SANTA FE Special History Study

¹The road to Chihuahua (and the interior of Mexico) was called the camino real, el camino real de la tierra adentro, and the Chihuahua trail.

²The records indicate that between 1821 and 1838 the only hispano who travelled east to purchase manufactures directly in the United States was Manuel Escudero, a merchant from Chihuahua, see chapter V.

³Franklin Intelligencer, Jan 25, 1825, p 3; June 18, 1825, p 3. Some scholars, like T. D. Hall's Social Change in the Southwest, 150, argue that this was an attempt on the part of Missourians to discourage competition; but the traders themselves complained that selling for a profit was quite difficult.

⁴The first surviving guías issued in July 1825 demonstrate that initially shipments were fairly small and consisted of a wide array of goods, MANM roll 4 # 1213-1228. By the 1830s the volume and value of the merchandise had increased considerably although there was a proportional decline in the variety of items, MANM roll 11 # 1133-1160, roll 14 # 188-319, roll 15 # 1018-1041; roll 17 # 1107-1123; roll 19 # 226-294; roll 21 # 273-398; roll 24 # 767-802; roll 25 # 1429-1467; roll 27 # 620-643; roll 28 # 753-799; roll 30 # 315-324; roll 32 # 1630-1663; roll 34 # 1202-1271; roll 37 # 392-535; roll 40 # 282-358; Webb bemoaned the fact that after more than three weeks and close to four hundred miles on the road he had only been able to sell 350 dollars worth of goods, Adventures in the Santa Fe Trade, 116.

⁵Gerhard, Northern Frontier, 24; Moorhead, New Mexico's Royal Road, 64-65. Figures on the population of Nueva Vizcaya vary as Jones reports 190,159 for the census of 1821, Nueva Vizcaya, 245; Missouri newspapers also advertised the advantages of these markets, Franklin Intelligencer, May 28, 1825, p. 1; Nov 4, 1825, p 3.

⁶These patterns continued until the Mexican War in 1846, Robert W. Frazer, ed. Over the Chihuahua and Santa Fe Trails, 1847-1848: George Rutledge Gibson's Journal (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), 8. After 1846 changes resulted because Mexican duties made importation of efectos del país uneconomical; for a brief discussion of commercial exchange between New Mexican merchants and their Mexican counterparts, see chapter VI and VII.

⁷Gregg computed the distance between Missouri and Santa Fe several times; in all cases the total was less than 800 miles (the distance between Santa Fe and Mexico City is about 1660 miles, more than twice that between Missouri and Santa Fe), and he also commented on the poor quality of the drinking water, The Commerce of the Prairies, 217, 275; "el ideal carácter del territorio que se tenía que recorrer entre Misuri y Nuevo Mexico en comparación con el paisaje tan difícil de naturaleza en gran parte de la ruta interna," Bork, "Nuevos aspectos," 13.

⁸Gibson seldom made positive comments about native New Mexicans, Frazer, Over the Chihuahua and Santa Fe Trails, 14-15. He observed that women accompanied the men on trading trips, an observation that was confirmed by other travelers, ibid, 15.

⁹Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 305; MANM, roll 23 # 900; John Adam Hussey, "The New Mexico-California Caravan of 1847-1848." New Mexico Historical Review 18 (1943), 8-9.

¹⁰Of the 476 dated guías eight were issued in January, ten in February, two in March, one in April, fourteen in July, 216 in August, 143 in September, 74 in October, 38 in November, and five in December, see Appendix I; Gregg's description of his trip to Chihuahua follows the norm, leaving on August 22, it took him about 40 days to arrive at his destination (October 1), The Commerce of the Prairies, 268, 277-278.

¹¹The Westport Border Star published a register of the men, wagons, and stock which passed Council Grove during the months of June and July 1859. During these two months more than 500 men and 1,000 wagons traveled to New Mexico carrying almost 3,000 tons of merchandise, July 15, 1859, p 3; August 12, 1859, p 3; according to the Trinidad Chronicle News some of wagons trains were so long in the late sixties and early seventies that it took two or three days for their teams to pass through Uncle Dick Wootton's toll gate, cited in Honora DeBusk Smith, "Early Life in Trinidad and the Purgatory Valley," unpublished Master's Thesis, Colorado College, 1930, 29; although many of these caravans were larger than the 1847-1848 convoy to California that involved 209 men (50 of whom were boys under 16), they probably also relied on very young males for much of the work, Hussey, "The New Mexico-California Caravan of 1847-1848," 1-16.

¹²See Appendix I.

¹³William B. Napton, Over the Santa Fe Trail, 1857 (Santa Fe: Stagecoach Press, 1964), 16.

