The Other Slavery (63 page)

6. The anti-Spanish Pueblo–Plains Indian movement of 1704–1705 has received very little attention from historians. One of the reasons is that the records are scattered. For Juan Páez Hurtado’s investigation, see
“
Diligencias sobre haber contraído amistad los pueblos con los infieles,” Santa Fe, 1704–1705. This was one of the items gathered by the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition and now housed at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. I consulted the microfilm version: Hemenway Expedition, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, roll 2, vols. 8–13. Correspondence and testimonies pertaining to Páez Hurtado’s investigation can also be found in “Record of Proceedings re Reported Conspiracy Between Pueblo Indians and Apaches and Utes,” Santa Fe, December 12, 1704, to February 28, 1705, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, roll 3, frames 927–963. To be sure, these closer Pueblo–Plains Indian associations could be volatile, shifting from peaceful barter to mutual predation and enslavement. It was an unstable embrace between agriculturalists and nomads based on economic convenience, nutritional complementarity, and bonds of enslavement and kinship.

7. Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire
, chap. 1; Thomas W. Kavanagh,
The Comanches: A History, 1706–1875
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 28–132; Rivaya-Martínez, “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians,” chap. 2; Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
chap. 1; Elizabeth A. John,
Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975), 117–121.

8. Friar Miguel de Menchero, apostolic preacher and officer of the Inquisition, Santa Bárbara, May 10, 1744, in Hackett,
Historical Documents
, 3:401–402. The exact ethnicity of this individual will remain ambiguous forever not only because it is not clear whether “Ponna” really means Pawnee but also because French trappers often referred to Indian slaves as “Pawnees” without necessarily implying a specific ethnic affiliation. See Richard White,
The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change Among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 152.

9. Friar Pedro Serrano to the viceroy of Mexico, n.p., 1761, in Hackett,
Historical Documents,
3:486–487.

10. In 1639 Governor Rosas sent a force against a band of Utes who had entered New Mexico not as assertive traders, but as slaves bound for the silver mines of Chihuahua. Had Comanches lived closer to New Mexico at that time, they may well have suffered the same fate. See Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
47. This does not mean that the Spaniards stopped raiding the surrounding nomads in the eighteenth century. In 1716 a Spanish detachment attacked a group of Utes, taking dozens of captives. Ibid., 38.

11. The beheading incident is narrated in Alfred Barnaby Thomas,
After Coronado: Spanish Exploration Northeast of New Mexico, 1696–1727; Documents from the Archives of Spain, Mexico, and New Mexico
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935), 13–14. This episode is also discussed in Russell M. Magnaghi, “Plains Indians in New Mexico: The Genízaro Experience,”
Great Plains Quarterly
10:2 (Spring 1990), 87–88. Magnaghi writes that the “utopian-minded” New Laws of 1542 were “all but ignored,” that the principle of “just wars” justified the enslavement of non-Christian Indians, and that the
Recopilación de las leyes de Indias
“carefully spelled out the Christian obligation to ransom captive Indians enslaved by other Indian tribes.” I was unable to find any such regulation for ransoming Indians in book 7, title 7, laws 2 and 17, cited by Magnaghi. Book 7 actually deals with royal officials. In book 6, title 2, law 1, the
Recopilación
explicitly refers back to the New Laws of 1542 and prohibits the enslavement of Indians under all circumstances, even slaves taken in “just wars” or ransomed from other Indians, as stated in
chapter 5
of this book. As noted earlier, the general tenor of book 6, title 2 is to prohibit any enslavement of Indians “except when expressly permitted by the crown.” In the following laws, only the enslavement of the cannibalistic Carib Indians and the Muslim inhabitants of Mindanao, in the Philippines, is permitted.
Recopilación de las leyes de Indias,
http://fondosdigitales.us.es/fondos /libros/752/1030/recopilacion-de-leyes-de-los-reynos-de-las-indias/
.

