Santa Fe, New Mexico

“ The province of New Mexico is rather more mountainous, than that part formerly called New Biscay, now state of Chihuahua; but is interspersed with some rich vallies, particularly those bordering on the Rio del Norte. The city of Santa Fe is situated 25 miles from the river, at the barren foot of a mountain. It was established about the beginning of the 17th century, and seems to have been formerly a place of considerable importance, as a rendezvous for troops. It now contains perhaps not far from two thousand souls, the most of whom have the appearance of penury. ”

“ Do lady sit an’ cry? No, No! she get horse, tek her money, ride all long trail to Mexico City and tell big men of King. Then she mek justice come to Santa Fé, and every one feel better for leetle time.
“Oh, ye’es! Many, many such tragedy, many drama, what go on in Old Palace where history make the West,” repeated the Padre, his weak black eyes gazing at the famous old building which was just visible beyond the houses in the foreground.
“You know, signoras, our old Santa Fé trail one of mos’ famous in world history. ”

“ We recommenced our journey, and passed a mission of Indians under the control of an old priest. After crossing a point of the mountain, we reached Santa Fe,48 on the 5th. This town contains between four and five thousand inhabitants. It is situated on a large plain. A handsome stream runs through it, adding life and beauty to a scene striking and [77] agreeable from the union of amenity and cultivation around, with the distant view of the snow clad mountains. It is pleasant to walk on the flat roofs of the houses in the evening, and look on the town and plain spread below. ”

“ The hills surrounding the city on all sides shelter it from the sandstorms which afflict some parts of New Mexico, and its pleasant climate, attractive mountain scenery and historical interest make it a favourite resort.
Santa Fé is built round a plaza or square. Crooked streets, bordered with low adobe houses, are characteristic of the older part of the city and give an impression of antiquity. Around the plaza and elsewhere in the city, however, the Mexican style of architecture has given way to the American. ”

“ While Spain lost its empire and New Mexico and the Southwest sank into poverty and decay, yet another force was on the march, a force that welled up in an Anglo-American people clinging to the Atlantic Coast of North America. As these people developed a nation, they also discovered a sense of destiny which turned their faces to the west and their footsteps toward the sunset. With them moved their culture. At first, it was a trickle, a few traders bent on profit, crossing the plains on the Santa Fe Trail. ”

“ Mexico manufactured very little, and was eager for American goods.
As the result, through the country of the Kiowas and the Comanches there was opened the great Santa Fe Trail of the merchants and traders. From the Missouri River at the Kansas border it struck out into present central Kansas, headed southwest to the Arkansas River, and passing on across the desert into northeastern New Mexico arrived at old Santa Fe, seven hundred and seventy miles. ”

“ In Chihuahua, they make a great exhibition with the whole scalps of Indians which they happen to kill by proxy; the refined New Mexicans show but the ears. Among the distinguished buildings in Santa Fe, I have to mention yet two churches with steeples, but of very common construction.
The inhabitants of Santa Fe are a mixed race of Spanish and Indian blood, though the latter prevails. The number of inhabitants was in former times reported as high as 4,000; at present it contains at most 3,000; and with the surrounding settlements belonging to the jurisdiction of Santa Fe, about 6,000. ”

“ High in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, eight miles northeast of Santa Fe, the park offers an excellent example of the scenic beauty in New Mexico rarely seen by most travelers passing through the state. Easily accessible from Santa Fe, Hyde Park gives a few moments, or a few days, respite in the cool refreshment of a mountain forest. Excellent picnic and camping facilities are available. For those who want to penetrate the mountain vastness even farther, there are a number of well-marked trails for hiking. ”

“ In New Mexico and Arizona, while exploring an ancient Spanish church or considering some palace of sun-dried mud with a sixteenth-century origin, it will begin to press upon one how the East, after all, is but the younger theatre of European endeavour in this continent. Also, an odd feeling will grow, as one reflects that more than a half century before Winthrop and Standish and Bradford and Alden and those other stern and solemn ones, came ashore on Plymouth Rock, Santa Fé was a bustling capital—a centre of agriculture, of mining, of flocks and of herds. ”

