Forefathers

This is a picture of the statue of don Diego de Vargas near the cathedral in Santa Fe. Click on the image to enlarge it.

You think our forefathers might be different? That my forefathers might differ from yours? You think mine came here looking for religious freedom? Think again!  You think my forefathers wanted to be free of taxation (Boston Tea Party)? Squanto, remember Squanto?

My forefathers never did encounter Squanto, nor did they ever hear of him. In fact I do not think any Native New Mexicans in New Mexico ever heard about Squanto till the late 1940's or early 1950's when they started adding American History to the curriculum.

Anyway, my forefathers did not come here to have "religious freedom". Not by a long stretch. Nor did they come here to get away from taxation. They came because of the three G's, God, glory and gold. Not necessarily in that order.

In New Mexico, for New Mexican Hispanics, our forefathers were don Juan de Onate, don Diego de Vargas, don Juan de Anza, maybe even the Indian Pope and Cureno Verde. Not George Washington, not Patrick Henry!

Lets make a deal, I will adopt yours when you adopt mine.

Esquipula Padilla

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Esquipula Padilla having a cigarette with a cup of coffee in front of the kitchen stove at his house in Rowe, New Mexico. Circa 1960.

This is a neat picture of a relative of mine who lived next door to us in Rowe in the late 1950's and early 1960's. His name was Esquipula Padilla. He was one of my favorite relatives. He was always willing to spend time with family. I remember all of the neighborhood boys going to his house on a Friday evening in the winter to play cards. We used stick matches to make bets, or the paper book matches which were worth 10 stick matches. Sometimes we would end up going home at 2:30 or 3:00 AM. Playing poker for matches, can you imagine.

I also remember going rabbit hunting with him in the winter just after a snowfall. He had a .22 Cal. rifle and would take 5 shells and come home with  2 - 3 rabbits.

Actually he and his wife, Guadalupe Archuleta, and children lived in Colorado for a while, then in Rowe and finally in Cerillos, New Mexico. I last saw him in 1999, shortly before he passed away. He was then living with his daughter in an area close to the honor farm in the the Los Lunas area.

Almost All Gone

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This is a good pen and ink drawing of my maternal uncle, Abel Benavidez. The pen and ink was drawn by Roark Griffin in 1976. My mother doctored it up by writing on the corner "27 of Feb". And then someone else added the glasses. So the original is somewhat marred. But it is an amazing likeness. I am sure Mr. Griffin would not mind.

Abel was born 18 March 1909 the son of Roman Benavidez and Ignacia Archuleta in Rowe, New Mexico and passed away on 5 August 2008 in Colorado Springs. Ninety nine years and then some. In previous posts here I have posted a picture of his business in Rowe, New Mexico. It was the Midway Bar and Grocery.

He worked in the mines in the Pecos Canyon at Terrero, New Mexico in the late 1920's and 1930's. He was enumerated in the 1930 U.S. Federal Census at Terrero as a miner and living with his sister and brother in law as well as a niece.  I know that he worked for the CCC because he told me so, not sure where he worked with them. At some time he also worked for a time logging north of La Madera, New Mexico. He told me he saw a train car with only 3 logs on it from that area. This was because no more logs fit on the car. Seems like they had railroad spurs all over the canyons up there during that time. During the second world war he worked in the shipyards in California. After the war, he came back to Rowe and opened up the bar/grocery store/filling station. 

The Midway Bar and Grocery was a place that was very prominent on U.S. 85 on the road between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, you could not miss it. Especially in the pre I-25 era. He sold the liquor licence in the late 1960's and continued to sell gas and groceries until he sold the business. He worked at the Glorietta Baptist Assembly and retired from there only to go to work at La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe. He worked there until he finally decided to quit. Then he stayed busy hauling wood from Rowe Mesa and tending the best garden in Rowe.

I only know of one other person from his Benavidez family and generation that is still alive. She is in a rest home in Las Vegas. Today she is 102 years and 8 months old. Her name is Flora Benavidez Ortiz, Abels first cousin.

They are almost all gone!

