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Jesuits and the Yaqui in Mexico

By the mid-1600s, Jesuit missionaries were well established among the Yaqui Indians of Sonora. The Yaqui had repelled the slave raiding of the Spanish in 1533. But, in 1565, Yaqui had welcomed Spanish explorers who came in peace, the Yaqui showing them hospitality in hope of winning Spaniards as allies in the war they were planning against neighbors to the south - the Mayo Indians. The Spaniards had withdrawn, and other Spaniards had come decades later, also in peace. In 1587, the Spanish crown had given permission to Jesuit missionaries to work Mexico's northwestern frontier, and the Jesuits had arrived in Sonora in 1591, protected by soldiers.

The Jesuits impressed the Yaqui with their good intentions and their spirituality. The Jesuits brought a message of everlasting life and won Yaqui confidence with their concern for the well being of the Yaqui. According to Jesuit missionaries, by 1606 they had converted 40,000 out of a population estimated to be 100,000. The Jesuits improved Yaqui political organization and integration, some Yaqui having been scattered and isolated on their individual agricultural plots. The Jesuits managed to make themselves into a ruling priesthood among the Yaqui, and as such they came into conflict with Spain's secular authorities in Mexico, the Jesuits wanting to protect the Yaqui from exploitation by mine owners.

Spanish authorities in Mexico became hostile towards the Jesuits, and in 1637 they lobbied the Spanish crown to secularize missions among the Indians, to "free" the Indians from mission controls. The Jesuits argued that exploitation would bring more Indian uprisings and that their authority over the Indians would keep the Indians peaceful.

The Jesuits prevailed against Mexico's secular authorities, but later in the century lucrative mines were developed in Sinaloa and Sonara, and the conflict between the Jesuits and secular authorities intensified. Mining interests accused the Jesuits of working the Indians as slaves, of inflicting harsh corporal punishments upon the Indians and of neglecting their spiritual commitments. Jesuits accused the miners of having something less than a benevolent regard for Indian welfare. Some mine owners had been using Indian slave labor - despite the Spanish crown in the previous century having declared enslaving Indians illegal. But the king's authorities in Mexico had been ignoring the law.

The dispute between the Jesuits and secular authorities went to court, and the judgment was made that all Indians working in the mines had to be paid 2.5 reales per day, that Indians working the mines against their will had to be freed, and that the Jesuits had to free Indians under their control to work in the mines if they so desired. The Jesuits were criticized for working Indians without pay, this judgment not taking into consideration that the Jesuits were operating a communal society, where labor and food were not bought and sold. Communalism lost to free enterprise, and more Yaqui men, searching for wages, went to the mines.

New Mexico and Texas

In 1609 the king of Spain declared Nuevo Mexico a royal colony. It was around this time that the struggling settlers abandoned San Gabriel and re-established themselves twenty miles to the south, at another place the Spaniards called Santa Fe, which was less crowded and more easily defended.

In Nuevo Mexico, it was the Franciscans who had the crown's permission to create missions, and Franciscans were making impressions upon the Pueblo as the Jesuits had upon the Yaqui. Pueblo Indians were interested in spiritual matters. They saw Franciscans flagellating themselves, walking barefoot and in many other ways depriving themselves. The Pueblo believed that priests had the power to mediate between humanity and nature, and they saw the Franciscans as people with powers like their shamans or witches. They were impressed by Spanish soldiers and well attired officials prostrating before the Franciscans - a policy performed to impress the Indians. Franciscans claimed the power to cure the sick, to make rain and good harvests, and many Indians believed that it might be best to cooperate with and appease the Franciscans. It is rumored that some Pueblo Indians did not want to be revisited by the wrath of the gods that they heard had been put upon their people - punishment for what the Christians described as their idolatry.

The Franciscans devoted their attention to the Indian children, whom they believed were more malleable than adults, and they hoped that the children would help convert adults. The Franciscans, moreover, impressed the Pueblo with small gifts: scissors, clothing, beads and such. Some Pueblo Indians appreciated the Franciscans for the material benefits they offered, including trade with Spaniards. And some saw the Franciscans as useful intermediaries between themselves and Spanish soldiers or as a force between them and the Apache Indians.

