In the mid-1870s, brothers Salome and José Eusequio Jaquez began considering a move to the San Juan country. New Mexico’s Hispanics had lived along the Rio Grande and other nearby areas for almost 300 hundred years, but Native Americans had successfully prevented settlement in the San Juan and Animas valleys. This made northwest New Mexico one of the last unsettled areas in the American west, but Salome Jaquez was familiar with the broad valleys, abundant water and tall grass to be found there. As a child he had seen it firsthand after being kidnapped during a Ute raid. Afterward, when his father encountered Utes on trading journeys he would always inquire for news of his son. Finally, he found a Ute who had firm information. He took the opportunity and gave the man two mules and asked for the return of Salome. Shortly thereafter the family was reunited. As young men, Salome and Eusequio had been among the earliest settlers in what would become the state of Colorado. In the 1860 census they are shown as living in the precinct of Culebra in Taos County, New Mexico, which was actually the area that is now San Luis, Colorado. The territory of Colorado was not created until 1861 and a portion of the New Mexico/Colorado border was subsequently moved south. Then, on July 18, 1876, President Grant took a large chunk of northwest New Mexico out of the Jicarilla Apache Reservation and placed it in the public domain. The Jaquez brothers began to tie up loose ends and gather provisions.
By the late autumn of 1876, they had their wagons loaded and began the arduous journey across the southern end of the San Luis valley and over Cumbres pass to the Chama valley. It was here they encountered serious trouble. The Jaquez brothers had been joined by several other families including those of Francisco Manzanares, Jesus Manzanares, Cruz Antonio Archuleta, Desiderio Valencia and Epifanio Valdez. Ute Chief Ignacio had received word that a large group of settlers were headed west from the Rio Chama. He gathered a group of warriors and rode out to meet them. While the Utes had reservations in Colorado and Utah, they maintained close ties to the Jicarilla Apaches. Ute Chief Ouray had himself been born to a Jicarilla Apache mother. The Brunot Agreement of 1873 had opened southwest Colorado to settlement. Settlers and prospectors poured into Colorado’s Animas valley in numbers that left local Native Americans stunned. Now the same thing was happening in northwest New Mexico. As Ignacio and his group came within sight, Francisco Manzanares knew he had to head off trouble. He spurred his horse forward to engage Ignacio, who was out in front of his men. When Manzanares greeted Ignacio in fluent Ute, the tension dissipated. Manzanares was the other side of the kidnapping coin. He was a Ute and had been taken by New Mexicans in a raid and raised as servant in the family of José Antonio Manzanares. He now had a New Mexican wife as well as two married daughters and two grown sons. As Ignacio and Manzanares conversed, they were joined by Salome Jaquez, who greeted Ignacio in the language he had learned as a child. After some discussion, it was agreed to ride into Tierra Amarilla and meet with the local patron, Thomas D. Burns, one of the richest and most influential men in northern New Mexico. Tom Burns was persuasive and Ignacio agreed to not interfere with the New Mexican’s plans to settle on the San Juan River. On December 20, 1876, the group arrived in the Blanco area and began to sink roots that still exist today.
