CHAPTER TWO
Journey to New Spain & New Mexico
Bartolome Jose ROMERO y Adeva & Luisa LOPEZ de ROBLEDO
Bartolome Jose Romero Bartolomé Romero was born 6 April 1563, at Corral de Almaguer, Spain. During the reign of King Felipe II of Spain. Bartolomé was named as a son of Bartolomé Romero and María de Adeva in his christening records and was the first to leave Spain for Nuevo España[Mexico]. As that he was an orphan at the age of four, he and his siblings were raised by conversos relatives, his aunts and uncles.
The Romero and de Adeva families lived in the small farming community of Corral de Almaguer where the village apparently had a large Jewish conversos community including a number of Romeros who in church records were described as “New Christians”.
As an adolescent Bartolome certainly would have been apprenticed out or even simply joined the Spanish army at a young age possibly to seek his fortune in the New World. If he stayed in Spain certainly he would have been part of King Felipe II’s failed attempt to invade England.
Spain in the late 16th Century
Spain was a superpower in the 16th Century, fueled by the riches of the Mexico and Peru and by commerce with its new world colonies. By the mid sixteenth century Habsburg Spain under King Felipe II was a dominant political and military power in Europe, with a global empire which became the source of her wealth. It championed the Catholic cause and its global possessions stretched from Europe, the Americas and to the Philippines. This was expanded further in 1580 when Portugal was annexed thus forming the Iberian Union, greatly expanding the empire. King Felipe II became the first monarch who ruled over an empire upon which the sun did not set.
Under King Felipe II “an average of about 9,000 soldiers were recruited from Spain each year, rising to as many as 20,000 in crisis years. Between 1567 and 1574, nearly 43,000 men left Spain to fight in Italy and the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
This is the Spain that Bartolome Romero grew to manhood. In 1580 he would have been 21 years old and between that and the year 1596 little is known of his life.
The Spanish Armada 1588
When Bartolome Romero he was a young man at the age of 25, Spain went to war with England over King Felipe’s s claim to the throne of England due to his marriage to Queen Mary the Catholic daughter of King Henry VIII. Mary’s protestant half-sister Elizabeth was crowned Queen. In 1588 a momentous naval excursion took place when King Felipe sent an Armada to invade England and depose Queen Elizabeth.
The Spanish Armada consisted of 10,138 sailors and 19,315 soldiers from Spain and Portugal, assisted by 31,800 soldiers from the Spanish Netherlands along with 34 warships and other support vessels. It was said that Spain’s forests were decimated to build the fleet of 130 ships.
Spain’s flotilla hoped to remove Protestant Queen Elizabeth I from the throne and restoring the Roman Catholic faith in England. However, Spain’s “Invincible Armada” was “outfoxed by the English, then battered by storms while limping back to Spain with at least a third of its ships sunk or damaged.”
By the time the “Great and Most Fortunate Navy” finally reached Spain in the autumn of 1588, it had lost as many as 60 of its 130 ships and suffered some 15,000 deaths.
King Felipe II later rebuilt his fleet and dispatched two more Spanish Armadas in the 1590s, both of which were scattered by storms.
We may never know if Bartolome Romero was in Spain at the time of the Spanish Armada or in Mexico. If Bartolome Romero was still in Spain, he certainly would have been recruited into the Spanish Army. Obviously, he had some military experience as a decade later in Nuevo Espana was a “capable soldier” with the means to marry and start a family.
However it may never be known when or why he left Spain for Mexico. It may have been for a down turn of opportunities in Spain, or the adventure of new lands. The fact that his extended family were “New Christians” during a time of increased scrutiny may have also been a reason to leave Spain and the long reach of the Spanish Inquisition.
New Christians within Zacatecas, in the Viceroy of Nuevo España
Modern DNA tests show that there is a high percentage of Sephardic Jews who settled in Nuevo México . When the Muslims and Jews were driven out of Spain in 1492, many Sephardic Jews, adopted Spanish surname at the moment of their conversion to Roman Catholicism to keep from being persecuted and tortured by the Spanish Inquisition.
“To escape persecution by the Holy Office, many of these conversos migrated to the Spanish colonies in the 16th and 17th centuries, settling in metropolitan centers such as Lima and Mexico City.”
Nevertheless, once the Catholic Inquisition established itself in these New World capitals, it became necessary for those “crypto Jews”, New Christians who still practiced elements of Judaism, to seek refuge in more remote parts of the Spanish colonial frontier. One of the main places of refuge was the silver mining town of town of Zacatecas, 500 miles north of Mexico City, and later Nuevo México a 1000 miles north of Zacatecas. Indeed, it appears that Nuevo México , like the mining areas of Zacatecas also served as a focus of settlement of “crypto-Jews” seeking an escape from persecution from the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
Despite the formal prohibition of the practice of the “Law of Moses” in Nuevo España the frontier community of Zacatecas functioned effectively as a zone of refuge for “conversos” far from Mexico City. When don Juan de Onate, he himself a descendant from conversos, was recruiting colonist for his expedition to north of the Rio Bravo, today’s Rio Grande it was likely seen as a way to get farther away from the Mexican Inquisition.
