Cro-Magnon Warm Period Cultures

Will return to Santa Cruz between 1714 and 1732 in a few weeks. Now, back to life in early Spain.

The Würm glacier went through three phases: a cold one from 71,000 to 60,000 years ago (marine isotope stage 4), a warm one from 60,000 to 25,000 (MIS 3), and another cold period from 25,000 to 12,000 (MIS 2).

During the warm period, sea levels were still at least 200' (60 meters) below current levels, and often 300' (90 meters) because ice sheets trapped so much of the available water. In the second cold period, around 21,000 years ago, waters were 410' (125 meters) lower than today.

Within the middle phase, decade-long periods of relative warmth and chill alternated. They fell into four longer-term warm eras which ended when glaciers calved, sending cold water into the oceans and lowering temperatures. The warm times, when the Greenland ice contained higher concentrations of the oxygen¹⁸ isotope, peaked 58,000, 53,000, 47,000, and 39,000 years ago.

Cro-Magnon tools show humans reacted to these changes in their environments. No one will hazard exact chronologies because the effects of the climate varied by location, and human responses often were modulated by other factors.

The first phase occurred at least 90,000 years ago in the warm period between the Riss and Würm glaciers. Homo sapiens left remains at Qafzeh and Skh l in the Levant with technology no different than that of the Neanderthals. There’s no evidence they moved farther.

Another group began moving as the climate warmed some during the Würm glacier about 60,000 years ago. Jean-Jacques Hublin said, they moved north into central Europe, arrived at Bohunice in Moravia about 48,000 years ago. They traveled east into central Asia where they reached the Altai mountains around 47,000 years ago. According to Ted Goebel they used a flat-faced technology.

When they encountered the colder conditions of the Danube, Jirí Svoboda said, they developed a new technology, the Aurignacian. The most important trait defining their toolkit was that, instead of a few general purpose tools, men made some for specific purposes. They also began working with bone and antler. They learned to split it as they had earlier mastered splitting rock.

From there, Aurignacian tools moved west, tracking south of the cold front. They appeared in the Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria 37,900 years ago, France 37,800 years ago and northern Spain about 30,000 years ago. The tools didn’t penetrate southern Spain until 27,500 years ago.

The technology also moved back south toward the Zagros mountains along the modern boundary between Iran and Iraq. Yafteh cave was occupied between 30,000 and 35,000 years ago.

The technology had disappeared by 27,000 years ago. The map below shows the distribution of important sides in Europe.

In the east, Goebel said the migrants moved from the Zagros mountains across the uplands of central Asia to the Altai mountains in southwestern Siberia. Next they moved across Siberia past Lake Baikal through the Trans-Baikal mountains 42,000 years ago. From there they passed into Mongolia sometime between 41,000 and 43,000 years ago. Some moved south into northern China about 30,000 years ago where the encountered other people who had moved through southeast Asia.

They made an independent adaptation to the cold that used bone, antler and ivory for points, awls, and needles. They made fewer personal ornaments than the Aurignacians, and less evidence of ochre has been found.

Notes:
Goebel, Ted. "The Overland Dispersal of Modern Humans to Eastern Asia," in Kaifu. He has a good map showing the location of archaeological sites that mark the move east.

Hublin, Jean-Jacques. "The Modern Human Colonization of Western Eurasia: When and Where?", Quaternary Science Reviews 118:194-210:2015. He has a good chart showing phases of the Aurignacian with a time line showing coinciding changes in levels of oxygen¹⁸ isotopes in Greenland ice cores.

Kaifu, Yousuke, et alia. Emergence and Diversity of Modern Human Behavior in Paleolithic Asia, 2015.

Siddall, M., E. J. Rohling, W. G. Thompson, and C. Waelbroeck. "Marine Isotope Stage 3 Sea Level Fluctuations: Data Synthesis and New Outlook," Reviews of Geophysics, December 2008. The warm periods were Dansgaard-Oeschger events, the cool ones were Heinrich events, the four eras were bond cycles.