The clash of cultures was not confined to Native Americans and the descendants of Europeans. At the same time the Jaquez brothers were settling along the San Juan, Anglos from many parts of America were settling in the Animas valley. Most had no familiarity with the proud Hispanics of New Mexico. When the Jaquez brothers arrived, northwest New Mexico was part of Taos County. On February 10, 1880, it became the western half of Rio Arriba County. The county seat was a three day ride away in Tierra Amarilla. This contributed to a law enforcement void and in 1880 and 1881, the turmoil caused by Texas-born brothers Ike and Porter Stockton resulted in the formation of a militia known as the San Juan Guards by order of Governor Lew Wallace. Juan N. Jaquez, son of José Eusequio, was a corporal in the San Juan Guards. Englishman and Bloomfield merchant William B. Haines was Captain of the Guards. While Mr. Haines appeared to be the epitome of fairness in newspaper accounts, he was not. His bias against the Hispanic population was evident in a September 1881 letter to territorial Adjutant General Max Frost in which he said, “It is a decided fact here that no more prisoners will go to Tierra Amarilla, to be tried by Mexican penetentes [sic] (don’t know if spelt right) and get off. We must have a new county and this must be county seat.” Even after both Stockton brothers had been killed, lawlessness continued. In October 1882, the killing of John Blancett resulted in the lynching of one of the Jaquez’s neighbors, Guadalupe Archuleta. That grisly and well-witnessed task took place on the butcher frame used to hang beeves at the Haines and Hughes Store in Bloomfield. Despite having a predominately Hispanic customer base, William Haines’s bias was out in the open.
The Jaquez family also supported the creation of a new county. Their roots in New Mexico were deep and their understanding of New Mexico’s politics far outweighed that of Mr. Haines. Salome Jaquez was one of the first to recognize that if a new county was to be carved out Rio Arriba County, it would need the backing of the aforementioned Thomas D. Burns. Burns was a genial Irishman who had married into an influential Hispanic family. He was content to be the boss of a county that stretched from Tres Piedras to the Arizona border. Salome Jaquez lobbied Burns for the creation of a new county. It took a few years, but finally in 1887 the territorial legislature created San Juan County.
In San Juan County’s early years, the Jaquez brothers and their descendants proved to be an impressive and potent political force. In 1888, Salome Jaquez was elected probate judge and in 1890 Juan N. Jaquez was elected county treasurer. Six years later, Juan was elected as representative to the territorial legislature for San Juan County and for portions of Rio Arriba and Taos Counties. Teófilo Jaquez, who had been born in Colorado in December 1869, was elected as a county assessor in 1894. Juan Augustín Jaquez, was on the county commission in 1898. William B. Haines customer base shrank after the lynching of Guadalupe Archuleta. He had once entertained visions of being a major political force in San Juan County, but eventually he pulled up stakes and moved to the state of Washington, where he became a successful oysterman.
The Jaquez brothers lived long productive lives. According to his grave marker, Salome Jaquez, was born on October 22, 1826 at San Juan Pueblo (Ohkay Owingeh), north of Española. He died at his home on August 29, 1899 due to an acute attack of dysentery. Santa Fe’s Spanish language newspaper, La Voz Del Pueblo reported the death of “el venerable anciano (an esteemed old man) Don Salome Jaquez.” He is buried on the land he settled on in the 1870s, near the home of one of his descendants. On September 14, 1909, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported that Salome’s brother, José Euseqio Jaquez, had died in San Luis, Colorado at the age of eighty-seven.
Written by Mike Maddox. A special thank you to Yvonne Bennett for the photos of José Eusequio Jaquez and Juan Augustín Jaquez. Photo of Juan N. Jaquez and of José Salome Jaquez’s grave marker are from The Collection of Mike Maddox. Also a special thanks to Ed Marquez for steering me in the right direction and other assistance. Sources: San Juan County Index, Farmington Times Hustler, Farmington Daily Times, Santa Fe New Mexican; La Voz Del Pueblo (Santa Fe, NM), Aztec Museum Newsletters, June 1, 1986 and Sept. 1, 1992, comp. by Mary Atwood; French Fur Traders and Voyageurs in the American West; edited by LeRoy Reuben Hafen, Janet Lecompte; Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands by James F. Brooks; Pioneers of the San Juan Country, Vol. 4, San Juan County Pioneers by Olive Frazier Cornelius; Porter and Ike Stockton – Colorado and New Mexico Border Outlaws by Michael R. Maddox; https://ancestryangel.org; and https://www.museumtrail.org /news/previous/3 - Native American Captivity, Slavery & Identity by Estevan Rael-Galvez.
Original source can be found here.
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