Juan de ulibarri biography books

Within a generation, the distribution of power in the northern Rio Grande was profoundly transformed. The first potential written references to the Comanche appear on French maps from the s, during the period of Spanish exile.

Juan de ulibarri biography books: Good book about The

The French regularly reported the presence of a group known as the Padouca at the northeastern edge of New Mexico, often in the vicinity of the headwaters of the Arkansas River, not far from Taos. We consider this as an open question, complicated of course by two of the central facts of the colonial period: first, many indigenous identities were undergoing substantial transformation and, second, colonial authorities often knew almost nothing about indigenous groups, particularly about the highly nomadic groups whose home territories were far from colonial settlements.

Some ancestral Comanches surely began to visit northern New Mexico during the late seventeenth century, most likely in the company of the Ute, whose long history of occupation immediately northwest of Taos would have given them both an intimate knowledge of the landscape and established access to Pueblo trade networks. The subsequent ethnic divisions between various Numic-speaking tribes Ute, Paiute, Shoshone, Comanche, etc.

Indeed, while some archaeologists have sought to naturalize Comanche military aggression—presenting it as a deeply precolonial pattern that was merely accentuated by the adoption of the horse Sutton — Blackhawk makes a compelling argument that Comanche ethnogenesis must be understood as a complex response to a new landscape of colonial violence that rippled out from Spanish New Mexico, creating new possibilities and economic rationales for raiding and captive-taking.

Be that as it may, the greater Taos area was clearly a key locus of self-fashioning for the Comanches at the start of the eighteenth century. In fact, local Hispano oral traditions still include stories about how the initial Comanche herds were built up through raids on settlements a short distance south of the modern town of Taos. Full-blown Comanche militarism also saw its beginnings in the Taos region.

Inen route to El Cuartelejo to retrieve the remnants of the Picuris Tribe, Juan de Ulibarri stopped at Taos Pueblo and learned from the local leaders that the threat of Ute and Comanche aggression was palpably felt. By mid-century, the Comanche had split with their former Ute allies and assumed a position of dominance across a large region from Wyoming down into northern Mexico.

Taos continued to serve as a strategic center for Comanche economic and political ambitions, however, both as a major market—during the s, the Taos trade fairs were rivaled only by those at Pecos Pueblo—and as a target for continued raids. In contrast, the vecinos living in the region were notably constrained in their use of the landscape and its resources; throughout much of the mid-eighteenth century, few had horses at all and the threat of Comanche raiding forced most of the colonists to live within the walls of Taos Pueblo for protection Jenkins There is no question that the Comanches were regular visitors to the Taos region during the critical period when they were emerging as a militarized equestrian society with regional economic ambitions.

Juan de ulibarri biography books: Juan de Ulibarri. Ulibarri

If one is to talk of an emergent Comanche empire, then Taos, it seems, should be viewed as a kind of imperial outpost. And yet, prior to the research reported herein, no Comanche sites had been identified in the Taos region despite many decades of archaeological survey. Compare this situation with the great many Jicarilla Apache sites that dot the Taos landscape see Eiselt, ; Girard ; Johnson et al.

On the other hand, the Jicarilla displayed remarkable resilience. As Eiselt has carefully documented, they developed a distinctive enclave economy focused on exchange of micaceous pottery and upland resources, which served as important supplements to the agricultural products of lowland Hispano and Pueblo communities. Reduced mobility and the relatively liberal use of durable remains such as pottery, chipped stone, and metal, as well as a strategic willingness to accept Christianity and to appear in Catholic baptismal records—all of this enhances our archaeological perception of the Jicarilla presence.

The Comanches, in contrast, have traditionally been viewed as the destroyers rather than the creators of sites. In fact, beyond their regular appearance at Taos trade fairs, the most memorable Comanche incident in the region is surely the attack on Taos Pueblo and its surrounding ranches, including the Villalpando compound, the largest Hispano settlement near Taos.

Nevertheless, these sorts of incidents have left us with the impression that the archaeological signature of the Comanches in the Taos region—were one to go looking for such a thing—would primarily be found in the charred remains of destroyed Hispano, Pueblo, and Jicarilla Apache sites. Recent surveys in the Rio Grande Gorge, just west of Taos, are beginning to change this impression, however, bringing to light a previously unknown diversity of Comanche sites.

