New Mexico State Coat of Arms

The coat of arms centers on two eagles placed one above the other. A large American bald eagle spreads its wings at the top, covering and protecting the smaller Mexican eagle below. On the breast of the American eagle is a small shield bearing the colors of the United States flag: a blue chief at the top with red and white vertical stripes below.

The design does not use shield supporters, a helmet, or a crest. Below the eagles, a ribbon scroll carries the state motto in Latin. Among U.S. state coat of arms designs, New Mexico's is one of the most historically specific, placing the entire arc of the state's political history into two birds and a single line of text.

New Mexico was part of the Spanish empire until Mexico gained independence on September 27, 1821. For the next twenty-five years, New Mexico was a northern province of Mexico. That changed in August 1846, when U.S. General Stephen W. Kearny led his Army of the West into Santa Fe and declared the region under U.S. authority. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 2, 1848, formally transferred the territory to the United States.

Congress created the Territory of New Mexico on September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850. The territorial legislature, meeting in the early 1850s, adopted a seal featuring the two-eagle composition: an American bald eagle above a Mexican eagle, with the motto Crescit Eundo on a scroll below. The design acknowledged the region's recent history under Mexico while marking its new status under the United States.

The design remained in use through the entire territorial period. When New Mexico was admitted to the Union as the 47th state on January 6, 1912, the state legislature codified the composition as the official state coat of arms, carrying the territorial design forward without significant changes.

The New Mexico coat of arms uses two eagles and a motto scroll. Each element refers to a specific chapter of the state's political history.

The two-eagle design compresses more than two centuries of New Mexico's political history into a single image. The Mexican eagle below shows that New Mexico was governed by Mexico from 1821 to 1846. The American eagle above it shows that the United States took control in 1846 and formalized that authority through the Territory of New Mexico in 1850, then statehood in 1912.

The American eagle does not replace the Mexican eagle. It shields it. That arrangement reflected the reality of New Mexico's population at the time: the territory had a large Hispanic and Native population with deep roots in both Mexican and pre-Mexican culture. The design made that history visible rather than erasing it.

The motto Crescit Eundo pointed forward. It described a territory still growing into what it would become. When New Mexico became a state after sixty-two years as a territory, the phrase remained accurate: the state kept the same image and the same direction.

Surviving territorial-era renderings show that New Mexico's dual-eagle arms were already established before statehood. The core composition remained stable: a larger American eagle above a smaller Mexican eagle with serpent and cactus, with Crescit Eundo below.

The territorial legislature formally adopted the same seal and coat of arms in 1887, and New Mexico carried that design into statehood on January 6, 1912 with only the outer seal wording updated from territory to state.