44 University of California Publications in History

Californias, with the capital at Chihuahua. New Mexico embraced
more than it does today, though the center, then as now, was on the
Rio Grande, and the capital at Santa F6. Long an outpost of New
Spain, New Mexico showed greater activity and was more profitable
than Texas, but its fringes were even less well known or exploited.
 The Spanish governors early in the nineteenth century were
 concerned chiefly with the regulation of trade with old Mexico,
 Indian affairs, and the increasing threat of "Anglo-American" in-
 trusions. Along the Rio Bravo (also known as the Rio Grande del
 Norte) traders went frequently between El Paso and the leading
 settlements of the upper country: Santa F6, Albuquerque, La
 Cafiada, and the rather new Indian trading center of Taos. The
 province in 1818 has been variously estimated to have had a popu-
 lation of from twenty thousand to forty thousand."
 Trade relations and efforts to ward off attacks kept the Spanish
 continually alert to the Navajos on the west, the Utes on the north,
 and the Comanches and Apaches on the east. The last-named tribes
 were also met by the French explorers, who traveled over much
 of the Southwest during the eighteenth century, and by the eager
 advance guard from the United States after the purchase of Loui-
 siana in 1803.
 The Mississippi-to-Rio Grande route was hardly developed suffi-
 ciently to be called the Santa F6 Trail until after Mexican inde-
 pendence, but the territory through which it passed was known
 long before that time to traders of the three countries. In their
 intercourse the traders had found the Indians generally helpful;
 and before the first non-Spanish Europeans reached New Mexico
 across the plains, the French and Spanish were trading with each
 other through the medium of the natives.
 Trade and exploration took the French through nearly all the
 territory between the Mississippi and the Rockies. Many of them
 either stayed voluntarily or were detained in New Mexico, thus
 building up a non-Spanish white group there. The cession of Lou-
 isiana to Spain in 1763 cut off their base of action, with the result
 that the entire West remained under control of the Spaniards.
 From Santa F6, explorations, forays against the Indians, and
 investigations of foreign intrusions were made, giving the Span-
 iards some knowledge of the watershed of the Mississippi. Uriburri,
 Villazur, and Bustamante were prominent explorers. In 1779 Gov-