de Vaca into Mexico after eight years of wandering across the
continent and related to his countrymen the stories he had
heard of wonderful cities of stone in the north. He had not
seen the cities himself, nor had he, as is frequently asserted,
gone as far north as the present New Mexico, but his reports
tended to confirm previous rumours and led the viceroy, Don
Antonio de Mendoza, to send Fray Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan
friar, on a small and inexpensive expedition of discovery.
Fray Marcos (q.v.) was the first European to enter the limits of what is now New Mexico. A glimpse of the terraced houses of an Indian village—now identified as Zuñi—convinced him that he had seen one of the Seven Cities, and he hastened back with the good news. The stories that he told grew in their passage from mouth to mouth until the Spaniards believed that in the north were cities “very rich, having silversmiths, and that the women wore strings of gold beads and the men girdles of gold.” Full of missionary zeal, and desirous that settlements should be planted in the new region in order that the heathen might be converted, Fray Marcos did little to refute these exaggerations. The conquest of the Seven Cities was determined upon, and a band of adventurers, led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado (q.v.), set out in 1539. Following the route of Fray Marcos de Niza, Coronado reached the first of the alleged cities, and to his great disappointment found only an Indian pueblo. An exploring party sent eastward reached Acoma, and then proceeded to Tiguex on the Rio Grande, and finally to the Pecos river. The main body of Coronado’s expedition remained in New Mexico on the Rio Grande while he pushed on to the fabled land of Quivira,[1] only to meet with another disappointment.
Forty years elapsed before the Spaniards again entered New Mexico. In 1581 Fray Augustin Rodriguez, another Franciscan, explored the valley of the Rio Grande, and in 1582–1583 Antonio Espejo made extended explorations to the E. and W. of this stream. It was about this time, apparently, that the Spaniards in Mexico adopted the term New Mexico to designate the land to the north; Rodriguez had called the country San Felipe, and Espejo had named it Nueva Andalucia. Between 1583 and 1595 several attempts at the conquest and occupation of New Mexico were made, but for various reasons they were unsuccessful. In the spring of 1598 Don Juan de Oñate entered New Mexico with about 400 colonists, and choosing the pueblo of San Juan (30 m. N.W. of the modern Santa Fé) as a temporary dwelling-place, made preparations for building a town at the junction of the Rio Chama and the Rio Grande, to be known as San Francisco. In the following year the new settlement was renamed San Gabriel. Some years later a second settlement was made at Santa Fé, which has ever since been the seat of government of New Mexico. Although the Franciscan missionaries by 1617 had built seven churches and had baptized 14,000 Indians, there were in this year only 48 soldiers and settlers in the province. The zeal of the friars in stamping out the religious rites of the natives, the severe penalties inflicted for non-observance of the rules of the Church, and the heavy tribute in kind demanded by the Spanish authorities, aroused feelings of resentment in the Pueblo Indians and led in 1680 to a general revolt, headed by a native named Popé. Over 400 Spaniards were massacred, and the remnant, after enduring a siege in Santa Fé, fled southward to a mission near the present El Paso. For a decade the natives enjoyed their independence, destroying nearly all vestiges of Spanish occupation, and venting their wrath particularly upon the churches. After several attempts at reconquest had failed, Don Diego de Vargas marched up the Rio Grande in 1692, and largely by moral suasion secured the surrender of Santa Fé, then held by the Indians. During the next four years the submission of all the pueblos was secured, and the permanency of European occupation was assured. The history of New Mexico in the 18th century was uneventful, being chiefly a story of petty disagreements among the pueblos, and occasional forays of the more warlike tribes, the Navahos, Apaches and Comanches. During the Mexican War of Independence (1811–21) New Mexico was tranquil and little disturbed by events farther south; but when, near the close of the year 1821, the news of independence arrived it was received with enthusiasm. Under the Mexican republic New Mexico was called a province till 1824, when it was united with Chihuahua and Durango to form the Estado Interno del Norte. Several months later, however, it was separated from these two provinces and became a Territory; in 1836 it was officially designated as a department, and remained as such until ceded to the United States by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, in 1848. Its government during this period was only slightly changed from what it had been under Spain.
Of great importance to New Mexico during the first half of the 19th century was the development of its trade with the United States. American traders had occasionally ventured as far as Santa Fé before the independence of Mexico, but they were frequently expelled and their goods confiscated by the Spanish authorities. After 1822 trading expeditions became larger and more numerous. From Missouri caravans of pack animals, and later wagon trains, set out in May of each year on the 800 m. journey to Santa Fé, along the route later followed in its general lines by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé railway. The value of the products carried by these trains increased from $15,000 in 1822 to $450,000 in 1843. On their return trip the wagons often brought loads of wool, fur and blankets.
In 1841 the republic of Texas, claiming that its western boundary was the Rio Grande, sent a force of 300 men to New Mexico to enforce these claims. The Texans reached the frontier in a starved and exhausted condition, were made prisoners by the New Mexican militia, and were sent to Mexico, where after a short term of confinement they were released.
In 1846 the Congress of the United States declared that war existed with Mexico, and on the 3rd of June Brigadier-General Stephen W. Kearny was ordered to undertake the conquest of New Mexico and California and to “establish temporary civil governments therein.” Kearny reached Las Vegas on the 15th of August, assured the people of protection if they remained peaceable, and three days later entered Santa Fé without opposition. Here he organized a civil government and compiled a code of laws, some of which are still in force, thus exceeding his instructions and ignoring the territorial claims of Texas, out of which had grown the war. After Kearny’s departure for California and Col. Alexander William Doniphan’s (1808–1887) setting out (Dec. 1846) on his heroic expedition to join Gen. Wool at Chihuahua, some of the inhabitants revolted, and in January 1847 assassinated the governor, Charles Bent, and a number of Americans and Mexicans who had taken office under the new regime. The insurrection was quickly suppressed, but the citizens soon grew tired of a military government, and in 1848 and again in 1849 petitioned Congress for a government “purely civil in character.” In 1850 a convention met in Santa Fé and drafted a state constitution prohibiting slavery; this constitution was ratified, and state officials were chosen to act under it. The governor by military appointment, Colonel John Munroe (1796–1861), refused to surrender his jurisdiction in favour of the state officials until authorized to do so by Congress, and for a time there was much writing of pronunciamentos by the military and the quasi-state officials. But finally a regular Territorial form of government, provided by Congress by an act of the 13th of December 1850 (a part of the Compromise of 1850), was formally inaugurated on the 3rd of March 1851.
As originally constituted, the Territory included, besides most of its present area, nearly all of what is now Arizona, and a small portion of the present Colorado. By the terms of the Compromise Measures of 1850 Texas surrendered all claims to the portion of New Mexico E. of the Rio Grande, and was reimbursed for this loss of territory by the Federal Government. The Gadsden Purchase (see Gadsden, James), concluded on the 30th of
- ↑ Although the Quivira story was fabricated by an Indian captive and its fraudulent character was fully exposed by Coronado in 1541, ignorant American treasure-seekers still search for this mythical region. By a strange perversion of names the deserted stone pueblo of Tabirá, S. of Albuquerque in the vicinity of the Manzano Mountains, has received the appellation of “Gran Quivira,” thereby causing many deluded persons to make a vain search among its ruins for treasure.
