Peralta and the Founding of Santa Fe A Santa Fe 400th Anniversary lecture

Pedro de Peralta’s conflicted legacy in the founding of Santa Fe will be discussed by Dr. Joseph Sánchez at 6 p.m., Thursday, May 13, in the New Mexico History Museum Auditorium. Enter through the Washington Avenue doors for this event, part of the Santa Fe 400th lecture series.

Whether Santa Fe was in fact established in 1610 or earlier is a fine point to be argued by purists, Sánchez says. Regardless of the date, Gov. Peralta oversaw the early history of Santa Fe – and set in motion a struggle for power between successive governors and church officials.

“In that context,” Sánchez says, “was Peralta a scoundrel, as churchmen made him out to be? Or was he a man of his convictions who would unjustly be excommunicated from Santa Fe’s Catholic congregation, arrested for the accidental shooting of a Franciscan missionary, sent in shackles to a jail at Santo Domingo Pueblo, condemned by his successor, and exiled from New Mexico?”

In the end, Peralta was exonerated by officials in Mexico City, but 400 years later, scholars still discuss the history that unfolded because of what he did – or didn’t – do.

The Santa Fe 400th lecture series builds on Santa Fe Found: Fragments of Time, an exhibition at the Palace of the Governors that explores the first 100 years of Santa Fe following its colonization.

Sánchez is director of the University of New Mexico’s Spanish Colonial Research Center and superintendent of the Petroglyph National Monument. Throughout his career, he has researched archives in Spain, Mexico, France, Italy and England and has published several studies on the Spanish frontiers in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Alaska. Internationally recognized, in May 2000, he was awarded the Medalla de Acero al Mérito Histórico Capitán Alonso de León by the Sociedad Nuevoleonesa de Historia, Geografía y Estadística, Monterrey, Mexico, for his lifelong work in Colonial Mexican history. In April 2005, he was inducted into the prestigious knighthood order of the Orden de Isabel la Católica by King don Juan Carlos of Spain.

Funding for the Santa Fe Found exhibition and lecture series comes from the Palace Guard, a support group of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation; the Gala Opening Committee; Friends of Archaeology, a support group of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation; the Santa Fe 400th; and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.