed the rebellion of the Mexicans and...
of New Mexicans and several Native American tribes arose in the pueblo of Taos. The Taos rebels, nearly all Pueblo Indians, attacked and killed acting Governor Charles Bent and about ten other American officials on January 19, 1847. Reacting quickly, a U.S. detachment under Colonel Sterling Price
Sterling Price
Sterling Price was a lawyer, planter, and politician from the U.S. state of Missouri, who served as the 11th Governor of the state from 1853 to 1857. He also served as a United States Army brigadier general during the Mexican-American War, and a Confederate Army major general in the American Civil...
marched on Taos and attacked the rebels, who retreated to a thick-walled adobe
Adobe
Adobe is a natural building material made from sand, clay, water, and some kind of fibrous or organic material , which the builders shape into bricks using frames and dry in the sun. Adobe buildings are similar to cob and mudbrick buildings. Adobe structures are extremely durable, and account for...
church. US forces breached a wall and directed concentrated cannon fire into the church, where they killed about 150 rebels. Close fighting followed and they captured about 400 men. Six rebel leaders were arraigned, and tried. Five were convicted of murder and one of treason; all were hanged in April 1847. Additional executions followed.
Price fought three more engagements with the rebels, which included many Pueblo Indians, who wanted to push the Americans from the territory. By mid-February he had the revolt well under control. President Polk promoted Price to a brevet rank of Brigadier General for his service. Total fatalities amounted to more than 300 New Mexican native rebels and about 30 Anglos, as they called American troops and settlers.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Under the Treaty of Guadalupe HidalgoTreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico City, that ended the Mexican-American War on February 2, 1848...
of 1848, Mexico ceded much of its mostly unsettled northern holdings, today known as the American Southwest and California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
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. Texas was also recognized as a part of the United States under this treaty. Mexico also received $15 million cash, plus the assumption of slightly more than $3 million in outstanding Mexican debts. New Mexico, the new name for the region between Texas and California, became a territory. 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 treaty promised to protect the ownership rights of the heirs of the land grants. 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. All residents could leave for Mexico, or remain and be full U.S. citizens. Apart from Mexican government officials, the great majority remained.
American Territory
The Congressional Compromise of 1850Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five bills, passed in September 1850, which defused a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War...
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
New Mexico Territory
thumb|right|240px|Proposed boundaries for State of New Mexico, 1850The Territory of New Mexico was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 6, 1912, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of...
on September 9, 1850. The territory, which included all of Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
and parts of Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, officially established its capital at Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
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
Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Northern Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed...
) maintained that the territory could not restrict slavery, as under the earlier Missouri Compromise
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an agreement passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30'...
, while others (including Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
) 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
Kit Carson
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married...
to abandon his intent to retire to a sheep ranch near Taos
Taos, New Mexico
Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico, incorporated in 1934. As of the 2000 census, its population was 4,700. Other nearby communities include Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, and El Prado. The town is close to Taos Pueblo, the Native American...
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
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase is a region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that was purchased by the United States in a treaty signed by James Gadsden, the American ambassador to Mexico at the time, on December 30, 1853. It was then ratified, with changes, by the U.S...
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
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico City, that ended the Mexican-American War on February 2, 1848...
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.
In the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
the Committee of Thirty-Three
Corwin amendment
The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the 36th Congress, 2nd Session, on March 2, 1861, in the form of House Resolution No. 80...
on January 14, 1861 reported that it had reached majority agreement on a constitutional amendment
Constitutional amendment
A constitutional amendment is a formal change to the text of the written constitution of a nation or state.Most constitutions require that amendments cannot be enacted unless they have passed a special procedure that is more stringent than that required of ordinary legislation...
to protect slavery where it existed and the immediate admission of New Mexico Territory
New Mexico Territory
thumb|right|240px|Proposed boundaries for State of New Mexico, 1850The Territory of New Mexico was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 6, 1912, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of...
as a slave state
Slave state
In the United States of America prior to the American Civil War, a slave state was a U.S. state in which slavery was legal, whereas a free state was one in which slavery was either prohibited from its entry into the Union or eliminated over time...
. This latter proposal would result in a de facto extension of the Missouri Compromise
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an agreement passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30'...
line for all existing territories below the line.
