Daughters of the Camino Real

Presented by Sherry Fletcher

Daughters of the Camino Real who traveled the Royal Road and survived

the Jornada del Muerto

From Spanish Capital to Spanish Capital, the Camino Real ran from Mexico City to San Juan Pueblo. The portion of the

Camino Real in the US is 404 miles. Formally established as a road in 1598 by Juan de Onate

The trail was nationally significant for its use in conquest, colonization, settlement, missionary

work, supply, commerce, cultural exchange and military campaigns.

Centuries before Columbus, the trail began as a series of Indian footpaths and evolved into a Pueblo Indian Trade Route, connecting the Rio Grande pueblos with the great civilizations centered at Casas Grande in Mesoamerica.

As did many agricultural practices, the first seeds of corn most likely spread into the Southwest up this

system of trails.

The first breeding horses, cattle and sheep entered the American West via this trail, as did the wheel, gunpowder,

written language, iron and Christianity.It also served as a lifeline for the new Spanish immigrants.

Jornada del Muerto• The Jornada del Muerto was ominous and respected, yet picturesquely beautiful

desert of sun and sand which remains one of New Mexico’s most distinctive landmarks, and whose history comprises one of the West’s most fascinating legacies of the past.

• When the stone marker, which identifies the crossing point of the Camino Real trail, was placed just west of Engel, NM by interested Sierra County residents, the language was carefully crafted to commemorate 400 years of the passage of people and culture which was carried along the trail. The committee was not going to debate the long held grievances of atrocities that have been documented.

Traveling along the Camino Real was

treacherous in places. The Jornada

del Muerto was a shortcut along the trail to avoid some of the difficulties of the lowlands along the river. It was the

only practical means for carts and wagons to bypass the rugged land along the river.

Zebulon Pike and Susan Shelby Magoffin were among the first Americans who came this way. Kit Carson crossed the Jornada del Muerto as a wagon master on his first trip to New Mexico and later led a union Army down El Camino Real to defend New

Mexico from a Confederate invasion.

It took the wagon train 1 ½ years to make the trip from Mexico City to

Santa Fe and back. The journey was extremely dangerous; travelers died of thirst, heat, Indian attacks

and disease. One Spaniard who survived the trail wrote, “Oh God, what a lonely land.”

To the left Rio Grande in its banks prior to the September 2014 rain event in Sierra/Socorro Counties. To the right, rain event of 2014..this is why the Camino Real trail went to the east of the Fray Cristobals.

The memory of Fray Cristobal has been preserved in the name Fra Cristobal mountain range that rises between the Rio Grande and the part of the Royal Road known as La Jornada del Muerto, the “Journey of the Dead Man”. Today travelers pass on the west side of this mountain range, but for several centuries they traveled on the east side.

This 90-mile basin is sparsely vegetated with mesquite, creosote bush, soap-tree yucca, cholla, claret cup

cactus and barrel cactus. Gamma and buffalo grasses grow along the arroyos and playas (low lying areas). Pumice and basaltic stones litter the slope of some of

the hills along the southern reaches of the trail.

Woody plant encroachment, like this lopsided cedar, is a major driver of land degradation in desert grasslands. Land degradation in dry lands, one of the major environmental issues of the twenty-first century, has serious implications for NM’s grasslands.

The Jornada was a sea of grass when the travelers came up the Camino Real. Field guides have been developed by students at NMSU regarding the flora of the area since the inception of the Jornada Experimentation Ranch (formally the College Ranch) of NMSU.The Elevations range from 3,990 feet at the Rio Grande to 5,835 feet at the peak of Summerford Mountain. Native vegetation is characterized by honey mesquite, snakeweed and soaptree yucca. The

When Juan de Onate began his journey in January of 1598 from Santa Barbara, Mexico, south of Chihuahua , he carved a new and shorter trail as part of the Camino Real through the desert

north of El Paso, nearly a quarter of a century before the Mayflower sailed from England. Onate rested, gave thanks, and

celebrated the first Thanksgiving on April 30, 1598.

These hardy individuals were recruited from Mexico City, Zacatecas and the frontier posts surrounding the

mines of Casco, New Vizcaya. All their possessions were packed in oxen-drawn, wooden-wheeled

wagons/carretas.

