The Other Slavery (65 page)

22. “Ortiz Parrilla and the Jesuits Propose to Deport the Seris,” 171–172.

23. The chaplain of the expedition, Father Francisco Antonio Pimentel, kept a diary of his experiences. See “Pimentel’s Diary of the Expedition to Tiburón Island, 1750,” in Sheridan,
Empire of Sand,
177–231. For a blow-by-blow account, see Sheridan, “Cross or Arrow?,” 327–333.

24. The quote is from Nentvig,
Rudo Ensayo,
75–76. The mission records of Tumacácori contain fifty-one references to Seri Indians. “Mission 2000: Searchable Spanish Mission Records,” Tumacácori National Historical Park,
http://home.nps.gov /applications/tuma/search.cfm
. Some of the other Indians included under the rubric “nijoras” or “nixoras” were Seris.

25. Several scholars have shed light on various aspects of the presidial frontier. One place to start is the classic work by Max Moorhead,
The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands.
See also the following compilations of documents: Naylor and Polzer,
The Presidio,
vol. 1,
1570–1700;
Polzer and Sheridan,
The Presidio,
vol. 2, part 1,
The Californias and Sinaloa-Sonora, 1700–1765;
and Diana Hadley, Thomas H. Naylor, and Mardith K. Schuetz-Miller, eds.,
The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain: A Documentary History,
vol. 2, part 2,
The Central Corridor and the Texas Corridor, 1700–1765
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997). Another key work is William B. Griffen,
Apaches at War and Peace: The Janos Presidio, 1750–1858
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988). The most recent and suggestive works include Conrad, “Captive Fates”; Santiago,
The Jar of Severed Hands;
Babcock, “Turning Apaches into Spaniards”; and Blyth,
Chiricahua and Janos
.

26. For figures and other statistical information on Apache prisoners, see Santiago,
The Jar of Severed Hands,
201–202. Conrad includes non-Apache captives in his estimates, which are the ones I have used here. Conrad, “Captive Fates,” 212–213. For a suggestive interpretation of the start of the Apache wars, see Sara Ortelli,
Trama de una Guerra conveniente: Nueva Vizcaya y la sombra de los apaches, 1748–1790
(Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2007).

27. Advice of Marquis of Croix copied in San Carlos, July 9, 1770, AGN, Provincias Internas, 31, fols. 332–342. The escape while the soldiers were occupied with the Indian women took place at a much earlier time. See judicial proceedings, Parras, September 1723–January 1724, Main Library, University of Arizona, Tucson, microfilm 318, reel 1723A, frames 72–81. For a brief biographical sketch of Viceroy Croix, see Herbert Ingram Priestley,
José de Gálvez: Visitor-General of New Spain, 1765–1771
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1916), 164 n. 70.

28. Pedro de Nava to Marquis of Branciforte, Chihuahua, November 14, 1797, AGN, Provincias Internas, vol. 208, exp. 13, fols. 482–528.

29. Report of Juan Antonio de Araujo, Hospicio de Pobres, January 17, 1798; second report of Juan Antonio de Araujo, January 22, 1798; report of Manuel de Villerias, Mexico City, February 1, 1798; and third report of Juan Antonio de Araujo, February 13,
1798, all in AGN, Provincias Internas, vol. 208, exp. 13, fols. 482–528. For the larger context of the illness, see the excellent book by Elizabeth Fenn,
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82
.

30. Report of Manuel de Villerias, Mexico City, February 1, 1798. On the Acordada, see Teresa Lozano Armendares, “Recinto de maldades y lamentos: La cárcel de la Acordada,”
Estudios de Historia Novohispana
13 (1993), 149–157.

31. For how yellow fever and malaria have shaped the history of tropical and subtropical America, see J. R. McNeill,
Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

32. The aggregate demographic information is still somewhat fragmentary, so it is hard to determine with precision the incidence of epidemics in these drives. Santiago’s
Jar of Severed Hands
includes an appendix listing each collera, including the number of men, women, children; individuals who managed to escape, were left behind, or were “deposited” with Christian families along the way; and, most important for our purposes, those who died or were killed before reaching their final destination. Santiago,
The Jar of Severed Hands,
203. Conrad’s “Captive Fates” has a more extensive appendix with aggregate demographic information that includes not only Apaches but other Indians of northern Mexico. It does not, however, distinguish between prisoners who escaped, who were deposited, or who died along the way. In aggregate numbers, out of 3,317 who started out, only 1,627—less than half—reached their final destination. Conrad, “Captive Fates,” 256–258. For a discussion of the spread of epidemic disease, see Ann F. Ramenofsky, “The Problem of Introduced Infectious Diseases in New Mexico, A.D. 1540–1680,”
Journal of Anthropological Research
52:2 (Summer 1996), 161–184.