“If Zacatecas constitutes a zone of refuge in comparison with the central region of the viceroyalty,” “a heaven for social outcasts” the el Nuevo México was viewed as “the zone of refuge from the zone of refuge.”
Limpieza de sangre or "Purity of Blood" laws required Spaniards to obtain permission to settle in Nuevo España. These laws prohibited the descendants of Jews and Muslims from emigrating to the Americas. Only those Spaniards “free from all Muslim or Jewish blood” were allowed to migrate, so those with a Jewish heritage had to keep secret their ancestry .
In the late 16th Century, the Catholic Inquisition had come to Mexico and began to persecute people whose ancestors were “New Christians”. A campaign of the Mexican “Holy Office” Inquisition against the crypto-Jews of province of Nuevo León began in the 1580s and 1590s. This had a direct impact on the exploration and settlement of el Nuevo México at the end of the sixteenth century.
El Nuevo México, lands north of the Rio Grande
As early as 1561 Spanish colonial explorers used the “el Nuevo México” to refer to Cíbola, cities of wealth that were reported to exist far to the north of the recently conquered Mexico.
Upon the arrest of the Governor of Nuevo León, Luis de Carvajal, for tolerating the presence of Crypto-Jews under his administration, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, was left in charge as lieutenant governor of the province. Almost immediately after the governor’s conviction in 1589, Castaño de Sosa rounded up some one hundred seventy colonists, comprising of men, women and children and left on an unauthorized expedition to lands north of the Rio Grande then known as Rio Bravo. The expedition traveled upriver into the Río Grande Valley, in an attempt to establish the first permanent Spanish colony on the northern frontier.
However, in 1590, an order had arrived from Spain requiring all expeditions to be authorized by the crown and Lieutenant Governor Gaspar Castaño de Sosa of Nuevo Leon had launched an expedition on his own authority. He had planned to start a colony in Nuevo México and persuade the viceroy to accept it after the fact.
The Castaño expedition was therefore illegal as he had failed to secure permission from don Luis de Velasco, Nuevo España’s viceroy, to leave Nuevo León. Moreover, Castaño's expedition into the northern frontier did not include a priest which had the inquisition suspected that he had “initiated the dangerous entrada for the purpose of leading “crypto-Jews to a secure haven on the far northern frontier.”
Inquisition officials informed don de Velasco that Castaño's departed from Nuevo León, and the Viceroy dispatched soldiers to arrest him and his entire expedition party. Pursued through Nuevo México, Castaño d Sosa was arrested and taken back to Mexico City. He was convicted of treason and exiled to the Philippine Islands, where he died shortly thereafter.
Historians consider that this Castaño expedition may have been a way for Crypto-Jews be out of the reach of the Holy Order. Yet, no muster roll has ever been found for the 1590 expedition, which would have provide clues as to the origins of its participants. While certainly not conclusive, possible links may be established by comparing the colonists’ names with those found in contemporary records of the Mexican Inquisition for trial of Crypto-Jews such as Rodríguez, Nieto, Díaz, Hernández, and Pérez.
Many of the survivors of the failed 1590 expedition returned to participate in the founding of the town of Monterrey in 1596. Others went to Zacatecas “Fearful, perhaps, of attracting the attention of the Inquisition, now in the throes of its vigorous campaign against the “converso” community of New Spain.
“For their part, those survivors who did not return to Nuevo León might well have Felt themselves somewhat vulnerable to arrest by the Inquisition, which, as has been demonstrated, was in the midst of its heaviest phase of activity against Mexican crypto-Jews.”
Conquistador Don Juan de Oñate
A couple of years after the failed 1590 attempt to colonize el Nuevo México, King Felipe II realized the need of establishing an outpost in the far northern frontier of Nuevo Espana. His Viceroy don de Velasco chose the son of a wealthy and powerful northern miner, don Juan de Oñate y Sanchez, for with the task of establishing a new colony in the distant frontier of Nuevo México .
In 1595 Juan de Oñate, whose father, Don Cristobal, had helped Hernando Cortes conquer Mexico, unlike Castaño, received permission from the Spanish Crown to establish the colony of Nuevo México. Although, he was a descendant of “conversos” Jews, Oñate's family connections and wealth made him able to privately financed venture .
Nevertheless, establishing a colony a thousand miles from the nearest Spanish settlement was a costly undertaking. Oñate's expedition contract with the Spanish government specified in great detail the number of settlers, livestock and other provisions and equipment he was to provide. In return, he was awarded titles which gave him civil and military authority over the colony. He was also to be the primary beneficiary of any riches they may discover."
Juan de Oñate, in 1595, approached some of the survivors of the failed Castaño de Sosa expedition who were in Zacatecas. They had returned from el Nuevo México just a Féw years earlier, and he knew these men “consequently knew well the route northward, the terrain, and had firsthand knowledge of the Pueblo Indians who inhabited the lands to be conquered and occupied.” Thus Oñate realized the potential for the survivors of the Castaño expedition in helping him establish his “new colony on a strong footing.”
