Back to the Drawing Board....

I have been having so much fun with the research, the blogging has suffered. To bring it up to date, a thorough search of RootsWeb was well worth the time and effort. The link tied into the maternal line of my New Mexico family and went 6 generations back to Bireuga, Spain in the early 1600's. The documentation looked good and the links seemed solid, but there was a drawback. Either Bireuga was so tiny it wasn't on the maps, or something else was wrong. The 'something else' was a spelling error. With some imagination and a lot of experimenting, I found the name of the location was spelled: "Briheuga". Fortunately, it is quite a large place and the Catholic records are excellent.

Family tradition matches the location in Spain even though it didn't put a name on the town, traditional family origins were in the province of Castillo, Spain. The historical background provides information that there was a Pueblo Revolt by the native Indians in 1680. The Indians were able to make the Spaniards leave. Runners were sent secretly to all the pueblo villages in the New Mexico area. They made pieces of rope with three knots in it and gave one to each of the chiefs in the pueblo villages. The instructions were to untie one of the knots at sunrise each day until there were no knots in the rope. At the next sunrise, they were all to attack the Missions and Forts at the same time in the morning. It was a very effective plan and the Indians were able to cause enough damage for the surviving Spanish soldiers and priests to leave.