The Old Spanish Trail
submitted by: Jay Jones Jones
03 Old Spanish Trail |
In November 1829 Antonio Armijo led a trade caravan with 60 men from Santa Fé, New Mexico to Southern California. They followed in reverse a part of the Dominguez-Escalante route, fording the Colorado River at the Crossing of the Fathers site, and continuing west along the Utah-Arizona border region.
Upon reaching California they traded woolen blankets and serapes, products of New Mexico, for horses and mules from the California ranches. In May of 1830 Armijo and company returned to New Mexico over the same route, losing several animals to the rigors of the journey and to thieves.
William Wolfskill and George C. Yount pioneered a more northerly alternative to Armijo’s difficult route in 1831. This is also known as the Main Route of the Old Spanish Trail and passes through Iron County from Little Creek Canyon east of Paragonah to Newcastle. Although longer than Armijo’s route, the Main Route offered better water and grazing resources for the trade caravans.
According to C. Gregory Crampton and Steven K. Madsen in the 1995 Brooks Lecture, “The Spanish Trail was a horse and mule trail, not a wagon road. Goods were transported on the backs of mules. In California, textiles carried over the Spanish Trail were used for clothing, bedding, carpeting, and sacking.
Among the woolen items hauled overland were serapes (capes), fresadas (blankets), jergas (carpeting), and sabanillas (sheeting, or homespun coverings). Packers blindfolded the mules to keep them calm as saddles, and bales of wool weighing from 200 to 400 pounds, were loaded on each animal.
“One mule in each train was packed with a metate, a stone for grinding maize into tortillas. Frijoles (beans), penole (roasted cornmeal), chili colorado (red chili peppers), atole (corn flour gruel), and beef jerky comprised the traders’ daily bill of fare. Pack trains as much as a mile in length, were kept in line by packers and drivers. Sometimes a few resilient women, and children, accompanied the train.”
At times traveling along with the caravans were trappers, explorers, and home-seekers planning to settle in California.
A tragic part of the legacy of the Old Spanish Trail is the slave trade. Local Paiute Indians, mostly women and children, were captured and sold as slaves for domestic service in New Mexico and California.
William R. Palmer of Cedar City, a noted authority on the Paiutes and local history, was quoted in the Hafen’s book of the Old Spanish Trail:
“In my life time I have known and talked personally with three old Indian women who in their youth had been caught in this slave traffic. I saw their faces blanch after sixty years as they recalled the terrors of their captivity.”
Members of the neighboring Ute tribe would capture Paiutes and hold them for a passing caravan. Palmer asserts that $100 worth of goods, such as guns, knives, blankets, shirts, and trinkets from the caravan could be exchanged for $1,000 worth of human slaves.
One of the local Paiutes stolen by slave traders was a young woman named Quinney, who managed to escape as the caravan holding her was preparing to cross a river. Running all night, she covered quite a distance, but the next day she saw men on horses looking for her, coming dangerously close to discovering her hiding spot. She ran further into the mountains, eventually finding a Ute camp in the Uintah basin. There she married a young brave, and the couple had two or three children. Her husband died after a few years and Quinney returned to her old home and relatives in Cedar City, where she remarried and had more children.
A 1948 obituary in the Iron County Record for John Merricats identifies Quinney as his mother and mentions part of her story. Palmer says that Quinney was Merricats’ grandmother.
After the settlement of pioneers in Utah, some traders from New Mexico applied for a license to trade with the Indians. Brigham Young refused to grant the license because he had heard of the Indian slave trade. In 1852 the Utah Territorial legislature enacted legislation against the slave trade.
According to Hafen: “Caravan trade over the Old Spanish Trail came to its close after the war with Mexico. In the spring of 1848 the last large Mexican mule pack train crawled the long dusty trail from California to Santa Fé. Desultory horse-thieving and Indian slave traffic persisted for a number of years over portions of the route, but the annual caravan commerce was at an end.”
The portion of the Old Spanish Trail from Iron County to Southern California, was important in the establishment of pioneer settlements in Utah. Jefferson Hunt and others brought much needed livestock, seeds, and supplies from Southern California to Utah in the late 1840’s.
Iron Silhouettes mark a portion of the Old Spanish Trail near Newcastle, Utah. Photo courtesy Al Matheson.
To help modern-day motorists know where the Old Spanish Trail was located, Iron County resident Al Matheson has led an effort to place iron silhouettes of pack mules and muleteers on the Old Spanish Trail. With help from other volunteers, many of these silhouettes have been placed near roads and highways, marking the path of the Old Spanish Trail throughout Iron County and beyond.
Some of the roads that follow the trail are unpaved and may not be passable in wet weather. Some locations are remote and may not have cell phone service, so carrying some food and water along while exploring the trail is essential to modern travelers, as it was long ago.