¹⁴Alvin R. Sunseri, "The Hazards of the Trail," El Palacio 81 (Fall 1975), 29-38. George R. Gibson traveling north with very light wagons noted that they were able to travel twice the distance as when they had full loads, but he seldom made more than twenty-five miles in a day, Over the Chihuahua and Santa Fe Trails, 12-13, 15, 28, 30, 33-36.

¹⁵Gregg, The Commerce of the Prairies, 288-289; for a list of arrieros listed in the guías, see Appendix II.

¹⁶Frazer, Over the Chihuahua and Santa Fe Trails, 17.

¹⁷Cooke, Philip St. George, "A Journal of the Santa Fe Trail," Mississippi Valley Historical Review XII (1935), 72-98, 227-255.

¹⁸Gregg, The Commerce of the Prairies, 128-129; Moorhead, New Mexico's Royal Road, 87.

¹⁹Cited in Sunseri, "The Hazards of the Trail," 33.

²⁰Not all New Mexican goods traveling south were carried by mules. Some of them were hauled in wagons pulled by oxen, but it appears that until the Mexican War pack mules were the favored mode of transportation, Jose Ortiz y Pino III, Don José: The Last Patrón (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1981), 5; Erasmo Gamboa, "The Mexican Mule Pack System of Transportation in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia," Journal of the West, 29 Jan 1990), 16-28; Gregg, The Commerce of the Prairies, 319; Moorhead, New Mexico's Royal Road, 86; Janet Lecompte, Pueblo Hardscrabble Greenhorn: The Upper Arkansas, 1832-1856 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 81; Gregg asserts that even the nomenclature of the apparatus had been adopted by the Army, The Commerce of the Prairies, 129.

²¹Gamboa, "The Mexican Mule Pack System," 17-18; Moorhead, New Mexico's Royal Road, 86-87.

²²John Keast Lord, cited in Gamboa, "The Mexican Mule Pack System," 18.

²³Moorhead, New Mexico's Royal Road, 87-89; Gamboa, "The Mexican Pack Mule System," 18.

²⁴Gregg, The Commerce of the Prairies, 286; Moorhead, New Mexico's Royal Road, 87; Gamboa, "The Mexican Mule Pack System," 19.

²⁵It is not possible to establish if these represented standard measurements of volume, weight, or value.

²⁶Subcomisario Francisco Sarracino admitted that the scribe had made an honest error in recording the merchandise of Eduardo Ara on November 29, 1835, MANM, roll 21 # 377.

²⁷For the cuaderno de guías reference see MANM, roll 34 #1215; for the guía itself, see roll 36 #1267.

²⁸MANM, roll 34 # 1205.

²⁹MANM, roll 34 # 1208, 1215.

³⁰For Tomás Baca see MANM, roll 21 # 278, 302, 311, 320, roll 22 # 1180 and roll 30 # 319; for Vicente Baca see roll 10 # 328, roll 12 # 1155, and roll 30 # 320; for Francisco García see roll 21 # 277 and roll 37 # 402; for José Montaño see roll 21 # 304, 307, 314, 336, and roll 32 # 1651.

³¹See Appendix I. The number and possibly the bulk of the shipments sent by hispanos was greater than that sent by Anglos although the value was smaller. For example surviving records indicate that in 1835 there were 19 Anglo shipments to 31 Hispano, in 1836 34 Anglo and 11 Hispano, in 1837 almost even, 24 Anglo and 25 Hispano; in 1838 12 Anglo and 40 Hispano, in 1839 32 Anglo and 77 Hispanos; in 1840 6 and 74 and in 1843 12 and 72 respectively; Gregg does not distinguish between American and New Mexican loads, but also notes the growth in value of the merchandise sent to Mexico through the Royal Road after 1831, The Commerce of the Prairies, 332.

³²MANM, roll 32 # 1206, 1639, 1648, 1652, 1660.

³³More than 300 individuals were listed as owners of merchandise. Some, like Agapito Albo, José Cordero, Francisco Elguea, and Manuel Escudero were from the internal provinces, but the majority were New Mexicans; Barreiro noted that, "New Mexicans trade quite actively with the neighboring provinces exporting annually flocks of sheep, hides, piñon nuts, coarse woolen goods, tobacco and other articles. Some have contracts in Durango for the delivery of fifteen thousand sheep or more for which they received nine or more reales," Ojeada sobre Nuevo Mexico, 287. Barreiro' s report is printed in its original form in Three New Mexico Chronicles, ed. and trans. by H. Bailey Carroll and J. Villasana Haggard (New York: Arno Press, 1967), 263-318. It is not clear if, and how, New Mexicans ever carried tobacco to the interior of Mexico, as its production and sale had been an important government monopoly throughout the colonial period; for the excessive regulations associated with the tobacco monopoly, see MANM, roll 1 # 565-568.

