It was fought in the winter of 1540–41 by the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado against the twelve or thirteen Pueblos or settlements of what would become the Tiguex Province of Nuevo México.

Alvarado was one of 200 soldiers who had used their bodies to protect the fallen Coronado at the battle of Hawikuh, saving him from being bludgeoned to death by stones dropped by the Zuni defenders.

Bigotes guided Alvarado and twenty-three other Spaniards and an unknown number of Mexican Indian allies east, past Acoma and into the Rio Grande valley.

He returned to Tiguex[3] at about the same time an advance party led by Field Master García López de Cárdenas also arrived.

The Tiguex Province was described as the most prosperous area the expeditions had seen, with the Rio Grande flowing through a wide, level, desert with vast irrigated cornfields.

[7] Coronado sent Cárdenas with a large force of Mexican Indian allies to conquer a Tiwa pueblo the Spaniards called Arenal.

Upon his return, the Towa Indians of Jemez Pueblo had decided the Spaniards were enemies and turned hostile, resulting in a battle and siege against Pecos.

It was not until 1706 when La Villa de Alburquerque was established as an actual trade outpost for the Pueblos, that Native rights were finally being given thought.

By the mid-1700s, Native American rights to their land were being recognized by the Santa Fe de Nuevo México government, by then governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín.