A condensed version of this article appeared in the
Mountain View Telegraph on July 23, 2009, as part of a
supplement commemorating Estancia's 100th anniversary as an
incorporated town.
ESTANCIA:
WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE INCORPORATION
By Morrow Hall
What’s In a Name?
Estancia is a
Spanish word with several shades of meaning. It’s usually translated
as “place of rest,” but it has other nuances. A “stay” in the
hospital is an estancia in
Spanish, as would be a “sojourn” abroad. The word also applies to
the place one stays, and is used to mean “mansion” or
“headquarters.” By extrapolation from that, big cattle ranches in
Estancia,
The evidence for the pueblo is a map drawn in 1779 by Don
Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, by order of Governor de Anza. There is
shown along the eastern side of the
It’s likely there had been a mission of some sort at Estancia, as there had been at most of the other pueblos mentioned. There may even have been a church. If there was, records of it may still exist in Mexican or Spanish archives. There seems to be no trace of it left on the ground, though.
From this evidence we can say that Estancia has carried that name for over 230 years, perhaps a lot longer. When it was incorporated it was already well over a century in age.
Under Water.
Spaniard met Indian at Estancia at some point between 1598,
when Oñate’s large band of colonists came from
Let’s look at the terrain. The Town of
Along the east side of the valley is a string of rocky hills,
the last visible remnants of a much older (around 300 million years)
mountain chain that once ran from what is now
To the south is the Chupadera (Sucker or Sinkhole – the
meaning is unclear – perhaps there were lots of ticks there)
In the center of the
During the Ice Age,
These lakes lasted a very long time, to our way of thinking.
We know this in part because when the lakes were full they were home
to lots of tiny, shrimp-like creatures whose remains can be
carbon-dated. When the lakes became shallow, another shrimp
flourished. The tiny skeletons of these creatures are found along
the shoreline of ancient
Scientists have found that
The lake filled again, at least partially, several times as the Ice Age came to an end. The most recent time was only about 7,000 years ago, a blink of the eye in geological time. One scientist calculated that with 70% more precipitation and 40% less evaporation than we get now the lake would begin to fill again.
The
Estancia probably served as a camping site for thousands of years. It was undoubtedly well known to the nomadic tribes that hunted here, and it was near one of the only surface deposits of salt in the region. The distinctive points (arrowheads) of Folsom Man have been found in the valley, indicating a presence some 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. Perhaps these early people lived along the lake shore. Sandía Man, thought to have lived before that, had his famous cave on the north end of the mountains after which he was named, and he was probably familiar with nearby Lake Estancia.
The history of those who lived here that long ago is written only in rare and durable artifacts. This was before the agricultural revolution, and thus before the pueblo era. Everybody was a hunter-gatherer then.
The First Land Grant.
Let’s jump forward again, to 1819, when Don Bartolomé Baca
petitioned the governor of the Province of New Mexico, Don Facundo
Melgárez, for a tract of land. Baca was a captain of cavalry
stationed at Tomé. He told the governor he had sheep, cattle, and
horses and did not have a place to graze them. He described a huge
piece of the
Governor Melgárez sent his commissioner of justice, Don José García de la Mora, to inspect the property with Captain Baca. García reported that the land was uninhabited and unclaimed. Citing the “great services” Baca had rendered for the king, he related: “I have given him possession in the name of His Majesty, the King of Spain, and taking him by the hand we went over the place, acclaiming, pulling out grass and throwing rocks in the name of the King, saying, ‘Long live our Beloved Monarch Don Fernando Septime! May God save him!’ with all my might and on hearing the echoes I wept.”
The boundaries of the grant were established as
This was an enormous piece of land, somewhere around 1.2 million acres. Sheepherders for Captain Baca probably had a camp at every spring, and dwellings of some sort were constructed. Estancia was the headquarters, perhaps from the beginning, but there were quite a few other residences around the valley.
Only three years later, in 1821, over three centuries of
Spanish domination in North America ended when
The Second Land Grant.
