All the other towns in New Mexico, the Indian villages excepted, are of much later origin than Santa Fé. Albuquerque, for example, dates from 1701, Las Vegas from 1835, Bernalillo from 1701, Socorro--the old pueblo was destroyed in 1681--from 1817. The oldest Indian missions in Arizona--“Tubac,” “Tumacacori,” etc.--date from the close of the seventeenth century. Tucson was still in 1772 a small village of the Pimas. Santa Fé is therefore the oldest existing city in the two Territories, and the second oldest European town in the United States that is still inhabited.
The first church in Santa Fé was begun in 1622 and completed in 1627. It stood on the site of the present cathedral, and the remains of the walls of the old “Parroquia,” or parish church, probably belonged to that oldest temple. Of San Miguel, the walls are of the middle of the seventeenth century. The roof and towers were built after 1694. The old house by the side of it is of the same age. The oldest churches in New Mexico still standing and in use are those in the Indian villages San Ildefonso and Santa Clara; the oldest abandoned houses of worship are those of Pecos, San Diego de Jemez, and perhaps Abó and Cuaray. All these buildings were erected in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The Indian village--or, as it is usually called in New Mexico, the pueblo--of Santa Clara lies thirty miles north of the city of Santa Fé, on the Texas, Santa Fé & Northern Railroad. It is inhabited by about four hundred agricultural Indians of the Tehua tribe, whose one-and two-storied houses form two irregular quadrangles, surrounding two open places, called plazas. A large church of adobe, now in decay, stands at the northeastern end of the village. It dates from the middle of the last century (1760). The priests’ houses have fallen to ruins, the interior of the temple is strikingly bare and bald, and the few paintings are either unrecognizable on account of the dirt and the advanced decay of the canvas, or they are specimens of the unskilful works of the domestic art industry so often met with in New Mexico. The best kept of the appurtenances are two wooden side-altars, marked with the date of 1782. The bell bears the year-mark of 1710. Everything savors of neglect; only a few dwellings are outwardly new, but within the habitations are comparatively clean; while the population, through frequent mixture with wandering Indians--the Utes, Apaches, and Navajos--are taller and more slenderly built, if not stronger, than the ordinary pueblo Indians of New Mexico.