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The Pueblo Reforms: Spanish Imperial Strategies & Negotiating Control in New Mexico
A thesis presented to
the faculty of
the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University
In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts
Paul M. Rellstab
December 2013
© 2013 Paul M. Rellstab. All Rights Reserved.
2
This thesis titled
The Pueblo Reforms: Spanish Imperial Strategies & Negotiating Control in New Mexico
by
PAUL M. RELLSTAB
has been approved for
the Department of History
and the College of Arts and Sciences by
Mariana L. Dantas
Associate Professor of History
Robert Frank
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
3
ABSTRACT
RELLSTAB, PAUL M., M.A., December 2013, History
The Pueblo Reforms: Spanish Imperial Strategies & Negotiating Control in New Mexico
Director of Thesis: Mariana L. Dantas
“The Pueblo Reforms” investigates Spanish and Pueblo interactions in New
Mexico from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. Building off the
historiography on Spanish early modern imperial policies, the thesis places New Mexico
within the historical context of Spanish imperial expansion in the Americas and efforts to
control native populations. As the Spanish attempted to expand to areas beyond Mexico
City, mendicant orders became their strongest allies: by converting natives, Franciscan
missionaries promised to transform Indians into productive vassals of the Crown. Unlike
areas with centralized Spanish authority, New Mexico did not count on a significant civil
and military Spanish presence. The Church, represented by Franciscan missionaries, thus
became the most stable institutional presence the Crown could promote. However, similar
to other regions of the empire, the trajectory of Spanish control in New Mexico was
subject to local exigencies and actors, particularly the Pueblo Indians. When the Pueblos
revolted in 1680 and removed a Spanish presence for twelve years, they signaled to the
Crown that a new institutional presence would be required to reestablish Spanish control.
New Mexico was thereafter viewed as a military outpost and the Crown shifted its
position towards the Pueblos to emphasize political and military agreements that afforded
the Pueblos more autonomy in cultural and religious customs. Thus, local events in New
Mexico, such as jurisdictional disputes between Franciscans and civil officials,
4
missionary violence against the Pueblos, drought, famine, the threat of foreign European
intrusion, and raids from Apaches were as influential as royal policy in determining the
shift of New Mexico from a missionary colony to a military outpost.
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In memory of my grandmother, Opal Sparr
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I must express my gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Mariana
Dantas. Her persistence, guidance, and advice have been instrumental throughout my
time at Ohio University and, in particular, as I researched and wrote for this work. Her
commitment to helping me improve all facets of the thesis—from issues of
historiography, research, language, and writing—has made me a better historian. I cannot
thank her enough for her dedication to me. I would also like to extend my thanks to Dr.
Michele Clouse and Dr. Jessica Roney for their contributions in the classroom, providing
frank advice during my proposal defense, and for their time and efforts for agreeing to be
on my committee. In addition, Dr. Steven Cote and Dr. Tatiana Seijas offered advice,
help with sources, and words of encouragement. I am grateful for all of it. To my fellow
friends and grad students: Jeremy Kohler, Luiza Oliveira, Cherita King, Scott Foreman,
Carolyn Crowner, and Christa Gould, thank you for providing support, laughs, and
conversation as we travelled the path together. Lastly, I would like to offer my sincere
and warm thanks to my family and Erika Goodrow. Thank you for your support, love,
care, and warm meals as I sat researching and typing for hours on end. I love you all.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………3
Dedication……………………………………………………………………………5
Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………6
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..8
Chapter 1: Early Spanish Expeditions and Extending Spanish Control……………...23
Chapter 2: A Delicate Balance of Power: Contests of Franciscan Authority ………..58
Chapter 3: A New Strategy: Civil Authorities and Accommodation of the Pueblos…84
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………106
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………..111
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Introduction
When Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca returned to Mexico City in 1536 after
wandering in the lands north of New Spain for eight years, he wrote an account which
provided extensive demographic and descriptive information on the Indians he
encountered. His account, which gave Christian-like qualities to the native populations
and told of potential material wealth, provoked both conquistadors and missionaries to
explore the lands.1 Secular colonial agents, hoping to reproduce Cortés’ conquest of the
Aztec Empire, promised to supply the Crown with vast material wealth. Missionaries,
conversely, promised to transform the native populations into temporal and spiritual
vassals of the Crown. The crown weighed proposals based on who would better meet the
needs of the King: the Hispanicization, Christianization, and financial exploitation of the
Indians.2
Despite the immense wealth the King gained from armed conquest, the Crown
distrusted the increasing powers of the conquistadors. Initially, conquistadors received
the majority of exploration contracts as most expeditions were self-funded, posing little
to no cost to the royal coffers. As a reward for their efforts, the Crown awarded
1 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the expedition of
Pánfilo de Naráez, eds. and trans. Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1999), 231, 263.
2 Those jockeying for the expedition were Hernán Cortés, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, Viceroy Antonio de
Mendoza, Pedro de Alvarado, and Hernando de Soto. See “General Introduction” in Documents of the
Coronado Expedition, 1539-1542, eds. and trans. Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint (Dallas: Southern
Methodist University Press, 2005), 1; Herbert Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution in the SpanishAmerican Colonies” American Historical Review 23, no. 1 (1917): 43.
9
conquistadors with an encomienda.3 The encomienda was a tribute institution through
which Spaniards received the right to demand tribute of the Indians, mostly in the form of
labor. In return, the Spaniards were obligated to offer the Indians protection and religious
instruction.4 Gradually, the King began to fear that the encomienda gave too much
authority to non-royal figures. In an attempt to assert the power of the Crown over all
secular colonial agents, the King decreed that the encomienda would not be passed in
perpetuity to the encomendero’s heirs but would rather revert to the Crown upon the
former’s death.5
While the Crown enacted policies to undermine the power of encomenderos,
mendicant orders questioned lay Spaniard’s ability to promote the Christianization of the
Indians. Friars such as Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas argued in the 1540s and 1550s that
secular Spanish agents were not meeting the goals of the Crown by failing to Hispanicize
and Christianize the native populations. Indeed, in territories north of New Spain, the
armed expeditions by Nuño de Guzmán in New Galicia and Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado in Tierra Nueva (Northern New Spain) failed to bring native populations under
Spanish control. The shortcomings of these and other secular efforts helped mendicant
orders to successfully form an alliance with the Crown by asserting that a mission system
under the control of friars would better serve the temporal and spiritual goals of Spain.
3 Lesley Byrd Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1966), xiii, 64.
4 Compilation of Colonial Spanish Terms and Document Related Phrases, eds., Ophelia Marquez and
Lillian Ramos Navarro Wold (Midway City: SHHAR Press, 1998), 22.
5 Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain, ix-10; The New Laws for the Government of the Indies and for
the Preservation of the Indians, 1542-43, trans. Henry Stevens, reprint of the facsimile edition in London
1893 (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1968), xvi.
10
Convinced by these arguments, the Crown gave jurisdiction over the Indians of Northern
New Spain to the Order of the Friars Minor, the Franciscans.6
Although the Franciscans had been given royal authority to explore the lands
above el rio del norte (Rio Grande) and preside over the Indians, settlers and civil agents
were a necessary addition to these expeditions to protect the missionaries from Indian
rebellion. All able-bodied men who settled were also expected to act as a militia if the
situation demanded they provide military service to the king. The civil agents who were
called on to protect and support the friars in their spiritual endeavors, however, did not
always share the Franciscans' goals. Juan de Oñate, for example, who was chosen to lead
one of these expeditions in 1598, focused on gaining material wealth through armed
conquest. Consequently, Franciscans and settlers—whose interests generally lay in the
Christianization of the Indians and the labor exploitation of the natives, respectively—
aligned their interests to depose the abusive Oñate. When Oñate was removed from his
post, the Crown affirmed that civil agents were to act as a support for the missionary
enterprise; civil authorities would serve the main purpose of protecting the friars.7
After their success in removing Oñate, the Franciscans became the predominant
power in what they called Nueva Mejico, entitled to exercise spiritual and political
6 Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan
Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians (Dekalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 120-122; Ida Altman, The War for Mexico’s West: Indians and
Spaniards in New Galicia, 1524-1550 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010), 24-56; “The
Viceroy’s Instructions to Fray Marcos de Niza, November 1538” in Documents of the Coronado
Expedition, 1539-1542, eds. and trans. Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint (Dallas: Southern Methodist
University Press, 2005), 59-60.
7 “Conviction of Oñate and His Captains, 1614” in Don Juan de Oñate: Colonizer of New Mexico, 15951628, eds. George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, vol. 2 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1953), 1109-1113.
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authority over civil officials.8 For example, since the friars were the only clergy in the
area, they received episcopal powers, including the right to withhold the sacraments and
excommunicate the laity. Moreover, the Franciscans also received Inquisitorial power to
denounce Spaniards and correct heterodox practices among the Indians. Throughout the
seventeenth century, Franciscans employed these powers to remove Governors who
challenged their authority.9
Although Franciscans claimed that their authority derived from the religious
powers delegated by the Pope and God, missionary authority ultimately relied on Spanish
armed forces and, more importantly, Pueblo willingness to accommodate their presence.
Franciscans continued to maintain power by balancing Pueblo needs and subordinating
civil officials. For instance, the Franciscans challenged traditional native rites by
undermining the influence of indigenous shamans and replacing the chieftains, who,
within the Pueblo political structure, were seen as benevolent figures responsible for
promoting peace. The Pueblos were willing to accept these changes to their religious and
political organization as long as the Franciscan deity met their needs. However,
Franciscans often resorted to force to punish recalcitrant natives, betraying native
expectations that they would act as the peaceful chieftain. Likewise, when friars were
8 During the Chamuscado-Rodriguez expedition in 1581, the Spanish entitled the lands San Felipe del
Nuevo México; in the Espejo expedition a year later, Espejo shortened it to New Mexico. The feminine ‘a’
ending was at times used to describe that these lands represented la ciudad de mejico. See George P.
Hammond, “Introduction” in The Rediscovery of New Mexico, 1580-1594, eds. George P. Hammond and
Agapito Rey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966), 12.
9 Richard Greenleaf, “The Inquisition in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico” New Mexico Historical Review
60 no. 1 (1985): 29; France Scholes, “Church and State in New Mexico 1610-1650” New Mexico Historical
Review 11, no. 1 (1936), 34-42.
12
unable to replicate the success of shamans—whether by healing or bringing rain for
cultivation—the Pueblos began to question the efficacy of Franciscan authority.10
At the same time, conflicts between secular authorities and friars over who had
greater authority helped to create, among the Pueblo Indians, an impression of Franciscan
power as being fragile. Franciscans believed that civil officials, being in a subordinate
position, were to act solely as a military deterrent in case Pueblos rebelled. However,
when governors such as Bernardo López de Mendizábal in the early 1660s refused to
punish natives for disobeying friars, the Pueblos saw that Franciscan authority could not
be exacted without the help of armed forces. Consequently, the Pueblos viewed
Franciscan power as weak.11
When the Franciscans could no longer maintain the balancing act between
Pueblos and civil authorities, the autonomous Pueblos united to overthrow Spanish
presence. On August 10, 1680 the Pueblos killed 21 missionaries, 400 Spaniards,
desecrated Catholic vestments, and destroyed churches and missions. The testimony by
captured Indians during the Revolt revealed Pueblo rejection of the Franciscan God.
Religious leaders who led the revolt ordered Pueblos to “break up and burn the images of
the holy Christ, the Virgin Mary and other saints, the crosses, and everything pertaining
10 Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, The Corn Mothers When Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and
Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 55-94.
11 Laura Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 93-4.
13
to Christianity.”12 The Pueblos found that the Franciscan god had failed to meet their
needs and, consequently, sought to eradicate all vestiges of missionary power.13
Pueblo rejection of Franciscan claims to authority sparked a new strategy of
imperial expansion that relied on military alliances, economic trade, and toleration of
native practices. The focus on pragmatic secular goals rather than Christianization
represented a process of secularization of Spanish imperial expansion that, in effect,
subordinated the Church to the State. For example, Spaniards and Pueblos allied to
prevent enemy raids and potential threats from European rivals. In exchange for a
military alliance, missionaries and Spanish officials generally tolerated traditional native
practices that had been previously regarded as subversive. These new policies, which
focused on secular goals such as political and economic advancement, also gave
substantially more power to royally appointed officials. While the missions still existed,
Christianization of the Pueblos became a secondary goal for the Spanish. Accordingly,
the Franciscans played a subordinate role to governors. The eighteenth century, then, has
been regarded as an era of mutual accommodation between Spaniards and Pueblos
because, in part, imperial strategy relied less on Christianization and more on temporal
exigencies.14
12 “Declaration of Pedro Naranjo of the Queres Nation. [Place of the Río del Norte, December 19, 1681]”
in Revolt of the Pueblo Indians, ed. George Hackett, trans. Charmion Clair Shelby (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1942), 247.
13 Nicholas Robins, “Symbolism and Subalternity: The 1680 Pueblo Revolt of New Mexico and the 178082 Andean Great Rebellion” in Genocides by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice,
eds. Nicholas Robins and Adam Jones (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2009), 30-35.
14 Oakah L Jones, Pueblo Warriors & Spanish Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966);
30-32; John Kessell, “Spaniards and Pueblos: From Crusading Intolerance to Pragmatic Accommodation”
in Columbian Consequences: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands West,
ed. David Hurst Thomas (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 127-138.
14
This thesis demonstrates that Spanish negotiations with Pueblo Indians were as
instrumental as royal policy in shaping Spanish strategies for imperial expansion. A
stable Spanish presence could occur in New Mexico when the Pueblos were willing to
accept Spanish methods of control. When the Pueblos found Spanish missionary
presence unacceptable, such as in 1680, the Indians rose up to remove that presence.
When civil authorities negotiated with the Pueblos based on pragmatic goals such as a
mutual need for defense, the Indians found these negotiations beneficial to their political,
religious and cultural needs. Throughout the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, then, a
stable Spanish presence relied on the willingness of the Pueblos to accept Spanish
control.
Spanish imperial strategies in the sixteenth century were formulated by which
competing entity—mendicant orders and secular colonial agents—could best bring native
populations under Spanish dominion. Although the conquest of the Aztecs by Hernán
Cortés had brought large wealth to the crown, the majority of armed expeditions outside
of Mexico had failed to bring natives under the control of the Crown. Moreover, a result
of the failed entradas, largely due to slave raids and bloodshed, was Indian reluctance to
accept any Spanish presence. The mendicants, conversely, offered an alternative route to
promoting a stable institutional presence. The mission system, theoretically, was more
concerned about the benevolent treatment of the Indians. A successful missionary
enterprise, as evidenced by the Verapaz mission, gave hope that future expeditions would
not only spread Spanish domain but would also make native populations productive
spiritual and temporal vassals of the Crown. The form of imperial expansion undertook
15
by the missionaries, consequently, would emphasize the Christianization and
Hispanicization of the Indians. Civil authorities and armed Spaniards would preside over
Spanish settlements and provide armed support for the missionaries.15
However, local exigencies and the increasing fractiousness between Church and
State revealed that Church authority in temporal affairs relied upon armed forces and
Indian acceptance of the missionaries. When the Pueblos found the missionary message
unappealing to their needs, the Franciscans depended upon armed threats by colonial
authorities to keep the Pueblos on the mission. When civil authorities refused to provide
armed support, the Franciscans were unable to assert control over the Pueblos or secular
Spaniards.16
Since the Church was unable to maintain a stable institutional presence in New
Mexico, the Crown shifted its policy. By emphasizing defense, providing more authority
to governors, and tolerating native religious practices, the Crown’s new policy solidified
the power of secular institutions to the detriment of mendicant orders and, ultimately, the
Church.17
The historical trajectory of the Franciscan mendicant order in New Mexico was
influenced as much by the actions of the Pueblo Indians as by the royal edicts that
granted or suppressed the religious and temporal authority of the friars. The Pueblos
initially found that accepting the missionary message was a better alternative than a
15 Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution”, 44-47; Antonio Remesal, Bartolomé de Las Casas
(1474-1566) in the Pages of Father Antonio de Remesal, trans. Felix Jay (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen
Press, 2002), 80-99; P.J. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, Zacatecas 1546-1700
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 26-38.
16 Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, 93-4.
17 Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 204-270.
16
protracted struggle against armed conquest. The missionaries were then able to provide
spiritual and temporal benefits that overweighed Franciscan attacks on unacceptable
native customs. Pueblo acceptance of Franciscan authority buttressed the power of the
missionaries. When the Franciscans were unable to meet the needs of the Pueblos,
however, missionary authority was unwound. The Pueblos then found pragmatic secular
goals, such as military protection and economic trading, a reasonable tradeoff for
accepting Spanish control. Ultimately, the Pueblo alliance with secular institutions
lessened Franciscan authority and contributed to the subordination of Church to State.18
Herbert Bolton’s article “The Mission as a Frontier Institution in the SpanishAmerican Colonies,” published in 1917, initiated a historiographical discussion of
Spanish imperial expansionism in the Americas that emphasized the promotion of an
institutional presence as an important expansionist strategy.19 More specifically, Bolton
emphasized missionaries as the vanguard of Spanish efforts to extend imperial holdings
and claims to political domination over native populations. More recent historiography
has grappled more closely with “why” and “how” the Spanish maintained an institutional
presence in outlying areas. For instance, Anthony Pagden’s Lords of All the World
underscores Spanish understanding of their right to dominate natives as resulting from a
papal decree empowering the Spanish king to evangelize the natives. The Spanish
Crown's alliance with the mendicants, and the authority these orders gained in the
Americas, can thus be explained by the rising conviction that Franciscans, Jesuits, and
others were more effective in Christianizing and transforming Indians, into productive
18 Jim Norris, After “The Year Eighty”: The Demise of Franciscan Power in Spanish New Mexico
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 5, 43, 159-160.
19 Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution,” 42-61.
17
vassals.20 A failure to properly evangelize the Indians could delegitimize Spanish claims
to authority in the Americas vis-à-vis European rivals. Spanish imperial strategies, then,
were partially predicated upon a need to legitimize their political claims over the
Americas to other European powers.
Political designs were not the only factor in determining imperial interests. As
ethnohistories on native political, social, religious, and cultural customs have shown,
Indians were prominent actors in the formulating the trajectory of Spanish strategies.21
For instance, native populations engaged the Spanish legal system, exploited tensions
between Spanish civil and religious authorities, and used violence as a means to affirm or
reject Spanish imperial policies.22 Since a Spanish presence in outlying areas was
predicated upon their being Indians to exploit and convert, Indians could effectively
enforce or rebuke the predominant institutional authority. The Spanish, in turn, often
realized the need to negotiate with Indians a political or military alliance, their inclusion
in Spanish institutions, or autonomy from Spanish intrusion. Spanish imperial strategies,
therefore, were shaped by negotiations on the ground level as well as political concerns
from the Crown.
20 Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500c.1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 29-56.
21 For a discussion on native sources, see Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in
Yucatan, 1517-1570 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 131-138; For New Mexico, see
Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 3-36.
22 For court proceedings, see Susan Kellogg, Law and Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500-1700
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), xvii-xxviii; Brian Owensby, Empire of Law and Indian
Justice in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 99; For exploitation of Spanish
tensions, see Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, 81-100; Yanna Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-between:
Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (Durham: Duke UP, 2008), 6890; for episodes of violence, see Altman, The War for Mexico’s West, 24-56.
18
The thesis is organized into three chapters which explore three different moments
of Spanish expansionist efforts in New Mexico and the role Franciscans, secular colonial
agents, and Pueblo Indians played in that process. Chapter One argues that the missionary
model was embraced by the Spanish crown as a means to promote institutional control in
response to failed armed expeditions and the successful establishment of missions. When
the Spanish first ventured in the “New World” in the late fifteenth century, the Crown
employed two objectives: introduce and convert the indios to Catholicism and exploit the
mineral, agricultural, and labor resources for the royal treasury.23 Conquistadors and
missionaries competed for the right to preside over native populations. However, when
secular armed conflicts, such as the forty-year Chichimeca War, failed to bring Indians
under Spanish dominion and drained the royal coffers, and theological debates
highlighted the potential for peaceful conversion, the Crown sought an alliance with
mendicant orders.
The successes of the mendicant orders in the missions as well as its influence in
the Royal court helped to forge to an alliance in which missionaries received jurisdiction
over native populations. The Crown and mendicant orders also cooperated to impose
new regulations which emphasized a concern over the treatment of native populations.
The King decreed that all expeditions would seek “pacification” and “settlement” instead
of “conquest.” Explorations into unsettled lands would be carried out by ecclesiastics and
funded by the King. Civil authorities were to act as an armed guard for the missionaries
and establish a settlement for Spaniards. Moreover, during the initial discoveries, secular
23 Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution”, 43.
19
agents were not allowed to use force against the natives.24 Consequently, when civil
officials competed for the right to settle New Mexico, they had to conform to rhetoric
imposed by the King and mendicant orders. In comparing the journals of sixteenthcentury expeditions, the dominant language included terms such as “pacification”, going
“in support of the ecclesiastics,” and concern over the well treatment of the natives.
Consequently, royal concern over bringing natives into the fold of Spanish dominion
became the main impetus for a model of imperial expansion in Northern New Spain that
relied predominantly on the efforts of Franciscan missions.25
Despite the veneer of a strong Franciscan presence in New Mexico, missionary
authority rested on their ability to balance the Pueblos needs while subordinating, but not
alienating, civil authorities. Chapter Two covers the tensions and process of negotiation
between competing actors that ultimately revealed the fragility of Franciscan authority.
