"Six Degrees Of Seperation"? Or Less?

Six degrees of separation is the idea that everyone is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of "a friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy.

In researching New Mexican (Hispanos) genealogy we have found that, generationally speaking, there is less than 6 degrees of separation before you can tie New Mexicans together in one big tree. The records are there to determine this. Birth, baptismal, marriage investigations, marriage and death records kept by the Catholic Church during the Spanish, Mexican and into the American period facilitate this.

Numbers of individuals, usually men, coming into New Mexico were never high and some periods they were non existent or very low. They were soon assimilated into the group that was here. This was true during the Spanish colonizing and colonial period, it remained true during and just prior to the Mexican period when French and Americans started making appearances in New Mexico. Records show that these folks had to integrate themselves with the natives in order to survive.

The French found it easy as a result of France being a Catholic nation at the time. The names, regardless of their current spelling, remain as proof of this assimilation, Alarid, L'Eperance, Archiveque, Gurule, Charette are some of the more prominent.

Early on, the Americans had more difficulty and some did so just to be able to remain here and work here. Kit Carson is a prime example. There were many others like him. Kit never really considered himself a Mexican, he never considered himself a New Mexican, he never considered himself a Catholic. But he swore on the Holy Bible that he was all three. As soon as the Americans marched into Santa Fe, Kit and others like him wrapped themselves in the American flag.

But they married New Mexican women and in reality their descendants were an odd mixture of American and New Mexican cultures.