Jean L'Archeveque
(1672 - 1720)
Maria Antonio Gutierrez
(abt. 1681 - abt. 1702)
Jean L’Archeveque, also known as Juan de Archibeque, and his wife, María Antonia Gutiérrez, were the
parents of our ancestor María Bárbara
Archibeque. We know this from the
Surname Index of New Mexico and the book Origins
of New Mexico Families, by Fray Angélico Chávez, Revised Edition, pages
129-131.
Jean L’Archeveque was born 30 September 1672, in Bayonne,
in southwestern France. His parents were Claude L’Archeveque and Marie
d’Armagnac. Bayonne
is the center of the Basque-speaking region of France,
so Jean would have spoken Basque as his first language. He received a good
education, learning to read and write French.
In
1684 life had become difficult for Jean in Bayonne. His father’s import business was
failing. Necessity required that he find
other work. In 1684, at the age of twelve, he joined on the crew of a ship of
the French West India Company and set sail for the West Indies. He arrived at the west end of the
island
of Hispaniola [present-day Haiti]. There, at Petit Goave, Jean contracted
himself as an indentured servant to the merchant Sieur Pierre Duhaut. Duhaut was preparing to join a croup of
colonists led by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, that planned to
settle in the Mississippi
Valley.
Duhaut was one of the few people of means among La Salle’s
transient low-life colonists.
The
expedition embarked and headed across the Gulf of Mexico.
They landed instead on the coast of Texas
at Matagorda Bay on 20 February 1685, and built Fort
St. Louis nearby. The plight of the colonists was extremely
difficult. There wasn’t enough food, the Indians were hostile, and pestilence
took its toll.
In
March of 1687, a group of seventeen desperate men struck out from the forsaken
fort bound for New France [Quebec]. Among the group was Pierre Duhaut and his
bond servant, Jean L’Archeveque, now fourteen; a haughty nephew of La
Salle; and a surgeon named Liotot. When the group reached the Trinity
River, the members of a hunting party, which included the surgeon
Liotot and the nephew of La Salle, quarreled among
themselves. That night the surgeon
placed an axe in head of La Salle’s nephew and two other
men while they were sleeping. Apparently someone repulsed by the violence went
back to Fort St. Louis
to notify La Salle.
He came to investigate, accompanied by a priest and others. As he approached Duhaut, Jean L’Archeveque
distracted La Salle by seemingly disrespectful
actions. When La Salle
turned his attention to Jean, Duhaut unloaded his gun’s charge into La
Salle’s head. He fell
dead. The group stripped La
Salle’s body, abused it, and dragged it into the bushes to the
horror of the priest who witnessed the event and later wrote of it. Duhaut and another major conspirator were
then killed by others in the main group. Released from his bondage by Duhaut’s
death, Jean returned to the ailing colony on Matagorda Bay. [Spain in the Southwest, by John L. Kessell,
pp. 137, 143-146, 165, 202, 210-211, 145]
In
1688, while Jean and five others were away from the fort trading with the
Hasinai, the Karankawa Indians attacked Fort St. Louis, killed most of the
remaining few colonists, and took the rest, some women and children, captive. The trading group returned to discover the
massacre. Jean was one of the six surviving Frenchmen who went to live with the
Hasinai [Teja] Indians. There he learned to speak the Caddoan language and
submitted to being tatooed by having black dye made from walnut hulls forced
into cuts made on his face, chest, and arms.
In
April of 1689, when Jean was yet sixteen, the Spanish commander, Alonso de
Leon, entered Texas to explore the rumors that the French had established a
colony in Texas, which was claimed by Spain.
He discovered the scene of the massacre and heard of the existence of
the six Frenchmen. De Leon
sent the men a message written in French with an Indian runner. The message
urged the Frenchmen to give themselves up. Only Jean L’Archeveque and Jacques
Grollet agreed to meet de Leon. Jean wrote back on the margin of a sketch of a
ship, “We are sorely grieved to be among the beasts like these who believe
neither in God nor in anything.
Gentlemen, if you are willing to take us away, you have only to send us
a message.” This sketch is still existent at the Archivo General de Indias
in Seville, Spain.