33. Donald B. Cooper,
Epidemic Disease in Mexico City, 1761–1813: An Administrative, Social, and Medical Study
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), 56–69; Fenn,
Pox Americana,
138–166. For the colleras of 1778, see Conrad, “Captive Fates,” 256.

34. Conrad, “Captive Fates,” 256.

9. CONTRACTIONS AND EXPANSIONS

1. Gallay,
The Indian Slave Trade;
Rushforth,
Bonds of Alliance;
Snyder,
Slavery in Indian Country;
Krauthamer,
Black Slaves, Indian Masters.

2. In 1813 the rebel priest José María Morelos presented a plan to the Constituent Congress known as the Sentiments of the Nation. It called for “the abolition of slavery forever” and the elimination of “all distinctions of caste so we shall all be equal, and only vice or virtue will distinguish one from another.” By “slavery” Morelos really meant African slavery. Although African slaves constituted a small percentage of Mexico’s overall workforce in 1813, they were highly concentrated in southern Mexico, where Morelos was from. But he also had in mind other forms of labor coercion that affected Indians throughout the emerging nation. Three weeks after the publication of the Sentiments of the Nation, Morelos, as the main insurgent leader, specifically instructed officials “not to enslave the Indians from the communities through personal services.” Article 15 of the Sentiments of the Nation, Chilpancingo, September 14, 1813, and
orders by Morelos reaffirming the abolition of slavery, Chilpancingo, October 5, 1813, both in Carlos Herrejón, ed.,
Morelos Antología Documental
(Mexico City: SEP, 1985), 134 and 136, respectively. Nonwhites also took part in various independence movements in South America and often did so in the hope of obtaining freedom. See Peter Blanchard,
Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008).

3. For this expansion, see especially DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
and Babcock, “Turning Apaches into Spaniards.” See also specific citations in the following notes.

4. Miguel Ramos Arizpe to Lucas Alamán, Puebla, August 1, 1830, Herbert E. Bolton Papers (hereafter cited as BP), carton 40, no. 673, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. This presidial line included Laredo, Rio Grande, Aguaverde, and the old presidio of Monclova. The Spanish government closed down the strategic presidio of Aguaverde and relocated it in Villa de Rosas farther south. It also relocated the old presidio of Monclova—which had once stood close to the Rio Grande—back to the town of Monclova. To retain a presence on the Rio Grande, the government tried to set up a new presidio called Palafox in 1810–1811 but could not maintain it.

5. Given what we know about specific Indian raids, these numbers seem exaggerated and almost certainly are. According to estimates by knowledgeable witnesses such as José Francisco Ruiz and Jean Francois Berlandier, the Comanches held about 500 to 600 captives in the 1820s. Brian DeLay counted around 270 captives successfully taken by the Comanches in the period between 1831 and 1848. It is hard to imagine that the Comanches and other Indians of the frontier would have been able to capture nine times as many people in just a handful of years and in less territory. For the estimates by Ruiz and Berlandier, see Rivaya-Martínez, “A Different Look at Native American Depopulation,” 397–398 and n. 29. For the number of captives taken by Comanches between 1831 and 1848, see DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
320–340. In personal communications, Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez and Brian DeLay assessed the validity of Ramos Arizpe’s estimates of the number of Mexican captives, for which I am grateful. In the 1820s, Ramos Arizpe was arguably the most powerful politician in Mexico, and he decided to expend some of his political capital by prodding the national government to restore the abandoned presidios. In 1830 he suggested moving the presidio of Lampazos, located in the middle of the state of Nuevo León, to the Rio Grande and proposed that the presidio of Monclova be relocated to the ruined presidio of Aguaverde. He even offered to donate the land for it. But not even Ramos Arizpe’s clout could overcome the fact that Mexico’s treasury was depleted. “What will the sad fate of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas be,” the Coahuilan politician asked, “states that have their principal population centers and wealth not far from the banks of the Rio Grande, which will suffer an even more destructive invasion than the previous one [of 1816–1821], this time encouraged and directed by more exalted [Anglo-American] leaders and by even greater and more deliberate interests?” José María Díaz de Noriega, Monclova, June 23, 1834; Ramos Arizpe to Alamán, Puebla, August 1, 1830; and Ramos Arizpe’s petition to the state government of Coahuila and Texas, Saltillo, November 12, 1828, all in BP, carton 40, no. 673.

