TEJAS Pueblos Magicos

I'm thinking about starting a travel company to arrange adventures to Copper Canyon Mexico. All profits for this company will go to the indigenous people of the area.

An understanding of Chihuahua’s indigenous inhabitants from the pre-Hispanic era to the 19th century requires an imagination that dispenses with national borders. The borders of the present-day state of Chihuahua with its neighboring Mexican states and the American states on its north is a creation of political entities. These borders may cause the reader to believe that the indigenous groups from Chihuahua were unique to their area and distinct from the indigenous inhabitants of New Mexico, Texas, Coahuila, Sonora, or Durango.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. Although an international border separates Chihuahua from Texas and New Mexico, the indigenous inhabitants of Chihuahua did in fact have extensive cultural, linguistic, economic and spiritual ties with the indigenous groups of those two American states.

For several thousand years, indigenous groups living in Chihuahua have had trading relations with indigenous groups located in other areas. And many of the Chihuahua Amerindians do in fact share common roots with the Native Americans of New Mexico and Texas. And, up until the last part of the 19th century, the border of Chihuahua and the United States was a meaningless line in the sand, across which Apaches, Comanches and other groups freely passed.

If you are from Chihuahua, it is likely that you have both indigenous and European ancestors because this frontier region represented both a melting pot and a battleground to the many people who have inhabited it during the last five centuries. Spanish explorers started exploring the region of Chihuahua (which was part of the Spanish province of Nueva Vizcaya) in the mid-16th century, especially after the discovery of the Santa Barbara mines in 1567.

Jesuit San Ignacio Mission Church in Chihuahua, Mexico

Mid-18th century Jesuit San Ignacio Mission church in Valley of the Mushrooms near the town Creel, Sierra Madre Occidental, Chihuahua, Mexico.