of the family was in charge of saddling a horse or walking to the midwife’s home and ask la partera (midwife) that she was needed to deliver a newborn. For the most part, la partera delivered most of the newborn babies in the area.
La partera was the village doctor in early 1950s and beyond. In many ways northern, New Mexico had also been culturally isolated from the rest of the country. Until the last few decades the Spanish American village culture of this area was relatively untouched by the urbanization and industrialization taking place in the rest of the United States. For centuries, the villages of this area held tenaciously to their own traditions and values, and Spanish has remained our mother tongue. We have carried on the Spanish traditions and culture for several centuries. My family goes back eight generations in Northern New Mexico. It has been traced to the 1770 when the first Rodarte family arrived in the area, according to a genealogy done in 2015.
Use of the land and minerals of New Mexico goes back to the prehistoric time of the early cultures in the Southwest that long preceded the flourishing sedentary civilization of the Pueblos that the Spanish found along El Camino Real and up the (Rio de Norte) Rio Grande and its tributaries. Many of the Native American pueblos exist today much as they were in the thirteen century, with the exception of the close neighbor Picuris Pueblo, which has maintained its tradition. This is the farthest northeast Pueblo along El Camino Real. This pueblo is five miles south west of Rodarte, New Mexico.
The Picuris Pueblo reservation (la legua de los indios) borders the private landowners of the village of Rodarte into el llano de la legua. El llano de la legua is known for its famous canovas (bridges of carved timbers across an arrio), an ingenious way to get water across a small valley. The timbers were cut and carved by hand and were placed across the valley to bridge the water of the famous acequias. This was done by people of the nearby communities with traditions taught by the Spaniards. Water was bridge with canovas in order to get water to the mesa called llano de la legua. A canova that it is well-known and photographed almost daily can be seen on the side of the road on the high road to Taos part of El Camino Real, one of the oldest communities called Las Trampas. Las Trampas Catholic Church is one of the oldest churches in Northern New Mexico, where many Spaniards settle.
Early Colonization into Northern New Mexico
The exploration by the Spaniards began in Mexico in 1517 when Francisco Hernández de Córdoba discovered the Yucatan and entered through Cape Catoche. The following year, Juan de Grijalva landed on the island of Cozumel, which he called Nueva España (New Spain) since the expedition was sponsored by the queen of Spain. By April 27, 1519, Hernando Cortes, a soldier and alcalde (mayor) of Santiago, Cuba, was sent to conquer Nueva España for the queen of Spain. Cortes and his expedition met resistance from the Aztecs. Cortes and his soldiers fought the ruler of the Aztec Nation and defeated Moctezuma II, the ruler (according to history books).
As the conquest moved north with Nueva España colonized, families from Spain started to settle in what is known today as Mexico. The Spaniards were in search of the “seven cities of gold.” In 1540, Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza sent the conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado with a large expedition to explore north of the (Rio del Notre) Rio Grande, which is known today as Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and the plains of Texas and Kansas. The expedition consisted of several hundred men, horses and mules, and some wives and children of the men. The seven cities of gold were never found, and the expedition was considered a failure and, in return, the southwest of the US Continent set stage for future exploration and colonization of territory for the queen of Spain.
A full-scale expedition (1540–1542) to find the cities was dispatched from New Spain under the leadership of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. The treatment of the Pueblo people by Coronado and his men led to the long-standing hostility between the Native Americans and the Spanish and slowed Spanish conquest. The first regular colony at San Juan was founded by Juan de Oñate in 1598 and became the first capital of New Mexico. The Native Americans of Acoma revolted against the Spanish encroachment and were severely suppressed
It wasn’t until 1598 that Don Juan de Oñate was commissioned to lead a large expedition north into Nuevo Mexico. On January 1598, Don Juan de Oñate gave the command to his nephew, Vincente de Zaldivar, to proceed north to the Rio Grande (Rio del Norte), opening a new and more direct trail from Mexico City on into Northern New Mexico via El Camino Real, which is still traveled today, one of the oldest road in the United States. On April 20, 1598, Oñate reached the Rio Grande (Rio del Norte) and proclaimed official possession as governor and captain general of all the land north of the Rio Grande (Rio del Norte).
In 1609, Pedro de Peralta was made governor of the “Kingdom and Provinces of New Mexico”; and a year later, he founded his capital at Santa Fe (“la vida real de Santa Fe”). The little colony did not prosper greatly, although some of the missions flourished, and haciendas were founded. The subjection of Native Americans to forced labor and attempts by missionaries to convert them resulted in a violent revolt by the Apache in 1676 and the Pueblo in 1680. Under the leadership of a Picuris Pueblo Indian named Popay, the Indians united and retaliated against the Spanish in the well-known Revolt of 1680, which drove the Spaniards back to El Paso de Norte.
The Recolonization and Settlements North of Santa Cruz de la Cañada Española, New Mexico
On August 21, 1692 Don Diego de Vargas returned with seventy soldiers and one hundred Tlazcaltec and Pueblo Indian allies and reconquered Nuevo Mexico for Spain. Don Diego de Vargas returned to El Paso de Norte in December 20, 1692, and started recruiting civilians/colonists with their families that had come from Spain previously to recolonize Nuevo Mexico. From 1692 to 1695, many families were recruited to colonize Nuevo Mexico; included in this families was the Rodarte family. In the coming years, Jose Manuel Rodarte’s parents were among the families. Jose Manuel Rodarte and wife, Maria Nicolasa Romero Rodarte, were born on approximately 1760. Jose Manuel Rodarte and wife, Maria Nicolasa Romero Rodarte, had eleven children, and they all lived along the Rio de Santa Barbara.
All of the eleven children married and had children of their own and lived in the Santa Barbara area (according to the genealogy of 2015).
In the eighteenth century, the development of ranching and of some farming and mining was more thorough, laying the foundations for the Spanish culture in New Mexico that sill persists. Over one-third of the population today is of Hispanic origin (and few are recent immigrants from Mexico), and roughly the same percentage speak Spanish fluently.
When Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in 1821, New Mexico became a province of Mexico, and trade was opened with the United States. By the following year, the Santa Fe Trail was being traveled by the wagon trains of American traders. In 1841, a group of Texans embarked on an expedition to assert Texan claims to part of New Mexico and were captured by the pueblo Indians (according to history books of New Mexico).
The basic ancestors of these villagers were the early Liberian colonizers who moved into Northern New Mexico through Mexico from Spain in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These colonizers founded villages while moving north into the high country while making pit stops in Santa Cruz de la Cañada, near Española, New Mexico, just south of the first capital of New Mexico: San Juan Pueblo.
First capital of New Mexico, San Juan Pueblo in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico
When Don Juan de Oñate and his fellow colonists established the first European settlement in New Mexico near Okay Owingeh Pueblo, also known as San Juan, north of what is known as Española in 1598, they ushered in a period of complex cultural interchange that continues to the present day. For four hundred years, the lives of Native Americans and Hispanos have been intertwined through religious practices, governance, warfare, land and water issues, agriculture, social and family relations, and the production
