Background
Pedro de Peralta was born circa 1584 in Spain.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Pedro de Peralta
Edit ProfileEducation
There is some evidence that Pedro de Peralta was a university graduate and trained in canon law. Also, he had seen military service.
Career
In the winter of 1608 - 1609 at the age of twenty-five, Pedro de Peralta arrived in the city of Mexico. On March 5, 1609, the viceroy appointed Pedro de Peralta governor of New Mexico, to supersede Juan de Oñate and his son Cristóbal, and instructed him "before all else" to see to the founding of a new villa with a view to order and permanence. From April to October 1609, Peralta was at Zacatecas, assembling building supplies, foodstuffs, weapons, clothing, carts and livestock, missionaries, soldiers, Indian servants. Probably, therefore, he did not reach Oñate's colony at San Gabriel until March 1610; at least, Oñate and his son did not depart before May. The name selected by Peralta for the new villa, Santa Fe, would suggest a strong piety in his character, yet, as governor, it was his duty to maintain the king's authority as superior to that of the Church, and he was soon crossing swords with the Franciscan missionaries.
In the spring of 1612, the comisario, Fray Isidro de Ordoñez, was in Mexico city getting the next three years' supplies for the missionaries; and upon his return, late that year, he represented that he had been made comisario of the Holy Inquisition also, a false claim for which he was later rebuked by the king and disciplined by his own order. Apparently Peralta required him to show his credentials; Ordoñez refused, called the governor a "schismatic heretic, " and posted an excommunication of him. When Peralta disregarded the excommunication, he was seized by Fray Ordoñez with the help of some of the soldiers and colonists and was held prisoner for nearly a year in the convent at Sandia pueblo.
Early in December 1612 , Pedro de Peralta managed to escape, "in the dead of winter, and half naked, covered with a buffalo skin like an Indian. " His jailer, Fray Esteban de Perea, pursued him with a large force of Indians to a ranch five miles away, but he had escaped to Santa Fe. There he was again seized and brought back "in irons and seated on a beast like a woman. " But from Santa Fe, December 13, 1612, he had managed to send a report of his situation to Mexico city; and nearly a year later peremptory orders arrived which effected his release. Official approval of Peralta's defense of crown prerogatives appeared in his passing a satisfactory residencia. Also he was next appointed lieutenant-commander at the port of Acapulco.
In 1621 - 1622 Pedro de Peralta was alcalde of the royal warehouse in Mexico city. In 1637 he arrived in Caracas, Venezuela. He bought a half-interest in a trading vessel. From 1644 to 1645 he was auditor of the royal treasury at Caracas; later, he was acting treasurer; and from February 1651 to August 1652, was treasurer, having purchased that office. Late in the latter year he arrived in Madrid, "old and infirm and almost blind, maimed in the right hand and totally incapacitated" through injuries inflicted by enemies in Caracas from whom he had required moneys due the king. He petitioned and was granted (1654) leave to resign, and that his wife and two children be shielded from his enemies and allowed to join him in Spain.
Until Pedro de Peralta's death, which occurred in Madrid in 1666, his lot may have been happier, yet his estate was attached by the Jesuit order, and in 1671 the Aléfrez Pedro de Paredes was striving to salvage something for his widowed sister and her two children.
Achievements
Connections
In 1637 Pedro de Peralta married a widow of means, sister of Pedro de Paredes.