12. For a sound overview of trade relations between the New Mexicans and the Comanches and Utes in the 1700s, see Cheryl Foote, “Spanish-Indian Trade Along New Mexico’s Northern Frontier in the Eighteenth Century,”
Journal of the West
24:2 (April 1985), 22–33.

13. Instructions left by Governor Cachupín to his successor, Francisco Marín del Valle, Santa Fe, August 12, 1754, in Alfred Barnaby Thomas,
The Plains Indians and New Mexico, 1751–1778
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1940), 129–143. On the treaty with the Comanches and Utes, see also Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire,
47–48; and Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
63–64.

14. Friar Menchero, Santa Bárbara, May 10, 1744. The genízaro settlement of Tomé was built on the site of an earlier community. In the 1660s, Tomé Dominguez de Mendoza had established a hacienda in the area and given his name to the place. On the 1733 genízaro petition, see Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks,
The Witches of Abiquiu: The Governor, the Priest, the Genízaro Indians, and the Devil
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 28–29. For a broader consideration of the captive exchange in New Mexico, see Brooks,
Captives and Cousins
. See also Doris Swann Avery, “Into the Den of Evils: The Genízaros of Colonial New Mexico” (master’s thesis, University of Montana, 2008); Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez, “Reflexión historiográfica sobre los genízaros de Nuevo México, una comunidad pluriétnica del septentrión novohispano,” in David Carbajal López, ed.,
Familias pluriétnicas y mestizaje en la Nueva España y el Río de la Plata
(Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2014); Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire,
38–39; and James F. Brooks, “‘We Betray Our Own Nation’: Indian Slavery and Multi-ethnic Communities in the Southwest Borderlands,” in Alan Gallay, ed.,
Indian Slavery in Colonial America
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 319–351.

15. Gary Anderson,
The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), chaps. 4 and 5; Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire,
28–29.

16. For the Apache settlements known to archaeologists as the Dismal River Culture, see Waldo R. Wedel,
Central Plains Prehistory: Holocene Environments and Culture Change in the Republican River Basin
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), chap. 8. Expeditions led by Juan de Ulibarri, Antonio de Valverde, and Pedro de Villasur visited these Apache settlements. See Thomas,
After Coronado,
passim.

17. Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire,
28–32; Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Western Comanche Trade Center: Rethinking the Plains Indian Trade System,”
Western Historical Quarterly
29:4 (Winter 1998), 485–513; Kavanagh,
The Comanches,
66. The quote is from Pedro de Rivera to Casa Fuerte, Presidio del Paso del Norte, September 26, 1727, in Thomas,
After Coronado,
211.

18. The quotes are from Governor Antonio de Valverde, La Cieneguilla, September 21, 1719, and General Juan Domingo de Bustamante, Santa Fe, November 8, 1723, both in Thomas,
After Coronado,
112–113 and 194, respectively.

19. On pre-contact Cherokee slaving practices, see Theda Perdue,
Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540–1866
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979), 3–18. On the early Iroquois, see Richter, “War and Culture,” 528–559; and Parmenter,
The Edge of the Woods
, xliii–xliv, 45–51. Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez has recently argued that the Comanche practice of adopting outsiders was primarily driven by their desire to appropriate these captives’ labor rather than to replace lost population, as other scholars have assumed. He has shown that Comanche raiding expeditions often resulted in more deaths of Comanches than captives assimilated into their society. Rivaya-Martínez, “A Different Look at Native American Depopulation: Comanche Raiding, Captive Taking, and Population Decline,”
Ethnohistory
61:3 (Summer 2014), 391–418.

20. The quote is from Rivaya-Martínez, “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians,” 47–48. For the importance of the hide trade, see Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire,
247–249. For a good description of women’s work among the Comanches, see Rister,
Border Captives,
14–16. Rister’s book was published in 1940. More recently, Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez has de-emphasized the physical challenges of Comanche captives and stressed instead other psychological, cultural, and reproductive factors that shaped their lives. See Rivaya-Martínez, “Becoming Comanches: Patterns of Captive Incorporation into Comanche Kinship Networks, 1820–1875,” in David Adams and Crista DeLuzio, eds.,
On the Borders of Love and Power: Families and Kinship in the Intercultural American Southwest
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 47–70.

