El Cerrito is a village in San Miguel County, New Mexico,

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The village is located in the upper

Pecos River The Pecos River ( ; ) originates in north-central New Mexico and flows into Texas, emptying into the Rio Grande. Its headwaters are on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range in Mora County north of Pecos, New Mexico, at an elev ...

valley and was founded in 1824 by settlers from Villanueva, upstream. The majority of the population is

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

. Since 1939, El Cerrito has been the subject of several academic studies and books. Its prominence is due to the isolation of the village from major transportation routes and population centers and its Hispanic culture.

History

Prior to 1786, when a peace treaty was concluded with the Comanches, Spanish settlements in

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

were confined to the

Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( or ) in the United States or the Río Bravo (del Norte) in Mexico (), also known as Tó Ba'áadi in Navajo language, Navajo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the Southwestern United States a ...

Valley and nearby. The reduced threat from the Comanches, the most numerous and dangerous of the Indian peoples surrounding the New Mexican settlements, permitted the expansion of the Spanish eastward toward the

Great Plains The Great Plains is a broad expanse of plain, flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include th ...

. El Cerrito was one of the settlements founded in the Pecos River Valley in the San Miguel del Vado Land Grant, a area the New Mexican government gave to individuals and families in exchange for their commitment to take up residence on the frontier of the Spanish settlements. The motivations for the Pecos Valley settlements were to provide land to the growing population of New Mexico and to defend the Spanish and Puebloan settlements in the Rio Grande valley from raids by Apache and other Indian peoples. El Cerrito was settled by people from nearby Villanueva (then called La Cuesta) from 1824 to 1827. As one of the closest New Mexican settlements to the Great Plains with its

bison A bison (: bison) is a large bovine in the genus ''Bison'' (from Greek, meaning 'wild ox') within the tribe Bovini. Two extant taxon, extant and numerous extinction, extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American ...

herds and

Plains Indians Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nations peoples who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of North ...

, many

Cibolero A Cibolero (plural: ''ciboleros'') was a Hispanic, Spanish colonial (and later Mexican) Bison hunting, buffalo hunter from New Mexico. The Spanish word for buffalo as used in New Mexico is ''cibolo''; hence, the name ''Cibolero'' for buffalo hunter. ...

s (bison hunters) and

Comanchero The Comancheros were a group of 18th- and 19th-century Merchant, traders based in northern and central New Mexico. They made their living by trading with the nomadic Great Plains Native Americans in the United States, Indian tribes in northeaste ...

s (traders with the Plains Indians) originated from El Cerrito and other Hispano communities along the Pecos River. A U.S. government survey in 1941 described El Cerrito: El Cerrito suffered an economic blow in 1904 when the United States Court of Private Land Claims invalidated the common ownership of nearly all the land of the San Miguel del Vado Land Grant, leaving the residents of El Cerrito owning only of irrigated land and house lots. Over time, as private ownership by outsiders of formerly-common lands expanded, residents lost the access to the grazing lands that were the basis of the village economy. From a population of 135 in 1940, the population declined to five aged adults in the late 1960s. The population increased to nine households in 1992 with 25 to 30 persons in full-time residence.Eastman and Krannich, p. 1

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in San Miguel County, New Mexico Villages in New Mexico 1824 establishments in Mexico