At least two members of the Castaño expedition, who decided to return to Nuevo México with Juan Oñate in 1598, were Juan de Victoria Carvajal and Juan Rodríguez Nieto, who were crypto Jews. Another crypto-Jew member of the 1590 expedition, Alonso Jaimes, was found in Oñate's military encampment at Casco in 1596. Additionally, another of Oñate's soldiers, Cristóbal de Herrera, was arrested several years later in Zacatecas, and denounced before the Inquisition on suspicion of practicing Judaism. Even the supplier of the Oñate expedition, a merchant by the name of Balthasar Rodríguez, was possibly the same Balthasar crypto-Jew Rodríguez, who merchant of Nuevo León. crypto-Jews and conversos evidently made up a significant portion of his recruits.
The family members of the former governor of New Leon were tried as Crypto-Jews and burned at the stake in Mexico City in December 1596. This renewed persecution by the Inquisition may have prompted many families of Sephardic Jew ancestry in Zacatecas to join the Juan de Oñate’s expedition in order to be far from the reach of the Nuevo España’s Holy Order.
The campaign of the Holy Office against the crypto-Jews of Nuevo León in the 1580s and 1590s, evidently had a direct impact on the settlement of El Nuevo México at the end of the sixteenth century by descendants of Sephardic Jews.
Bartolome Romero marries in Zacatecas and starts a Family
Bartolome Jose Romero was in the silver mining town of Zacatecas probably at least by 1595 perhaps earlier as that was where many of the soldiers and their families were living who were recruited by Juan de Onate.
The far northern frontier town of Zacatecas offered two major advantages for conversos and crypto-Jews seeking anonymity: remoteness from inquisitorial officials and an ample market for the goods and services provided by converso merchants.
The town served as a “haven for conversos attempting to avoid arrest by the Holy Office” due to the great distance of Zacatecas from Mexico City. Also its geographical isolation from other major communities “facilitated laxity and backsliding, practically assuring exemption from punishment” by the Holy Office.
By 1596, Bartolome married Luisa Lopez Robledo [1574-1620] in Zacatecas, Mexico, when he was 33 years old. As elsewhere in the viceroyalty of New Spain, often “conversos” took “care to marry within their community.”
Luisa Robledo was a member of a New Christian family. The Robledo family were from the village of Maqueda, Castilla, Spain and like the Romeros but possibly crypto-Jews or at least conversos from strong evidence from the archives of the Inquisition. These families continued to live under church suspicions of observing Jewish practices which may have prompted leaving Spain. Certainly, this is why Bartolomew Romer married into this family as he had no other known relatives in New Spain. Her father, Pedro Robledo had brought his family to Nuevo España in 1575 when she was an infant.
The Bartolome and Luisa’s first child, Matias Romero, was born in April 1597, certainly in Zacatecas, as it was here the Onate’s expedition was in preparation for the migration to el Nuevo México. It should be noted that Matias’ pioneer young mother had to care for an infant as well as attending to other duties of women in the caravan.
Bartolome Romero, his wife Luisa, and infant son Mattias were all part of Juan de Oñate's 1598 expedition to claimed the territory across the Rio Grande river in el Nuevo México for the Spanish Empire.
The Oñate Expedition to Colonize el Nuevo México Province
Bartolome Romero was mustered in 1597 as an “Alferez” or "ensign” as one of the soldiers of the expedition, which indicated he had military training. He was described on the muster rolls as being of “good stature, dark, and black bearded”. He was mentioned in the company’s records as being married to Luisa Lopez y Robledo “who came with him and her young family.”
Oñate's expedition initiated its journey from the state of Zacatecas in northern México. After various impediments, mostly of a political nature, the expedition was able to depart on January 26, 1598. An enormous caravan assembled at Hacienda de Compostela, in Zacatecas, for the first wave of colonists to settle what became known as the “province of Nuevo México ”. Juan de Oñate led this a company of officials, 129 soldiers, 10 Franciscan priests, nearly 650 women, children, mainly the soldier’s families, Indian servants, and slaves, numbering closely to nearly 800 souls as well as thousands of head of herds of cows, sheep, mules, and horses on a 1000 mile trek into the Rio Grande valley of El Nuevo México which was 600 miles north of the nearest Spanish settlement of Santa Bárbara, Chihuahua.
Bartolome Romero figured quite prominently in the Oñate annals as he was promoted to Capitán shortly after the colony arrived in Nuevo México .
“After many hair raising and near-death adventures, the expedition was finally able to cross the turbulent and rapidly flowing waters of the Rio Grande River at what today is El Paso, Texas”, In late April 1598. The pioneers paused on the Río Bravo now known as the Rio Grande at a place Don Juan de Oñate named El Paso del Rio del Norte which is near present-day Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and the city of El Paso, Texas. The Franciscan Priests celebrated a “Thanksgiving Mass” there on 30 April 1598 nearly 25 years before the English Pilgrims' Thanksgiving.
