NMCentennialBlueBook

served as servants, shepherds, or laborers. They were raised in Spanish or Mestizo culture, speaking
Spanish and becoming Christians, and were given Spanish names).
In 1796, the Don Fernando de Taos Land Grant is made.
Governor Chacon reports that New Mexico has a wonderful climate, high mountains, plains and
deserts. The population numbers about 35,751, most of them farmers and/or ranchers living in the
Río Grande Valley, where they grow various crops. Being so isolated, few crops are exported
so there is seldom a surplus. The hard working Pueblo people, who make up about a third of the
population, are experts in agriculture and often enjoy surpluses.
Census figures show that there are 23,648 Spaniards/Mestizos in New Mexico, which includes El
Paso, and 10,557 Indians.
New Mexico is an isolated, remote frontier outpost with no mineral wealth to speak of. Missionary
activity is strong and paid for by the Spanish government. Settlers and their Pueblo allies are a
buffer against hostile Native American Nations. Like the Pueblo people before them, Hispanic
men and women have carved a home out of the wilderness, against all odds, and survived.
According to the Census of 1790, there are 16,358 Hispanics living in New Mexico.
*1800
Col. José Manuel Carrasco discovers a fabulous deposit of copper, which comes to be known as
the Santa Rita del Cobre near Silver City.
In 1804 the mining of copper begins, which makes Santa Rita one of the oldest copper mines in
the United States.
The Cebolleta (Seboyeta) Land Grant, which encompass 200,000 acres, is awarded to 430
families from the Albuquerque-Atrisco area. The settlement is intended as a buffer to forestall
Navajo raids on the Río Grande communities.
Santero Art, one of the rare, truly indigenous art forms to be found in the United States, has
become an important aspect of New Mexican culture and day-to-day living, the product of a unique
New Mexican environment. Although they take stylistic liberties, New Mexican saint makers draw
on traditional Christian iconography from illustrated missals, bibles, devotional cards, as well as
paintings and sculptures brought up from New Spain.
Santero art is not aesthetic in the sense of creating something beautiful but rather intended for a
religious purpose. New Mexican life is difficult, so a santo has to have powerful holiness to enable
people to survive, endure, and prevail.
Governor Fernando Chacón reports New Mexicans are much given to dealing and bartering
with each other and tribes of nomadic Indians, which are conducted in sign language. Further,
he states that New Mexico isn't as poor as it is generally represented to be, and its decadence and
backwardness is traceable to the lack of development and want of formal knowledge in agriculture,
commerce, and the manual arts.
*1805 - 1808
Joaquín Del Real Alencaster is governor. Vaccination against smallpox is introduced in New Mexico.
Francisco Salazar and 30 settlers petition for a grant of land, the Cañón del Río de Chama, which
is awarded and comes to be known as the San Joaquín Land Grant.
Word reaches New Mexico that an American expedition is being sent into Spanish territory. Facundo
Melgares leads a troop of soldiers to intercept it but never finds the Zebulon M. Pike expedition.
*1807
The Pike Expedition is encountered, marching into Santa Fe and then into Chihuahua.
Pike maintains that he was lost. Throughout his experience, he records what people from all walks
of life tell him concerning the economy, the extent of their patriotism, and how they feel about
foreign trade markets. Pike's journal provides the first information available to the American
public on the area that would be called the Spanish Southwest.
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