After the Peace Conference of 1861
Peace conference of 1861
The Peace Conference of 1861 was a meeting of more than 100 of the leading politicians of the antebellum United States held in Washington, D.C., in February 1861 that was meant to prevent what ultimately became the Civil War. The success of President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party in the...
, a bill for New Mexico statehood was tabled by a vote of 115 to 71 with opposition coming from both Southerners and Republicans.
Newspapers
The first newspaper in New Mexico was El Crepusculo de la Libertad ("The Dawn of Liberty"), a Spanish-language paper founded in 1834 at Santa Fe. The Santa Fe Republican, founded in 1847, was the first English-language newspaper. By 2000 the state had 18 daily newspapers, 13 Sunday newspapers, and 25 weekly newspapers. The most influential paper, by far, in state history has been the Albuquerque Journal.Albuquerque Journal
-History:Its earliest predecessor, the Albuquerque Daily Journal, was first published on October 14, 1880. The newspaper is owned by the Journal Publishing Company, a family-owned business headed by president/publisher T.H. Lang; it is operated by the Albuquerque Publishing Company...
. The most important radio station since its founding in 1922 has been KKOB (AM) in Albuquerque. With 50,000 watts of transmitter power on a clear channel it reaches audiences in most of New Mexico and parts of neighboring states. Locally important daily papers include the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Las Cruces Sun-News, and the Farmington Daily Times and Deming Headlight.
Civil War
During the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, Confederate troops from Texas commanded by Gen. Henry Sibley
Henry Hopkins Sibley
Henry Hopkins Sibley was a brigadier general during the American Civil War, leading the Confederate States Army in the New Mexico Territory. His attempt to gain control of trails to California was defeated at the Battle of Glorieta Pass...
briefly occupied southern New Mexico in July 1861, pushing up the Rio Grande valley as far as Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
by February 1862. Defeated in the Battle of Glorieta Pass
Battle of Glorieta Pass
The Battle of Glorieta Pass, fought from March 26 to 28, 1862 in northern New Mexico Territory, was the decisive battle of the New Mexico Campaign during the American Civil War. Dubbed the "Gettysburg of the West" by some historians, it was intended as the killer blow by Confederate forces to break...
, they were forced to withdraw south. Union troops from California under Gen. James Carleton re-captured the territory in August 1862. As Union troops were withdrawn to fight elsewhere, Kit Carson
Kit Carson
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married...
helped to organize and command the 1st New Mexican Volunteers to engage in campaigns against the Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
, Navajo
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
, and Comanche
Comanche
The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Historically, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian...
in New Mexico and Texas as well as participating in the Battle of Valverde
Battle of Valverde
The Battle of Valverde, or the Battle of Valverde Ford from February 20 to February 21, 1862, was fought near the town of Valverde at a ford of Valverde Creek in Confederate Arizona, in what is today the state of New Mexico. It was a major Confederate success in the New Mexico Campaign of the...
against the Confederates. Confederate troops withdrew after the Battle of Glorieta Pass
Battle of Glorieta Pass
The Battle of Glorieta Pass, fought from March 26 to 28, 1862 in northern New Mexico Territory, was the decisive battle of the New Mexico Campaign during the American Civil War. Dubbed the "Gettysburg of the West" by some historians, it was intended as the killer blow by Confederate forces to break...
where Union
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
regulars, Colorado Volunteers (The Pikes Peakers), and New Mexican Volunteers defeated them. The Arizona Territory
Arizona Territory
The Territory of Arizona was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 24, 1863 until February 14, 1912, when it was admitted to the Union as the 48th state....
was split off as a separate territory in 1863.
Indians
Centuries of continued conflict with the ApacheApache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
and the Navajo
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
continue to plague New Mexico. In 1864, the U.S. Army trapped and captured the main Navajo forces, forcing them onto a small reservation in eastern New Mexico is what is called the Long Walk of the Navajo
Long Walk of the Navajo
The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo , refers to the 1864 deportation of the Navajo people by the U.S. Government. Navajos were forced to walk at gunpoint from their reservation in what is now Arizona to eastern New Mexico. The trip lasted about 18 days...
, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. This put an end to their livestock raids on New Mexican farms, ranches, and Indian pueblos. After several years of severe hardships that saw many Navajos die, they were allowed to return to most of their lands in 1868. Sporadic Apache small-scale raiding continued until Apache chief Geronimo
Geronimo
Geronimo was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who fought against Mexico and the United States for their expansion into Apache tribal lands for several decades during the Apache Wars. Allegedly, "Geronimo" was the name given to him during a Mexican incident...
finally was captured and imprisoned in 1886.
After the Civil War, the Army set up a chain of forts to protect the people and the caravans of commerce. Most tribes were relocated on reservations near the forts, where they were given food and supplies by the federal government.
Gilded Age
To provide the forts and reservations with food, the federal government contracted for thousands of head of cattle, and Texas cattlemen began entering New Mexico with their herds. Rancher Charles Goodnight blazed the first cattle trail through New Mexico in 1866, extending from the Pecos River northward into Colorado and Wyoming. Over it more than 250,000 head of cattle trailed to market. John Chisum also brought his herds up the Pecos and, as employer of the desperado Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid
William H. Bonney William H. Bonney William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr. est. November 23, 1859 – c. July 14, 1881, better known as Billy the Kid but also known as Henry Antrim, was a 19th-century American gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier...
, figured prominently in the Lincoln County War
Lincoln County War
The Lincoln County War was a 19th-century range war between two factions during the Old West period. Numerous notable figures of the American West were involved, including Billy the Kid, aka William Henry McCarty; sheriffs William Brady and Pat Garrett; cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and...
of 1878-1880. This was only one of the many struggles between cattle herders and territorial officials, among rival cattle barons, and between sheep ranchers and cattle ranchers during this period. The longest of the cattle trails, the Butterfield Trail, had its first important stop in New Mexico at Fort Fillmore. It began operations in 1858 and gave way to the railroad in 1881.
The Santa Fe Railroad reached New Mexico in 1878, with the first locomotive crossing Raton Pass that December. It reached Lamy, New Mexico
Lamy, New Mexico
Lamy is a census-designated place in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, United States, to the south of the city of Sante Fe. The community was named for Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy, and lies within the Bishop John Lamy Spanish Land Grant, which dates back to the eighteenth century.Lamy is part of the...
, 16 miles (26 km) from Santa Fe in 1879 and Santa Fe itself in 1880, and Deming in 1881, thereby replacing the storied Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1822 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial and military highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880...
as a way to ship cattle to market. The new town of Albuquerque, platted in 1880 as the Santa Fe Railroad extended westward, quickly enveloped the old town. The rival Southern Pacific was completed between the Rio Grande valley and the Arizona border in 1881.
From 1880 to 1910 the territory grew rapidly. With the coming of the railroad, many homesteaders moved to New Mexico. In 1886 the New Mexico Education Association of school teachers was organized; in 1889 small state colleges were established at Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Socorro; and in 1891 the first effective public school law was passed. An irrigation project in the Pecos River valley in 1889 marked the first of many such projects to irrigate farms in the dry state. Discovery of artesian waters at Roswell in 1890 gave both farming and mining a boost. The power of the cattle barons faded as much land was fenced in at the expense of the open range. The cattle ranchers and sheep ranchers also learned to tolerate one other, and both the cattle and sheep industries expanded. Mining became even more important, especially gold and silver. Coal mining developed during the 1890s, primarily to supply the railroads, and oil was discovered in Eddy County in 1909. The population of New Mexico reached 195,000 in 1910.
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.
Statehood
On January 6, 1912, after years of debate on whether the population of New Mexico was fully assimilated into American culture, the United States CongressUnited States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
admitted New Mexico as the 47th state of the Union. The admission of the neighboring State of Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
on February 14, 1912 completed the contiguous 48 states. Thousands of Mexicans fled north during the civil war that broke out in Mexico in 1911. In 1916 Mexican military leader Pancho Villa
Pancho Villa
José Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals....
led an invasion across the border into Columbus, New Mexico
Columbus, New Mexico
Columbus is a village in Luna County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 1,765 at the 2000 census. The town is named after 15th century explorer Christopher Columbus.-History:...
, where they burned some homes and killed several Americans. New Mexico contributed some 17,000 men to the armed services during World War I.
