Stories

History classes are filled with treaties between colonial powers and Indigenous peoples. Yet we learn considerably less about treaties between Native nations. A 1786 agreement between Utes and Comanches, poorly documented by Spanish sources, provides an opportunity to see history from a different perspective.

Farolitos are practically synonymous with a New Mexican Christmas. Luminaria traditions have spread over the centuries to many of the former Spanish territories.

Soon after the Civil War broke out, Confederate political and military leaders hatched a plan for Western conquest. They would raise a force in Texas, march up the Rio Grande (along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro), take Santa Fe, turn northeast on the Santa Fe Trail, capture the federal supplies at Fort Union, head up to Colorado, capture the gold fields, and then turn west to take California. All three states had populations loyal to the Confederacy.

Crossing the Southern Plains in 1806, Zebulon Pike described herds of bison that “exceeded imagination.” Yet by the 1850s, many of the Native nations that relied on bison for sustenance—such as the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes—were seeing fewer bison than ever before. What happened?

Almost every movement in American history has a corresponding counter movement. The Mexican American War (1846-48), which resulted in Mexico ceding much of the modern-day American Southwest to the United States, is a good example. With the stroke of a pen, parts of the Santa Fe, California, Oregon, Pony Express, Mormon Pioneer, and Old Spanish trails, as well as El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, suddenly became American territory.

Historians often cite the importation of large horse herds as one of the Spanish empire's biggest impacts on the Americas. Ironically, these very herds helped transform Comanches into Spain's most formidable rival.

With so much daily anxiety about the Dow and the S&P 500, it’s easy to forget that ‘stock market’ used to mean something entirely different. Sheep became crucial parts of the New Mexican economy after the Oñate entrada brought large flocks in 1598. As livestock raiding slowed in the 1700s, New Mexican families rich in sheep began exporting stock and wool southward along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.

In 1598, as Spanish colonizer Juan de Oñate led the first expedition to establish El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro north from Mexico into New Mexico, he made a surprising find: watermelon.

The congressional designation in 2000 of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro as a National Historic Trail put the spotlight on a pivotal three-century chapter of the ethnic, cultural and economic development of the American Southwest.

Traditionally, the telling of the history of the United States moved from east to west, cast in a timeline of the notable people, places and events that shaped the country from the 1607 founding of Jamestown, Virginia, to today. With the designation of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro as a National Historic Trail on September 13, 2000, the U.S. Congress recognized an alternative path to understanding the diverse international history and cultural heritage of the U.S.