Land Grants

Settlement patterns in northern Nueva México were closely tied to the presence of governors willing to make land grants and to the perceived safety of lands on the perimeter of settlement. Men given grants were considered accessory conquistadores. They were expected to use their own funds to recruit settlers and provide for their defense. They weren’t promised titles like Oñate or de Vargas. Instead, they were rewarded with whatever wealth they produced.

In 1703, Pedro Cubero granted lands at Chimayó to Francisco Martín, grandson of the first Luis Martín Serrano. The area had been used before the Revolt, and was rarely attacked. It’s major impact on natives living in the valley was an encroachment on traditional lands of San Juan.

Sebastían Martín Serrano, another grandson of Luis and second cousin of Francisco, requested confirmation of his lands south of the Embudo in 1712 from José Chacón. While this reestablished the Español presence in an area settled before the Pueblo Revolt, it also propelled families into an area where tribal territories were being renegotiated by force. This was discussed in the post for 9 July 2015.

While the first round of grants were given to families who had large landholdings before the Pueblo Revolt, many concessions to the north and west of Santa Cruz were given to retired soldiers. The governors were following the tradition of the Romans who settled veterans in the Estremadura to exploit and protect mines.

Juan Flores Magollón granted a number of allotments in 1714 along the Río Chama. Some of the land had been used before the Revolt. The Navajo had exploited the rest when they raided Santa Clara and San Juan in 1705, 1708, and 1709. As mentioned in the post for 21 May 2015, the last battle with them had been in March of 1714.

Chacón had refused a request from men in Santa Cruz in 1712 to resettle the area west of San Juan between the Río Grande and the Chama that had been the site of the first settlement "known as San Gabriel and by other name the Town of Yunque." His aide, Juan Páez Hurtado, had warned it would leave Santa Cruz "practically abandoned."

The group who had requested the grant included children of Roque Madrid. José and Matías Madrid were his sons. Ysabel de la Serna had married his son Pedro. Tomás de Bejarano had married Teresa Madrid, whose parentage was unknown.

It also included Bartolomé Lobato, who had risen to the rank of capitán, and his son or nephew Blas. Lobato was from Sombrerete, as was Andres González. Simón de Córdoba and Cristóbal de Castran were from Zacatecas. Córdoba was in the presidio. Angélico Chávez believed the second surname was actually Castro.

The other two in the group who requested rights to Yunque were Sebastían Durán, who was married to Ana María Martín, and Diego Márquez, who was married to Juana Martín. The parentage of the two Martín girls was unknown to Chávez. Capitán Márquez was the son of Esther Luján.

Flores had no qualms about ceding the same land to Bartolomé Sánchez, who had come from Queretaro and was living in Santa Fé under the name Bartolomé Garduño. He apparently was given priority over the protests of local military families because he carried papers for the viceroy.

Flores also granted land on the west side of the Chama in 1714 to Cristóbal Crespín, Diego Trujillo, and Salvador de Santisteban. The last was described as "las sobras de tierras" of land granted Lobato for wheat and corn. The literal translation is "leftover lands." Santisteban said he would plant wheat and corn.

The land ceded to Crespín was next to that requested by Santisteban. He planned to divide it evenly with Nicolás Griego to grow corn and wheat. It was described as "whatever is left after granting four fanegas to Salvador de Santisteban and Nicolás de Valverde, and the two fanegas with a house, lot and garden which in their outskirts I granted to Capt. Bartolome Lobato."

Next south on the west side of the Río Grande, Flores validated the claims made by Antonio de Salazar that were mentioned in the post for 6 July 2014. He also may have given José López Naranjo the land mentioned in the post for 14 July 2014, or Naranjo may have acquired it directly from Salazar. There are no records in the archive and no one filed a claim in the nineteenth century for the Naranjo land. Angélico Chávez found the reference in William Ritch’s collection of manuscripts.

These grants were dependent on goodwill between neighbors. They didn’t use the English system of metes and bounds, which identified permanent topological features. William Penn’s use of a grid, mentioned in the post for 13 September 2015, foreshadowed the use of surveys with brass posts at specified coordinates that replaced the metes.