Word Smithing in History

Kit Carson was "unlettered".

New Mexicans were "illiterate".

Unlettered and illiterate are one and the same. But unlettered seems kinder.

Americans dressed in "buckskins".

New Mexicans dressed in "animal skins".

Again, no difference in meaning, but one sounds better than the other.

These are some examples of the word smithing folks use. Sometimes it is done intentionally and sometimes not. They are particularly plentiful when people are in conflict. Like now with the Iraq war and like then, when the Americans first got to New Mexico. Usually it is done to vilify one group and raise the status of another. 

On another post on this blog I posted of one man, hung as a traitor, hung for treason for daring to plot against the United States in early 1847, less than a year after the Americans invaded and occupied New Mexico and most of Northern Mexico. He was don Antonio Maria Trujillo. What would we call an American today who plotted against an invader that had been here less than a year and planned to stay forever as ruler? We would call him/her a hero/heroine.  But don Antonio Maria Trujillo went down in history as a traitor.

Watch out for those types of word smithing in the history of New Mexico.

IGNORANCE OF THE READER vs IGNORANCE OF THE WRITER vs PLAIN OLD IGNORANCE

The first picture is of an unidentified Mexican woman oh horseback. The second image is of a chart that depicts Spanish racial classifications during the conquest of the Americas. Click on the image to see a larger picture of racial classifications during the Spanish era in New Mexico.

I was looking for some information on a particular individual in the 1910 Federal Census and it took me to Conejos County Colorado. I found the individual in question in 1910 Federal Census for Conejos Counry in  Los Pinos. Anyway I was surprised to find out that the individual is listed as a mullato. I did a little more checking to see if his family was listed as mulatto. They sure were! I did a bit more checking and I find out the whole community is listed as mulatto! Now I know a lot of folks in Los Pinos and do not know a single mulatto. So I check some more and I see where the census taker's W looks close to his M's. The census taker was Jose B Romero.

So I check on and go to San Rafael, CO which the same individual was doing the census taking. Anyway, here is an individual born in Indiana, a Charles Emmerson.  Here is where I compare the W for white in column 5 with the M for male in column 6. They are similar, but not the same. a couple of lines down there is an individual by the name of Elias Quintana. Now I compare the M for "whatever" in column No. 5 with the M for male in column No. 6. They are the same!!!!!

I Think Jose B. Romero was using the M for Mexican, not Mulatto !!!!!!!!! Whoever transcribed the actual image made the mistake, Mr. Romero's penmanship is not good, but it is not that bad. But by interpreting the M as being for mulatto instead of the M being for Mexican someone made a huge blunder. The moral of the story is "checks your data" before you determine they are facts.

Indians (Navajos) in New Mexican Households

The picture above I found on the Internet, no name was associated with the picture other than Navajo woman in Spanish dress. It fit todays subject.

182 Navajos in Hispanic homes in Rio Arriba County in 1870. That is a lot of Navajos, boys and girls and some women. That according to the Federal Census. Reference the publication titled "Herencia, The Quarterly Journal of the Hispanic Genealogical Research Center of New Mexico, in Volume 16, Issue 3, July 2008".  This article was researched and written by a lady by the name of Lorraine Aguilar. 

I was surprised so I looked at the census myself and she is correct. In her article she notes she was just looking for Navajos. And there were other Indians, not Navajo, living in other households. So I went to look in San Miguel, Colfax, Valencia, Taos, Socorro and Mora counties in the 1870's. Lo and behold, none that I could find.

Well, there were less than 10 Indians living in Hispano households in Arroyo Hondo in Taos County. In one Arroyo Hondo household there was Felipe Talachi age 64, an Indian and Lorenza, age 56 keeping house. Lorenza was listed as white. Also Josefa, a 35 year old listed as an indian and finally Dolores age 3 and listed as white. The Talachi household seems to be a mixed race place.

