The Other Slavery (66 page)

16. George E. Hyde,
A Life of George Bent Written from His Letters
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 68–69.

17. The data are from Rivaya-Martínez, “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians,” 410. For the description of Matilda Lockhart by Mary Maverick, see Rena Maverick Green, ed.,
Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 38. For a broader consideration of captivity texts, see Richard Van Der Beets,
The Indian Captivity Narrative: An American Genre
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984).

18. Jesús María Guzmán, Villaldama, Nuevo León, June 20, 1873, in Velasco Ávila,
En manos de los bárbaros,
60–63. The witness provided additional deals that are of interest: “And he saw some going and others coming every month and understood that the campaigns were directed against Mexico because the brands on the horses that they stole were all Mexican and, most especially, because he saw the scalps that they brought which were all Mexican.” (Presumably he could tell by the type of hair.)

19. Josiah Gregg,
Diary and Letters of Josiah Gregg
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941), 57; Kenner,
The Comanchero Frontier,
94–95. On the abduction of Mrs. White and her daughter, see
The Official Correspondence of James S. Calhoun,
63–65.

20. Governor of New Mexico Manuel Armijo to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, Santa Fe, January 10, 1846, AGN, Gobernación [without section], 1845, caja 292, exp. 8, fols. 1–6.

21. On San Carlos, see Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez, “The Captivity of Macario Leal: A Tejano Among the Comanches, 1847–1854,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
117:4 (2014), 384–385.

22. The precise timing of the presidial decline in the early decades of the nineteenth century is a matter of debate. The response to this decline varied from group to group among the Apaches. It started as early as the 1790s and continued until the 1830s. See Babcock, “Turning Apaches into Spaniards,” 250–305.

23. On the Apache peace settlements, see Babcock, “Turning Apaches into Spaniards.” On Mahco, see Eve Ball,
Indeh: An Apache Odyssey
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 14–15; Edwin R. Sweeney,
Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 31; and Robert M. Utley,
Geronimo
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 6–7. The quotes are from Jason Betzinez,
I Fought with Geronimo
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1959), 14.

24. The data on expenditures and men at Janos are from Babcock, “Turning Apaches into Spaniards,” tables 4.2 and 5.1. The information about the decline of the civilian population of Janos is from Griffen,
Apaches at War and Peace,
120. For an in-depth, long-term look at the relationship between Janos and the Apaches, see Blyth,
Chiricahua and Janos,
passim. Geronimo himself gave the year of his birth as 1829 and the place as the Gila River in Arizona, but other evidence suggests the time and place indicated in the text. See Utley,
Geronimo,
6.

25. For an extremely detailed and illuminating biography of Mangas Coloradas, see Sweeney,
Mangas Coloradas
. On his appearance and Carmen, see ibid., 33, 90.

26. Frederick Turner, ed.,
Geronimo: His Own Story; The Autobiography of a Great Patriot Warrior
(New York: Penguin, 1996), 70–71; Utley,
Geronimo,
15. On the so-called novice complex, as young Apaches trained for raiding, see Morris Edward Opler,
An Apache Life-Way: The Economic, Social, and Religious Institutions of the Chiricahua Indians
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1941), 332–353; and Keith H. Basso, ed.,
Western Apache Raiding and Warfare: From the Notes of Grenville Goodwin
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), 288–298.