Franciscans claimed that by 1626 they had converted 34,000 Indians. This success was in towns - an urban phenomenon like early Christianity - where the sound of the mission bell could reach the entire community. By 1630 missions had been built as far north as Taos, and as far south along the Rio Grande as Sorocco.

In 1630, Santa Fe consisted of 250 Spaniards and 750 people of Indian and Spanish mixture. In the passing decades, conflict arose between the Franciscans and secular authorities as had happened with the Jesuits. Again the issue was labor, the secular authorities disliking the Franciscan monopoly on Indian labor. Franciscans argued that their use of Indian labor combated the inclination among Indians for indolence, that their use of Indian labor was for the good of the monasteries and the Indian community and that the secular Spanish exploited Indian labor only for their own material benefit. Sensing a dislike among the Indians in working for secular Spaniards, the Franciscans complained that secular authorities were interfering in their efforts to spread Christianity.

The Franciscans threatened to abandon the entire province, but they kept on with their work. The crown looked with favor upon the Franciscans - only in small part because of the additional wealth that accrued to the crown in the form of donations, or payment for religious services, that the Franciscan missions were drawing from the Indians. The Inquisition also favored the Franciscans, and local authorities at Santa Fe occasionally suffered at the hands of the Inquisition for their differences with the Franciscans.

Life became more desperate in Nueva Mexico. From 1660 year after year of draught and crop failure began. Famine and bitterness grew. By now the population of the Pueblos was considerably less than it had been when the Spaniards first arrived - partly the result of disease from Europe.  By 1680, it has been estimated, the Pueblo Indian population would be down fifty percent from what it had been in 1630. [note]

In these times, among the Franciscans was a difference of opinion regarding conversions. Some favored a gradual approach that tolerated Indian traditions. Others wanted no compromise and advocated forced extermination of Indian paganism. Eventually it was a policy of forced extermination of paganism that won, and it was backed by secular authority. The traditional religion of the Pueblo was declared illegal, while some Pueblo Indians, like some Jews in antiquity, wished to hold on to their religious tradition. Spanish authorities punished disobedient Pueblos, while some Pueblo Indians began practicing their religion in secret.

In 1675, Spain's governor of Nuevo Mexico had 47 medicine men arrested. The soldiers took the men to Santa Fe, hanged some and whipped and jailed the rest. After the Spanish soldiers left Santa Fe, Pueblos arrived and demanded the release of the medicine men. Without soldiers as reinforcements the governor released the surviving captives.

Pueblo Indians in various villages across Nueva Mexico, led by a medicine man named Popé, rebelled against Spanish rule, beginning at dawn on August 11, 1680. within a few days, twenty-one missionaries and 400 Spaniards were killed, and several churches and ranch houses were in flames. On August 15, Indian warriors converged on Santa Fe. They cut off the water supply to the 1,000 men, women and children there, and they sang "The Christian god is dead, but our sun god will never die." The Spaniards counterattacked. The Indians pulled back, and on August 21 the Spaniards at Santa Fe fled, making their way southward down the Rio Grand to a mission that had been built in 1659, at El Paso del Norte, the refugees taking with them a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary - Nuestra Señora de La Conquesta (Our Lady of the Conquest)

Spanish authorities remained concerned about their holdings in the north, and concerned with French moves from the far north in their direction. In 1690 a small party of soldiers and four Franciscan priests moved into Texas to begin what they hoped would be Spain's rule there. The expedition stopped at what had been the French fort at Matagorda Bay, and one of the priests, Father Mazanet, set fire to the fort to discourage the French from re-occupying it. The expedition journeyed a little over 200 miles to the northeast and established a mission called San Francisco de los Tejas. In 1691, Spain appointed General Domingo Teránde los Ríos as governor of Texas, and he brought with him supplies and gifts with which to placate Indians.

