Kachina and the Cross (19 page)

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Authors: Carroll L Riley

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Page 88
Cristóbal and was basically a propaganda piece for the glorification of Juan and the Oñate family. The book and his other efforts met with some success, for Oñate obtained the important office of mining inspector for Spain in 1624. The following year he was made a
caballero
of the Military Order of Santiago, a firm sign of royal favor. Oñate died around the first of June, 1626, and his family never regained importance in the affairs of New Mexico.
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Chapter Seven
Church and State through Mid-Century
The situation in the province of New Mexico during the seventeenth century had some unusual features. As pointed out a half century ago by the great Southwest historian France V. Scholes, it seems to have been a period of almost constant stress and turmoil, a struggle to the death (sometimes literally) between church and state, between the Franciscan missionaries and the civil governors and their retinues. Was what
seemed
to be happening in the Southwest typical of Spanish governance in the New World during that period? Was New Mexico unique? Or do the documents give a skewed picture of events?
This last point is certainly true to some degree. Most of the New Mexico governmental archives and the Santa Fe cabildo documents, stored in Santa Fe, were lost in 1680. They were, of course copied, thanks to Spanish bureaucracy, and more and more are coming to light. It was with the Mexican and Spanish repositories of documents, and especially with the voluminous Franciscan documentation, that France Scholes, unquestionably the premier researcher on this period, worked in creating his detailed picture of the seventeenth-century province of New Mexico. His extensive use of mission records has led some modern historians to challenge Scholes's overall picture and to suggest that he introduced a strong pro-Franciscan bias and tended to stress negative aspects of the civil government of the province.
First of all, I doubt this alleged bias on the part of France Scholes. It is possible by picking and choosing isolated pieces of Scholes's work to find pejorative statements about the governors and their parties. It is, however, equally easy to find statements critical of the missionaries and of the settlers. As stated in the preface, I was a student of Scholes and knew him quite well during a time when he was still working and publishing on southwestern matters. Although I discussed the
Page 90
politics of seventeenth-century New Mexico with him a number of times, I never got the impression of a pro-mission bias. Scholes had a healthy objectivity in his approach to all sourcesmissionary, secular, or whatever.
Was New Mexico, then, different from the rest of Spanish America in its violent church-state controversy? Actually, I suspect that it may have been so. Even a casual reading of the fate of New Mexico seventeenth-century governors gives the feeling that something was very wrong in that province. One governor was murdered, and one died in prison. Others were imprisoned, and most of them bore scars from their New Mexican experience.
The situation, I believe, was the result of a combination of factors that made New Mexico unique in Spanish North America. First of all, the colony was extremely isolated. It was connected to the heartland of New Spain by a supply train that made a round trip from Mexico City to Santa Fe, along what became known as the
Camino Real
, approximately every three years, a long and dangerous route largely controlled by the Franciscans. News traveled very slowly, and even official letters to and from New Mexico did not reach their destinations for months.
A second factor was that by around 1608, New Mexico had been essentially written off by the Spanish Crown as a profit-making colony. It was to be a royal mission province, and secular Spaniards were to be essentially a support group for the Franciscans. However, neither the settlers, some of whom had come with Oñate in the heady and highly optimistic days of first settlement, nor the various governors ever fully accepted this state of affairs.
A complete Franciscan hegemony could only operate in the absence of a large Hispanic population, and the numbers of colonists did remain very small throughout the century. But, however few in numbers, the settlers were determined to get the maximum advantage from encomiendas and
estancias
(ranches), and they naturally tried to exploit the Pueblo population whenever possible. One source of power for the settlers was participation in the city government of Santa Fe.
The governors, also, expected to gain
something
from their time in this rude and isolated area. In spite of the high hopes of Oñate and of such early churchmen as Benavides, no mineral industry developed. In fact, according to a 1638 letter of the commissary-general of the Franciscans in New Spain, not a single mine had been opened up to that date. Lacking mineral wealth to exploit, the Spaniards had relatively few options. One important possibility was trade, which to a greater or lesser degree involved Pueblo Indian labor in the production of cotton and wool goods and other natural products for export to Mexico or to the Plains. This was a source of constant friction since the missionaries felt they had
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first call on Indian labor for their own Mexican trade. Help from the Crown was not always generous, and the missions for the most part were expected to support themselves.
An even quicker way of gaining wealth was the securing of captives from the surrounding nomadic groups, especially the Apache. Such slaving expeditions usually had as a pretext the attack by Apaches on Pueblo or Spanish towns or estancias. But often the Spaniards attacked first, and the Apaches, thus provoked, tended to retaliate, especially on the outlying Pueblo towns. This state of affairs generally outraged the missionaries, who blamed any loss of converts on the governors and their associates. But slaving became an increasingly important factor in the economy of the Southwest, not only to the governor and settlers but also to the Pueblo Indians themselves. Captives, especially pubescent boys and girls, brought large sums of money in central Mexico and in the mining outposts of Nueva Vizcaya. For a Pueblo Indian operating within the restrictive mission system, it was a chance to function militarily under the governor's patronage. With luck and skill, a given individual might become relatively affluent, but it did tend to undercut the Franciscan control over native populations.