Artists and writers
The mainline of the railroad bypassed Santa Fe, and it lost population. However artists and writers and retirees were attracted to cultural richness of the area, the beauty of the landscapes and its dry climate. Local leaders took the opportunity to promote the city's heritage making it a tourist attraction. The city sponsored bold architectural restoration projects and erected new buildings according to traditional techniques and styles, thus creating the "Santa Fe style." Edgar L. Hewett, founder and first director of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, was a leading promoter. He began the Santa Fe Fiesta in 1919 and the Southwest Indian Fair in 1922 (now known as the Indian Market). When he tried to attract a summer program for Texas women, many artists rebelled saying the city should not promote artificial tourism at the expense of its artistic culture. The writers and artists formed the Old Santa Fe Association and defeated the plan. The old "mud city" - which short-sighted modernizers laughed at for its adobe houses - was transformed into a city proud of its peculiarities and its blend of tradition and modernity.Nuevomexicanos
Hispanics living in New Mexico were relegated to second-class social status by the socio economically dominant non hispanic population. Some of these "Anglos" deprecated Hispanic/Mexican culture. and questioned the native populations fitness for democracy. Some claim, in response, they constructed a "Spanish American" identity in an early instance of cultural citizenship (expressing Americanism through ethnic identity) but this is strongly disputed by Richard Nostrand. World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
gave the Hispanics the opportunity to prove their full American citizenship. Like the "new immigrants" in eastern cities who also constructed dual identities, members of the Nuevomexicano middle class exuberantly participated in the war effort. They melded images of their heritage with patriotic symbols of America, especially in the Spanish-language press. Nuevomexicano politicians and community leaders recruited the rural masses into the war cause overseas and on the home front, including the struggle for woman suffrage. Support from New Mexico's Anglo establishment aided their efforts. Their wartime contributions improved the conditions of minority citizenship for Nuevomexicanos but did not entirely eliminate social inequality. For example, no Hispanics—not even the son of a regent—was allowed in a fraternity at the state university.
The Anglos and Hispanics cooperated because both prosperous and poor Hispanics could vote and they outnumbered the Anglos. Around 1920, the term "Spanish-American" replaced "Mexican" in polite society and in political debate. The new term served both the interests of both groups. For Spanish speakers, it evoked Spain, Not Mexico, recalling images of a romantic colonial past and suggesting a future of equality in Anglo-dominated America. For Anglos, on the other hand, it was a useful term that upgraded the state's image, for the old image as a "Mexican" land suggested violence and disorder, and had discouraged capital investment and set back the statehood campaign. The new term gave the impression that "Spanish Americans" belonged to a true American political culture, making the established order appear all the more democratic.
New people arrive
In the 20th century immigrants brought new skills, outlooks and values and modernized the highly traditionalistic culture of the state. They include Midwestern farmers who tried to bring humid-area crops to the desert climate, Texas oilmen, tuberculosis patients who sought healing in the dry air, artists who made Taos a national cultural center, New DealNew Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
ers who sought to modernize the state as fast as possible programs, soldiers and airmen from all over who came for training at the many military bases, famous scientists who came to Los Alamos to build a super weapon, and stayed on, retirees from colder climes. They brought money and new ideas, with the eventual loss of a quaint uniqueness and the submergence into a standard national culture.
Women
The suffrage movement worked hard to get women the vote but were stymied by the conservatism of the politicians and the Catholic church. New Mexico's legislature was one of the last to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. Soon there there was a dramatic increase in political participation by both Anglo and Hispanic women as well as strong mobilization efforts by the major parties to gain the support of the female voters.For the first 25 years of statehood, the state Supreme Court
New Mexico Supreme Court
The New Mexico Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is established and its powers defined by Article VI of the New Mexico Constitution...
operated in cramped quarters in the Capitol building. Not until 1937 as a result of a Public Works Administration
Public Works Administration
The Public Works Administration , part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression...
(PWA) New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
project, did the Supreme Court get its own building. That year, there was a diphtheria epidemic in Santa Fe resulting in 20 deaths before serum was flown in to end it.
New wealth came from the discovery of oil in the 1920s.
