Finding Gold, Forming Slavery: The Creation of a Classic Slave Society, Popayan, 1600-1700

Inscribed on the outside walls of Quito's Cathedral is a list of the men who invaded, occupied, and ultimately renamed the Inka city of Quito for Saint Francis on August 28, 1534. Listed among these individuals are two blacks—Juan (de color negro), and Anton (negro).² Juan and Anton represented the hundreds (and perhaps thousands by this date) of blacks, explorers, conquistadors, slaves, and squires who had come to the Americas during the age of conquest (1492-1550).³ Although the biographical records for Juan and Anton are sketchy, sources indicate that they were freemen. Like many of their black counterparts throughout the Americas, Juan and Anton must have earned the prestige of founding a colonial city the hard way—shedding blood, sweat and tears in early conquest battles. Perhaps they fought at Cajamarca, or in that infamous battle against the Inka general Rumiñavi, which occurred just south of the city of Quito in Puruhá near Mount Chimborazo.⁴ In either case, Juan and Anton must have contributed significantly to the conquest effort of the north highlands because their Spanish counterparts bestowed upon them the title of fundador of the city of Quito.⁵ Yet, even as Spaniards envisioned a society where black men could gain notoriety and even serve as founders of colonial cities, they were also laying the foundation for what historian David Eltis calls the "slave-free paradox" (the simultaneous rise of modern notions of freedom and New World slavery) in early colonial Spanish America.⁶

Relying upon a body of literature that has highlighted the period between 1550 and 1640 followed by an emphasis upon the early-to-mid-nineteenth century, historian David Eltis has argued that the slave-free paradigm experienced a false start in mainland Spanish America, and that African slavery was on the wane by the late seventeenth century. Yet, the case of the Kingdom, or Audiencia of Quito suggests otherwise (see Map 1).⁷ Indeed, Quito was a quintessential Spanish American slave society. There, elites made foundational movements towards the "slave-free paradox" during the early years of the seventeenth century. As the century ended, Quito's elite turned evermore aggressively towards African slavery, not away from the institution.⁸ No Quito sub-district illustrates this more than the Gobernación of Popayán.

Destined to remain a colonial outpost, isolated at Quito's northern frontier, gold and the enslaved Africans who mined it transformed the Gobernación of Popayán into a slave society par excellance. While this process

spanned much of the seventeenth century, early decisions by elites to employ ethnic Africans in the hunt for gold positioned slavery as the bedrock of Popayán's economy. Not only did slavery and slave ownership signal status and wealth in Payanese society, slave labor quickly became the chief method for acquiring and maintaining wealth and elite status in early colonial Popayán. Although Popayán held marginal importance to the greater Quiteño economy for most of the sixteenth century, gold production surged during the last quarter of the century peaking in the early years of the seventeenth century. These events led to sizeable tax profits for the highland-based audiencia, increasing Popayán's importance in the kingdom's socioeconomic milieu. The increase in gold outputs helped to forge strong commercial links between mine owners based in the Gobernación of Popayán and merchants in the city of Quito, even as the highland economy turned quickly to producing woolen textiles for the mining camps of Peru.⁹ By the end of the century, Popayán would be both the kingdom's largest producer of gold and the principal slave-trading center for the north Andes.

Detailing colonial elites...