Santa Fe, New Mexico

The notion that America's steady westward movement brought progress and civilization in its wake has become an integral part of the nation's mythological fabric—so much so that there exists a collective amnesia when it comes to the historical complexities of western settlement. Yet, as current volume reminds us, the trajectory of western history includes not only the usual narrative suspects—Native Americans and Anglos—but also Spaniards, Mexicans, Chinese, and a hodgepodge of European peoples.

The essay at hand takes as its subject the Hispanic frontier of northeastern New Mexico as it existed prior to the American conquest of the 1840s. This is an eminently sensible approach insomuch as frontiers naturally suggest contact, conflict, and collaboration between differing peoples. Moreover, one could argue that New Mexico's colonial and postcolonial borders were as vibrant as any in the West. Powerful Plains tribes, for instance, had begun drifting southward along the eastern slope of the Rockies no later than the 1500s, a move which brought them into contact with more sedentary Pueblo cultures as well as with hard-nosed Spanish explorers who were feeling their way northward along the Rio Grande River. Indeed, the Spaniards and indigenous tribes waged war, haggled for peace, and bartered for goods on the high Plains frontier for nearly 300 years. The situation would only grow more complex in the early 19th century, when both Native American and Hispanic societies intersected with, and gradually succumbed to, a steady eastward infiltration by French and Anglo trappers and merchants.

This study makes no new claims in proposing that one should take a closer look at the Iberian frontier. Herbert E. Bolton said as much in 1921, when he argued that Spanish movement along a north-south axis from Latin America was as valuable to understanding southwestern history as Anglo east-west [Page 594]migration. Bolton's challenging of the already dominant American narrative of progress through the “winning” of the West resulted from his willingness to mine Spanish colonial archives in Mexico City. His familiarity with sources that other Anglo scholars had largely ignored also gave him an appreciation for Iberian policies and attitudes and led to his call for “a broader treatment of American history, to supplement the purely nationalistic presentation to which we are accustomed.”

Bolton's pioneering effort underscores the fact that the central Plains had a legacy of migration long before Spanish arrival—archaeological evidence points to the presence of nomadic indigenous peoples in northern New Mexico as early as 10,000–5,000 years BCE. Far more recent and lasting incursions began in the early modern era, when Athapaskan-speaking Apachean peoples drifted from west central Canada along the east range of the Rockies. Scholars have debated as to when the Apaches first arrived in the region, yet the most persuasive evidence points to the early 1500s. It seems fairly clear that a number of Apache groups—the Chiricahua, Kiowa-Apache, Navajo, Jicarilla, and affiliated tribes—had penetrated deep into the central high Plains at roughly the same moment that the Spanish were establishing their hegemony over Mexico and preparing to venture north. The Shoshonean-speaking Comanches joined the exodus slightly later, moving southward from Wyoming about 1550 in the wake of their Ute kin. The first Comanches appeared at the Taos, New Mexico, trading fair in 1705. This was an ominous sign, for both the Apache and the Spanish alike soon discovered that the horse-mounted Comanches constituted a dominant military force, one that had to be accounted for in terms of Plains diplomacy. By 1720 the Comanche had ended two centuries of Apache supremacy and forced some Apachean clans to seek Spanish protection. Apparently not just the Spanish had designs for a southwestern empire.

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