Svoboda, Jirí. "Early Modern Human Dispersal in Central and Eastern Europe," in Kaifu.

Graphics: Hugh Charles Parker, "Aurignacian Culture Map," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 2 June 2011.

Cro-Magnon Population

Cro-Magnon is one of those terms that has no technical meaning, and yet carries very specific connotations to us non-specialists.

Anthropologists would prefer to use "Upper Paleolithic" for late ice-age cultures and "European Early Modern Humans" for the first Homo sapiens to arrive on the continent. If they had their druthers, they wouldn’t even refer to species, just to technologies and their relationship to the great glacial phases, or rather to their marine isotope stages.

Abri de Cro-Magnon was an archeological site in Aquitaine in southwestern France discovered in 1868 that contained remains of four skeletons that clearly weren’t Neanderthal. They probably were deliberately buried at the back of the cave. The bones were stained with red ochre and surrounded by perforated shell and animal tooth ornaments. Tools were made from flint and bone. Stone lined hearths and remains of reindeer and mammoths also were found in the limestone rock shelter.

The site, dated to between 30,000 and 32,000 years ago, was typical of those found later. It may be imprecise to make it an eponym for an era, but it’s much easier to remember than the alternatives.

Modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, emerged about 200,000 years ago as the Riss glacier was forming.

No species is static. Genetic mutations occur in every generation. In time, accumulations of significant changes are enough to form distinctive subgroups biologists call haplogroups.

DNA studies of the Y chromosome tell us Native Americans belong to the Q group and modern Europeans to the R. They also confirm the ancestor of both was L3, who evolved in Africa.

After L3 moved onto the Arabian peninsula, haplogroup N coalesced about 71,000 years ago. The expansion into Europe occurred about 50,000 years ago, or about 20,000 years before the Cro-Magnon burial.

The N population also diffused east. Haplogroup Q developed in northern Asia somewhere between 22,000 and 17,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum of the Würm period from the M haplogroup via the intermediate P grouping. The M group is thought to have emerged 60,000 years ago, the P between 27,000-45,000 years ago.

Maulucioni’s reconstruction of the diffusion of Q shows most Native Americans, including local Tewa speakers are part of that stream. A team lead by Morten Rasmussen established the DNA of an infant buried in Montana around 10,000 years ago (8000 bc) was part of the dark purple on the map below.

Maulucioni also shows the areas where the Q marker on the Y chromosome has been diluted by other groups. The rosy purple corresponds roughly with the later influx of Athabascan and Algonquin speakers. Navajo and Apache are part of the first linguistic group, now called Na-Dené.

The medium purple represents the Inuit and Eskimoes.

More than 40,000 years may have passed between the time the first Homo sapiens moved into Europe and some migrated across the Bering Strait into North America. If it took women twenty years to reproduce, that was 2,000 generations of genetic change and cultural continuity.

Anthropologist working with Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel have tried to estimate the number of N-type individuals living in Europe using the known characteristics of food animals. They classified modern hunting groups by their prey and climate.

Next they used the modern groups’ demographic profiles as indicators of numbers of hungry beings each biome could support. That is, they recognized the diet of reindeer in Lappland today differs from that of reindeer in paleolithic Aquitaine.

From what was known about each site and the climate at the time, they then estimated populations for each. From there, they calculated the Cro-magnon total from number of sites.

They believed from the first entry of modern Homo sapiens to the last cold peak in the Würm glacial, the number averaged 4,400 to 5,900 inhabitants. Some 16,500 years ago, the climate began slowly warming and the population expanded to 28,800 inhabitants.

By way of comparison, San Juan pueblo counted 6,748 in the 2010 census. The combined total for our local zip codes that year was about 24,200 spread from Santa Clara to Valverde over 190 square miles.