The Rio Grande Gorge Figure 6. As such, it has remained largely unsettled, posing a major barrier to movement in the region. But the gorge does have the advantage of being a hidden subterranean space with occasional sediment-filled basins that are today covered with weedy sagebrush but that prior to the ravages of late nineteenth-century sheepherding would have been filled with grasses suitable for equestrian camps.

Indeed, anyone on horseback looking for a hideout while planning trading or raiding expeditions would have found a number of excellent options in the gorge. Figure 6. This is particularly true in the vicinity of the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Rio Pueblo, where the gorge broadens somewhat and includes a great series of secluded and easily defensible basins accessible via old trails that had likely been in use for many millennia.

As discussed below, it is precisely in this location that the strongest evidence of a Comanche presence has been found. The first mounted tribes to camp in the Rio Grande Gorge appear to have been the Jicarilla and Ute, both of whom were early converts to an equestrian lifestyle.

Juan de ulibarri biography books: Juan de Ulibarrí or Uribarrí

Jicarilla sites dating from the seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century are relatively easily identified by the presence of thin micaceous pottery and a light distribution of metal artifacts in association with small tipi rings 2—2. Jicarilla rock art remains poorly defined, but our research has suggested that it can be broadly characterized as lightly pecked with a frequent focus on shield-bearers, morning stars, Mountain Spirit headdresses, horses, and the like Figure 6.

In fact, the earliest images of equestrian battles in the Rio Grande Gorge were probably created by Athapaskan groups during the seventeenth century when the Apache and Navajo posed the most significant military threat to both native and nonnative communities. Significantly, three Jicarilla micaceous pot drops and one probable tipi clearing were located in close association with the pecked rock art at the Lightning Arrow Site, strengthening the claim for Jicarilla affiliation.

Indeed, this Apachean rock art tradition appears to have continued well into the nineteenth century, as evidenced by additional pecked battle scene images at another site in the gorge, just to the south, that was explicitly identified as having a Jicarilla affiliation by tribal consultants Figure 6. The Ute occupation of the Rio Grande Gorge is more difficult to document, though this is surely due to a lack of research attention rather than the absence of Ute sites in the region but see Montgomeryin press.

We know that at the onset of Spanish colonialism, the Ute already had deep historical roots in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, a fact that is still commented on at Taos Pueblo, where a long history of relations and intermarriage with the Ute is quickly acknowledged. The nearest Ancestral Ute juan de ulibarri biographies books that have been identified with confidence, however, are at the northern edge of the Taos region, near the Rio Grande—Rio Hondo confluence, where pecked and abraded rock art panels with distinctive iconography e.

This panel and a cluster of others were found in association with brownware pottery, and are likely affiliated with the ancestral Ute occupation of the Taos region. Not only did the Comanches probably receive their first horses from their Ute cousins, whose proximity to liberated Spanish herds during the Pueblo Revolt era led them to be key middlemen in the early horse trade; the Ute are also known to have regularly enlisted Comanche muscle in their raids on northern New Mexico during the early eighteenth century.

One gets a good sense of this at the most impressive of the eighteenth-century sites in the gorge: the Vista Verde Site LA Figures 6. The Vista Verde Site has been a focus of sustained research since ; it is the largest site in the Rio Grande Gorge, with a striking density of rock art panels encircling a large flat basin bounded by rugged basalt talus ridges.

Archaic and Ancestral Pueblo individuals visited the area for millennia, at least to a limited extent, as evidenced by rock art and isolated projectile points. Extensive use of the Vista Verde Site, however, appears to have only begun during the early colonial period. In the course of a magnetic gradiometer survey of the central basin infor instance, a large buried feature roughly twenty by fifteen meters resembling a horseshoe-shaped dance ground was located.

The feature exhibits a clear opening to the southeast and three pronounced dipole anomalies along its northwestern edge that may represent bonfires, as well as evidence of at least one large tipi ring in direct association a few meters away Goodmaster Subsequent conversations with consultants from the Ute Mountain nation have suggested that this buried archaeological complex may be an early Bear Dance ground, which the ancestral Ute are known to have constructed in the juan de ulibarri biography books during the early colonial period Terry Knight, personal communication, Map of the central tipi encampment Area 6 at the Vista Verde Site.