Notes: Salvador de Santisteban was an officer of the presidio who went on the Páez expedition of 1715. Diego Trujillo survived the Villasur expedition of 1720. Sebastían Martín’s grant is often located in Taos; the term apparently was used to refer to any land between the San Juan and Taos pueblos.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Christmas, Henrietta Martinez. "Cristobal Crespín - Lands near the Chama River 1714," 17 April 2013 posting for her blog, 1598 New Mexico; quotation on Crespín grant.

Ritch, W. G. According to Chávez, 1992, the territorial secretary salavage papers from the archives before they were destroyed; they’re now in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914; quotations on Yunque and Santisteban grants.

Militia Duty

Nuevo México was less reliant on its civilian militia between 1714 and 1733 than it had been in years immediately after the Reconquest. Military requirements changed from assaults on established settlements that defied colonial authority to defenses against raids by highly mobile native bands.

The one had required massive forces for short periods in discrete locations. Expeditions to the frontiers took men away for weeks in summer and fall. People dependent on their crops to eat could not afford that time.

When Juan Páez Hurtado led an expedition against the Faraón Apache in 1715, he took 21 settlers with 36 soldiers and 149 auxiliaries. Everyone, military and civilian, reported fully armed with horses or mules. It took more than two weeks during harvest season, August 30 to September 14, to reach their destination, and probably less time to return.

The following year, Félix Martínez prepared a campaign against the Moqui. He apparently had trouble raising troops to go so far west. He offered pardons to any Español or Pueblo man under sentence if he enlisted. Only three took his offer: Antonio López, Marcos Montoya, and Felix Martines. In addition, he took ten men from San Juan and four from Santa Clara.

Three years later, in 1719, Antonio Valverde led an expedition against the Utes and Comanches that included 60 men from the presidio with "45 settlers and volunteers." In addition there were "30 natives of [torn out] prepared for war with their arms."

They left Taos on September 20, at the end of harvest season, and agreed to return a month later, on October 22. Again, they probably didn’t take as long getting home, though they took a different route.

The changed attitude towards service was reflected in the lack of supplies the volunteers brought. Valverde had to provide them with ammunition and leather jackets. He also contributed 75 horses and mules. They must have come from a poorer segment of society that did those who rode with Páez.

Pedro Villasur led troops on a search for the French in 1720. He took 42 men from the presidio with 60 auxiliaries from the pueblos. Except for the priest, the others were all retired military men or civilian capitánes: José López Naranjo of Santa Cruz, Cristóbal de la Serna of Embudo, and Jean l’Archevêque of Santa Fé.

They left Santa Fé on June 16, and were ambushed two months later, on August 13^th or 14^th. The dead included 31 from the presidio, at least 11 from the pueblos, and all the non-presidio men.

Each expedition took twice as long as the previous one, growing from a one way trip of two weeks to one for a month to one for two months. Apart from the increasing time commitments, established men may have felt different loyalties to a leader of the Reconquest like Diego de Vargas, who was tasked with protecting them, and to one of the later political appointees who obeyed orders governed by Spain’s fractious relations with France. Participation in the one was ennobling. Involvement with the other was not.

The rank of capitán was still prestigious, but bivouacs were not. Santa Cruz diligencias matrimoniales in these years indicated the capitánes were all fathers of participants or witnesses, not grooms. All but one were alive before the Reconquest when military valor was expected. The post-Reconquest generation hadn’t assumed that role.

At the same time settlers were less inclined to join military campaigns, men in the presidios were withdrawing into their private world. They began to see civilians as little more than elevated servants to be given the most distasteful tasks like sentry duty.

There was probably no great turnover in forces, and in the years after the Reconquest, many have been local recruits. Veterans had found ways to supplement their income. They could afford to marry and dabble in real estate. Their sons enlisted. They and their daughters married others whose fathers were soldiers.

Before 1720, most of the soldiers who married women in Santa Cruz were widowers and their second wives were related to local capitánes or other military men. Felipe Pacheco married the daughter of Capitán Sebastían Martín, Bernardo Fernández married Sebastían niece, and Melchor de Herrera married the widow of Matías Martín. He was the son of Sebastían’s cousin Domingo Martín Serrano and Josefa de Herrera.

