SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

THE RECONQUEST OF NEW MEXICO

New Mexico remained separated from the Spanish Empire for twelve years, until the campaign of Governor Diego de Vargas in 1692. Governor Antonio de Otermín made an unsuccessful attempt to recapture the lost province during the winter of 1681-82, and other expeditions made punitive strikes at the Pueblo Indians in 1688 and 1689, but during most of the twelve year period, the pueblos were left to themselves.

The Spanish presence was not forgotten, however. The Indians continued to use many of the tools, livestock, and farming methods that they had learned about from the Franciscans, and many people with some percentage of Spanish blood lived in the pueblos. Some pueblos were abandoned and reestablished in more defensible locations, probably in fear of the return of the Spanish as well as because of increased friction between pueblos and between the pueblos and nomadic Indians.

De Vargas began the reconquest in 1692, but not until 1696 did he have the province firmly in hand. He set up the machinery of government again, but many of the old ways were gone. De Vargas did not reestablish the encomienda system, and the broad powers of the Franciscans were severely cut back. The conflict between the governor, the encomenderos, and the church was over. Missions became doctrinas in fact, exercising little influence over the daily lives of their pueblos. In place of the encomienda, the Spanish Government maintained a permanent force of regular army troops in the province. The governor began the use of the land-grant to encourage the establishment of towns and settlements that would have some ability to defend themselves. Pueblos and towns would receive a formal title to a specific tract of land for their use. Individuals and groups had the same privileges. In spite of the danger and the efforts of the government, many small, undefended settlements grew up, only to be destroyed by nomadic Indian raids. [37]

Resettlement of the Rio Grande Valley

Through the eighteenth century, settlements slowly filled the northern Rio Grande valley and began to be established farther and farther south. In 1706, the governor founded the villa of Albuquerque in the middle of what had been the richest and most extensive farming area of the seventeenth century. [38] It served as the starting point for colonization farther south.

In 1739 Governor Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza created the town of Tomé, eleven miles south of Isleta Pueblo on the east side of the Rio Grande. The governor selected the ruins of the estancia of Tomé Domínguez de Mendoza for the site of the new town. Since the Domínguez de Mendoza family abandoned the ranch during the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 the site had been called the Cerro de Tomé, or "Tomé's hill." Tomé was effectively the southern limit of settlement on the east side of the Rio Grande in New Mexico for most of the eighteenth century. Across the river and five miles south, the town of Bethlén, now called Belén, was settled in 1740. Eleven miles south of Belén also on the west bank, was the fortified settlement of Sabinal, established in the mid-eighteenth century. Just across the river on the east bank the town of Las Nutrias had been established about the same time as Sabinal, but it was abandoned in 1772 because of Apache raids. [39]

Tomé had been colonized with genizaros, hispanicized Indians, who were to form the first line of defense against Plains Indian raids up the Rio Grande valley from the south. When the town was founded, the settlers were "under obligation to go out and explore the country in pursuit of the [Plains Indians], which they are doing with great bravery and zeal." [40] Tomé bore the brunt of many Plains Indian raids throughout the eighteenth century. For example, in 1777 twenty-one settlers of the Tomé area were killed by Comanches, and in 1778 another thirty persons died during a raid by unnamed Indians. The friction between the Spanish and the Plains Indians kept the area south of Tomé untenable for the next twenty years. [41]

The government of the Province of New Mexico began a new effort to colonize the southern Rio Grande in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Plans were made to reoccupy the pueblos of Sevilleta, Alamillo and Socorro, all within forty-five miles south of Belen. The new settlers had begun construction on the defenses of Alamillo and Sevilleta by 1800. The reconstruction of Socorro was delayed until about 1815. Colonists had built a new town in the ruins by 1817. [42]

As the interest in expansion down the Rio Grande strengthened in the period from 1800 to 1815, settlers began to trickle through the Bocas de Abó, the mouth of Abó canyon, toward the abandoned pueblos and estancias east of the Manzano Mountains. [43] Artifacts in the trash dumps of the towns established here indicate that the first reoccupation of Abó and Quarai occurred soon after 1800. In 1815, at the same time that it was encouraging the reoccupation of Socorro, the government began actively recruiting colonists to resettle "the ancient pueblo of Manzano", probably referring to the ruins of the Zalazar estancia and its surviving apple groves four miles northwest of Quarai. [44]

The Expansion of Settlement Into the Salinas Basin

The land in the Rio Grande valley was filling up, and ranchers and farmers began to look outside the valley for new territory. The Salinas basin, abandoned since the 1670s, held a large expanse of land unclaimed by Indian pueblos or private owners. Everyone knew of the good land on the east slope of the Manzano Mountains, and everyone had heard the stories of pueblos and missions that had once been there. The basin was more exposed to Apache and Navajo raiding than the Rio Grande valley, making settlement of the area a risky business, but there were always people willing to take risks for good land.

In 1800, small groups of settlers started moving through Abó Pass to the eastern slopes of the Manzanos, then called the Abó Mountains. Because of their strategic location near dependable springs on the main route east, small settlements immediately formed at the ruins of Abó and Quarai. From Quarai, the explorers and settlers moved north, establishing themselves at other water sources along the eastern slope of the Manzanos. By 1815, settlers were reclaiming the ruins of the Zalazar estancia where the village of Manzano is now located. By 1819, Joseph Nieto's estancia, where the town of Torreon now stands, was reoccupied. The more extensive remains of the pueblos of Tajique and Chililí were resettled before 1840. By 1850, Torreon, Tajique, and Chililí had become the dominant towns of the western Salinas basin.

In the sudden flurry of land speculation and colonization, Abó and Quarai had promising beginnings, but a combination of local political maneuvering and Navajo raiding prevented their development from equalling that of the towns farther north. Las Humanas, in an area that was more exposed to raids and with a less dependable water supply, never aroused much interest among the colonists. The success and failure of the settlements directly influenced the rate of disturbance and deterioration at the three missions. In fact, the survival of the churches and conventos of Abó, Quarai, and Las Humanas in relatively good condition can be attributed to the lack of long-term occupation at these three locations.

No documents directly recorded the reoccupation of Abó and Quarai. Events at the two pueblos can be reconstructed only in the most sketchy manner, from remarks in the records of the successful colonies, traveller's journals, and an examination of the structural changes. Rough dates for the stages of the rise and fall of the new settlements are indicated by the trash thrown onto the refuse heaps around the reoccupied buildings.