The Spanish military presence in New Mexico in 1680 was thin, decentralized, and not organized as a formal presidial system. It consisted of a small number of professional or semi-professional soldiers mixed with armed settlers (vecinos), under the governor acting as captain-general. Formal presidios in the region came afterward, largely in response to the revolt and related frontier instability.
Scale and Composition in 1680
The total Spanish/mestizo population of New Mexico was roughly 2,000–2,500 people, thinly scattered in Santa Fe and smaller settlements or ranches along the Rio Grande and near the pueblos. Santa Fe was the only place that approximated a town.
The province could muster only about 170 men capable of bearing arms in total.
In Santa Fe during the siege, roughly 1,000 people (settlers, families, servants, and some allied or servant Indians) took refuge in and around the Palace of the Governors (the casas reales). Defenders were limited: one account notes no more than about 50 "regular" troops (many of them convicts conscripted in Mexico), with the rest being armed able-bodied male colonists. Other figures for the armed force in the villa during the crisis fall in the rough range of 100 or so.
Professional reinforcements were modest and infrequent. Fray Francisco de Ayeta had brought a group of about 50 convict soldiers north in 1677 as part of supply efforts; some of these were still present or formed part of the available force by 1680. There was no large standing garrison.
Organization and Equipment
There was no formal chain of presidios or a large permanent company in upper New Mexico before the revolt. Authority rested with the governor (Antonio de Otermín in 1680) as captain-general. Supporting officers included a maestre de campo (e.g., Francisco Gómez Robledo), sargentos mayores, captains, alféreces, and alcaldes mayores who combined civil and military roles in the districts. Many of the "soldiers" were simply male colonists expected to turn out when needed.
Santa Fe had an armory/storehouse with royal harquebuses (arquebuses), blunderbusses, swords, daggers, shields, and munitions. At least two pieces of cannon were mounted for the defense of the palace complex. The decisive Spanish action was a mounted sally from the fortified palace that broke the siege (they claimed heavy Pueblo losses in the fighting). Horses, firearms, swords, and lances were the key tools; the force was essentially light colonial cavalry/militia rather than heavily equipped European regulars.
The Palace of the Governors and adjacent buildings served as the main strongpoint—thick adobe walls that could be barricaded, with roofs manned and approaches covered. Outlying Spanish settlements were overrun quickly because they lacked concentrated military strength.
Presidios and the Aftermath
Yes, the formal presidial system in New Mexico proper is largely a post-revolt development. The 1680 uprising (and the broader indigenous unrest it helped trigger further south) prompted the strengthening or creation of presidios in the El Paso del Norte area and in Nueva Vizcaya in the early-to-mid 1680s (examples include facilities at El Paso for the refugees and places like Janos around 1686). Upon the reconquest under Diego de Vargas in 1692–93, Santa Fe was reconstituted as a formal presidio with a garrison of about 100 soldiers.
Some later or popular accounts retroactively label early Santa Fe (founded ~1610) a "presidio," but the structured presidial company—associated with the classic soldados de cuera (leather-jacketed frontier cavalry) and royal regulations for garrisons—dates primarily to the post-1693 period and becomes clearer in the 18th century. Before 1680, New Mexico's military was a thin mix of small professional elements and settler militia, insufficient to hold the province against a coordinated Pueblo uprising.
