Just How Old Is Santa Fe? A Santa Fe Found lecture

Is Santa Fe really 400 years old? Join Thomas Chávez, former director of the Palace of the Governors, for a lecture on the "first" founder of Santa Fe, Juan Martínez de Montoya. This latest lecture in support of the exhibit Santa Fe Found: Fragments of Time is free with museum admission. The lecture series also supports the city of Santa Fe’s 400th anniversary.

The precise date of the city's anniversary has entangled historians, politicians and others attempting to pinpoint the birthdate of what was then Spain’s far northern frontier. Chávez will talk about that controversy, as well as the story behind Martínez de Montoya, sometimes regarded as the “first” founder of Santa Fe.

Santa Fe Found, which details the city’s origins through documents and archaeological evidence, tells of the soldiers who left the Spanish colony of San Gabriel to settle a new colony away from occupied Pueblo colonies. Martínez de Montoya, a Castilian-born captain who opposed then leader Don Juan de Oñate, left family papers that show he and a small group of soldiers settled Santa Fe between 1604 and 1608.

Appointed governor by the viceroy in June 1608, Martínez de Montoya was rejected as a leader by Oñate loyalists, who installed his son, Cristóbal, instead. Martínez de Montoya persuaded the viceroy to send Pedro de Peralta to Santa Fe to establish a permanent villa and, in 1610, Peralta did so, naming the new capital La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís.

Chávez is former director of the Palace of the Governors and former executive director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center. An active scholar, he contributed to the book Telling New Mexico: A New History that supports the core exhibition of the New Mexico History Museum.

Upcoming lectures in the series:

Saturday, April 17, 2 pm: Robin Farwell Gavin, senior curator, Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, “The Journey of Mayólica.” Free with museum admission.

Thursday, May 13, 6 pm: Joseph Sánchez, director, University of New Mexico Spanish Colonial Research Center, and director, Petroglyph National Monument, “Peralta and the Founding of Santa Fe.” Free.

Funding for the exhibition and lecture series was made possible by 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.