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Life in Europe during the late Middle Ages was no picnic. The bubonic plague, aka the Black Death, rampaged the continent.

About a third of the population dropped dead from the painful, but quick-acting, disease.

If you survived the plague, you may have starved to death because of famines, shortages of farm laborers and severe malnutrition.

If disease or bad nutrition didn't do you in, the royals and the religious leaders marched thousands off to nearly endless wars fought largely in bloody hand-to-hand sword fights.

It's no wonder that when the parade of calamities began to ease up, the survivors looked longingly toward the Atlantic Ocean and wondered what was on the other side.

European explorers piled into ships and headed west. It wasn't long before they noticed the vast Southwestern lands on the North American continent.

The Spaniards decided to head north from Mexico and look for gold and other assorted riches. In 1540, Coronado set out on his big North American adventure but failed to discover any cities of gold, although some of his men did happen to stumble across the Grand Canyon.

Disappointed by the lack of gold, the Spaniards basically ignored the area now known as New Mexico until 1598 when Juan de O¤ate and a group of colonizers once again headed north.

The Spanish population grew in New Mexico throughout the 17th century, and, except for a 12-year period following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the Hispanic culture and language became firmly entrenched here.

If you have Hispanic ancestors in New Mexico, it's possible that they've been here for more than 400 years. Tracing your ancestors back that far may seem like an impossible task, but Hispanic New Mexicans have all kinds of resources to help with the hunt.

Since most of our Hispanic ancestors were Catholic, start your search in Catholic Church records. Go to New Mexico Genealogical Society and find the page explaining Catholic Church records.

Many of the church records are on microfilm available at the Special Collections Library in Downtown Albuquerque, at the state Archives in Santa Fe and at local family history libraries. These records include baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths, and burials — the vital data that genealogists crave.

A number of censuses, dating back to the 1600s, enumerated the residents during the Spanish and Mexican eras. Find a list of these in the book "Genealogical Resources in New Mexico" available from the New Mexico Genealogical Society.

Also, be sure to scan the nearly 100,000 names in the Great New Mexico Pedigree Database. The Hispanic Genealogical Research Center and serves as a clearinghouse for New Mexico researchers.

If you spot some of your ancestors in the database, you can use the clues for further research.

Check for your Mexican-born ancestors in the Vital Records Index. You'll find nearly 2 million entries for Mexican births, christenings and marriages.