Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/301

Rh Crown fixed the governmental regulations of the new possession and assigned a regular salary of 2000 ducats a year to the governor, and he immediately departed for Santa Fé. More exact statements concerning the date of this settlement are not accessible, although they probably exist in the Spanish archives; but it is certain that Santa Fé was not founded till after the year 1607. Twenty years afterward two hundred and fifty Spaniards dwelt there, including soldiers; and when the Indians rose and drove out the whites in 1680, the whole district contained not more than one thousand Europeans, about half of whom lived in Santa Fé.

All the other towns in New Mexico, the Indian villages excepted, are of much later origin than Santa Fé. Albuquerque, for example, dates from 1701, Las Vegas from 1835, Bernalillo from 1701, Socorro—the old pueblo was destroyed in 1681—from 1817. The oldest Indian missions in Arizona—"Tubac," "Tumacacori," etc.—date from the close of the seventeenth century. Tucson was still in 1772 a small village of the Pimas. Santa Fé is therefore the oldest existing city in the two Territories, and the second oldest European town in the United States that is still inhabited.

The first church in Santa Fé was begun in 1622 and completed in 1627. It stood on the site of the present cathedral, and the remains of the walls of the old "Parroquia," or parish church, probably belonged to that oldest temple. Of San Miguel, the walls are of the middle of the seventeenth century. The roof and towers were built after 1694. The old house by the side of it is of the same age. The oldest