Clashes between civil officials and Franciscans over who held authority over and
controlled native populations mirrored the larger struggle between Church and State.
Franciscans believed that the Pope had supreme authority over all Christians and nonChristians in the world. Therefore, the spread of knowledge of Christianity to all peoples
was an ecclesiastical duty. When the Pope gave the Crown the right to evangelize the
New World, it was merely a delegation of papal authority, not a sign of royal supremacy.
Civil officials and the Crown rebutted this claim. The Crown declared that under the
Real patronato the King had jurisdiction over ecclesiastical affairs and temporal authority
24 S. Lyman Tyler, ed., Spanish Laws Concerning Discoveries, Pacifications, and Settlements among the
Indians, trans. María Aragón, Gertrude Elsmore and Charles Wonder (Salt Lake City: University of Utah,
1980), 7-9.
25 “Viceroy’s Appointment of Vásquez de Coronado,” in Flint, Documents, 108-110; “Contract of Don
Juan de Oñate for the Discovery and Conquest of New Mexico,” in Hammond, Oñate, 42-43.
20
over all vassals. As the representative of the Crown, then, the governors believed that
they had supreme authority in governing affairs. The two sides strove to enforce their
claims to authority: friars relied on their substantial ecclesiastical powers delegated by the
Pope to enforce control over both secular agents and Indians; conversely, Spanish
officials refused to provide military escort or punish recalcitrant natives on the mission.26
Pueblo Indians, then, became the main arbiter in the contestation between Church
and State. The Pueblos had initially aligned with Franciscans because they found that
missionaries, unlike the armed civil authorities with whom they previously had contact,
provided for their spiritual and temporal needs. However, when the Indians saw the
contestation of authority between ecclesiastics and civil officials, they realized the
weakness of Franciscan claims to power. Likewise, when the missionaries failed to
prevent drought, disease, and famine, the Pueblos then found missionary power
unqualified to meet their spiritual or temporal needs. Consequently, when the Pueblos
revolted in 1680, their actions signaled that the Church could no longer be the
predominant form of Spanish institutional presence in the area. By rejecting Franciscan
authority, the Pueblo Indians forced the crown to seek an alternative means to securing its
claims to New Mexico.27
However, it was not only Pueblo agency that necessitated a shifting imperial
strategy. Chapter Three argues that military exigencies, such as the threat of French
intrusion and increasing Comanche and Apache raids, required the Crown to rethink its
26 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 101-108; Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, 93-4.
27 James Ivey, “‘The Greatest Misfortune of All’” Famine in the Province of New Mexico, 1667-1682”
Journal of the Southwest 36, no. 1(1994): 76-100; Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, 93-94; Jim Norris,
After “The Year Eighty”, 36.
21
policy in marginal areas. The Crown, therefore, gave increasing powers to civil
authorities in order to emphasize defense. Since the governor received more powers, the
Franciscans subsequently were subordinated to civil officials.28
Since the Spanish needed Pueblos to act as auxiliaries to help protect the colony,
the Pueblos negotiated with Spanish officials to maintain degrees of cultural, social and
political autonomy that were previously threatened by the Franciscans in the seventeenth
century. The Spanish also rescinded Pueblo tribute obligations and abolished the
encomienda. The Pueblos protected their privileges and rights as vassals of the crown by
engaging with civil institutions, such as the court system. Pueblo negotiation with civil
authorities and institutions lessened Franciscan claims to authority. With the Franciscans
in a position of inferiority vis-à-vis secular officials and unwilling to enforce stringent
orthodoxy, they tolerated native practices such as the rain dances. The outcome of these
negotiations between Pueblo Indians and the Spanish was Pueblo assistance in military
protection and on expeditions.29
The changing strategies for imperial expansion represented a process of
secularization—the subordination of Church to State. Mendicant authorities and the
mission system were unsuccessful in their attempt to bring natives under Spanish control.
The Pueblo Revolt revealed the fragility of the mission system; missionaries relied upon
Pueblo Indians and armed Spaniards to maintain control. Consequently, when imperial
interests necessitated a shift to a strategy that emphasized defense and promoted
toleration, the missionary model could no longer act as the predominant form of Spanish
28 Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 147-171.
29 Jim Norris, After “The Year Eighty”, 5; Charles Cutter, The Protector de Indios in Colonial New
Mexico, 1659-1821 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 44-57.
22
institutional control. To enforce this new strategy, the Church had to be subordinate to
the State.
Ultimately, negotiations with the Pueblo Indians were as influential as royal
policy in the process of secularization of Spanish imperial expansion strategies. Spanish
imperial presence relied on native populations, so when the Pueblos revolted the Crown
had to find a new ally that would accommodate Pueblo needs. At the same time, when
enemy Indian raids and European intrusion threatened Spanish control, the Crown needed
Pueblo Indians as military allies. As a result, the Pueblos negotiated an alliance with civil
Spanish institutions and authorities that afforded them autonomy in political, religious,
and social matters. Pueblo acceptance of civil institutions created a century of mutual
accommodation, a lessening of Franciscan authority on the missions and, overall, the
secularization of Spanish imperial strategies.30
30 Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 147-270; Norris, After “The Year Eighty”, 157-160.
23
Chapter 1: Extending Spanish Control: Religious and Lay Expeditions into New Mexico
In 1539, Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of New Spain, lamented in a letter
addressed to the Crown the failures of lay Spanish expeditions to control native
populations in lands outside of Mexico. He referred specifically to the expedition Nuño
de Beltrán Guzmán had led to Nueva Galicia (western Mexico) in 1530. Accompanied
by four hundred Spanish horsemen and fourteen thousand native footmen, Guzman
accomplished little and “they nearly all perished during the undertaking,” wrote
Mendoza.31 Furthermore, Guzmán reportedly tortured and killed friendly native leaders
suspected of hiding gold and razed villages in order to assert Spanish dominance.
Guzmán’s actions destabilized Spanish-native relations in the area and within a year of
Mendoza’s letter various native groups in Nueva Galicia rebelled in the Mixtón War.32
Mendoza also referenced two expeditions ordered by the famed Hernán Cortés to
“reconnoiter the [northwest] coast [of New Spain]” which suffered shipwrecks, defeats in
conflicts with Natives, and widespread hunger. Given these many failed attempts to
conquer the northern reaches of New Spain, Mendoza commented that “it seemed God
was keeping [his goals] away from [Cortés] by divine power.”33 The failure of Guzmán
and Cortés to bring the native populations outside of Mexico into the fold of Spanish
institutional control signaled a need for a new direction regarding native policy in future
expeditions.
31 “Letter of the Viceroy to the King, 1539” in Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539-1542, eds.
and trans. Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005), 48.
32 Altman, The War for Mexico’s West, 24-56.
33 “Letter of the Viceroy to the King, 1539” in Flint, Coronado Expedition, 48.
24
The Crown was therefore willing to employ the mendicant orders, who criticized
the efficacy of armed conquest, with the tasks of both Christianizing and Hispanicizing
Indians. The ecclesiastics believed expeditions done by missionaries would make Indians
more peaceful and receptive to Spanish presence and authority. Influenced by the advice
of mendicant orders, King Charles I (r. 1516-1556) affirmed the need for ecclesiastical
enterprises in Northern New Spain in 1538 and subsequently ordered the Viceroy to grant
ecclesiastics a license to travel to new lands to bring native peoples knowledge of
Christianity.34
Mendoza commissioned a Franciscan, Fray Marcos de Niza, to penetrate the
interior of the Tierra Nueva in 1539. When Fray Marcos returned with wondrous reports
of settled indigenous populations and vast material wealth, Mendoza believed Fray
Marcos’ success was the result of divine providence. Furthermore, it was evidence for
the Viceroy that the route to find the northern reaches of New Spain was blocked by God
to those who used force to find it. Conversely, God revealed it to a “barefoot, mendicant
friar,” Mendoza claimed.35 Thus, for Mendoza and the Crown, the friars’ mission aligned
with God’s mission and, consequently, royal favor should be granted to missionaries in
the reconnaissance, exploration, and settlement of the lands north of New Spain.
Pressure from theologians and failed secular conquests, however, were not the
sole reasons for the Crown’s employment of mendicants to control native populations.
The King was equally concerned with reining in the power conquistadors gained while in
New Spain. Since the Crown was unable to directly oversee expeditions, royal policies
34 Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint, “Introduction” to “Letter of the Viceroy to the King, 1539” in
Flint, Coronado Expedition, 45.
35 “Letter of the Viceroy to the King, 1539”, in Flint, Coronado Expedition, 48.
25
were enacted to maintain the king's authority over Spaniards abroad. When
conquistadors threatened royal authority through the power they gained through conquest
the Crown set out to limit those powers. When the Crown limited the powers of
conquistadors in 1542, the Crown had already established its jurisdiction over
ecclesiastical affairs.36 Under the papal bull Inter Caetera Divinae, promulgated in 1493,
the Spanish Crown received the sole right to evangelize and, subsequently, establish
jurisdiction over the Indies.37 Therefore, as patron of the Indies, the King believed he
was the head of the Church. Consequently, the Crown wanted to make sure that both
secular and ecclesiastical officials were firmly under royal control before granting either
one of them the power to explore and exercise authority in the name of the King. Thus,
when both sides were under royal control the Crown delegated its authority to the side
that best met the goals of royal policy.
The contemporary characterizations of sixteenth-century Spanish imperial actions
has split into two schools of thought: on one hand, scholars beginning in the twentieth
century coined the term “The Black Legend” to refer to other European powers’
description of Spanish actions as brutal in order to delegitimize Spanish claims to the
Americas.38 The English, for example, perpetuated the notion by pointing to Bartolomé
de Las Casas’s treatise, Destruction of the Indies, as evidence of rampant abuse.39 On the
other hand, Spanish-centric scholars have swung to the other side in proclaiming a
36 The New Laws for the Government of the Indies, trans. Henry Stevens, vii, xvi.
37 “Inter Caetera divinae, Alexander VI, 1493,” in W. Eugene Shiels, King and Church: The Rise and Fall
of the Patronato Real (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1961), 72-81.
38 Gregory Murry, “‘Tears of the Indians’ or Superficial Conversion? José de Acosta, the Black Legend,
and Spanish Evangelization in the New World,” Catholic Historical Review 99 no. 1 (2013): 29-51; Charles
Gibson, The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and New (New York: Knopf, 1971),
29-41.
39 Gregory Murry, “‘Tears of the Indians’”, 29-30.
26
“White” or, as Patricia Seed claims, a “Rose Legend”, which emphasizes mendicant
concern over the treatment of native populations as evidence that the Spanish were more
benevolent towards Indians than other Europeans.40 Instead of seeing Spanish actions as
Black or White (or Rose), Spanish strategies shared elements of both characterizations.
While the Crown was indeed concerned about the proper evangelization of native
populations and, consequently, favored the Franciscans in New Mexico to achieve that
goal, royal policies did not completely reject the use of force. When engaging with
Indians recently contacted, the Spanish were requested to avoid violence. However,
when planting a settlement, the Spanish could forcibly engage with the Indians “without
harming them any more than necessary.”41 By using New Mexico as a case study,
Spanish policies and actions, then, demonstrate not simply a Black or Rose Legend, but
rather a concern over creating a legal framework that could justify violence with the ends
of producing Christian vassals of the Crown.
Following Hernán Cortes’s famed conquest of the Mexican Empire in 1521,
Spanish settlers, soldiers, and missionaries rushed to the New World in search of their
own fortune and the conversion of large, settled native populations. In 1532, Francisco
Pizarro and Diego Almagro’s success in defeating the Inca rulers confirmed the presence
of wealthy and vast indigenous empires waiting to be discovered and claimed by the
Spanish. The material reward enjoyed members of Cortés and Pizarro's expeditions gave
40 Patricia Seed, "'Are These Not Also Men?': The Indians' Humanity and Capacity for Spanish
Civilisation." Journal of Latin American Studies 25:3 (1993): 630. For scholars who have extolled the
mendicants, see Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of the Americas
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949).
41 “Ordinances of His Majesty For the New Discoveries, Conquests, and Pacifications [July 1573]” in
Spanish Laws Concerning Discoveries, Pacifications, and Settlements among the Indians, ed., S. Lyman
Tyler, trans., María Aragón, Gertrude Elsmore and Charles Wonder (Salt Lake City: University of Utah,
1980), 36.
27
the Crown the financial incentive to sanction further expeditions by would-be
conquistadors.42
However, not all expeditions during this period shared Cortés’ and Pizarro’s
success. In 1527, for example, Pánfilo de Narváez ventured north leading an entrada of
six hundred men to “conquer and govern the provinces” from the River of Palms to Cape
Florida.43 Instead of military victories and riches, Narváez and his men encountered bad
weather, divisions within leadership on where to travel, illness, disease, starvation, and
Indian attacks. Finally, the Spaniards’ makeshift boats shipwrecked off the coast of
current day Texas, leaving only sixteen survivors.44 Ultimately, only four members of the
expedition survived the months following the shipwreck in Texas: Álvar Núñez Cabeza
de Vaca, Andres Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo, and Estevánico, a black slave. The four
traveled through Texas, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua and Sonora
before heading south to New Spain.45 After eight years of travel west, the four found
Spaniards in Culiacán and thereafter returned to New Spain. The Narváez expedition was
just one among many that ended in disaster. The success and wealth achieved by Cortés
and Pizarro were exceptional in the annals of the Spanish conquest.
While the Narvaez expedition ended in failure, Cabeza de Vaca wrote an account
of their journey, which was first published in 1542 and then further elaborated in 1555,
42 The tax afforded to the Crown on all goods was called the quinto, or one-fifth. Compilation of Colonial
Spanish Terms and Document Related Phrases, eds., Ophelia Marquez and Lillian Ramos Navarro Wold
(Midway City: SHHAR Press, 1998), 48.
43 Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca,23. The River of Palms is the Soto la Marina River
in the current-day state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. See p 23, note 2.
44 Ibid., 107, 119.
45 The route of Cabeza de Vaca has been debated since the early twentieth-century, but the most recent
ethno-anthropological studies have adhered to the above route. Donald Olson et al, “Piñon Pines and the
Route of Cabeza de Vaca,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 101, no. 2 (1997), 174-186.
28
that provided extensive ethnographic information on the Indians in the north. His
account captivated both missionaries and would-be conquistadors. Though he did not
venture into the lands of the Pueblos, he heard reports of large settlements with
substantial material wealth to the north. Indians had given Dorantes “five emeralds made
into arrowheads.” When Cabeza de Vaca asked of their origin, they replied that they had
brought them from the North. In the north, there were “villages of many people and very
large houses there.”46 Cabeza de Vaca commented further that throughout the region they
found “such great readiness” in the Indian’s eagerness to learn of the Christian God and,
if they “had an interpreter”, they would have “left all of them Christians.”47 He portrayed
the Indians as ready to accept Christianity when he claimed that throughout their entire
journey “we found neither sacrifices nor idolatry.” Cabeza de Vaca believed that the
Indians could easily accept the Crown’s authority and knowledge of the true God.48 His
account of precious stones appealed to Spanish settlers who desired to replicate Cortes’
accomplishments. Tales of large permanent settlements and Indian inclination towards
Christianity attracted missionaries who believed they could preside more easily over
natives for conversion purposes.49
While Cabeza de Vaca’s account set off a rush of Spaniards to confirm the
presence of metals and settled populations in the North, mendicant orders began fervently
to demand exclusive jurisdiction over native populations vis-à-vis encomenderos.
Missionaries attacked the role of encomendero as a caretaker and protector of the Indians.
46 Ibid., 231.
47 Ibid., 235.
48 Ibid., 263.
49 Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution”, 53.
29
They claimed that the encomendero failed to provide for the spiritual welfare of the
Indian. They also deplored the physical abuses committed by secular Spaniards. As an
example, Fray Luis de Villalpando in the Yucatan wrote to the Crown that an
encomendero stripped and flogged an Indian woman until her death. Villalpando also
reportedly held in his arms a beaten and bloody Indian who pleaded for protection.50
Missionaries claimed that conquest—the subjugation of Indians to Spanish control—and
conversion could only be undertaken by the Church, which would ensure Native adoption
of Christianity and acceptance of Spanish control. Under the mission system, mendicant
orders would employ the task of Christianizing and Hispanicizing native populations
through rigorous disciplining in both religious and daily-life customs. Consequently,
Indians under ecclesiastical watch would become productive economic and spiritual
vassals of God and King.51
Missionaries appealed to the king to undertake new expeditions in order to prove
the efficacy of peaceful conquest through Catholicism without lay Spaniard intervention.
For instance, in 1537, Bartólome de Las Casas led a small expedition in TuzulutlánVerapaz, Guatemala. Las Casas and three other Dominicans entered the territory and
selected four Indian merchants who were well known in the area. They taught the
Indians songs that promoted Christian values but used indigenous rhythms and cadences.
The native chiefs, called caciques, embraced the message and music from the
Dominicans and the Indians that travelled with the friars.52 The early success of the Vera
50 Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 55.
51 Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution”, 47.
52 Antonio de Remesal, Bartolome de las Casas, 81-98.
30
Paz mission led to an agreement between Las Casas and the governor Pedro de Alvarado
that prohibited Spanish settlers from entering the boundaries of the mission for a period
of five years. The agreement, the mendicants hoped, would further prove that
missionary-only presence among Indians would serve best royal interests.53
Buttressing the mendicant cause was the rapid deterioration of Spanish control
through armed conquest in New Galicia. Nuño de Guzmán, the first governor of the
province, engaged in scorched-earth tactics to maintain control over native populations.
Both Spanish and indigenous populations were conscripted into military campaigns that
enslaved Indians under dubious claims that natives were resisting Spanish control.54
During Guzmán’s tenure, Cabeza de Vaca journeyed through New Galicia while on his
return to Mexico. He found that the “land was abandoned and not cultivated and all of it
greatly destroyed.” He further stated that “the Indians went about hidden and in
flight…without wanting to come and settle.”55 Guzmán’s tactics had not made the
Indians of New Galicia productive vassals of the Spanish King.
As a result of the early successes of the Verapaz mission and failures of armed
conquest, in 1538 Antonio de Mendoza contracted Franciscan Fray Marcos de Niza to
lead a small expedition to reconnoiter the northern lands of New Spain.56 Fray Marcos, a
native of Savoy, was a correspondent of Las Casas. He was in Peru at the time of
Pizarro’s conquest and spent a year in Guatemala at the same time Las Casas organized
53 Ibid., 88.
54 Altman, The War for Mexico’s West, 24-34, 59-67, 78-87.
55 Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, 255.
56 “The Viceroy’s Instructions to Fray Marcos de Niza, November 1538” in Flint, Documents, 59-64.
31
the Verapaz mission. Fray Marcos, then, was an experienced friar and expeditionary who
most likely witnessed both armed and spiritual-based conquest.57
Viceroy Mendoza’s orders to Fray Marcos reveal a concern about the treatment of
Indian populations and the trust placed on ecclesiastics to carry out royal orders. He
ordered Fray Marcos to ensure Indians were treated well on the expedition. Mendoza,
concerned with tensions in New Galicia following Guzmán’s dismissal, also asked Fray
Marcos to report on how Francisco Vásquez de Coronado—the governor of New Galicia
who would travel with Fray Marcos part of the way—governed the Indians of that town
and managed the conversion and treatment of the natives of that province.58 Fray Marcos
was also ordered to observe the local conditions in the North, whether the native
population was scattered or in communities, the fertility of the land, access to water, and
evidence of mineral and metal resources. If indeed a large settlement were found, he was
to send information so friars could begin to convert the Indians.59 By 1539, then,
reconnaissance missions were to be performed by ecclesiastics who theoretically were
more concerned about the welfare of the Indians and also who were experienced in
gauging undiscovered native populations' potential receptiveness to Spanish control.
However, despite Fray Marcos’s experience dealing with Indians as a missionary,
in his report to the viceroy he focused primarily on the material potential of Northern
New Spain. Fray Marcos confirmed Cabeza de Vaca’s claims about the native
populations to the north when he learned of “grand communities.”60 He also learned
57 Ibid., 59-60.
58 Ibid., 65.
59 Ibid., 66.
60 “Narrative Account by Fray Marcos de Niza, August 26, 1539” in Flint, Documents, 68.
32
from Indian messengers that there were “seven very large cities, all under one ruler.” The
houses were large, made of stone, and had “imbedded turquoise stones” on the doorways.
Provinces beyond the Seven Cities were even greater.61 A native of Cibola currently
living in another town, moreover, stated that “[Totonteac] is a [great] thing, the grandest
in the world, [with] the most people and greatest wealth.”62 Excited by the potential size
of cities to the North, he sent his main guide, Estevánico, the black slave from Cabeza de
Vaca’s journey, further ahead to confirm the native’s reports. Soon after, however, an
Indian messenger returned with reports that Estevánico and nearly three-hundred Indians
who accompanied him were killed by the natives of Cibola.63 As a result, Fray Marcos
reported to have only seen Cibola from afar. He wrote that “the houses… are all made of
stone, with upper stories and with flat roofs… the settlement is grander than the Ciudad
de México… in my view, this [land] is the greatest and best of all discovered.”64 When
discussing the city with the natives, the Indians remarked that Cibola “was the least of the
seven ciudades” and that Totonteac “comprises so many buildings and people that it has
no end.”65 While Fray Marcos seemingly avoids much discussion over native
receptiveness to Catholicism, he did confirm the material promise of Northern New
Spain.
