Kachina and the Cross (21 page)

Read Kachina and the Cross Online

Authors: Carroll L Riley

Tags: #History, #Native American, #United States, #State & Local, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #Social Science, #Anthropology, #General, #Ethnic Studies, #Native American Studies, #test

BOOK: Kachina and the Cross
10.24Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Page 100
shop for weaving cloth, and he supposedly forced both Christianized Pueblo Indians and captive Apaches and Utes to work as slaves. Rosas was also accused of raiding the Apaches for slaves but then not providing the frontier pueblos with protection against counter-raids. This was probably not the case; whatever his faults, Rosas seems to have been an able military leader. But the main Franciscan objection to Rosas was probably that he ignored their traditional immunities and flouted their authority, especially among the Pueblo Indians.
The Rosas period was one of tumult. The priests at Taos and Jemez were killed by the Indians, and the three Tewa missions of Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, and Nambé were without missionaries for a whole year from the spring of 1640 to the spring of 1641. The Franciscans accused the governor of sending soldiers to expel the missionaries and steal the mission herds. Rosas and Vidania retorted that the missionaries had deserted their posts, and the soldiers simply went to rescue whatever equipment and livestock remained. Since San Ildefonso was being fortified by the natives, Rosas established a short-lived presidio there. To add to the confusion, what seems to have been a smallpox epidemic spread during 1640, killing an estimated three thousand Pueblo Indians. Apache raids were said to have destroyed some twenty thousand fanegas (fifty thousand bushels) of maize. According to the missionaries, Pueblo Indians in desperation were increasingly turning to their old religion.
Disease had already become a serious problem in the Pueblo world. In a 1638 letter to King Philip IV from Juan de Prada, the Franciscan commissary-general in New Spain, the churchman estimated the Pueblo population at forty thousand and mentioned that smallpox had ravaged the area, reducing numbers of Pueblo Indians by about a third. If my own estimate of Pueblo population in Oñate's time is correct, this is too high a percentage of loss, but even so, the reduction was drastic.
According to the commissary-general, the Pueblo area extended from Senecú to Taos, and from Pecos to the Hopi towns. Prada also tallied the Spanish lay population at two hundred, with an additional fifty Franciscans. He indicated that the population lived in Santa Fe, which had approximately fifty houses, though from the account of ex-governor Francisco Martínez de Baeza, writing the following year, it would seem that there were two hundred able armed fighting men (see chapter 9 for a more detailed discussion of the non-Pueblo population).
By 1640 the church-state battle in New Mexico deepened, with excommunications flying in every direction and at least one of the pro-Rosas faction murdered. By the beginning of 1641 the settlers began more and more to swing to the Franciscan side of the quarrel, and the viceroy was also becoming greatly concerned. Juan de Salas had been reappointed as custodian in 1639. He was given
Page 101
Taos Pueblo, 1880 (courtesy of the Museum of New Mexico, neg. no. 16096)
the Inquisitionary authority in the spring of 1641, at the same time that Fray Hernando Covarrubias replaced him as custodian. A new governor, Juan Flores de Sierra y Valdés, arrived in April of that year to relieve Rosas of his office and, through a
residencia
, to investigate his activities as governor. Friar Vidania was arrested and sent to Mexico for trial with the fall 1641 mission supply train. He escaped, but apparently died within a year or so.
Rosas's residencia had barely begun when Governor Flores died. By this time, new elections had given the Santa Fe cabildo an anti-Rosas majority. With Flores's death, the cabildo became for a time the power center in the province. Rosas was imprisoned and in January 1642 was murdered by a settler named Nicolás Ortiz who accused the governor of a liaison with his wife, Maria de Bustillas, or Bustillo, a niece of Antonio Baca, alcalde of the Santa Fe cabildo. Although Maria readily confessed to a longstanding affair with Rosas, there seemed a real possibility that the whole story was a fabrication. Whatever the case, Ortiz was acquitted by the cabildo court on the grounds that his honor demanded Rosas's death. That was not the end of the story. Ortiz was later retried in Nueva Vizcaya and condemned to die, though, like many other condemned individuals on the wild frontier of Mexico, he escaped and disappeared
Page 102
from history. Meanwhile, Rosas's body had been denied burial in consecrated ground since he had died excommunicate.
