Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico

4: The Imbalance of Power

CHAPTER FOUR The Imbalance of Power The governor acts as if [the Indians] were his slaves, that do not belong to the religious, but are his. — New Mexico’s Provincial Fray Francisco de San Antonio, 1657 T he terms of conquest that Spaniards and Indians negotiated over the first decades of the seventeenth century changed after the s. The survival of Spain’s frontier colonies was largely dependent on extracting native labor and proselytizing native souls. But recurrent epidemics, raids by non-Christian Indians, and onerous labor demands ravaged indigenous populations. Disgruntled native converts started voting with their feet. The struggle to exercise influence over dwindling numbers of mission Indians became more urgent. With colonial conditions in tremendous flux, colonizers and natives in Florida and New Mexico openly vied for power and sought leverage to control their own, and each others’ lives. Governors tried to wrest Indian laborers and warriors from clerics’ hands; friars pulled the reins tighter on mission Indians; Indian leaders struggled to maintain a hold on their own people. Pushed and pulled by these competing forces, mission Indians in Florida and New Mexico were in unenviable positions. To decide any portion of their future, Indians had to carefully play one contestant off another. As the demands on native labor, loyalty, and 89 behavior grew more insistent, Indians’ choices narrowed and left them with few happy options. Much of the late seventeenth-century instability in Spain’s frontier doctrinas was self-inflicted. Spaniards in Florida and New Mexico, secular and ecclesiastical, shared the responsibilities of colonial government, but their jurisdictions overlapped and frequently opposed each other. When one side gained an advantage in the tug-of-war for mission Indians, the weakened party used all its influence to strike back. For the Spaniards, the issues were gravely serious and worth fighting over. The essence of Spanish relations with Indians—when and for whom natives worked, where the profits went, who had the Indians’ interests at heart, and what traditional practices were sacrilegious—was at stake. Disagreements were fierce and the contest between state and church raged in colonial capitals, on private farms, and in missions alike. Far away from colonial audiencias and viceroys, the northern frontiers provided the ideal setting for jurisdictional squabbling and abuse. Even the very structure of frontier government encouraged Spanish infighting. The governor was the highest-ranking official in Spanish frontier colonies. Appointed by the viceroy of New Spain, the men who held the title Governor and Captain-General represented the king’s interests and had broad responsibilities. They provided for the welfare of Spanish settlers and native inhabitants, arranged the defense and economic development of the colony, promoted the religious salvation of Spaniards and Indians,and carried out the daily operation of local bureaucratic,economic, and military affairs. For their service, provincial governors earned a salary from the king of Spain, but many expected to earn much more than the allotted stipend. To secure fortunes more befitting men of their assumed status, most colonial governors in Florida and New Mexico exploited local resources and native labor whenever they could. Under the guise of the repartimiento (native labor drafts for civic or public works), governors had Indians harvest crops, salt, piñon nuts, deerskins, corn, and other trade items from the frontiers for export. Using their mandate to explore new territories and defend the colonial borders, governors led frequent trade expeditions and slaving forays beyond mission limits. Accepting a colonial post was a risky way to amass wealth, but governor after governor tried to make his appointment personally profitable. Indeed, the colonial system encouraged governors to find ways to supplement their official salaries. Would-be colonial leaders bought their offices with a half-a-year’s salary 90 Chapter Four (media anata) and needed to raise capital to bribe their successors who investigated them through the residencia. As the king’s agents, governors granted mercedes (land grants) and municipal concessions to settlers for their private use. But there were significant differences in the ways the two colonial leaders distributed these plums. New Mexican governors bound elite colonists to their side by issuing encomiendas, permits given to select colonists for the use of Indian labor and the right to collect native tribute. In exchange, encomenderos agreed to ensure that their allotted Indians were fed, converted, and defended from attack. The most in...