Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (review)

As the colonial period drew to its ragged close, independent Indians (as opposed to incorporated Indians) still held sway over more than half the land mass claimed by Spain in the western hemisphere, from the tip of South America to the plains of Texas. Spaniards, who shared no uniform idea about how they should treat such unsubjected peoples, called them bárbaros (barbarians), salvajes (savages), bravos (wild men), or gentiles (heathens). The vast peripheral homelands of these freeborn natives, Weber suggests, "had more in common with one another than with the colonial core regions with which one usually associates them" (p. 12), hence, the Comanchería more with the Gran Chaco than with the Valley of Mexico. Yet this masterful survey of Spanish dealings all over the map with independent Indians points to fewer commonalities than variables.

Centered on the period from 1759 (accession of Carlos III) to the 1810s—but amply grounded in the Habsburg era before and concluded in the genocidal republican era after—Bárbaros analyzes the Spanish government's vacillating policy toward its subjects and independent Indians as they confronted each other in so many different ways. More often than not, pragmatism trumped principle. Since practically every self-interested Spanish administrator, captain, and Indian leader appeared to defy conventional categories at one time or another, Weber's greatest challenge and his greatest success is in supplying new ones.

Late in the colonial period, the ever more menacing Comanches and Apaches of the greater Southwest, Weber informs us, "had undergone transformations that resembled those of Araucanians, Pampas, and Guaycuruans" (p. 71). Observing the push and pull of forces operating in such diverse theaters, readers gain an appreciation for the many choices presented to los salvajes by their "enlightened" Spaniards. We begin to recognize the circumstances and attitudes that alternately dictated offensive or defensive war, theft or trade, alliances, treaties, gift giving, captive exchange, religious conversion, sex, adoption, even extermination. Stereotypes, parochialism, and oversimplifications fall by the wayside.

Despite its daunting scholarship, Bárbaros is very readable. Weber writes with clarity and grace. He tells a good story, using anecdotes with clear purpose. The ups and downs of Alejandro Malespina, Spain's enlightened, globe-circling naval officer, are neatly interwoven throughout. Even with Malespina's feats at sea and his wide-ranging observation of los bárbaros, in the end "the skillful mariner crashed clumsily on political shoals" (p. 51). The wild ride of native Gov. Colville Briton of the Tawira-Miskitos illustrates the lengths to which Spaniards would go to court leaders of unsubjected peoples, especially if other Europeans had a rival interest in them. Nonetheless, such Indians, Weber concludes, "entered the Spanish world as objects of curiosity, not of respect—pomp and circumstance notwithstanding" (p. 243). Revealing quotations by contemporaries abound, bringing the text alive. One old, unconverted Mapuche on the point of death advised a priest, "Padre, do not tire yourself, because it is an inviolable custom and law of my forefathers not to believe anything that Spaniards say" (p. 126). Well-chosen and seldom-seen illustrations add a further graphic dimension.

Ninety-two double-column pages of endnotes set in eight-point type undergird the text. Along with citations, critical commentary on sources, supplemental data, and modernized Spanish transcripts of every quotation translated by the author, are mini-essays on such subjects as the secularization of missions, the authorship of the nuevo sistema (justifying commerce with independent Indians), verbal and written treaties, and scalping. I felt in no way cheated, however, when, in note 292 to chapter three, Weber cited a book about the Chiriguano frontier by Thierry Saignes, "whose argument contains subtleties that I lack space to develop."

Curating, marshaling, and presenting clearly such an enormous body of material—the bibliography runs to an additional seventy pages—would have overwhelmed Hubert Howe Bancroft's stable...