“ Towns.—This stripe of country, which borders the Rio del Norte, is thinly peopled; the town of Santa Fe containing 4000 inhabitants; Albuquerque, 6000; and Taos, 9000, comprise almost one-half of the population. The other half consists of poor colonists, whose scattered hamlets are frequently ravaged by the powerful tribes of Indians who surround them, and overrun the province. It is true that the soil is amongst the finest and most fertile of Spanish America. ”

“ But the city itself seemed unchanged, and there was little evidence that Yankee thrift and energy had entered New Mexico with the new government. The narrow street still marked the trail's end before the Exchange Hotel. San Miguel, with its dun walls and triple-towered steeple, still good guard over the soul of Santa Fé, as it had stood for three sunny centuries. The Mexican still drove down the loaded burro-train of firewood from the mountains. The Indian basked in the sunny corners of the Plaza. The adobe dwellings clustered blindly along little lanes leading out to nowhere in particular. ”

“ The most tragic event in the history of the valley was the massacre of the provisional governor of the Territory of New Mexico, with a number of other Americans, shortly after its occupation by the United States.
Upon General Kearney's taking possession of Santa Fe, acting under the authority of the President, he established a civil government and put it into operation. Charles Bent was appointed governor, and the other offices filled by Americans and Mexicans who were rigidly loyal to the political change. ”

“ The privations of long marches through the enemy's country and through a wilderness have been borne without a murmur. By rapid movements the Province of New Mexico, with Santa Fe, its capital, has been captured without bloodshed. ”

“ More exact statements concerning the date of this settlement are not accessible, although they probably exist in the Spanish archives; but it is certain that Santa Fé was not founded till after the year 1607. Twenty years afterward two hundred and fifty Spaniards dwelt there, including soldiers; and when the Indians rose and drove out the whites in 1680, the whole district contained not more than one thousand Europeans, about half of whom lived in Santa Fé.
All the other towns in New Mexico, the Indian villages excepted, are of much later origin than Santa Fé. ”

“ Contrary to our expectations, however, they did not offer to molest us, and we at once made up our minds they preferred to wait for our return, as we believed they had somehow learned of our intention to bring back from New Mexico a large herd of mules and ponies. We arrived in Santa Fe on the 20th of July, without further adventure, and after having our stock of goods passed through the custom house, were granted the privilege of selling them. The majority of the party sold out in a very short time and started on their road to the States, leaving twenty-one of us behind to return later. ”

“ These vast public properties located in several sections of the state are administered as Carson, Santa Fe, Cibola, Lincoln, Gila, Apache, and Coronado National Forests, the latter two lying primarily in Arizona and being directed from there rather than from New Mexico. Visitors to New Mexico traveling along main highways see the high forest country outlining the horizon and often regard the lofty masses of rugged rock as unapproachable and lacking in friendliness. ”

“ Fine Arts Building of the Museum of New Mexico
12
Note the inspiring flowing style of the FINE ARTS MUSEUM, on the Plaza in Santa Fe. The massive facade has six of the ancient Franciscan mission churches reproduced; all without destroying the unity of its appearance. They are: Acoma, San Felipe, Cochiti, Laguna, Santa Ana and Pecos. ”

“ The early history of the Santa Fe Trail, which runs parallel with the Santa Fe Railroad for hundreds of miles, is somewhat obscured by mystery and tradition, but from historical data in possession of the Museum of New Mexico, at Santa Fe, it can be stated with a large degree of accuracy that the trail was started by Spanish explorers three hundred years ago. ”

“ What a wonderful change has taken place in the traffic with New Mexico in less than three-quarters of a century! In 1825 it was all carried on with one single annual caravan of prairie-schooners, and now there are four railroads running through the Rio Grande Valley, and one daily freight train of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe into the town unloads more freight than was taken there in a whole year when the "commerce of the prairies" was at its height! ”