Notes:
Advameg, Inc. Zip code data on City-Data website, run by Lech Mazur. The local zip codes are: Española and Santa Clara (87532), Santa Cruz (87533), Alcalde to Leyden (87511), and Chamita, San Juan and Velarde (87566).

Bocquet-Appel, Jean-Pierre, Pierre-Yves Demars, Lorette Noiret, and Dmitry Dobrowsky. "Estimates of Upper Palaeolithic Meta-Population Size in Europe from Archaeological Data," Journal of Archaeological Science 32:1656-1668:2005.

Rasmussen, M., et alia. "The Genome of a Late Pleistocene Human from a Clovis Burial Site in Western Montana," Nature 506:225-229:2014.

Stringer, Christopher B. and Alison S. Brooks. "Cro-Magnon," in Eric Delson, Ian Tattersall, John Van Couvering, and Alison S. Brooks, Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory, 2004 edition.

Wikipedia entries on various haplogroups.

Maps:
1. Metspalu, M., et alia. "Suggested Migratory Route of the ‘Out of Africa’ Migration According to Mitochondrial DNA," BioMed Central Genetics 5:26:2004.

2. Maulucioni. "Haplogroup Q (Y-DNA) Distribution," Wikimedia Commons, 16 July 2010.

Santa Cruz Families

Families were the only dependable social unit that existed in Santa Cruz. That wasn’t simply a matter of religious mores, but an economic necessity. When there were no stores or restaurants in an agricultural community with little surplus to trade, eating required a man raise crops and a woman grind corn or oversee its preparation.

Young men in Santa Cruz could marry at any age, but when a woman’s parents were alive and known, she usually married between the ages of 16 and 20.

It’s impossible to know life expectancies for such a small population, but marriage records suggest women died in childbirth leaving young husbands behind. If there were young children, the widower needed to remarry quickly. Marcos Martín was 18 when he remarried in 1723, Juan Trujillo was 20 in 1715, and Joaquín de Anaya 22 in 1719.

The age of pre-nuptial witnesses shown in the table in the last post suggests that by 1720, most men in Santa Cruz could expect to live to age 40. After that, half could live to be 60. If a man died in his early forties, there was a good chance he left young children. Adolescent boys could and did marry.

A man’s widow and young daughters faced greater perils. Marriage records indicate few widows remarried. This wasn’t true just in the north, but was also the case in México. Philip Russel thought inheritance laws that dictated a woman retained her dowry and received half the property the family accumulated during the marriage provided them with some freedom. Robert McCaa noted the failure of widows to remarry acted as a counterpoise to high fertility rates.

Year	Widower	Widow
1714	2
1715	2	1
1716	2
1717
1718	1	1
1719	2	2
1723	1
1724
1725	2	1
	Remarriages

The major difference between México and the north was there were few urban amenities in Santa Fé and none in Santa Cruz. Mores established in the one may not have served women as well when they were perpetuated on the frontier. If a widow had children who could grow crops, she could survive. If not, locating food would have been a difficulty if she did not have relatives to help.

A widow’s alternative to living with a grown child was to become a servant. However, that could have stimulated gossip about herself or her daughters. The solution was much older men married the young daughters. That gave the girls some sort of dowry when their husbands died and probably provided a home or security for their mothers.

Providing respectability for young orphans was a luxury few men could afford. In 1718, forty-five-year-old Bernardo Fernández married 16-year-old Antonia Martín. In 1725, eighty-year-old Antonio Martín married fourteen-year-old Gertrudis Fresqui. In 1726, forty-seven-year-old Marcos Montoya wed fourteen-year-old María Rosa Baca. Not only were all their fathers dead, but the new husbands may have known the fathers. Such marriages may have been the best way for them to look after the families of deceased friends.

The same device sometimes was used to look after girls with unknown parents. It certainly provided better security than that given to the orphaned María de Mascareñas in the household of Jean l’Archevêque. In 1725, sixty-five-year-old Domingo Martín Serrano married twelve-year-old Juana Bautista de Olivas. A few years later, in 1728, forty-year-old Cristóbal Martín wed fifteen-year-old Juliana Maese.

