Mexico City to Santa Fe:

Spanish Pioneers on the Camino Real, 1693-94

By José Antonio Esquibel

Forthcoming in Volume 2 of an

El Camino Real Project anthology publication

Available around December 1999

In the spring of 1995 I was introduce to Gabrielle Palmer, director of the El Camino Real Project for the State of New Mexico, by Cordelia (Dedie) Thomas Snow. Dedie was preparing an essay for inclusion in the second volume of papers to be published for the El Camino Real Project by the New Mexico Bureau of Land Management —Gabrielle was editing the essays for the volume. I had shared my monograph about the families recruited at Mexico City in 1693 as colonists for New Mexico with Dedie, and she suggested that Gabrielle would perhaps be interested in the material.

I met with Gabrielle at her place of residence in Santa Fe, and left her a copy of my monograph entitled Remembrance:Recordación: The Spanish Colonists that Arrived in Santa Fe, 23 June 1694, printed by the Genealogical Society of Hispanic America (Denver 1994). Later, we met again and she asked if I would be willing to rewrite the material, as she was very interested in an essay about pioneer settlers on El Camino Real. I was pleased to take on the task and excited about the challenge to re-present the material from the monograph.

The result was an essay that I like very much, which I completed in the summer of 1995. The essay, and the monagraph it is derived from are based in the research conducted for "The Spanish Recolonization of New Mexico: An Account of the Families Recruited at Mexico City in 1693" (José Antonio Esquibel and John B. Colligan). "Mexico City to Santa Fe" is an essay about a group of pioneers that spent nine months of their lives living on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. They were recruited as colonizers of New Mexico and represent the largest group of people to traverse the entire route of El Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Their journey is more than comparable to the experience of pioneers that travel across America from the east to the west. "Mexico City to Santa Fe" relates the story of pioneers that came from the south to the north.

The Bureau of Land Management published the first anthology volume of El Camino Real Project in 1993 (El Camino Feal de Tierra Adentro, Gabirelle G. Palmer, ed., Buereau of Zland Management, Santa Fe, Cultural Resources Series, no. II, 1993). It is among the very few publications dedicated to the subject of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. The second volume, which will also be a collection of scholarly essays regarding the various aspects of the history of El Camino Real, is over due for publication. It was originally intended to be published in 1998 to coincide with the cuartocentenario commemoration.

I recently spoke with Gabrielle, and she is hopeful that the second volume will be available in early 1999. As soon as the volume is available, I will post additional information.