List Of The 12 Travelers

Here’s the full list of theTwelve Travelers:

Cabeza de Vaca and Estebanicoarrived at the Pass of the North in 1535 after eight years and 6,000 miles of wandering with an escort of Native Americans in the first recorded transcontinental crossing North America. The lives of Cabeza de Vaca and Estebanico were changed irrevocably by the experience. Estebanico went on to lead the Fray Marco’s de Niza into the Pueblo country and Cabeza de Vaca, later appointed to the Governorship of Paraguay, was returned to Spain in chains because of his concern for the treatment of the natives.

Don Juan de Oate was the official colonizer of New Mexico and representative of Spain’s Imperial interests in the Northern Province. His expedition brought the first horses as well as the Spanish culture, language and Catholic religion into the region. He also established the Camino Real, later known as the Santa Fe Trail. The brutality of his encounter with Native Americans however, left a lasting stigma that was followed by 85 years of subsequent abuse, culminating in the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680. Although the expedition was dogged with hardship and disaster, its legacy, together with the indigenous culture, is evident today in the Southwest’s unique character.

In 1659 the Spanish Franciscan priest, Fray Garca de San Francisco, built the first mission at the Pass of the North — La Misin de Nuestra Seora de Guadalupe. This mission is the oldest extant structure in the El Paso area and can be visited today in El Paso’s sister city Jurez. Fray Garca is depicted in the sculpture supporting a viga or roof beam (hand carved by local Manso Indians). He also introduced the famous mission grape and viticulture into the Southwest along with European irrigation techniques.

The building of the missions, which began with the first priests to enter the region, continued up to the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680.

The Tigua Indians came to the Pass of the North in 1680 under the leadership of Governor Juan Moro and War Captain Bartolo Pique following the Pueblo Rebellion of New Mexico. Their arrival at The Pass gave impetus to the settlement of the area. The Tiguas of Ysleta del Sur are honored today as Texas’ oldest living tribe.

In the late 18th century sixteen presidios were constructed along the Frontier of New Spain to protect settlements and prevent their abandonment during a time of increasing resentment among Native Americans. Juan Bautista de Anza, born in Sonora, Mexico, was a presidio captain who later organized an important expedition of exploration to California. Upon his return he served as governor of New Mexico for ten years. His career spans a period of consolidation in Southwest history.

This sculpture depicts the eighteen-year-old bride of Samuel Magoffin (brother of the famous Santa Fe trader, James Wiley Magoffin). Susan came across the trail from Independence Missouri to El Paso del Norte during the tumultuous years of the war between the US and Mexico. In this time of hostility and international tension she kept a diary that is recognized today as a literary gem of the period. Her perceptive and sensitive observations also reveal a warm appreciation for the Mexican people and their culture. She is depicted seated upon a trunk writing in her diary with her greyhound, Ring, standing by her side. The monument also recognizes James Wiley Magoffin in a bas-relief.

Benito Jurez, Mexico ‘s greatest and only Native American president, was forced to relocate the government of the Republic of Mexico to The Pass as a result of foreign occupation during the French Intervention. Like his contemporary, Abraham Lincoln, Jurez held the common man in high esteem. This monument represents Mexico’s struggle for political democracy and his country’s growing influence on the United States. It also recognizes the thirst for learning that induced thirteen-year-old Benito (and motivated young Lincoln as well) to leave his native Zapotec village of Guelatao and walk 40 miles to Oaxaca City seeking an education. The monument will include Jurez the child as well as Jurez the man, as an inspiration to youthful viewers.

The courageous and gifted Lozen was born to the Warm Springs band of Chiricahua Apaches in New Mexico around 1840. She was a close relative of the great chief, Victorio, who described her as “his wise counselor and his right hand …who had the strength of a man and was a shield to her people.” To the Apaches she was a revered warrior woman and a shaman who could discern both the direction and proximity of the “enemy” by the tingling in her hands. She fought with Victorio and Geronimo against the combined forces of the United States and Mexican armies, and the heavily armed civilian populations of the New Mexico and Arizona Territories, before finally being taken into custody and confined in Florida where she died of tuberculosis around the age of 50.