Fray Marcos’s messages reached the Viceroy and Rodrigo de Albornoz, contador
(accountant) of New Spain, who, encouraged by the report, prepared for a large-scale
expedition. The Viceroy confirmed Fray Marcos’s eyewitness testimony of having seen
61 Ibid., 68.
62 Ibid., 72.
63 Ibid., 73-75.
64 Ibid., 75.
65 Ibid., 75.
33
“seven very populous ciudades, with grand buildings.”66 Antonio de Mendoza then
appointed Coronado, a friend of the Viceroy, to lead a large contingent of Spaniards into
Tierra Nueva with Fray Marcos as the guide.
Aware of continued tensions in New Galicia as well as Las Casas’s success
converting the natives in Guatemala, Coronado crafted his petition to lead the expedition
to Tierra Nueva in such a way as to appeal to the increased sensitivity about the treatment
of native populations and the shortcomings of armed conquest. First, Coronado
compared his term as governor in New Galicia to that of Guzmán. He took credit for
quelling a potential rebellion in the area. Noting the royal will was that Indians become
Christians and be treated well, he claimed to have “pacified [the natives] and attracted
them to Your Majesty’s service.”67 Coronado forgave all the natives involved in the
rebellion as the uprising had been caused more by ignorance than by contempt, save for
the leader, whose execution “settled” and “calmed down” all that land.68 He also
demanded that more clerics come to New Galicia so that the Indians would return to
Catholicism.69 Acting in concert with royal concerns, he offered peaceful entreaties to
the indigenous populations. Coronado, then, appealed to royal will by assisting
ecclesiastics in spiritual conquest as well as successfully subduing Indians with minimal
66 “Letters from Antonio de Mendoza and Rodrigo de Albornoz, October 1539,” in Flint, Documents, 91.
There were several reports that claimed Fray Marcos had exaggerated his testimony. Many included,
whether accurate or not, that Fray Marcos claimed to have seen gold. Although we can only rely on written
evidence, it is entirely reasonable that Fray Marcos orally exaggerated his findings. Mendoza sent another
expedition before Coronado to confirm the reports of Fray Marcos. Led by Melchior Diaz and Juan de
Zaldívar, the expedition did not reach Cibola, but did interview local natives. They concluded that “[The
Indians] are unable to give me information about any metal, nor do they say that [the people of Cíbola]
possess it.” “The Viceroy’s Letter to the King, Jacona, April 17, 1540” in Flint, Documents, 237.
67 “Letter of Vásquez de Coronado to the King, July 15, 1539,” in Flint, Documents, 39.
68 Ibid., 39.
69 Ibid., 40.
34
force. By framing his letter to the King in this manner, Coronado sought to assuage royal
concerns about the efficacy of armed secular expeditions.
The directives from the Crown to Coronado were likewise concerned about the
benevolent treatment of Indians, but also recognized the need to reward those who
participated in the expedition with material benefits. With the approval of the King in
1540, Mendoza ordered Coronado “to reconnoiter and pacify the lands” of all that he
would encounter, and assure the “safety and protection of the ecclesiastics.” Coronado
was further commanded to “attract its natives to the knowledge of our Holy Catholic
Faith and to place it under our royal crown.” Finally, to compensate Coronado for the
financial risk he was incurring, close to 71,000 pesos, he would be awarded an
encomienda.70 By 1540, then, although mendicant orders had success in both shaping
royal policy and the missions, the Crown realized that self-funding expeditions remained
a financially effective way to extend Spanish control.
In reality, while legal documents assuaged royal and mendicant concerns, most
others in New Spain did not subscribe to the idea that the main purpose of expeditions
was to protect ecclesiastics. Mendoza ordered Hernándo Alarcón, who would travel by
sea parallel to Coronado’s land route, “[through kindness], to find out what one can
obtain in that land.”71 Mendoza’s order to Alarcón exposes a concern over reaping
material benefits and the contrasts between the benefits of material and spiritual
conquest. While a spiritual conquest would produce Indian vassals for the king through
conversion, a material conquest would solidify the vassalage of Spanish settlers through
70 “Viceroy’s Appointment of Vásquez de Coronado,” in Flint, Documents, 60, 108-110.
71 “Viceroy’s Instructions to Alarcón, May 31, 1541” in Flint, Documents, 227.
35
the granting of economic privileges. Thus, although the crown adopted a policy that
claimed to cater to the concerns of the mendicant orders and promote the peaceful
integration of the Indians under Spanish control, the exigencies of expansionism helped
to preserve some of the economic benefits extended to secular colonial agents.
Consequently, when Coronado and his men viewed Cibola, their reactions
denoted that the intent of the expedition was material oriented. Leading nearly 2000
people, including 1300 native allies and five friars, he expected to see the grand cities
that Fray Marcos believed to have seen during the latter’s journey.72 As Coronado and
his men came upon the city of Cibola they did not find the large settlements that
supposedly held vast mineral wealth. As a result, he and other lay Spaniards expressed
outrage and disparaged Fray Marcos for exaggerating his testament. Pedro de Castañeda,
a lay Spaniard and a member of the expedition, wrote that Fray Marcos needed protection
from angry Spaniards because “his report had turned out to be incorrect about
everything.” The kingdoms had not been found, nor had the “wealth of gold or rich
jewels that had been publicized.” Coronado wrote to Mendoza that “I can say truthfully
that he has not spoken the truth in anything he said. Instead, everything has been quite
contrary, except the name of the ciudad and the large, stone houses.”73 Castañeda wrote
that when they approached Cibola, “such were the curses that some of them hurled at fray
Marcos that may God not allow them to reach [his ears].”74 An anonymous narrative
72 Native allies are rarely mentioned in the accounts, though they always provided the bulk of the ground
forces. See Arthur S. Aiton and Agapito Rey, “Coronado’s Testimony in the Viceroy Mendoza Residencia,”
New Mexico Historical Review 12 (1937): 314. Cited in Flint, Documents, p 641, note 4.
73 “Vásquez de Coronado’s Letter to the Viceroy, August 3, 1540” in Flint, Documents, 258.
74 “The Relación de la Jornada de Cíbola, Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera’s Narrative, 1560s (copy, 1596)”
in Flint, Documents, 393.
36
written in the 1540s stated that Coronado later split the expedition to search for material
wealth because “of the poor expectations that were held about Cíbola.”75 Later,
Castañeda lamented that “they should return to Nueva España, because nothing of wealth
had been found and there was no settlement in what had been reconnoitered where
repartimientos could be made to the whole expedition.”76 The disappointing reaction to
the settlements suggests that the expedition’s secular goals conflicted with its spiritual
goals.
However, did Coronado’s lack of focus towards the spiritual welfare of the
Indians conflict with Fray Marcos’s testimony? Fray Marcos’s Relacion made little
mention of the Indian’s receptiveness to Catholicism. What he focused on, instead, was
the material advantages that would be gained by a Spanish presence. Fray Marcos was in
Peru at the time of Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas, and perhaps his text betrayed an
expectation that new discoveries would include material wealth. Herbert Bolton suggests
that mendicant orders had to promote the political i.e. and financial advantages of their
missionary efforts to the Crown in order to receive funding. If the Crown could receive
vast material wealth, the financial cost of the missions would be lessened. Since the King
sought to convert, exploit, and civilize the Indians, missionaries then had to entice the
King with temporal promises to open up the royal coffers.77
75 “The Relación del Suceso (Anonymous Narrative), 1540s” in Flint, Documents, 497. Flint speculates
that Hernando Bermejo, the captain general’s secretary could have written the narrative.
76 “The Relación de la Jornada de Cíbola, Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera’s Narrative, 1560s (copy, 1596” in
Flint, Documents, 426. The repartimiento was a “conscription basis for work on projects involving the
common good under the New Laws of 1542, usually in agriculture.” Compilation of Colonial Spanish
Terms, 50. The use of repartimiento in this document clearly shows that this was written beyond the
expedition, as the usage of the word was not in use until after 1542.
77 Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution”, 48-49.
37
While one can only speculate upon what Fray Marcos truly viewed and hoped to
accomplish, Coronado and his men’s disappointment over what they viewed led the
Spanish to physically subjugate the Indians. With the veracity of Fray Marcos in
question, the Spanish arguably no longer saw the need to support and protect the
ecclesiastics. In this viewpoint, Coronado and his men could focus upon reaping the
economic advantages offered by material conquest. By physically subjugating the
Pueblos and bringing them under Spanish control, the explorers hoped to be rewarded in
the same manner of Córtes.
As an illustration of Coronado’s physical interactions with the Pueblos, the
Spanish approached Cibola but were denied entrance. Convinced that the natives were
hiding mineral wealth within the city, he planned to siege and then ransack the city.
Before the attacks, however, Coronado sent two churchmen and the maestre de campo
(second in command) to “summon them to obedience, as is the custom in new lands.”78
The summoning of obedience in Spain during the sixteenth century was the
requerimiento.79 When the officials in New Mexico read the requerimiento the Indians
responded with arrows. Coronado called on “Lord Santiago” as intercessor and attacked,
78 “Traslado de las Nuevas (Anonymous Narrative), 1540,” in Flint, Documents, 292.
79 Spaniards based their right of “just war” on the Requerimiento. The Requerimiento was a written
document promulgated in 1513 that Spaniards recited to native populations as they first approached. It
justified Spanish control of the Americas by right of the papacy, who delegated the Indies to the Spanish
through the Treaty of Tordesillas, and demanded that native populations accept Spanish rule and recognize
the superiority of Catholicism, though it did not require conversion. If they did not accept, Spaniards
waged what they viewed as being a just war against native populations, which inevitably resulted in the
death or enslavement of many. Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New
World, 1492-1640 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 69-99.
38
killing an estimated fifteen Indians.80 After the siege, the natives of Cibola abandoned
the pueblo and the Spanish searched for food and other goods.
Later, Coronado and his men entered the village of Arenal, in the Tiguex region.
An unnamed Spaniard coaxed an Indian to hold his horse for him. While the Indian did
so, the Spaniard climbed up to the pueblo and reportedly “raped or tried to rape his
wife.”81 Also, Spaniards lacked sufficient daily food during the expedition, and accosted
Indians to offer their own. The Tiguas rose up and hostilities ensued. Coronado,
although not present, ordered by message to the maestre del campo, García López de
Cárdenas, that the “Indians [were] not to be taken alive,” for their killing was meant to be
a deterrent against future indigenous resistance.82 Cárdenas smoked the Tiguas out of
their pueblos. As they attempted to escape, the Spaniards on horse ran them down and
killed them. The soldiers set up posts and burned two hundred Indians alive. Those
captured attempted to flee but were thrown into the fires.83 Coronado later ventured in
search of the kingdom of Quivira—current day Kansas—on reports of vast wealth, but
again found little of mineral value and returned to New Spain in 1542.
80 “Traslado de las Nuevas (Ananymous Narrative), 1540,” in Flint, Documents, 292. The evocation of
Santiago derived from a legend that St. James’s relics miraculously transferred from the Holy Land to the
Iberian Peninsula as a sign for Christians under Muslim control of Al-Andalus. Santiago was appropriated
by Spanish kings, first as Matamoros, and then Mataindios. See Erin Kathleen Rowe, Saint and Natino:
Santiago, Teresa of Avila, and Plural Identities in Early Modern Spain (University Park: The Pennyslvania
State University Press, 2011), 21-47.
81 “The Relación de la Jornada de Cíbola, Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera’s Narrative, 1560s (copy, 1596)”
in Flint, Documents, 402.
82 Ibid., 402-403.
83 For the entire episode, see Herbert Bolton, Coronado on the Turquoise Trail: Knight of Pueblos and
Plains (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1949), 201-215. For a first-hand account, see “The
Relación de la Jornada de Cíbola, Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera’s Narrative, 1560s (copy, 1596),” in Flint,
Documents, 402-403. When Castañeda refers to “the general” who ordered the deaths of the natives,
scholars are unsure precisely to whom he refers: Coronado or Cárdenas. Bolton appears to suggest
Coronado.
39
Reports of Coronado’s abuses led to an investigation. When Coronado was put on
trial for abuses against the native populations, however, the disparity between the
enforcement of royal authority in Spain vis-à-vis New Spain contributed to his
exoneration.84 Viceroy Mendoza, a close friend of Coronado, feared that a guilty verdict
imperiled his own political standing with the Crown. As a result, Coronado was tried in
Mexico, where Mendoza participated in the final verdict, whereas Coronado’s maestre
del campo, García López de Cárdenas, was tried in Spain, where mendicant orders at the
time where drafting new regulations on the treatment of native populations.85 López was
banished from the New World and sentenced to thirty-three months in prison in Africa.86
On the other hand, Coronado was exonerated on all charges. The difference in
punishment demonstrated that a new policy was needed in New Spain to rein in the
rampant abuses of native populations by conquistadors and punish those guilty of such
violence.
When the Spanish tried to conquer the Indians through force, however, they failed
to achieve both goals of the expedition—the quest for material wealth and Indian
receptiveness to Spanish control. The outcome of the physical altercations, moreover,
was used against Coronado during his trial for abuses committed against native
populations. The Coronado expedition turned into another example of a failed secular
84 “Decision of the Audience in the Case” in Great Cruelties Have Been Reported: The 1544 Investigation
of the Coronado Expedition, ed. Richard Flint (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2002), 457501. While testimony against Coronado was scant, which may have led to his acquittal, Herbert Bolton
questions, and David Weber appears to agree, that Coronado’s failing health may have contributed to his
acquittal. See Herbert E. Bolton, Coronado 372-3. Also see Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 49, 379.
85 Great Cruelties, 536-537. Herbert E. Bolton, Coronado, 393-4. Bolton goes as far as to say that “the
sentence of Cárdenas may be regarded as an incident in the putting of the teeth into the New Laws”.
86 Herbert E. Bolton, Coronado, 393-4. López later received a shorter sentence: one year in Vélez Málaga.
40
armed conquest and hastened the Crown's realization that a stable Spanish presence
would be better achieved by the missionary enterprise.
In the aftermath of episodes like the Coronado expedition, the Crown realized that
efforts at armed conquest failed to bring the Indians under Spanish control. Ergo, the
King, working in concert with mendicant orders, devised a series of laws that would curb
Spanish abuses of natives, gradually abolish the encomienda, and give predominant
jurisdiction over native populations to ecclesiastics.87 The New Laws of 1542 called for
the “preservation, good government and treatment” of the Indians and abolished the
encomienda after the death of the initial encomendero.88 The laws were also an
affirmation of royal authority over encomenderos. For instance, the Crown created a
Viceroyalty in Peru to preside over governmental affairs. 89 The abuses of encomenderos
and concomitant failure of armed expeditions to bring more natives under Spanish
dominion led the King to ally with mendicant orders.
Like Coronado’s exoneration, however, the exigencies of local events and the
limits of royal policy contributed to the relative ineffectualness of the New Laws. The
encomenderos, who were the only armed presence in New Spain, resisted the
enforcement of the New Laws. In a revolt against the New Laws at Anaquito, Peru,
Benito Juarez de Carvajal captured the Viceroy, decapitated him, and carried his head on
a string.90 As a result, the King needed a policy which would accommodate
87 The New Laws for the Government of the Indies, i-vi.
88 Ibid., vii, xvi.
89 Ibid., viii.
90 Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of the Americas (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949), 96.
41
encomenderos, since they were the only military force in the Americas, but also one that
would emphasize religious conquest by missionaries.
The King ordered a stop to all conquests in 1550 while theologians debated a
legitimate method to conduct expeditions.91 Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de
Sepúlveda led the debate in Valladolid in 1550. Sepúlveda grounded his arguments in
Aristotelian theory of natural law. He argued that the Indians were barbaric in nature and,
therefore, were fit to be slaves. It was natural law that determined Spanish superiority.
Also, Sepúlveda regarded indigenous actions such as idolatry, cannibalism, and human
sacrifice as barbaric and consequently subject to Spanish authority. The Spanish had the
legal right to wage war on the Indians and take their land in order to propagate the faith.92
Las Casas, conversely, argued that Indians were rational beings fully capable of
becoming Christians and of self-governing. They were not barbarians, for their language
had been written down by Spaniards, and they had their own laws and leaders. Las Casas
also attacked the legitimacy of the requerimiento. Christianity was an egalitarian
religion, but the requerimiento reduced men to slavery. Indians only had the choice of
two different forms of inferiority: as subjects of the Spanish crown or subjected into
slavery.93 He claimed that since the Indians were pagans who had not had the chance to
reject Christianity, the Crown and the Pope had no jurisdiction over them. As a result, if
Indians were to be Christians, they must do so by willingly accepting Spanish presence.
91 Ibid., 117.
92 Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One, 83-98; For Aristotelian theory in Spain, see Anthony Pagden, Lords
of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500-c.1800 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995), chapters 1-3.
93 Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, trans. Richard Howard (New
York: Harper and Row, 1984), 147-148.
42
The best means for Indians to accept Spanish presence, according to Las Casas, was
under missionary guidance.94
It is important to note, though, that Las Casas always thought that Spanish
presence was legitimate. He only disputed the methods used by Spaniards to bring
Indians into the Spanish realm.95 Therefore, while theologians may have disagreed over
the rationality of Indians, they did agree that Indians needed saving; Spanish control
would begin the salvation process. Historian Daniel Castro persuasively argues that Las
Casas idealization of the Indian made them pristine figures devoid of reality. As a
consequence, they were innocent victims deserving of mendicant intercession. This
idealization gave Las Casas the rationale to claim legitimacy for missionary-only
conquest.96
Hampering Las Casas’s argument, however, was the unraveling of the peaceful
missions in Verapaz. The Dominicans in Verapaz had agreed with civil authorities in the
area that for five years, colonists were not allowed to enter the mission areas. From 1537
to the early 1550s, the friars presided over the missions peacefully. In 1556, however,
one of the friars sent a letter the governor of Guatemala stating that the Indians had
revolted and killed three missionaries. When the friars asked for help, the colonists
reportedly quoted the royal edict that prevented lay Spaniard intrusion of the mission
area. Since the friars had no weaponry to threaten the Indians, they were powerless to
prevent potential rebellion. Missionary authority alone could not sustain a successful
94 Ibid, 83-98.
95 Pagden, Lords of All the World, 52.
96 Daniel Castro, Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical
Imperialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 36.
43
mission system. The missions would require a nearby Spanish settlement that could be
called upon to quell Indian unrest. Future explorations and settlements, then, would
require both religious and civil authorities to coexist for the survival of a Spanish
presence.97
Although Las Casas’s Verapaz mission crumbled and the debate ended in a
stalemate, military events in New Spain throughout the mid to late sixteenth century
contributed to the Crown’s decision to give missionaries control over future expeditions.
Conflict in New Galicia between Spaniards and the indigenous populations continued to
escalate. At the same time of the Coronado expedition, native groups allied to remove
Spanish presence. For two years, both sides battled in what is now called the Mixtón War
(1540-42). The allied Indians had been so formidable that Viceroy Mendoza personally
led the Spanish in the final battle.98 Though the initial rebellion was put down,
skirmishes persisted throughout the next decade. Then, in 1550, the Chichimeca Indians
gathered to fight the Spanish. The two sides fought continuously for forty years.
Historian Peter Bakewell called the war the “longest and most expensive conflict between
Spaniards and the indigenous peoples of New Spain.”99
By the end of the fighting, the Crown was convinced that secular Spanish
treatment of native populations—mainly participation in the slave trade—was the cause
for the uprising. The Crown deemphasized military conquest and instead emphasized the
establishment of settlements and missionaries. Noting that the presence of soldiers was
not effective in reducing Chichimeca warfare, the Crown suggested that “three or four
97 Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice, 78-81.
98 Altman, The War for Mexico’s West, 24-56, 152.
99 Bakewell, Silver Mining, 22.
44
monasteries of friars” should be established for the “purpose of attracting the Indians
with gentle methods.”100 Four years later, the King commanded that the Indians be
gathered into towns, because the “religious can’t visit them,” which created difficulties in
their conversion efforts.101 The Spanish consequently reached peace with the
Chichimecas through missionary conversion and providing benefits and food for Indians
who accepted Spanish control.102
The large expenditures by the Crown during the Chichimeca War led the King to
align with mendicant orders in hopes that their success in bringing natives into the
Spanish fold would increase colonial tribute and replenish the royal coffers. Working
with advisors, Philip II (r. 1556-1598) decreed in the Royal Ordinances of 1573 that
discoveries were not to be called “conquest” but rather “pacification.”103 Spaniards were
to explain the benefits of Spanish presence, including trade and Christianity. The vices of
Indians were to be corrected peacefully by friars. If after expressing the benefits of
submitting to Spanish authority the Indians did not consent, Spaniards should do “no
more harm than that necessary for the defense of the settlers.”104 The Crown, though
carefully accepting the possibility of violence, had shifted its vision of imperial
expansion to meet ideas proposed by mendicant authorities.
100 “To the Viceroy of New Spain, ordering him to send a report with his opinion concerning the
suggestion that it would be suitable for the reduction and pacification of the Chichimecas to use the
methods here recited; namely, to establish towns and monasteries in their lands. [1566]”, Historical
Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Viscaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, ed. Charles Wilson
Hackett (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1923), 155-157.
