From 1540, when intensive exploration north from Mexico got
under way, until 1821, when Mexico became independent of Spain,
today's Southwestern states of California, Arizona, New Mexico,
Texas, Nevada, Utah, and much of Colorado formed part of the
wealthy Spanish colony of New Spain, as Mexico was then called.
Spain had only a nominal hold over this vast territory; permanent
colonies were established in coastal California, southern Arizona, the
Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, and in Texas. Yet, the years of
Spanish control over the Southwest left remnants of Spanish culture
firmly stamped on the area: "This is an imprint," one Spaniard
recently wrote, "that nothing and nobody can erase, for history is
ineradicable, though it is all too often forgotten by many." ¹

What is most often forgotten is that this colonial period in today's
Southwest belonged as much to Mexico and Mexicans as it did to
Spain and Spaniards. Although the leaders of Spain's exploring and
colonizing expeditions were usually persons born in Spain, the rank
and file of those groups consisted of persons born in Mexico, usually of
mixed blood, whose culture combined Indian and Spanish elements.
These "Spanish" pioneers were neither Indian nor Spanish, but Mexi-
can. Even though this chapter treats a period in which Spain con-
trolled the Southwest, those colonists who entered the region are re-
ferred to as Mexicans or Spanish Mexicans, terms which correspond to
American and Anglo American.

Beginning in 1513 when Juan Ponce de León landed on the shores
of Florida, Spain's explorers were the first Europeans to explore the
area that is now the United States. By the 1520s Spanish maritime
explorers had cruised along the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico,
becoming the first Europeans to see Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas,
while others sailed up the Atlantic coast to the Carolinas. Between
1539 and 1541 Hernando De Soto led a large, well-equipped

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