6. Some of the structural factors that impelled Comanches and Apaches to send raiding parties into Mexico are discussed in Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Politics of Grass:
European Expansion, Ecological Change, and Indigenous Power in the Southwest Borderlands,”
William and Mary Quarterly
67:2 (April 2010), 173–208; and Babcock, “Turning Apaches into Spaniards,” especially chap. 5. These Indian incursions occurred in discrete bursts and in coordinated fashion. The raids of 1816–1821, which had resulted in so many captives and deaths, ceased immediately after Mexico’s independence in the autumn of 1821. At first Apache and Comanche leaders took time to meet with Mexico’s new leaders. Some of them, such as Chiefs Cuelgas de Castro and Yolcna Pocarropa (Scant Clothes) of the Lipan Apaches and Guonique of the Comanches, even journeyed to Mexico City to negotiate treaties. The fact that nearly all incursions stopped so suddenly implies coordination and shows that some Indian leaders exercised control over a multiplicity of bands. See DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
17–20, 61–62, 115–118, 317–340; Andrés Reséndez,
Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 57–58; and Ramos Arizpe to Alamán, Puebla, August 1, 1830. See also Kavanagh,
The Comanches,
196, 199–205; and the diary of governor of New Mexico José Antonio Chávez, Santa Fe, August 2, 1829, Mexican Archives of New Mexico (hereafter cited as MANM), reel 9, frames 871–877.

7. Chief Esakeep’s remark about his sons is from Rister,
Border Captives,
32. For further context on the Comanches and horses, see DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
86–113; Rivaya-Martínez, “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians,” chap. 2; and Rivaya-Martínez, “A Different Look at Native American Depopulation,” 391–398. See also Thomas W. Kavanagh, ed.,
Comanche Ethnography: Field Notes of E. Adamson Hoebel, Waldo R. Wedel, Gustav G. Carlson, and Robert H. Lowie
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 152.

8. DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
90–95.

9. The trades were reported by James S. Calhoun, the U.S. Indian agent in the territory of New Mexico, based on what the captives themselves told him. Calhoun specifically said that he gave “full credit” to such statements and that “the Mexicans from whom I received these captives will claim to have paid more.” In other words, the prices quoted here are probably quite realistic. Indian Agent in New Mexico James S. Calhoun to Orlando Brown, Esq., Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., Santa Fe, March 31, 1850, in U.S. Congress, House Documents, 31st Cong., 2nd sess., Executive Document no. 1, 136.

10. Niyah, July 6, 1933, and Post Oak Jim, July 12, 1933, in Kavanagh,
Comanche Ethnography,
59, 63, 137–138.

11. The quote is from Post Oak Jim, July 12, 1933, 153–155.

12. Ibid.

13. On the 1840–1841 raid, see Isidro Vizcaya Canales,
La invasion de los indios bárbaros al noreste de México en los años de 1840 y 1841
(Monterrey: Publicaciones del Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, 1968), 51–52, 181–185; and DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
114–118. On the 1846 raid, see George F. Ruxton,
Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains
(Glorieta, TX: Rio Grande Press, 1973), especially chap. 14. See also Rister,
Border Captives,
43–45.

14. Testimony of Abelino Fuentes, Monclova, Coahuila, September 27, 1873, in Velasco Ávila,
En manos de los bárbaros,
50–51.

15. I want to thank Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez for elucidating the term “Sarit
u
hka,” which was used by the Comanches to refer to other Plains nomads and which literally means “dog eater.” Rivaya-Martínez, personal communication. See also testimonies of Juan Vela Benavides, Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas, August 2, 1873, and José Ángel Villarreal, Salinas Victoria, Nuevo León, June 6, 1873, both in Velasco Ávila,
En manos de los bárbaros,
68–69 and 91–92, respectively. The level of involvement of each band could even depend on the temperament of its leader. Mexican captive Benito Martínez, for example, observed that the leader of the band that held him was very keen on launching campaigns against Mexico. See testimonies of Benito Martínez, Lampazos, Nuevo León, July 5, 1873, and Fernando González, Lampazos, Nuevo León, July 7, 1873, both in Velasco Ávila,
En manos de los bárbaros,
76–77 and 35–36, respectively. For the Kiowas, see James Mooney,
Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), 236–237. One of Mooney’s Kiowa interviewees was a man with a goatee and an incredible life story named José Andrés Martínez, better known to his fellow band members as Än’Dali (Andele). See J. J. Methvin, ed.,
Andele, the Mexican-Kiowa Captive: A Story of Real Life Among the Indians
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), passim. The 1902 census of Comanche families is discussed in Rivaya-Martínez, “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians,” 134–135.