Santa Fe is the capital of the State of New Mexico and it’s one of the oldest cities in the United States – it was founded in 1610. It’s also the oldest state capital – Santa Fe stayed the capital of New Mexico throughout its whole history: as a Spanish colony, then – as part of Mexico, then – a US territory, and finally – as a US state. The name Santa Fe, which means “Holy Faith” in Spanish, has quite an interesting history. When the Spanish expanded their New World colonies from Central America to the north, they called the new territories Santa Fe de Nuevo México (“The Holy Faith of the New Mexico”). Santa Fe was a common phrase that the Spanish would use naming their new colonial acquisitions, since they saw themselves as missionaries of the Christian faith. It started in 1491, with Queen Isabella of Castile naming a Spanish military outpost near Granada during Reconquista “Santa Fe”, as a symbol of the Christian crusade against the Moors.
The first capital of the new colony was San Juan de los Caballeros (now a small pueblo – a Native American settlement – just 30 miles north of Santa Fe). But several years later New Mexico’s second Spanish governor, Don Pedro de Peralta, founded a city specifically designed as a new capital of the colony – La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís. “La Villa Real” means “the Royal city”, as in – founded by a Royal decree and designated to be an administrative centre. And St. Francis of Assisi is commemorated in the city’s name because the missionary activities in the colony were performed by the Order of St. Francis. Franciscan friars arrived in the New Spain practically on day one of the Spanish Conquest (Conquista, as the call it), in 1539. Since then, the Order was orchestral in spreading and enforcing the Catholic faith in the new lands.
Naming the city after St. Francis seemed to help Don Pedro de Peralta when he ended up in the Inquisition court. Soon after founding the city, he was excommunicated by a Franciscan Father Commissary, the head of the church in New Mexico, in a struggle for power in the newly-established colony. He was arrested, chained, and imprisoned, but later vindicated by the Inquisition.