Henry Ossian Flipper was born in Georgia under slavery in 1850. In 1873 he was appointed to West Point where he became its first Black graduate. As a second lieutenant he served frontier duty in the Southwest with the famous all Black regiment known as the Buffalo Soldiers. While still in the army he was court marshaled under fabricated and racist charges of “embezzlement and unbecoming conduct.” He was eventually acquitted of embezzling but “dismissed” from the service.

As a civilian he led a distinguished career as author, surveyor, engineer, editor, authority on land and mining law and Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior. Although unable to get his military record cleared during his lifetime it was reviewed in 1976 by the Army Bard for Correction of Military Records and Flipper was posthumously awarded a Good Conduct discharge. He received a full pardon from President Clinton on Feb. 19, 1999.

Teresa de Urrea was a paradoxical and mystical leader born in La Cabora, Sinaloa, Mexico under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Her mother was an Indian servant and her father was Tomas de Urrea, a liberal hacendado who was forced to move his household to Sonora to escape political persecution. As a child she was deeply affected by the friendship and guidance of by a curandera named Huila. After recovering from a protracted coma Teresa assumed her vocation as an inspired and charismatic healer of the oppressed Indian and Mestizo populations, which gave her ministry both a political dimension and broad popular appeal. Her unorthodox and anti-government views likewise aroused official concern and when leaders of Tomochic protected her from a pursuing posse the entire village was massacred in retaliation. Meanwhile her name (like that of Jean d’ Arc) inspired rebellions across this northern region of Mexico and heralded the coming revolution of 1910. The fearful Diaz dictatorship forced Teresa to flee across the border into Arizona, where she died just four years before the Revolution.

No one typifies the wanton lawlessness of the old west better than the gun slinging outlaw, John Wesley Hardin, who was born in Bonham, Texas in 1853 to a Methodist preacher and a woman known for her charity work.

It is claimed that he had killed five men when he joined herd on the Old Chisholm Trail — and 11 more by the time he arrived in Abilene, Kansas at the age of 18. After a scrape with Wild Bill Hickok, Hardin became a family man with a wife and three children but soon fell into trouble again. He was arrested in 1872, escaped from jail, and was finally captured in a deadly fight while fleeing to Florida. He was convicted and served 16 years in prison, during which time he studied law.

Upon release he went to El Paso where he was shot in the back of the head and killed by one of his own hired gunmen, while gambling in The Acme Saloon.

His murderous reputation of having killed more than 30 men was disputed by his friends who claimed, “he was a always gentleman…and never killed anyone who didn’t need it”…including (it is supposed) the man he once shot through a hotel wall for snoring!

Doroteo Arango Armbula, later known as Pancho Villa, was born on June 15, 1878 in San Juan del Ro, Durango, Mexico. As a child he witnessed the harshness of peasant life under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. When he was 15 his father died and Villa began to work as a sharecropper to support his mother and four siblings. In the following year he shot a hacendado who was trying to rape his younger sister and fled into the mountains where he joined a group of bandits.

His notoriety brought him to the attention of the incipient revolutionary movement.

Villa became the leader of the Revolution in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua but it also involved him with the ambitions and betrayals of the time. When President Wilson withdrew his support for Villa, the Caudillo invaded Columbus, New Mexico, which in turn provoked the unsuccessful Punitive Expedition commanded by General John J. Pershing.

Pancho Villa is widely hailed as a revolutionary Robin Hood by some and vilified as a bandit and murderer by others. The stature of his legend (unrivaled in Mexico) has overshadowed the man himself. He was assassinated in Parral, Chihuahua in 1923 but his reputation still generates energetic controversy along the border.

La Adelita was the archetype of a woman soldier (soldera), famous in the corridas of the period and an inspiration to the armies of the Revolution.