The San Luis Valley is a region in south-central Colorado with a small portion overlapping into New Mexico. The valley is approximately 122 miles (196 km) long and 74 miles (119 km) wide, extending from the Continental Divide on the northwest rim into New Mexico on the south. It contains 6 counties and portions of 3 others. It is an extensive high-elevation depositional basin of approximately 8,000 square miles (21,000 km2) with an average elevation of 7,664 feet (2,336 m) above sea level. The valley is a section of the Rio Grande Rift and is drained to the south by the Rio Grande, which rises in the San Juan Mountains to the west of the valley and flows south into New Mexico. The San Luis Valley has a cold desert climate but has substantial water resources from the Rio Grande and groundwater.
Fort Garland is an unincorporated town, a post office, and a census-designated place (CDP) located in and governed by Costilla County, Colorado, United States. The Fort Garland post office has the ZIP Code 81133. At the United States Census 2020, the population of the Fort Garland CDP was 464.
San Luis is a statutory town that is the county seat and the most populous town of Costilla County, Colorado, United States. Formerly known as San Luis de la Culebra, it is the oldest continuously occupied town in Colorado. The population was 598 at the 2020 census.
The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, was a conflict initially fought by European colonial empires, United States of America, and briefly the Confederate States of America and Republic of Texas against various American Indian tribes in North America. These conflicts occurred from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various wars resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for Indian tribes' lands. The European powers and their colonies enlisted allied Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; some entailed cycles of violent reprisal.
Jicarilla Apache, one of several loosely organized autonomous bands of the Eastern Apache, refers to the members of the Jicarilla Apache Nation currently living in New Mexico and speaking a Southern Athabaskan language. The term jicarilla comes from Mexican Spanish meaning "little basket", referring to the small sealed baskets they used as drinking vessels. To neighboring Apache bands, such as the Mescalero and Lipan, they were known as Kinya-Inde.
Fort Union National Monument is a unit of the United States National Park Service located 7.7 miles north of Watrous in Mora County, New Mexico.
The term Navajo Wars covers at least three distinct periods of conflict in the American West: the Navajo against the Spanish ; the Navajo against the Mexican government ; and the Navajo against the United States. These conflicts ranged from small-scale raiding to large expeditions mounted by governments into territory controlled by the Navajo. The Navajo Wars also encompass the widespread raiding that took place throughout the period; the Navajo raided other tribes and nearby settlements, who in return raided into Navajo territory, creating a cycle of raiding that perpetuated the conflict.
Samuel Forster Tappan was an American journalist, military officer, abolitionist and a Native American rights activist. Appointed as a member of the Indian Peace Commission in 1867 to reach peace with the Plains Indians, he advocated self-determination for native tribes. He proposed the federal government replace military jurisdiction over tribal matters with a form of civil law on reservations, applied by the tribes themselves.
Comanche history – in the 18th and 19th centuries the Comanche became the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains. The Comanche are often characterized as "Lords of the Plains." They presided over a large area called Comancheria which they shared with allied tribes, the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Wichita, and after 1840 the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. Comanche power and their substantial wealth depended on horses, trading, and raiding. Adroit diplomacy was also a factor in maintaining their dominance and fending off enemies for more than a century. They subsisted on the bison herds of the Plains which they hunted for food and skins.
Meeker Massacre, or Meeker Incident, White River War, Ute War, or the Ute Campaign), took place on September 29, 1879 in Colorado. Members of a band of Ute Indians attacked the Indian agency on their reservation, killing the Indian agent Nathan Meeker and his 10 male employees and taking five women and children as hostages. Meeker had been attempting to convert the Utes to Christianity, to make them farmers, and to prevent them from following their nomadic culture. On the same day as the massacre, United States Army forces were en route to the Agency from Fort Steele in Wyoming due to threats against Meeker. The Utes attacked U.S. troops led by Major Thomas T. Thornburgh at Milk Creek, 18 mi (29 km) north of present day Meeker, Colorado. They killed the major and 13 troops. Relief troops were called in and the Utes dispersed.
Fort Garland (1858–1883), Colorado, United States, was designed to house two companies of soldiers to protect settlers in the San Luis Valley, then in the Territory of New Mexico. It was named for General John Garland, commander of the Military District of New Mexico.
The Battle of Cieneguilla was an engagement of the Jicarilla War involving a group of Jicarilla Apaches, possibly their Ute allies, and the American 1st Cavalry Regiment on March 30, 1854 near what is now Pilar, New Mexico. The Santa Fe Weekly Gazette reported that the action "was one of the severest battles that ever took place between American troops and Red Indians." It was one of the first significant battles between American and Apache forces and was also part of the Ute Wars, in which Ute warriors attempted to resist Westward expansion in the Four Corners region.
Lafayette Head was the first Lieutenant Governor of Colorado, serving from 1876 to 1879 under Governor John Long Routt.
Thomas Turner Fauntleroy was a Virginia lawyer, state legislator from Fauquier, Regular Army officer, slaver, and briefly a Virginia military officer at the beginning of the American Civil War who refused a commission as brigadier general in the Confederate States Army.
James Henry Carleton was an officer in the US Army and a Union general during the American Civil War. Carleton is best known as an Indian fighter in the Southwestern United States.
The Fort Pueblo massacre was an attack that occurred on December 25, 1854, against Fort Pueblo, Colorado, also known as El Pueblo, a settlement on the north side of the Arkansas River, 1⁄2 mile west of the mouth of Fountain Creek, above the mouth of the Huerfano. The attack followed the deaths of Chief Chico Velasquez and others who died of smallpox after having been given blanket coats which the Muache believed had been deliberately contaminated. Coalition forces of over 100 Muache Utes and Jicarilla Dindes under the leadership of Chief Tierra Blanco led the attack against Fort Pueblo, killing 15 men, and capturing one woman, and two boys. Later on, the Muache killed the woman south of Pueblo along Salt Creek. Two women and one man survived the joint military operation, and the two boys who were captured eventually returned.
The history of slavery in Colorado began centuries before Colorado achieved statehood when Spanish colonists of Santa Fe de Nuevo México (1598–1848) enslaved Native Americans, called Genízaros. Southern Colorado was part of the Spanish territory until 1848. Comanche and Utes raided villages of other indigenous people and enslaved them.
Chico Velasquez was a leader of the Jicarilla Apache and Ute people. He was originally closely associated with the Jicarilla and was blamed for attacks on Americans in the early part of the Jicarilla War. Velasquez met with American leaders in 1850 and promised not to take up arms against Americans and Mexicans. By 1854 he was working with the American governor of New Mexico David Meriwether to recover stolen American livestock. As reward for searching for a fugitive murderer, Velasquez was given an embroidered gray coat, but that coat and blankets given to the Ute at the same time were infected with smallpox. The disease killed Velasquez and many other Ute and was one of the causes of the Fort Pueblo Massacre.
The Sangre de Cristo Land Grant in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico consists of 1,000,000 acres (4,000 km2) of mostly arid land. It was awarded by the government of New Mexico to the Beaubien family in 1843. The land grant was originally settled by Hispanics from New Mexico. Since the incorporation of the area of the grant into the United States in 1848, legal disputes between the descendants of the Hispanic settlers and Anglo ranchers about ownership of and access to some of the land in the grant area have been frequent and continued into the 21st century.
Early history of Fremont County, Colorado includes Native Americans, such as the Ute people, and later the establishment of the Colorado Territory by European explorers and settlers.
