From Savages to Subjects

Missions in the History of the American Southwest

Robert H. Jackson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315500157
• Subtopic: Asian History

Incorporating recent findings by leading Southwest scholars as well as original research, this book takes a fresh new look at the history of Spanish missions in northern Mexico/the American Southwest during the 17th and 18th centuries. Far from a record of heroic missionaries, steadfast soldiers, and colonial administrators, it examines the experiences of the natives brought to live on the missions, and the ways in which the mission program attempted to change just about every aspect of indigenous life. Emphasizing the effect of the missions on native populations, demographic patterns, economics, and socio-cultural change, this path-breaking work fills a major gap in the history of the Southwest.

Chapter 1

Mission Economics

Production and Labor, Supply, and Local Markets

Economic production and provision were important aspects of the frontier mission project. Economic development entailed either the harnessing of existing production for the needs of the missionaries, civil/military officials, and settlers, or the organization of an entirely new economic system that often had to introduce European notions of disciplined labor. The full range of mission economies evolved on the frontier of northern New Spain. In New Mexico and Sonora, for example, the missionaries erected mission communities in functioning indigenous communities with well-developed economies based upon agriculture, skilled artisan production and trade, and some hunting and collection of wild plant foods. At the other extreme were the missions of Texas (excluding the missions built among the Hasinais) and the Californias. The indigenous populations of these regions were largely semi-sedentary hunters and gatherers who exploited food resources in a clearly defined territory and frequently practiced a pattern of seasonal transhumance between village sites occupied over a long period of time.

The discussion of patterns of mission economic development in this chapter focuses on three areas: production and labor, the supply of goods not found locally to the missions, and the relationship between the missions and local/regional markets. This chapter also makes distinctions between economic patterns on the missions established among sedentary peoples (New Mexico, northern Sonora), and among semisedentary/ nomadic hunters and gatherers (California and Texas). The first topic is production and the organization of labor on the missions.

Production and Labor

The primary objective of the missionaries was to provide basic sustenance for the Indians congregated on the missions and for themselves and to see that any surpluses be sold locally to earn extra money for the mission beyond the funds allocated by the government for each establishment. The Franciscans in New Mexico created missions at existing indigenous communities with well-established economies based upon agriculture, specialized craft production, and trade. The missionaries could organize labor drafts for construction projects such as fortress churches and conventos (convents). The large size of the Pueblo populations in the seventeenth century allowed the Franciscans to initiate major construction projects, such as the stone churches built on the Salinas missions (Humanas, Abo, Quarai) and Pecos. Additionally, the Franciscans controlled lands specifically set aside for their support and for that of the mission program. They used the crops and livestock from these lands for their own support, but also sold surpluses for profit.

A central goal in the missions was social-cultural engineering. The Franciscans stationed in New Mexico operated schools designed to teach the natives new skills such as mechanical arts and new weaving techniques. The Franciscans sold mission-produced products locally and in neighboring regions such as Chihuahua. There was some trade in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but at the end of the eighteenth century the demand for New Mexico textiles and pottery in Chihuahua grew, creating new sources of revenue for the missionaries. The missionaries also introduced new crops and improved agricultural techniques.

In the seventeenth century, Spanish settlers also exploited Indian labor through the encomienda system. The encomienda first evolved as a feudal institution in southern Spain beginning in the thirteenth century, and the conquistadors first introduced the institution to Caribbean and then to the mainland in the sixteenth century. The encomienda generally was a grant of jurisdiction over a specific group of Indian heads of household, and it entitled the holder of the grant to collect tribute, labor, and personal services. Juan de Oñate introduced the encomienda to New Mexico around 1600, and distributed grants to Pueblo Indians and sections of Pueblos to his followers. Later in the century the number of grants was fixed at thirty-five. Typically, the Indians paid tribute in units of com, animal skins (buffalo and deer), and cotton mantas (cloths). In the 1660s, for example, tribute collected was measured in units based on the numbers of heads of household. Pecos had the largest tribute with 340 units as compared to 110 for Taos, 80 for half of Shonopovi, 50 for half of Acoma, and 30 for half of Abo. There was also a labor draft known as repartimiento linked to the encomienda that provided workers for farms and large livestock estates. Theoretically workers received a daily wage of half a real (later raised in 1659 to one real), but the Indians commonly did not receive pay. Disputes between missionaries and settlers over encomiendas were common, and excesses and abuses associated with the institution contributed to the 1680 Pueblo revolt. Following the reconquest of New Mexico after 1692 by Diego de Vargas, the encomienda was no longer an important institution. Moreover, the predominance of small farms, usually worked directly by the settlers themselves, limited the demand for Indian labor.

