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The Clovis-Paleo
Indians later discovered the eastern plains of New Mexico,
the same expansive romping grounds of the dinosaurs around
10,000 B.C. The river valleys west of their hunting grounds
later flooded with refugees from the declining Four Corners
Anasazi cultures. Sometime between A.D. 1130 and 1180, the
Anasazi drifted from their high-walled towns to evolve into
today's Pueblo Indians, so named by early Spanish explorers
because they lived in land-based communities much like the
villages, or pueblos, of home. Culturally similar American
Indians, the Mogollón, lived in today's Gila National
Forest.
Less than two generations after Christopher Columbus set
foot on the shores of an obscure Caribbean island on October
12, 1492, and claimed this New World for the Spanish
kingdoms of Leon and Castille, Spanish conquistadores such
as Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro had conquered the
Aztec Empire in Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Subsequent
explorers remained on the alert for other lands which might
prove as wealthy as ones these men had conquered. It was
this search for a “new” Mexico which ultimately led to the
expedition which first brought the Spanish to New Mexico in
1540.
Ironically, the first exploration of New Mexico may have
come about from an ill-fated Spanish attempt to settle
Florida in 1527. A series of storms and shipwrecks stranded
four survivors from this expedition near present-day
Galveston, Texas. This group, which included Alvar Nuñez
Cabeza de Vaca and an African slave named Estevan (also
known as Estevan the Moor and Estevanico), spent more than
eight years wandering through southern Texas and northern
Mexico. They were the first Europeans to explore, albeit
unwittingly, this part of North America.
In 1536, the ragged survivors finally emerged from the
wilderness at Culiacan, on the west coast of Mexico. Cabeza
de Vaca's report to the Spanish Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza,
included a brief mention of stories they had heard which
told of large cities in the interior of the continent where
valuable minerals were traded. This sparked a renewed
interest in the Spanish quest to find the “new” Mexico which
had so far eluded them. In 1539, Mendoza authorized Marcos
de Niza, a Franciscan priest who had accompanied Pizarro to
Peru, to conduct a preliminary exploration. Estevan went
along as the expedition's guide.
When the expedition approached what is now southern Arizona,
Estevan and several companions went ahead to scout the
country. The scouts reported Estevan had learned of a place
called Cíbola, and had been told this Cíbola was but one of
seven magnificent cities. However, the Friar soon
encountered several of Estevan's companions, who reported
that their colorful guide had been killed. The Cíbola where
Estevan was killed was in reality the ancestral Zuñi pueblo
of Hawikah, however the friar's report seemed to confirm the
stories which Cabeza de Vaca had heard during his travels.
In January of 1540, Vásquez de Coronado set out from Mexico
in search of treasure, and convinced that the adobe pueblos
were the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola, Coronado had
orders to conquer the Indians and claim their riches. For
the next two years, the expedition explored deep into the
North American continent, but discovered only that the Seven
Cities of Cibola were, after all, nothing but a myth. After
Vásquez de Coronado was injured in a riding accident in the
winter of 1542, the disheartened adventurers returned to
Mexico. Failing to find the fabled gold, however, he and his
men returned to New Spain without any newly won wealth.
History has shown the expedition to have been a journey of
epic proportions. In little more than two years, Vásquez de
Coronado and his men explored much of the southwestern
United States, ventured deep into the plains of Kansas,
descended the walls of the Grand Canyon, and visited all the
major Indian villages in the region.
For nearly forty years New Mexico was forgotten. As the
sixteenth century progressed, Spanish settlement advanced
slowly, but steadily through northern Mexico. During this
period, Franciscan missionaries learned that Indians of the
region traded regularly with other peoples who lived further
north. During the 1580's several expeditions entered New
Mexico and explored much of same region traversed four
decades earlier by Vásquez de Coronado. One of these, led by
Fray Bernardo Beltrán and Antonio de Espejo in 1582, is
credited with the first official use of the term, la Nueva
Mejico, to describe the region we now call New Mexico.
Don Juan de Oñate made the first successful exploration of
Mexico del Norte's wilderness. In 1598 he marched up the Rio
Grande claiming land for Spain, accompanied by troops,
colonists and cattle arrived at Caypa, one of two Pueblo
villages at the confluence of the Río Chama and the Río
Grande, north of present-day Española. He soon moved across
the river to Yungueingge (Tewa for mockingbird place), a
now-ruined pueblo he renamed San Gabriel del Yunque, the
first Spanish capital of New Mexico.