In an act of thanksgiving, Oñate ordered a Mass to be said, after which the men and women relaxed by watching a play written by one of the soldiers for the occasion; this was the first Western European drama performed in the United States. These secular dramas, such as Los Moros y Cristianos, were performed in part as a strategy to demonstrate the mighty power of the Spanish Empire to the astounded Indian masses who marveled at the deafening sound of the firing cannons.”
A Few days later 4 May 1598, Oñate took formal possession of the province in the name of “King Felipe of Spain”. The king however would die later that year on 13 September 1598 at the age of 71. He was succeeded by his 20 year old son Felipe III who was an "undistinguished and insignificant man."
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| King Felipe III |
Under Oñate's original terms for the colony, it made the lands north of the Rio Bravo a separate viceroyalty from New Spain however it remained a province instead.
The colonists traveled another 350 miles along today’s Rio Grande all during the summer of 1598, following the middle Rio Grande Valley to northern Nuevo México into the Espanola Valley.
This valley is situated in the northern Rio Grande Valley between the 12,000 ft. Jemez Mountains to the west and the 13,000 ft. Truchas Peaks to the east. The Rio Grande, Rio Chama, and the Santa Cruz Rivers all converge near the pueblo of San Juan de Los Caballeros, (St. John of the Gentlemen) which was the first capital of El Nuevo México until it was removed to San Gabriel and then Santa Fé (Holy Faith) in 1608.
On July 11, 1598, an advance party of the expedition arrived at the Tewa pueblo village of “Ohkay Owingeh”, located near the Rio Grande and the Rio Chama. When Oñate arrived at the pueblo, he temporarily established his headquarters there and renamed the village, San Juan Bautista. It was later renamed San Juan de los Caballeros.
A Féw months later, the Spaniards relocated their settlement to “Yungé Owingeh”, across the river less than half a mile away, renaming the pueblo San Gabriel de Yungé which became the capital of the new Spanish colony of Nuevo México.
Oñate and his soldiers forced or convinced the inhabitants of Yungé to relocate to Ohkay, San Juan Bautista, and the settlers and soldiers moved into the Tewa’s former homes, which was a pueblo house block of about 400 apartments. Once established at San Gabriel, the Spaniards “built new houses, a garrison, dug a water channel to bring water, and the San Miguel church in the fall of 1598.” The colonists introduced new crops, like wheat and apples, and animals, like horses, cattle and sheep as well as new breeds of dogs to the Pueblo people. Once settled Oñate granted land to colonists of the expedition and empowered them to demand tribute from the local Pueblo Indians.
The Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande Valley
The Rio Grande Valley was, at the time of the Spanish colonization, the home of the descendants of the ancient Anasazi or Pueblo Indians who had settled in the valley in the 1200 A.D. There were at the time approximately 40,000 people inhabiting the region. They had settled in adobe villages throughout the valley and the tribes were called the Tiwas, Piroes, Towas, Tanos and Keresans. When the Spaniards saw these Indians living in flat-roofed stone or adobe dwellings built around plazas, they were reminded of their homeland villages or pueblos and called the people Pueblo Indians. Upon arriving the Spaniards established small communities near the Indian pueblos due to the access of water for farming and stock raising. However Onate brutally suppressed the Pueblo Indians by warfare and enslavement after some of the tribes tried to resist Spanish dominance.
The Acoma people had lived in the Acoma Pueblo (Sky City or Old Acoma) for at least a thousand years before the Spanish arrived. However, in 1598 Juan de Oñate brought 500 colonists and 7,000 livestock animals to the region, declaring that it was now a Spanish territory. He declared that the natives must become Catholic and were now subject to the King of Spain. However, when the Acoma Pueblo people refused to give up their essential winter supplies to his soldiers, Oñate retaliated and set fire to the Pueblo, massacring around 800 villagers. Each male survivor had one of their Féet cut off, and the women and children became slaves.
Franciscan missionaries from Spain claimed that in 1630 they had converted 60,000 Indian souls which could not have been accurate. In reality the priests subjugated the "heathen" Pueblo Indians, forcing them to convert to Christianity and then used them as an involuntary labor force to build the missions, presidios and haciendas of the Spaniards.
The Spaniards also inadvertently introduced measles, small pox and plague to the Pueblo Indians. From 1599 to 1600 and for several years afterwards there was a terrible outbreak of bubonic plague across Spain, killing over 10% of the population and it was also carried to the new world.
Along with drought and hostile tribes, the Spaniards caused the Pueblo villages in the Rio Grande Valley to decline from more than 100 in 1598 to only 18 by 1700. The native population was said to have been decimated by half.
San Gabriel Bartolome and Luisa Robledo’s First Residence in Nuevo México
San Gabriel de Yunque was the first home of Capitán Bartolome Romero and Luisa Robledo. Luisa like the other women “had to cultivate and harvest the crops of native maize and whatever European seeds they had brought along. And sturdy women they must have been, especially Luisa Robledo, as shown the first summer when wild Indians from the eastern plains came to attack San Juan when her husband and the other men were away exploring.
She was the daughter of the old ensign from Toledo who had died along the trail, and the wife of Bartolomé Romero, likewise a Toledoan who was one of Oñate's best Capitáns.
