A recent newspaper headline referred to our current Gov. Richardson as "subdued." Given the whirlwind of activity that has surrounded him during his term-and-a-half, one would be surprised if Bill Richardson was not completely stressed out.

That he fails to appear so is to his credit. In fact, some past New Mexico governors have suffered in office such strain and physical stress that they were left with permanent scars.

One of those was Gov. Pedro de Peralta, credited with founding the Villa Real de Santa Fe in 1610. Two years later, he and the local head of the Franciscans, Fray Isidro Ordoñez, began a bitter feud, fed by their struggle for power over the colony.

The unbearably arrogant Ordoñez in the end won out. He excommunicated the governor, twice, denouncing him as a heretic, a Lutheran, and a Jew!

When Peralta tried to flee New Mexico, the partisans of Ordoñez seized and jailed him at Sandia Pueblo. The poor fellow was left without food or water for days at a time.

Such treatment ought to have given any governor a migraine headache.

The two men who followed Peralta in office, Bernardino de Ceballos and Juan de Eulate, were also excommunicated. That was an extremely harsh penalty.

A worse fate, however, awaited mid-century Gov. Bernardo López de Mendizábal and his successor, Gov. Diego de Peñalosa. The former was arrested for religious crimes and sent down the Camino Real to be tried by the Inquisition. He died in that institution's dungeons.

The latter, Peñalosa, abandoned Santa Fe while still governor and went to Mexico City. There he was imprisoned by the Inquisition, charged with 237 crimes, and banished from Spain's colonies in America.

In the late 17th century, Gov. Antonio de Otermín during his administration had to deal with the catastrophe of the Pueblo Revolt and its aftermath. The experience broke him physically and mentally.

The renowned Gov. Don Diego de Vargas had his own troubles. Pedro Rodríguez Cubero reached Santa Fe in 1697 as his replacement and promptly placed Don Diego under house arrest on charges of graft and misgovernment.

Vargas remained confined for three years, including five months in leg irons. Most of his personal property was sold at auction. Later he was exonerated and reappointed governor by the viceroy, too late though to get "his stuff" back.

Throughout the remainder of the colonial period, we find abundant reference to the woes suffered by New Mexico's royal governors. And the pattern continued during the quarter century of Mexican rule, 1821 to 1846.

The saddest lot perhaps fell to Gov. Charles Bent, named first civil governor under the newly imposed American regime in 1846. A few months after assuming office, he was shot full of arrows and scalped during the Taos Revolt.

And then there was the case of James S. Calhoun, who became in 1851 the first governor of the newly organized Territory of New Mexico. Before starting a business trip east in the summer of 1853, he had a local carpenter make a coffin to fit him.

The governor, in ill health, feared he might die crossing the Santa Fe Trail and he wanted to be prepared. Sure enough, he expired in eastern Kansas and finished the trip in his coffin. He was buried at trail's end in Kansas City, Mo.

Most of the early territorial governors had to deal with grievous burdens, most conspicuously the problem of hostile Indians and for a brief period a Confederate invasion at the time of the Civil War.

Near the end of the period, Miguel A. Otero wrote a book upon completion of his term titled My Nine Years as Governor, 1897-1906.

In it, he reveals the nature and causes of new types of problems he faced in his governorship, while noting that the older frontier-style challenges met by his predecessors were fast fading from memory.

Gov. Otero dwelled upon battles with his political enemies, saying that "they fought bitterly and without scruple to blacken my character and belittle my achievements." In light of the slugfests in recent national elections, his statement sounds quite modern.

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.