San Carlos de los Jupes

This was a Comanche idea before it was a Spanish one. In July 1787 Paruanarimuco, leader of the Jupe Comanches, asked Governor Juan Bautista de Anza to help his people build a farming village, and Spain sent workmen, tools, seed and livestock. No mission came with them and no Spanish settlers stayed. When Anza was replaced, Paruanarimuco tried to hand the tools back, fearing the agreement had lapsed. By January 1788, after one of his wives died there, the Jupes had left for good. The rivers have shifted since, and nothing of the village survives.

What the plaque says

San Carlos de los Jupes By 1700 Comanches moved south from the northern Rockies onto the plains of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. They raided the Apaches and Spanish settlements from the late 1600s until 1779 when the governor of New Mexico, Don Juan Bautista de Anza, decisively defeated a large group, led by Cuerno Verde in a battle near the mountains to the southwest of here. The Comanches signed a peace treaty in 1786, and a year later they asked for Spanish assistance to build a permanent farm village. The Spanish provided workmen, tools, farming implements, seed and livestock to help found San Carlos de los Jupes, but Comanche religious beliefs caused abandonment of the village within a year because a member of the tribe died there. It is believed San Carlos de los Jupes was built just west of here at the confluence of the Arkansas and San Carlos rivers. Although this early Spanish attempt to colonize Plains Indians failed the Comanches were comparatively friendly toward the New Mexican settlements thereafter Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado, the Arkansas Valley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Colorado Department of Highways through the Robert S. Ellison Memorial Fund 1972.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Jacob Fowler's Lookout - Fountain City — 7.3 mi
• The Mormon Battalion — 8.0 mi
• Fort Reynolds — 8.9 mi