The two teenagers arrived at the Spanish camp wearing deer skins around their
waists and nothing else.
The
young men were formally examined at the Guadalupe
River on May 1. They informed the
Spaniards in detail all that had befallen the little French colony and
explained how they had been away from the settlement at the time of the
Karankawa attack. They declared that
there were a few other survivors scattered among the Indians. They were then
taken to Mexico City, where they
were questioned by the Viceroy, the Conde de Galvé, and then sent to Spain
as prisoners. After thirty months, the youths were returned in chains to New
Spain in 1692 to work in the silver mines at Zacatecas.
In 1693 Velasco, representing Diego Vargas’
expedition to recolonize New Mexico,
was in Zacatecas. He explained that if
they volunteered as colonists, it would be their way out of the mines. L’Archeveque and Grollet were described by
Velasco, the recruiter and leader of the party, as “streaked in the face,”
meaning that their faces were tatooed. The men signed on as colonists, but
Grollet remained in Guadalupe del Paso for a few years, where the two had
encountered another Frenchman, Pierre Musnier, who had also been with La
Salle. Of the three
Frenchmen, only Juan continued on to Santa Fe.
Among his fellow travelers on the journey to
New
Mexico were our ancestors Miguel de Quintana and his wife Gertrudis Moreno Trujillo;
Nicolás Moreno Trujillo and his wife
María de Aguilar; Jose de Atienza and his wife Estefania Moreno Trujillo; Jose Cortés del Castillo and his wife María de Carvajal; all from
Mexico City. The expedition arrived
in Santa Fe on June 22, 1694.
Jean’s companion, Jacques Grollet later became the founder of the Gurulé
family of New Mexico. Jean’s own name was Hispanicized to Juan de Archibeque. Juan was twenty-one
years old when he arrived in New Mexico. The two were stationed at the garrison in
Santa
Fe.
Also
traveling with the group to New Mexico
was sixteen year old Antonia Gutiérrez and
her husband, Tomás de Hita [Itta]. At Zacatecas, Tomás was murdered by a mulatto
at a rancho near the town before the colonists started north. Antonia stayed with the Miguel García de la
Riva family from Mexico City and
started for a new life in New Mexico
under terribly depressing conditions. She had been born in Tezcuco, in the
Valley
of Mexico, the daughter of Mateo Gutiérrez and was described as
tall, broad-faced, with brown hair and eyes.
She was referred to as “La Vermeja,” the redhead. [p.129, Origins
of New Mexico Families, Revised Edition, by Fray
Angelico Chávez] The García de la Riva family received a grant in the Pajarito
area sometime after arriving. It is
unknown if Antonia joined them there.
In 1697 the young widow Antonia Gutiérrez
married Juan de Archebeque at
Santa
Clara, Rio Arriba County,
New Mexico. Santa
Clara lies just southwest of Santa
Cruz. Juan was a private at the Santa
Fe garrison.
The
couple had two children, Miguel and María, before Antonia’s death about
1701. Juan did not marry again for about eighteen years. During this period he had two sons out of
wedlock, Juan II and Agustín. It is known that Juan II was sired with
Archibeque’s orphaned servant girl, María
de Mascareñas, and the son assumed his mother’s surname after the death of
his father. Both illegitimate sons were reared in the Archibeque household,
which suggests that Agustín was probaly sired by a servant girl also. All those
persons carrying the Archibeque name today are descended through Agustín. We
are descended through Juan’s daughter María.
In
1701 Juan de Archibeque purchased land in Santa Fe
but continued as a soldier. In 1704 he
served as a scout on an expedition with Juan de Ulibarri, who was second in
command at the Santa Fe garrison.
There is a record that Juan served as second alcalde [lower rank than first
alcalde] of Santa Fe in these early
years. In both 1715 and 1720, Juan was Captain of the , War Council. On January
1, 1716, the Cabildo elected Juan de Archibeque as procurador, which was probably something
like quartermaster general.
Juan,
by 1719, still in the military, was now a trader with operations as far away as
Sonora and Chihuahua
and sometimes buying directly from Mexico City.
