Juan de Onate's Colony in the Wilderness by Robert McGeagh

Author:Robert McGeagh [McGeagh, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611399929
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Sunstone Press
Published: 2021-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5: Royal directive to Fray Esteban de Perea, Custodian of the Franciscans in New Mexico. Spanish Archives of New Mexico 11. No. 1. New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.

CHAPTER 5

THE SETTLEMENT

The fact that the Council of the Indies did not entirely abandon all further attempts to colonize New Mexico attests to the habitual pietism underlying many political decisions of the Spanish Crown whose foreign policy had to deal with the future of thousands of Indian converts to Catholicism. The neophytes were decidedly too numerous to transfer ‘en masse' to Mexico, and so to aid the policy makers in finding a solution favoring the continued presence of the Spanish government in New Mexico, the Franciscan missionaries provided highly inflated statistics, claiming to have baptized between 9,000 and 10,000 souls. As a consequence, the decision was made to declare New Mexico a royal colony and to develop the region for purposes of evangelization.

Meanwhile, a new Governor, Pedro de Peralta, had been appointed in 1609. Arriving in San Gabriel in the winter of that year, he decided with the consent of the Viceroy to relocate the capital of the colony further down river since San Gabriel was now considered unsuited for defense purposes, for it was situated too close to the Tewa pueblos. It is possible that Onate may have anticipated this decision during his tenure in office and founded a small settlement at a location at the southern end of a spur of the Rockies (later named the Sangre de Cristo Mountains).

Chosen for its defense potential, the Spaniards named their new “Villa”, Santa Fe, after the town of the same name which had been built by Queen Isabella outside the Moorish stronghold of Granada during the final stages of the “Reconquista". Very likely the Spanish saw a parallel between their former crusade against the infidel Moors and their present struggle against the heathen Indians; both conflicts represented the triumph of the “Santa Fe" (Holy Faith) over the Forces of Darkness. Hence, their new capital should bear a name epitomizing the intensity of the Faith with which the Spanish approached the conquest.

Firstly, a ‘plaza' was built under the system of “repartimiento” by which Indians were conscripted to serve as a labor force. Municipal land grants were parceled out among the colonists and grazing and farm lands were assigned according to the accepted custom and regulations governing the distribution of lands in a new area. The “Casa Real" (now referred to as the Palace of the Governors) was built at the edge of the ‘plaza', where the prominent figures in the colonial administration had their offices.

Along with the civil government, the Catholic Church also established itself firmly in New Mexico to continue its missionary work. The head of the Franciscan friars, the custodian, established his headquarters at the Queres pueblo of Santo Domingo. From this ecclesiastical center, the missionary programs of the Catholic Church were administered at considerable cost to the secular government. During the next 70 years, it is estimated that

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