page_title: History of New Mexico
section_title: Spanish exploration and colonization
hierarchical_section_title: History of New Mexico / Colonial period / Spanish exploration and colonization
caption_attribution_description: English: While the famed Venetian cartographer and Minorite friar Vincenzo Coronelli spent time in France as cartographer and globe-maker to Louis XIV, he was able to compile valuable geographic knowledge about New Spain's interior provinces. One of his most important sources was a manuscript map drawn by Abbé Claude Bernou based upon information from a former governor of New Mexico (1661-1664), the self-proclaimed Comte, don Diego Dionisio de Peñalosa Briceño y Berdugo (1621-1687). Peñalosa had been banished by the Inquisition for alleged misdeeds and had traveled to London and by 1678 was in France, where he offered his services to the French. Tillemon's and Coronelli's maps as published by Jean-Baptiste Nolin not only spread knowledge of many place names for the first time, such as "el Passo" (modern Juarez, Mexico), they also showed that the "Rio del Norte" and "Rio Bravo" were one and the same. One particularly interesting toponym near the "Moqui Peuples" (Hopi people) is the town or village of "Santa Fé de Peñalossa" – apparently a fabrication.
context_page_description: The history of New Mexico is based on archeological evidence, attesting to varying cultures of humans occupying the area of New Mexico since approximately 9200 BC, and written records. The earliest peoples had migrated from northern areas of North America after leaving Siberia via the Bering Land Bridge. Artifacts and architecture demonstrate ancient complex cultures in this region.
  The first written records of the region were made by the Spanish conquistadors, who encountered Native American pueblos when they explored the area in the 16th century. Since that time, the Spanish Empire, Mexico, and the United States have claimed control of the area.
  The area was governed as New Mexico Territory until 1912, when it was admitted as a state. The relatively isolated state had an economy dependent on mining. Its residents and government suffered from a reputation for corruption and extreme traditionalism. New Mexico introduced the atomic age in 1945, as the first nuclear weapons were developed by the federal government in the research center it established at Los Alamos. Ethnically the state has historically included Native American, Hispanic and Anglo elements in earlier years.
context_section_description: Francisco Vásquez de Coronado assembled an enormous expedition at Compostela, Mexico in 1540–1542 to explore and find the mythical Seven Golden Cities of Cibola, as described by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who had just arrived from his eight-year ordeal of survival. He traveled mostly overland from Florida to Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca and three companions were the only survivors of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition of June 17, 1527 to Florida, losing 80 horses and several hundred 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. They took 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 no rich cities of gold. Further widespread expeditions 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. it is likely that some of Coronado's horses escaped, to be captured and adopted for use by Plains Indians. Over the next two centuries, they made horses at the center of their nomadic cultures. Only two of Coronado's horses were mares.
  More than 50 years after Coronado, Juan de Oñate came north from the Valley of Mexico with 500 Spanish settlers and soldiers and 7,000 head of livestock, founding 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 El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, "The Interior Royal Road of," a 700-mile (1,100 km) trail from the rest of New Spain to his remote colony. Oñate was appointed as the first governor of the new province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. Although he Intended to achieve the total subjugation of the Natives, Oñate noted in 1599 that the Pueblo "live very much the same as [the Spanish] do, in houses with two and three terraces." 
  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. Governor Pedro de Peralta moved the capital and established the settlement of Santa Fe in 1610 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.
  Contemporary scholars believe that the objective of Spanish rule of New Mexico (and all other northern lands) was the full exploitation of the native population and resources. As Frank McNitt writes,
  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 resulted in their conducting nearly continuous raids and reprisals against the nomadic Indian tribes on the borders, especially the Apache, Navajo, and Comanche.
  Franciscan missionaries accompanied Oñate to New Mexico; afterward there was a continuing struggle
caption: Jean Nicolas Du Tralage and Vincenzo Coronelli's 1687 map of New Mexico
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3200", "Image ImageLength": "2726", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "83-151_01, Wed Jun 27, 2012,  4:32:10 PM,  8C, 9738x11484,  (1917+2333), 150%, bent 6 stops,  1/30 s, R88.3, G63.9, B76.9", "Image Make": "Better Light", "Image Model": "Model Super8k", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "400", "Image YResolution": "400", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2019:07:05 15:16:37", "Image ExifOffset": "440", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "730", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7141", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/30", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:06:27 16:32:10", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:06:27 16:32:10", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "490689/100000", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0010", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2908", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2244", "EXIF SensingMethod": "Trilinear"}