101 “[Royal Order] Commanding that the Indians of Nueva Galicia be gathered into towns, where they
may live under an organized government [1570],” Historical Documents, 101-103.
102 Bakewell, Silver Mining, 26-38.
103 “Ordinances of His Majesty For the New Discoveries, Conquests, and Pacifications [July 1573]” in
Spanish Laws Concerning Discoveries, Pacifications, and Settlements among the Indians, ed., S. Lyman
Tyler, trans., María Aragón, Gertrude Elsmore and Charles Wonder (Salt Lake City: University of Utah,
1980), 9.
104 Ibid., 36.
45
Perhaps noting the failure of the missionary-only Verapaz mission, the Crown also
enacted regulations for the establishment of lay Spanish settlements. The appointed civil
authority who led the expedition would be obligated to establish a town of at least thirty
families. The town would be placed without usurping Indian lands or causing harm to the
natives. The person in charge would then give each family land for a house, pasture, and
cultivation. Colonists were ordered to avoid communication or contact with the Indians;
contact was only permitted when explaining the peaceful nature of the Spanish
presence.105 The establishment of a Spanish settlement signified the need for both a civil
and religious presence to create and maintain a stable Spanish presence.
While the majority of the 1573 Ordinances gave predominant jurisdiction over
native populations to mendicants, Philip II was determined to bring mendicant orders
under the control of the Crown. After experiencing the problems caused by the excess
power of the encomenderos, the King did not want to be subverted by another authority
abroad. The mendicant orders were traditionally under the direct authority of the Pope,
but since the King believed he was the patron of the Church in the New World, he then
held jurisdiction over ecclesiastical appointments. Conversely, the Church believed that
the Pope was the head of the Church and only delegated that power to the King.106 The
tensions between the Pope and Crown rose through the mid sixteenth century. For
instance, according to Henry Kamen, the papacy refused to approve the 1573 Ordinances
because the laws ignored papal dispensations to dispense lands as it had under the Treaty
105 Ibid.,
106 Edwin Edward Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory in Sixteenth Century New Spain Province
of the Holy Gospel (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1975), 66-77.
46
of Tordesillas—which divided the Spanish and Portuguese claims in the New World.107
The crown counteracted by enacting the Real Patronato in 1574 which gave the Crown
the ability to act as patron over both mendicant and diocesan clergy in the Americas.
Consequently, while the Crown had allied with mendicant orders to bring natives under
Spanish control, Philip II made sure to declare his absolute authority over all ecclesiastic
and civil affairs.108
While the Real Patronato would not affect the Franciscans in New Mexico until
the eighteenth century, the Royal Ordinances quickly restarted interest in pacifying the
Indians to the north of New Spain. In 1580, Fray Agustín Rodríguez, who previously
converted the Conchos Indians (Northern Mexico), pleaded with the Viceroy to bring
Christianity to northern Indians. The Viceroy accepted and Rodríguez chose Captain
Francisco Sánchez Chamuscado to serve as military escort. In total, three friars, nine
soldiers, and nineteen Indian servants, along with cattle and horses, set out to Northern
New Spain in 1581.109
The account given by one of the soldiers, Hernán Gallegos, provided insight into
the methods missionaries used to persuade the Pueblo Indians. One of the missionaries,
Fray Juan de Santa María, departed to report their findings of populations and pueblos to
the Viceroy. During the journey, Indians from a nearby settlement killed Fray Juan for
fear of his return with more Spaniards. The Spanish soldiers took up arms and engaged
107 Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power 1492-1763 (New York: Harper Collins,
2003), 256.
108 Robert Charles Padden, “The Ordenanza del Patronazgo, 1574: An Interpretative Essay.” The Americas
12, no. 4 (1956): 333-354.
109 George P. Hammond, “Introduction” in The Rediscovery of New Mexico, 1580-1594, eds. George P.
Hammond and Agapito Rey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966), 8.
47
the Pueblos. The soldiers captured the culprits and returned them to the other friars at the
village of Piedrahita. Gallegos noted that preparations for the Indians executions were
ready, but “it was agreed that at the time when the Indians were to be beheaded the friars
should rush out to free them” so that the Indians may embrace the friars and
Catholicism.110 The Spaniards did so, and the Pueblos embraced the friars. The
benevolent nature of the friars, at least from the Pueblo viewpoint, had made them
respected figures of authority.111
The Chamuscado-Rodríguez expedition traveled back to Mexico City shortly after
the episode at Piedrahita. However, the two remaining Franciscans insisted on their
staying in order to convert the natives. When the soldiers returned, the Franciscan
commissary and the Viceroy immediately ordered another expedition to retrieve or at
least know the whereabouts of the friars. Two friars and thirteen soldiers, led by Antonio
de Espejo, who was a familiar (civil police agent) for the Inquisition, set off in 1582.112
Espejo, according to notarist Diego Pérez de Luxán, stated that he was to go with the
friars to “congregate the native Indians and to preach the Sacred Teachings.”113 Like the
Chamuscado-Rodríguez entrada, this was meant to be solely an evangelization mission.
Like the previous expedition, Espejo and his men engaged in a brief skirmish with
Indians but staged formal punishment so that the Pueblos would respect the friars. The
Indians had killed three horses and fled to the hills afterwards. Espejo pleaded with the
110 “Gallegos’ Relation of the Chamuscado-Rodríguez Expedition” in The Rediscovery of New Mexico, 98.
111 Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests, 55.
112 G.R.G. Conway, “Antonio de Espejo, as a Familiar of the Mexican Inquisition, 1572-1578” New
Mexico Historical Review 6 no. 1 (1931): 1-20.
113 Diego Pérez de Luxán, Expedition into New Mexico Made by Antonio de Espejo, 1582-1583: As
Revealed in the Journal of Diego de Luxán, a Member of the Party. Trans. George Peter Hammond and
Agapito Rey (Los Angeles: Quivira Society, 1929. New York: Arno Press, 1967. Reprint), 46.
48
natives to return. They agreed and Espejo erected crosses to state they remained pacified.
In the same manner as the Chamuscado-Rodríguez expedition, the soldiers claimed that
“we told these natives that we wanted to kill them…but that the Father who accompanied
us had begged us not to do it.”114 Again, the Indians embraced the Father for his
benevolent actions on their behalf.
When the party found out that the two friars from the previous expedition had
died, which abruptly ended the mission, Espejo and Friar Bernaldino Beltrán sparred over
the direction of the rest of the journey. Espejo desired to find mines suitable for
extraction, while Friar Bernaldino Beltrán wanted to return to report on the two dead
friars. The party split.115 Once the party split, Espejo’s actions attest that secular figures
still were concerned with finding material wealth and remained willing to use physical
force. An Indian servant of Espejo fled and he pursued until he came to the village of
Acoma. He was told of the death of his servant and responded by burning fields of
maize. When discussing the incident, he blamed the departed Fray Beltrán, whom he
believed had incited the Indian to flee. Espejo and his retinue departed after the event.116
His emphasis on finding material wealth when the friars no longer accompanied his
journey illustrates the contrasting goals between missionaries and secular agents.
When the friars confirmed reports of large indigenous populations who were ripe
for conversion, the Viceroy prepared for a large scale expedition for the permanent
settlement of New Mexico. Juan de Oñate was given the right to settle New Mexico.
Oñate was the son of Cristóbal de Oñate, a famous conquistador in Nueva Galicia and a
114 Ibid., 56.
115 Ibid., 109-110.
116 Ibid., 110-112.
49
wealthy nobleman in the silver industry.117 Oñate himself carried noble lineage as he
married the granddaughter of Hernán Cortés and the great-granddaughter of Aztec
emperor Moctezuma.118 Hence, like most of the other lay figures who led expeditions,
Oñate’s background, lineage, and wealth made him a suitable choice to properly fulfill
the goals of the crown.
Like Coronado’s petition, Oñate sought to play up his accomplishments that met
royal goals and supported missionaries. In the 1590s, Oñate personally led a group of
Spaniards to capture Francisco de Leyva Bonilla, who had tried to enter New Mexico
with the “intent and determination of conquering them” without royal approval.119 By
leading a retinue of Spaniards to prevent an unauthorized expedition into New Mexico
bent on conquest, Oñate attempted to show his concern over following royal policies. In
contrast to Leyva, Oñate’s objective was the “discovery, pacification, and conversion” of
New Mexico.120 Furthermore, Oñate’s appointed title as the “pacifier” of New Mexico
attested to the influence the missionaries had with the crown.121 Like Coronado,
Chamuscado and Espejo, Oñate followed the rhetoric required by the Crown that was
influenced by mendicant orders.
117 Donald Chipman, “The Oñate-Moctezuma-Zaldívar Families of Northern New Spain” New Mexico
Historical Review 52 no. 4 (1977): 301.
118 Eric Beerman, “The Death of an Old Conquistador: New Light on Juan de Oñate” New Mexico
Historical Review 54 no. 4 (1979): 306.
119 “Appointment of Don Juan de Oñate as Governor and Captain General of New Mexico” in Hammond,
Oñate, 59.
120 “Contract of Don Juan de Oñate for the Discovery and Conquest of New Mexico” in Hammond,
Oñate, 42-43.
121 “Instructions to Don Juan de Oñate, October 21, 1595,” in Hammond, Oñate, 65.
50
Yet, like Coronado and Espejo, Oñate attempted to balance the rhetoric of royal
policy with economic interests. Since secular Spanish leaders incurred the cost to lead
expeditions, Oñate received the title of adelantado, which provided him substantial
authority in governing affairs.122 His willingness to serve the crown interests could thus
be inspired both by the desire to pacify and the desire to gain political and economic
privileges. Moreover, Oñate referred to himself as a conqueror.123 His use of the word
suggests that, in conjunction with pacifying Indians, he sought to gain the prestige
associated with conquistadors. Since his father was instrumental in early suppression of
indigenous rebellions in New Galicia, and was a reported friend of Coronado, it is
surmisable that Oñate attempted to further honor his prestige. But, like Coronado and
Espejo, the success of Oñate’s goals would depend upon his ability to balance both royal
interests and his own.124
Accordingly, Oñate’s treatment of the settlers and his violent actions against the
Pueblo Indians during the expedition exposed his fragile commitment to the policy of
pacification and, like in Coronado's case, invited a royal investigation into his actions.
Within his more immediate political circle, moreover, he faced mutinies, desertions, and
conspiracies within his own ranks, including an attempted overthrow by forty-five settlersoldiers.125 Oñate blamed the disorder around him on soldiers and officers who were
122 Ibid., 65. The title of Adelantado was essentially the same as a governor, but with more privileges
associated with successful service to the Crown.
123 “Contract of Don Juan de Oñate for the Discovery and Conquest of New Mexico,” in Hammond,
Oñate, 42-57.
124 Coronado and Oñate’s father, Don Cristobal Oñate, were apparently friends and exchanged gifts, or
perhaps even bribes, for favors. Perhaps Juan de Oñate heard tales from his father about Coronado, and
hoped to replicate the conquests of both his father and Coronado. Bolton mentions Oñate and Coronado
together in Coronado, 374.
125 “Record of the Marches by the Army, New Spain to New Mexico, 1596-98,” in Hammond, Oñate, 324.
51
conquest-minded and who mutinied after he prevented them from abusing natives and
their property.126 However, it was Oñate who acted as a conquistador against indigenous
populations. In 1599, members of the Acoma Pueblo killed twelve Spaniards.127 In
response, Oñate sieged the well-fortified village. After several days of conflict, the
Acoma capitulated.
After the Acoma capitulated, the Spaniards held a trial against the Indian leaders
in which punishment of the Indians would depend upon whether the conflict was a just
war. In debating the causes of just war, one of the justifications offered resembled the
requerimiento. Spaniards could force Indians to observe divine and natural law, and
therefore could use all means to force Pueblo subjugation. Conversely, Fray Juan Claros
believed that Indians should only accept Spanish authority through admonition and
persuasion.128 The Spaniards agreed to the claim of just war despite Fray Claros’s
dissent. The acceptance of a rationale of just war that resembled the requerimiento
attested to the continued demand for meeting local exigencies vis-à-vis assuaging
mendicant concerns.
The punishment exacted by Oñate upon the Indians challenged the Royal
Ordinances and resulted his removal from office as governor. Oñate sentenced the guilty
Acoma to the following: males over twenty-five years of age were sentenced to have one
foot cut off and to twenty years of personal servitude; males in between twelve and
twenty-five and women over twelve sentenced to twenty years of personal servitude; two
Indians from a nearby province who were present had their right hand cut off and were
126 “Don Juan de Oñate to the Viceroy of New Spain, March 2, 1599,” in Hammond, Oñate, 481.
127 “Trial of the Indians of Acoma, 1598,” in Hammond, Oñate, 430.
128 Ibid., 454.
52
set free in order that they may convey to their land the news of this punishment; and
children under twelve were placed under the care of the Franciscans.129 Oñate’s
questionable use of “just war”, which a Franciscan opposed, to justify violence against
the Pueblo recreated a conquistador-like pattern of Spanish-Native interaction and
promoted the subjugation of Natives through elaborate displays of force.
The actions and motives of Oñate contrasted with the desires of the Franciscans,
settlers, and royal policy. The Franciscans needed Indian acceptance to establish the
missions. The settlers needed Indians to extract tribute and cultivate crops. As dictated
in the 1573 Ordinances, the Crown desired as little violence as possible with native
populations. Oñate’s interactions with the natives made the Indians refuse Spanish
control. As a result, the colonists and Franciscans formed an alliance to depose Oñate.
While Oñate led a group of soldiers west to search for material wealth, the Franciscans,
including his own confessor, and settlers abandoned the camp. Furious, Oñate demanded
the return of the settlers for trial of desertion. Theologians in Mexico City, however,
openly rebuked Oñate. They stated the people could not return to New Mexico, or
anywhere under Oñate’s jurisdiction, because there was too much risk should they come
under the “power of one against whom they have formulated so many complaints and
against whom they intend to bring charges.”130 Settlers and Franciscans had legitimate
goals of settlement and conversion, and would attempt to remove a civil authority who
refused to meet their needs.
129 Ibid., 477-478.
130 “Reply of the Theologians” in Hammond, Oñate, 779.
53
With complaints from Franciscans and desertions from settlers, Phillip III ordered
in 1606 the halt of the discovery of New Mexico and the recall of governor Juan de Oñate
for “excesses, disorders, and crimes” committed by Oñate and his relatives.131
Franciscans who remained in New Mexico sent a letter to the Viceroy claiming that
Oñate had hampered the missionary effort. They argued that “the best defense for the
cause of the order consists in the fact that Governor Don Juan de Oñate is on bad terms
with the friars of St. Francis.” The friars would have never had peace with Oñate because
the friars had to admonish him for the “cruelties and killings inflicted on the poor Indians
by his command.”132 Only the removal of Oñate would make the Indians receptive to the
missionary enterprise.
Oñate sought to bolster his standing by reporting on the material wealth of the
colony. By offering alluring promises of vast mineral wealth, Oñate hoped rally enough
royal support to maintain power. Specifically, Oñate sent Captain Marcos Farfán de los
Godos to explore the area of the Moqui (Hopi) Indians. Farfán and eight others traveled
west and peacefully engaged with the Indians there. When the Spaniards asked of any
ores or minerals, the Indians reportedly led them to a mine that had “brown, black,
yellow, blue, and green ores.” Farfán claimed that the veins were so great in size that
“one-half of the people in New Spain could stake out claims in this land.” He
unabashedly reported that there was “no question” that the mountain range that held the
131 “The King to Montesclaros, June 17, 1606” in Don Juan de Oñate: Colonizer of New Mexico, 15951628, , eds. George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, vol 2, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1953), 1038.
132 “Petition of the Franciscans to Remain in New Mexico” in ibid., 980.
54
mines were the “richest in New Spain.”133 While Farfán undoubtedly exaggerated his
claims—throughout the colony of New Mexico, no minerals were extracted except for
salt—Oñate relied on these reports to frame his attest to the successes of the expedition.
A multitude of local actors testified against Oñate, showing that an alliance
among Franciscans, settlers, and Indians could mobilize enough political influence to
overthrow a civil authority. While settlers and Franciscans comprised the bulk of the
testimony, an indigenous man called Miguel provided information that clinched Oñate’s
removal from office. Miguel confirmed that Oñate’s letters regarding the reasonable
abundance of goods, metals, and population in New Mexico was false.134 Moreover,
various lay Spaniards attested to Oñate and his officers’ demeanor with soldiers, friars,
and Indians. Several were unaware if precious metals existed, only hearing scattered
reports from one Indian, and commented that the indigenous populations were fit for
evangelization in the missions.135
With assertions from Franciscans, lay men, and natives, Oñate’s defense could do
little to refute the combined testimonies. Oñate was found guilty on twelve charges,
including ordering the deaths of two Captains, executing two other soldiers, committing
robberies and damaging native property without restitution, causing the deaths of many
natives at the pueblo at Acoma, treating with excessive severity those taken alive at the
133 “Discovery of the Mines, 1598” in Hammond, Oñate, 408-414.
134 “Inquiry Concerning the New Provinces in the North, 1602” in Hammond, Oñate, 871-877. For the
entire testimonials, see pgs 836-877.
135 That Indian, in fact, was Miguel. We can reasonably assumed Miguel told this to the Spaniards while
captive in order to improve his conditions. In the testimony, he claimed to have heard reports about gold
being present in a lake distant from the pueblo of Encuche. Again, the veracity of his claims is unknown.
55
pueblo, and threatening those who spoke the truth on the realities of the land.136 The
court banished Oñate from New Mexico.
Upon the removal of Oñate in 1607, the crown debated whether to abandon the
colony due to financial cost and Spanish inability to control the Pueblos. However,
Franciscans pleaded their case by offering examples of widespread success in their
missions among the Pueblos. They sent a letter to the Viceroy claiming that “more than
seven thousand persons had been baptized” and many more were willing to accept
baptism.137 The letter was welcomed news to the Crown, for the Viceroy then decreed
that New Mexican settlement and conversion efforts should continue.138
With their successes, Franciscans were given authority over native populations
and also controlled many temporal matters. Franciscans were the only ones allowed to
make further explorations in the region of New Mexico and the number of soldiers was
reduced in order to cut expenses.139 Franciscans operated the trade economy with the
closest Spanish province of Parral, mainly in sheep, wool, and salt.140 Finally,
Franciscans presided spiritually and temporally over Spaniards and Pueblos, and became
the predominant authority in local New Mexican affairs. With the friars in control over
the spiritual and temporal affairs of New Mexico, the Franciscans had successfully
136 “Conviction of Oñate and His Captains, 1614” in ibid., 1109-1113.
137 “Don Luis de Velasco to the King, December 17, 1608” in Don Juan de Oñate: Colonizer of New
Mexico, 1595-1628, , eds. George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, vol 2 (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1953), 1067.
138 “Decree Regarding What Father’s Fray Lázaro Ximénez and Fray Ysidro Ordóñez Have Been Ordered
to Take to New Mexico, January 29, 1609” in ibid., 1076.
139 Frederic Athearn, A Forgottten Kingdom: The Spanish Frontier in Colorado and New Mexico, 15411821 (Denver: Bureau of Land Management, 1992), 6.
140 Francis Scholes, “Supply Side in New Mexico” New Mexico Historical Review 3 (1928), cited in ibid.,
8.
56
influenced royal policy, received acceptance from native populations, and consequently
provided the best means for the Crown to extend its domain.
A comparison between the journals of the expeditions of Fray Marcos de Niza,
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, Fray Agustín Rodriguez and Francisco Chamuscado,
Antonio de Espejo, and Juan de Oñate, all carried out between 1539-1607, reveals the
growing influence of mendicant orders in shaping royal policy. For instance, Coronado’s
entrada in 1540 focused primarily on the search for mineral wealth, having
Christianization as a second goal. Forty years later, the expedition led by Fray Agustín
Rodriguez and Francisco Chamuscado had Christianization as its first goal, suggesting a
shift in the Crown's attitude towards the treatment of indigenous populations and the
purpose of expeditions.
Mendicant orders were not the only entity who affected the direction of royal
policy. Native populations, though largely silenced actors during the expeditions,
influenced local events which reshaped the trajectory of royal policy. The lack of
indigenous testimony in the Coronado trials signified that the expedition had little to no
interaction with the Pueblos outside of the violence perpetrated against them.
Conversely, when Miguel testified about the veracity of Oñate’s claims about material
wealth, he became an instrumental actor in both deposing Oñate and affirming that the
Franciscans had brought some Indians under Spanish control.
The greater focus expeditions placed on Christianization and the growing
influence of Natives on colonial political decisions reflect a shift in royal expansionist
policy that was in part shaped by broader political and theological events in New Spain
57
and Europe, as well as local developments in New Mexico. Thus, when secular efforts,
like Coronado's expedition, failed to bring the Pueblos under Spanish control, and the
Chichimeca Wars created an immense financial burden for the Crown, the King sought a
new strategy for imperial expansion. The King employed the mendicant orders to bring
the Indians in through religious means. Missionary success in the New World and its
influence in Spain contributed to an alliance between missionaries and the Crown.
Franciscans and the missionary enterprise best met the Crown's goal of promoting Indian
willingness to accept Spanish control and to supply tribute. By the late sixteenth-century,
then, the Crown had become convinced that subjugation of native populations through
secular force-of-arms was not effective in bringing indigenous groups under Spanish
control. The Crown had placed its hopes for further imperial expansion in the hands of
Franciscan missionaries.
