New Mexico

New Mexico (Spanish: Nuevo México) is a southwestern state in the United States of America. Over its relatively long history it has also been occupied by U.S. Amerindian populations, part of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, a province of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. more...

New Mexico has the highest percentage of people of Hispanic ancestry of any state, some recent immigrants and others descendants of Spanish colonists. The state also has a large U.S. Amerindian population. As a result, the demographics and culture of the state are unique for their strong Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. Amerindian cultural influences.

History

Amerindian Pueblos

Prehistoric Amerindians used the land and minerals of New Mexico to build an early Southwestern culture millennia ago. Prehistoric Amerindian ruins indicate a presence at modern Santa Fe. Caves in the Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque contain the remains of some of the earliest inhabitants of the New World. The Pueblo people built a flourishing sedentary culture in the 1200s, constructing small towns in the valley of the Rio Grande and pueblos nearby.

The Spanish encountered Pueblo civilization in the 1500s. Word of the pueblos reached Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer, while travelling with his companion Estabanico in 1528–1536. Fray Marcos de Niza enthusiastically identified the pueblos as the fabulously rich Seven Cities of Cíbola, the fabled seven cities of gold. Dispatched from New Spain, conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led a full-scale expedition to find these cities in 1540–1542. Coronado camped near an excavated pueblo today preserved as Coronado National Memorial in 1541. His maltreatment of the Pueblo people while exploring the upper Rio Grande valley led to hostility that impeded the Spanish conquest of New Mexico.

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