If, in fact, marriage was used as a way to introduce servants into a household without arousing suspicion, then some of the other marriages of very young orphans may have had such an origin. For example, in 1727 fourteen-year-old Domingo Matías Cruz, whose mother had died, married fourteen-year-old Margarita Domínguez, whose parents were unknown. Similarly, sixteen-year-old Isidro Trujillo, whose mother had died, married fourteen-year-old Francisca Xaviera Torres in 1727.

It may now seem an extreme way to channel the sexual behavior of young servants, but the marriage prospects of young girls with unknown parents were more dire.

Age	Groom	Bride	Groom an Orphan/ Unknown	Bride an Orphan/ Unknown	Orphan Bride to Widow
12					1
13				1	1
14		2	1	2	2
15	1		1	2	1
16	2	2	1	1	1
17	1	2		2
18	1	2		1
19	1	2	2	1
20	1	3	3	1	1
21	1		2	1
22	1	2	3
23	1		1		1
24	1		1
25	2		1	1
26	1
27	2
28			1
30		3
34	1
36	1
			Age First Marriage

Notes: María de Mascareñas was mentioned in the post for 14 October 2015. She was the daughter of José Mascareñas and María de Acosta. Her father’s first wife had been María de García García. There might have been a connection dating back to Archevêque’s first wife, who stayed with Miguel García de la Riva and Manuela Velasco, after her first husband was killed. The woman who cared for Archevêque’s children when he was a widow was Francisca de Velasco. She had come north as a widow with her nephew, Miguel García Velasco, and Manuela.

Chávez believed Bernardo or Bernardino Fernández was the same man as Martín Fernández mentioned in the post for 2 April 2015.

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

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Kessell, John L., Rick Hendricks, and Meredith Dodge. To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995; background on Mascareñas.

McCaa, Robert. "The Peopling of Mexico from Origins to Revolution," in Richard Steckel and Michael Haines, The Population History of North America, 2000.

Russell, Philip. The History of Mexico, 2010.

Santa Cruz Leaders

The population in the Santa Cruz valley was more diverse than the one in Chimayó. Marriages hadn’t yet bridged cultural differences between La Cañada, the Río Abajo, Ciudad de México, and the mining towns, but men were cooperating to create a more unified society.

Witness lists from the diligencias matrimoniales indicate that more than two-thirds of the weddings between 1714 and 1730 were approved by men from both La Cañada and elsewhere, even when the bride and groom were from the same group.

Year	Both Local	Man Local	Woman Local	Both Not Local	Total
1714	2	1	2		5
1715	2		1		3
1716		3		1	4
1717		2			2
1718	1		3	2	6
1719		1	1	4	6
1720			1	4	5
1721				1	1
1722			1	1	2
1723	3		1	3	7
1724
1725		1		1	2
1726				3	3
1727			2	5	7
1728	1			1	2
1729
1730		1			1
1731
1732
	9	9	12	26	56

More important, a pool of men was called year after year. That could mean the friars were more comfortable with some men than others. However, with frequent ecclesiastical turnovers, the reappearance of some men more likely suggests they were the agreed upon community leaders.

The group represented the entire male population, with more in their twenties and thirties when they first appeared. However, while men in their thirties were most often to be called, the ones called for five or more years were likely to come from families in Nuevo México before the Revolt: José de Madrid, Antonio Bernal and Tomás Núñez de Haro were each called in seven years.

Age	5+	2-4
20s		9
30s	4	9
40s	1	6
50s	2	5
60s		1
70s		1
Number of Years Called to Witness by Age When First Called

Madrid was the son of Roque and his first wife, Juana de Arvid López. Neither Bernal’s parents nor those of his wife, Rosa María Romero de Prazda, are known. Francisco Romero de Prazda was tentiente alcade at Santa Domingo in 1664. He had a dependent named María living with him in 1693 at El Paso.