Even though Rosas was largely discredited, the viceregal officers in Mexico could hardly overlook his murder at the behest of the Santa Fe cabildo. In 1642, a new governor, Alonso de Pacheco y Heredia, was sent to New Mexico. He had certain secret instructions to deal with the situation, and on July 21, 1643, he suddenly arrested and immediately executed eight of the ringleaders opposed to Rosas, including three members of the 1641 cabildo. No action was taken against the Franciscans, who conceded a minor point and gave the dead governor absolution so that he could be reburied in Santa Fe. The fate of Maria de Bustillas, who had also been arrested in New Mexico, is unknown, but she may have quietly returned to her natal family.
Although the missionaries had trouble with Pacheco, and the situation with governors in the latter half of the century was often (perhaps
usually
would be a better word) thorny, there was a general lowering of the tension in the period immediately following Rosas. New Mexico had gone to the brink, and none of the various parties wanted to risk disaster. The various custodians and vice-custodians for this periodTomás Manso, Tomás Alvarado, Laurence de Rivas, Antonio de Aranda, Francisco de Salazar, and Antonio de Ibargaraypushed on with the business of missionization. The several governors who followed PachecoFernando de Argüello Carvajál, Luis de Guzmán y Figueroa, Hernando de Ugarte y la Concha, Juan de Samaniego y Jaca, and Juan Manso de Contrerashad their differences with the Franciscans and with the settlers, but the next really violent episode of this continuing power struggle did not come until the brilliant but ill-starred Bernardo López de Mendizábal arrived on the scene. There were tragicomic scenes. Juan Manso, governor from 1656 to 1659, was the relatively young brother of Tomás Manso and somewhat of a ladies' man. He established a liaison with a local woman, Margarita Márquez, the wife of one of his captains. Margarita gave birth to one and probably two children sired by Manso. For one of them, Manso's friend, Fray Miguel Sacristán (stationed at the Santa Fe, Analco, district convento), was said to have performed a mock funeral, the child being quietly transported to Mexico to be raised as a part of Manso's family. The Inquisition eventually became interested in this affair, especially after the suicide of Sacristán in 1661. Their investigation eventually came to nothing, though it did highlight, as Scholes pointed out, the "ignorance, superstition, and moral laxity [that] characterized the life of the Hispanic community, and the governorsand even the clergy."
A consideration of the first half century in the new province of New Mexico would not be complete without discussing the role of Mexican Native
Page 103
Americans in Santa Fe. Operating from their base in central Mexico, the Spaniards quickly began to use friendly native populations to help strengthen and buffer their conquests along the northern frontier. Some of these Indians were Aztecs and Tarascans, but the majority seem to have been from the city state of Tlaxcala, that early and important ally of the Spaniards. Tlaxcalans were sent to a number of places in northern New Spain. By around A.D. 1600, there were colonies in present-day San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas, Durángo, Chihuahua, and Coahuila.
It is not clear just when central Mexican Indians were introduced into New Mexico, but I have suggested that they may actually have antedated the Spaniards at Santa Fe. It is not clear how many of them were actually Tlaxcalans, though it is often assumed that at least a portion were. Their church was San Miguelas far as we know, the earliest church in Santa Fewhich may also have been used for a time by the Spanish settlers. San Miguel still exists at more or less the same site, though of course it went through a number of rebuildings. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the central Mexicans were settled in a
barrio
, or district, just south of the Santa Fe River; a district named
Analco
, a Nahuatl word meaning "across the river." In the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, this Indian contingent remained loyal to the Spaniards, and Analco was attacked by the Pueblo military forces. It is not known just how many Mexican Indians were transplanted to New Mexico, but possibly there were several hundred. I have suggested elsewhere that they were counted with the fleeing Spanish settlers when the colony was evacuated in the latter part of 1680. Some of the central Mexican natives may have returned with the Spaniards, for there is a possible reference to them at Analco as late as 1728. Following that time, they fade from history.
Page 104
Chapter Eight
Missionization