Measuring four miles in length, the column of immigrants blazed through the torturous desert,on a trail of unstable

geography. Often forced to eat roots and berries, drink water from the occasional water holes or cactus and other plants.

These weary and ragged colonists arrived at the banks of the Rio Grande in April 1598.

Perky Sue BlackfootDaisy White Blaze

In 1821, the American traders blazed the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to New Mexico, linking the United States and Mexico. Wagons plying manufactured goods from the East Coast and

Europe poured into New Mexico. Many American traders continued on down the Camino Real to Chihuahua City. In

1846 during the Mexican War, US troops invaded New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail. By 1850 Mexico had lost almost half

of its territory to the United States.

When the weary travelers arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande, what a sight it was—a beautiful river,

trees, fish below, ducks and geese above….. Once Onate established his first capital at San Gabriel,

north of Espanola, the supply train schedule became stabilized, and the exchange of goods began.

The American section of the Camino Real became a stagecoach route and a string of forts was built along the road to protect the citizenry from Indian attacks.

After the Civil War, the Camino Real slowly lost its importance to the United States. The Navajo and

Apache were defeated in the Indian Wars and were made prisoners of war or hauled off to the

reservations. The forts were abandoned that once protected the travelers along the Camino Real.

In the united states, The approximate modern day El Camino Real is I-25

running from El Paso northward to santa fe and

beyond.

El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was probably the most significant of all the early trails on the North

American continents…..for better or worse, the cultural clashing, compromise, intermarriages and peaceful coexistence forged an unique Culture.

The people and their cultures who traversed the Camino real changed the history of the United

States and Mexico as no other trail has before or since. The cultural compromise of this trail created

and defines the Nuevo Mexicanos of today.

El Camino Real Project 1995

Daughters of the Camino Real• According to Mary Jean Cook’s research, in

1602 Juan Onate decreed honorary titles o the sons of the colonizers. What about the hijas, daughters of the colonizers? Was their legacy or honor through their male offspring. In truth, were it not for the women who also traveled the Camino Real beside the men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there would have been no consummate hidalgos!

Few historical documents record the many women who traveled the royal road

• My research indicates that scribes of Spanish expeditions into the northern borderlands ignored the presence and contributions of courageous women who accompanied the soldiers. Rarely if at all, the scribes included the names of a few women in the muster rolls, complete with cryptic notes of the role they performed. *Dona Ana Robledo, a legendary women was reported to have lived seventeenth century and have been outstanding for her charity and good deeds.

Villagra, Historia Canto• One of the first journals of its kind to be published, this epic

poem about Onate entrade and earliest reference to noting there were twenty-five women who not only contributed to the survival of the expedition through their skills in cooking, mending, washing, nursing and packing, tasks the soldiers could have discharged, but with less efficiency. Along with Franciscan missionaries attached to the expeditionary force, the women comforted the soldiers who died in the line of duty. Of the twenty-five women who also guarded the rooftops during an uprising, the Spanish were seen as intruders and “conquerors”, only nine names were preserved in the known records of Onate’s expedition and other NM records:

Dona EufemaDona Juana de Trejo, wife of Capt. Diego de Zubia and daughter of Dona EufemaDona Isabel Sanchez, wife of Capt.Diego Nanez and daughter of Capt. Alonso SanchezDona Beatriz Navarro Rodriguez y Castano de Sosa, wife of Capt Alonzo de Sosa AlbornozDona Isabel Holguin, wife of Alferez Juan de Vitorio Carvanjal and daughter of Alferez Juan Lopez HoguinDona Lucia (Luisa) Lopez Robledo, wife of Perez de BustilloDona Pasquala Bernal, wife of Juan GriegoThe last six women listed above are known to be common ancestors of many people with New Mexico roots.Happy Mother’s Day /// Dia de la Madre Feliz

Whose Vision and What Vision of Society Do they

represent during the Spanish Colonial era?

J. Paul and Mary Taylor at groundbreaking of Camino Real

Heritage Centre 1998

Banner announcing the El Camino Real de Tierra Adrento display at the Museo De America Madrid, Spain November 1998

Then and Now- 411 years of Blazing New Horizons19 June 2009

The latest of many women who have traveled the Camino Real is Christine Anderson, executive director of Spaceport America…