Meanwhile in Santa Fe Plaza

To get an idea of the community of Santa Fe in its infancy, let's visit the town square, or plaza which is the center of commerce and community.

The square is noisy - clanging caravan bells, hawking peddlers, arguing traders, and shouting wagon master arriving in town.  At 10 am everyone is eager to do business before the midday heat drives most inside to the coolness of thick-walled whitewashed rooms or the tree shaded courtyards around the private homes. 

In 1835, the 4,000 residents of Santa Fe welcome the caravans as a break in their isolation imposed by Spanish trade restrictions, lack of roads and navigable rivers.  The Santa Fe locals trade in pinon nuts (from mountain scrub pine), sheep, goats, and coarse wool.  They have a limited outlet for their products.  Their tools are primitive with no craftsmen or manufacturers. 

To the American traders, Santa Fe means safety after weeks of danger and with luck, good profits. One trader wrote "arrived at last in the strange place to which our wild love of novelty lead us - excitement tingled through our veins."

What makes up the town plaza?  As wagons enter the plaza's east side from the road to Pecos, they cross San Francisco Street.  It leads to the cathedral with its shady portales.   Beyond are the snow capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  They stop at the ornate customhouse to unload goods for inspection.  Adjoining the customhouse are the shops, in the rear is a placita (little court) which is shared by private homes.

The hotel welcomes wagon crews with clean beds, bathing facilities, meals of chili and lamb, costly liquor and free nightly dances.  The wagon master goes to the fashionable salon of Spanish gambling, La Tules.  Shrewd, wealthy and bejeweled, the owners is an aristocrat respected in New Mexican society. 

The trader's paymaster pays the crew - some in goods, others in gold coins.  The men, from seven countries speak diverse languages.  The trader's partner, a shopkeeper, checks goods brought to his shop on the plaza's south side.  His store, like the others, have interior wooden shutters and barred windows without panes. 

Next time...more inside the Santa Fe Plaza.
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 4, 1873, while protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, Custer and his 7th Cavalry clash for the first time with the Sioux Indians, who will defeat them three years later at Little Big Horn.