Pilabó was a former
Piro pueblo
In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...
located on the site of the present city of
Socorro, New Mexico
Socorro (, '' sə-KOR-oh'') is a city in Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . In 2010 the population was 9,051. It is the county seat of Socorro County. Socorro is located south of A ...
, United States. In 1598, the vanguard of the Spanish colonizing caravan under Juan de Oñate acquired food at the Piro pueblo of
Teypana. The
Spaniards
Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance peoples, Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of National and regional identity in Spain, national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex Hist ...
named that pueblo “Socorro” which means “help” or “aid” in Spanish. Eventually, a different but nearby pueblo, Pilabó, would be given the name "Socorro" following the May/June 1626 founding of the mission of Nuestra Señora del Socorro. Some buried remains of Pilabó are still present south and southeast of the current church of San Miguel (established in the early 1800s on the ruins of the post-1626 church of Nuestra Señora which was destroyed in 1680/81) in Socorro.
[Bletzer, Michael P., A House for Fray Alonso: The Search for Pilabo Pueblo and the First Piro Mission, Nuestra Señora del Socorro. ''El Palacio'' 120(3): 34-37 (2015) / Marshall, Michael P. & Walt, Henry J., ''Rio Abajo: Prehistory and History of a Rio Grande Province'' (Santa Fe: New Mexico Historic Preservation Division, 1984), p 248.]
Footnotes
Colonial New Mexico
Piro Pueblos of Socorro County, New Mexico
Pueblos in New Mexico
{{Socorro County, New Mexico