The other widowers who married in Santa Cruz were Roque de Madrid and Juan Trujillo, who married Roque’s granddaughter. María Madrid’s mother was Antonia de la Serna, Cristobal’s niece.

Joaquin de Anaya was a widower who married Domingo Martín Serrano’s daughter. There’s no indication he was in the presidio. The two soldiers who witnessed his marriage probably knew his deceased father, Sargento Mayor Francisco de Anaya.

Antonio García de Perea was a soldier, but not a widower when he married the daughter of the one-time alférez of Chama. Diego Gonzales was dead when two soldiers confirmed their right to marry.

After the Villasur disaster, few presidio men married women in Santa Cruz. Julian Madrid, the son of Roque, married the daughter of one of Sebastían Martín’s nephews. Antonio de Armenta married a soldier’s widow.

Two men who married local women were sons of soldiers who had acquired land in Santa Cruz. Pablo Manuel Trujillo, the son of Capitán Baltasar Trujillo, married the daughter of Capitán Diego Márquez. Antonio de Santisteban, the son of Ayudante Salvador de Santisteban, married Francisca Fernández Valerio, whose father was probably somehow related through Bernardo Fernández’s first wife, an unknown Valerio.

In ten years, from 1720 to 1730, there were only four alliances between Santa Cruz and the presidio. It was clear that settlers in the north were beginning to want a professional soldiery, and the men in the presidio were becoming a self-sufficient community thirty miles away.

Notes:
Athearn, Frederic J. A Forgotten Kingdom, 1978; has details on Martínez campaign against the Moqui.

Chávez, Angélico. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982, contains the diligencias matrimoniales.

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

Páez Hurtado, Juan. Lists of soldiers, settlers, and Pueblo auxiliaries, in Thomas.

Thomas, Alfred B. After Coronado, 1935; also contains details on Villasur expedition.

Valverde y Cosío, Antonio. Diary of the campaign against the Ute and Comanche, 1719, reprinted by Thomas.


Capitánes named in diligencias matrimoniales between 1714 and 1730
Alive at time of 1680 revolt. Dates of birth at left were calculated from ages and may be inaccurate: the ages may be guesses, and the calculations may be off a year since no months are given.

         Juan de Archuleta, deceased in 1714, father of groom
         José López Naranjo, father of groom
         Cristóbal de la Serna, father of bride
1631 Luís Martín, deceased in 1716, father of groom, bride
1668 Cristóbal de Torres, father of bride
1668 José Trujillo, father of bride, groom
1670 Baltasar Trujillo, father of groom
1671 Sebastían Martín, father of bride
1671 Miguel Tenorio de Alba, witness, married
1672 Ignacio de Roybal, notary
1674 Diego de Medina, deceased in 1717, father of bride, groom

Alive at time of Reconquest
1681 Diego Márquez, father of bride

Santa Cruz Militia Rosters

The identities of many who served in these years from Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and San Juan are lost. No roster survives from Roque de Madrid’s 1705 campaign against the Navajo. The man who chronicled the campaign, Antonio Álvarez Castrillón, mentioned few in the company. He did, however, remark the skills of Juan Roque Gutíerrez, the campaign captain who guided the horses through "the middle of a forest so thick and close that the animals got stuck."

There’s no published roster for Juan de Ulibarrí’s expedition the next year to El Cuartelejo. He says he received an "enlistment list" that included 28 from the presidio, 12 from the militia, and 100 auxiliaries. He added men went he stopped at Picurís.

Ulibarrí is the only one who signed his report. In it he mentions Sargento Bartolomé Sánchez, who found a ford across a swollen stream. Later he sends Ensign Ambrosia Fresqui and Capitán José López Naranjo to find water. Ulibarrí also names Francisco de Valdés and Jean l’Archevêque.

Castrillón’s report was signed by nine men, besides himself and Madrid. Six had ties to Santa Cruz: José Domínguez de Mendoza, Cristóbal de la Serna, Juan Roque Gutíerrez, Miguel de Herrera, José López Naranjo, and Mateo Trujillo. The first two were capitánes whose families had lived in the Río Abajo before the Revolt.

