The Spanish Empire, at its peak, encompassed much of the Western Hemisphere (thanks to the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas) and is said to be one of the largest empires ever to exist. The lands that Spain claimed were more than it controlled on the ground, but it was still an immense sphere of hegemony. The bulk of Spain’s holdings at the Empire’s peak in the 1700s were in the Western Hemisphere, with the only large part of the Empire in the Eastern Hemisphere other than Spain itself being the Philippines. The map below shows the Provincias of Spain in the Americas and Caribbean Sea and gives an idea of the immensity of its governmental expanse.
In North America Spain’s reach covered not just what is now the Southern and Southwest United States of America, but farther north, up the Atlantic to the Chesapeake Bay, up the Pacific to Vancouver Island and Alaska, up the Mississippi to the Illinois country. A remarkably detailed map of Spain’s presence in North and Central America is shown below. This map shows territory claimed by Spain over time, even if its possession sometimes amounted only to a ship sailing by, perhaps landing a small boat, and performing the formal act of possession, in the process providing Spanish names for geographical features. The map also shows missions, towns, and presidios as well as expeditions and trails and is very information intense. To study the information contained here, it may be best to go to the Wikipedia entry on the Spanish Colonization of the Americas or follow the link here for a full-page image of this map. The map can be downloaded by following this link and expanded for more detailed study. Although the source of the map is unknown to us, other than by the name “Nagihuin”, the map seems to be historically accurate, although it might be considered Ibero-centric and does not show the claims of other nations such as France, England, and Russia.
This presence of Spain in North America is not well known for the most part, even though across much of this vast territory the old names survive: cities like San Antonio, Albuquerque, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco. And rivers: the Colorados, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Sacramento, and many more. These names are all so familiar that they barely even register on us as foreign names. And then there are the remnants of the Caminos Reales (Royal Roads) in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and California. The old roads remain today sometimes only as memories or faint traces in the ground, but sometimes as names on street and highway signs, the “Camino Reals” of several states or the “Old Spanish Trails” or the “King’s Highways”.
Despite these linguistic remains, and of course structures such as churches and forts, we may not recognize the overall importance of Spain in “American” history. To most of us Americans of a certain age, what we learned in school was “British American” history. Yet for much of the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain’s dominance of American seas, fueled by silver wealth from the Spanish colonies, kept other European powers largely at bay, despite the establishment of fledgling Swedish, Dutch, French, English, and Russian colonies elsewhere in North America.
The Northern New Spain Data Base
With a long-standing interest in Spanish history and culture (especially music) enhanced by living in New Mexico, about 20 years ago I developed an interactive data base of places in North America with a significant Spanish imprint north of about 22 degrees latitude (north of Zacatecas). The area encompasses what is often considered Northern New Spain. The intent was to provide a searchable data base so as to discern settlement patterns and provide information on the “founding” of Spanish places, including communities, missions, and presidios. The original data base contained hundreds of entries with online access provided to the data base through a website (southwest frontiers.org). The data base information for each location included historic place name, state, current place name, type of occupation (such as mission, military, land grant, civilian or community), year of “founding” (sometimes a vague concept), principal person (or “founder”), ethnic group (such as indigenous tribal group), and brief (usually) comments on the history of the place, particularly its beginnings. A sample snapshot of one place is shown below to illustrate the idea.
The “Northern New Spain” data base was presented at a Historical Society of New Mexico conference in 2002 and received a fair amount of interest. Unfortunately, the data base and associated website were too unwieldy (and costly) for me to maintain over time, so I was not able to continue this framework. Over the years I did add more places to the data base, particularly those in the southeast U. S. I also added more to the New Mexico entries. Recently, I decided that a Google map including most of the data base entries would be the best way to preserve the information in an easily accessible format. At this point, we are able to present the first issue of our “Spain in North America” Google map, containing for now just the New Mexico entries.
In lieu of presenting the complete data base, we will be providing pages on each state’s entries as also contained in the “Spain in North America” Google map. The first of these available is for New Mexico, and can be seen here. There is also a paper on the colonization process and sequences in New Mexico here. We are also providing a bibliography of those references used in developing the overall data base. It is available here.