However, Spain was not to find another Mexico in the northern reaches. Rather she would discover death, starvation, rebellion, and finally entrapment in a place she soon had no desire to be. Legends regarding riches were in large part responsible for Spanish interest. He had not seen these places but he had heard from "reliable natives" that there were cities of great wealth to the north and west.
He also reported that "cows" with shaggy hair were on the plains. These were, of course, buffalo. There was truth in Cabeza's stories.
The explorer claimed that he had vaguely heard of Seven Cities of Gold where citizens dined on solid gold platters, the streets were paved in gold and the lowliest resident was covered with riches. There were equally persistent rumors of a civilization far to the south. This was, of course, the Inca civilization, which fellow Spaniards were in the process of looting by the middle s.
While Cabeza de Vaca was interesting to Viceroy Mendoza, more information was needed. Fray Marcos was an experienced traveller in "America" and, based on his knowledge, he was permitted to go.
In he was given orders by the viceroy to move north and find out what was there. For this trip the Moorish slave, Estevan, was borrowed from Dorantes, a companion of Cabeza de Vaca's.
It was not until that Marcos and his little group moved from Culiacan. Near the River Mayo, Estevan decided he wanted to go on faster than the rest of the group. Fray Marcos never heard from El Moro again. Indian tales later indicated that Estevan, a black, so fascinated Indian women that he was killed by jealous native men.
Fray Marcos pushed on. He marched up the Sonora Valley into southern Arizona and then into the area of what was called "Cibola. Undaunted, he pushed on to "Cibola.
However, he stated that it was larger than Mexico City and that it was "shimmering". He said the houses were of stone, with terraces and flat roofs. He also noted that he was told that Cibola was the smallest of the seven cities.
Marcos returned to Mexico City and filed his report. It was Marcos' stories that caused Viceroy Mendoza to agree to a full scale expedition. Marcos got to Arizona. This can be told from his geographic descriptions, but what he saw is another matter. They were in no way cities of gold but, in the shimmering summer heat they may have appeared so. The Spanish government was interested in the potential of what was then generally called 'the north' [el norte].
After the successes of Mexico and Peru, Spain felt that northern New Spain was ready to be added to the empire. On the basis of both Marcos de Niza's and Cabeza de Vaca's reports, Mendoza organized a major expedition into the northern lands. For one of the only times the crown, upon Mendoza's strong urging, gave limited aid to an expedition. The Coronado excursion of was the first officially authorized attempt to conquer the north.
Three women also went along. Coordinated with this overland expedition, Hernando de Alarcon proceeded by sea, up the coast of Mexico, to the mouth of the Colorado River where his fleet was supposed to rendezvous with Coronado.
This meeting never took place. Coronado marched north and ultimately into the Rio Grande valley where he found pueblos of relatively high civilization. He found Indians who could weave, were potters and farmers, and who had a well-organized government and religious system. However, there was no silver or gold, nor were there seven golden cities. Coronado and his men suffered through a very rough winter of and, in doing so, demanded so much of the pueblos that they rebelled.
Winter was unbearable as the natives harrased the Spanish, while the elements did their best to finish off the expedition. The spring of found Coronado on his way across the plains of Colorado seeking Quivira.
Led by a native called El Turco [the Turk], the Spanish tramped across southeastern Colorado into Kansas where there were no cities, only groups of buffalo hide houses.
The Turk, having confessed that he had lied, was strangled by angry expedition members. By the fall of the expedition was back in the Rio Grande area where they survived yet another winter. An accident caused Coronado to become seriously ill, and forced the group back to New Spain, where no doubt they were glad to be.
Thus ended the first major effort to conquer New Mexico. The Spanish found that there was nothing of value in the land and the fact that they had covered an area from Arizona to Kansas confirmed this.
But the desire for settlement was not ended. The Coronado expedition answered one thing. There was no gold nor were there any major cities or civilizations in the north. Spain lost interest in a barren land of mud houses.
Other expeditions were attempted in North America. On the Pacific coast, explorers like Cabrillo, Ferrelo and others ranged up to and beyond the Monterey Bay area and then had quit.
By , Spain had seen enough of northern New Spain to leave it alone. In the Rodriguez-Chamuscado expedition worked its way into New Mexico and found nothing. A year later, , another expedition set out for New Mexico. Antonio de Espejo and Bernaldino Beltran organized a party to explore the north and to try and make contact with missionaries who had remained from the expedition of Reports were filed and information that the expedition had gained stirred some interest at Mexico City.
Earlier stories were still prevalent and the tales of mines from the Espejo-Beltran expedition aroused the imagination of younger men, those who had forgotten about Coronado's eye-opening excursion into the region. By the late s, the Spanish government was under considerable pressure from the Church. As one of the longest continually occupied religious buildings in the United States, Ysleta Mission has a spiritual heart that even centuries of challenges cannot extinguish.
Many Isletans stayed at the pueblo following the revolt. When Spaniards made a failed attempt to reclaim New Mexico a year after the revolt, additional Isletans joined their retreat back down El Camino Real to join the Tigua settlement on the south banks of the Rio Grande.
Some of the Native Americans feared the revolt and chose to follow the Spaniards south, while others where forced to retreat to El Paso del Norte. Governor Diego de Vargas, who was en route to reclaim New Mexico for the Spanish Crown, more formally recognized the community in , when he bestowed a formal grant to the mission and surrounding lands.
Those who stayed emphasized their ties to their sister pueblo and its patron saint, St. Anthony and building a traditional adobe pueblo with a plaza and ceremonial kiva.
It was all swept away in the flood of , but by , it had all been rebuilt. Despite the challenges of frontier living, Ysleta del Sur moved into the early 19th century as a community of successful farmers and artisans whose pottery, baskets, textiles and other traditional arts were frequently traded along El Camino Real.