58
Chapter 2: A Delicate Balance of Power: Contests of Franciscan Authority
In 1613, Friar Isidro Ordóñez, prelate to the missions of New Mexico, stood
before the parishioners at Santa Fé as he read his sermon. Known among the settlers,
civil authorities, and even his own friars as an overbearing ecclesiastic, Ordóñez made a
speech that shocked the settlement. Agitated as a result of a jurisdictional dispute with
Governor Pedro de Peralta over Indian tribute, he unabashedly proclaimed to “let no one
persuade with vain words that I do not have the same power and authority that the Pope
in Rome has.” If the Pope were in New Mexico, “he could do no more than I.” Ordóñez
stated, to anyone who did not follow his orders, that he could “arrest, cast into irons, and
punish as seems fitting to me any person without exception.” Directing his speech to
governor Peralta, Ordóñez lastly confirmed that he said this for the “benefit of a certain
person who is listening to me who perhaps raises his eyebrows. May God grant that
affairs may not come to this extremity.”141
Ordóñez’s threats to the governor and settlers reveal his confidence in the superior
power of the Church over secular representatives of the crown in New Mexico. While
Ordóñez did not mean that he was the Pope himself, he saw himself as the representative
of the Pope in New Mexico. The Pope gave mendicant orders episcopal powers, such as
the ability to administer sacraments, excommunicate, and take over parishes, through the
bull Omnimoda, which enhanced the spiritual authority of Ordóñez.142 At the same time,
Franciscans controlled the temporal matters in New Mexico, including the supply trade
141 “Relación Verdadera, A. G. P. M., Inquisición 316” cited in France Scholes, “Church and State in New
Mexico 1610-1650.” New Mexico Historical Review 11, no. 1 (1936): 39.
142 Padden, “The Ordenanza del Patronazgo, 1574”, 337-344.
59
from Mexico. But above all, in the early seventeenth century New Mexico, according to
decrees from the Viceroy, was primarily a missionary settlement.143 The Franciscans
accordingly saw civil officials mostly as escort for missionaries who journeyed to the
Indian pueblos.
Despite royal approval of New Mexico as a mission province, Franciscans, civil
officials, and Pueblo Indians engaged in a triangle of negotiations that concealed the
fragility of Franciscan control. This chapter emphasizes that while Franciscans
dominated the political, social, cultural, and religious life of New Mexico in the early to
mid-seventeenth century, Franciscan authority was predicated on a balancing act that
needed to meet the exigencies of the Pueblo Indians while simultaneously resisting, but
not alienating, civil officials. While missionaries believed their power came from God,
Franciscan authority in fact came from Pueblo acceptance of the missions and from the
assistance civil authorities provided as an armed deterrent to prevent Indian rebellion.
The Pueblos would stay on the missions as long as the Franciscans meet their spiritual
and temporal needs. When the Pueblos attempted to either flee or rebel, Spanish armed
forces were able to return the Indians or suppress any uprising.
However, when the Pueblos united to overthrow Spanish presence in 1680, the
revolt was symptomatic of the breakdown of Franciscan authority. Franciscans had
become unable to meet the temporal or spiritual needs of the Pueblos. Drought, famine,
and disease led Pueblos to believe that the missionaries no longer possessed adequate
power. At the same time, the relationship between Franciscans and civil authorities was
143 “The King to Montesclaros, June 17, 1606” in Hammond, Oñate, 1038; “Royal Cedula to the Viceroy,
November 1, 1609” in Hammond, Oñate, 1104; Frederic Athearn, A Forgotten Kingdom: The Spanish
Frontier in Colorado and New Mexico, 1541-1821 (Denver: Bureau of Land Management, 1992), 6.
60
severely damaged. Consequently, when rumors of rebellion arose, civil authorities
refused to provide the protection that had quelled previous episodes of unrest. The
Revolt challenged Franciscan authority and ultimately revealed the fragility of Franciscan
claims to dominance in New Mexico.144
The cause, or causes, of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 has been a topic for discussion
for historians throughout the twentieth century. David Weber’s collected essays on the
matter, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, brought five different interpretations
for the revolt including the desire for cultural preservation, the rise of a mestizo
population that threatened both Spanish and Pueblo traditional cultures, the charisma of
religious leaders, and a Franciscan desire for martyrdom.145 Since scholars have provided
substantial evidence for each interpretation, a review of the historiography of seventeenth
century Spanish-Pueblo relations reveals the complex circumstances that culminated in
the revolt. While various factors can be recognized as contributing to the revolt, what
emerges from Spanish-Pueblo interactions was the fragile balance of power Spanish
authorities, in particular the Franciscans, had achieved in the decades prior to 1680. For
example, Franciscans and civil authorities contested each other’s jurisdiction over native
populations, which revealed missionary weakness against a subordinate civil authority.
Franciscans relied upon natives to accept the missionary’s presence, but when the friars
were unable to meet Pueblo spiritual and temporal needs—such as producing rain and
protecting from enemies—the Franciscans could not maintain a veneer of power. Since
the revolt had revealed the fragility of Franciscan claims to authority in the region, New
144 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 95-140.
145 What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, selected by David Weber (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
1999).
61
Mexico becomes a prominent example of the instability of a Spanish institutional
presence in regions beyond centralized authority.
In the early seventeenth century, the Franciscan Order enforced royal policy that
emphasized the mission system, which buttressed the claims of missionary authority in
New Mexico. The Franciscans had a large hand in the removal of Juan de Oñate, the first
governor of New Mexico. Oñate’s abuse of native populations and lack of concern for
their well-being, according to missionaries, made him unfit for the governorship. It was
hoped that Pedro de Peralta (1609-1614), Oñate’s replacement, would be subordinate or,
at least, more amicable to missionary needs. Generally, the duties of the governor
included the right to portion encomiendas, grant land, organize defense, and administer
justice in Spanish civil disputes.146 The Viceroy sent Peralta with instructions to “defend
the county” from enemies, namely Apaches, and to attend to the excessive taxes that was
“causing [the Pueblos] great vexation and trouble.”147 Peralta was to further “consult
with the religious” to teach Spanish, and organize the reducciones to facilitate
proselytization.148 Peralta's instructions highlight the prominence of the missionary
enterprise in the Crown's vision for colonial settlement in New Mexico.
However, civil and religious officials contested the boundaries of each other’s
authority over Indians and local government in a battle over jurisdiction that resembled
the larger conflict between King and Pope. For example, in 1613, Peralta sent soldiers to
collect tribute from the Pueblo Indians. Prelate Ordóñez ordered the men back home in
146 Ibid., 100.
147 Lansing Bloom and Ireneo Chaves, “La Ynstruccion a Don Pedro de Peralta (1609), with translation”
NMHR 4 no. 2 (1929): 183, 185. Chaves’ translation is literal and awkward: the translations cited are my
own.
148 Ibid., 185.
62
order to observe the feast of Pentecost. Peralta, however, ordered them back.149 Under
the encomienda system, civil authorities held jurisdiction over the collection of tribute
from the Indian villages. Franciscans, however, sought to control tribute collection as
they feared any civil Spanish intrusion in the Pueblo villages would corrupt natives.150
Moreover, the Franciscans used the tribute collection as another means to obtain more
authority over the secular arm.151 Because Franciscans had effectively removed Oñate
and received sole privilege to start expeditions, the Franciscans believed they had the
authority to control the collection of native tribute as well. Moreover, since missionaries
believed civil intrusion of Pueblo villages would corrupt natives, tribute collection also
became a religious concern. The Franciscans, who were delegated by the Pope to preside
over the Christianization of native populations, believed civil authorities designated by
the King had no authority over the affairs of Indians.152
Ordóñez initially attempted to assert the authority of ecclesiastics over the
governor by imposing religious sanctions. Enraged at Peralta’s disobedience, Ordóñez
declared by the authority of the Inquisition that Peralta faced excommunication despite
the fact that the Inquisition did not exist in New Mexico until 1626.153 Ordóñez and his
second-in-command, Fray Tirado, threatened to consume the Eucharist, also known as the
149 Scholes, “Church and State”, 33. It must be noted that Scholes derives nearly the entirety of the
following events from Friar Francisco Pérez Guerta, a Franciscan unsympathetic to Ordóñez, in an
Inquisition document. See Scholes, 30. As previously mentioned in the introduction, there existed scant
sources of New Mexico prior to 1680 due to the Revolt. What we glean upon are documents sent to
Mexico City.
150 Bolton, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution”, 46-48.
151 Scholes, “Church and State,” 24.
152 Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory, 66-77.
153 It turned out the Ordóñez had forged documents that gave him Inquistorial power. See Gut 109.
Cyprian Lynch, “Introduction” in Fray Alonso Benavides, Benavides’ Memorial of 1630, trans. Peter
Forrestal (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1954) xv.
63
sacraments within the Lord’s Supper, which would prevent the communion and the
forgiveness of sins to all who supported the governor.154 Support for Peralta dwindled as
settlers feared for their spiritual lives.
After the excommunication episode, Peralta and Ordóñez used Pueblo Indians as
an audience for their test of strength as one side tried to claim authority over the other.155
In July of 1613, Peralta rebuked Ordóñez’s excommunication and Franciscan authority by
attending Mass. In return, Fray Tirado threw the governor’s assigned chair out into the
street during mass. The governor’s chair was originally placed at the front near the altar
with other ranking officials and settlers.156 By removing Peralta’s chair, the Franciscans
attempted to show the natives that all who challenged the authority of God and the
missionaries would be denied sacraments, excommunicated and outside the universal
Church body. Peralta, however, ordered the chair to be placed near the baptismal font
where he sat amongst the Indians.157 By placing his chair towards the back, Peralta allied
himself with the Pueblo, signaling therefore that civil authority would sit side-by-side
with Indians.
The Pueblo Indians viewed the episode as a subversion of religious authority.
According to Ramón Gutiérrez, among the Pueblo Indians the two most powerful
leadership positions were those of the religious and war chiefs, but the latter were
considered inferior to the former. The Inside Chief was a direct descendent of the Sun,
the highest deity in the sky for the Pueblos, and necessary for the creation of life.
154 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 109.
155 Ibid., 109.
156 Ibid., 109; Scholes, “Church and State”, 36-38.
157 Scholes, “Church and State”, 36-38.
64
Outside Chiefs descended from the Twin War Gods, whose purpose—violence through
protection or war—embodied the direct opposite of the Sun. Consequently, when Peralta
rebuked the authority of the Franciscans, an authority that supposedly had been granted
by the Christian god, Peralta raised doubts about the legitimacy of the Franciscan God. If
subordinate war chiefs could openly challenge the authority of the religious chief, then
that brought into question the strength of the Christian God.158
Ordóñez countered Peralta’s symbolic seating arrangement with a public display
of Franciscan authority. They confronted each other outside the church where,
reportedly, the governor’s pistol fired and wounded two. Ordóñez again ordered Peralta
excommunicated and later arrested him. Ordóñez summoned nearby Indians so they
could witness Peralta’s incarceration.159 Like Peralta’s chair among the Indians,
Ordóñez's public jailing of Peralta showed to the Pueblos the dominance of ecclesiastical
authority over the secular arm. Ordóñez claimed both religious and civil authority after
Peralta’s imprisonment. Peralta remained in jail until his replacement, Bernardino de
Ceballos, arrived in 1614. Though Peralta was exonerated on all charges in 1617, his
arrest and loss of the governorship highlighted the strength of local ecclesiastical power
over the political direction of New Mexico.160
After Peralta’s arrest, the jostling over who held greater authority over the Pueblo
Indians became part of a larger battle over whether the Crown or the Pope had more
authority in New Spain over ecclesiastical affairs. After Governor Ceballos' term ended,
Juan de Eulate (1618-1625) was chosen as new governor and attempted to assert the
158 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 21-27.
159 Scholes, “Church and State”, 40-44.
160 Ibid., 41, 44-45; Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 110.
65
power of the secular wing in New Mexico.161 However, Eulate was not content to simply
subordinate Franciscans in New Mexico to the governorship, but also was a proponent of
the larger subordination of the Church (Pope) to the State (King). According to
testimony from friars, Eulate reportedly stated that marriage was better than celibacy and
declared the king as his chieftain. By declaring the king as his chieftain, Eulate was
affirming that the Crown was the highest authority. Eulate also denied that the custos
(custodian) had jurisdiction over laymen and denied military escort for friars seeking to
convert friendly, yet non-converted Pueblos.162 Lastly, in a conversation after finishing
his term as governor, Eulate claimed that he would have willingly sacked Rome as
Emperor Charles V had done one-hundred years prior if he were commanded to do so.
By referencing one of the most well-known acts of political subjugation of the Church to
a secular authority, Eulate publicized his own conviction that the Crown should have
supremacy over the Church.163
The basis for secular officials’ attacks upon the Church was the Crown’s
institution of the Real patronato de las indias in 1574, which brought both regular and
secular clergy in the Americas under the authority of the crown and its civil
representatives. While the secular clergy had been accustomed to royal supervision in
Spain, the mendicant orders had owed obedience directly to the prelates and Pope. The
Crown saw the conflicting authorities, according to historian Robert Charles Padden, as a
161 It should be noted that governor’s terms generally lasted 3-4 years. Eulate was an exception.
162 Cyprian Lynch writes that due to the size of the Spanish Empire, the Franciscan order divided
territories into administrative districts called custodies, each presided by the custos. New Mexico was
given a custos in 1616 with the arrival of Parea. See “Introductory Letter,” in Benavides’ Memorial, 5, note
8. France Scholes, “Church and State in New Mexico 1610-1650,” NMHR 11, no. 2 (1936): 146-148.
163 Eleanor Adams and John Longhurst, “New Mexico and the Sack of Rome: One Hundred Years Later,”
NMHR 28, no. 4 (1953), 249.
66
political matter. 164 While episcopal benefits given to mendicant orders in the early
sixteenth-century were necessary for the spread of Spanish institutions, the relatively
stable Spanish presence after the first decades of the seventeenth century rendered
clerical privileges unnecessary. The Crown then desired the ability to replace mendicants
with secular clergy, who were traditionally under the authority of the Crown.165
A contrasting view of the relationship of power between the King and the papacy
relative to the mission system was offered by Franciscan theologian Juan Focher in his
treatise Itinerarium Catholicum.166 Through Christ’s statement to Peter, who is regarded
as the first Pope, to “Feed my sheep,” Christ delegated to Peter the vicarage over all
believers and unbelievers. Peter’s claims passed unbroken to all future Popes.
Consequently, Focher argued that the Pope held authority over matters of conversion, but
that he could exercise that authority directly or delegate it to others. The Pope then
delegated that role to the Crown. Other Franciscan theologians such as Bernardino de
Sahagún and Gerónimo de Mendieta concurred. Mendieta believed that the Pope
assigned the Crown to oversee the missions, but the original missionary task was the
responsibility of the Pope. Sahagún likewise argued that the Crown could oversee and
support the mission but could not control the friars or the direction of the mission. The
Franciscans believed that while the Crown had patronage rights over the missions, these
obligations were financial and did not include ecclesiastical authority over mendicant
orders.167
164 Padden, “The Ordenanza del Patronazgo,” 337-344; Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory, 78.
165 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 95.
166 Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory, 70-72.
167 Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory, 70-77.
67
Consequently, differing interpretations about the role of the Crown in the
missionary enterprise sparked battles between civil authorities and mendicant orders in
New Mexico. For example, in response to Governor Eulate’s proclamations of the
superiority of the State vis-à-vis the Church, Fray Estevan de Parea, prelate and custos,
ordered investigations into Eulate’s unethical behavior. Parea and Eulate submitted pleas
to the Viceroy. The bickering and political jockeying between both parties caused dual
letters from the Viceroy that demarcated the boundaries of royal and ecclesiastical
authority.168
The viceroy’s instructions to both Eulate and Parea were that religious agents
should preside over ecclesiastical affairs only and civil officials should keep to nonreligious matters. Specifically, the Viceroy wrote to Eulate to “maintain Good relations
with the said father custodian and the other religious.” Eulate was not to intrude in the
business and administration of the doctrine “which is under their charge, nor in the other
ecclesiastical matters which belong to them.”169 Civil officials were not to interfere with
the direction of the missions. All religious affairs were to be under the control of this
Franciscans. On the other hand, the Viceroy wrote to Parea that “you shall not impede
nor allow your said Religious to impede the said Governor nor the encomenderos of the
said pueblos in collecting the said tributes.”170 Parea’s claim that the Franciscans had
control of native tribute was untenable. The encomienda was a contract between King
168 Lansing Bloom, “A Glimpse of New Mexico in 1620,” New Mexico Historical Review 3, no. 4 (1928):
357-384.
169 Ibid., 363.
170 “Plain Copy of a Cedula Dispatched by the Royal Audencia of Mexico to the Governor and Custodio
of these Provinces, Under Date of January 9, 1621,” in Lansing Bloom, “The Royal Order of 1620,” New
Mexico Historical Review 5 no. 3 (1930): 295.
68
and encomendero in which the former transferred to the latter the right to native land and
labor. Franciscans had no authority over a civil agreement between the Crown and its
subjects. In his communication with Parea, the Viceroy also wrote that “you nor the
Religious shall not intermeddle nor intrude upon the Governor and other judiciaries, nor
impede them in the use and exercise of their Jurisdiction and government.”171 The
Franciscans were not to interfere in government matters, or impede them from tribute
collection.
The Viceroy’s directions indicate that, as stated in the 1573 Ordinances, a stable
Spanish presence would require amicable relations and a balance of power between
missionaries and civil authorities. While the Crown had decreed that missionaries could
best bring natives under Spanish control, the Crown was just as interested in promoting
settlement and to secure its claims to the region. But in order to entice settlers it had to
be able to promise access to land, labor, and tribute. The strategy for imperial expansion
at this juncture required a delineation of the different spheres of authority of religious and
civil officials, in part to ensure a productive economic relationship between settlers and
natives, and in part to prevent Franciscan interference in the secular goals of the Crown.
The viceroy's orders were intended to clarify that distinction of authority between the
missions and secular representatives of the crown.
Despite efforts to curb Franciscan authority, the arrival of Fray Alonso Benavides
in 1626 as prelate, custos, and commissary of the Inquisition helped to grow the mission
171 Ibid., 296. I have adjusted the translation, as the original translation is awkward and literal. The
original translation reads: “you shall not intermeddle nor allows you said Religious to intrude themselves
upon my said Governor and upon the other judiciaries nor impede them in the use and exercise of their
Jurisdiction and government.”
69
system. The crown's willingness to run a deficit in support of the missionary program
also contributed to that trend. Between 1596 and1683, the Crown spent a total of
1,776,786 pesos on New Mexico, of which 1,254,500 pesos was invested in the
missions.172 Conversely, funds from the encomienda and trade with peaceful nonChristian Indians totaled 17,518 pesos, leaving a deficit of 1,759,268 pesos.173 Therefore,
while the Franciscans were rebuked by the Crown for meddling in civil affairs, they still
enjoyed royal financial support
To prove the effectiveness of the mission system, the Franciscans' first step to
Christianize the Pueblos was mass baptisms. During Governor Oñate’s tenure, for
instance, the Crown debated abandoning the settlement of New Mexico. However, Fray
Lázaro Ximénez personally returned to Mexico to plead with the Viceroy. The Viceroy
wrote to the King that Ximénez found that “more than seven thousand persons had been
baptized” and many more were willing to accept baptism.174 As a result, the Viceroy
decreed that New Mexican settlement and conversion efforts should continue.175
During the seventeenth century, missionaries employed similar strategies.
Benavides claimed that friars baptized 15,000 Indians from the Piro and Tomapiro
speaking Pueblos; 20,000 Zuñi and Moqui (Hopi) Pueblos; 15,000 Jumanos, Japies and
other non-Pueblo groups; and countless Apache.176 Fray Gerónimo de Zárate Salmerón,
172 France Scholes, “Royal Treasury Records, 1596-1683” NMHR 50 no. 2 (1975): 152.
173 Ibid., 159.
174 “Don Luis de Velasco to the King, December 17, 1608” in Hammond, Oñate, 1067.
175 “Decree Regarding What Father’s Fray Lázaro Ximénez and Fray Ysidro Ordóñez Have Been Ordered
to Take to New Mexico, January 29, 1609” in Hammond, Oñate, 1076.
176 “Account of the Conversion of New Mexico…” in Fray Alonso Benavides, Revised Memorial of 1634,
eds. and trans. George Hammond, Frederick Webb Hodge, and Agapito Rey (Albuquerque: Unviersity of
New Mexico Press, 1945): 163-165. The Hopi Indians, are Puebloan culturally, but language family is UtoAztecan.
70
who preceded Benavides, claimed to have baptized 6,566 souls among the Jemez Indians
and “alone conquered and pacified El Peñol de Acoma that sustained a war with the
Spaniards, building churches and convents.”177 However, the majority of these claims
exaggerated the number of baptism to portray the mission system as successful and,
consequently, secure continued royal funding. More accurately, parish registers in the
mid-seventeenth century place the total number of souls at 20,181.178
Franciscans attempted to Christianize and Hispanicize the Pueblo Indians through
rigorous education in Catechism, music and song, and training in the crafts. Missionaries
attempted to Hispanicize the Pueblo Indians by encouraging reading, writing, and craftmaking. Benavides noted that Pueblos at Keres were “well trained in all the crafts.” 179
The crafts included construction, spinning, weaving, and other carpentry skills for use in
trade, subsistence, or for the benefit of the missionary. The Franciscans catechized Indian
children daily and also held an expansive church schedule to indoctrinate the neophytes.
