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Document 32: Melchior Pérez’s Petition for Preferment, 1551
- University of New Mexico Press
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533 introduction e ven generations after the end of the coronado entrada, descendants of the expeditionaries were still soliciting rewards from the king on the basis of their relatives’ service in tierra nueva from 1539 to 1542. 1 one such instance resulted in the document presented here. nearly 130 years after the expedition, Diego flores de la torre, a distant relative of expeditionary melchior pérez, submitted a petition for royal preferment. 2 As evidence of his family’s méritos (worthiness), to support that petition he ordered copied into the file pérez’s own 1551 proof of service. 3 the 1551 document, in turn, had been prepared in the hope of securing an encomienda or corregimiento for pérez in recognition of his suffering and financial loss as a result of the coronado expedition. melchior pérez was the son of vázquez de coronado’s predecessor in the governorship of nueva Galicia, licenciado Diego pérez de la torre. 4 He had gone to nueva Galicia with don Luis de castilla in 1536, ahead of his father, in a failed attempt to rescind encomiendas that had been distributed by nuño de Guzmán. 5 pérez was still in nueva Galicia when vázquez de coronado arrived in December 1538 to take the residencia of Diego pérez de la torre and found that he had died. 6 Because melchior pérez could have been held financially responsible for his father’s misdeeds in office, he must have been relieved when vázquez de coronado decided not to lodge any charges. 7 within a short time after the arrival of the new governor ’s entourage, melchior befriended a member of vázquez de coronado’s household, a man named pedro de Ledesma. the two were to remain friends and close associates for the rest of their lives and even became relatives when, sometime around 1547, Ledesma married pérez’s daughter catalina mejía. 8 when the expedition to tierra nueva mustered at compostela in february 1540, the two were listed among the unassigned horsemen. Already their friendship was such that only seven names intervene between theirs on the roster. 9 Later they both served in the company of captain Juan de Zaldívar. 10 After the expedition the two frequently testified in legal cases, one immediately following the other. 11 furthermore, Ledesma was one of those called by pérez to testify in support of his 1551 petition. pérez was probably one of the wealthier members of the coronado expedition. in preparation for its departure, he spent some 4,000 pesos, according to his son-in-law. 12 As he himself put it, “i took on the expedition more than a thousand head of livestock (pigs, sheep, and rams).” 13 Assuredly, this was done with the intention of turning a profit by selling meat animals to other expeditionaries either during the course of the entrada or once a permanent settlement had been established. But as he laments, they were all “lost and expended . . . without any return.” 14 pérez also took two black slaves on the expedition; they were evidently also available for sale. As he phrases it in the 1551 interrogatorio, he took “two ladino Blacks (for one of whom four hundred gold Document 32 Melchior Pérez’s Petition for Preferment, 1551 university of california, Berkeley, Bancroft Library, m-m 1714 534 DocuMent 32 pesos were offered to me).” But in the course of the entrada the two fled, making pérez’s purchase price unrecoverable and future profit unattainable. 15 this loss of potential profit forms the centerpiece of pérez’s 1551 claim, the chief reason the king should award him an encomienda or corregimiento. 16 A further reason adduced by pérez is that the corregimiento he already has pays very poorly. that is especially true, as his de parte witnesses testify, because prices have risen dramatically in the seven years since the salaries of corregidores were last adjusted. 17 in the royal office of corregidor pérez received a annual salary as administrator and tribute collector for the king within an indigenous community that has not been identified. pérez fails to mention in the 1551 petition that from the 1530s until recently he has been encomendero of cuyupuztlan, 10 miles west of Guadalajara. About 1547 he transferred the encomienda as dowry to his daughter catalina at the time of her marriage to pedro de Ledesma. 18 modern...