So were the folks in Rio Arriba County the only ones who had Navajos, or other Indians,  living with them? What was going on in 1870? The census taker in Rio Arriba was Trinidad Alarid, in San Miguel it was Demetrio Perez. In Taos County it was Juan Santistevan. Judging by their writing, they seem to read and write well, so they had a fair amount of education. So why the discrepency? Was one or two advised to note this and the other not? Was one inclined to note this and the other not? Did one recognize the Indians and the other not?

Trinidad Alarid nor Juan Santistevan would not have known who was and who was not Indian, Navajo or otherwise. They had to have asked, they had to. Otherwise why would Trinidad Alarid have some born in Navajo Country and other Indians born in New Mexico. He was asking. Now was he asking for the purpose of being thorough? Was he instructed to ask or just inclined to ask? If I had to guess I would say he was inclined to be thorough, at least as compared to Mr. Demetrio Perez who was working San Miguel County. There could not be that many in Rio Arriba County and none in San Miguel County. And keep in mind there were only 13 counties then, so they had to be bigger. 

De Hidalgos a Peon's, Que Paso?

Hispanic New Mexican's who came north from Mexico with don Juan de Onate in 1598 were promised "hidalgo" status for their efforts if they stayed here a specified amount of time. Now hidalgo status was a granting of nobility at it's lowest rung. Yet by the time the United States annexed the province there were mostly folks whom the Americans classified as peon's, landless poor.

Here is what I think happened. and there seems to be several causes.

1) Between the "entrada" in 1598 and Mexican Independence from Spain on Sep. 16, 1821 New Mexicans of every stripe were ignored by the Spanish authorities in both Mexico City and Madrid, Spain. Utterly ignored by any measure being used at the time. By being ignored by their government my ancestors had to make do with what they had on hand, they had to adjust, adapt AND adopt. Adjust to the fact hidalgo status was not worth what they had been led to believe, adapt to the local conditions and adopt methods of survival used by the Indians. Especially when they could not go back, it was decreed that abondoning the colony was not to be condoned. And in reality it was enforced. They could not leave so they had to adjust, and they did.

2) Between Sep. 16 1821 and when the Americans occupied the province on Aug. 15, 1846 New Mexicans were further ignored by the new government in Mexico City. But by this time they had adapted to the harsh conditions. And hidalgo status be dammed, you had to survive. And the way to survive was to copy the Indians just as they had been doing before. They had been surviving here for untold generations.

3) My ancestors were seen as landless poor by the Americans as they came here and they documented that. By comparison my ancestors may have been poor, but most were landless only in the way the Americans viewed land ownership. Most land was held by individuals or by community grantees as mercedes or land grants. But most of the American who came early, fur trappers, did not appreciate the New Mexicans and they did not hesitate to document it, if they could write, by word of mouth if they couldn't. The traders who started arriving a bit later , but still in the early 1800's, thought the same way, and most of them could document this in writing. When the Army of the west arrived on Aug. 15, 1846 the "peon" label was attached to all with the glue provided by writings of the military. And it stuck. 

Jews in New Mexico in the Spanish Era

A relative and a friend offered a subscription to the magazine "La Herencia". The magazine is great reading, but it is not a genuine "historical" document. A good read, but too much mitote in there. There are some great stories in there and I like the publication, it is just that there are many stories in there from New Mexican families claiming to be Jews.

Where is the proof? Who were our ancestors who were "Jews"? Name one, or two or three! There is no documented evidence that any people of the Jewish faith came north with either don Juan de Onate or don Diego de Vargas. There is no evidence of any Jews coming north from Mexico period. Yet there are many that claim to be Jews and from the same time periods discussed here. And I can't be blamed for not looking, I have read several books dedicated to the subject. And at best it states that there could have been some Jews in the colonists of either Onate or Vargas. "Could have been" is a long ways from proof, a very long way.

Some are even attempting to use DNA as proof. My thoughts on that is "how does DNA determine religion. At best it might point to a Semitic race. If it does point in that direction, the odds are that it would be Arab as compared to Jewish. The Arabs, and lots of them,  were in Spain over 700 years. 