Each mission held chants at three different hours throughout the day. Every Indian,
according to Benavides, went to confession “in their own language” but used knotted
strings to indicate their sins.180 Since the language barrier made linguistic
communication difficult, missionaries relied on adornments, music, and pictures to
propagate the faith. Fray Bartólome de Las Casas’s Verapaz mission, for instance, relied
on native musical rhythms to make the Christian message identifiable. Likewise,
177 Friar Gerónimo de Záarate Salmerón, Relaciones, trans. Alicia Ronstadt Milich (Albuquerque: Horn
and Wallace, 1966), 26.
178 France Scholes, “Documents for the History of the New Mexican Missions in the Seventeenth
Century.” NMHR 4, no. 1 (1929): 45-51.
179 Benavides, Benavides’ Memorial of 1630, 20-21, 36.
180 Ibid., 36.
71
Benavides found in each mission that musical instruments were used. Music was a
method used by Franciscans to attract the Indians, make chants in a foreign language
more palatable, and establish a common religious bond between two different ethnic
groups.181 Adornments also livened up the missions to entice Indians. The majority of
chapels contained altar cloths, vestments, banners, candles, rosaries, and religious statues
depicting the saints, Christ, or the Virgin. Visual aids provided a means for missionaries
and Indians to overcome linguistic barriers. When goods from Mexico were unavailable,
as was generally the case in New Mexico, Friars often incorporated indigenous craftsman
to carve statues and other wooden images. Including natives in the creation of Catholic
imagery provided another avenue through which Indians could participate in religious
affairs.182 Their participation suggests, moreover, that there was at least an outward
acceptance of Christianity and toleration for missionary oversight of their daily routines.
Nevertheless, Franciscan methods of conversion caused disruptions in native’s
spiritual and temporal lives that would make the Pueblos question life on the mission.
Missionaries traditionally learned the rites of native religious practices and meanings in
order to prove their ineffectualness. Franciscans discovered that Pueblo religion, called
katsina, had two main chieftains: the Inside chief and Outside chief. The Inside Chiefs
acted as a balancing and peaceful force of the cosmos. The Outside Chiefs were youthful
warriors who protected the community from enemies. But since violence was an act that
destabilized balance and peace, Outside Chiefs were necessarily subservient to the Inside
181 Lota M. Spell, “Music Teaching in New Mexico in the Seventeenth Century,” NMHR 2 no. 1 (1927):
27-36; Kristen Dutcher Mann, The Power of Song: Music and Dance in the Mission Communities of
Northern New Spain, 1590-1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 4-5.
182 Robert C. Galgano, Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of
Florida and New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 50-52.
72
Chiefs.183 Also imperative to Pueblo religious culture were the shamans, who brought on
rain, cured the sick, and foretold success in battle. Shamans led katsina rain dances,
which were integral to Pueblo’s agricultural livelihood. Since maize was the
predominant crop pre-contact, Pueblos revered the Corn Mother, Iatiku, who brought
rain, cornmeal, the seasons, and created the katsina religion.184 If Franciscans were to
prove the strength of the Christian God, they would have to take on the religious role of
the shaman as well as the political role of the Inside Chief.
Franciscans metaphorically replaced the Pueblo Inside Chief by acting as a
benevolent, peaceful father-like leader to the natives and by dominating the Outside
Chief. On the Chamuscado-Rodriguez and Espejo expeditions, for instance, Franciscans
interfered in staged punishments oft recalcitrant Indians. By doing so, the Pueblo’s
regarded the missionaries as a protector. However, Fray Juan Prada remarked in 1638
that secular violence against Indians was not always staged. When the soldiers,
representing the Outside chief, caused baptized Indians to flee the mission, the
Franciscans tried to attract Indians with “gentle treatment” and by “relieving them of all
physical labor.”185 Missionaries attempted to show themselves to the Pueblos as
representatives of peace and goodwill.186
When missionaries were unable to metaphorically replace the Inside Chief, they
focused on converting him and his families. If the native chiefs embraced Christianity,
183 Benavides remarks that the two factions were simply called “the warriors and the sorcerers.”
Benavides, Benavides’ Memorial, 34.
184 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 3-7.
185 “Petition of Father Juan de Prada, Convent of San Francisco, Mexico, September 26, 1638” in Hackett,
Historical Documents, 111.
186 Galgano, Feast of Souls, 50-57.
73
their political clout would subsequently bring others to the missions. Juan de Ye, chief at
the Pecos Pueblo, was a Christianized leader and avid supporter of Spanish presence.
Under the leadership of Ye, the Pueblos at Pecos did not participate in the 1680 Revolt
and, in fact, helped Governor Don Diego de Vargas during the Reconquest of New
Mexico in the 1690s.187
Franciscans also attempted to undermine the authority of shamans by replacing
them as healers, destroying idols, and preventing rain dances. When missionaries
destroyed native idols and were not spiritually punished, Pueblos saw that the Franciscan
God had more power than their deities. Epidemics that plagued the Pueblos but not the
Spaniards were seen as further proof of the strength of the Christian God and helped to
convince Natives that those who followed the Christian God would be saved.188 Finally,
by promoting the healing power of the Christian deity Franciscans sought to deny the
authority of native shamans. According to Benavides, at the Pueblo of Acoma, a baby
was near death and the mother had given up hope. The friar stated that if the mother
loved the child she would baptize it. “Although the mother was a pagan, she believed the
priest…as he was pouring the water and pronouncing the words, the child instantly arose,
healthy and sound.” 189 By convincing the Pueblo Indians that they had the power to
heal, the Franciscans successfully appropriated the role of arguably the most influential
religious figures in Pueblo culture.190
187 John L Kessell, “The Ways and Words of the Other: Diego de Vargas and Cultural Brokers in Late
Seventeenth-Century New Mexico,” in Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker, ed.
Margaret Connell Szasz, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994) 35.
188 Daniel Reff, Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old
World and the New (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 175-176.
189 Benavides, Benavides’ Memorial of 1630, 29-30.
190 Reff, Plagues, Priests, and Demons, 176-183; Galgano, Feast of Souls, 53.
74
While Franciscans attributed the success of the mission to missionary vigor, in
reality the Indians accepted missionary authority, despite the suppression of indigenous
religious culture, as long as the Franciscan God continued to supply their needs:
providing maize and protecting them from enemy Indians. Access to food on the
missions, for instance, helped to attract Natives who received “three meals a day by
means of pot and spoon.” Friars acknowledged that, as result of the resources they
received, the Natives became “courteous and well-behaved.” Franciscans hoped that nonChristianized Indians, whose “only care is their stomachs,” would see the material
benefits afforded to Christianized Indians on the mission and follow suit. Consequently,
they would be fed both food and “the milk of the Gospel.”191 While there were legitimate
conversions, part of the allure of the missions was temporal exigencies which provided
relative security for Indians.192
While the Franciscans were generally able maintain control on the missions by
meeting Pueblo needs, missionary authority began to fracture when civil officials in the
late 1650s challenged Franciscan temporal and spiritual dominance. France Scholes
labeled the era the “Troublous Times” of New Mexico.193 In the mold of Governor’s
Peralta and Eulate, Bernardo López de Mendizábal, appointed governor in 1659, was
determined to refute the authority of Franciscans and assert the authority of civil officials.
191 France Scholes, “Documents for the History of the New Mexican Missions in the Seventeenth
Century.” NMHR 4, no. 2 (1929): 197-200.
192 Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians: Spanish Contact with the Yaqui Nation of
Northwestern New Spain 1533-1820 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981), 37-38; Steven Hackel,
Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 17691850 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 89, 127.
193 France Scholes, Troublous Times in New Mexico, 1659-1670 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1942).
75
López targeted the authority of Franciscans in spiritual matters by questioning
their legitimacy to act as commissaries of the Inquisition. In 1626, Fray Alonso
Benavides received the title of Commissary of the Holy Office to regulate the orthodoxy
of Spaniards and native populations. Although the title was normally given to members
of the diocesan clergy, the Franciscans were the only ecclesiastics in New Mexico. The
office gave Franciscans unprecedented authority over secular colonial agents. While the
Real patronato had legally given the right of patronage to the King, the Holy Office of
the Inquisition was the one Church body that remained outside the jurisdiction of the
Crown.194
López based his claims against the Franciscans on the Patronato and on the
Viceroy’s orders in 1620 to Parea and Eulate, which clearly marked the boundaries
between ecclesiastic and civil jurisdiction. López believed that the Franciscans did not
have the authority to regulate religious orthodoxy. Fray García de San Francisco claimed
that López commanded him “not to make use of the ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction.”
If he did, López would “proceed against me as an insubordinate judge.”195 Not
surprisingly, the Franciscans used their religious powers to excommunicate and denounce
him to the Inquisition.
During Inquisition proceedings, the conflicts between López and the friars
revealed that the effectiveness of the missions relied in part upon secular authorities’
enforcement of mission policy. Any failure or refusal by civil officials to support the
194 Lynch, “Introduction” in Fray Alonso Benavides, Benavides’ Memorial, xv; Greenleaf, “The
Inquisition in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico”, 29.
195 “Letter of Fray García de San Francisco, Senecú, October 13, 1660” in Historical Documents Relating
to New Mexico, Nueva Viscaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, vol 3. Ed. Charles Wilson Hackett
(Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1937), 155.
76
missionaries could reveal the weakness of Franciscan authority. For instance, part of the
conversion process was the suppression of native practices deemed idolatrous. The
Franciscans specifically targeted the katsina dances, which were elaborate ceremonies the
Pueblos performed in order to bring rain, increase crop growth, and buoy the medicinal
powers of shamans.196 These dances, according to Fray Nicolás de Freitas, were a “direct
invocation of the devil” and encouraged incestuous relationships.197 When López
allowed them, it undermined the mission system and weakened Pueblo acceptance of
missionary authority.198
In testimony against López, Fray García de San Francisco indirectly highlighted
that missionary authority relied on a balancing act between competing groups:
Franciscans had to resist civil intrusion but required their military assistance; they had to
eradicate Pueblo pagan practices by also meet their religious and material needs. Lopez
testified that the Indians came to the governor “to complain that the religious would not
allow them to perform” the katsina dances, and complained that the governor responded
by permitting them.199 Although García’s point was to show that López permitted the
dances because the friars extirpated them, García signals that the goal of Christianizing
the Pueblo Indians had been largely ineffectual. Furthermore, Laura Benton argues that
although friars could investigate Indians for idolatrous practices, punishment had to be
exacted by civil authorities. Since the secular arm did not cooperate with the Franciscans
196 Dennis Tedlock, “Zuni Religion and World View” in Handbook of North American Indians vol. 9, ed.
Alfonso Ortiz and William C. Sturtevant (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1979), 500.
197 “Declaration of Fray Nicolás de Freitas” in Hackett, Historical Documents, 133.
198 Laura Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, 93-4; Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 121-127.
199 “Letter of Fray García de San Francisco” in Hackett, Historical Documents, 156.
77
to abolish the dances, the Franciscans had no legal means to punish Indians.200 Similar to
what had happened during the Eulate and Parea disagreements, then, Pueblo Indians were
exposed to a reality in which Franciscan authority was subservient to, or at least relied
upon, Spanish civil authority.201
Although Franciscans believed Pueblo refusal of Christianity was due to secular
abuses, evidence shows that settlers depended upon the Indians as much as the
Franciscans. Benavides wrote that the main reason Pueblo Indians refused Christianity
was because they would be “compelled to pay tribute and render personal service.”202
While there are cases which document Spanish abuses, the evidence suggests that most of
these complaints were targeted at the friars. Historian Van Hastings Garner has
persuasively argued that encomenderos and settlers relied upon the Indians for
subsistence as much as the friars.203 When settlers and friars united to overthrow Oñate,
for instance, it was because his actions threatened Pueblo acceptance of Spanish control.
Without Pueblo acceptance, settlers would not receive the tribute which enticed lay
Spaniards to travel to New Mexico. Accordingly, settlers had little reason to want the
Pueblos to flee or rebel.
200 Laura Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, 93-95.
201 Ramón Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 21-27, 120-127.
202 “Decrees Granting Concessions to the New Mexico Missions, June 5 and August 28, 1634” in
Benavides, Revised Memorial, 176. However, historian David Snow has shown through anthropological
research and native population figures that the encomienda tribute only accounted for .04 percent of the
total maize available to the Pueblos. The tribute meant much more to the Spaniards than it did to the
Pueblos. David Snow, “A Note on Encomienda Economics in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico” in
Hispanic Arts & Ethnohistory in the Southwest, ed. Marta Weigle, Claudia Larcombe and Samuel
Larcombe (Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 1983), 352.
203 Van Hastings Garner, “Seventeenth Century New Mexico” Journal of Mexican American History 4
(1974): 48-49.
78
Consequently, by the 1670s, Franciscan’s ability to balance competing interests
began to crumble as friars could not protect Indians from enemy raids or provide for their
temporal needs on the missions. Fray Juan Bernal noted two afflictions that devastated
New Mexico. First, Apache raiders killed Christianized Indians and all who ventured on
the roads. The increase in Apache raids were most likely a product of the second
affliction: “for three years,” Bernal wrote, “no crops have been harvested.” He continued
to say that in 1668 “many Indians perished of hunger, lying dead along the roads…there
is not a fanega of corn or of wheat in the whole kingdom.” The severity of drought and
famine reached an apex when, for two years, Spaniards ate “the hides of cattle” by
toasting them until there was no more leather available.204 Moreover, the Tompirospeaking Pueblos abandoned their villages as a result of the attacks and drought. The
drought and famine that plagued New Mexico, in conjunction with Franciscan inability to
meet the needs of the Pueblos, threatened missionary authority in the region
Apache raids for agricultural goods that stemmed from the famine forced Pueblo
Indians to rethink their allegiance to the Franciscan God and subsequently return to
traditional religious customs. Since the Pueblos believed that the Franciscans had failed
to provide for their needs Pueblo shamans returned to openly performing in the katsina
rain dances. 205 In conjunction with the shamans, Pueblos openly mocked Franciscans
and their God through performances by Pueblo “clowns” who parodied their missionary’s
behavior or mannerisms. In one instance, Fray Miguel Sacristán found a katsina mask
204 “Letter of Fray Juan Bernal to the Tribunal, April 1, 1669, From the Convent of Santo Domingo” in
Hackett, Historical Documents, 271-2; Ivey, “The Greatest Misfortune of All”, 76-100.
205 Henry Warner Bowden, “Spanish Missions, Cultural Conflict, and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680” in What
Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, selected by David Weber (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999), 21-30.
79
that resembled his likeness. By mimicking friars and returning to condemned native
religious and cultural practices the Pueblo “clowns” and shamans undermined the
authority of the missionaries.206
Furthermore, while Franciscan missionaries were meant to act as benevolent
Inside Chiefs, they at times resorted to force to assert their authority over their flock. For
example, the Viceroy admonished Parea and his missionaries for shearing the heads of
Indians at Acoma, a punishment from which they “suffer very great affliction” because it
is the “greatest affront that there is.” The result of the head shearing was that the Indians
returned to idolatry.207 Another friar grabbed a Taos Indian by the groin and twisted until
he collapsed in pain.208 Acts of violence by the father/elder figure, though acceptable in
Spanish culture, was unacceptable in the Pueblo culture. The friars’ actions led Pueblo
Indians to identify them as outside chiefs instead of inside chiefs. Consequently, if Friars
were outside chiefs, they held a position of weaker authority in relation to other authority
figures.209
Civil authorities who participated in native slave trade exacerbated tensions
between the Pueblos, non-Christianized Indians, and missionaries. Although the slave
trade existed well before Spanish settlement, Pueblo Indians traded Apache slaves within
the villages to gain social prestige and increase ties of kinship through various families.
Elders maintained slaves to give as a gift or as a potential wife to worthy Pueblo men.
206 Alison Freese, “Send in the Clowns: Resistance Strategies Among the Pueblo Indians in SeventeenthCentury New Mexico” Best Student Essays of the University of New Mexico 1(2): 1-8, in Spanish
Borderlands Sourcebooks: The Spanish Missions of New Mexico II: After 1680, eds. John L. Kessell and
Rick Hendricks (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), 499.
207 “Plain Copy of a Cedula…” in Bloom, “The Royal Order of 1620”, 297.
208 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 76.
209 Ibid., 76.
80
Slaves also acted as mediators between Pueblo and Apache traders.210 However,
Spaniards, eager to promote a labor-based slavery, sought to increase the amount of
captives taken. Civil authorities such as Governor’s Eulate and López, who participated
in the trade, often created conflict between both Pueblo and Apache Indians by engaging
in raids to capture slaves from both groups.211
Because the captives sold by Spaniards were almost exclusively Apache, the
Apache blamed the indigenous ally of the Spanish. Consequently, Spanish participation
in the native slave trade increased tensions between the Apache and Pueblo Indians.
Apaches raided Pueblo villages with increasing vigor as a result of the Spanish-Pueblo
alliance. Caught in the middle, the Franciscans were unable to prevent Apache raids,
protect their Pueblo children, or mobilize the aid of secular authorities. Without the
armed forces of civil officials to both protect the mission and keep Pueblos from fleeing
the mission, Franciscans' claim to power was weakened.
Between slave raids and tensions with the Apache, drought, famine, and
Franciscan abuses, Pueblo Indians suffered enough to warrant a large-scale revolt to
remove Spanish presence. Pueblo religious leaders organized and coordinated the attack.
On August 10, Spaniards at Santa Fe received word from various messengers that several
Indian pueblos, led by religious leaders, had risen up and killed twenty-one
missionaries.212
210 James Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 33-34.
211 Scholes, “Church and State” NMHR 11, no. 2 (1936), 149; Scholes, Troublous Times, 51-52. Scholes
states that most likely every governor participated in the trade.
212 Andrew Knaut, The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New
Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 167-168.
81
Testimony from the Indians involved revealed the religious nature of the attacks.
Pedro Naranjo, one of the leaders of the revolt, proclaimed that Popé, another leader of
the revolt, received a calling from the Old Gods to root out the Christian religion. Popé
ordered that they “break up and burn the images of the holy Christ, the Virgin Mary and
other saints, the crosses, and everything pertaining to Christianity.”213 The killings of the
friars also revealed the religious nature of the uprising. For instance, three friars were
killed and placed upon an altar. According to Nicholas Robins, placing the corpses upon
an altar signified the death of Hispanic religious dominance, and the Pueblos
symbolically offered Hispanic and religious blood in the place where the body and blood
of Christ was ritually performed.214 During the revolt, Spaniards captured an old man,
Don Pedro Nanboa, and asked the reasons for the uprising. He stated that because the
Spaniards “punished sorcerers and idolaters” the Pueblo nations had been “plotting to
rebel and kill the Spaniards and the religious.” What the old man had heard was that the
Indians did not want “religious or Spaniards.”215 The statements made by Pueblos
participating and those not participating attest to the religious nature of the uprising. But
more importantly, it revealed Franciscans' fragile claims to power. Since Franciscan
authority depended, in part, upon Pueblo Indian acceptance of the missions, the religious
nature of the revolt became symptomatic of a broader rejection of Franciscan power. As
213 “Declaration of Pedro Naranjo of the Queres Nation. [Place of the Río del Norte, December 19, 1681”
in Revolt of the Pueblo Indians and Otermin’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680-1682, ed.. George Hackett,
trans. Charmion Clair Shelby (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), 247.
214 Robins, “Symbolism and Subalternity”, 34.
215 “Declaration of One of the Rebellious Christian Indians Who Was Captured on the Road., [Palace of El
Alamillo, September 6, 1680]”, in Hackett, Revolt of the Pueblo Indians, 60-61.
82
relations between the Pueblos and missionaries broke down, the Pueblo Revolt became
the manifestation of Franciscan inability to balance competing interests in New Mexico.
To the missionaries, Franciscan claims to authority rested upon divine delegation:
Christ bestowed the conversion of all to Peter, the first pope, who then delegated it to the
mendicant orders. As the “vicar of Christ” the Pope gave mendicant orders the
responsibility to act in his stead. Therefore, when fray Ordóñez claimed he had the
power of the Pope, he was stating that he was the supreme authority in New Mexico.
Franciscan’s ability to remove governor’s Oñate and Peralta, moreover, confirmed their
substantial power over civil officials in the early seventeenth century. However, while
Franciscans claimed their authority was from God, in reality, Franciscan ability to
exercise power over Pueblo Indians and Spanish settlers relied upon the military
protection of civil officials, and Pueblo acceptance of the missionary presence. The friars
had to balance the interests the Pueblo Indians while resisting, but not alienating, civil
officials in order to maintain their control.
The missionaries were able to preside over Indians on the missions by providing
temporal and spiritual benefits. The Indians were reportedly fed three times per day and
were able to plant crops in relative safety. The Pueblos were also under the impression
that the Franciscans had healing power and could bring rain to produce crops. Thus, as
spiritual and temporal providers, the Franciscans had been able to insert themselves as
predominant authority figures. However, when the Pueblos found Franciscan conversion
tactics unpalatable and attempted to flee or rebel, the friars depended upon civil
authorities to physically subdue the Indians. As a consequence, the Franciscans could not
83
fully remove a civil presence. When the relationship between Franciscans and secular
colonial agents broke down, governors then refused to provide armed support. For
instance, when Governor López refused to punish Indians engaging in idolatry,
Franciscans did not have the capability to suppress native religion.
