Settlement Patterns and Village Plans in Colonial New Mexico

Abstract

Patterns of settlement in New Mexico fluctuated during the two and one-quarter centuries of Spanish rule. Expansion and contraction of the European population was determined by availability of arable land, territorial requirements of the Pueblo Indians, and pressures of hostile nomadic tribes. Study of the influences which shaped settlement patterns in New Mexico and review of attempts by government officials and others to regulate the settling of new lands and towns offer insights into some of the economic and social problems of colonial times. When the Spaniards reached the Southwest in 1540, they found the largest concentration of Pueblo Indians along the upper Rio Grande and its tributaries with outlying nuclei of settlement to the west at Acoma, Zuni and Hopi and to the east at Pecos Pueblo and the villages beyond the Manzano Mountains. The Rio Grande drainage offered suitable home sites for the Pueblo people with sufficient land to meet their agricultural needs. The Spanish colonists as well, found the environment attractive, so they fixed their earliest farms, ranches, and towns on lands adjacent to the Pueblos. To the present day heavy population clusters occur in this same area. Extensive exploration in the early colonial period quickly dashed hopes that New Mexico would yield treasure in gold, silver, or other profitable minerals. The fading of prospects for a mining boom meant that population growth and economic development would lack the spectacular quality which attended the colonization of some of the other frontier provinces. New Mexico, in fact, to the end of the colonial era remained thinly populated and dependent upon royal subsidies to meet her expenses. Land served as the principal source of what little wealth she possessed.

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