Another aspect of New Mexico life was the intensive conversion program of the missionaries and the governors' reactions to it. A few governors, over a period of several decades, resisted the mission attack on native ceremonials. I am not entirely clear on the reasons for this resistance. However, the seventeenth century in Europe was a period in which folk dances and other ceremonies were popular and accepted. These folk dances seem to have met little opposition from the Church, assuming that they were not part of "devil worship." It may be that governors, who generally had a certain sophistication, saw the Pueblo masked dances as also basically harmless. Still, considering how the clergy felt about such matters, it seems an inadequate explanation as to why certain governors actively promoted the native ceremonials. Perhaps the governors, who generally were very sensitive to what they considered the rights and prerogatives of the civil government, were simply trying to establish their authority. Alternatively, they may have worried about the "public safety" factor, fearing that tensions and turmoil, produced by the missionaries' all-or-nothing religious acculturation, would eventually produce a violent Pueblo reaction. Whatever their reasons, which probably varied from governor to governor, there
was
a violent reactionon the part of the Franciscans.
Given all this, one would expect a certain amount of friction, but probably one in which the secular and religious powers were in reasonable balance. However, another factor in the power struggle quickly became evident. This was the Holy Office of the Inquisition, aimed at maintaining moral censorship and
Page 92
purity of the Catholic faith. The Holy Office was introduced into the New World in 1517. It quickly spread to the great viceroyalties, at first under control of the bishops, then via separate tribunals established in 1569 and set up in Lima and Mexico City within a year or so after that date. The Inquisition operated largely independently of both the secular and religious authorities in the New World. It was a tribunal with extraordinarily broad powers from which only Indians were excludedand a powerful and dreaded weapon to use against secular authorities. A commission from the Inquisition was claimed by the Franciscan commissary Fray Isidro Ordóñez perhaps as early as 1613. As it happened, Ordóñiez was not a commissary of the Inquisition, although that office would be introduced into New Mexico a decade later. At first this authority was employed with a certain moderation, even gingerly at times. However, it eventually became a powerful weapon in the hands of the friars and was used recklessly and ruthlessly by them, especially in the 1660s. With such broad and essentially undefined powers, the New Mexico missionaries might well be expected to have fought the governors tooth and nail. And the latter officials generally felt obligated to defend the secular power, sometimes at great cost to themselves. The use of the Holy Office upset the already delicate and imperfect power balance and made conflict inevitable.
As discussed in chapter 6, Pedro de Peralta arrived in New Mexico sometime in the winter of 1609-10. The province by that time had shrunk to probably fewer than two hundred people, huddled at San Gabriel. With Peralta came twelve soldiers and a new contingent of eight Franciscans including a new commissary, Fray Alonso de Peinado, who replaced Father Escobar. Peralta had a mission much more sharply focused than had Oñate. He was to move the capital from San Gabriel, where the Spaniards competed for scarce resources with the large Tewa-speaking population. The Santa Fe Valley had already been chosen, and settler Martínez Montoya had done some building there possibly as early as 1605. As discussed below, it may be that the Analco settlement of Mexican Indians also predated Peralta by a year or two. It would at least explain why the desirable heights on the south side of the Santa Fe River were off-limits to the earliest Spanish families. It looks as if the Franciscans had established a prior right to the southern side of the river, and continued to exercise this right throughout the seventeenth century. The missionaries, however, continued to headquarter at Santo Domingo Pueblo, somewhat nearer the center of action as far as the Rio Grande Pueblos were concerned.
Peralta was directed to concentrate on missionization and defense of the Pueblo area. The Apaches, especially those east of the Rio Grande, were to be left to their own devices until the Pueblo region itself was firmly secured. A system
Page 93
of tribute was set up, and encomiendas were established. Directions were given Peralta for the new settlement of Santa Fe. He was to establish cabildo officers and, with their help, deal out lots to the inhabitants of the new villaapparently by a lottery working off some sort of plat. Each family was to have land for a house, garden, vineyards, and olive groves. The mention of olive groves brings home the point that Peralta was working from a standardized set of instructions. Olives are unsuited to the harsh climate of mountainous northern New Mexico. Irrigation water was to be provided, and settlers were obligated to remain continuously for ten years (for a further discussion of the founding of Santa Fe, see chapter 9).
The core of the colony was a group of families who had remained with Oñate through thick and thin. Perhaps the most important of these were members of the Baca and Barela families and Gerónimo Márquez, who had been Oñate's ambassador in 1601 when most of the colonists had deserted. These were individuals who were determined to make something of New Mexico, and they and their fellow colonists formed one of the factions that jostled and struggled for control of the province along with the governor and his party, the Franciscans, and the Indians themselves during the next seventy years. Some thirty-five of these settlers were awarded encomiendas, the right to the labor of specific Pueblo Indian groups. People awarded encomiendas were called
encomenderos
, and they were required by law to maintain a dwelling in the capital. In fact, many of them lived in Santa Fe, perhaps all of them at least seasonally. The encomenderos technically were not allowed to reside in the towns they held in encomienda, though this rule was sometimes violated in New Mexico. Encomenderos were normally soldiers, and one of their duties was to raise arms when needed to defend the colony. A good portion of their military manpower came from the Indians they held in encomienda.
The encomenderos also functioned directly in the governance of the colony. New Mexico was divided into six to eight subdivisions called jurisdictions, which included all the province except for Santa Fe and its surrounding area. Each jurisdiction was headed by an officer called an
alcalde
mayor
who functioned as military commander for his district, local judge, and general overseer for both settlers and Pueblo Indians. The alcaldes mayores were therefore in constant contact with the missionaries, and with an overlapping authority that often caused friction. One of the major sources of power for colonists was a place on the Santa Fe city cabildo either as
regidor
(counselor) or
alcalde
(magistrate). In certain situations, the cabildo officers actually managed to seize the executive power of the provincial government. It was sometimes a dangerous activity, as in the aftermath of the Rosas murder (discussed further below).

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