21. Rivaya-Martínez, “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians,” especially chap. 2; Brian DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
92. The testimonies of Mexican captives taken by Comanches in the nineteenth century attest to this dynamic more clearly. See Cuauhtémoc Velasco Ávila,
En manos de los bárbaros: Testimonios de la guerra india en el noreste
(Mexico City: Breve Fondo Editorial, 1996), 18.

22. On the extent of the Comanchería, see Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire,
59, 66. For a demographic discussion of the Comanches in the eighteenth century, see Rivaya Martínez, “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians,” chap. 3; and Rivaya-Martínez, “A Different Look at Native American Depopulation,” 393–394.

23. John,
Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds;
Kavanagh,
The Comanches;
Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire;
DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
105; Rushforth,
Bonds of Alliance,
239–242.

24. For estimates of the proportion of slaves held by the Comanches, see Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire,
250. Hämäläinen calls Comanche captives an “evaporating resource,” because many of them were either traded away or assimilated into Comanche society. Rivaya-Martínez also makes the interesting point that in his sample, only a small proportion (around eleven percent) remained with their captors for the balance of their lives. A majority escaped or were killed or traded away. Rivaya-Martínez, “A Different Look at Native American Depopulation,” 405–406. For a critique of the distinction between “societies with slaves” and “slave societies” first proposed by Moses Finley, see Rivaya-Martínez, “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians,” 335–336. Fernando Santos-Granero has studied the proportion of slaves in various early Native American societies and concluded that the ratio fluctuated between five and nineteen percent of the total population. The Comanches fit into this range fairly well. Santos-Granero,
Vital Enemies,
conclusions.

25. Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
passim.

26. For information on Ute seasonal movements, see the report of Governor Fernando de la Conacha, quoted in Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
65.

27. Knack,
Boundaries Between,
20–31.

28. This lifestyle characterized not only Paiutes but also other peoples of the Great Basin. See Steven J. Crum,
The Road on Which We Came: A History of the Western Shoshone
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 1–5.

29. William Wolfskill, quoted in J. Cecil Alter, ed., “Journal of Orange Clark and George Yount,”
California Historical Quarterly
2 (April 1923), 13; Mark Twain, quoted in Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
11.

30. Knack,
Boundaries Between,
30–36; Leroy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen,
Old Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 261–273. For a broader consideration of the autonomous world created by Natives, see Natale A. Zappia, “Indigenous Borderlands: Livestock, Captivity, and Power in the Far West,”
Pacific Historical Review
81:2 (May 2012), 193–220; and Natale A. Zappia,
Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540–1859
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), passim.

31. Ted J. Warner and Fray Angelico Chavez, eds.,
The Dominguez-Escalante Journal: Their Expedition Through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico in 1776
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995), 91–92, 101–102.

32. For the parish records, see Thomas D. Martínez,
Abiquiu Baptisms, 1754–1870: Baptism Database of Archives Held by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the State Archive of New Mexico
(San Jose, CA: published by author, 1993). These records are organized by last name and in chronological order. At least 152 “Ute” boys and girls were baptized between 1754 and 1870, not counting scores of others identified simply as “Indian.” For a broader discussion of the role of Abiquiu and the distribution of these entries, see Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
71–75.

33. For the meaning of “yuta” and the broader patterns of the enslavement of Indians
in New Mexico as revealed by parish records, see Brugge,
Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico,
18–19; and Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
71–75. On the 1752 peace agreement between the New Mexicans and Utes, see Joseph Lobato to Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín, San Juan de los Caballeros, August 17, 1752, in Thomas,
The Plains Indians and New Mexico,
117–118.