The Santa Fe Fiesta

The anniversary of the reconquest of New Mexico from the Pueblo tribe in 1692, which was first formally celebrated in September 1712, was renewed by the city of Santa Fe in 1919 and is known as the Santa Fe Fiesta.

The historical background of the celebration dates from 1528, when the battered and hungry survivors of Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition to Florida, fleeing across the Gulf of Mexico from hostile tribes, were shipwrecked off the coast of Texas. Only four men escaped from the ordeal and managed to reach land, probably Galveston Island. They included Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who had served as Narváez's treasurer; and a black Moor known as Esteban or Estevanico who had served as guide.

In the nearly eight years that followed, the four labored for native captors, escaped, and wandered thousands of miles through the rugged terrain of the American Southwest. They probably crossed through New Mexico and Arizona, possibly reaching the Gulf of California. Far south of the Rio Grande, they finally encountered other Spanish people near Culiacán. In Mexico they spread tales they had heard about the Pueblo natives and rich northern cities, thus giving rise to the myth about the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola.

Spurred by these accounts, Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy of New Spain, dispatched an exploring party under the leadership of the Franciscan missionary Fray Marcos de Niza in 1539. Estevanico, who had become an experienced ambassador to the natives in the previous years of wandering, went with him as guide and scout. The party, accompanied also by native guides, explored southeastern Arizona. Sent ahead as the leader of an advance expedition, Estevanico was the first nonnative to see the region of northwestern New Mexico. He discovered the Zuñi tribe. At Hawikuh, their westernmost pueblo, the Zuñis killed him and some of the native guides who had accompanied him.

The three guides who managed to escape hastened back to Fray Marcos with news of the tragedy. Though he promptly turned back for Mexico, the friar's imagination and credulity were undiminished by the disaster. His unsubstantiated report about a land “rich in gold, silver and other wealth” where people were “very rich, the women even wearing belts of gold” aroused such enthusiasm that a year later Captain-General Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, with Fray Marcos as a guide, set out at the head of a military expedition of 1,500 men. After crossing the deserts, mountains, and forests of southeastern Arizona, they arrived five months later at Hawikuh. When the Zuñis refused to submit to Coronado, he subdued them by force.

As it turned out, however, Hawikuh was not one of the golden cities of Cíbola but a “few hovels of clay and stone built upon a high rock” surrounded by barren land. Coronado, spurred on by yet another fabulous tale of the wealthy kingdom of Quivira continued his explorations, probably as far east as the southern part of what is now Kansas. Bitter and disappointed, he returned to Mexico City in 1542, having found no gold in his 3,000-mile march but having claimed extensive lands for Spain.

Although the legends of riches and glory lingered, a royal ordinance suspended further Spanish exploration of the recently discovered New Mexican area, at least as far as government -sponsored expeditions were concerned. Five decades were to pass before serious colonization of New Mexico would be attempted. Then, in 1598 Don Juan de O9ate, acting on reports about profitable grazing and mining opportunities there, offered to finance a private expedition. Born into a prosperous mining family, he was able to equip the company of colonists—130 families and 270 single men—and supply 7,000 cattle. He established the first permanent European settlement in New Mexico in 1598 at a native pueblo that he renamed San Juan de los Caballeros. It was situated at the confluence of the Chama River and Rio Grande, 30 miles north of what is now Santa Fe.

This provisional Spanish capital of New Mexico was later transferred to the west bank of the Rio Grande and named San Gabriel del Yunque. The colony remained there for several years until the viceroy of New Spain ordered Don Pedro de Peralta, the third governor of “the Kingdom and Provinces of New Mexico,” to move it farther south. In the winter of 1609-1610, he built a new capital at a spot known to the natives as Kuapoga, the “place of the shell beads near the water.” This modest mud and stone settlement, located at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, was proclaimed La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assisi-the Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi, or Santa Fe as the name was abbreviated. Work immediately began on construction of a colonial headquarters at Santa Fe. The result, called the Royal Palace, was a long adobe structure with walls several feet thick. Later known as the Palace of the Governors, it was successively occupied by Spanish captains-general (until 1821, when Mexico won independence from Spain), by Mexican governors (until 1846), and by American territorial governors (until 1907).