27. For an excellent analysis of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, see DeLay,
War of a Thousand Deserts,
xiii–xxi. On how the newly redrawn international border provided sanctuary for the Apache camps, see Betzinez,
I Fought with Geronimo,
19. On Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Miguel Narbona (named after the Mexican military leader Antonio Narbona, who captured Miguel), see Sweeney,
Mangas Coloradas,
especially chap. 9; and Edwin R. Sweeney,
Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 406–407. On Juh, see Dan L. Thrapp,
The Conquest of Apacheria
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975); and above all Dan L. Thrapp,
Juh: An Incredible Indian
(El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1992), passim. For telling descriptions of Juh, Geronimo, and some other leaders by fellow Apaches, see Ball,
Indeh,
passim. The use of captives as bargaining chips was widespread. By the start of 1850, for instance, Sonoran and Chihuahuan authorities together held at least thirty-three Chiricahuas. Among them were both the mother and mother-in-law of an important war leader of the Chokonen band named Demos, as well as some relatives of Arvizo and Galindo of the Nednhi band. All of these captives had relatives and friends eager to sue for peace and negotiate their release. From the Mexican perspective, it seemed like a good strategy to force the Chiricahuas back to the
negotiating table. However, the practice of using prisoners as bargaining chips also gave the Apaches an incentive to acquire prisoners of their own in order to gain leverage in such negotiations. The Apaches captured Mexican women and children to incorporate them into their bands but also to exchange them for their relatives when the time came to broker a deal. On the Chiricahua prisoners in 1850, see Sweeney,
Mangas Coloradas,
188–204. On the long-standing practice of exchanging prisoners, see Blyth,
Chiricahua and Janos,
especially chaps. 4 and 5.

28. The most detailed reconstruction of these raids can be found in Sweeney,
Mangas Coloradas,
209–219, 235, 502 n. 50. See also Sweeney,
Cochise,
83–87. Geronimo’s own account is demonstrably inaccurate and needs to be used with caution. Even after the Pozo Hediondo episode, Mangas Coloradas and his warriors were not done. Aware that Sonora lay momentarily unprotected, the war party headed back home by way of the presidio of Bacoachi, striking it on the morning of January 21, 1851. The attackers easily overwhelmed the undermanned garrison and killed six residents (one of whom was the alcalde). They also took five prisoners, intending to use them as bargaining chips to open peace negotiations with Mexican authorities. One of the five captives was an eight- or nine-year-old boy named Jesús Arvizu (probably Alviso), who remained in Mangas Coloradas’s extended family for some time before he was sold to the Navajos. While with the Navajos, he was in the family of a chief named Kla. Apparently Jesús became quite fluent in Navajo and acted as an interpreter until late in life. See Frank McNitt,
Navajo Wars: Military Campaigns, Slave Raids, and Reprisals
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 406–408. Another one of the captives was a thirteen-year-old boy named Saverro Heradia (probably Severo Heredia), spotted six months after his capture by members of the U.S. Boundary Commission, who on occasion received visits from Apache bands and that day were visited by Mangas Coloradas’s group. The Boundary Commission took Saverro/Severo, along with another Mexican captive, and refused to return them, proclaiming that they were bound by the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. See John Russell Bartlett,
Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, 1850–1853,
2 vols. (Chicago: Rio Grande Press, 1965), 1:310–312.

29. For an insightful discussion of this episode, see Sweeney, “‘I Had Lost All’: Geronimo and the Carrasco Massacre of 1851,”
Journal of Arizona History
27:1 (Spring 1986), 35–52. The principal works on Janos include Blyth,
Chiricahua and Janos;
Babcock, “Turning Apaches into Spaniards”; William B. Griffen, “The Chiricahua Apache Population Resident at the Janos Presidio, 1792 to 1858,”
Journal of the Southwest
33:2 (Summer 1991), 151–199; William B. Griffen, “The Compás: A Chiricahua Apache Family of the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries,”
American Indian Quarterly
7:2 (Spring 1983), 21–49; and Moorhead,
The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands,
259–261. See also Sweeney,
Mangas Coloradas,
218–219; and Turner,
Geronimo: His Own Story,
75–78.