The first church in North America was also constructed in
1598 at San Juan Pueblo, 30 miles north of Santa Fe. Within
the first quarter of the 17th century, 50 churches had been
built in New Mexico.
Santa Fe was founded as the capital in 1609 by New Mexico's
third governor, Don Pedro de Peralta. The fortified villa
real (royal village) occupied the site of an early Tanoan
Indian Pueblo and a more recent Spanish settlement. Spanish
priests begin converting Indians, and settlers pouring into
the remote colony. But some of the priests became
overzealous, and the economic tribute system enslaved the
Indians. By the middle of the 17th century, there was
growing discontent among the Pueblo people. On Aug. 10,
1680, after years of careful planning, the tribes led by
Taos Pueblo, revolted, killing many of the 3,500 settlers
strung out from Santa Cruz de la Cañada (near Española) to
Socorro and driving the rest south to El Paso del Norte (El
Paso).
By 1692, however, the Spanish had returned. New settlers led
by Don Diego DeVargas, the newly appointed governor and
captain-general of New Mexico, began to reconquer the
northern pueblos, a task that took four years.
Throughout the next century the Spanish were more tolerant
of the Pueblo culture. Because of the area's isolation and
neglect from both Spain and Mexico, the Spanish colonists
persevered with limited resources and vital help from their
Pueblo neighbors. The two cultures adopted traits from each
other and the result is a distinct cultural commingling that
succinctly identifies much of New Mexico's charm today.
New Mexico remained under Spanish rule until 1821 when
Mexico won its independence from Spain. Running from
Missouri to Santa Fe, the trail opened trade with the U.S.
and brought new lifestyles, money and settlers to New
Mexico. In 1824, New Mexico briefly became a Mexican
territory, but in 1846 U.S. Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny's
troops followed Anglo merchants down the Santa Fe Trail to
occupy New Mexico, which became an American territory. An
1847 revolt by Mexican loyalists precipitated battles at
Santa Cruz and massacres at Mora and Taos, but eventually
armed resistance ceased.
The war with Mexico ended when the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo was signed in 1848. Two years later, on September 9,
1850, the United States Congress passed an Organic Act which
created the Territory of New Mexico and authorized the
establishment of a new civil government.
During the U.S. Civil War, New Mexico Volunteers were among
the troops proving their Union loyalties by helping cut the
supply lines of invading Confederates at Apache Pass, near
today's Glorieta.
The U.S. army forced the Navajo and Apache Indians onto a
reservation on the Pecos River in 1886, and in the late
1880s, the railroads steamed in, forever changing New
Mexico. Commerce improved, but under the imported U.S. legal
system, dishonest Anglo lawyers defrauded many natives of
land they had held for centuries.
And, cattle barons such as John Chisum started rounding up
longhorns along the southeastern plains, often battling
native landholders. Chisum also was involved in the bloody
Lincoln County Wars, a conflict between two mercantile
houses that involved such notables as Pat Garrett, Billy the
Kid, and Gov. Lew Wallace, who wrote the novel Ben Hur.
Despite injustices, New Mexicans remained patriotically
American. In 1898, Teddy Roosevelt recruited his "Rough
Riders" from New Mexico, many from Las Vegas. Although New
Mexico was colonized nearly 25 years before the Pilgrims'
arrival at Plymouth Rock, it did not achieve statehood until
Jan. 6, 1912, when it was admitted to the Union as the 47th
state.
The Great Depression, 1930-43, almost eliminated the
isolated villages--heart of the Hispano homeland. But New
Deal programs helped villagers survive.
During World War II, two New Mexico regiments endured the
Bataan Death March in the Philippines. Navajo and other
Indian "code talkers" used their native languages to help
confuse the Japanese.
Things heated up again in the politically tumultuous 1960s,
when activists led by Reies Lopez Tijerina attempted to
reclaim Spanish land grants. After several confrontations,
including an armed raid on the Tierra Amarilla courthouse,
the movement quieted.
New Mexico has now become a research center and testing
ground for government studies. In Los Alamos, they are
studying ways to use nuclear energy. In Albuquerque, they
are developing uses for military inventions during times of
peace. In White Sands, they test weapons.
In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
increased trade with Mexico.
In 1998, New Mexico reached a milestone in its long and
colorful history. It is the year the state observed the
Cuatro Centennial, or 400th anniversary of the founding of
the Spanish colony at the Tewa village of Ohkay in 1598.
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