The government transition from Spain to Mexico in increased trade along the newly opened Santa Fe Trail. But the greatest community changes were naturally influenced. In , a massive flood changed the Rio Grande's course and set Ysleta del Sur and its neighboring communities of Socorro del Sur and San Elizario on the river's north bank.
The flood heavily damaged the mission. The influx of Anglos to El Paso in the 19th century created tension with the Hispanic and native inhabitants of the area, at times leading to violent clashes, such as the San Elizario Salt War of The most contentious issue between the two groups was their differing laws regarding land transactions and property ownership.
In , King Charles V of Spain had issued each pueblo in New Spain a land holding that was to be free from trespass and settlement by non-native peoples. The protected status of this land was reaffirmed several times by Spanish law during the late 18th century, and by Mexican law during the early 19th century.
In , Texas adopted English common law, but recognized land grants that had been issued under Spanish and Mexican law. As Anglos began to flood into El Paso, however, they demanded that the Hispanic and native landholders provide legal titles to prove their ownership of the land.
Legal titles were very expensive to obtain, thus many landholders could not prove that the land they occupied had been granted to them under Spanish or Mexican law.
Those without legal titles were removed from the land to make way for Anglo settlers. Land owned by native people fell under the jurisdiction of the U. By the mid 19th century, most native groups of El Paso had intermarried with each other and the Spanish to such an extent that they had lost their ethnic identity. The Tiguas were the only distinctive native group left in El Paso, but the Texas government would not recognize them.
Although they originally had been granted more than 35 square miles of land by the Spanish, rights to this land had been in dispute over the years and much of it lost. In , the Texas Legislature illegally incorporated the Ysleta Pueblo and its land into El Paso County, then seized most of the land under eminent domain. In the next three years, conveyances of Tigua land were made to Anglo settlers.
The act of incorporation was reversed in , but in the two months before it took effect, another conveyances took place, leaving the Tiguas with almost no land. In , the railroad arrived in the tiny town of El Paso. Railroad service was the key to regional commercial and agricultural development at the time, and by El Paso had been transformed into a bustling frontier community of more than 10, people.
Though the coming of the railroad meant prosperity for the Anglos of El Paso, it caused conditions to worsen for its few remaining native people. After being stripped of their land, many native people had turned to cottage industries to support themselves, but cheap industrial products shipped in on the railroad soon replaced the demand for native handicrafts. Though the population of El Paso had been a heterogeneous mix of Spaniards and many different native groups after the Pueblo Revolt of , the native people slowly lost their identities during the following centuries.
The native groups of Socorro were the first to intermingle with the Spanish and each other, and by the end of the 18th century they referred to themselves largely as mestizo. Some in the El Paso area still identified themselves as Mansos and Apaches, but engaged in the same rituals as the Tiguas and Piros.
San Lorenzo and Socorro had been thoroughly Mexicanized and their inhabitants did not identify themselves as native people at all. During the 20th century, those who wished to preserve their native heritage joined the Tiguas in Ysleta, the only native group who still maintained any sense of their identity. Today the Tiguas are the only surviving native group in El Paso and they observe celebrations deriving from native and Catholic traditions.
TBH Home. Missions and presidio at El Paso del Norte. Paintings of Indios and Spaniards from O'Crouley See full map. Artist's depiction of native people of the Rio Grande. The Sumas, characterized by tattooed or painted faces, and the Mansos, known for their distinctive red-plastered hair, were groups that early Spanish explorers encountered in the El Paso area.
Read More. Passage of the Rio Grande, as shown in a circa s lithograph. This thanksgiving was the first to be celebrated in what is now the United States, a full 23 years before that of the Pilgrims at the Plymouth Colony. During the s, Spanish priests began converting the Mansos, Sumas, and Janos of El Paso to Christianity and settling them in missions.
Photo of mural at Guadalupe church in Juarez by Margaret Howard. Founded for the Mansos in , the mission was the first to be established in the El Paso area. Click to see the church as it appears today.
Map of significant towns and pueblos during the Pueblo Revolt of This map depicts Ysleta and Socorro in their present-day locations on the north bank of the Rio Grande. The mud-plastered jacal structures and outdoor ovens in this early s photograph are probably very similar to those constructed by the native people of El Paso in the early 18th century. They were loosely arranged around central plazas in the vicinity of the missions.
Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur was established for the Tiguas in Though it has been at the mercy of floods and fires over the years, the mission and church were rebuilt on successive occasions. Ysleta and nearby Mission Socorro church are the two oldest, continuously active parishes in Texas. Photograph by Susan Dial. Despite several changes to the mission's name throughout the years, the Tiguas always considered Saint Anthony, who died in , to be their patron saint and protector.
Grapes growing on a Spanish arbor. In addition to their own domesticates, the native people of El Paso grew European crops, such as wheat, grapes, peaches, and other fruits. It is delightful country in summer.. Inset from ca. The small structure shown as 20 may be Hacienda de los Tiburcios which was later the site of the Presidio and settlement of San Elizario.
The map was drawn by Fray Juan Miguel Menchero following an inspection tour of the province during the s. See enlarged map key. Lipan Apache on the trail, drawn circa during a U. Mexican border survey. Apache raids became common in El Paso during the first half of the 18th century and increased after , due to Spanish military pressure in New Mexico, pressure from Comanche groups in the east, and stress brought on by drought and the Spanish slave trade for the silver mines.
This image, from "A Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents" by John Russell Bartlett, was drawn in after the structure had fallen into ruins. The settlement of San Elizario sprung up around the presidio and church, soon becoming second only to Paso del Norte in population in the El Paso area.
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