Historic presentation on some of the women who traveled through southern New Mexico on the El Camino Real circa 1600, surviving the Jornada del Muerto.

1. Presented by Sherry Fletcher

2. Daughters of the Camino Real who
traveled the Royal Road and survived
the Jornada del Muerto

3. 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

4. The trail was nationally
significant for its use in
conquest, colonization,
settlement, missionary work,
supply, commerce, cultural
exchange and military
campaigns.

5. 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.

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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.”

12. 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.

13. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. In the unIted states, the
approxImate modern day el CamIno
real Is I-25 runnIng from
el paso northward to santa fe and
beyond.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. El Camino Real Project 1995

28. 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!

29. 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.

30. 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:

31. Dona Eufema
Dona Juana de Trejo, wife of Capt. Diego de Zubia and daughter of Dona
Eufema
Dona Isabel Sanchez, wife of Capt.Diego Nanez and daughter of Capt.
Alonso Sanchez
Dona Beatriz Navarro Rodriguez y Castano de Sosa, wife of Capt Alonzo
de Sosa Albornoz
Dona Isabel Holguin, wife of Alferez Juan de Vitorio Carvanjal and
daughter of Alferez Juan Lopez Hoguin
Dona Lucia (Luisa) Lopez Robledo, wife of Perez de Bustillo
Dona Pasquala Bernal, wife of Juan Griego
The 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

32. Whose Vision and What Vision of Society Do they
represent during the Spanish Colonial era?

33. J. Paul and Mary Taylor at
groundbreaking of Camino Real
Heritage Centre 1998

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

35. Then and Now- 411 years of Blazing New Horizons
19 June 2009

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