The second two were soldiers from the presidio. Gutíerrez had married the daughter of a capitán, Luis Martín, in 1690. Herrera was raised in La Cañada. Both were the sons of soldiers. Trujillo had come north as a soldier, then claimed land. On this expedition he was a squadron leader.

The other signatories included two who were part of the presidio and later assigned to Santa Cruz as alcaldes: Cristóbal de Arellano and Tomás López Holguín. Martín García was also part of the presidio. He’s the one who would be exiled in 1710 for abusing native workers at Galisteo.

As for the auxiliaries, Madrid noted sixteen joined them from Tesuque, when they were en route to Picurís, and forty came there from Taos. In addition he mentioned Pamuje, a Tewa speaker, and Dirucaca from Jémez as men who gave him conflicting advice on a route. When he wanted to distract the Navajo while he positioned men to attack, he sent Naranjo and the governor of Zia. Their seconds were Juan Griego from San Juan and another war captain.

The other capitánes, militia men and auxiliaries were anonymous. Only one was killed, "and he was an Indian."

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

Hendricks, Rick and John P. Wilson. The Navajos in 1705, 1996; biographies of men mentioned in journal.

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

La Cañada Marriages

The community of Santa Cruz in 1700 was too small to be self-sustaining.

It had no educated men willing to work as notaries. All the notaries who signed diligencias matrimoniales came from elsewhere. José Manuel Giltomey, who served from 1696 to 1703, was from the Philippines. A man from Mexico City, Miguel de Quintana, signed papers from 1704 to 1712. Juan de Paz Bustillos, Cristóbal Góngora, and Juan de Atienza Sevillano served shorter terms. The first two were from Mexico City, the last from Puebla.

Too few families returned to support marriages without the priests raising questions of consanguinity. The proposed marriage between Isabel Madrid and Agustín Sáez was stopped when Antonio Bernal and Bartolomé Lobato said the two were related in the third degree through his first wife. Matías Madrid agreed his wife and Sáez’s first wife were first cousins.

In the first three years, a third (3) of the Santa Cruz marriages were between returning families. Two were with families who had some old kinship ties, and one was from the Santa Fé. The remaining third with people from the Río Abajo.

Around 1700, all the marriages were contracted with people who had some tie to La Cañada, often through a mother or grandmother.

After 1705, two-thirds of the marriages were still with people with an ancestral tie to La Cañada, but the rest were with families from the Río Abajo.

The Martíns were the most likely to marry from outside the Santa Cruz valley. Many were with a family with an even more distinguished past, and possibly even more misalliances: the Domínguez y Mendozas.

The other Río Abajo men introduced into the north were Trujillos.

Although circumstances were prodding La Cañada families to expand their social networks, most were on the male side through militia duty. More intimate relations were still limited to a few family traditions.

Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982; contains the diligencias matrimoniales.

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

New Mexico Politics

Governors were a new world innovation within the Spanish governmental hierarchy created to handle frontier settlements too far from Mexico City for direct supervision by the viceroy. According to Charles Cutter, they had military, administrative, fiscal, and judicial responsibilities similar to those of alcaldes in Mexico City and Zacatecas.

Community expectations for governors may have fueled the conflict between Diego de Vargas and the man who followed him in power, Pedro Rodríguez Cubero. He had been appointed governor on 6 June 1692, but did not assume office until 2 July 1697. Legally, de Vargas was the military leader, and maintained his position through conventions of martial law.

The event that may have persuaded Cubero to accept the governorship was a change in leadership in Mexico City. The viceroy who had sponsored de Vargas, Gaspar de la Cerda, resigned on 26 February 1696. His successor, José Sarmeinto Valladares, didn’t take office until 18 December 1696. The Bishop of Michoacán, Juan Ortega y Montañés, served in the interim.

Cubero restored the civil authority of the cabildo in Santa Fé. It responded by charging de Vargas with failing to fulfill his public functions during the famine of 1696 by not supplying enough corn. In Mexico City and Zacatecas cabildos were responsible for procuring and distributing the food supply. In extraordinary circumstances, like the famine in Mexico City in 1697, Cubero’s viceroyal patron became active.

