Review by Ed Quillen
History – August 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
Along the Northern Frontier – Spanish Explorations in Colorado
by Phil Carson
Published in 1998 by Johnson Books
ISBN 1-55566-216-1
DURING THE THREE CENTURIES of European imperial expansion into North America, Colorado wasn’t part of anybody’s grand design. Colorado, and especially Central Colorado, lay not at the core, but at the fringe — forbidding, remote, isolated.
And yet the Empire of Spain came close. By 1542, just 50 years after Columbus touched land in the Caribbean, Don Francisco Vàsquez de Coronado penetrated deep into the interior, clear to Taos Pueblo, just 45 miles south of the current state line.
In 1598, permanent Spanish settlement ascended the Rio Grande with Don Juan de Oñate’s official colonization of New Mexico, and one result, beyond the quadricentennial observations this year, was the founding of La Villa Real de Santa Fé de San Francisco — then and now the capital of New Mexico.
But there the imperial engine, one that had quickly overwhelmed the Incas and Aztecs, ran out of energy. To put this another way, it took Spain only 118 years to extend its power across the 5,500 miles from Madrid to Santa Fé.
And then it took 241 years, until 1851, for Spanish-speaking colonizers to manage the 136 miles from Santa Fé, the oldest seat of government in the United States, to San Luis, the oldest town in Colorado. And by then, the territory was no longer part of Spain, or even Mexico.
What happened — and didn’t happen — during those two and a half centuries is the story told in Beyond the Northern Frontier, an excellent addition to an oft-neglected but significant part of Colorado’s history.
Author Phil Carson focuses on northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, a domain known to the Spanish as “La Frontera del Norte” and indicated by a sweep of the hand on the map. Its boundaries were deliberately vague, so as not to limit Spanish claims on North America.
What did limit the Spanish, as Carson points out, were the Indians. The Pueblos along the Rio Grande revolted against Spanish misrule in 1679, and recovering the territory for the empire cost plenty in time and blood. Farther north, in present Colorado, were the Utes; west were the Hopi and Navajo, east were the Apache and later the Comanche. None of these nations was in any hurry to accommodate the Spanish, though some were willing to trade.
Spanish policy toward this edge of the empire was never consistent, as Carson explains. His book is organized chronologically, with each chapter covering a phase of New Mexico’s territorial history and focusing on the northern frontier. Sometimes the authorities encouraged settlement by impresarios who would establish great rancheros, complete with gristmills and garrisons, and people them with recruited colonists.
At other times, Spain tolerated exploration, and occasionally organized expeditions to find out exactly what might lie in that maze of northern mountains.
There was also flat-out exploitation — some slave-hunting ventures. And on occasion, the empire encouraged trade, resuming patterns established by the Pueblos before the Spanish arrived — bison pelts in exchange for cotton and copper
But there never was a consistent view, and the most persistent notion was to treat the northern frontier as a buffer zone of sorts. Get the Indians to side with Spain, as much as they could be persuaded to side with anybody, and they would discourage invaders like the French, Russians, and Americans.
Although the colonial administrators were often men of great energy, they were at the far end of a treacherous supply route from Chihuahua. Further, they had little in the way of official support, and the local resources were scant.
IN COLORADO, their tangible accomplishments were so minimal that archæologists still argue about the location of a stone Spanish fort built to protect Sangre de Christo Pass (an early variant of today’s La Veta Pass), and we haven’t yet found the site of Juan Bautista de Anza’s great battle against Cuerno Verde and the Jupe Comanche.
But as Carson concludes, another sort of legacy endures, perhaps more permanent than the Palace of the Governors in New Mexico — place names like San Luis del Culebra and San Patricio, geographic names like Sangre de Christo and Sierra de La Plata, family names like Gallegos and Espinosa, along with the enterprises of the Spanish frontier: mining, livestock, and irrigated agriculture, all of which still employ terminology derived from the melodious Spanish tongue.
CARSON’S WRITING is smooth and solidly documented, with good source notes and a useful bibliography, plus informative maps and pictures. Sometimes this book was a little dry for my taste — I occasionally wished for some Marshall Sprague exuberance, or at least a little informed speculation, rather than such devoted adherence to the story.
But it’s quite a story, covering imperial ambitions, individuals who ranged from traitors to bold idealists, acts of unspeakable cruelty and deeds of valor and generosity — the full panoply of human nature operating at the limits of empire — and often the limits of human endurance, too.
If you believe, as I did for many years, that Colorado’s history began with the gold rush of 1859, then there’s a fascinating earlier Colorado you’ll enjoy learning about, and this authoritative yet quite accessible book, Across the Northern Frontier, may be the best place to start.
— Ed Quillen
Phil Carson, the author of Across the Northern Frontier, will speak at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 22, in the Poncha Springs Town Park as part of the fifth annual Anza Day celebration.
He will autograph his book from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Aug. 22 at First Street Books in Salida.