World War II
New Mexico proportionately suffered the loss of more servicemen than any other state in the nation. The state led in the national war bond drive and had fifty federal installations, including glider and bombardier training schools. The state rapidly modernized during the war, as 65,000 young men (and 700 young women) joined the services, where they received a wide range of technical training and saw the outside world, many for the first time. Federal spending brought wartime prosperity, along with high wages, jobs for everyone, rationing and shortages, and remained a major factor in the state's economy in the postwar years.The top secret remote Los Alamos Research Center
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
opened in 1943 and the scientists and engineers invented the world's first atomic bomb. The first test at Trinity site in the desert on the White Sands Proving Grounds
White Sands Missile Range
White Sands Missile Range is a rocket range of almost in parts of five counties in southern New Mexico. The largest military installation in the United States, WSMR includes the and the WSMR Otera Mesa bombing range...
near Alamogordo
Alamogordo, New Mexico
Alamogordo is the county seat of Otero County and a city in south-central New Mexico, United States. A desert community lying in the Tularosa Basin, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains. It is the nearest city to Holloman Air Force Base. The population was 35,582 as of the 2000...
on July 16, 1945 ushered in the atomic age, and moved New Mexico to the forefront of world-class science.
Albuquerque expanded rapidly after the war. High-altitude experiments near Roswell
Roswell, New Mexico
Roswell is a city in and the county seat of Chaves County in the southeastern quarter of the state of New Mexico, United States. The population was 48,366 at the 2010 census. It is a center for irrigation farming, dairying, ranching, manufacturing, distribution, and petroleum production. It is also...
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
Sandia National Laboratories
The Sandia National Laboratories, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation , are two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories....
, founded in 1949, carried out nuclear research and special weapons development at Kirtland Air Force Base
Kirtland Air Force Base
Kirtland Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located in the southeast quadrant of the Albuquerque, New Mexico urban area, adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport. The base was named for the early Army aviator Col. Roy C. Kirtland...
south of Albuquerque and at Livermore, California
Livermore, California
Livermore is a city in Alameda County. The population as of 2010 was 80,968. Livermore is located on the eastern edge of California's San Francisco Bay Area....
.
Environmentalism
Since the late 19th century, New Mexico and other arid Western states have sought to assert sovereign control over water allocation policies within their boundaries. In the 1990s the legislature debated H.R. 128, the proposed State Water Sovereignty Protection Act. Since the passage of the Newlands Act in 1902, Western states have benefited from federal water projects. In spite of these projects, water allocation remained a politically charged issue throughout the 20th century. Most states have sought to limit federal control over water distribution, preferring instead to allocate water under the discredited doctrine of prior appropriation.As a state dependent on both smokestack industry and scenic tourism, New Mexico was at the center of the debates over clean air legislation, particularly the Clean Air Act of 1967 and its amendments in 1970 and 1977. The Kennecott Copper Corporation, operated a large the smelter at Hurley, New Mexico
Hurley, New Mexico
Hurley is a town in Grant County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 1,464 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Hurley is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all of it land....
, which was responsible for thick clouds air pollution, led the opposition to the environmentalists, represented by the New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water. Eventually the company was forced to comply with fairly strict standards, but they often managed to delay the compliance process for years by threatening economic repercussions such as plant closings and unemployment.
Surveys
- Bancroft, Hubert Howe. The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Vol. XVII. (History of Arizona and New Mexico 1530–1888) (1889); reprint 1962. online edition
- Beck, Warren. Historical Atlas of New Mexico 1969.
- Beck, Warren. New Mexico: A History of Four Centuries (1962), standard survey
- Bullis, Don, New Mexico: A Biographical Dictionary, 1540–1980, 2 vol, (Los Ranchos de Albuquerque: Rio Grande, 2008) 393 pp. isbn 978-1-890689-17-9
- Chavez, Thomas E. An Illustrated History of New Mexico, 267 pages, University of New Mexico Press 2002, ISBN 0-8263-3051-7
- DeMark, Judy, ed. Essays in 20th Century New Mexico History (1994)
- Etulain, Richard W., ed. New Mexican Lives: Profiles and Historical Stories (2002
- Simmons, Marc. New Mexico: An Interpretive History, 221 pages, University of New Mexico Press 1988, ISBN 0-8263-1110-5, good introduction
- Szasz, Ferenc M. Larger Than Life: New Mexico in the Twentieth (2nd ed. 2006).
