Bad Christians, New Spains

Muslims, Catholics, and Native Americans in a Mediterratlantic World

Byron Ellsworth Hamann, Byron E. Hamann, Byron Hamann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367221126
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000699036
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book centers on two inquisitorial investigations, both of which began in the 1540s. One involved the relations of Europeans and Native Americans in an Oaxacan town (in New Spain, today's Mexico). The other involved relations of Moriscos (recent Muslim converts to Catholicism) and Old Christians (people with deep Catholic ancestries) in the Mediterranean kingdom of Valencia (in the "old" Spain).

Although separated by an ocean, the social worlds preserved in the inquisitorial files share many things. By comparing and contrasting the two inquisitions, Hamann reveals how very local practices and debates had long-distance parallels that reveal the larger entanglements of a transatlantic early modern world. Through a dialogue of two microhistories, he presents a macrohistory of large-scale social transformation. We see how attempts in both places to turn old worlds into new ones were centered on struggles over materiality and temporality. By paying close attention to theories (and practices) of reduction and conversion, Hamann suggests we can move beyond anachronistic models of social change as colonization and place questions of time and history at the center of our understandings of the sixteenth-century past.

The book is an intervention in major debates in both history and anthropology: about the writing of global histories, our conceptualizations of the colonial, the nature of religious and cultural change, and the roles of material things in social life and the imagination of time.

1Ashes and silkworms

In the Rain Place

A document stored in one of the cells of the former Lecumberri Prison (1900–1976), now the General Archive of the Nation in Mexico City, tells the following story:

In the middle of Lent in 1544—sometime between Ash Wednesday on March 5 and Easter Sunday on April 13—Francisco and Diego went out at night to collect silkworm cages. The two men were Native American officials (topiles) from the town of Etlatongo (Figure 1.1).¹ Actually, “Etlatongo” was what Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs from the north called the community. In their own language (Dzaha Dzavui, Rain Speech), Francisco and Diego referred to Etlatongo as Yucunduchi (Temple of Beans). Their town was one of many in the Ñuu Dzavui (Rain Place), and its inhabitants called themselves Ñudzavui (Rain People). But since Nahuatl-speaking translators were employed by European migrants throughout New Spain, sixteenth-century documents generally refer to Etlatongo (Bean-Patch Place in Nahuatl) and the Mixteca (Cloud People in Nahuatl). Because these are the terms in the documents I am describing, I use them here.

Figure 1.1View of the Nochixtlán Valley, looking south from the summit of Hill of Flowers (Yucuita). From right to left are Blue Hill (Yucundaa), then Middle Hill (Yucumañu, the prominent ridge near the center of the photo), and then (near the horizon) the connected pair of mountains above Place of Sand (Añute or Jaltepec). The town of Temple of Beans (Yucunduchi or Etlatongo) is at the base of Middle Hill. Yanhuitlán (not visible) is beyond a range of hills to the right. Photo by the author, July 2007.

The silkworms were being raised in the houses of Etlatongo’s common people, over whom Francisco and Diego served as constables (alguaziles). Silkworms had been introduced to New Spain by Europeans only a decade or so earlier, and quickly flourished in some areas, feasting on the leaves of native and imported mulberry trees. As a result, silk had become an important tribute item.

To their surprise, in the darkness, Francisco and Diego encountered two trespassing nobles (prinçipales) from the rival town of Yanhuitlán, 15 kilometers to the northwest (Figure 1.2). These nobles, Sebastián and Juan, were attempting to capture and enslave six Etlatongo commoners, two women and four men. A fight broke out, and although two of the captives from Etlatongo were freed, Francisco and Diego were less fortunate.² Their constabular staves of office were broken, and Francisco himself was taken prisoner. His captors—Sebastián, Juan, and a group of Yanhuitlán commoners who accompanied their nobles on the raid—brought Francisco as far as a mill on the boundary of Yanhuitlán and Etlatongo. (The mill belonged to Francisco de las Casas, the European encomendero of Yanhuitlán. It was both a functional building and a symbol of las Casas’ lordship—an issue to which we return in Chapter 4).³

Figure 1.2Sacred geography in the Nochixtlán Valley, looking from south to north. The place signs are from the Codex Nuttall and Codex Vienna, prehispanic screenfold books (see Chapter 2).

At this point, reinforcements arrived from Etlatongo. Another fight broke out. Francisco was set free, and one of his captors, Juan, was taken prisoner. Juan was brought back to Etlatongo, and his feet were locked in a set of stocks for the night.⁴ Despite Juan’s capture, one account of the raid suggests that Yanhuitlán’s attack was not a total failure. Sebastián managed to escape, and either he or his accomplices returned to Yanhuitlán with two Etlatongo commoners as slaves.⁵

The next day, Gonzalo and Juan de las Casas—European-born sons of Yanhuitlán’s encomendero—came to Etlatongo with an indigenous-language translator. This man is not named; all that is said is that he was a meztizo, the child of a European and a Native American. Through his voice, the las Casas brothers complained to the people of Etlatongo, and managed to get Juan released from his stocks. The fate of the Etlatongo commoners taken to Yanhuitlán as slaves is not revealed. All we know is that ex-slaves who once served in Yanhuitlán would have much to say against their former masters in the months to come.⁶

