A Southwestern renaissance man is the subject of a new book by a Durango author and historian. Don Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco (1713–85) is known by hardcore history buffs as an early cartographer and prolific religious artist.
But Durango author John L. Kessell shines a light on Pacheco’s many other pursuits in Miera y Pacheco: Domínguez and Escalante’s Unruly Cartographer.
According to Kessell, “On August 8, 1776, they camped just down river from the Strater which, incidentally, didn’t open for another 111 years. Although a superb map resulted from their exploration, the two Franciscans and their map maker were often at odds.”
In addition to being a questionable map maker, Kessell also identifies Pacheco as an engineer and militia captain on Indian campaigns, district officer, merchant, debt collector, metallurgist, luckless silver miner, presidial soldier, dam builder and rancher. The biography recounts his complex life from his birth in Cantabria, Spain, to his sudden and unexplained appearance at Janos, Chihuahua, and his death in Santa Fe at age 71.
Beginning with his marriage to the young descendant of a once-prominent New Mexican family, the book tracks Miera’s transformation by his varied experiences into the quintessential Hispanic New Mexican. As he traveled to every corner of the colony and beyond, Miera gathered not only geographical, social and political data but also information about the Southwest’s indigenous peoples. At the same time, Miera the artist was carving and painting statues and panels of the saints for the altar screens of the colony.
Miera’s most ambitious surviving map resulted from his five-month ordeal as cartographer on the Domínguez-Escalante expedition to the Great Basin in 1776. Two years later, with the arrival of famed Juan Bautista de Anza as governor of New Mexico, Miera became a trusted member of Anza’s inner circle, advising him on civil, military and Indian affairs.
Miera’s maps and his religious art have long been considered essential to the cultural history of colonial New Mexico and Kessell’s biography tells the rest of the story.
Meet the Author
Miera y Pacheco : A Renaissance Spaniard in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico by John L. Kessell, University of Oklahoma Press, 194 pages hardcover, $29.95. 3rd Ave. Arts will host an author event for Kessell from 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 910 East Third Ave. For more information, call 903-8854.