“ A day's delay at Albuquerque enables the traveller to visit four interesting pueblos,—Santa Ana, Sandia, Zia, and Jemez,—in a day's stage ride between Jemez and Albuquerque. At all these important stations on the route the Santa Fé has established free reading-rooms for its employés, fitted up with every comfort.
New Mexico, while partaking in the general fascination that invests all the great Southwest, is especially not only a land of enchantment, but a land of opportunities. It is a country of untold latent wealth, of uncalculated resources. ”

“ Moreover, an Indian village, in consequence of the peculiar structure of its buildings, always appears at least twice as large as it really is.
The founding of Santa Fé has been ascribed to Espejo. The error is the result of inaccurate, extremely superficial historical inquiry. The mere reading of Espejo’s account would satisfy any one that he marched all through New Mexico and northern Arizona with only fourteen soldiers; that his expedition was a mere reconnoissance and no scheme of colonization ”

“ A few miles west of Topeka, the capital of Kansas, when the train reaches the little hamlet of Wakarusa, the track of the railroad commences to follow the route of the Old Santa Fe Trail. At that point, too, the Oregon Trail branches off for the heavily timbered regions of the Columbia. Now begins the classic ground of the once famous highway to New Mexico; nearly every stream, hill, and wooded dell has its story of adventure in those days when the railroad was regarded as an impossibility, and the region beyond the Missouri as a veritable desert. ”

“ Once established in the Franciscan province, the concept of converging sanctuary walls survived the 1680 Indian revolt and returned with the reconquest of New Mexico in 1693. Spaniards raised and rebuilt missions from the capital at Santa Fe (San Miguel, rebuilt 1710; Figure 9d) north to Taos (San Geronimo, 1706) . Throughout the 18th century, in a three-to-one ratio, the churches of New Mexico used the contracted, as opposed to the box, sanctuary. ”

“ With the exception of a narrow belt of missions in New California, on the Western coast, which terminates with the port of San Francisco in lat. 36, and the isolated province of New Mexico, the capital of which (Santa Fé) is situated in the same parallel as San Francisco, the whole country contained between 28° and 42° of North latitude, is unappropriated by any white population, and almost unknown; and centuries must elapse before the civilization of America can increase sufficiently to give it any value. It will, probably, be one of the last strong holds of man in a semibarbarous state ”

“ Rising in the Santa Fé mountains immediately east of Santa Fé, and following a south-southeast course for about eight hundred miles, it enters the Rio Grande in latitude 29° 41′. The name is derived from an old pueblo, situated on one of the mountain tributaries about twenty-five miles southeast of Santa Fé. In 1540 this was the largest Indian village in New Mexico, containing a population of about two thousand souls; but the United States troops in 1846 found it desolate and in ruins. A small modern village has grown up near the ancient site.—Ed. ”

“ These Indians developed great hostility to the white man, and caravans on the trail were so frequently attacked, and so many tragedies stained the trail with the blood of women and children, that in 1823, Colonel Viscarra, Jefè Politicio, of New Mexico, commanded a battalion of Mexican troops in protecting the caravans on the Santa Fe trail. ”

“ Alburquerque is a town as large as Santa Fé, stretched for several miles along the left bank of the Rio Grande, and if not a handsomer, is at least not a worse looking place than the capital.
The population of New Mexico, owing to the insecure tenure of life on a frontier which is constantly liable to the ravages of wild Indians, has always clustered together in towns and villages. ”

“ Note.—The greater part of the information given in this brief history is taken from Twitchell on Leading Facts of New Mexico History.
[Pg 12]
THE SANTA FE TRAIL.
There are moanings on the trail,
From west and eastward bounders,
The host that’s passed forever,
That shall never know it more;
From men and fragile women,
From pioneers and traders,
Whose dying word was “Never,”
Whose pale souls went on before. ”