When de Vargas returned as governor in November of 1703, the cabildo charged Cubero with neglecting his duty to protect the people by abandoning the frontier post of Santa Cruz. It said, "there were very large houses and a plaza with a chapel and convento, all behind a door and parapets" when Vargas settled the villa. Now, it said, the settlement was "laid waste and ruined, with the wood and adobes removed and only the foundations remaining."

De Vargas believed the northern outpost must remain compact to be defendable, and populated to serve its defense function for the colony. He also believed peaceful relations with the pueblos depended on keeping them separated from the españoles.

Cubero acquiesced to the desires of the people de Vargas had settled in Santa Cruz. Some wanted more land to sustain themselves, others wanted to return to the more urbanized Santa Fé.

The only land grants in the Santa Cruz area that survive in the archives from the time of de Vargas, were small. The half fanega he gave Tomás de Herrera y Sandoval near Chimayó in 1695 was three-quarters of an acre, enough to plant half a fanega of corn seed. That would support one adult and maybe a small child for a year, with some left for seed.

Cubero approved larger grants, and allowed many to move near pueblos. In 1698, he granted eight fanegas of wheat land to Juan de Archuleta near San Juan. He also granted land to Juan de la Mora Pineda.

The next year he ceded a rancho and lands to Francisco Guerrero de la Mora. In 1700, he granted lands on the Chama river to Diego Trujillo and Catalina Griego, and lands between Santa Clara and San Ildefonso to Mateo Trujillo. He also let José Trujillo have the lands near the Black Mesa that had belonged to Francisco Jiménez and Ambrosia Saenz before the Revolt, and granted land to Luis Martín.

Few records of private land transfers exist for the time de Vargas was in control. Gertrudis de Barreras y Sandoval sold half a fanega of land in 1695 to Mateo Trujillo.

As soon as Cubero arrived, Juan de Archuleta began acquiring land from people in Santa Cruz. In 1697 he received a rancho from Manuel Vallejo González, and the next year a rancho from Tomás Jirón de Texeda that had belonged to Alonzo del Río. His widow, Isabel González, consolidated his holdings in 1698 with land that Pedro de la Cruz had conveyed to Manual Vallejo.

In March of 1703, Diego González and Ambrosio Fresqui filed a denuncia, or statement of criminal activity, notifying Cubero that Felipe de Arratia had fenced off a section of the road to Chimayó. His actions forced carters to use a narrow, muddy road near the Santa Cruz river. They appealed to Cubero’s fiscal responsibilities when they noted "the camino real should remain open because it is royal property."

Cubero asked his lieutenant alcalde mayor, Matías Madrid, to determine the facts. All the witnesses agreed the traditional road limited Arratia’s ability to grow crops. They also agreed the road by the river was hazardous for oxen bringing vigas down from Chimayó. One even suggested it would be a good place for an Apache ambush.

The governor’s responsibilities as judge required him to give precedence to community harmony, equidad, over those of individuals. Madrid persuaded Arratia to reopen the road. Despite bickering in Santa Fé, the rudiments of civil law were functioning in Santa Cruz.

Notes:
Cutter, Charles R. The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810, 1995.

Fat Knowledge. "How Many People Can the Earth Support?, 30 November 2008 blog posting. He calculates a "bushel of corn can support a person for 52 days at 2,400 kcal/day with 25.4kg/bushel)," or 7 bushels a year. I reduced that number, since nutritional values may be greater today.

Gibson, Charles. The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, 1964. He calculates the corn yield in a good year would have been 75 to 125 fanegas for one sown, with 11 fanega or 17 bushels an acre. That would mean .75 acres would produce 12.75 bushels.

Rowlett, Ross. "How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measure," 2001, website. He says, "one fanega of land grows one fanega of corn seed." It was standardized to 1.59 acres in 1801, or .75 acres for a half fanega.

Santa Fé Cabildo. Certification, 2 December 1703," included in A Settling of Accounts, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, Meredith D. Dodge, and Larry R. Miller.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 1, 1914. When entries with the same names appear in different years, it’s hard to determine if they are separate transactions or continuations of the same.