Brave Luisa gathered all the Spanish and Indian women on the flat rooftops to pelt the invaders with stones while taunting them...”
Luisa Robledo may have even been pregnant at the time as she had a son in 1599 she named Agostin [Augustine] Robledo y Romero. He would have been born at San Gabriel. A daughter, Ana Robledo y Romero, was born in 1602 at the pueblo of San Gabriel. Other children born to Capitán Bartolome and Luisa were Maria in 1606 and Bartolome in 1607. If there were other children they have been lost to history.
After 1604, the policy on the part of the Holy Office returned to one of relative toleration towards the crypto-Jews of New Spain, with only sporadic arrests in the 1620s and 30s. During the first four decades of the seventeenth century, the converso community grew substantially both in numbers and in commercial influence in New Spain and New Mexico.
While relatively safe from investigation by the Holy Office, life was harsh on the frontier and from the original the Spaniards in the Onate expedition, by 1608 there were only 200 people left, and almost all were residents of San Gabriel de Yunque on the west bank of the Rio Grande opposite San Juan Pueblo.
No gold or silver had been found and the viceroy was receiving reports of mistreatment of the Indians and of near starvation of the settlers. Due to these problems, on 13 September 1608 the “Council of the Indies” made a formal recommendation to King Felipe III, that Nuevo México be abandoned. However, soon afterwards, a Franciscan Priest interceded and claimed that 7,000 Indians had been converted and baptized. It was decided that the Christian converts could not be abandoned, so King Felipe III suspended the order to evacuate the colony.
Juan de Onate was recalled to Mexico City to answer for the brutality he inflicted on the native people and was in the process of removing the capital of Nuevo México. to the new settlement of Santa Fé when he was removed as Governor.
Oñate is notorious for the 1599 “Acoma Massacre” that occurred following a dispute that led to the ambush and death of thirteen Spaniards including Oñate's nephew, Juan de Zaldívar, at the hands of Ácoma warriors. Oñate ordered a brutal retaliation against the Acoma Pueblo with killing between 800 and a 1000 Acoma men, women, and children.
Finally in 1606, Oñate was recalled to Mexico City for a hearing regarding his conduct to the Indians. He was tried and convicted of cruelty to both natives and colonists and was banished from Nuevo México for life and exiled from Mexico City for five years. Eventually Oñate moved to Spain, where the king appointed him head of all mining inspectors in the country. He died in Spain in 1626 and is sometimes referred to as "the Last Conquistador."
The San Gabriel de Yunque pueblo was either abandoned entirely by the Spanish after the capital was moved to Santa Fé in 1610, or left with a Few colonists. It was eventually abandoned entirely, however San Juan Baptista, renamed San Juan de los Caballeros continued on until the present but which is now known simply as San Juan.
After the village was abandoned Capitán Bartolome Romero and his wife relocated their family to Santa Fé where they lived out the remainder of their lives.
Capital Moved to Santa Fé
San Gabriel was Nuevo México 's colonial capital from 1598 until 1610, when Juan de Oñate was replaced by Governor Pedro de Peralta.
San Gabriel was considered to remote from the main Pueblo Indian population centers. Juan de Oñate had planned to move the capital south to the Santa Fé River valley before he was recalled.
Governor Peralta selected a defensible site with ample available land and a good water supply for the town, which he called “The La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asis” or Santa Fé. Founded between 1608 and 1610, Santa Fé was now the capital outpost of Nuevo México in the remote northern frontier.
Peralta and his surveyor laid out the town, including the districts, house and garden plots and the Santa Fé Plaza for the government buildings. These included the governor's headquarters, government offices, a jail, arsenal and a chapel. On completion, the plaza could hold "1,000 people, 5000 head of sheep, 400 head of horses, and 300 head of cattle without crowding."
The governor’s “palace” was built for defense with three-foot-thick adobe walls and now the “Palace of the Governors” is now the oldest continuously occupied building in the United States.
Author and genealogist José A. Esquibel chronicled the history of the founders of Santa Fé and of the nineteen first families, 11 were of Jewish ancestry. In fact, it was a crypto-jew woman who rescued “La Conquistadora” from a burning Santa Fé chapel during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The Madonna was carried to safety by Josefa López Sambrano de Grijalva, wife of Francisco Lucero de Godoy. Lucero de Godoy was the eldest grandson of Francisco Gómez and Ana Robledo y Romero, the daughter of Capitán Bartolome Romero.
Although Capitán Bartolome and his family moved to Santa Fé, he also had been granted by Onate a large estate as part of the “encomienda system” which In the early years of the colony, Spanish soldiers were rewarded with encomiendas which gave the grantee the right to exploit Pueblo labor and extract tribute but did not give the grantee legal ownership of the land itself.
As he would have been called upon in any excursion against native people or stationed at garrisons, this meant that Luisa more than likely would have been in charge of his household, rearing their children and managing their estate. No doubt the family had Indian servants, actually slaves, as well as other people helping her. It had to have been extremely difficult being on the frontier 1500 miles from Mexico City and completely depended on their own resources and what they could trade from converted Pueblo Indians.