Before turning to the details of the Franciscan missionization of New Mexico, perhaps some more general problems should be considered. What were the long-term effects of the new religion, and how did it compare with the native religion, especially that of the Pueblos? Historians looking at the events of the seventeenth century have generally assumed that Christianity, because of its perceived superiority over the native religions, would gradually swamp the aboriginal beliefs. Some students of Spanish southwestern history, even today, apparently do not realize that this conversion failed to occur.
Even in the high tide of missionization, during the seventeenth century, it is not entirely clear to what extent the Pueblos actually understood what they were being taught. As Ramón Gutiérrez has pointed out, the friars in one sense took over the role of rainmakers and magicians, and much of their success was due to charismatic domination over the Indians. Certainly, some of their messages became transmuted when transferred to the linguistic conceptual world of the Pueblos. The cross, for example, was reinterpreted as a prayer stick or a star symbol, and the calendric rhythms of Franciscan Christianity were assimilated to the solstice ceremonies of the Pueblos. The Franciscans in the seventeenth century wanted more; they planned to reorganize the sociopolitical and religious life of the Pueblo Indians to make them "true" converts. What they got was at the most an incomplete fusion of the two religious traditions, and, more often, a sullen hostility that led finally to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Although aimed at all Spaniards, this retaliation was clearly directed primarily against the missionaries.
What were the fruits of missionization? Among modern Pueblo Indians, the Hopi and Zuni are basically outside the sphere of Christianity. There are, indeed, modern missions to these groups, and individual Hopi and Zuni may profess either Catholic Christianity or one of the various Protestant sects; however, most
Page 105
people in the western pueblos are deeply involved in the "old religion," and it is central to any understanding of these two groups.
In the Rio Grande, where the Spanish presence was more pervasive, the various Pueblos are often considered "Christianized." The Pueblo Native Americans have long been eclectic in their ability to absorb new religious ideas, as evidenced by the widespread acceptance of the kachina cult in the fourteenth century. Many Christian elements have entered the native religion, and indeed, a vigorous folk Christianity is practiced side by side with that religion. However, the traditional religious ceremonies and beliefs are at heart autochthonous. They are carried on in dances and kiva ceremonials quite apart and separate from the Catholic mission churches and the parallel Protestant organizations. So, basically, the Pueblo religion in the east may be said to be the real core of Pueblo life, just as it is in the west.
Was Christianity in any way a "superior" religion to that of the Pueblos when it was introduced into the Province of New Mexico at the end of the sixteenth century? To some degree this is a pointless question, since religionany religionobtains its validity from internal acceptance and not from any external "proof." Nonetheless, it may be worthwhile to compare the worldviews and moral imperatives of these competing systems.
Not surprisingly, we know far more about the formal attributes of seventeenth-century Christianity than we do about seventeenth-century Pueblo religion. For the latter, it is usually necessary to extrapolate from nineteenth-and twentieth-century beliefs, something not easy to do.
As far as cosmology is concerned, the Franciscan missionaries in seventeenth-century New Mexico likely saw the earth and heavens largely in Ptolemaic terms. The ideas of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had not penetrated the wilds of New Mexico; in fact, the Church had declared the heliocentric model of the solar system heretical in 1616 and officially maintained that position for many years. Although the Jesuit order had shown an early interest in Galileo's telescopes and had introduced one into China in 1634, the Franciscans in New Mexico were not particularly interested in science. My own guess is that the sun, moon, planets, and stars represented to these unsophisticated friars some sort of mystical emanations. In all likelihood, they hardly thought about such things at all. The missionaries accepted the Gregorian calendar as a practical matter but likely had no clue as to the calculations that went into it.
At that, the Franciscans represented the literate elite of the time and place. Probably the great majority of seventeenth-century laypeople in New Mexico could neither read nor write (see also chapter 9). And there is no evidence, and no real likelihood, that even literate people had available the written texts

Other books

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
Velvet & steel by Sylvie F. Sommerfield
Painted Memories by Flowers, Loni
Undercover Alice by Shears, KT
Diamond in the Buff by Susan Dunlap
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi
Sacred by Dennis Lehane
Where They Found Her by McCreight, Kimberly