Jews were there also, but at some point they were forced to convert or leave. It is these that everyone seems to be "connecting" to. It is stated that even if one could trace a family member to one of these there would be no more "Jewish" customs OR religious customs in the 20th and 21st century.

Now the Spanish had no love for either as documented by their efforts to get rid of the Arabs and convert or expel the Jews. So maybe a few "conversos" did make it through. But 400 and some years later no trace is left of them. The religious folks were diligent in this effort and some were accused and taken to Mexico in chains only to be found innocent.

Now in the early 1800 they did start to arrive, but from the United States. A lot of them, and maybe they intermarried with the locals. That is a distinct possibility and probability. But don't let folks tell you that all Spanish names are in reality Jewish words. That is just not true, no matter who states it. Ask for proof and none is forthcoming.

Peasants and Peons in New Mexico AND the United States in the Mid 1800's

The first image is a photo titled "peon". And the second image is of a peasant, click on them to make them larger.

The early history of New Mexico's people dealing with "Americans" begins just prior to the Spanish being expelled from New Mexico by the new rulers of the soon to be named "Mexico". So in reality New Mexico was here before the country of Mexico came into being. Mexico came into being in the early 1800 as it aquired it's independance from Spain and New Mexico was already New Mexico in the mid to late 1500's. Anyway, just prior to the overthrow of the Spanish New Mexico had begun to see "Americans". They came first as trappers and then as traders on the Santa Fe Trail.

And make no mistake about it, the traders, in particular, were spies first and traders second. They were carrying back to the "States" stories of the wealth, or lack therof, in New Mexico. New Mexico's strengths and weaknesses. They tended to refer to the people here, my ancestors, as peasants or peons. They used these words in pejorative terms. Wikepedia defines this as "Words and phrases are pejorative if they imply disapproval or contempt. The adjective pejorative is synonymous with derogatory, derisive, dyslogistic, and contemptuous. When used as a noun, pejorative means "a belittling or disparaging word or expression".

I have always wondered if there were any peasants in Kearney's Army of the West?  Were there any peons in Kearney's Army of the West? Were there any pesants or peons back in the "states"? Anyway, do a search on Google and you will soon see that there were indeed both peasants and peons in the "states" back in the mid 1800's. A lot more than in New Mexico as the population of the "States", as compared to New Mexico, was huge. Huge! But they did not refer to them as such. Only Mexicans were pesants and peons.

Anyway, I never heard the term pesant when I was growing up. But I did hear the term peon. And it was not a bad word. It was used to describe a worker. And not someone held against their will. My grandfather would sometimes refer to us as his peon's. Always with affection. But it goes to show how the word can be used by different folks and give it a completely different meaning. But I will have to admit that using the dictionary meaning for the terms, a lot of my ancestors were, in non-pejorative terms, pesants and peons.

Las Ruedas, New Mexico to Rowe, New Mexico, the Transition

The last mention that I can find of Las Ruedas, New Mexico as a community is from page 22 of the publication New Mexico Marriages Pecos, October 1862 to April 1904 and published by the Hispanic Genealogical Research Center of New Mexico. 

There it states "January 31 of 1881. I married Manuel Archuleta, single, legitimate son of Ramon Archuleta and Gertrudes Newman with Marta Alari, daughter of Matias Alari and Josefa Valencia, from Las Ruedas. Padrinos were Francisco Archuleta and Maria Montoya."

Then the first mention of Rowe, New Mexico is from page 26 of the very same publication. There it states " November 15, 1889. I married and veiled Catalino Sanchez, single, son of Ramon Sanchez and of Luz Lobato with Maria Segura, single, daughter of Manuel Segura, deceased, and of Cristina Archuleta, from Rowe. Padrinos were Ramon Archuleta and Eulalia Neuman."

Seems like Ramon was there at the end of the line for Las Ruedas and the beginning of Rowe, New Mexico.

My guess is that the movement of people from the Los Trigos Land Grant, of which Las Ruedas and Pajarito seem to have been the only towns, was essentially from Las Ruedas to Rowe and some to Pajarito as the work on the railroad created the jobs people needed to survive.