On December 7, 1845, the governor of
Governor Armijo is better known for what he did less than a year later, during the Mexican War, which was to position his forces east of Santa Fe to oppose the impending arrival of General Stephen Watts Kearney and his Army of the West – and then think better of such an unfriendly gesture, dismiss his troops, and hightail it south to El Paso.
Was he unaware of the Baca grant, or had it been annulled? Or did he make the grant to quiet a disgruntled employee, knowing that war was brewing and others would have to deal with the consequences? The answer isn’t clear from the remaining public records of the time. What is clear is that he had just lit a slow-burning fuse that would eventually explode.
Baca vs. Sandoval.
The heirs of the Baca grant sold it in 1874 to Manuel Antonio
Otero of La Costancia, near Belén. Otero had made a fortune by
herding many sheep from the
Estancia was headquarters for the agricultural activities of
the grant, but the Otero family were absentee owners most of the
time. There was a one-story ranch house made of
terrones, sod bricks, cut
from the wet grassy area around the springs. It was located north
and east of the present fire station, partially in what is now
Most of the people in the grant at that time had partido (sharecropper) agreements with the owners. They herded and cared for the sheep and cattle and were given a percentage of the increase as payment. Don Manuel, the patron, or boss, visited once in a while, but his foreman was in charge most of the time.
Meanwhile, ownership of the Sandoval grant changed hands as
well. In 1878, it was purchased by a rich
The Gringo & Greaser.
When
When the AT&SF railroad entered
He came with a sharp intellect, a satirical sense of humor, and dreams of empire. He was the first representative of the Fourth Estate to meddle in the affairs of the local citizenry in this valley, and he did it up fine and gave them all seconds without extra charge. He managed to survive for four years before someone shot and killed him, but that’s another story.
He apparently decided to ruffle everyone’s feathers at once when he chose the name for his newspaper. He called it “The Gringo & Greaser,” highly insulting terms Anglos and Hispanics used to describe each other, and he published a four-page edition, in both English and Spanish, twice a month whether anything had happened or not.
“There is more money invested outside of Manzano than in any other City in the Territory, or perhaps in the world,” he wrote. That’s still true today, as is another comment he made: “It is famous for its weather, hardly ever being without a spell.”
On August 18, 1883, Editor Kusz published an “Extra Edition” of his paper, thus leaving us a contemporary account of the “War” that had taken place the day before.
War at la Estancia.
Joel P. Whitney, the purchaser of the Sandoval grant, and his
brother, James G. Whitney, came to the valley and began telling the
sheepherders scattered around it, whom they called “squatters,” that
they would have to leave. They had been to
Manuel B. Otero, the son of Don Manuel Antonio Otero, set out with two of his cousins to see what was happening at the Estancia ranch. He was a truly elegant scion of his patrician family. He was a graduate of Heidelberg University in Germany, and he had married a lovely young heiress of the other rich family in the area, the Lunas of Los Lunas.
James B. Whitney was already at the headquarters, along with his brother-in-law and a friend. The six men met in the house and parleyed. Before long someone got tired of talking and started shooting. Seconds later, Whitney’s brother-in-law was dead, and Whitney was badly wounded. As for Otero, I’ll let Editor Kusz tell the story. He could be as maudlin as he was droll:
“The Priest, Rev. L. Bourdier, was at once summoned to administer the rites of the church to the dying Otero, but he arrived too late; he was beyond human help; his lips were already sealed and the icy hand of death had already touched the lower part of his body, and as the sun was sinking behind the mountains to light up a new world, his spirit took its flight to the hands that gave it, passed the valley of the shadow of death and entered that great undiscovered bourne whence no traveler returns….”
There’s more of that, a lot more. I can imagine the man with his composing stick in hand, furiously selecting each tiny italic letter from his font box as he constructed his grand eulogy.
The opposing parties retreated to tend their wounds and bury
their dead, and the validity of the competing land grants became a
matter for the courts to decide. They took their time. Finally, as
if to usher in a new era for the
The land was opened for homesteading, a railroad was built across the valley, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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Town of Estancia History |
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