Donaciano Vigil: A Book Review
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Review by Pete Warzel
518 Alto Street is an elegant, traditionally adobe plastered home, formerly owned by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, and recognized as historically significant by the Foundation’s Register of Properties Worthy of Recognition, as well as the National Register of Historic Places. HSFF holds a preservation easement on the property ensuring the façade, footprint, and specific elements be maintained as is, in perpetuity.
The house was brought to prominent public attention in the 1960s when owned and renovated by Charlotte White and companion, the sculptor Boris Gilbertson. It was much earlier owned by the Vigil family, the land purchased and the home built sometime between 1792 and 1800. It is the birthplace of Donaciano Vigil, Territorial Governor of New Mexico following the murder of Governor Charles Bent during the Taos Revolt in 1847. His fascinating life spanned Spanish, Mexican, and United States jurisdiction of the area in the 19th century, and so was at the center of the change to what we are now.
Authors Maurilio E. Vigil (descendant of Donaciano) and Helene Boudreau, both professors at New Mexico Highlands University, have written a thoroughly researched, engaging history of Donaciano Vigil, within the context of New Mexico history, and the long arm of Spanish colonization of New Spain and the northern reaches of what would become our state. The detail in this book is prodigious, the writing well done, the story fascinating. And because of our former ownership of the Alto Street House, Donaciano feels like a cousin we are just learning about.
The authors trace the origination of the Vigil family from Spain, and follow the emigration of the noble class to the new world due to “…the many Spaniards trapped in this archaic social and political system…” that arose under the Austrian Habsburg monarchs of Spain during the sixteenth century. Juan Montes Vigil II was the third named Vigil immigrant to the Americas, and the patriarch of the family in New Mexico. Juan Montes Vigil III had a son out of wedlock, Francisco Montes Vigil, most likely a mestizo, and the first Vigil to move his family to New Mexico, following Don Diego de Vargas’ call for settlers to propagate the newly reconquered land in 1695. (The authors pull no punches in describing the years of Spanish return following the Pueblo Revolt, “Santa Fe was liked an armed camp….Food was scarce, and it was up to Vargas to remedy the situation. He commanded a force to Picuris and Taos to steal food from the natives.”) Juan Cristobal Montes Vigil II, great grandson of Francisco Montes, purchased the land and built the home on Alto Street sometime around 1800, where Donaciano was born in 1802.
I have long pondered the lack of focus on Mexican history in Santa Fe, and why that might be. It is a significant missing piece in the way the city promotes its past, and a hole in our own knowledge of the cultural history of our city. No longer. Donacinao Vigil’s life is at the heart of Mexican rule in New Mexico, and the authors fill in the blanks with great research and detail. In many ways, Donaciano is a cultural bridge between Spain and U.S. ownership of the land here. Born under Spanish rule in Santa Fe, he begins his prodigious career in the military, as many of his forefathers had done for Spain and Mexico. He serves during the rebellion in Santa Cruz in 1837, and again during the attempted Texas invasion of New Mexico in 1841, takes on a political persona as secretary of the assembly in the Department of New Mexico under Mexican regime in Santa Fe, and following General Kearney’s invasion by the Army of the West, and proclamation that New Mexico was now part of the U.S., is appointed Secretary of the first, civil U.S. government. That position was second in political command to the governor, Charles Bent. Upon Bent’s murder in Taos during the Taos uprising, Donaciano Vigil stepped into the position and began to create new government structure and process, following the Kearney Code, and supervised the creation of the Vigil Index, a guide to the document archive of Spain and Mexico for future use by the United States in lawsuits and land claims. His dedication and energy out ran the new national affiliation’s timeframe as he was informed the structure could not stand, since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo had not yet been signed by Mexico and the U.S., so ownership of New Mexico was still under Mexico jurisdiction. Ooops.
The subtitle of the book cites Donaciano Vigil’s service as soldier, statesman, and territorial governor, but that leaves so much of his life out of the picture. An active life of community and political involvement put him at the center of everything. He retired to land purchased in Pecos, NM, ostensibly as a gentleman farmer, yet continues to be called and serve as a Territorial Representative to the New Mexico legislature. He built a molino, grist mill, on his land beside the Pecos River, and ground corn and threshed wheat for his neighbors, augmenting his income. Upon his death, he received a spectacular send-off by his fellow New Mexicans, the authors quoting historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell, “…by far the largest and most distinguished gathering ever witnessed in New Mexico.”
Professors Vigil and Boudreau have written an important book on a native born New Mexican who straddled three political and cultural worlds, and was instrumental in forming the government of the United States in the Territory that would eventually become the forty-seventh state. In doing so, they highlight Mexican history in Santa Fe, and how governmental transition worked and cultures interacted on way to becoming New Mexico.
Donaciano Vigil: The Life of a Nuevomexicno Soldier, Statesman, and Territorial Governor
By Maurilio E. Vigil and Helene Boudreau
University of New Mexico Press
Hardbound, 318 pages, $39.95
Purchase below.