- Weigle, Marta, ed. Telling New Mexico: A New History (2009) 483 ISBN 978-0-89013-556-3. wide range of readings online review
Special studies
- Carnett, Daniel R. Contending for the Faith: Southern Baptists in New Mexico. (2002) 230pp. ISBN 0-8263-2837-7
- Getz; Lynne Marie Schools of Their Own: The Education of Hispanos in New Mexico, 1850–1940 (1997) online edition
- Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, David R. Maciel, editors, The Contested Homeland: A Chicano History of New Mexico, 314 pages – University of New Mexico Press 2000, ISBN 0-8263-2199-2
- Forrest, Suzanne. The Preservation of the Village: New Mexico's Hispanics and the New Deal (1998) online edition
- González; Nancie L. The Spanish-Americans of New Mexico: A Heritage of Pride (1969) online edition
- González, Deena J. Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880 (1999) online edition
- Gutiérrez; Ramón A. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (1991) online edition
- Hain; F. Paul L. Chris Garcia, Gilbert K. St. Clair; New Mexico Government 3rd ed. (1994) online edition
- Tony HillermanTony HillermanTony Hillerman was an award-winning American author of detective novels and non-fiction works best known for his Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels...
, The Great Taos Bank Robbery and other Indian Country Affairs, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1973, trade paperback, 147 pages, (ISBN 0-8263-0530-X), stories - Holmes, Jack E. Politics in New Mexico (1967),
- Paul HorganPaul HorganPaul Horgan was an American author of fiction and non-fiction, most of which was set in the Southwestern United States. He was the recipient of two Pulitzer prizes in History...
, Great River, The Rio Grande in North American History, 1038 pages, Wesleyan University Press 1991, 4th Reprint, ISBN 0585380147, Pulitzer Prize 1955 - Kern, Robert W. Labor in New Mexico: Strikes, Unions, and Social History, 1881–1981, University of New Mexico Press 1983, ISBN 0-8263-0675-6
- Lamar; Howard R. The Far Southwest, 1846–1912: A Territorial History (1966, repr 2000)
- Larson, Robert W. New Mexico's Quest for Statehood, 1846–1912 (1968)
- Nieto-Phillips, John M. The Language of Blood: The Making of Spanish-American Identity in New Mexico, 1880s–1930s, University of New Mexico Press 2004, ISBN 08236324231
- Resendez, Andres. Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850 (2005) 309pp ISBN 0-521-54319-3
- Sánchez; George I. Forgotten People: A Study of New Mexicans (1940; reprint 1996)
- Szasz, Ferenc M.; and Richard W. Etulain; Religion in Modern New Mexico (1997) online edition
- Trujillo, Michael L. Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern New Mexico (2010) 265 pages; An experimental ethnography that contrasts life in the Espanola Valley with the state's commercial image as the "land of enchantment."
- Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico (1982) online edition
Primary sources
- Andrews, Martha Shipman and and Richard A. Melzer, eds. The Whole Damned World: New Mexico Aggies at War, 1941-1945; World War II Correspondence of Dean Daniel B. Jett (2008)
- Ellis, Richard, ed. New Mexico Past and Present: A Historical Reader. 1971. primary sources
- Sante Fe Trail: 72 References Kansas Historical Society http://www.kshs.org/research/collections/documents/bibliographies/transportation/santa_fe_trail.htm
- Weber, David J. Foreigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans (1973), primary sources to 1912
See also
- History of the Western United States
- Spanish governors of New MexicoSpanish governors of New MexicoThe following is a list of governors of the Province of New Mexico under the Viceroyalty of New Spain.*Juan de Oñate *Cristóbal de Oñate *Pedro de Peralta *Bernadino de Ceballos...
- Governors of New Mexico Territory
- Territorial evolution of New MexicoTerritorial evolution of New Mexicothumb|240px|An enlargeable map of the United States after the [[Treaty of Paris |Treaty of Paris]] in 1789thumb|240px|An enlargeable map of the United States after the [[Louisiana Purchase]] in 1803...
- List of Governors of New Mexico