Loss and separation make up the contemporary fabric of the small village of Conejos, Colorado, one of the earliest permanent settlements in the San Luis Valley west of the Rio Grande River. Throughout the Southwest, Native children who were separated from their family and home in this community were referred to as criados, a Spanish word that describes a captive Indigenous child who is raised in a family as a servant.[1]
Genizaro Families, Abiquiu, New Mexico, photographed by Sumner Matteson, 1905; From the collection of the Milwaukee Public Museum; From the collection of the Milwaukee Public Museum, #44474
Another term to describe this group of Hispanicized and detribalized Native Americans who were raised in Spanish-speaking households is Genízaro, a word used in the Spanish caste system that came to apply to this group as well.
As child captives were released upon reaching adulthood and allowed to marry, they integrated into communities with diverse cultural identities. Abiquiú, New Mexico, serves as an illustration of a Genízaro settlement, and many forebears of Conejos settlers previously resided in Abiquiú, indicating their connection to and perpetuation of the encomienda system—a system of forced labor imposed on Indigenous workers by Spanish colonists. Given that Conejos was established by individuals predominantly from Genízaro communities, it is plausible that the continued practice of Indigenous enslavement in Conejos County stemmed from cultural loss, Hispanicization, and the enduring legacy of such practices among those whose ancestors were themselves victims of this system. Arguably, Conejos could be viewed as a Genízaro settlement, emerging as a consequence of a new wave of colonization by the United States that perpetuated the traumas inherited from earlier Spanish colonial legacies.
The original settlers to La Plaza de Los Conejos arrived in 1854, establishing themselves in the village of Guadalupe, Colorado, approximately one mile north of present-day Conejos, to claim the Conejos Land Grant: 2.5 million acres extending from northern New Mexico into the San Luis Valley, which was approved in 1833 by the Mexican government. Early attempts at claiming this Mexican grant were unsuccessful, as Native Americans resisted the occupation of their traditional hunting grounds, which were primarily inhabited seasonally by the Capote, Mouache, and Tabeguache bands of the Ute tribe, as well as by the Pueblo, Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Diné.
Notes:
[1] Ramón A. Gutiérrez, “The Genízaro Origins of the Hermanos Penitentes,” in Nacion Genízara, ed. Moises Gonzales (University of New Mexico Press: 2021), 90.
Excerpt from Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, (Cooper Hewitt | The MIT Press, 2025) published in companion with Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial (New York, Nov. 2024-Aug. 2025)
Interior of Lafayette Head home and Ute Indian Agency, Conejos, Colorado, 19th century; Luther Bean Museum; Courtesy of the Luther Bean Museum, Adams State University, Gift of Gwendolyn Hill, 1975.10.1o
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