Ebook: Explorers, traders, and slavers: forging the old Spanish Trail, 1678-1850

The origins of the Old Spainsh Trail are obscure, except that it first came into the historical limelight when Yuta guides led Spanish colonial frontiersmen in New Mexico northwest from Santa Fe beyond Abiquiu through the Utah Canyonlands to present Utah Lake. Only then did the Yuta country become part of the Spanish claim to New Mexico. The land, with its many rivers, valleys, ridges, and mountains, became a geographic stage for the Hispanic quest for trade in the Great Basin and a route from New Mexico to California.This proclivity for trade formed the driving force paving the way to the Yuta country. In opposition, development of the OST was hindered by the Indian policy by Spanish officials that prohibited New Mexican frontiersmen from going to Yuta country. Despite the official policy, New Mexicans persisted in a clandestine trade that ran from early 1700s to the 1850s.Historically, the main account of the Old Spanish Trail is Hafen's Old Spanish Trail: (1954). The Hafens, however, overlooked Hispanic efforts to open the trail. This book corrects that oversight. Joseph P. Sanchez describes the Spanish search for mythical Teguayo and the Spanish-Mexican explorers, traders, and slavers who traveled through the Yuta country.The route taken by Armijo in 1829 connecting Santa Fe with Los Angeles was forged by earlier explorers. Among them were Juan Maria Antonio Rivera, Pedro Fages, Francisco Hermenegildo Garces, and countless others who risked their lives in that rugged land. Their efforts connected two other major emigrant trails: the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro from Mexico City to Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to New Mexico. The two routes converged at Santa Fe where, after 1829, they joined settlers bound for California.This book demonstrates the significance of the OST as not just a sidebar to Anglo western expansion, but as an integral page of our national story.The author is Dir. of the Spanish Colonial Research Center, Albuquerque.