User:Jcl0258/Old Town Albuquerque

Article Draft
However, prior to its establishment as a city in the Santa Fe de Nuevo México province, many indigenous tribes lived there including Diné, Pueblo, Apache, Tiwa, and others.

History of Old Town
Prior to 1706, indigenous tribes traveled through and occupied the land on which Old Town Albuquerque now stands. These indigenous peoples include the Anasazi, Diné, Pueblo, Apache, and Tiwa communities. While it is unknown approximately how long the area has been inhabited by indigenous peoples, their long-standing presence in the Albuquerque area is exemplified by the thousands of years old Petroglyphs found in the Sandia mountains to the Acoma pueblo which is still inhabited by the Acoma tribe today. During this time, the region that is now known as Albuquerque was known as Paak'u. The indigenous peoples residing in the Paak'u region engaged in subsistence farming and hunting, managing complex, intertwined systems of government and religion. The Pueblo peoples of modern Albuquerque originally stemmed from one tribe called the Tamayame or Santa Ana tribe. As they discovered the resources that the Sandia mountains and the Rio Grande had to offer, they slowly spread into different pueblos as far as Angostura, a village 131 miles northeast of Albuquerque. The spread led into the development of five distinct language groups and many more dialects based off those languages. Today, because of the combination of smaller and larger pueblos due to colonization by both the Spanish and Anglo Americans, there is a total of nineteen pueblos which are recognized as sovereign nations in and around Albuquerque.

Arrival of the Spanish
Spanish relations with indigenous peoples in Albuquerque were complex and violent. In New Mexico, the first interaction that Puebloans had was at the Zuni pueblo of Vacapa when the Spanish explorer Frey Marcos de Niza sent his African slave Esteban to interact with the Zuni people. Estaban was subsequently killed by the Zuni, establishing a tone for Spanish-Indigenous relations throughout New Mexico which carried into the founding of Albuquerque. The Spanish first had contact with the Pueblos in the area that would become Old Town Albuquerque when in 1540 Fransisco Vásquez de Coronado’s expedition searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola lead him to the Pueblos. Coronado was able to peacefully trade small gifts and items with them at first, but as winter overtook the unprepared conquistadors, they steadily became more and more violent with the Pueblo peoples, demanding more food and supplies and progressively conquering a few of the Puebloan’s smaller villages. The Tiwa people of Albuquerque fought back against the Spanish until they left to return to Mexico in the Spring of 1541. However, the violent interactions between the two parties gave each a long-lasting impression of the other, further contributing to negative relations between the Spanish and Indigenous peoples of Albuquerque. This paved the way for the violent conquest of Oñate, and his ouster from New Mexico by the indigenous peoples in 1680 during the Pueblo Revolts.

Albuquerque began to be settled by a group of people traveling in the Spanish “Reconquista” led by Don Diego de Vargas in 1693. Several families in this group split off and asked permission to settle the Middle Valley which was the area south of the Sandia and Alameda pueblos. The settlement grew progressively to encompass around forty-five Spanish estate and what is known as Old Town Albuquerque was established in 1702 and recognized by Francisco Cuervo y Valdes, the governor of Spanish New Mexico, as a municipality in 1706. In 1784, over 3500 Spaniards and 600 Indigenous people were recognized by the census to be residents of Old Town. However, for many of the Indigenous tribes living around Old Town, the rapid growth of Old Town served as a reminder to the continuing conquest of their people.

Women also played an overlooked role in Old Town Albuquerque. At least twenty women are known to have been a part of the Spanish colonization of Albuquerque and the subsequent founding of Old Town. While many were subjugated to more traditional colonial roles like cooking, cleaning, and homemaking, some quickly became heads of their respective families due to the death of their husbands. Those who were designated heads of households were able to inherit land as a result of Spanish law and became the breadwinners for their families. The twenty women who are known to have helped colonize Old Town have come to be acknowledged as the "founding women of Albuquerque" and are listed on a plaque in Old Town Plaza provided by the New Mexico Historic Women Marker Program. \

Toward the Modern Age
Possession of Albuquerque, along with the rest of New Mexico, passed to Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence and later to the United States in 1846 when General Stephen Kearny took control of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe trail in 1846. The territory was officially recognized as US territory on February 2, 1848 under the signature of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, representing yet another change in the power dynamics for Indigenous people and Mexicans living in New Mexico alike.

The Plaza
During the civil war, the guns originally belonged to the Union until the Confederacy captured the guns and used them against the Union. Accompanying the guns is a plaque that is controversial for having pro-confederate sentiments, mentioning the name of a Confederate Major Trevanion Teel. The plaque was partially funded by his ancestors, however, Teel was a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a group like the Ku Klux Klan, that sought to conquer territory in Latin America with the purpose of establishing an empire based on slavery. Two other plaques, both which have created controversy due to their historical flaws in the portrayal of events, that commemorated the Skirmish of Albuquerque and buried Confederate soldiers respectively were also removed at that time. At this time, the plaque that accompanies the howitzers remains in tact.

La Journada Statue
A controversial statue known as La Journada featuring the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate formerly sat in the middle of Old Town Plaza. The statue was commissioned by the City of Albuquerque in 1998 and created by New Mexico artists Betty Sabo and Reynaldo "Sunny" Rivera. It depicts several Spanish settlers and an Indigenous guide led by Oñate who is one of the first Spanish conquistadors to travel to and settle in the New Mexico territory. However, much of Oñate's success were at the expense of Indigenous peoples, most notably the Acoma people, who he tortured and massacred. Oñate was later removed and prosecuted by the Spanish crown in 1614, however, the pain and generational trauma he has inflicted on many Indigenous peoples in New Mexico have caused continuing controversy around the statue. In the wake of the George Floyd murder, during a protest that rose at the site of the statue, a gunman opened fire on the protesters, prompting the Albuquerque mayor Tim Keller have the statue removed the next day. The incident occurred when armed counter protesters from the New Mexico Civil Guard, a paramilitary group, attempted to act in a law enforcement capacity, trying to detain protestors and limit property damage. A judge later ruled that the group did not have the right to act in the capacity as law enforcement or national guard as well as barring them from having any law enforcement powers independent of the state government of New Mexico. As of 2023, the statue remains in storage with its new home still undetermined by the Albuquerque city council.