Moments in Time: Stories of New Mexico's History; The Palace of the Governors: A Witness to History

The House of the Governors is living and breathing because it changed as the people who lived with it changed. And I often think about the stories that it could tell if these walls could talk. It's the only public building that's been occupied and occupied the same space for 400 years and that 400 years spend the time of the Spanish colonization of the Southwest in New Mexico or the retaking of New Mexico during the Pueblo Revolt, the return of the Spanish in the 18th century, the Mexican independence from the Spanish in the 1820s and the coming of the Americans in 1846.

Pedro de Peralta began building the palace of the governors in the winter of 1610. He used building materials that he salvaged both from sheep camps found here on site as well as from the ancient Pueblos surrounding Santa Fe. Here beneath the floors of the palace archaeologists found foundations, adobe floors and adobe walls remaining from the first palace of the governors from the early 17th century. On top of those floors we have the foundations and walls and floors from the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, Pueblo people in their allies basically expelled the Spanish and there was a four-story Pueblo made up of 1,000 rooms that occupied this space. To me this is almost halved space because the room remnants that we have beneath the floors of the palace are the only physical evidence of that time.

The palace in the 1780s and 1790s was just one part of a very large complex that included a percidio or a fort, it included storehouses and stables. It was here where the governors lived and made their decisions where military commanders ready their troops and where merchants prepared the caravans for the trips on the Camino Rail to Mexico. In many ways the palace of the governors was the heartbeat of the colon. The space behind the palace of the governors was one of the last archaeological frontiers in downtown Santa Fe.

Before the construction of the New History Museum we had an opportunity to complete a fairly detailed excavation. Working within what we thought were the most important deposits and areas we recovered 800,000 artifacts. We went from finding the ground surface that Dom Pedro de Peralta would have walked down. I often think of what it would be like to be in this building in the 1790s with the troops getting ready to go out on patrol and the governor sitting inside the palace talking to his advisors. I think that these walls echo with those conversations. It's probably the time that the palace saw the most action. We found foundations which were made out of river cobbles. We found three layers of cobbles, one from the 1860s, one from the 18th century and one

from the 17th century. To me what's interesting about all the cobbles is that we were able to start to get at the level of effort that goes into building a major governmental complex in terms of the materials that were used to build the walls. We found the cobble foundations from the 18th century building right here so as people walk across this spot, they're crossing history into the New Mexico history. Governor Ellen Costa hosted a dinner and invited Pike to be present at the dinner and

Pike notes that once the governor had a little bit to drink, he became quite cordial. Occasionally we would just find this tiny artifact that would bring us back to the people who lived at the palace. We were covered two amulets. These amulets which are called eagles, they are meant to bring good luck or ward off the evil eye in the 17th century Spanish culture. In this case the very small amulet that we found we believe was probably attached to a baby's blanket. In 1810 when Governor Manrique writes to the viceroy about the conditions of the palace, it's really the very end of the Spanish period. Spain is having trouble maintaining this building, having trouble holding on to this far northern frontier, and Governor Manrique writes with enormous emotion about this building.

He says we're losing the palace day by day, we're losing the palace to rain, to snow, to leaks. He is alarmed that there aren't keys to the doors and in fact in some places there aren't even doors and there are animals running through the palace and rampaging, destroying some of this architecture. We found the first evidence of kind of formal sanitation with a wood flu emptying into a doby-lined cesspit and amazingly enough when we started to get down to the bottom of that cesspit we found the skeleton of a horse. We're fortunate to have descriptions of Santa Fe in the summer of 1846 when General Kerney comes. Kerney tells us about the simplicity of this building, the fact that he slept on the

dirt floors on the very night that he took the palace of the governors in the name of the United States. We exposed the remains of almost 10,000 square feet of Spanish buildings that were used for barracks and store rooms. The soldiers barracks extended from west to east for at least a couple hundred feet right through this area where we're standing now. During the 1860s and 1870s the palace begins to acquire Victorian trimmings. The American authorities who are living here in the palace of the governors change it enormously, adding Victorian porches to the outside of the porch, adding wallpaper to the walls inside the palace and beginning to change its very soul.

In 1909 the palace of the governors becomes the first museum of New Mexico. The palace architecture changes enormously. The Victorian facades are stripped off. We have the emergence of what we call the Pueblo Revival Style and that was part of a movement of Santa Fe city fathers became part of the city beautiful competition in the United States and they wanted a more uniform style here and a style that spoke of the regional architectural traditions. The palace of the governors anchors 400 years of American history in a way that no other

place in the United States does. It's a building that has absorbed the very essence of the history here in the southwest and you feel that when you're in this building.