In Nuevo Mexico, meanwhile, the Pueblos had been suffering from abnormally low summer rains. Corn crops failed. Apache Indians raided the Pueblos. And leadership of the revolt against the Spanish in the 1680s were trying to dominate with a heavy hand. 1692, Spanish troops led by General Don Diego de Vargas, with some Pueblo allies, cautiously moved back into Nuevo Mexico. There he acquired more Pueblo allies against hostile Pueblos. News of the reconquest of Nuevo Mexico reached Mexico City and was greeted there with joy and the ringing of bells. But the following year, when Vargas returned to Nuevo Mexico with 100 soldiers, around 800 others and the wooden statue, Our Lady of the Conquest - some Pueblos that had sworn allegiance to him went over to the side of resistance.

Vargas defeated Pueblos holding Santa Fe, Vargas executing 70 of those who had refused to surrender. Then in 1694 Vargas pursed a determined military campaigns and was able to defeat remaining resistance. In 1696 another rebellion erupted. Five Franciscans were killed, and churches were burned. The rebellion was defeated by Spanish arms and those who refused to submit to Spanish rule abandoned their towns.

In 1700, some Hopi Indians (a branch of Pueblo Indians) rose against Christianity. After hearing of the conversion of 73 Hopi at the village of Awatovi where the Spaniards had established a mission, Hopi leaders ordered the missionaries to leave, but the Spanish refused. The Hopi attacked Awatovi, burned what they could, leaving in the smoldering ruins the bodies of around 700 men, women and children - Hopi, Spaniards, Christians and non-Christians.

Spain in South America

By 1611 the mining town of Potosi was filled with about 42,000 Spaniards and 65,000 Indians. Prices were high - as they would be in 19th century Gold rush areas. More than a dozen dance halls existed, around three dozen gambling halls, and numerous prostitutes strolled the streets.

Hundreds of miles to the south, the town of Cordoba was growing in a different way: in 1614 a university was founded there. East of Cordoba, the Spanish were in conflict with the Portuguese. In 1632 - eight years before Portugal returned to independence from Spanish rule - Portuguese from São Paulo pushed the Jesuits out of the Iguassu region.

Farther south, Buenos Aires remained a small frontier settlement. In 1620 Spain began allowing two ships a year to journey there, despite the notoriety of the area for smuggling. Cattle ranches south of the Buenos Aires extended no farther than a hundred miles, and in 1650 Buenos Aires consisted of farmland, 400 houses, 854 Spanish inhabitants and 1,500 slaves.

Colonists, meanwhile, were settling to the north and south of Santiago. Jesuits in this coastal area called for better treatment of the Indians there - the Araucana. And in 1641 the Spaniards signed a treaty with the Araucana. But the treaty broke down, and Lima sent armies to the area to protect the settlers. By the end of the century this coastal area had an estimated 100,000 Christian inhabitants and Bío Bío River was a frontier between well armed colonists and the Araucana.

The dominant city on the Pacific and in Spanish South America was Lima. Here was the home of Spain's viceroy to South America and a seat of the Inquisition. Lima was a center of trade, including the port of exit for the silver mined in the Potosi area. South America's major university, the University of San Marcos, was there - founded in 1551 under Dominican direction, with a grant from Charles V, and secularized in 1571. In 1680, Lima had about 10,000 who considered themselves of pure Spanish descent and 60,000 others. In Lima, wealthy Spaniards lived in luxury and considered themselves just as aristocratic as anyone in Spain. Elaborate balconies adorned their homes. Churches and monasteries were adorned with much silver and gold. And in the 1680s a wall was built around the city to protect it from pirates.

Class, Authority and Racial Blending in Spanish America

Most Spanish colonists were poor early on, but into the 1600s many prospered. Some of them became rich in land while exploiting Indian labor. They bred and grazed horses and cattle, planted and harvested crops and traded directly with their mother country, Spain. Where Indian labor was inadequate, the Spaniards began importing slaves from Africa.