30. Turner,
Geronimo: His Own Story,
90–91, 102.

31. Petition of Indian Juan Vázquez, Turicato, Michoacán, August 31, 1587, AGN, Instituciones Coloniales, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 2094, exp. 13. For clues about the spread
of debt peonage, see the classic works of François Chevalier,
Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); and Taylor,
Landlord and Peasant
. For a regional discussion, see Cuello, “The Persistence of Indian Slavery,” 683–700. The New Laws abolished Indian slavery in 1542. The Spanish crown abolished encomiendas in northern Mexico in 1673 and repartimientos after 1777. For a discussion of this last date, see Cramaussel, “Encomiendas, repartimientos y conquista en Nueva Vizcaya,” 73–89. For brief introductions to the topic of debt peonage, see Moisés González Navarro, “El trabajo forzoso en México, 1821–1917,”
Historia Mexicana
27 (1977–1978), 588–615; and Alan Knight, “Mexican Peonage: What Was It and Why Was It?,”
Journal of Latin American Studies
18:1 (May 1986), 41–74. Debtor-lender relationships are complex. For instance, in early Mexico the mere existence of a worker’s debt in an employer’s account book did not necessarily imply a coercive relationship. Sometimes such debts reflected exactly the opposite: the worker’s ability to extract credit from his employer. Far from being subservient or coerced, such workers used their bargaining power to get this concession, which gave them immediate access to a variety of goods. Serious scholars trying to form an accurate idea of conditions in a given time and place are forced to wade through the minutiae of hundreds or even thousands of individual cases generally running the gamut from benevolent patron-client relationships to abject bondage. We are far from having such extensive research for any region of Mexico in the nineteenth century. At present we must rely on studies of labor conditions at individual haciendas, textile mills, or other businesses and extrapolate to an entire industry, state, or region. Needless to say, this approach is risky and potentially quite misleading. And yet it is vital to chart the spread of debt peonage and understand its dynamics across time and space.

32. For debt peonage in Yucatán, see Moisés González Navarro,
Raza y tierra: La guerra de castas y el henequén
(Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1970), 58. For Oaxaca, see González Navarro, “El trabajo forzoso en México,” 590. For Chiapas, see Mercedes Olivera Bustamante and María Dolores Palomo Infante, eds.,
Chiapas: De la Independencia a la Revolución
(Mexico City: CIESAS, 2005), 78–79. The state of Tabasco exported precious woods such as mahogany and desperately needed workers in the logging camps. Thus the 1825 state constitution refused to grant citizenship rights to those who had “no fixed address, employment, trade, or visible means to support themselves,” which applied to many of those on logging crews. The constitution is available online at
http://biblio.juridicas.unam.mx/libros/6/2870/10.pdf
. For Coahuila, see Charles H. Harris III,
A Mexican Family Empire: The Latifundio of the Sánchez Navarro Family, 1765–1867
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975), passim. The state constitution of Sonora specifically stated that individuals classified as servants did not enjoy full citizenship rights. Officials routinely tracked down runaway servants and returned them to their masters, while adding the costs of capture to their accounts. See Miguel Tinker Salas,
In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border During the Porfiriato
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), chap. 2. For Chihuahua, see law number seven in
Nueva colección de leyes del estado de Chihuahua
(Chihuahua City: Imprenta de Horcasitas, 1880),
528–535. It goes without saying that conditions varied from place to place. Historian Alan Knight has argued for the existence of at least two distinct forms of debt peonage in Mexico: one that was not coercive and was based entirely on market incentives, in which workers were free to come and go (as documented in parts of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí), and another that relied on corporal punishment, the restriction of workers’ movements, and the assiduous pursuit of runaway workers (which spread throughout southern and northern Mexico). Knight, “Mexican Peonage,” 45. For Mexico’s far north, which became the American Southwest, see William S. Kiser, “Debt Peonage and Judicial Empowerment in Territorial New Mexico” (paper presented at the Western History Association Conference, Tucson, AZ, October 2013); and William S. Kiser, “A ‘Charming Name for a Species of Slavery’: Political Debate on Debt Peonage in the Southwest, 1840s–1860s,”
Western Historical Quarterly
45:2 (Summer 2014), 169–189. For Texas, see James David Nichols, “The Line of Liberty: Runaway Slaves and Fugitive Peons in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands,”
Western Historical Quarterly
44 (Winter 2013), 413–433.

33. John Kenneth Turner,
Barbarous Mexico
(Chicago, C. H. Kerr, 1911), 5–6. Alan Knight discusses other sources that corroborate Turner’s account of labor conditions in Yucatán. Knight, “Mexican Peonage,” 52–53. For the most recent and enlightening examination of this journey, see Claudio Lomnitz,
The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magón
(New York: Zone, 2014), 146–171.