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Project Ideas- Communication & National Historic Trails: Old Spanish Trail

Mountain rising from a dry mixed-grass prairie — Blanca Peak, San Luis Valley, CO

The North branch of the Old Spanish Trail passed Blanca Peak (Navajo: Sisnaajiní), a landmark that remains much like it was during trail travel (1829-1848).
Photo/NPS

Communication was an essential aspect of the Old Spanish Trail.

Below are a few examples and questions to get you thinking about potential research projects.

1. The Old Spanish Trail connected New Mexico to Los Angeles

What kinds of information moved over the trail?
Why would it be important to establish communication between Santa Fe and the Pacific Coast?

2. The Old Spanish Trail crossed the homelands of many American Indian nations

What kinds of information might these nations have contributed to make the establishment of the trail possible?
What kinds of interactions do you think these nations had with the traders that traveled the trail? How/why might they have communicated with one another?

3. Many genízaros (American Indians brought to New Mexico as captives but eventually assimilated into New Mexican society) used the Old Spanish trail to emigrate to Alta California

Some of these colonists had already spent years trading and traveling along the trail. What kinds of helpful information might they have learned?
In both Alta California and New Mexico, genízaros were often granted land on the outskirts of ranches or settlements so they could guard against attacks and livestock raids. What do agreements like these communicate about life as a genízaro?

4. Horses, woolen goods, and even enslaved American Indians moved along the Old Spanish Trail

How does trade facilitate communication across geographic and cultural borders?

5. Mail also traveled along the trail; for example, mountain man Kit Carson used the route while carrying military dispatches bound for Washington, D.C., during the Mexican American War

How does communication affect military conflicts?
How did knowledge travel before the advent of regular mail service, the telegraph, etc.?

6. Even though Antonio Armijo is credited with establishing the trail in 1829, his route relied upon American Indian trails as well as lands explored by Spanish friars in the 1770s

When writing history, should we strive to communicate in the simplest way possible, or in the most accurate way (which is often less clear)?
How do historical communication methods (i.e. diaries, letters, etc.) influence the way that we write history today?

Example Project Idea

In 1776, Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Fray Silvestre Vélez de Escalante explored throughout northern New Mexico, western Colorado, and southern Utah on trails that would become part of the Old Spanish Trail. Yet despite the Spanish desire to link two of their northern outposts, it would not be until the Mexican period that the Old Spanish Trail would come to fruition. In 1829, Antonio Armijo connected these trails and other indigenous paths to California, establishing overland trade and communication between New Mexico and the pueblo of Los Angeles—and points in between. The trail also provided landlocked New Mexico with access to more foreign markets via the Pacific Ocean; it also provided a way for mail to travel back and forth between California and New Mexico. The trail’s vague nature made it unsuitable for all but the most seasoned mountaineers, such as Kit Carson. Carson used the route while carrying military dispatches bound for Washington, D.C., during the Mexican American War (1846-48).

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“Urged on by the Russian advance down the Pacific coast, Spain had colonized Alta California. The first expeditions had been by water. But the need of an overland route was keenly felt both as a means of protection and as an economic saving in transportation. From Sonora, [Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de] Anza had led a party to California in 1774 and another in 1775-76. But the route was far from satisfactory. Even if the Colorado desert had proved less formidable there would still have been the desire of opening a direct road between New Mexico and California if that should prove possible.”
Joseph J. Hill, “The Old Spanish Trail: A Study of Spanish and Mexican Trade and Exploration Northwest from New Mexico to the Great Basin and California,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 4, no. 3 (August 1921): 449.

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