How to Document the Presence of Otomí and Tlaxcalan Settlers in Colonial New Mexico

This paper is part of a broader research project exploring the potential presence of Otomí Indians, along with other Mesoamerican natives, as frontier settlers in 17th and 18th century New Mexico. Given the challenges in finding definitive evidence, this study examines indirect traces that native colonists from central Mexico may have left in the cultural heritage, collective memory, and ritual practices of several Indo-Hispano communities north of Santa Fe. In particular, I focus on iconographic and symbolic elements found in religious art and contemporary rituals, which serve as circumstantial evidence of their presence. Several scholars have emphasized the role of Tlaxcallan natives in the Spanish conquest and colonization of New Mexico. However, a significant documentary gap exists. Much of the support for early Tlaxcallan presence in the region is based on scant evidence linked to the Barrio de Analco de San Miguel, located across the Santa Fe River from the Spanish settlement established around 1609-1610. Today, people born in the town of Santo Tomás Apóstol del Río de las Trampas claims a Tlaxcallan ancestry because it traces its origins to 1751, when twelve families from the Barrio de Analco received a merced and founded the town.

I have proposed in other papers that Otomí people, too, may have contributed to the colonization of New Mexico, settling alongside other Mesoamerican natives in the Barrio de Analco and then moving elsewhere in the province. I argue that Otomí Indians may have been among the Mesoamerican populations that settled in colonial New Mexico. This paper also reflects on the reasons that explain the scarcity of direct documentary evidence on native conquerors and settlers in the context of European colonial expansion in North America and on the definition of what historians consider historical evidence.