New Mexico Inhabited by Native Americans since thousands of years before the European Exploration, it was colonized by the Spaniards in 1598 and annexed to the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Later, it was part of independent Mexico until it became an American territory and, eventually, a state, as a result of the Mexican-American War.
The first expedition Francisco Vázquez de Coronado met a great expedition in Compostela (or perhaps in the current Tepic, seat of the old Compostela) between 1540-1542 to explore and find the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola that described Cabeza de Vaca, which He had just arrived from his painful eight-year voyages traveling from Florida to Mexico. The men of Coronado found several villages of clay houses in 1541. Later, other expeditions in the South-West or Great Plains also failed to find the fabulous cities. A discouraged and now poor Coronado, along with his men, began their journey back to Mexico leaving behind New Mexico.
More than fifty years after Coronado, Juan de Oñate, on an expedition from Zacatecas, founded the colony of San Juan in Rio Grande in 1598, the first permanent European population in the future state of New Mexico. Oñate extended the so-called Camino Real, in more than 966 km (600 miles). Oñate was appointed first governor of the new Province of New Mexico. The Indians in Acoma rebelled against this Spanish invasion, but suffered severe punishment.
In 1609, Pedro de Peralta, later governor of the Province, founded Santa Fe del Yunque at the foot of the Sierra de la Sangre de Cristo. This occurred ten years before the first English settlers arrived on the shores of New England aboard the Mayflower, which makes Santa Fe the oldest state capital of the United States. The city, along with most of the colonized areas of the state, was abandoned by the Spaniards for twelve years (1680-1692) as a result of the successful Pueblo Rebellion. The Pueblo Indians succeeded in expelling the Spaniards to El Paso.
