The Tepehuan Revolt of 1616: Militarism, Evangelism, and Colonialism in Seventeenth-Century Nueva Vizcaya (review)

Charlotte Gradie's study of the 1616 Tepehuan Revolt is, to varying degrees, an examination of the revolt itself, an investigation of the maturation of the Jesuit "project" in Spanish North America, and an analysis of the development of Spanish frontier policy more generally. Gradie proposes moving beyond the standard explanations for the revolt--as the work of the Devil, in the Jesuits' estimation, or attributable to the "treacherous character of the Tepehuanes," as others would have it--to a "cultural interpretation" that considers the Tepehuan perspective, too often, she argues, left out of the analysis entirely.

Gradie begins with an examination of the prehistoric Tepehuan, and of early Tepehuan/Spanish contact in the sixteenth century. She looks as well at the initial Jesuit missionary endeavor in La Florida, analyzing the impact of that failure on the Jesuit project later developed for New Spain and northern Mexico. She establishes the historical context from which the three actors emerge: the Tepehuanes shaped by centuries of contact with intruders, most recently the Spaniards; the Jesuits smarting from their failures in La Florida and refocusing their mission efforts to emphasize language learning, gathering the indigenous people into villages, and maintaining good relations with Spanish authorities; and the Spanish authorities themselves, moving away from the unsuccessful policy of guerra a fuego y a sangre toward a "peace-by-purchase" approach.

In Gradie's telling, the story of the Tepehuan Revolt is a story of Jesuits misreading Tepehuanes. The Jesuits learned much from their hapless ventures in La Florida, not least of which was to deal directly with the natives rather than through intermediaries, and to do so in the native language. But for all their much-touted linguistic ability, which ostensibly allowed them to understand Tepehuan society at its core and to use that understanding to effect "true" conversions, the Jesuits seem to have completely misunderstood the Tepehuanes. Their insistence that the Tepehuanes "live in peace with their neighbors" marginalized Tepehuan warriors. Missing the significance of warrior culture to the Tepehuanes, Jesuits missed the aspect of Tepehuan culture that most threatened their missionary efforts.

The revolt, the warriors' response to marginalization, represented the second attempt to revitalize Tepehuan culture. The first effort, the Jesuits' initial efforts to reorganize Tepehuan society within missions, had not improved their lot; that failed revitalization forced Tepehuanes themselves to initiate a "nativisitic revitalization" which proposed removing all vestiges of Spanish life and customs (and, in the process, all Spaniards) and restoring Tepehuan culture, specifically the warrior cult. The defeat of the Tepehuanes' nativistic revitalization marked the end of peace-by-purchase pacification; missionaries continued to play a role, but their presence on the frontier was now buttressed by Spanish military forces in the "mission-presidio" complex.

Intriguing though it is, Gradie's conceptualization of the revolt as a nativistic revitalization movement seems forced, imposed from without rather than examined from within the Tepehuan world. Indeed, one of the book's shortcomings is its inability to flesh out the Tepehuan perspective. Source limitations are a factor, of course; the Tepehuanes left no written record, and Gradie is reduced to seeing their world through the eyes of the Jesuits. But Susan Deeds's writings on Jesuits in Nueva Vizcaya and on seventeenth-century indigenous revolts, only some of which Gradie cites, are proof that Jesuit materials can provide a more richly textured picture of the mission experience than Gradie offers here.

The book further disappoints in its failure to clearly locate the area under study. The geographic markers offered on page 13 are nowhere to be found on the frontispiece map, which purports to represent Tepehuan country ca. 1616. Gradie also ranges well beyond what the geographer Peter Gerhard considers Tepehuan country, into regions peopled by Laguneros, Zacatecos...