³⁴Their last names were Archuleta, Armijo, Baca, Chavez, Gutiérrez, Luna, Ortiz, Otero, Perea, Pino, Saavedra, Salas, Salazar, Sandoval, Valdez, and Yrizarri; one of the best studies of socio-economic conditions in New Mexico John O. Baxter's, Las Carneradas: Sheep Trading in New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987) devotes an excellent chapter to the period prior to the Mexican War, 89-110.

³⁵The few surviving records for 1842 do not include any shipments of sheep, but surviving tornaguías and guías issued in Mexico appear to indicate that trading might not have been too different from that of previous years; Felipe Chávez's papers at the University of New Mexico and at the State Archives Center at Santa Fe clearly demonstrate the importance of the sheep trade at least through the 1870s; for a more detailed discussion of the sheep trade to California, see chapter 4 and Baxter, Las Carneradas, 111-150; Donald Chaput, Francois X. Aubry: Trader, Trailmaker and Voyageur in she Southwest, 1846-1854 (Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1975), 113-122, 137-149; Walker D. Wyman, "F. X. Aubry: Santa Fe Freighter, Pathfinder, and Explorer." New Mexico Historical Review 7 (1932), 1-31.

³⁶In 1839 Juan Silva carried two bundles of domestic merchandise valued at 35 pesos 2 reales, MANM, roll 21 # 327. The same day Anastasio Sandoval took 14 bundles assessed at 38 pesos, MANM, roll 21 # 327. Two weeks later Juan Bautista Montoya hauled four bundles worth 46 pesos, MANM, roll 21 # 334. For Santillanes's pase (pass) see MANM, roll 25 # 1460. There were others whose loads were not appraised and who were likely to have carried goods not in excess of the above sums.

³⁷This assessment appears extremely low and might be a mistake, MANM, roll 32 # 1660.

³⁸MANM, roll 32 # 1648, 1652, 1654, 1656, 1658, 1660.

³⁹MANM, roll 15 # 828-835; for samples of exemption requests see MANM, roll 21 # 897-898, roll 23 # 705-710; roll 25 # 804.

⁴⁰Juan Armijo carried 1,200 common blankets in Aug 1839, MANM, roll 21 # 325; Manuel Armijo took 1,800 common blankets at the same time, roll 21 # 325; he had carried 20 tercios of blankets in 1835, roll 21 # 274; Juan Bautista Baca also took 460 blankets in 1836, roll 21 # 294; others, like Antonio Sandoval, Julián and Juan Tenorio carried smaller quantities, roll 21 # 324, 308, and 309; for Felipe Romero's shipment, see MANM roll 25 # 1445.

⁴¹See Appendix I.

⁴²For Agapito Albo see MANM, roll 19 # 323; roll 21 # 318. For Manuel Armijo see MANM roll 21 # 274, 275, 294, 299, 301, 303, 305, 325, 348, 349, 354; roll 37 # 393; roll 40 # 282; the fact that the guías include no information on Armijo's shipments of foreign goods to Mexico, particularly after 1839, is a good indication that a sizable proportion of the trading activities was not recorded by the Aduana (Customs) officials.

⁴³MANM roll 21 # 278, 279, 302, 311, 346; roll 22 # 1180; roll 30 # 319; roll 34 # 1206.

⁴⁴MANM roll 30 # 320; roll 37 # 397, 398; roll 40 # 314, 316.

⁴⁵MANM, roll 21 # 279, 311, 332, 1206, 1207; roll 34 # 1206, 1207. Pedro Córdoba is another merchant who appeared to have increased his relatively small investment. He made three trips in 1838, 1844, and 1845. He specialized in domestic merchandise and augmented the size and value of his shipments each year, MANM, roll 21 # 312; roll 37 # 401; roll 40 # 332.

⁴⁶MANM, roll 21 # 297, 314, 337, 360; roll 27 # 643.