A few weeks later—three days after Easter, on Wednesday April 16—Francisco of Etlatongo was caught once again in the social webs of silkworms. He discovered that commoners from Yanhuitlán were trespassing on Etlatongo’s lands. They were stealing mulberry leaves from the trees behind Francisco’s house. Those mulberry leaves, of course, were being collected to feed the ravenous silkworms being raised in Yanhuitlán.⁷ (Indeed, Gonzalo de las Casas—who we just met—would later claim that silkworms were introduced to the towns around Yanhuitlán by his mother, María de Águilar).⁸ Francisco yelled at the commoners, and they summoned Juan de las Casas (Gonzalo’s brother) from the neighboring town of Tecomatlán. Juan arrived on horseback and began to beat Francisco with a maize stalk, as well as with Francisco’s own staff of office.⁹ Francisco called for help, and Juan—apparently thinking that Francisco had confiscated the mulberry leaves being stolen by Yanhuitlán commoners—ordered his Ñudzavui servant to search Francisco’s house. The servant didn’t find any mulberry leaves, so took the opportunity to beat Francisco’s mother.¹⁰ When Francisco told the servant to stop, Juan began to yell in Castilian, resumed beating Francisco (now with the flat of his sword), and finally held out Francisco’s staff of office and cut it in two. (This was the second time Francisco’s staff had been broken in a month). Juan returned the fragments to Francisco. Not only was the staff fractured, but the cross at its top had been damaged as well.¹¹ Francisco then began to yell at Juan, telling him that he would complain before Martín de la Mezquita, the European-born regional authority (corregidor). Juan began beating Francisco once again, and finally grabbed the cross-topped half of Francisco’s staff of office and threw it to the ground, saying that Francisco “was no constable, wasn’t anything.”¹²

Soon afterward, the Ñudzavui of Etlatongo filed a complaint against Yanhuitlán with the European authorities of New Spain. We can assume that Francisco, the roughed-up constable, was a main author: it is in this complaint that events described in the previous paragraphs are recorded. Etlatongo emerged victorious. Juan de las Casas was fined and forbidden to enter the community, and an arrest warrant was put out for Yanhuitlán nobles Sebastián and Juan. These two men, remember, had led the initial slave raid against Etlatongo in the middle of Lent in 1544.¹³

Four months after these conflicts took place—around August 20, 1544—some of the Ñudzavui from Etlatongo accompanied Spanish regional authority Martín de la Mezquita to the palace of don Francisco, Yanhuitlán’s indigenous governor. Don Francisco was an elder kinsman (either father or uncle) of the arrest-warranted Sebastián, and Sebastián was thought to be hiding in don Francisco’s palace. Sebastián was indeed found inside the palace. But something else was found as well: signs of idolatry. From a small dark room, bloodied offerings and a feather cape were produced by our friend Diego of Etlatongo. (Diego, remember, was one of the constables whose staff of office had been broken by Sebastián and Juan during their Lenten slave-raid).¹⁴ Diego would later testify proudly about his role:

this witness went to the house of the said don Francisco with Martín de la Mezquita and a notary, by command of the lord viceroy, to arrest the son of the said don Francisco, and this witness within a chamber in the said house found feathers and sacrificed puppies and paper and incense and a great deal of blood on some stones of the devil, and this witness collected them in his cape, and he did this while the said don Francisco resisted the entry of the said Martín de la Mezquita, and taking what he could of the said sacrifices this witness threw them on the ground before the said don Francisco …¹⁵

The attack on Diego back in the spring raises a key question: did he truly discover this bloody evidence, or did he plant it? Whatever the case, Diego led European officials to an important chamber within don Francisco’s palace. It was filled with objects that could not have been placed there by Diego: “more than a hundred ceramic dishes, covered by putting one on top of another, as in a meal.”¹⁶

Evidence of idolatry had been found in Yanhuitlán before. In the late 1530s, a Dominican friar encountered a similar assemblage of food, supposed sacrifices, and featherwork in the palace of Yanhuitlán’s indigenous ruler, don Domingo. But this earlier discovery did not trigger an inquisitorial investigation (see Chapter 3). The 1544 raid on don Francisco’s palace did not trigger an investigation either—at least not at first. Diego of Etlatongo revealed signs of idolatry in the middle of August, but an inquisitorial investigation against don Francisco (and two other nobles from Yanhuitlán) did not begin until mid-October. Something else happened in this region of the Rain Place in late summer or early fall 1544: a shouting match between two powerful Europeans. This is how Toledo-born Juan Alonso remembered the incident:

it could have been a year ago, more or less, that when in the town of Jaltepec this witness saw the said Baccalaureate Maraver exchange angry words with the said Francisco de las Casas, and they came to use foul language and to become enraged, and the said Baccalaureate Maraver left infuriated from the house where he had been, shaking his fist and threatening that he swore to God that “it would have to be done,” and this witness does not remember exactly what other words were said, other than that they remained on bad terms and each much enraged with the other (testimony October 17, 1545).¹⁷

We have already met Francisco de las Casas, European encomendero of Yanhuitlán: we visited his mill, and learned of his sons Gonzalo and Juan. Pedro Gómez de Maraver was dean of the Cathedral of Antequera (today’s Oaxaca City), and Jaltepec was a town at the southern end of the valley where Yanhuitlán was located (Figure 1.2). Yanhuitlán and Jaltepec spent much of the sixteenth century in litigation over control of a smaller town, Zahuatlán, and so perhaps this is what brough...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Ashes and silkworms
• 2 Geographies of discord
• 3 Catholic Catholicisms
• 4 The poverty of economy
• 5 Ruination
• 6 The excavation of the dead
• 7 Chronologies at war
• Conclusions: Conversion, reduction, and early modern empire
• Epilogue
• Works cited
• Index