Secular and Sectarian Conflicts
Prosperity and growth in Nuevo México. in much of the 17th century was due to struggle between civil authorities and ecclesiastical ones. While governors generally and the support of the state, the hundreds of Franciscan Missionaries in Nuevo México. had the full weight of the Inquisition on their side.
Franciscan Priests maintained that the colony of Nuevo México’s specific purpose was to convert the native Americans to Catholicism and to destroy “heathen” traditions among them. That put them at odds with civil authority which believed that the government of Nuevo México. was to defends and expand the frontier as well as protect settlers and the native pueblo people from marauding tribes that surrounded them. The Church assumed that the main objective in Nuevo México. was to convert the Indians, and the civil power existed only in order to provide protection and to support this goal.
As the Franciscan Priest began converting Indians and establishing missions at the pueblos, they demanded that garrisoned forts, called presidios, be established to counter Indian attacks. During the next several decades, a thin string of Spanish settlements was established along the Rio Grande, from Socorro in the south to the Taos Valley in the north.
Conflicts over Indian policies was the main reason for a turn over of Governors of Nuevo México during this period from 1610 until 1625 when there were four governors, none serving more than 7 years. The disputes between the friars and the secular administration later became so violent that in 1620 the King himself had to intervene, taking the side of his governors
The Latter Years of the Pioneers
Doña Luisa Robledo passed away in in Santa Fé, Nuevo México between 1618 and 1626. She was mentioned as deceased in a statement given by Lucas de Figueroa on 26 January 1626. Figueroa, a vecino [resident] of the Villa de Santa Fé, stated that doña Luisa had commented to him about the Few Masses that Governor don Juan de Eulate attended, and that during Mass when the host was elevated, she noticed that Eulate would turn his head. Eulate served as governor of Nuevo México. between 1618 and 1625.
All of these facts indicate that doña Luisa Robledo died sometime between 1618 and January 1626.The couple had been married more than 20 years. Their known children were Matias Romero [1597-1642], Agostin Romero [1599-circa 1648], Ana Romero [1602-1633] the wife of Francisco Gomez, Maria [1606-1846] wife Romero of Gaspar Perez and Bartolome Romero [1607-?].
Where Luisa was buried is unknown or likely ever will be. “Many of the Historic dead in Santa Fé likely would not have been coffined, wood being in very limited supply.” She being the wife of Capitán Romero would have been buried in or near the camposantos of Parish Church of st. Francis founded in 1610. The name "camposanto" literally means "holy field", is a word for cemetery in Spanish. She may have been buried in the camposanto of the San Miguel Chapel since the chapel was first built circa 1620.
Luisa Robledo died during the administration of Governor Juan Álvarez de Eulate y Ladrón de Cegama who was given a large salary and had permission to use as many Indians as he wanted under the encomienda system. He was also said to have pacified the tribes and by the end of his term in office in 1625 the province of Nuevo México was quieter than it had ever been before.
In 1621, Felipe III’s son Félipe IV became King of Spain and reigned until 1640. During his reign, Spain began to decline as a super power. King Philip IV of Spain, who only valued Nuevo México mainly because of the number of souls to be saved, ordered the dispatch of thirty more Franciscan friars to the province in 1629.
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| King Felipe IV |
Nuevo México ’s next governor Félipe de Sotelo y Osorio [1625-1630] was appointed in 1625 when Bartolome Romero may have been an aged widower and all his children grown and married. Governor Osorio was a non-practicing Catholic and after becoming governor, rejected the Roman Catholic Church as that he viewed it as a dictatorship, “thus provoking clashes with the institution.” He actions were investigated by the Inquisition and was the 2nd governor of Nuevo México to have been excommunicated due to the struggle over authority in the province. He was replaced with Manuel de Silva Nieto [1630-1632].
In 1629, Governor Silva travelled with an agent of the Inquisition, Estevan de Perea, who has been called the "Father of the New Mexican Church". Estéban de Perea was born in Spain, near the Portuguese border. Both his parents were Portuguese and came from a region that was home to many Jews. The Catholic Church was suspicious that some converts remained true to Jewish beliefs in private and would investigate.
In 1629 the Mexican Inquisition conducted a thorough inquiry into Perea's "purity of blood" with two witnesses testifying that his mother's family was "tainted with new Christian blood", but the Franciscans chose to ignore this evidence. When Governor Silva journey north from Mexico City he and Perea brought about thirty friars and several lay brothers to undertake missionary work in Nuevo México as King Felipe IV had requested.
Father de Perea during Silva time in office recorded that the local whites and half-castes were “superstitious and influenced by Indian customs”. “Men were unfaithful to their wives, and the wives used Indian love-potions and spells in attempts to win back their affections.” The Franciscan friars used harsh measures and asserted their authority to “stamp out evil practices”.
Governor Silva was more friendly to the friars than his predecessors had been and he helped them in their work of establishing missions to the Zuni and Navajo people. He also gave orders that his soldiers should not molest the Pueblo Indians, on penalty of death. His replacement arrived in March 1632. According to one account, Silva was murdered by one of his servants in Zacatecas, “possibly because of his closeness to the unpopular priests.”
