Tajique

Tajique's Tiwa name may have been something like Tush-yit-yay. After an Apache raid in 1674 the people of Quarai came here, doubling the village to more than 600, and a second raid in 1675 emptied it. The modern town began with a petition: on March 9, 1834, Manuel Sánchez and nineteen associates from Valencia asked for the vacant land, and on Christmas Eve that year the official Otero divided the farmland into seventeen tracts for the seventeen families living on it. Congress confirmed the grant in 1860, one of thirty-two claims it approved that June.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Tajique The pueblo-mission of San Miguel de Tajique was established in the 1620s. In the 1670s, famine, disease and Apache raids caused the aban- donment of the Jurisdiccion de las Salinas (1598-1678) which included Tajique. Modern occupation of Tajique began in the 1830s with a land grant made to Manuel Sanchez.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument — 11 mi
  Three Spanish mission churches raised over Tiwa and Tompiro pueblos east of the Manzano Mountains in the 1600s, each of its own stone, and one never finished.

More markers nearby

• Quarai Ruins — 11 mi
• Estancia — 13 mi
• Estancia — 13 mi
• Mountainair — 16 mi