A similar pattern developed in northern Sonora. The northern Pimas continued to control individual parcels of land for family production, while the missionaries managed lands to support the mission operations and expenses not covered by government funds. The stark realities of an arid environment at some sites in Sonora, however, limited the selfsufficiency of some of the mission communities.

The Jesuits who staffed the Pimería Alta missions attempted to assert spiritual and temporal control over the Indians living in the mission communities. This meant that the Jesuits made the decisions regarding exploitation of communal resources from agriculture to the production of cloth and leather goods, as well as the administration of livestock and communal mission property. The Jesuits required adult Indian converts to work on communal projects, and the government authorized the Jesuits and all frontier missionaries to use corporal punishment to ensure discipline and to correct perceived violations of the strict moral codes they wished to impose on the Indians. The Jesuits usually did not administer corporal punishment themselves, but gave responsibility for its direct administration to Indian village officials.

The northern Pimas continued to cultivate their own parcels, and the crops grown on these parcels were not a part of the communal mission produce. In this fashion the missionaries hoped to break down the kin- based social relationships that cemented native society and to stress the nuclear family as the basic unit of social organization. As in New Mexico, the Pimas were closer to making the transition to full indio status—that is, they provided labor, paid tribute, and lived in self-governing indig-enous villages. However, the missionaries also attempted to eliminate pre-Hispanic communal food collection activities such as the harvesting of cactus fruit or hunting.

Wheat and com were the most important grains grown at the missions on communal lands, with wheat being first in importance. Only a few figures on grain production survive. Between 1749 and 1762, for example, the crops grown at Aconchi and Baviacora in central Sonora totaled 10,429fanegas (2.6 bushels) of wheat and 3,861 fanegas of com. The missionaries sold 18 percent of the wheat and 42 percent of the com grown. Similarly, wheat was the dominant crop grown in the Pimería Alta missions: between 1818 and 1820, wheat production in the region totaled 5,942 fanegas, as against 313 a mere fanegas of com and 271 fanegas of frijol. The missions also had herds of cattle, sheep and goats, horses, and swine. The missionaries frequently complained about the loss of livestock to raiding Indians such as the Apaches. The Jesuits complained about the loss of livestock. However, grain sales constituted the single largest source of revenue for the Sonora missions. For example, between 1720 and 1766 grain sales by the Jesuits stationed at San Pedro de Aconchi totaled 72,826 pesos as against 9,606 pesos for sales of livestock.

Following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767-68 the imperial reformer José de Galvez initiated a new system in the missions. The Franciscans who replaced the Jesuits in the Pimería Alta no longer controlled mission temporalities, and the government appointed civil administrators to manage the mission economies. The Franciscans were simply to function as parish priests to the indios living on the missions. Galvez’s experiment amounted to a partial secularization of the missions, but the new regime lasted only until 1769, when Galvez reversed his earlier order and restored the mission temporalities to the control of the Franciscans. From the very beginning the Franciscans complained about the failings of the new system. They attributed the lack of discipline among the Indians to the loss of control over the temporalities, and the fact that the Indians had been told they no longer needed to work for the missionaries. They also pointed out that the civil commissioners appointed to administer the missions dissipated the property such as livestock and allowed the Indians to take stored food.

Debate over the management of the Pimería Alta missions did not end in 1769. In 1772, Tubac presidio commander Juan Bautista de Anza challenged the basic foundation of the missions. He argued that the Indians were required to provide too much labor to the missionaries, and de Anza proposed that the obligatory labor of the Indians should be replaced by a system of voluntary labor. He also stated that the Franciscans should not control the mission temporalities. De Anza also urged the government to establish schools for the Indians and to encourage the indios to have more contact with the settlers living in the region. The government rejected his plan, which would have resulted in greater integration of Indians into frontier society.