On 23 June 1719, at San
Ildefonso, he married María Manuela Roybal, daughter of our
ancestor, Don Ignacio Roybal. Manuela’s sister María Roybal had married
Juan’s son Miguel in 1716. Don Ignacio,
the father of the women, was wealthy and ranked high in the Santa
Fe scene, so Archibeque was likely very esteemed
himself. Manuela and María were our
aunts. We are descended from their niece, Magdalena
Roybal. The Roybals owned a rancho
in the San Ildefonso area, where the family lived. They probably owned a home
in Santa Fe as well because Don
Ignacio was very active there.
A
year later, on 17 June 1720,
Captain Archibeque was with Don Pedro Villasur’s expedition into the country of
the Pawnee Indians [Nebraska]. Juan had strongly recommended this
reconnaissance mission to see if the French were making inroads into
Spanish-claimed territory. The Pawnees were led by a Frenchman, and Juan was
sent as an envoy to the Pawnees after interpreting letters from the Frenchman. On 17
August 1720, the Pawnees suddenly attacked, catching the Spanish
unprepared. Forty-four New Mexicans were
killed, including Juan de Archibeque and the commander, Colonel Villasur. Juan’s body was left unburied on the banks of
the Platte River.
The few survivors carried home the story of his end to his family. Juan was
almost forty-eight years old. The Villasur expedition is like the Custer’s Land
Stand in New Mexico history.
The
Archibeque estate was valued at 6,118 pesos.
His young widow had not yet produced any children. About 1728 she married the very wealthy Jose de Riaño [aka Reaño], who owned
the Piedra Lumbre
Basin in the
Chama
Valley. They had one surviving son, José Riaño II. Riaño Senior died in 1743, leaving a will in
Santa
Fe. Manuela then married Felipe Rojas y Sandoval on July
13, 1755. She died in 1778,
fifty-eight years after Jean L’Archeveque.
I
CHILDREN OF JEAN L’ARCHEVÉQUE AND MARÍA ANTONIA GUTIÉRREZ
[1] Miguel de Archibeque, was born about
1698. On 2 November 1716, he married María Roybal [1697-1744], our
aunt, at San Ildefonso. He was
apparently a trader, for at the time of his father’s death in 1720, Miguel was
gone from Santa Fe on a trading
trip to Sonora for his merchant
father. Miguel wrote a will on August
14, 1727, in Santa Fe,
and died soon afterward. María. Their
only son, Lorenzo Claudio, died in
infancy. A daughter, Antonia Juliana de Archibeque, married Juan Manuel Gabaldón, 26 July 1735,
and had a large family. María de
Archibeque and her husband Francisco
Casados were the witnesses. In 1744 Juan Manuel probated the estate of his
mother-in-law.
[2]
María de Archibeque, our ancestor, was born about 1702. Her
mother may have died giving birth to her. She married Francisco José Casados, Alcalde of Santa Fe, on 28 October 1716, in
Santa Fe, and was the mother of our
ancestor Gertrudis Casados, [abt.
1738-bef. 1780]. wife of Nicolas Martín
[abt.1730-?]. In 1729 Francisco and
María sold a house and some land to José
Riaño, the new husband of María’s stepmother, María Manuela Roybal. [Spanish Archives of NM, Vol. I, p.206]
Casados was very prominent in Santa Fe.
ILLEGITIMATE SONS OF JEAN L’ARCHEVEQUE
[3] Agustín de Archibeque On 17 May 1739, in Santa Fe,
Pascuala Padilla sold some lands to Agustín.
The transaction was before Alcalde
Antonio Montoya, our uncle, the famous Indian fighter.[SANM V.1, p.20] He
married Manuela Trujillo. Agustin
was probably the son of an servant of Juan de Archibeque as was his brother
Juan. He may have been a mestizo. All
the Archibeques of New Mexico today are descended from Agustín.
[4] Juan de Archibeque II was Juan’s son by
María de Mascareñas, an orphan who came to the Archibeque home to work as a
servant. After his father’s death, Juan
II used his mother’s surname, Mascareñas.
Submitted by Donald Rivara, June 23, 2009.
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