By 1617 Spanish villages had spread all along the Rio Grande and the Franciscan friars who accompanied the Spanish soldier-settlers had erected eleven churches and supposedly had converted fourteen thousand natives. The Spanish and the native tribes lived in relative harmony for seventy years, but dissatisfaction and resentment mounted as some of the natives were enslaved and compelled to work in the mines and others were slain by religious zealots because they rejected conversion. In August 1680 the Pueblo people under the leadership of Popé of Taos and with the help of the Apache, rose in revolt. They killed twenty-one Franciscans and all the other Spanish they could find. Governor Antonio Otermín, at the head of a small military force, led the remaining colonists in a hasty retreat from the city. The nearly one thousand survivors crossed southern New Mexico and reached the safety of El Paso del Norte, where the cities of El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico, now face each other across the Rio Grande. In the meantime, the natives at Santa Fe “washed away” their baptisms with mud and sacked the churches and the Royal Palace.

After twelve years in exile, awaiting the appearance of a conquistador to win back Santa Fe, the Spanish settlers finally found Captain-General Don Diego de Vargas Zapata y Luján Ponce de León, who had been appointed governor of New Mexico in 1691. Before marching to regain New Mexico for Spain in 1692, de Vargas solemnly vowed that in return for a bloodless victory he would have an annual novena to Our Lady offered in thanksgiving. He successfully negotiated a peace agreement with the natives, and under the royal banner of New Mexico his troops triumphantly entered Santa Fe on September 14, 1692.

With elaborate fanfare, de Vargas took over the Royal Palace. Soon afterwards he and his men marched south and rounded up the settlers to escort them back to Santa Fe. They also carried back the statue of Our Lady as patroness and queen of New Mexico and Santa Fe, known as La Conquistadora, which had been saved from damage in the 1680 uprising. Renewed native opposition in 1693, however, soon forced the Spanish to fight to keep control of the city.

In the years immediately following the reconquest, the inhabitants of Santa Fe continued to hold their traditional fiesta of La Conquistadora on the first Sunday in October, as had been customary before the revolt. At the same time, they commemorated the 1693 battle for the city, when they had prayed before the statue for victory. In 1712 the city council agreed to inaugurate a special fiesta in memory of the 1692 reconquest as well. The lieutenant governor of New Mexico, Juan Paéz Hurtado (acting in place of the governor, the Marqu‗s de la Peñuela), with the governing body of the city, issued a proclamation on September 16. It required “that in the future the said 14th day [of September] be celebrated with Vespers, Mass, Sermon and Public Procession through the Main Plaza.…It is our will that it be [henceforth] celebrated for all time to come…and…we swear [this] in due form of law.”

It is not known how long this order was obeyed, since documentary evidence is lacking. It may have been only in 1712 or may have continued for many years afterwards; but in the course of time the fiesta was abandoned. In the twentieth century, however, there was renewed interest in having a fiesta. For several years prior to 1911, the Women's Board of Trade of Santa Fe had been holding an annual festival on the town plaza to raise money for the library. Early in that year, the Reverend James Mythen suggested a commemoration of the important events in the history of the city. On July 4, 1911, the women arranged a pageant representing the entry of de Vargas into the city. It was repeated two or three times in succeeding years, but abandoned during World War I. It was not until 1919, therefore, that people began to seriously arrange for an annual celebration. The original date of the fiesta, set in 1712 for September 14, was changed to the Labor Day weekend when the festivities attracted larger numbers of people and spread over a number of days. In the late 1990s, however, it was moved back to the second weekend in September. Roughly fifty thousand people typically attend the parades, shows, and food fairs that surround the event.

"Fiesta de Santa Fe." Santa Fe, 4 Jan. 2023, santafe.com/fiesta-de-santa-fe/. Accessed 1 May 2024.

"Four Centuries of History: The Fiestas de Sante Fe." New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, 28 Apr. 2009, media.newmexicoculture.org/release/67/. Accessed 1 May 2024.