1599 on the Llano Estacado

Fifty red and white tepees were clustered under the outer edge of the cottonwood grove.  The clamor of hundreds of dogs greeted Vicente de Zaldivar and the 59 men with him, as they rode down the Canadian River (just northwest of present day Fritch). In the year 1599, the mid-September air was cool, and the vast prairies they traveled after leaving the settlements near present day Espanola, New Mexico were delightfully adorned with many colorful flowers.  They had met a member of the band on the Gallinas River, as he headed home, and he had agreed to show them the way.  Zaldivar hoped to capture buffalo and domesticate them, as ordered by Don Juan Onate, the leader of the new settlements.

The Indians were Querechos or Vaqueros (later determined to be of Apache affiliation.)  The Indians used the dogs to haul travois – two poles with webbing in between then loaded with everyday essentials from the tipi covers to bundles of dried meat and dried medicinal plants.  They hunted the buffalo on foot, using the ancient tricks of wearing calf hides to enter the herds and shoot selectively, and sometimes organizing the exciting activity of driving the herd off of a cliff.

Their guide introduced Zaldivar and his officers to the head men of the village. In the conversation (in sign language), Zaldivar learned that a trading party had just returned from the Taos Pueblo, well satisfied with their cotton blankets, bags of dried corn, collection of pottery, and some beautiful turquoise jewelry.  They had delivered buffalo hides and dried buffalo meat, bags of buffalo tallow and suet, and bags of salt from the salinas of the Llano Estacado.

They indicated the first time their people had seen Spanish men and their horses was the expedition of Coronado 50 years before.  In more recent times, in 1581 the Rodriguez-Chamuscado expedition of three priests, nine soldiers and sixteen Indian servants had introduced the tenets of Christianity. After the expedition had left, the two priests who had purposefully stayed behind were soon killed in a pueblo to the west.  The priests had named the vast plains now known as the Llano Estacado “Los Llanos de San Francisco” after their Catholic order. The next year Antonio de Espejo’s expedition had confirmed their martyrdom.

For a month and a half Zaldivar tried to corral adult buffalo, and after failing at that, corralled calves, which struggled so mightily to escape they died. The expedition turned to killing buffalo, processing over a ton of tallow (along with dried meat and hides) to bring back to their struggling settlement in the valley where the Rio Grande meets the Rio Chama. Captain Gaspar Perez de Villagra took notes, and in 1610 published an epic poem in Spain about the beginning years of settlement and exploration with its first ever published description of the Llano Estacado; “All seems to be a peaceful sea, with no sort of valley or hill, where a man can in any way, limit his vision or rest it.”  

The expedition was idyllic. The Apaches were friendly, trading small items and were helpful at times. It was the first of almost 300 annual buffalo hunts by the Spanish settlers of Northern New Mexico. The men that did the hunting each year became known as Ciboleros, hunting the buffalo each fall with lances and bows and arrows, then processing the hides, meat, and tallow for transport, 

sometimes trading the products as far south as Chihuahua. For a hundred years they traded and fought with the Apaches, and in the early 1700’s the Comanches arrived and replaced the Apaches, who moved southeast or southwest or northwest to become the Lipan, Mescalero, and Jicarilla Apaches when the region became under United States control. The term “Llano Estacado” became the most used term for the region around 1800, where one had to bring stakes to tie horses from wandering away and to hang meat from ropes stretched between posts as it dried.

In the 1840’s Santa Fe trader Josiah Gregg in “Commerce of the Prairies” described the Ciboleros as open and friendly, colorfully dressed, wearing flat straw hats, and with horse and weapons gaily decorated with tassels and pennants. They roamed the plains in groups of over a hundred men, with women and children along.

I have seen two museum displays about the Ciboleros, but I don’t remember ever seeing mention of them in any text book for primary or secondary level students. Why is this exciting economic endeavor of many years never taught to our children? It is our history!