Núñez was born in Zacatecas, but apparently moved north before the Revolt, perhaps when Diego de Peñalosa was governor in the 1660s. He married Juana Durán, whose father Nicolás was an aide to Peñalosa. Her paternal grandmother was Catalina Bernal. His current wife was the niece of Juana, another Juana Durán. This was the daughter of the first Juana’s brother, Salvador Durán, and Ana Márquez.

Núñez was the only one known to be close to the Franciscans. He supported them in 1730 when the Bishop of Durango was making inquiries, and was a member of the Conquistadora Confraternity.

The man who testified for six years, Sebastían Durán, was the son of Fernando Durán y Chaves and Elena Ruiz Cáceres. His family was originally from the Río Abajo, but they were living in Taos in 1680. Elena was descended from Juan Ruiz Cáceres whose daughter married the father of Roque de Madrid. Roque himself married Salvador’s daughter, Josefa Durán, in 1715, when he had been a widower for more than a year. They had been accused of adultery in 1700.

Domingo Martín was the oldest of the frequently called witnesses. His father Domingo was apparently the oldest son of Luis Martín Serrano. When Luis’s property was divided, his son Domingo may have received the best share, or bought out his brothers Antonio and Francisco who moved to Chimayó.

The other two men called for five years were new colonists. Roque Jaramillo was eleven-years-old when his brick-mason father decided to leave Mexico City. José de Atienza Sevillano also came from an urban, skilled-trades family: his father made paving stones, his brother Juan was a weaver.

Most of the remaining men who were called in two, three or four years were equally from La Cañada, Mexico City or the mining towns. The exception were the soldiers who were present between 1715 and 1719, and again in the late 1720s.

			First Appearance
Years	Name	From	Year	Age
7	Antonio Bernal	Local	1718	30
7	José de Madrid	Local	1718	40
7	Tomás Núñez de Haro	Zacatecas	1714	52
6	Sebastían Durán	Local	1714	38
5	Domingo Martín	Local	1714	56
5	Joque Jaramillo	Mexico City	1720	35
5	José de Atienza	Mexico City	1714	36
4	Juan Alonso Mondragón	Local	1718	40
4	Lucas Flores	Parras	1714	50
3	Francisco Xavier Romero	Mexico City	1714	56
3	Juan Alonso	Local	1719	38
3	Juan de Atienza	Puebla	1714	46
3	Juan Martín	Local	1717	23
3	Mateo Trujillo	Soldier	1723	48
3	Pedro Sánchez	Río Abajo	1725	22
2	Antonio de Herrera	Salvatierra	1714	30
2	Cayatano de Atienza	Mexico City	1725	34
2	Cristóbal Tafoya	Tlalpujahua	1720	40
2	Diego Martín	Local	1716	45
2	Domingo Montes Vigil	Zacatecas	1719	25
2	Francisco Alberto de la Mora	Zamora	1716	56
2	Isidro de Medina	Durango	1720	28
2	Juan de Sandoval Martínez	Mexico City	1722	63
2	Lázaro de Córdova	Mexico City	1714	24
2	Luís de Archuleta	Local	1720	20
2	Roque de Madrid	Local	1716	70
2	Miguel Martín	Local	1714	30
2	Nicolás Sisneros	Local	1714	24
2	Ramon Medina	Soldier	1719	28
2	Santiago Romero	Mexico City	1719	26
2	Ventura Esquibel	Soldier	1718	33
Santa Cruz Witnesses for Diligencias Matrimoniales between 1714 and 1730

Notes: First appearance means within this time period; the older men no doubt began being called when they were younger.

Roque’s brother Lorenzo was accused of illicit relations with Juana Domínguez in 1697. They later married. Salvador’s daughter, Josefa Durán, used the name Luján when she was married to Augustín Griego. Both accusations of infidelity occurred when Diego de Vargas was under attack by Pedro Cubero. Lorenzo’s name appears as maestro de campo in Santa Fé.

