Hispanic Legacy in the American Wild West: The Unseen Foundations

Thanks to much of American historiography and also to Hollywood, our collective imagination believes that what is now known as the American West was a wild, uninhabited, and uncultured territory, gradually populated by wagon trains of settlers in the late 19th century, as depicted in Western films, starting from scratch.

However, reality tells a different story, although neither Spain nor Hispanic America has shown much interest in addressing it.

In truth, it was the Spanish Monarchy that opened many paths through the southern, central, and western parts of what are now the United States. Many of these territories also belonged to Mexico, including California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and much of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming—not to mention areas like Texas and Louisiana, where the Spanish presence was much more evident, or even expeditions to Alaska.

As we have noted on numerous occasions, our language has been present in the United States since the 16th century. Speaking of this century and the West, we must mention Vázquez de Coronado’s expedition from 1540 to 1542, which traversed parts of what are now Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

In the 18th century, some claim there was no Enlightenment in Spain, while others criticize the Enlightenment altogether.

However, far from being a century of decline, it was a dynamic era for the Spanish Monarchy. Starting with Felipe V, the first king of the Bourbon dynasty, efforts were made to secure and even expand vast North American territories, beginning with Texas and reaching much farther west, following the northern Pacific route to Nutka.

Place names such as San Antonio, Escalante, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Valdez clearly speak to our history, legacy, and presence, without which the independence of the United States would not have been possible. It was through this legacy that support was provided to help the patriots defeat the British, from the Caribbean to the Mississippi River.

For this reason, I insist that before criticizing Americans for not knowing their own history, the real problem lies with us Hispanics, who are often unaware and indifferent to our legacy in the land of stars and stripes.

In Utah, for example, a school song commemorates the “Spanish explorers,” while in Spanish schools, this important chapter of history, which deserves to be shared, is largely overlooked:

his is not about defending a “rosy” version of history. We are well aware that the Spanish presence and expansion in those territories were not without enormous challenges, which only highlights the resilience of our ancestors.

But the fact remains that the late 19th-century immigrants were not arriving in a vacuum. They were coming to lands where men of diverse races, united in their faith and allegiance to their king, through missions and small settlements, had already paved the way—not only for the United States but for the Western world as a whole.

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