Some Indians remained who lived free of Spanish control, still with their ancient customs and language, but now with burros and oxen that had come to the Americas with the Spaniards. Indians the Spanish controlled they had  concentrated into villages, often near their own towns, making the Indians available for labor, the Spanish forbidding these Indians to live off the land elsewhere.

Like conquerors before them, the Spanish had left the elite of the conquered in charge of the common people they had conquered. The Indian chieftains that the Spanish left in charge often made a show of their contempt for the common Indians under them, the same contempt they had before the arrival of the Spaniards but now a demonstration to the Spaniards of their own, contrasting, worthiness.

Colonial authorities considered Indians in general to be too simpleminded for education. However much difficulty Spaniards had in recognizing talent, a few talented Indians were offered special attention, while education in Spanish America remained almost exclusively for those of Spanish ancestry. Some Indians advanced on their own. They learned European trades. A few in Peru acquired wealth by independent mining. Some rose as businessmen, and some joined the clergy and worked alongside European priests. Eventually, however, the Church decided that Indians were unsuited to the Catholic priesthood and dismissed them.

While the colonists were growing in number, the Indians were diminishing. Counted at 3.34 million in 1570, the Indians were counted at only 1.26 million in 1646. The diminishing numbers indicate hardship, but imported disease had killed many of them, and mining had taken some others. Some historians have charged Protestants and Spanish reformers with exaggerating cruelties against the Indians. Nevertheless, Indians under Spaniard control remained dependent upon work from the Spaniards for survival, and some Indians labored on the large farms of the Spaniards, not as slaves but kept in debt by their employers. And some Indians found solace in the Spaniard's alcohol.

Spaniards in the Americas remained class conscious. At the top were the families of authorities sent from Spain, called Peninsulares. Below them were the Criollos (pronounced kree-OH-yoo), those born in America claiming pure Spanish blood. In 1570, the Peninsulares are said to have numbered 6.6 thousand and the Criollos 11 thousand. By 1646 the Peninsulares had risen to 13. 8 thousand and the Criollos to 168.6 thousand.

The Criollos called themselves the decent people (gente decente) while below them were those they called Mestizos. These were people of mixed blood. Daughters of Indian nobility had married into upper class white families early on. And with few white women available, common Spanish men had been taking native concubines or wives. And blacks were mixing with Indians. Across generations people of mixed blood were increasing in number, while Indians who dressed like whites and spoke Spanish were labeled Mestizo. The Mestizos in 1570 are said to have numbered 2,437, and in 1646 to have risen to 109,042 - the authorities apparently trying to count them.

In Asunción and Santiago, those with some European genetic heritage were considered fully European, while across Spanish America the genes of Indians and blacks were slowly creeping into the DNA of some Criollo families that continued to claim an unmixed racial heritage.

Every Criollo community had its church, or churches, some of them Romanesque with a round dome, and some were of Italian Renaissance design. Criollo men and women prayed to their saints, and all of the religious festivals were celebrated. Many Criollos lived in fine houses and wore luxurious clothing, while below them a small middleclass was developing, made up of all races but predominately European.

People from different parts of Europe had been drifting into Spanish America, and some came from China and India. Many of those who arrived were deserters from ships that had touched on the continent. A few of these men had worked their way into the middleclass through trading - much of it contraband.

Criollo families sent their sons to Jesuit university in Spanish America or perhaps to a university in Spain, and the Church was in control of education. Books by Jews, Muslims or Protestants were forbidden. So too were books supporting any disrespect for established authority, including books about spreading political power to common people. Church authorities in Spanish America were on guard against any smuggled books that might create doubts about the need for obedience.

The Inquisition, however, was less active in the Americas than it had been in Spain. Ideologically unreliable people had been denied legal passage to the Americas. In three hundred years of Spain's rule, in Mexico City only 41 heretics would be burned at the stake - and some of these were captured Protestants.

Among the Spanish in America, Protestants were despised. They called England's sailors Luteranos (Lutherans), and the Spaniards paraded their English prisoners of war through town streets, flogging them before joyful crowds of colonists.

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