⁴⁷For Diego Gómez, see MANM, roll 21 # 361, roll 34 # 1214, roll 37 # 407; for Salvador López, see MANM, roll 21 # 312, 355; for José Dolores Durán, see MANM, roll 21 # 312, 353; for Juan Miguel Mascarenas, see roll 21 # 326, roll 25 # 1467, roll 34 # 1208, roll 40 # 324; for Blas Lucero, see MANM roll 21 # 304, 333; roll 34 # 1207; for Mariano Lucero, see MANM roll 21 # 305; roll 34 # 1215; for Pedro Antonio Lucero, see MANM roll 21 # 329, 352; roll 34 # 1209; roll 37 # 403. There were many others who appear to fall in this category—Juan Miguel Mascarenas made trips in 1838, 1839, 1843, and 1845, roll 21 # 326, roll 25 # 1467; roll 34 # 1208, and roll 40 # 324; Francisco Antonio Mestas in 1839, 1840, 1843, 1844, roll 21 # 329, 361, roll 34 # 1207, roll 37 # 403; José Nicolás Montoya in 1839, 1840, and 1841, roll 21 # 338, 352, roll 30 # 320; Antonio Matías Ortiz in 1839, 1840, 1843, and 1844, roll 21 # 323, 354, roll 34 # 1207, roll 37 # 396; Isidro Ortiz in 1839 and 1840, roll 21 # 335, 360; Antonio Alejandro Pacheco in 1838 and 1839, roll 21 # 313, 327, roll 25 # 1449; Blas Padilla in 1839, 1840, and 1845, roll 21 # 327, 354; Manuel Antonio Sánchez in 1835, 1837, and 1839, roll 21 # 283, 303, 328; Jesús María Silva in 1840, 1844, and 1845, roll 21 # 348, roll 28 # 762; roll 37 # 397, 398, roll 40 # 286, # 321; Juan Tenorio in 1838 and 1839, roll 21 # 309, 333; Julián Tenorio in 1838, 1840, and 1844, roll 21 # 308, 309, 357, roll 37 # 399; Ignacio Díaz Valdez in 1843 and 1844, roll 34 # 1271, roll 37 # 396, 397.

⁴⁸See Appendix I.

⁴⁹MANM, roll 21 # 305; roll 34 # 1205; roll 40 # 283; roll 21 # 317; roll 21 # 316.

⁵⁰MANM, roll 21 # 356; roll 37 # 402; roll 24 # 759; roll 34 # 1209.

⁵¹Crampton, C. Gregory and Madsen, Steven K, In Search of the Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles, 1829-1848 (Salt Lake City: Gibbs-Smith Publisher, 1994); Antonio Armijo Journal, University of New Mexico, Zimmerman Library, Special Collections.

⁵²MANM, roll 21 # 334; roll 34 # 1202; roll 37 # 403, 405.

⁵³Hussey, "The New Mexico-California Caravan of 1847-1848," 1-16.

⁵⁴It is not possible to establish if García and Sánchez were from New Mexico. Sánchez received guías numbers 3 and 6. García's guía has not survived, but it is listed in the cuaderno, MANM, roll 6 # 463. 465, 474, 475, 477. For a complete listing of all surviving information on guías issued to hispanos in New Mexico and pertinent tornaguías, see Appendix I.

⁵⁵Jesús Contreras purchased one tercio of foreign goods from Solomon Houck, Aug 2, 1832, MANM roll 15 # 1028; José Francisco Ortiz from Z. Nolan, Oct 14, 1828, roll 8 # 1342; José Francisco Valverde from John E. Hardman, Oct 3, 1831, roll 14 # 250; Juan Vizcarra purchased from Luis Robidoux, roll 14 # 294, Nov. 28, 1831; José María Zuloaga, foreign merchandise purchased in the United States and in the area, Sep 22, 1845, roll 40 # 349; Vicente Baca, (possibly arriero for Antonio Robidoux), one tercio of foreign merchandise bought in the country, Nov 18, 1829, roll 10 # 382; Juan Felipe Carrillo, two piezas of foreign merchandise bought in Sta Fe, roll 21 # 360, Oct 16, 1840; José Manuel Sánchez, two tercios of foreign merchandise bought locally, Sep 4, 1845, roll 49 # 285.

⁵⁶Their businesses probably extended to many communities in northern Mexico; Vicente Otero made a significant purchase in Chihuahua in 1832 paying 1,541 pesos in duties, MANM, roll 15 # 1023; José Chávez dealt with wholesalers in Durango where in 1837 he purchased 50 pieces of foreign goods valued at 7,680 dollars, MANM, roll 24 # 802.

⁵⁷Juan Otero paid 100 percent surcharge on the merchandise he purchased from Manuel Alvarez, MAP, roll 1 # 458461.

⁵⁸Few guías survive detailing shipments of foreign goods, see Appendix I; for the most interesting ones, see MANM roll 34 # 1205, roll 37 # 397, 472. For José's guías see MANM, roll 34 # 1294, 1205, roll 37 # 394, 398; for Mariano's see roll 37 # 395; for Antonio José Otero, see roll 37 # 392, 395, 396.

⁵⁹MANM, roll 34 # 1233-1240.

⁶⁰The documents record 47 consignments. The most popular consignees were José Cordero, Juan de Dios Márquez, Juan María Ponce de León, Ignacio Ronquillo, Juan Nepomuceno Urquide, Juan Yzurrieta, and Francisco Zuviría; for a complete list of these transactions, see Appendix I.