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

pueblo Pueblo refers to the settlements of the Pueblo peoples, Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, currently in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The permanent communities, including some of the oldest continually occupied settlement ...

was located close to present-day

Socorro, New Mexico Socorro (, ''Help:Pronunciation respelling key, sə-KOR-oh'') is a city in Socorro County, New Mexico, Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Middle Rio Grande Valley AVA, Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . At the 2020 ...

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

Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( or ) in the United States or the Río Bravo (del Norte) in Mexico (), also known as Tó Ba'áadi in Navajo language, Navajo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the Southwestern United States a ...

, 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, explorer and viceroy of the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México in the viceroyalty of New Spain, in the present-day U.S. state of New Mexico. He led early Spanish expedition ...

and an advance party of his

colonists A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among the first settli ...

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, United States. In 1598, the vanguard of the Spanish colonizing caravan under Juan de Oñate acquired food at the Piro pueblo of Teypana. The Spaniards ...

, 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