For more on the Bishop of Durango, see the post for 28 June 2015.

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

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Kessell, John L., Rick Hendricks, and Meredith Dodge. To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995.

Chimayó Families

All the people living in Chimayó before 1712 had family connections from La Cañada before the Revolt. Luis Martín Serrano II was married to Melchora de los Reyes. His children by another wife, Antonia de Miranda, included Antonio and Francisco. The second was married to Juana García de los Reyes. Luis’s brother Pedro’s daughter Juana was married to Felipe de Arratia. Luis’ first cousin, Cristóbal, was the father of Felipe Moraga.

Of the other settlers, Diego González was the son of Melchora González Bernal. Luis López was married to Ana María de la Concepción Bernal. His mother was Ana Luján. Matías Luján was married to Francisca Romero. Angélico Chávez thought Matías the likely son of Juan Luján. He didn’t mention Ana.

Those who weren’t members of the original La Cañada community were soon absorbed by marriage. Antonio’s first wife was Ynez de Ledesma. His second was María Cortés of Mexico City. In 1725, he married Gertrudis Fresqui, the granddaughter of Ambrosia Fresqui.

Ana María Herrera, the niece of Tomas de Herrera y Sandoval, married Luis’ grandson, Antonio. He was the child of Diego and Josefa de Torres.

After 1712, most of the new names that appear in Chimayó were through marriages. That year Mateo de Ortega, the husband of Antonia Martín conveyed, land to Manuel Martín. In 1718, Antonia’s second husband Bernardo Fernández was living there. Diego Durán, the husband of Pascuala Martín, witnessed a wedding in 1720.

Marriages of the younger generation of Martíns generally were with children of new immigrants. Cristóbal’s son Diego married Manuela de Vargas in 1714, his daughter Catarina married Isidro Medina in 1717, and his son Juan Luis married Isidro’s sister Antonia in 1719. Manuela’s father, Manuel Fernandéz de Vargas, was a tailor from Guadalajara. Isidro’s father was a capitán in the militia from Durango.

Antonio Martín’s stepdaughter, Ines Cortes, married Francisco Jurado in 1718. His family came from Sombrerete. The exception to this preference for exogamy was Antonio’s son by María Cortes. Juan Antonio, married Feliciana Monroy in 1725. Her parents were Juan Alonso de Mondragón and Sebastiana Trujillo. Her grandmother was María Bernal.

Within the extended families, authority apparently flowed from father to son. When disputes arose between brothers whose fathers were long dead, harmony was maintained by asking a neutral third party to arbitrate.

For instance, when Diego González filed a complaint against Pedro’s daughter’s husband, Felipe de Arratia, in 1703, the family of Pedro’s brother testified against him. Witnesses included Luis and his sons Domingo and Antonio.

Similarly, Luis López requested arbitration against Melchora de los Reyes in 1712. She was married to Luis Martín. His wife was the close friend of Pedro’s daughter-in-law, Leonor Domínguez.

In 1717, Cristóbal, the son of Hernán, and Francisco, the son of Luis’ son Pedro also used a third party.

In addition, the family employed diligencias matrimoniales to voice concerns when lines of authority weren’t clear. When Diego’s son Antonio proposed marrying Gertrudis Sánchez in 1717, Francisco, his son Juan, and another cousin Diego, all said they had had relations with her. When Isidro Medina’s sister was going to marry Diego Romero, Miguel Martín was one of the witnesses who said Romero had already proposed to another woman. The marriage proceeded when Romero claimed the woman involved was already pregnant by another man.

As mentioned in the post for 29 March 2015 on the dispute between Leonor Domínguez and her husband, the purpose of judicial investigations wasn’t to place blame. Instead, it was to determine the community’s will and enforce it. The first two complaints were like class action suits brought by groups who were harmed by someone closing a road. To maintain family and community harmony, the person filing the complaint was not a member of the accused’s family, but the witnesses and beneficiaries were.

