Conflict in Colonial Sonora: Indians, Priests, and Settlers

6: Father Januske and the Indians Take On the Vecinos and Their Livestock

168 Chapter Six father Januske and the indians take on the Vecinos and their livestock 1715 . / The advent of settlers and miners—Spaniards, people of mixed ancestry, and Indians from other regions—into the northwest of New Spain presented Jesuits with a host of unending headaches. The priests struggled to keep non-Natives out of the missions, where they could easily undo the arduous task of evangelizing the Natives. Indians always seemed slow to internalize the Catholic doctrines and quick to adopt the vices of outsiders with relaxed moral standards or to revert to their pagan ways. Statutes forbade non-Natives from taking up residence in the missions without permission from the priests, but enforcement of the prohibition lay low on the scale of governmental officials ’ priorities.1 Still, a priest could, if he wished, present a legal challenge to any vecino or outsider dwelling in the mission without authorization. The problem of dealing with non-Native newcomers also extended to the livestock they imported. Jesuits viewed the introduction of livestock (burros, cattle, horses, goats, mules, pigs, and sheep), wheat, and orchard crops as an unmixed blessing to the region. The Jesuit scholar John Bannon summed up neatly the prevailing opinion: “The Indians of the missions [of the Opatería] regularly enjoyed a more secure existence than their pagan fellows. . . . [T]he padres taught them new and better methods of agriculture, and established stock ranches among them. Mission Indians rarely went hungry.”2 Bannon, however, provides no evidence for this view. Indeed, as we saw in chapter 1, Father Januske and the Indians Take On the Vecinos 169 the introduction of wheat could lead to a loss of Indian agricultural productivity , and, as we also saw in chapter 1 and will see in this chapter, the arrival of livestock jeopardized the food security for many hundreds, if not thousands , of Indians. What cattle wreaked for the Indians of the Opatería places Bannon’s pronouncement in the realm of fantasy. If some priests, such as Father Guerrero, were preoccupied with punishing uncooperative Indians, others felt the need to protect them from outside influences. Priests occasionally became outspoken in defending what they saw as interference with Indians’ rights (such as they were) or undermining the missionaries’ task of Christianizing them. This chapter presents a case where a priest invoked the intervention of civil authorities, not to punish wayward Indians, but to protect them from the onslaughts of vecinos’ takeover of Indian lands. In this case, outsiders without a legitimate claim lived within the mission and claimed the right to run cows and beasts of burden on mission lands. The problem only grew worse. After years of abuses, a priest assumed a vocal and aggressive role in defending Indians against several powerful Spanish settlers. The circumstances resemble those of the Indians of Tuape (see chapter 1), who struggled against Pedro de Perea and his heirs when they illegally took over the Indians’ lands and allowed their herds to run wild over Indian fields and springs. In that case, however, the Jesuits remained largely in the background, though they were willing to testify on behalf of the Indians. In this case, a priest stepped forth and boldly challenged the right of settlers to live in mission communities and to run their cattle at will on Indian (mission ) lands. He led the charge against the intruders. In March 1715, Father Daniel Januske, Jesuit priest at the mission of Oposura (later Moctezuma) in eastern Sonora, journeyed to hear confessions at Cumpas, a visita about twenty-five kilometers north of the mission.3 Padre Januske relates that during his visit to the pueblo, he stopped by the dwelling of some Indians whose presence had been notably lacking from his congregations of late (many priests were fastidious about taking roll). He admonished them for their repeated absences at Mass and proceeded to administer to one (or perhaps both) of them the customary five lashes for failure to attend Mass.4 Just how vigorously the padre applied the whip is unclear, but Januske appears from his written correspondence a rigid, unsympathetic sort, not at all convinced of the innate goodness of his Opatan subjects.5 When Januske was finished flogging his backsliding charge, the chastened Indian(s) departed in haste, but the priest found himself confronted Chapter six 170 by the victim’s irate son-in-law, a vecino (non-Indian, probably a Spaniard) named Juan...