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Chapter 7. The Forced Transfer of Indians in Nueva Vizcaya and Sinaloa: A Hispanic Method of Colonization
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chapter 7 The Forced Transfer of Indians in Nueva Vizcaya and Sinaloa: A Hispanic Method of Colonization Chantal Cramaussel In the last two decades a great deal of research has been done in Mexico on the history of northern New Spain.1 This flourishing period opened different perspectives from the ones generated by scholars of American borderlands studies, where missions, presidios, and mines as separate institutions dominated the historiography. New books published in Mexico gave birth to a more integral research. Northern New Spain became less exceptional and less ‘‘peripheral’’ than it appeared in former works. Imperial institutions and social Spanish life did not differ much from those farther south. Indians took a broader importance in colonial enclaves, which are no longer considered as mainly settled by Europeans and mixed-blood persons . The labor systems and the general interaction between conquerors and Indians must be considered in this perspective. In the north of New Spain, there was no ‘‘frontier’’ similar to that conceptualized in the nineteenth-century American West. Colonial borderlands were made out of scattered settlements in a huge territory mainly controlled by unsubmitted Indians. In the case of the mining centers, the maintenance and growth of the Spanish enclaves depended on Indian labor and Indian crops. Both societies negotiated their mutual relations but the dependence of Spaniards on Indian resources generated continuous violence that increased during droughts and epidemics. Spaniards took advantage of these disasters and expanded as local societies became weaker.2 The Forced Transfer 185 presence of enough peaceful Indians was surely more important than silver as many permanent agricultural settlements like Parras, Saltillo, Valle de San Bartolomé, or Durango in Nueva Vizcaya show. The supply of the Indian labor force made the difference but it was not a free labor system as is usually adduced.3 The colonization of Nueva Vizcaya (nowadays north-central Mexico, containing the states of Chihuahua, Durango, and southwestern Coahuila) and northwestern New Spain (which included the provinces of Sinaloa, Sonora, and California)4 began in the sixteenth century and reached its peak with the discovery of the mines in Chihuahua two centuries later. The history of this region is similar to the colonial past of New Mexico, which goes back to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Both Spanish jurisdictions were made up of Spanish enclaves located in the middle of unconquered territories. Land was plentiful but the Spaniards lacked Indian workers and could not completely utilize the large estates that they officially owned. The numerous and industrious Natives generated the wealth of New Mexico but it took a long time until Indian or mixed-blood servants raised in the colonial society were numerous enough to guarantee food and labor supplies for the Spanish haciendas. In any case, this process was quicker in New Mexico where no mining center had been discovered. In Nueva Vizcaya, on the contrary, the density of the Indian population was lower; violence to obtain food and workers from missions and military raids on Indian villages became frequent during mining booms. Spaniards used all legal means in order to get food and labor. In the eighteenth century the stress was put on already-Christianized mission Indians, although most of them lived far away from the haciendas where they were required. The ravages caused by expeditions to round up Indian workers were so harsh that entire villages were soon abandoned. Many scholars have compared Spanish colonization in northern New Spain—the borderlands of the northern hemisphere—with the European invasion of central Argentina, where most of the Indians were not sedentary . But in fact the process was completely different in Buenos Aires and the Pampas, because Spanish conquerors were even fewer, they settled only on the coast, and no silver strike occurred. Local Indian communities had genuine chieftains, a social feature that did not exist even among the agricultural societies of northwest New Spain, and they were divided in numerous and politically independent villages. No treaty was signed in [3.230.128.106] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 12:26 GMT) 186 Chantal Cramaussel northern New Spain in the eighteenth century between Spaniards and Indians ; when military fights there were finished, Spanish authorities forced every village to surrender, one by one. After the 1680 rebellion in New Mexico no further uprising was able to threaten Spanish colonization. On the northern borderlands, peace was always ephemeral and even at the end of the eighteenth century, outside the establecimientos de paz,5 violence could arise at any time...