New flavours travel to the Southwest
along the Santa Fe Trail
Following Mexico’s independence in 1821 and the opening of the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri, Santa Fe saw more and more trading (which had been prohibited by Spain, necessitating smuggling), and soon it was the terminus of two major trade routes from the east and the south. After Santa Fe fell to the Americans in 1846, the area really opened up as goods flooded in from the east.
Imported grains such as wheat became readily available with the arrival of the railroads. These grains were grown mostly on the eastern plains. However, imported flour was available, and corn was raised in small plots by both Hispanics and Native Americans. Agriculture was so primitive in the region that one critic, Antonio Barreiro, wrote in 1832: “Agriculture is utterly neglected, for the inhabitants of this country do not sow any amount, as they might do to great profit without any doubt. They sow barely what they consider necessary for their maintenance for part of the year, and the rest of the year they are exposed to a thousand miseries.”
Wagon trains bringing goods from the eastern states, as well as luxuries from Europe, began making regular trips across the plains from Missouri in the 1820s. The momentous opening of the Santa Fe Trail is reenacted each year.
One such misery was described by Susan Magoffin, the teenage bride of American trader and agent Samuel Magoffin. In her diary she describes her first taste of New Mexican green chilli stew in 1846: “Oh how my heart sickened to say nothing of my stomach . . . [from] a mixture of meat, chilli verde and onions boiled together completing course No. 1 . .
There were a few mouthfuls taken, for I could not eat a dish so strong, and unaccustomed to my palate.” However, she did become accustomed to spicy food and even wrote a “cookery book” so that her friends in the States (New Mexico was still a territory, of course) could experience New Mexican cuisine.
By 1846, champagne and oysters were available, and flour for making bread sold for US$2.50 per fanega. If that sounds expensive, know that a fanega was 65 kilograms. About this time, a Lieutenant James Abert was travelling extensively throughout New Mexico. Later, in his book Through the Country of the Comanche Indians, he described the market at Santa Fe: “The markets have ... great quantities of ‘Chilli Colorado’ and ‘verde’, ‘cebollas’ or onions, ‘sandias’ or watermelons, ‘huevos’ or eggs, ‘uvas’ or grapes, and ‘pinones’, nuts of the pine tree.”
Prices were relatively high. Corn was two (US) dollars a bushel, beef and mutton eight to 10 (US) cents a pound, sugar and coffee were 25 (US) cents a pound, and tea was very expensive at US$1.25 a pound. About this time, W. W. H. Davis travelled to Santa Fe and sampled the native cuisine. In his book, El Gringo, he described his encounter: “The meal was a true Mexican dinner, and a fair sample of the style of living among the better class of people. The advance guard in the course of the dishes was boiled mutton and beans, the meat being young and tender, and well flavoured. These were followed by a sui generis soup, different from any thing of the kind it had been my fortune to meet with before. It was filled with floating balls about the size of a musket bullet, which appeared to be a compound of flour and meat. Next came mutton stewed in chilli (red peppers), the dressing of which was about the colour of blood, and almost as hot as so much molten lead.”
After mentioning the albóndigas soup and the mutton, Davis described the standard beans, tortillas and atole (a corn drink) and then commented on chilli: “Besides those already enumerated, there are other dishes, some of which have come down from the ancient inhabitants of the country. The chilli they use in various ways—green, or verde, and in its dried state, the former being made into a sort of salad, and is esteemed to be a great luxury.”
The agricultural situation improved shortly after the U.S. Army raised its flag over Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors and New Mexico was opened up to further settlement by American pioneers. The introduction of modern tools and techniques and new crops such as apples, peas and melons helped the farmers greatly. By 1900, more than 2 million hectares were under cultivation in New Mexico.
Santa Fe survived the Civil War without a scratch and did well under American control. Hotels and restaurants flourished with the coming of the railroad. Gradually, wheat crops surpassed corn crops. However, wheat tortillas have not supplanted those made of corn; both are still equally popular.
Cattle had been introduced by Juan de Oñate but only assumed a significant role in New Mexico after the Civil War. By 1890, after the great cattle drives to the New Mexico gold mines (which took place to feed the miners) there were 1.34 million head of cattle in the state. Remarkably, the figure nearly a hundred years later (1988) was almost identical: 1.32 million head.
After the Homestead Act of 1862 and the arrival of the railroad between 1879 and 1882, settlers from the eastern United States flooded into the state. With the advent of the railroad came the first railroad restaurants, the Harvey House chain. New Mexico boasted 16 of these establishments, including five that were the grandest of the system: Montezuma and Castañeda in Las Vegas, La Fonda in Santa Fe, Alvarado in Albuquerque, and El Navajo in Gallup. Harvey hired young women between the ages of 18 and 30 to be his hostesses, and they were quite an attraction on the Western frontier, where women were scarce. The humorist Will Rogers once said, “Fred Harvey kept the West in food and wives.”
The Harvey Houses attempted to bring “civilised” food to the frontier, and early menus reveal dishes like chicken croquettes, baron of beef, turkey stuffed with oysters, vermicelli with cheese à la Italian, and the ever delectable calfs brains scrambled with ranch eggs. “Mexican” food was considered too “native” for travellers and rarely appeared on upscale hotel and restaurant menus.
The railroads brought the settlers, and these pioneers brought new food crops. At first, vegetables such as tomatoes, asparagus, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, onions and peas were produced in home gardens on a small scale, but when extensive irrigation facilities were constructed in the early twentieth century, commercial vegetable production began.
During the years following World War I, Santa Fe began to emerge from obscurity as the city-and the rest of the state-was discovered by artists such as Peter Hurd and Georgia O’Keeffe, authors such as Willa Cather and D. H. Lawrence, and other prominent sculptors, poets, photographers and musicians. The high concentration of artists in the city, combined with Santa Fe’s tradition as an Indian trading centre, produced one of the top art markets in the world. More than 150 galleries (concentrated around the Plaza and along Canyon Road) now feature local as well as international artists, and special events such as Indian Market in mid-August ensure that the ancient artistic traditions are kept alive.
A parade in downtown Santa Fe circa 1932. The large building on the left is La Fonda hotel, built in 1922 and still standing in the same spot today.
In the decades after World War I, the cuisines of Santa Fe, however, remained fairly segregated: an Indian-Hispanic hybrid cuisine served in the pueblos; hotels offered mostly standard meat and potatoes eastern-style; and the traditional New Mexican chilli-based cuisine was served in Hispanic houses and restaurants. But major culinary changes would occur as Santa Fe became one of the top ten tourist destinations in the country.
Celebrations and Festivals
The many feasts of life in Santa Fe each
seem to have their own celebratory foods
Santa Feans love to party, and the entire year seems to revolve around the many fiestas-one after another. Even calling these celebrations markets doesn’t prevent people from partying.
Spanish Market, held during the last weekend in July for more than 45 years, showcases the arts and crafts of New Mexico’s Hispanic artisans. There is the Traditional Spanish Market, held on the Plaza, and the Contemporary Spanish Market, held in the courtyard of the Palace of the Governors. The crafts sold include santos