On the Trail with Sheriff Will Diaz – The Coming of Man – 2

About 10,000 years ago, the first humans wandered through. No doubt they were pursuing game animals. They left evidence behind in the form of arrowheads and pictographs. My father, who was an avid arrowhead hunter had found several spear points that closely resemble Folsom Points. They were no doubt left behind by some of the first visitors to the area.

Someplace in the picture from the ISS, is the remains of campsites and the graves of their dead. It’s not unheard of for the grave of one of these early Humans to be found while digging a ditch or building a road.

But it was a long time before a permanent settlement was established in the Valley. That would be the Taos Pueblo which rests at the foot of the Holy Mountain. It was founded over a 1000 years ago.

Around 1598, the first Spaniards, an expedition under the command of Juan de Onate entered the Valley. He quickly laid claim to the area in the name of the King of Spain. Now, if the event would have only stayed there.

He was ordered to establish what we now know as Santa Fe. This began what we call Extreme-Colonization. The first rule of this kind of Colonization is you get rid of those already there. Spanish policies on Colonization were already brutal in the extreme. It involved genocide and the forced submission of a people. Every effort was made to destroy their culture. This also meant enslavement and a forcing of Spanish ways and Catholicism on them.

One such event occurred at the pueblo of Acoma. The long and short of it, twelve soldiers, to include the brother of Juan de Onate raided the pueblo. They took food, blankets, and brutalized the people. The people of Acoma weren’t happy at all about this and found and killed the twelve soldiers.

As a result Juan de Onate fought what was destined to be one many of battles with Native Americans. In it, he and his troops killed over 800 inhabitants of the Acoma pueblo and enslaved almost another 500. At least two dozen of the inhabitants suffered amputations.

When reports of the atrocities visited by De Onate and his men reached Spain, it shocked even the king. In his eyes, Onate committed what we’d call today “A War Crime.” Onate was ordered home. He returned to Spain and never left it again.

There were several other expeditions into the Valley, but Spain seems to have established colonies no further North than Taos. Beyond that, the Native American tribes took a very dim view of anyone encroaching on their territories.

One of the expeditions I plan to follow on this page is the Juan de Ulibarri expedition of 1706. His explorations (it was actually a rescue mission) took him out in the plains of Colorado and Western Kansas. There’s been some suggestion that he might have gone as far north as present-day Cheyenne, Wyoming.

I have a particular interest in this man since I married Julie Ulibarri, one of his descendants.

The area was under the control of several different tribes, and they were not to be trifled with. Attempts to push colonies North into the Valley almost always met with disaster. After the Mexican-American War, the area was ceded to the United States. With troops to help protect them, we saw the first placitas established in the Valley.