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LAS CRUCES – Against a backdrop of a debate last week about the long-term future for local descendants of the Piro, Manso and Tiwa Native Americans, the question has been asked: How did the groups come to live in the Mesilla Valley?

Their history is a long, entangled one that has its roots in the centuries-long Spanish conquest and settlement of the land that’s now New Mexico, which had been inhabited for millenia by indigenous people.

In the 1500s, the first Spaniards ventured from Mexico into what’s now New Mexico. Smaller explorations culminated with a major conquest by Spaniard Juan de Oñate in 1598. An expedition set out in January of that year from Mexico with “nearly two hundred soldier-colonists, many with wives and families, nine Franciscan priests, several hundred Indian servants and allies, as well as thousands of head of livestock,” wrote former state historian Robert J. Torrez in an edition of the New Mexico Blue Book.

“In April, 1598, they paused near present-day Ciudad Juárez, where Oñate took formal possession of the province in the name of King Felipe of Spain,” Torrez writes.

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The group advanced north along the Rio Grande, encountering Native American pueblos and establishing settlements along the way. The Mansos inhabited the El Paso and Mesilla Valley region at the time, according to the book ” The Manso Indians ” by local resident Patrick Beckett and Terry L. Corbett.

Pueblos’ revolt

By early July 1598, according to Torrez, an advance party of the expedition arrived in the “northern New Mexico Tewa village of Ohkay Owingeh, located near the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Rio Chama. Here the Spanish decided to stop, renamed the village San Juan de Los Caballeros and established the first Spanish capital of New Mexico.”

Spanish oppression of pueblo peoples, including “intolerance of religious practices and persistent abuse of Indian labor,” stirred “several unsuccessful revolts against the Spanish” during the 1600s. The strife culminated in a massive, coordinated revolt by pueblos in August 1680, which forced hundreds of Spanish colonists and officials to retreat south along the Rio Grande to El Paso del Norte — now Ciudad Juárez, according to Torrez.

The Pueblo of Isleta — a village of Tigua/Tiwa people located about 10 miles south of present-day Albuquerque — “did not participate in the rebellion,” according to Alan J. Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer detailed the history in a 1957 thesis, included in the Piro-Manso-Tiwa Tribe’s application for federal recognition.

The neutral Isletans, during the Pueblo Revolt, “suffered” at the hands of both the Spanish and other pueblos, eventually becoming “displaced persons,” Oppenheimer writes.

Reconquest attempted

By November 1681, Spanish Gov. Antonio de Otermín and the part of the group that had retreated to what’s now Ciudad Juárez had arranged for an attempted reconquest of their formerly held region of current-day New Mexico. Among the nearly 300 people in the expedition were 112 people from the “Mansos, Piros, Tigua (Tiwa), and Jemez” nations, according to Oppenheimer.

In December 1681, Otermín’s party had once again reached the Pueblo of Isleta, just south of present-day Albuquerque, which had remained inhabited after the Spaniards’ first exodus, Oppenheimer writes. After an initial attempt to defend themselves, the pueblo’s 500 inhabitants surrendered. The pueblo included not only Tiwa, but also Piro people from regional pueblos from the vicinity of Socorro, who’d joined with Isleta.

Otermín “reprimanded” the Isletans for returning to their pre-Catholic religious practices during the colonists’ absence, according to Oppenheimer. Crosses, a monastery and a church had been destroyed.

“The shell of the church had been converted into a cattle corral,” according to Oppenheimer. Otermín ordered that “everything Spanish, both religious and secular, be reinstated.”

Tribal threat issued

On Dec. 7, 1961, Otermín ordered the Native Americans to assemble in the plaza, where a Catholic priest conducted a ceremony converting them to Catholicism. Otermín then continued with an expedition north, attempting, unsuccessfully, to get the northern pueblos to surrender. During this unsuccessful attempt, Otermín received a message that the Isletans had been threatened by other tribes to abandon the Spaniards or be killed. The Spanish conquistadores, whose position was “precarious,” decided the best way to protect the Isletans was to “accompany the Indians to El Paso,” Oppenheimer writes. However, by the time Otermín reached Isleta again, only 385 Native Americans remained, with another 126 “having joined the rebels.”

The Spaniards retreated south again in early January 1682 from the Isleta Pueblo. By the time the group reached the present-day El Paso-Juárez area, the group numbered 1,946 people.

“This total included soldiers, servants, women and children, and Indians,” Oppenheimer writes.

Upon reaching the El Paso area, the captive Native Americans — including Piros, Tompiros, Tiwas, Tanos and Jemez — were established in a series of pueblos, including Isleta del Sur south of El Paso.

Some of the descendants of Tigua people who were resettled make up the modern-day Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, based in El Paso.

Migrating north

Native American residents of the El Paso area, especially Piros, were believed to have migrated north in significant numbers to the modern-day Las Cruces area in the mid-1800s, according to the tribe’s application. There may have been other Native Americans already living there. Back-and-forth connections continued between groups in the Las Cruces and El Paso-Juárez areas.

Brevet Capt. John Pope of the Army Corps of Engineers was in the area in 1854 and described the communities he found: the village of Doña Ana, the “oldest town in this part of the country, having been first settled in 1842” as a Spanish colony; Las Cruces, Las Tortugas and the military post of Fort Fillmore, according to a historical account included in the tribe’s application.

Las Cruces was established in 1849 through a land grant. An officer from Doña Ana surveyed a more-than-80-block area as part of the original platting of the community, an area now known as the Mesquite Historic District, according to the tribe’s application. Among applicants who drew lots for parcels of land were Piro families, according to the tribe’s application.

By 1885, about 80 pueblo Native American families were living “in and around Las Cruces,” according to research done by Barbara Kaufman, Allogan Slagle and Stephen Conn.

Festivities relocated

Land in the central part of Las Cruces was home to the tribe’s cacique, which served as a hub for activities, according to the tribe’s application. Ed Roybal, current cacique of the Piro-Manso-Tiwa Tribe told Las Cruces city councilors last week that a parcel of land near San Pedro and Amador Avenue was important to the group.

In the late 1800s, tribal members also belonged to the historic St. Genevieve Catholic Church, then located at 200 N. Main St., Las Cruces. Near the church, they would host yearly ritualistic dances honoring the Lady of Guadalupe, according to their application. (The church was torn down in the 1960s.)

However, the boisterous celebrations clashed with two successive Catholic priests based at the parish. The second priest, Father Michael Vandermaesen, who came in 1909 from an Arizona parish, halted Native American dancing in front of the church. That proved to be the “last straw” for the Native Americans, who built a chapel in Tortugas and began conducting their dances there, according to Kaufman, Slagle and Conn.

Diana Alba Soular may be reached at 575-541-5443, dalba@lcsun-news.com or @AlbaSoular on Twitter.

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