SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

MISSION TRADE (continued)

The Trip To New Mexico

As the Procurador-General purchased the supplies, they were stored in a warehouse in Mexico City. When the full stock had been collected, he would send orders for the mayordomos in charge of the wagons to bring them to the warehouse and load them.

Once loaded, the wagon train set out for Santa Fe, about sixteen hundred miles to the north. The trip took about six months, including a two or three week stopover at Zacatecas, four hundred miles from Mexico City. In 1631 this was the last town at the edge of the empty lands of the north, where the wagons would refit and resupply before setting out into the wilderness. At a distance of nine hundred miles from Mexico City the road passed through a small island of civilization in the form of the mining district of Santa Bárbara, established in 1567. By 1600 mining towns, ranch holdings, and farms extended for eighty miles up the valleys of the tributaries of the Río del Parral and the Río Florida, north of Santa Bárbara. The town of Parral was founded near Santa Bárbara in 1631 and quickly grew into a major new commercial center of the north. It became the principal point where merchants and Franciscans could sell goods from New Mexico. The Santa Bárbara area must have been considered an oasis in the unpopulated northlands. It provided a welcome rest stop before the next long, desolate leg of the journey. After Santa Bárbara, the road ran about 560 miles through flat arid country inhabited largely by nomadic Indians before it reached Senecú on the Rio Grande, about fifteen miles south of Socorro. There the caravan would stop and resupply again before continuing on to ecclesiastical headquarters at Santo Domingo, another 125 miles north. [3]

A supply train usually had thirty-two wagons. It was under the supervision of the Procurador-General, who made each round trip himself. The thirty-two wagons were divided into two cuadrillas or sections of sixteen wagons, each under the supervision of a mayordomo. The cuadrilla was divided into two subsections of eight wagons, with the mayordomo probably driving the lead wagon of the leading subsection and the trailing subsection supervised by the driver of its lead wagon. Each wagon had a single chirrionero, or driver, assigned to it, so that there were thirty-two men under the direction of the Procurador-General. In addition, the mule train employed four Plains Indians to serve as scouts, drovers, and hunters, and sixteen Indian women as cooks and as needed, making a total wagon crew of fifty-two. Accompanying each wagon train was a military escort of unstated size. A second friar accompanied the Procurador-General as his companion and assistant on the road. Frequently other friars, merchants, and government personnel on their way to New Mexico would join the train.

A number of animals accompanied the train, some to pull the wagons and others to serve as food for the people making the journey. A team of eight mules hauled each wagon. A wagon had two teams and alternated between them, making sixteen mules per wagon. The entire caravan had an additional thirty-two mules to replace those that were lost or died on the trip, for a total of 544 mules on the usual train. As the meat supply for the trip, seventy-two head of cattle would be driven with the train. Additionally, each friar on his way to New Mexico for the first time received ten heifers, ten sheep, and forty-eight hens. The heifers and sheep were the beginning of the new friar's mission herds, while the chickens were to be eaten on the road as needed, with the survivors becoming part of the mission flock. In the dispatch of 1631, there were twenty new friars, meaning that the wagon train had two hundred heifers and two hundred sheep along with the seventy-two head of livestock that usually accompanied it. The usual train, therefore, had anywhere from about six hundred to about one thousand head of stock moving in company with the wagons.

Each wagon could carry a minimum of two tons of cargo. In the 1660s they were loaded far beyond that weight, probably hauling as much as three tons. The wagons were strong four-wheeled vehicles very similar in design to the wagons built a century later in the Conestoga Valley of Pennsylvania. This design derived from a general wainwright's tradition common to most of sixteenth century Europe. [4] They had iron-tired, spoked wheels and a canvas cover mounted on ribs above the wagon bed. Each wagon carried a supply of extra tires and axle parts. Other spare parts were carried by selected wagons in the cuadrillas. These included 16 axles, 150 spokes, harness parts, 144 prefabricated mule shoes, and tools enough to rebuild a wagon on the road.

The Procurador-General outfitted the wagons not only for utility, but with an eye toward appropriate ceremony. The lead wagon of each cuadrillas had four bells on a two bell-frame on each of the two lead mules. The entire team pulling the two lead wagons were outfitted with rebozos, blankets more decorative than the mantas worn as harness-blankets by the other teams. Finally, the four lead wagons of the four subsections of the cuadrillas each flew a banner with the royal coat of arms, notifying all who watched the train pass that this was a caravan of some importance.

These wagons averaged about ten miles per day along the unmaintained roads of northern Mexico. Compared with the twelve to fourteen miles per day that Conestoga freight wagons covered on the surfaced and maintained roads of the American Northeast in the early 1800s, this was an astonishing achievement. The amount of freight hauled was equally astonishing. Later versions of the Conestoga used on the Santa Fe Trail from St. Louis to Santa Fe in the 1850s and 1860s were considered to be pushing their limits when they hauled three tons, while the freight wagons of the mission supply trains carried an average of over two tons. The usual train on the Santa Fe Trail in 1860 consisted of twenty-five wagons, carrying a total of about seventy to seventy-five tons. The mission supply train hauled over eighty tons.

From Senecú, the wagon train continued north to Santo Domingo, the ecclesiastical headquarters of the province during much of the seventeenth century. Missions along the route probably received their supplies as the train passed through. When the wagon train arrived at Santo Domingo, the Procurador divided the train into smaller caravans, each carrying the supplies for missions in other regions of the province. For example, one section headed west to Acoma, the Zuñi missions, and on to the Hopi establishments. A second went north to Santa Fe and the Rio Arriba missions. A third division headed east to the Galisteo missions and on south to the Salinas area. [5]

The caravan to Salinas might consist of from two to four wagons. The actual number depended on how many friars were stationed at the missions of Salinas at the time and what extra goods above the standard issue they had ordered. [6] Once they were unloaded, the wagons returned to Santo Domingo to await the return of all the other wagons and the assembly of the wagon train for the trip back to Mexico City that would begin within a few months. [7]

The returning wagons usually carried the products of manufacturing and collection carried out at each mission. [8] The missions carried on a strong trade with the Santa Bárbara-Parral area, orienting much of their daily and yearly activity to provide for this trade. Sometimes the governor of the province would press the wagons into service for shipping his own trade goods to the south. The legality of this comprised one of the main points of disagreement between civil and ecclesiastical authorities in New Mexico. [9]