Franciscan’s tenuous hold on power was, then, based on a delicate negotiation
between missionaries, civil officials and Pueblo Indians. When drought, famine, and
Apache raids devastated Pueblo livelihood, the Pueblos believed the Franciscans had
failed them and, subsequently, they began to openly practice native rites. Without the aid
of civil authorities, the Franciscans were powerless. The Pueblo Revolt in 1680 thus
became the manifestation of broken relations between all parties and signified a loss of
Franciscan power.
84
Chapter 3: A New Strategy: Civil Authorities and Accommodation of the Pueblos
In 1692, twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt destabilized Spanish settlements in
New Mexico, the Viceroy entrusted Don Diego de Vargas, a Spaniard of reasonable
means, with the task of reestablishing Spanish presence in the region. In return for
Vargas’ funding half of what was considered to be a reconquest expedition, the crown
granted him the title of governor. In a letter written to the crown, Vargas promised to
return the statue New Mexico’s patron saint and protectress, Our Lady of the Conquest,
back to her chapel in Santa Fe. The return of Our Lady to a new throne would, according
to Vargas, not only foster “the propagation of our holy faith, but also the royal service.”216
By placing the statue upon the altar, Vargas, a civil official appointed by the Crown,
signaled a shift in the balance of power between secular colonial agents and Franciscans.
Vargas would not only symbolically appropriate the Christianization task from the
Franciscans but, more importantly, would also advance a process of secularization of
Spanish imperial strategies that would subordinate missionary authority to secular
authority.
Shortly after Vargas arrived in Santa Fe he found that the chapel had been
destroyed in the revolt. As a result, Vargas searched for a suitable ad hoc chapel for the
placement of Our Lady. He proceeded to the small village of Analco near Santa Fe and
216 John Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith Dodge, eds., To the Royal Crown Restored: The Journals
of Don Diego de Vargas, New Mexico, 1692-94 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995),
384.
85
found the chapel of San Miguel with its walls still intact.217 Vargas ordered the Indians to
complete the roofing and erect a sacristy. The Indian elders, however, said that it would
be more advantageous to add a door to a nearby kiva and use it as a chapel rather than use
the more distant chapel. Upon inspection, Vargas consented. Vargas then called in fray
José Díaz to inspect the premises. Díaz proclaimed by order of the custos that the
appropriation of a kiva for Christian services was unacceptable because the “[kiva] had
been a place the Indians had used for their prohibited juntas.”218 While it would appear,
based upon the strength of Franciscan authority prior to the revolt of 1680, that the matter
was settled, Vargas, in later letters, continued to refer to a kiva where “they had opened a
door to use it as a chapel.”219 Moreover, the San Miguel Church, which was the location
for the placement of Our Lady, was not rebuilt until 1710.220 Vargas and the Indians
ignored, it seems, Franciscan concerns and opposition and continued to use the kivaturned-chapel for nearly seventeen years. The placement of Our Lady by a civil authority
in an indigenous structure illustrates the strengthened alliance between secular colonial
officials, such as Vargas, and Indian elders and a shifting balance of power away from
Franciscan dominance in New Mexico.
During the early to mid-seventeenth century, the mission system fulfilled the
Crown’s vision of imperial expansion by bringing the Pueblo Indians under Spanish
control. The Pueblo Revolt in 1680, however, revealed that the missionary enterprise was
217 Analco was a small village created to house Tlaxcallan Indians who accompanied the Spaniards in the
seventeenth century. Peter Gerhard, The North Frontier of New Spain, revised edition (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 322.
218 Kessell, To the Royal Crown Restored, 485.
219 Ibid., 523, 528.
220 Francis B. Parsons, Early 17th century Missions of the Southwest (Tucson: Dale Stuart King, 1975),
17.
86
insufficient to advance Spanish interests. Without the Pueblos, the Spanish had lost an
ally in its efforts to maintain an imperial presence in northern New Spain. As a result, the
Crown needed a new plan to create stability in the region.221
Imperial expansion and control in the eighteenth century was not simply the
product of royal policies envisioned by officials, but was also the product of negotiations
by Spanish and indigenous agents on the ground level. The interactions and negotiations
of local actors ultimately favored imperial interests, whether by advancing economic
production or by bringing native populations under royal authority.222 In New Mexico,
when Apache raids and drought combined to weaken the military ability of the Pueblos,
the Indians needed Spanish arms and men to improve defenses. Because of political and
military needs, the Pueblos were more willing to accept a Spanish presence. At the same
time, evidence of potential French intrusion jumpstarted imperial designs to bolster the
military capabilities of New Mexico. The Spanish viewed Pueblo Indians as valuable
auxiliaries to protect the colony. When the Pueblos accepted a Spanish presence, the
result of the mutual need for defense was the coalescing of local and royal needs to
produce amicable relations between Spaniards and Pueblos that benefited both parties.
However, because the Pueblos found civil institutions and authorities appealing to their
needs, they advanced Spanish interests by accepting an imperial presence.
221 Norris, After “The Year Eighty”, 36.
222 Hal Langfur, The Forbidden Lands: Colonial Identity, Frontier Violence, and the Persistence of
Brazil's Eastern Indians, 1750-1830 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2006), 262-288; Yanna Yannakakis, The Art of
Being In-between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (Durham:
Duke UP, 2008), 68-90; David Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 1-9; Steve Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of
Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 132-37.
87
Immediately following the Pueblo Revolt, Spaniards held out hope that the
mission system could still effectively control the Pueblo Indians. Spaniards believed that
the devil had instigated the revolt, and that Pueblo Indians would realize their sins and
welcome back Christianity. Governor Antonio de Otermín and Fray Commissary
Francisco de Ayeta also believed much of the Revolt had to do with Apache influence.
By offering an alliance against the Apache, Spaniards hoped to once again preside over
New Mexico.223 In 1681, Otermín and Ayeta led 125 soldiers and native allies to
reconquer the land. What the two found, however, challenged Spanish ideas about the
causes of the revolt: they found recalcitrant Indians who were proud of their acts of
sacrilege. Only the pueblo of Isleta welcomed Spaniards, but they claimed that they had
not participated in the Revolt. The reaction of the Pueblo Indians to Otermín and Ayeta
show that while not all pueblos participated in the Revolt, those that did had no interest in
accepting a Spanish return to the region.
Confirming Otermín and Ayeta’s fears, autos drawn up after the failed reconquest
revealed that outside influences did not cause the Revolt but that it was rather a
widespread Pueblo rejection of Franciscan authority. Ayeta found the notion that the
Apaches were the main instigators of the Revolt to be “untrue,” for Apaches “have not
destroyed any pueblo or even damaged one seriously.”224 Moreover, the Pueblo Indians
had continued to survive and defend themselves against the Apaches without Spanish
assistance. The Spaniards also found that the Pueblo Indians were not sorrowful for their
deeds. The Pueblo Indians did not desire confession of their sins and a return to
223 “Opinion of Fray Francisco de Ayeta, Hacienda of Luis de Carbajal, December 23, 1681,” in Hackett,
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians, 306-7.
224 Ibid., 308.
88
Catholicism, but were “exceedingly well satisfied to give themselves over to blind
idolatry, worshiping the devil.”225 Ayeta also found that the Revolt was not led by a small
number of religious leaders. There was, in contrast, a widespread acceptance of the
return to traditional Pueblo religion. The Otermín expedition, according to Ayeta,
“dispelled the misapprehension under which we have been laboring, namely, that only the
leaders would be to blame for the atrocities committed.” They believed that “all the rest
of the Indians would be found tired of their cruel and tyrannical government, which it
was thought was imposed by force.” However, the Spaniards found that the Indians were
so “pleased with the liberty of conscience and so attached to the belief in the worship of
Satan that up to the present not a sign has been visible of their ever having been
Christians.”226 The Spaniards attempted to coax the Pueblos through kind treatment, but
even the well treatment of the Indians at Isleta proved insufficient to persuade other
Pueblo to acquiesce to Spanish presence.227 The expedition findings concluded that a
new policy was needed in which the Spanish could maintain a stable presence.
Realizing that a stable Spanish presence and the reestablishment of the missions
required the use of military force, Otermín requested the establishment of a presidio
(garrisoned fortress). At the same time of Otermin’s request, reports of potential
European intrusion in Northern New Spain sparked royal interest in the protection of the
interior provinces. Diego Peñalosa, former governor of New Mexico (1661-1664), once
exiled by the Inquisition under dominant Franciscan authority, plotted with the French in
225 Ibid., 308.
226 Ibid., 309.
227 Ibid., 311.
89
the Mississippi Valley to conquer the region.228 Consequently, royal policy and local
interests aligned to bolster the military capabilities of New Mexico.
The alignment between civil and royal authorities sparked a new form of imperial
expansion where a powerful military and secular presence would be reinforced by native
allies. The Crown therefore ordered reconnaissance missions in hopes of subjugating
Pueblo Indians to act as military allies against Indian and European enemies. Finding the
Pueblos disorganized and their leaders factionalized, the Spanish began assembling for a
large-scale military reconquest.229
The Crown desired more able-bodied men to settle and act as emergency forces.
In efforts to attract those men, the fiscal replied that all Spanish men and women who
returned to New Mexico, as well as new Spaniards who settled in the region, “[would] be
considered hidalgos [the lowest title of nobility in the Spanish aristocracy], worthy of
distributions of land and encomiendas.”230 During the initial stages of Spanish
exploration in the Americas, the encomenderos and all able-bodied men were the only
armed presence. After the revolt, however, the King abolished the encomienda in New
Mexico. Therefore, the Crown’s enticement of an encomienda in 1691 reinforced idea
that settlers were needed to provide a more stable and competent military force.231 Thus,
by extending social and political privileges that had been previously denied to settlers, the
228 Elizabeth John, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontations of Indians, Spanish, and
French in the Southwest, 1540-1795 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975), 112-113.
229 Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 147-171.
230 John Kessell, Rick Hendricks and Meredith Dodge, eds., By Force of Arms: The Journals of Don
Diego de Vargas, New Mexico, 1691-1693 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 95.
231 The Crown rejected the fiscal’s proposal of the encomienda to all except Vargas. Even then, Vargas’s
encomienda was never instituted, but rather doled out through a yearly pension for his descendants.
90
Crown was attempting to promote a military presence in the region that could support
Spanish expansion.
While there was an emphasis on armed reconquest through the reestablishment of
the encomienda, Vargas instead invoked the help of the Virgin to bring the Pueblos back
into the fold of Christianity.232 Vargas likewise only took a small force of armed men and
missionaries in order to assuage Pueblo doubts about a Spanish presence. In 1692,
Vargas led forty soldiers and fifty Indian allies to subjugate the Pueblos. He invoked his
divine intercessor, Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, to aid in his peaceful conquest.
Since the Remedios title was invoked during periods of non-violence, Vargas hoped that
by acting under her banner he could prevent bloodshed and peaceably bring the Pueblo
Indians back to the fold of Christianity.233 More importantly, by hoping for peace and not
violence, the Pueblos may have viewed Vargas as an Inside Chief. By having his actions
associated with the role of the Inside Chief, Vargas could claim a position of authority
that had previously been claimed by the Franciscans, shifting the balance of power from
missionaries to civil officials.
When Vargas reached Santa Fe, he hoped to quell potential conflict with the
Pueblos through an offering of peace. After an initial confrontation with shouting
Indians, Vargas and Pueblo intermediaries negotiated and, after several hours exchanging
messages, two Indians came out to offer peace. Vargas pardoned all the Indians,
symbolically reclaimed the villa by raising the standard banner, which on one side held
an image of Nuestra Señora, and claimed that the Spaniards only wanted them to “be
232 Kessell, By Force of Arms, 93.
233 Ibid., 410, 486, note 55.
91
Christians again and not idolaters.”234 Vargas also received peace offerings from the
pueblos of San Lázaro, San Cristóbal, Tesuque, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, San Juan and
from the Taos, Tewa, and Picurís nations. Vargas’s success in peacefully renewing
Pueblo fealty and at least an outward acceptance of Christianity signified to Spanish
officials and ultimately the Crown that the Pueblos welcomed Spanish presence.
Pueblos, however, despite an outward acceptance of Spanish authority, were
intent on resisting further Spanish control. After the initial Reconquest, Vargas received
royal funding to permanently resettle New Mexico the following year. The expedition,
which included one hundred soldiers, seventy families, eighteen friars, and innumerable
Indian allies, found that the fait accompli of the initial Reconquest had been a farce. The
pueblo of Pecos, who had been loyal to the Spanish under Christianized leader Juan de
Ye, relayed to Vargas that the Tewas, Taos, Acomas, and Jemez prepared for battle.235
The Spaniards approached the villa of Santa Fe and found the Tano and Tewa nations
prepared for war. Native reluctance to accept further Spanish control after participating
in ceremonial displays of fealty suggests that Pueblo acceptance of missionary authority
prior to the Pueblo Revolt had been superficial at best. Pueblo's outward signs of
acceptance and support of the Spanish did not preclude resistance to Spanish
domination.236
When Vargas and his messengers attempted to contact the Pueblos to accept
Spanish authority and Catholicism, the Indians reaffirmed their distrust of Spanish
234 Ibid., 398.
235 John L Kessell, “The Ways and Words of the Other: Diego de Vargas and Cultural Brokers in Late
Seventeenth-Century New Mexico” in Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker, ed.
Margaret Connell Szasz (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 35-37.
236 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 164, 306-308.
92
institutions. They specifically attacked Franciscan abuses of native labor on the missions.
The Pueblos claimed that they would “keep the religious for a time as their slaves,
making them carry firewood from the monte, and later they would kill them all, as they
did the first time.”237 While on the missions, Indians were legally only supposed to
perform labor that supported the missionary daily needs. But the Pueblos believed that
the friars had overstepped their legal bounds to extract native labor. As a result, as the
Pueblos had killed the friars in 1680, they promised that they would do it again if the
Spanish attempted to reestablish a presence.238
Perhaps owing to Pueblo rejection of Franciscan authority, Vargas realized that
Spanish presence could only be sustained through armed conflict. Consequently, he
shifted his devotion from Nuestra Señora de los Remedios to Nuestra Señora de la
Conquista. Spanish control could not be sustained through peaceful contact under the
invocation of Los Remedios, but rather required armed conquest with the aid of La
Conquista. After shouts of “Santiago” the Spaniards stormed Santa Fe and, after hours
fighting, the Tano and Tewa capitulated. Whereas Vargas had promised pardons in the
initial reconquest campaigns, he found their apostasy unacceptable. Vargas ordered
seventy Indians hanged and distributed the women and children amongst the Spaniards to
serve as slaves.239 Vargas’s use of force and punishment, reminiscent of Oñate and
Coronado's policies towards Natives, indicated that a stable Spanish presence would have
to be initially achieved through armed conflict.
237 Kessell, To the Royal Crown Restored, 529.
238 Nicholas Robins, “Symbolism and Subalternity”, 32.
239 Kessell, To the Royal Crown Restored, 537.
93
The events within the two reconquests provide evidence that suggests power
relations between civil authorities and Franciscans shifted in favor of the former. After
the Pueblo Revolt, the missionary enterprise was destabilized as Franciscans did not have
the capacity to enforce their rule over Indians. The reestablishment of a stable Spanish
presence, moreover, necessitated a rise in civil authority to exact a reconquest through
armed forces. However, Vargas did more than simply exact military retribution on the
Pueblos; he also acted as a representative of the Crown and Church by returning
Catholicism, along with Spanish control, to the Pueblos. Vargas’s dual role replicated
Hernán Cortés’ conquest of the Aztec Empire. Under the conquistador/encomendero
model of Spanish imperial expansion, Cortés’ task was both to Hispanicize and
Christianize the indigenous populations. Incidentally, Cortés also carried a banner of
Nuestra Señora de los Remedios and then shifted his devotion to La Conquista.240 While
imperial strategies for expansion in the late seventeenth century did not seek to return to
the conquistador model, they did, however, focus upon a powerful civil authority who
could bring both Catholicism and Spanish control to the natives.
The decline in Franciscan authority and political influence was also the result of
the alliance that developed between Native populations and secular colonial agents.
When the Indian elders and Vargas agreed to construct a chapel within a kiva, they did so
despite the complaints of the friars. The authority of the friars prior to the Revolt had
been superior to that of governors. It is likely that had Vargas been a governor during the
mid-sixteenth century and attempted to overrule Franciscan orders he would have been
excommunicated, jailed, or denounced to the Inquisition. However, by the end of the
240 Kessell, By Force of Arms, 486, note 55.
94
second reconquest, the Franciscans were dependent upon the Vargas and Indian alliance
for the continuation of the missions and could not afford to challenge the governor's
authority.241
Because relations between the Franciscans and Pueblos were unstable, Governor
Vargas portioned out friars to the missions under the protection of armed guard. The
presence of armed forces would act as a deterrent to a potential native uprising.
However, between 1695 and 1696, friars throughout New Mexico sent letters to the
custos concerning another uprising. Fray Blas Navarro noted that he had “seen true acts
of rebellion…[they] threaten to take my life, and also have seen them continue to profane
the sacred vessels.”242 Fray José Arbizu noted that the “Indians of the said pueblo and
mission of San Cristóbal have already openly indicated their intentions and in effect
would have killed me and profaned the holy vessels” had a faithful Indian not advised
him to leave.243 The destruction of Catholic vestments and symbols attest to the difficult
time Franciscans had in reestablishing some authority over Pueblos.
The threats to the missionaries’ lives sparked fear in the friars and increased their
dependence upon the presence of armed forces near the mission. While Franciscans in the
mid-seventeenth century had generally deplored the presence of soldiers near the mission,
by 1696 the Franciscans lamented the lack of armed protection for the missions. Fray
241 Other than the kiva dispute, it seems the friars had nothing but admiration for Vargas in campaign
letters. Ironically, Fray Salvador de San Antonio referred to Vargas as a “present-day don Hernán Cortés”
following the initial Reconquest. “Fray Salvador de San Antonio to the Conde de Galve, El Paso, 5 January
1693, LS,” in Kessell, To the Royal Crown Restored, 68.
242 “Letter of Fray Blas Navarro, Picurís, March 9, 1696,” in J. M. Espinosa, ed., and trans., The Pueblo
Indian Revolt of 1696 and the Franciscan Missions in New Mexico: Letters of the Missionaries and Related
Documents” (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 173.
243 “Letter of Fray José Arbizu, Santa Cruz, March 17, 1696” in Espinosa, The Pueblo Indian Revolt of
1696, 201.
95
Juan de Zavaleta refused to go to the mission at Taos because “[Vargas] is unable to
provide the guard that is needed.”244 Fray Navarro refrained from going to the missions
because the Indians, having stoned the image of the saint in his mission, “will be more
likely to do it me.”245 Frays José Diez and Juan Alpuente likewise refused to go on
similar grounds. Fray Francisco de Jesús María Casañas wrote that “To place myself at
the mouth of the wolf, so that he may swallow me and drink my blood, my mother did
not bear me to be another minister (although unworthy) for the purpose.” He did not
come “to seek death but rather the lives of these miserable ones.”246 In the aftermath of
the Pueblo Revolt, Franciscans, who in the mid-sixteenth century had decried soldiercivil infiltration in the missions, became increasingly dependent upon local officials to
provide for their security through the use of arms. Their need for armed force contributed
further to the shift in the power relations between religious and civil officials.247
By 1696, Pueblo and Franciscan relations had broken down sufficiently again to
warrant another revolt. Starting on June 4, various Pueblos rose up and murdered five
missionaries. Vargas again resorted to force to restore Spanish military control. Since
the Pueblos were not as unified as they had been in the 1680 Revolt, Vargas subdued the
Pueblo in only six months. The death of the supposed leader, Naranjo, via gunshot to the
244 “Letter of Fray Juan de Zavaleta, Santa Fe, March 16, 1696,” in Espinosa, The Pueblo Indian Revolt of
1696, 195.
245 “Letter of Fray Blas Navarro, Santa Fe, March 16, 1696,” ” in Espinosa, The Pueblo Indian Revolt of
1696, 196.
246 “Letter of Fray Francisco de Jesús María Casañas [Bernalillo, Ca. March 19, 1696],” ” in Espinosa,
The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1696, 200.
247 Jim Norris, After “The Year Eighty”, 36.
96
Adam’s apple and subsequent decapitation effectively squelched the rebellion. Through
force, the Pueblo Indians returned to their own villages.248
Recognizing that the missions could not exist based on missionary authority
alone, the Franciscans relented in some of their control over native populations. Custos
Francisco de Vargas acknowledged the tenuous presence of Franciscans and believed that
missionaries would have to relent in temporal and spiritual matters that the Pueblos may
have found abusive. For instance, Vargas declared that missionaries would only receive
alms every three years, and nothing else.249 The Pueblos would not be subject to tribute
or supplying subsistence beyond what was necessary for the mission’s daily needs.
Through these negotiations, Custos Vargas tacitly admitted that Franciscan abuses of
native labor on the missions had provoked conflict.
