History
Located in Taos, New Mexico. Spanish settlers began their colonization of the Taos Valley in 1616, but the Plaza dates to the late 18th century when the Don Fernando de Taos Land Grant was ceded to the settlers from the Taos Pueblo in 1796 by Don Fernando de Chacon, Governor of New Mexico.
Taos Plaza served for decades as the central meeting place in the valley and survived numerous fires that destroyed several older buildings.
Nearby is the home of Charles Bent, who was appointed Governor of New Mexico when it became an American Territory during the Mexican-American War. He was killed by Indian rebels during the Taos Revolt.
Read more about this topic: Taos Plaza
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)