The highlighted area presents the magnetic gradiometer detail highlighting the possible dance ground and tipi complex at the southern edge of the encampment. If the Vista Verde Site was indeed an established gathering place in the Rio Grande Gorge for the Ute, it makes sense that it would have been selected as a base camp for combined forces of Ute and Comanche raiders during the early eighteenth century.

Surface mapping within the central basin immediately north of the buried dance ground revealed the presence of a large encampment composed of two dozen or more tipi rings. Unlike the relatively ambiguous architectural and artifactual evidence at the site, the hundreds of rock art panels that surround the tipi compound offer a world of interpretive possibilities, insofar as those who camped there seem to have been compelled to document their presence, often in extraordinary detail.

The rock art is unusual and diverges in both its technology and iconographic content from prior traditions in the region. Almost all other local rock art is pecked, for instance, the artists having used stone and, later, metal tools to break through the dark patina of basalt boulders to expose the light interior. Indeed, pecking characterizes all known Archaic, Pueblo, Jicarilla Apache, Ute, and Hispano petroglyph traditions in this part of the Southwest e.

The dominant rock art of the Vista Verde Site, in juan de ulibarri biography books, was produced by lightly scratching and abrading with metal tools, leaving behind glyphs that barely if at all break through the patina of the rock. The overall result has little visual impact and is often impossible to see in direct sunlight, a fact that has led the imagery to be overlooked by past researchers.

The relative inscrutability of the scratched rock art, however, provides an important clue. Clearly, this is a technological tradition that did not develop locally; it is very poorly adapted to hard basalt of the Rio Grande Gorge. The iconographic content of the images supports this interpretation nicely. As should be evident in Figures 6.

By the end of the eighteenth century the Plains Biographic Tradition had spread across much of central North America, from northern Mexico to southern Alberta—effectively characterizing the area of regular Comanche incursions following their conquest of the Southern Plains in the s. Part of what makes the rock art of the Vista Verde Site so intriguing, however, is that it appears to have been produced very early on in the development of the Biographic Tradition by mounted warriors who were just beginning their expansionist push into New Mexico.

Rock art is notoriously difficult to position temporally, but in this case we are assisted by two key details. First, the imagery includes abundant evidence of indigenous equestrianism, indicating that it dates to a time after the Pueblo Revolt —92when Spanish horses first made their way into native hands in significant numbers. Second, the Vista Verde Site rock art also exhibits a near absence of gun icons, which is notable insofar as later Biographic Tradition imagery typically displays guns prominently.

During the s, French guns began to be widely traded among Plains tribes, and colonial correspondence discussing the situation at Taos reported that visiting Comanches were well supplied during this period Twitchell Had guns been present at the Vista Verde Site, we assume they would have been regularly depicted, as was indeed the case in most subsequent Biographic Tradition imagery.

This, then, provides us with a reasonable terminus ante quem. This conclusion is broadly supported by details from the panels that the Comanche did create. Seven of the warriors ride horses, their status being signified by long flowing war bonnets. One of the mounted warriors is depicted with a shield and buffalo horn headdress, a signature element of Comanche regalia.

Below them are five additional pedestrian warriors; each has his shield, one holds a club, and three seem to wield lances. The combination of mounted and pedestrian warriors might itself point to an early eighteenth-century date, but so too does the most notable detail in this panel, namely, the body covering that shields a number of the horses.

Depictions of horse body armor have been previously found in rock art at a handful of sites to the north of Taos in the ancestral Comanche territory of Colorado and Wyoming Mitchelland this imagery speaks both to a Comanche affiliation the Comanche were one of the few tribes to armor their horses and to the chronology of the Vista Verde Site generally.

The Comanche produced and used thick sheets of bison hide as armor only during the first half of the eighteenth century, mimicking the Spanish use of metal horse armor. The last archival reference to this practice was in Secoyafter which the widespread availability of guns rendered the cumbersome hide armor an ineffective strategy of defense.

The chronological outlines we are left with—roughly ad —50—effectively bracket the early period of combined Comanche and Ute raiding in the northern Rio Grande valley. This, we think, is a reasonable interpretation that is consistent with colonial records and local oral histories, as well as with many details within the rock art itself. Regarding the latter, it is worth highlighting one rock art panel Figure 6.

