Santa Cruz Militia

Two military ranks appeared in diligencias matrimoniales: capitánes of the militia and soldiers in the presidio. The latter included sargentos and sargento mayors. Other ranks existed in Santa Fé, but these were the ones known in Santa Cruz.

Thomas Naylor said New Spain paid its soldiers so poorly, few would enlist. Only the worst were turned away. In 1708, charges were brought against Martín García and six men under his command for mistreating men at Galisteo. Cristóbal Lucero stabbed one in the head. Miguel Durán threw others off scaffolds. García himself ordered Lorenzo Rodríguez to tie, hang, and whip a man.

There was no death penalty for Lucero killing a man. The Duque de Albuquerque wanted him sentenced to a distant presidio and the others warned. The viceroy was overruled by his auditor generals of war. In 1710, they suggested García also be sentenced to another presidio and Durán be warned. One of the pardoned, Alonso Garcia de Noriega, was the nephew of Leonor Domínguez and Alonso Rael de Aguilar. Their uncle Lázaro had been killed at Galisteo in 1680.

Low wages meant few soldiers could afford families. With no patrimony, their sons enlisted and their daughters had few prospects. The only man who married in Santa Cruz in these years was a second generation soldier. Miguel Tenorio de Alba had risen to capitán by the time he wed Agustína Romero in 1705. She was the daughter of Salvador Romero and María López de Ocanto.

The only military men called to witness Santa Cruz weddings were Sargento Ambrosio Fresqui in 1703 and Alonso Fernandéz in 1701. The one was likely the son or grandson of Capitán Juan Fresqui. The other had come from Sombrerete with his father. Capitán Juan Fernandéz de la Pedrera had migrated from Galicia.

A division without a name existed between militia capitáns and their men. Francisco Cuervo reviewed the troops in Santa Cruz in April of 1705. Eight-three men showed, but only twenty-three had horses or mules. Twenty-two had no weapons. It’s not known if two-thirds of the men had had animals they sold, if the animals they had been issued when the villa was settled had grown old, or if they never had had horses or mules.

When Roque de Madrid pursued the Navajo in August of that year, all the men were mounted and had spare animals. Cuervo had brought 600 horses from Nuevo Vizcaya. There were more than 700 horses in Madrid’s campaign herd, including those of the "Indian allies."

When Madrid started across the highlands west of the Tusas, he sent "war captains from the Tewa and Picurís nations" ahead to suggest a route. When they returned, "they laid before me as many difficulties and inconveniences as they possibly could." He ignored them to "follow the slope and the breaks of the mountains by a route no Spaniard or person from any other nation had taken until now," but did take the precaution of doubling the squadron for the horses.

A few days later, he sent his scouts ahead again, and "they returned to me and raised even greater objections to my entrada." Madrid "paid them no heed, because my mind was made up to continue until I saw everything to its conclusion."

Juan de Ulibarrí was sent across the prairies to El Cuartelejo in 1706. They met other Apache who warned them of dangerous bands ahead. He thanked them for their advice, "but I was trusting in our God who was the creator of everything and who was to keep us free from the present dangers."

Later, after they had crossed the Arkansas river, Ulibarrí’s pueblo guides warned him, "we would undergo much suffering because there was no water." The men got lost following hummocks of grass left as a trail by the Apache, but two scouts did find water. The next day, they got lost again. This time "I, with the experience of the preceding day, scattered the whole command" and so found a dry arroyo with a spring.

After they had fought several successful battles with the Navajo, Madrid called a council of "active officials, military leaders, and reserves." The horses were suffering, the men were sick from eating green corn. He asked what was "appropriate" for "a soldier’s honor."

They answered, the enemy would now hide from fear of their weapons, and so little would be gained from pursuing them. They felt it was time to "withdraw our forces to the royal presidio."

When Ulibarrí needed to violate colonial policy against arming natives by providing them with a gun in exchange for one they had taken from the Pawnee, he called a meeting of his advisors. "We had agreed by common consent that it was better to hand it over to them so that in no way should they lack confidence in our word."

There was one other division within the military, the one between men like Madrid and Ulibarrí and the men they commanded. When he was determining the best strategy for dealing with the Navajo, Madrid said he feared "the treachery of these barbarians because of my many years of experience fighting them."

But it was more than experience. It took judgement, intuition and an ability to learn from the unexpected to chart paths through unexplored wilderness, intelligence to devise ruses to trick the Navajo, and wisdom to listen to the tenor of what men said.

Such military virtues were universally recognized. Jacques Marquette said of his commander, Louis Joliet: "He possesses Tact and prudence, which are the chief qualities necessary for the success of a voyage as dangerous as it is difficult. Finally, he has the Courage to dread nothing where everything is to be Feared."

Notes: The roster doesn’t exist from Madrid’s campaign, so it’s impossible to know how many horses were available to each man.

Castrillón, Antonio Álvarez. Campaign journal for Roque Madrid’s campaign against the Navajo, republished in Hendricks; Madrid quotations.

Chávez, Angélico. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982.

Hendricks, Rick and John P. Wilson. The Navajos in 1705, 1996; on Cuervo.

Naylor, Thomas H., Diana Hadley, and Mardith K. Schuetz-Miller. The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain, volume 2, part 2, 1997; on trial of Martín García. The records they transcribed didn’t name all six men.

Marquette, Jacques. Journal included in Claude Dablon’s "Le Premier Voÿage Qu’a Fait Le P. Marquette vers le Nouveau Mexique," translated by Reuben Gold Thwaites in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, volume 59, 1899.

Ulibarrí, Juan de. Diary of expedition to El Cuartelejo, 1706, in Alfred B. Thomas, After Coronado, 1935.