Throughout the uprisings during the sixteen-year reconquest, Franciscan and
government authorities shifted their beliefs on the cause of the revolts, which sparked a
shift in the power relations between Franciscans and civil authorities. Immediately
following the 1680 revolt, for instance, Otermín and Ayeta believed that the devil had
caused the Revolt. It was not the fault of the Franciscans, but rather indigenous
recalcitrance that provoked rebellion. Providing hope to Otermín and Ayeta’s claim was
the baptism of thousands of Pueblos during the 1692 reconquest. However, the 1693
reconquest confirmed a rejection of Franciscan control over native lives. Spanish control
consequently required Vargas’s armed forces. Franciscans realized their situation was
248 “Governor Vargas to the Viceroy, Letter of Transmission of Autos and Reports, June-July, Santa Fe,
July 31, 1696,” in Espinosa, The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1696, 278.
249 “Letter of Fray Francisco de Vargas to Governor Vargas, Santa Fe, November 23, 1696” in Espinosa,
The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1696, 284.
97
tenuous without the help of civil authorities. When the Pueblos revolted again in 1696,
Custos Vargas admitted that a change was needed in the power relations between
Franciscans and Pueblo Indians.
As a result, Franciscans, civil officials, and Pueblo Indians engaged in
negotiations that, on the one hand, benefitted all three parties locally and, on the other,
signified a changing imperial strategy for the Crown. This new strategy lessened the
authority of missionaries by focusing on native populations' temporal needs instead of
spiritual needs. Indians were encouraged to engage with civil institutions, such as the
court system, which provided local autonomy and protected land holdings. Indian
interaction with civil institutions would then ultimately buttress Spanish control.
Moreover, Spanish domains far from institutional centers were established as defensive
outposts to prevent European intrusion and enemy Indian raids from threatening the
margins of Spain’s empire. As the new imperial strategy developed, Franciscan and
Church authority was necessarily subordinated to civil officials and the Crown.250
Since the Spanish population in New Mexico was still relatively small in the early
eighteenth century, they relied on Pueblo Indians for defense against both raiding Indians
and European interlopers. Using Indian auxiliaries as a military force was a common
Spanish protocol of conquest and protection against enemies. Against the Aztecs, Cortés
enlisted the aid of the hundreds of thousands of Tlaxcallans, the most formidable enemy
250 Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 147-270.
98
of the Aztecs who had not been conquered. When the Aztec Empire fell, the Tlaxcallans
received tribute privileges, titles of honor, and became a respected ally of the Spanish.251
The Spanish hoped to employ the Pueblo Indians as similar allies. The Viceroy,
who realized the eastern and western portions of the province were open to Apache,
Comanche, and Navajo attacks and complained about its defense, ordered Governor Jose
Chacón to the take greatest care in securing the allegiance of the Pueblo Indians.252
Likewise, the Pueblos understood the value of having access to Spanish arms when
fighting against their enemies. In 1709, Navajo raids in the western Jemez pueblo
destroyed buildings, including the church, and depleted the food stores. A raiding party
that attacked the Santa Clara Pueblo that same year stole their cattle. Chacón and his
maestre del campo (second-in-command) gathered auxiliaries from three Indian pueblos
and set forth on an expedition to punish the marauders. By allying together, Pueblos and
Spaniards found common ground against enemy nations253
Spanish-Pueblo alliances also occurred against the Apache. Governor Flores
Mogollón formed an expedition in 1715 to attack Apaches who killed two Tewa Indians
and destroyed crops. The governor brought fifty Spaniards and three hundred Pueblo
Indians.254 The same year, the maestre del campo gathered 149 Pueblo allies to attack
northern Apaches who had stolen horses. Oakah Jones notes that the Pueblo Indians in
251 Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 4463.
252 “No. 148, Duke of Albuquerque, Mexico, July 7, 1708,” in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Spanish
Archives of New Mexico, vol 2. (New York: Arno Press, 1976 [c1914]), 165; “No. 152, Duke of
Albuquerque, Mexico, December 4, 1708,” in Twitchell, Spanish Archives, 165.
253 Jones, Pueblo Warriors, 82.
254 Ibid., 86.
99
this expedition, as well as previous ones, carried firearms.255 Spaniards traditionally
feared supplying firearms to Indian allies who could then use those arms against them.256
However, the use of firearms in these expeditions denotes the extent to which Spaniards
depended upon Pueblos for military assistance. The Pueblos, in turn, found themselves
increasingly dependent upon Spanish arms for protection.
The threat of Comanche raids also plagued New Mexico. The French-Indian
horse trade in the Plains helped the Comanche trade, move, hunt, and wage war more
effectively. Prior to the introduction of horses, indigenous populations in the Plains were
nomadic, but within a relatively smaller range. The distances horses could travel pushed
the Comanche and Apache further south and west, engaging in a bison trade that made
the Comanche wealthy.257 As the Comanche pushed farther west, they increased raids on
the western pueblo villages. Fearful of these raids, Spaniards and Pueblos allied with
friendly Apaches to combat the intruding Comanche.
In 1751, Governor Vélez Cachupin organized a group of soldiers, including eighty
Pueblo Indians, to travel east to punish Comanche raiders. A reconnaissance force of
both Spaniards and Pueblos trapped the Comanche and held them at bay until the main
force arrived. Throughout the night, the Pueblos and Spanish found and killed over onehundred Comanche men. As a result of their resounding success, the Comanche in the
area enacted a peace treaty that lasted several years.258 Because of their shared concern
255 Ibid., 92-93.
256 Ibid., 88.
257 Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,” Journal of American History
90 no. 3 (2003), 834-41. Hämäläinen notes that although the horse trade made the Comanche extremely
wealthy, it destabilized the ecology, which also pushed the Comanche further south and west.
258 Alfred Barnaby Thomas, The Plains Indians and New mexico, 1751-1778 (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1940), 69-73. See also Jones, Pueblo Warriors, 125-6.
100
about the continuous threat posed by Apaches, Navajos, or Comanches, Pueblo Indians,
Spanish settlers, and colonial officers maintained a tight alliance throughout the
eighteenth century.
The Pueblo-Spanish alliance was not only geared towards enemy native groups,
but also European intruders. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
the French in Louisiana and the Plains pushed west. Unsure of the exact distance
between New Mexico and French settlements, any reports or rumors of potential French
presence alarmed Spanish officials. In 1695, friendly Apaches warned that Frenchmen
were headed towards New Mexico from Quivira (Kansas). When the Spanish questioned
the Apaches, they claimed that “seven nations beyond the region where they live, very far
from these parts” told them that the French were pushing towards Quivira and making
war on the Indians there. 259 Though no French had actually been seen during the
episode— their presence was at least “seven nations” beyond the Apaches—the threat
made Pueblo alliances even more necessary for protection.
Continued reports of a French presence finally provoked military action. In 1719,
Governor Valverde sent a garrison of troops to establish a presidio, explore the French
country, and take Pueblo auxiliaries east to fight against a rumored Pawnee-French
alliance.260 However, the result of the incursion was disastrous. Don Pedro de Villasur
led seventy Indian auxiliaries and forty-two soldiers to current-day Nebraska. While
traversing through dense flora, the group was surprise-attacked by Pawnee and other
native groups. The Spanish and Pueblos were unprepared and forty-five people were
259 F.W. Hodge, “French Intrusion toward New Mexico in 1695” NMHR 4 no. 1 (1929): 73-76.
260 “No. 308, Valverde y Cosio. June 2, 1719” in Twitchell, The Spanish Archives, vol. 2, 189. “No. 310a,
“Viceroy Marques de Valero, Mexico, June 9, 1720” in Twitchell, The Spanish Archives, 190-191.
101
killed. Reports that no French had been seen added insult to injury.261 Despite
complaints from the Pueblos over the loss of life, Spaniards and Pueblo Indians continued
to ally in other expeditions.
Mutual reliance between Spaniards and Pueblo was not relegated solely to
military need; both groups also engaged in a legal culture which reshaped both societies.
Since the conquest of the Aztec Empire, native groups employed the Spanish court
system to protect communal landholdings and prevent Spanish interference in local
elections. Initially, Spaniards often adjudicated based upon traditional indigenous
customs and legal culture. However, by the seventeenth century, native groups began to
rely predominantly on Spanish law. Consequently, when Indians used the Spanish court
systems to their benefit, they also lessened the consistent use of traditional legal forms.
The end result, as Susan Kellogg and Steve Stern have posited, was that Indian reliance
on colonial courts ultimately confirmed and buttressed Spanish rule.262
Though engagement with the court system may have confirmed Spanish control,
the Pueblos were able to shape legal procedures regarding land ownership. In their
appeals to the courts, Pueblo Indians used the argument of previous occupation and prior
use to support their claims to rightful possession of land. Since the Pueblos had held
lands, it was their customary right, based on pre-Spanish control, to continue ownership.
Land, in this sense, was part of the identity of the Pueblos. To negate Indian’s customary
viewpoints on land rights would negate the autonomy and tradition of the Indians.
261 Jones, Pueblo Warriors, 101-02, note 95; Twitchell, The Spanish Archives, 190-191.
262 Susan Kellogg, Law and Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500-1700 (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1995), xvii-xxviii; Steve Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish
Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 132-37.
102
Furthermore, since the Indians were vassals of the Crown, it was the King’s duty to
protect and care for his figurative children. As a result, the Spanish accepted Pueblo
traditional claims to ownership.263 Moreover, the Pueblos cited cultivation as a means of
ownership, regardless of a tract of land's current state. Productive use of land was an
argument used as a safeguard in case the traditional claims to ownership failed. Since
there was no actual documentation to show Pueblo ownership of the land prior to Spanish
contact, its use became sufficient evidence of possession against potential squatters.264
For example, in 1704, the Indians at the pueblo of San Ildefonso claimed, through
the official protector, that Captain Ignacio de Roybal acquired lands that belonged to
them prior to the Revolt and that at one time they had cultivated. An inspector viewed
the lands in question and found evidence of cultivation. The inspector measured the
cultivated land and apportioned it to the Pueblos.265 Roybal had believed that since the
Pueblos were not currently cultivating the land, as it apparently had been abandoned
during the 1680s, they had relinquished their ownership. However, evidence of
cultivation had been sufficient evidence to apportion the lands to the Pueblos. Pueblo
notions of land ownership merged with Spanish legal procedures that resulted in a
reshaping of Spanish legal authority.
As Pueblos and colonial authorities managed to carve out a successful coexistence
based on shared interests, the Franciscans were less capable of working themselves into
this burgeoning political and economic alliance. Seeking to protect their relevance in the
263 Brian Owensby, Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2008), 28, 99.
264 Ibid., 100-101.
265 “No. 1339. Petition relative to lands of the Pueblo of San Ildefonso, September 18, 1704” in Twitchell,
Spanish Archives, 394-96.
103
region and their power, the Franciscans again started Inquisition hearings. Led by
Franciscan Juan Alvarez in 1705, Franciscans focused primarily on the behavior and
religion of mestizos, or mixed bloods. As the Spanish population increased in New
Mexico in the eighteenth century while the Pueblo population decreased due to disease,
Apache raids, and warfare, Spaniards and Pueblos intermarried. Since mestizos contained
both Spanish and Indian blood, they had the ability to be full Christians, but also were
seen as being prone to “Indian” indulgence, including idolatry, mysticism, and sorcery or
witchcraft.266 Their emphasis on mestizos highlights that the Franciscans no longer
questioned the orthodoxy of the Pueblos as they had in the mid seventeenth century.
Accordingly, Franciscans lost yet another avenue of control over native populations.
However, Franciscan persecution of religious heterodoxy in the eighteenth
century bore none of the marks of the harsh treatment towards Pueblo-Catholic syncretic
practices that characterized the extirpation campaigns of the seventeenth century. In fact,
New Mexico governors criticized friars for not doing enough to abolish idolatrous
practices of the mixed bloods. The Franciscan’s position of weakness prevented them
from being zealous in removing indigenous religious customs. Consequently,
Franciscans relented to civil authorities in matters of witchcraft.267
As civil officials became the predominant power in local affairs, the Crown began
to institute its right through the Real patronato to bring mendicant orders under the
control of royal authority. In 1620, Pope Paul V erected the See of Durango, and while
the See technically had right of visitation over New Mexico, this authority was not
266 Greenleaf, “The Inquisition in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico”, 29-60.
267 Marc Simmons, Witchcraft in the Southwest: Spanish and Indian Supernaturalism on the Rio Grande
(Flagstaff: Northland Press, 1974), 18-30.
104
enacted until the early eighteenth century, at which time the Bishop of Durango
increasingly exercised his jurisdiction over the province. Bishop Crespo visited New
Mexico three times between 1723 and 1734. On these visits, Crespo decried Franciscan
lack of familiarity with the indigenous languages. He also accused the Friars of improper
use of the tithe and other general scandal.268 In 1760, Bishop Tamarón also visited the
New Mexican missions and found the same abuses as Crespo.269 By the 1776 visitation
by Francisco Dominguez, Franciscans had been stripped of their royal funding and the
tithes were administered by the secular clergy.270 By the late eighteenth century, the
Crown had effectively asserted its jurisdiction over the Franciscans.
Pueblo embrace of civil authorities and Spanish institutions, and Spanish
acceptance of Pueblo communal customs in the eighteenth century grew out of a need for
mutual survival. Franciscans who presided over the missions in the seventeenth century
could no longer meet the needs of the Pueblo Indians and the goals of the Crown. As
New Mexico shifted from a royal missionary province to a military outpost, civil officials
and Pueblos found common ground in the need to protect the province from both Indian
and European enemies. Gradually, this military alliance led to accommodation in
political matters. Through engagement with the Spanish court system, for instance, the
Pueblos found civil institutions an acceptable tradeoff for accepting Spanish control. By
268 Edwin Ryan, “Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in the Spanish Colonies,” Catholic Historical Review 5 no. 1
(1919): 5-6.
269 Eleanor Adams, ed. and trans. Bishop Tamarón’s Visitation of New Mexico, 1760 (Albuquerque:
Historical Society of New Mexico, 1954), 78-79.
270 Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, The Missions of New Mexico, 1776. Trans. Eleanor Adams and
Fray Angelico Chavez (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1956), 29, note 45.
105
negotiating a mutually beneficial relationship, the Spaniards and Pueblos engaged in over
a century of accommodation.
Franciscans had discovered in the 1680 and 1696 Pueblo Revolts that the
effectiveness of the missions relied on armed protection by colonial authorities and
Pueblo acceptance of the missionary’s presence. As a consequence, the Franciscans had
to negotiate with both groups to reestablish a missionary presence after the revolts. The
Franciscans tolerated Indian dances and rituals. Missionaries relegated extirpation
campaigns to civil officials and stayed out of governmental affairs. The result of these
negotiations was a lessening of Franciscan dominance and their subordination to royally
appointed civil authorities and secular clergy.
In conjunction with Franciscan acquiescence to civil authorities the crown shifted
its imperial strategy in New Mexico towards defense and accommodation. A stable
Spanish presence in New Mexico could only occur through a military force and a reliance
on Pueblo auxiliaries. French intrusion from Louisiana and the Plains, as well as Apache
and Comanche raids, remolded New Mexico into a military outpost for the protection of
the interior provinces. This new imperial strategy for New Mexico required the
subordination of Franciscans to civil authorities. The State in New Mexico had become
dominant vis-à-vis the Church.
106
Conclusion
The three centuries of shifting power relations in New Mexico clearly show that
presence of either Spanish Church or State institutions were the result of the confluence
between royal policy and local actors. The local actors most instrumental in determining
the direction of royal policy in New Mexico were the Pueblo Indians. As mendicant
orders and secular colonial agents vied to settle Tierra Nueva, interactions with the
Indians showed who could best meet native needs and bring them under Spanish
influence. The Coronado expedition, which failed to bring the Pueblos into the Spanish
domain, meant the general failure of armed expeditions. Similarly, when Governor Oñate
was under trial, testimony from natives and Franciscans—who acted as the voice of the
Indians—contributed to his removal from office. The Pueblos found the missions a better
alternative to their needs than a protracted, armed conflict.
Continued Franciscan dominance in New Mexico was obtained through Pueblo
acceptance of the missionary program. As long as the Pueblos continued to fulfill their
spiritual and temporal duties on the missions, the Franciscans were able to maintain a
veneer of authority. However, when the missionaries were unable to provide for the
Pueblos, the Indians found Franciscan repression of native practices unacceptable.
Ultimately, the Pueblos rejected Franciscan claims to power through a massive revolt in
1680. With the rejection of Franciscan authority, the mission system could not prevail as
the predominant Spanish institution.
107
As the Crown began to shift its imperial strategy for outlying areas, the nature in
which the Spanish interacted with the Pueblos shifted to policies of conciliation. The
Spanish needed the Pueblos to act as auxiliaries to protect Spanish interests. In exchange
for their armed assistance, the Pueblos negotiated autonomy in religious, political, and
cultural matters. At the same time, the Franciscans agreed to lessen their spiritual
zealousness in relation to native practices and lightened their demands for labor and
material assistance from the Pueblo Indians. The result of these negotiations was, on one
hand, the secularization of Spanish institutions and, on the other, the establishment of a
relatively peaceful era of Spanish and Pueblo interactions. Therefore, although Spanish
imperial strategies for expansion shifted from an emphasis on conversion to a focus on
political and pragmatic concerns, the success of both strategies rested on their ability to
establish a mutually beneficial relationship with the Pueblos.
The changing strategies in New Mexico is illustrative of the wider pattern of
reform instituted in the eighteenth century by the Bourbon Crown. For example,
Bourbon policy—which was steeped in Enlightenment thought—sought conciliation with
Indians through trade, military alliances, and conversion. By accommodating native
groups, Spaniards hoped to make Indians more economically productive and
Hispanicized while also protecting Spanish political interests. For example, in 1786 civil
authorities offered Indians, such as the Comanche, gifts, military alliances, and fair trade
policies. The result of these new policies, according to David Weber, was the creation of
an “era of economic and demographic expansion for northern New Spain.”271 However,
271 David Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005), 193.
108
effectiveness of Crown policy in these regions ultimately relied on local actors. Only
when Indians found Spanish presence useful for their own ends and when local officials
found peace imperative to their own interests could a working relationship occur.272
Bourbon emphasis on secular institutions and pragmatic conciliation when
engaging with native populations underscored a larger theme of the subordination of the
Church to the State. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the missions were
one of the mainstays of imperial expansion strategies. The missions served the purpose
of extending and holding Spanish control.273 By the eighteenth century, however, the
missions could not maintain a stable Spanish presence alone. Since the Church could not
perform its ecclesiastical and political tasks, the King attempted to establish supremacy
of royal power.
The King asserted authority over the Church by controlling the Indians on one
hand and removing the privileges given to the Church on the other. More specifically, the
Crown rescinded ecclesiastical immunity from secular courts and their exemption from
taxation.274 Moreover, the Bourbons also began secularizing mendicant missions and
replacing them with diocesan clergy. By reducing the power of the Church in the
Americas as well as in Spain, the Crown began a process of secularization that gave
preeminence to royal officials and civil institutions.275
272 Ibid., 1-9.
273 Bolton, “Mission as a Frontier Institution,” 47.
274 N. M. Farriss, Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico 1759-1821: The Crisis of Ecclesiastical Privilege
(London: Athlone Press, 1968), 9-11; Elizabeth Howard West, “Right of Asylum in New Mexico in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” New Mexico Historical Review 41, no. 2 (1966): 115-153.
275 Matthew O’Hara, A Flock Divided: Race, Religion, and Politics in Mexico, 1749-1857 (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2010), 30-31; Lucia Kinnaird and Lawrence Kinnaird, “Secularization of Four New
Mexico Missions” New Mexico Historical Review 54, no. 1 (1979): 35-41.
109
Although the process of secularization through the Bourbon Reforms was royally
instituted, local actors ultimately enforced, hastened, or resisted new policies. For
example, the Pueblo Indians became influential actors in secularizing Spanish institutions
in New Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt in 1680 began the process of secularization. While
Spanish strategies for imperial expansion during the seventeenth century relied primarily
on the missions, the Pueblos communicated through a revolt in 1680 that Franciscan
authority could no longer meet their needs. With the Franciscans unable to maintain
control, the Crown sought a new ally with which to foster royal interests.
The second Pueblo Revolt in 1696 also brought about a change in local and
imperial policy that reshaped the power structure in New Mexico. The revolt affirmed a
rejection of Franciscan impositions on native practices. Moreover, when missionaries
sent letters to the custos refusing to go to the missions, they tacitly admitted that they did
not have the power to keep the Pueblos under Spanish control. When custos Vargas
decided to limit obventions and only receive alms every three years, the Franciscans in
effect acquiesced to Pueblo demands. After Vargas subdued the rebellion, secular
colonial leaders and Pueblos negotiated the terms of their economic, political, and
cultural interaction into a mutually beneficial political relationship.
Ultimately, by the start of the eighteenth century, the Church in New Mexico was
clearly subordinate to the State. Franciscans in New Mexico continued to run the
missions, but became more tolerant of native practices previously not allowed. Realizing
that they were in a position of weakness, the missionaries deferred to civil officials in
enforcing religious orthodoxy among the Pueblos. Moreover, while the friars in the
110
seventeenth century had been able to remove secular colonial agents who challenged their
authority, the friars no longer legitimately contested the governor’s power. Franciscans in
New Mexico were in a position of inferiority vis-à-vis the State. The rejection of
Franciscan authority by the Pueblo Indians, then, caused the Crown to enact policies that
ultimately shaped a broader process of secularization.
111
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