The panel illustrates a tipi encampment under attack. One can clearly identify a cluster of sixteen tipis as well the many mounted warriors of the camp, all facing left. The aggressors are facing right, and among them is a dominant warrior, leaping over a tipi at the top of the panel, his long war bonnet flowing behind him. While we cannot identify the cultural affiliation of the right-facing warriors, there are good grounds for identifying the aggressed camp as Comanche.

This is evident in certain subtle details, such as the way the poles extended off the top of the tipi in two clusters—a distinctively Comanche architectural pattern Jimmy Arterberry, personal communication, —as well as the inclusion of a snake glyph in the lower center of the panel. The snake glyph, in this sense, served as a kind of signature.

Scratched and abraded rock art from the Vista Verde Site Panel Scratched and abraded rock art from the Vista Verde Site Panel B, overlying graffiti removed. Scratched and abraded rock art from the Vista Verde Site Paneloverlying graffiti removed. Panel at the Vista Verde Site overlying graffiti removed. The archaeological evidence on the ground may be paltry indeed; this is to be expected insofar as the Comanche traveled light and purposefully left behind few traces of their camps, in part to elude potential pursuers.

At a basic level, the rock art of the Vista Verde Site reflects a desire to archive and assert the local visits of Comanche bands. A new factor affecting the Great Plains was the arrival of the Comancheaggressive, nomadic newcomers who made travel more dangerous. The presence of francophone L'Archeveque indicates that the Spaniards may have anticipated meeting Frenchmen on the plains.

Encroachment by France on lands claimed by Spain was a deep-seated fear of the Spanish in New Mexico. He left Taos on July 20 and headed east, crossing the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and dropping down into the upper courses of the Canadian and Cimarron rivers. Many of these Apache had adopted agriculture and were growing crops of maizebeansand pumpkins.

The expedition attempted to follow piles of grass made by the Apache as landmarks but became lost, finally encountering a spring and a settlement of El Cuartelejo on August 3. The Apache there had erected a cross on a hillside as a sign of welcome to the Spaniards. The exact location of the settlements is unknown, although one of them may have been the El Cuartelejo settlement known today in Scott County, Kansas.

Part of the reason for this was the new threat of Comanche and Ute raids on both Spanish and Indian settlements. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. By whatever route, Ulibarri's journey to El Cuartelejo ranks as an arduous, dramatic journey across hostile territory, underscoring the early Spaniards' predilection for daring penetration of unknown lands.

During the mids, as New Mexico's governors and padres feuded, various Pueblo Indian tribes often rebelled. Inthen again at a later, unknown date, Taos and other Indians along the Rio Grande fled to the Apache settlement of El Cuartelejo. Historians believe, based on documentary hints, that a soldier named Juan de Archuleta mounted the first expedition to El Cuartelejo sometime in the s to retrieve the Taos Indians.

Should supporting documents ever be uncovered, Archuleta's expedition years ago would be the earliest European penetration of present-day Colorado. Thus by the time Ulibarri led 20 soldiers, a dozen militia, and Pueblo Indian allies to El Cuartelejo inroutes to the Apache settlement on the Arkansas were known. But they hadn't been traveled in a half-century, and this would cause Ulibarri much difficulty.

Ulibarri, 36 years old inwas born in the New World and reached New Mexico in with Don Diego de Vargas during the reconquest. Ulibarri obviously proved his mettle, for he served as a "sergeant-major" at Santa Fe when he was picked for the mission to El Cuartelejo. Afterward he was promoted to general. We know nothing of his appearance, for no portrait has survived.

Naranjo probably knew more than anyone about the land beyond the frontier, and he would guide other Spaniards in Colorado in ensuing years.

Juan de ulibarri biography books: Juan was born about in

On July 20,Ulibarri and his men traversed the Sangre de Cristos along a centuries-old route up Don Fernando Creek and down into the valley of La Cieneguilla - both names still in use today. From July 22 to July 24, the expedition rode northeast to the Raton Mesa, naming rivers and mountains as it went, reflecting the Spaniards' dim memories of the region.

Yet they also encountered well-known landmarks that hinted at what was remembered, including the Ojo de Naranjo, or "Naranjo's Spring," just south of Raton Mesa. The expedition reached the Purgatory River on July 25, then probably cut northeast again, reaching the Arkansas River on July