Capitán Bartolome Romero died in 1632 at Santa Fé Nuevo México , when he was 69 years old, during the transition of the Governorship of Francisco Manuel de Silva Nieto [1630-1632] to Francisco de la Mora y Ceballos who arrived in March 1632. Bartolome Romero was still active as that his last recorded act was in 1632 when he reported on “strange rites being performed by the Indians for the church of Alameda Pueblo” south of Santa Fé.
His burial place is unknown, possibly near his wife or even buried underneath the floor of the military chapel, Nuestra Senora de La Casas Reales in the Governor’s palace.
The Robledo Family
The father of Luisa Robledo was Pedro Robledo(1538-1598), a native of Maqueda Toledo, Spain. He was the son of Alejo Robledo. Stanley Hordes, in his book titled To the End of the Earth, A History of the Crypto-Jews of New México, “raises the possibility that Pedro Robledo may have come from a family of conversos. Robledo was born in Carmena, Maqueda, Spain, but spent much of his liFé in Toledo, Spain before moving to New Spain in 1574.
The records from the Church at Carmena, Maqueda, were destroyed in the 1930’s Spanish Civil War, so little is known about his ancestry. There were a number of Robledo families living the old Jewish quarter of Toledo in the mid 1600's, but connecting Pedro to these families is close to impossible.
Charles Martínez y Vigil uncovered records pertaining to the request for license to travel to the New World relating to Pedro Robledo and Catalina López. These records consist of nineteen pages and are dated 1574. In these records, Pedro Robledo is identified as a "vecino de lugar de Carmena." Carmena was in the jurisdiction of Maqueda. Robledo declared he was married and had children and that he was struggling to make a living in Spain. He wanted to take his family to Mexico City in New Spain where his "primos hermanos," Miguel de Sandoval and Catalina Sánchez, resided. Sandoval and Sánchez are repeatedly reFérred to as "personas muy ricas" who had written to him many times encouraging Robledo and his family to come live with them.
In a document dated 10 November 1574, Villa de Torrijos (about twenty miles from Maqueda), Pedro Robledo declared he was married legitimately within the Catholic Church with Catalina López and had these children: Ana, Diego, Luis and Lucía. Again he mentioned his cousins in Mexico City, Miguel de Sandoval and Catalina Sánchez. Robledo presented three witnesses on his behalf, Alexo Pérez and Luis Martín, “vecinos del lugar de Carmena,” and Sebastián López de Alcabón [?], vecino of Torrijos.
In the testimony of the witnesses, it is mentioned that the lugar de Carmena is located within the lands of the Duque de Maqueda. Alexo Pérez, age thirty, confirmed that Pedro and his wifewere legitimately married and named their children as Diego, Ana, Lucía and Luis. He described Robledo and his wifeas "gente honrrada y principal." Pérez further stated that Miguel de Sandoval and Catalina Sánchez were natives of the same area of Maqueda and were cousins of Pedro Robledo. This document has two signatures. The first is difficult to read, but is presumably that of Pedro Robledo. The second signature clearly reads "Cata Lopez." The handwriting for both signatures is similar and may indicate that the document was a copy.
Luis Martín, age twenty-five, declared that for all of his liFé he had known Pedro Robledo. The rest of his testimony corresponds with that of Alexo Pérez, as does the testimony of Sebastián López de Alcabón [?].
We learn from other related documents that Pedro Robledo had a nephew in his care. This nephew, named Luis, was orphaned as a child and became a ward of Robledo. In 1574, Luis was sixteen years old. Pedro sought license to be granted for him to go to New Spain with his family. Testimony was collected from several people to confirm the relationship between Pedro and his ward. On 7 December 1574, in the lugar de Carmena, jurisdiction of Maqueda, Pedro Robledo declared that his nephew, Luis, had lived with him for the past ten to twelve years, and brought four witnesses to testify to this. The witnesses were Juan de la Cadena y Vega, Juan de la Casa, and Martín de Ysasaga, and Pedro López (son of Francisco López de Sto [? —Santo?]), each of whom declared they were not related to Pedro Robledo.
Juan de la Cadena y Vega, age twenty-eight, vecino de Carmena, declared that he knew Pedro Robledo and his nephew Luis. He further stated that Luis was an orphan and had lived in the care of Robledo since he was a child. Juan de la Casa, over fifty years old, also a vecino de Carmena, provided the same testimony, as did Martín de Ysasaga, age thirty. Pedro López, fifty years old, son of Francisco López de Sto [? —Santo?], vecino de Carmena, provided the same testimony and added that the nephew had been in Robledo's care for the past ten to eleven years.
The testimonies were written by Alonso Durán, public scribe appointed by the Duque de Maqueda, don Bernardino de Cárdenas, with approval from the King and his Royal Council.
The information above comes from documents found in the Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Seville, in a collection referred to as "Indiférente." It is likely that there are related documents still to be located in the AGI collection known as Contratación. It was at the Casa de Contratación that people with license to pass to the New World presented themselves and were accounted for before getting on a ship for the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.
