Teypana (alternate spelling “Teypama”) was the first pueblo to be called Socorro. This Piro

pueblo In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...

was located close to present-day

Socorro, New Mexico Socorro (, '' sə-KOR-oh'') is a city in Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . In 2010 the population was 9,051. It is the county seat of Socorro County. Socorro is located south of ...

. A reference from 1598 suggests Teypana was on the west bank of the

Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( and ), known in Mexico as the Río Bravo del Norte or simply the Río Bravo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The length of the Rio ...

, downriver from the pueblo of Pilabó (the site of modern Socorro). Found in a partly flawed list of Piro pueblos, the reference is somewhat problematic. In 1598,

Juan de Oñate Juan de Oñate y Salazar (; 1550–1626) was a Spanish conquistador from New Spain, explorer, and colonial governor of the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México in the viceroyalty of New Spain. He led early Spanish expeditions to the Great Pla ...

and an advance party of his

colonists A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer. Settl ...

were given food and water by the people of Teypana. In response, they named the settlement “Socorro”, which means “help” or “aid” in Spanish. By 1626, the name had become associated with the Piro pueblo of

Pilabó Pilabó was a former Piro pueblo located on the site of the present city of Socorro, New Mexico Socorro (, '' sə-KOR-oh'') is a city in Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . In 201 ...

, site of the first permanent mission in Piro territory, now buried under the town of Socorro, NM. It has been claimed that “Teypana” means “village flower” in the Piro language.Julyan, Robert, ''The Place Names of New Mexico: Revised Ed.,'' (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1998) p. 351. As the Piro language survives only in fragments, however, the meaning of the name "Teypana", like all 17th-century Piro place names, remains unknown. Michael Bletzer has done a lot of excavation on a site in the vicinity of Luis Lopez which he believes to be the Teypana village.

Footnotes

Native American tribes in New Mexico Colonial New Mexico Piro Pueblos of Socorro County, New Mexico Pueblos in New Mexico {{NewMexico-geo-stub