Notes: Chávez didn’t mention Melchora in Families, but she was named as the mother of Diego Martín, son of Luis, in 1717 in Roots. Chávez believed Bernardo or Bernardino Fernández was the same man as Martín Fernández mentioned in the post for 2 April 2015.

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

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Cutter, Charles R. The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810, 1995. He has more on the functions of the judicial system as an enforced of community mores.

Chimayó

Chimayó lies on a plain at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, with steep badlands on three sides. It was reached by following what today is called the Santa Cruz river as it meanders down ten miles and 500' from the east and north.

When Diego de Vargas created the villa of Santa Cruz in 1695, he defined the eastern boundary as "those which extend from" San Juan pueblo past "the farms of Captains Luis Martín and Juan Ruis, in front of and at the place and tract of land called Chimayó."

At the time, the name Chimayó was used for the river, the plain, and everything between. In 1695, Tomas de Herrera y Sandoval requested half a fanega of land "near Chimayó" and in 1702 Diego González bought land "near Chimayó."

The next year, Felipe de Arratia plowed land "in the Cañada de Chimayó." Diego González and Ambrosio Fresqui filed a complaint with the Santa Cruz alcalde that he had taken part of the road used by oxen to bring vigas down to the valley. They said the road "was already in use and a custom" from the "beginning of the kingdom, before the first uprising."

It’s clear González and Fresqui were upstream. It’s also clear men were intent of exploiting Pedro Cubero’s relaxation of martial law to reclaim land in the high valley before it was taken by outsiders. Herrera had come in 1695 from Valladolid. Fresqui’s Flemish ancestor, Juan Fresco, had come from Mexico City in 1617 to prospect for minerals. His descendants had settled in the Río Abajo.

González and Fresqui filed their complaint on March 14. Two weeks later, on March 27, Francisco Martín claimed "uncultivated and wild land" next to land already granted to Felipe Moraga. Witnesses against Arratia included two men who gave Chimayó as their residence, Matías Luján and Antonio Martín.

Three years later Luis López requested land that "has never been cultivated" in the Cañada de Chimayó with the ditch dug after the Pueblo Revolt by San Cristóbal. It was separated on they west by an arroyo from Martín’s land. The road to Taos through the Arroyo de la Cañada Ancha ran on the north side.

Chimayó was desirable because it was relatively protected by topography from attack, had a permanent source of water, and the necessary resources to sustain life. Río Medio comes from Trailrider’s Wall and Río Frijoles comes from the Picuris-Pecos Fault to merge to the southeast. They’re joined at the eastern edge of the settled area by the Río Quemado, the only river that flowed all year. In addition to mountain snow from its origin near the Truchas peaks, it was fed by springs.

Almost as important, the north tilting plain was surrounded by woodlands that provided fuel for cooking and keeping warm. Probably most was one-seeded juniper, but Don Usner says you can still find old piñon stumps on the "summit of Tsi Mayoh and on the steepest ridges of the badlands" that were cut by axe.

The growing season is more variable there than in the valley, but they could grow corn and wheat. Communal grazing land lay east of López’s land. In 1712 he complained Melchora de los Reyes was preventing his animals from getting through. She had been granted land next to his in 1711.

Notes: The consequences of Cubero’s settlement politics were discussed in the post for 11 March 2015. Herrera’s son Antonio died in the Villasur massacre.

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

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, two volumes, 1914.

Usner, Don J. Sabino’s Map, 1995; he mentions corn and wheat being grown in the twentieth century.

Vargas, Diego de. Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz, 18 March 1695, in Twitchell, volume 1.

Maps: United States Department of the Interior, Geological Survey maps.
1. "Chimayo Quadrangle, New Mexico, 7.5 minute series (topographic)," 1953.
2. More readable detail of #1.
3. "Cundiyo Quadrangle, New Mexico-Santa Fe County, 7.5 minute series (topographic)," 1953.