We all know of the Spanish explorers, soldiers, and missionaries who
came north from Mexico into the American Southwest and then withdrew,
leaving Christianized Indians, Spanish place-names, and sturdy adobe
forts and churches. But little has been written about the colonists sent
by Spanish authorities to settle the northern frontier of New Spain, to
stake Spain's claim and serve as a buffer against encroaching French
explorers. "Los paisanos, " they were called - simple country people who
lived by their own labor, isolated, threatened by hostile Indians, and
restricted by law from seeking opportunity elsewhere. They built their
homes, worked their fields, and became permanent residents - the
forebears of United States citizens - as they developed their own
society and culture, much of which survives today. In the preface to
this paperback edition, Oakah L. Jones, Jr., updates the text with
recent scholarship on the settlers.