A brother of Pedro Robledo (ONMF: 93) sought passage to Americas in 1575. This brother was Alejo Robledo, the namesake of his father, and he intended to travel with his brother Pedro Robledo. Alejo Robledo was married with Francisca Díaz and had three children: Alejo, Francisco and Ana. All were vecinos of Carmena in the jurisdiction of Maqueda. The record indicates that Alejo and Pedro were going to be in the company of Catalina Sánchez, very likely the woman of this name who was married with Miguel de Sandoval and their kinswomen. The record of passage for Pedro Robledo mentioned he was going to live in Mexico City with his cousins ("primos hermanos"), Miguel de Sandoval and Catalina Sánchez.
“Expediente de concesión de licensia para pasar a Mexico a favor de Alejo Robledo, con su mujer Francisca Dias y sus hijos Alejo, Francisco y Ana, todos vecinos de Carmena (Maqueda). Para ir con Pedro Robledo (hermano de Alejo Robledo, tiene licencia aparte) a estar en compañia de Catalina Sanchez.”
So In 1574, Pedro and his wife, Catalina López de Madrid, applied to travel to Mexico City in Nuevo España with their children Ana, Diego, Luis, and infant Luisa. Along with Pedro came his brother Alejo, his sister in law Francisca Diaz and their children. They said they had wealthy cousins there who were willing to sponsor them, and they arrived sometime in 1575 when Pedro was 37 years old.
The varied places of the birth of his sons after arriving in Nuevo España showed that the family wandered all over Nuevo España before reaching Zacatecas, the second-most important city in the viceroyalty of Nuevo España after Mexico City. The town served as an important mining center and mercantile distribution to other point for the region.
A son named Alonzo Robledo was born in 1577 at Zimapan, a mining town and a colonial outpost. The following year the family relocated 15 miles north to Temascaltepec, where son Pedro Robledo II was born in 1578. Francisco Robledo was born in 1580 in Zamora, Mexico.
Increasing persecution of “New Christians” may have led Pedro Robledo to move his from Zacatecas family to Nuevo México.
Pedro Robledo was 60 year old and listed as an “alférez” (ensign) when he accompanied the Onate’s expedition in 1598. He must have been fairly well off as he had the means to provide a horse and his own armor which also indicated that he had military experience.
The Onate muster rolls stated “Pedro Robledo Alférez native of Carmera in Toledo son of Alejo, with complete armor for himself and horse. He is taking household of wife and five children.” He was also described as of “good stature and complexly gray.” In the muster roll f 1597 he stated that he was born at the place of El Carmen and had lived in Toledo.
Pedro Robledo was bringing with him his wife Catalina Lopez, his five children daughter Francica and four sons.
The four oldest sons were soldiers also listed in muster rolls.
“Diego Robledo, native of Maqueda, son of the above-mentioned Pedro Robledo, of good stature, red bearded, 27 years of age, with his arms. Alonso Robledo, son of Pedro Robledo, native of Cimapan in New Spain, of good stature, red bearded, 21 years of age, with his arms. Pedro Robledo, son of Pedro Robledo, native of Temazcal- tepeque, of good stature, 20 years of age, scanty beard, with his arms. Francisco Robledo, son of Pedro Robledo, native of Valladolid in New Spain, smooth-chinned, 18 years of age, with his arms, except cuisses and powder flasks.”
Besides his Diego, Alonso, Pedro and Francisco, two of his known three daughters joined the expedition with their husbands Bartolomé Romero and Juan de Tapiz. A third married daughter stayed in New Spain with her husband.
Pedro Robledo died shortly after the Onate company moved into Nuevo México the first of the colonists to die there. On May 21, 1598, Pedro Robledo, one of the eldest members of the group, died unexpectedly, shortly after the Oñate party entered into New México.
“Robledo, a sixty-year-old officer was an unusual participant in the expedition. Not too many gray-haired officers existed 400 years ago. Nonetheless, Robledo believed he could successfully participate in this venture because he had four strong sons, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-seven, to help him carry out his duties along the trail. Unfortunately, the journey became too much for him.”
“His sons took the news very hard. In fact, most of the colonists mourned his loss. Pedro Robledo was the first of the expedition to pass away. He was buried on 21 May 1598 on the trail east of Rio del Norte. As a tribute to Robledo, the group named the spot where they camped the Paraje de Robledo (the Robledo Campsite). The Spanish reférred to the site by that name through the end of the colonial period. To this day the mountain that overlooks the campsite is still known as Robledo Mountain.”
The day after Robledo's funeral, Oñate left the main group with an escort of approximately sixty people. This small group went ahead to help make travel for the main caravan less hazardous. With Oñate, went the two Zaldívar brothers, Father Cristóbal de Salazar, Father Alonso Martínez, the four Robledo brothers, and other soldiers, some of who brought their wives and children. Oñate's young son, Cristóbal, may have also accompanied his father on this excursion. This group intended to ride ahead of the wagon train to help establish good relations with the Indians, acquire grain, and to scout out the perféct site for the group's first settlement. However, accomplishing these goals was more difficult then any of them anticipated.”
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