In the following year Diego Ximeno, O.F.M., responded to de Anza’s proposals with a Franciscan plan eventually endorsed by the government. Ximeno requested that the missionaries be given undisputed control over mission temporalities. The temporalities consisted of the authority to (a) supervise Indian labor and punish the Indians; (b) end labor drafts that took Indian laborers away from the missions; (c) mediate interactions between the Indians and Spaniards, as well as ban settlers’ living among the Indians. In granting Ximeno’s petition, the government rejected de Anza’s proposal to more rapidly integrate the Pimas into frontier society. Instead, the government opted in favor of the existing system of paternalism under the Franciscans, who attempted to shield as much as possible the converts living in the missions from Spanish society, as Franciscan missionaries had attempted to do in Mexico since the sixteenth century. However, the serious questioning of the continued operation of the Pimería Alta missions made it imperative for the Franciscans to justify the continuation of the mission system by documenting the continued congregation and conversion of pagans.

Tinkering with the system continued until the secularization of the missions following Mexican independence, and civil officials and missionaries drafted reports on how to improve the system. One such report in 1814 on Bac mission in the Pimería Alta reflected a changed philosophy among the Franciscans that responded to the changing mood of the government. The installation of a liberal cortes (parliament) in Spain that in 1813 called into question the continued functioning of the missions posed a major challenge to the Franciscans. Juan de Cevallos, O.F.M., made recommendations in his report that essentially reversed the stand taken by the Franciscans sixty years earlier. Cevallos urged the hiring of a teacher to educate the Pimas; the distribution of mission lands and water rights to the Indians; adoption of a policy to rent mission lands to settlers; the use of salaried laborers, either Indian or settlers, to work mission lands; and the sale of mission livestock to cover mission expenses. On the other hand, Cevallos embraced the century- old concern of the missionaries for the provision of European-style clothing to the Indians, especially women.

The organization of the economy of the missions in Texas and California was somewhat different from that already examined in New Mexico and the Pimería Alta. The indigenous peoples congregated on the missions were not sedentary agriculturists, which meant that the missionaries had to introduce an entirely different economic organization based on agriculture and ranching. In the case of Baja California, the arid climate limited farming to sites with some water, so in the early stages of mission development most of the Indians did not reside at the central mission village, and rotated in periodically for religious instruction. However, as the indigenous population declined, more and more people came to live at the main settlement. Moreover, the Jesuits also imported food from the Mexican mainland, primarily Sinaloa and Sonora. In the Texas case, particularly in the San Antonio missions, the Franciscans imported wheat from Saltillo, and concentrated on growing com and other crops.

In all three areas the missionaries enrolled adult men and women in the communal labor force, and exercised control over the mission temporalities. Indian children became adults when they reached age twelve to thirteen, and at that point were incorporated into the labor force. Generally, the heads of household did not receive individual plots of land, and the missions operated large communal kitchens that prepared meals for all of the converts. The missionaries established a far more paternalistic regime in Texas and the California, and imposed rigid social control enforced through different forms of corporal punishment. The evidence shows that the Franciscans in the Alta California establishments imposed stricter social control. In all three areas the teaching of new skills was one aspect of a larger program of drastic social, religious, and cultural change, and the creation of a disciplined labor force was consistent with the larger goal of transforming the indigenous populations in conformity to Spanish policy objectives.

The organization of the economies of the three regions and their labor systems were similar. For purposes of illustrating patterns of economic development, I focus on the example of the Alta California establishments, for which there is abundant documentation. The economy of the Alta California missions was based on agriculture, ranching, and craft industries such as textile production. The Franciscans controlled two important resources: abundant land and Indian labor. The mission domain granted to La Purísima, for example, covered some 84 square leagues, or about 149,000 hectares of land. Within this territory the Franciscans developed farming and ranching at different sites. In the 1830s the mission included seven ranchos dedicated to agriculture and ranching. The 1773 agreement between the Franciscans and the colonial government stipulated that the missions would supply the military with food, textiles, and leather goods. Therefore the missionaries organized the economy of the missions to produce large surpluses, unlike the mission economies of Texas and Baja California largely geared to self-sufficiency. The Franciscans also hired out Indian labor to both the military and local settlers, and large numbers of Indians from the missions worked on building projects, producing crops, tending livestock, and craft production.

The Franciscans supplied food and other goods directly to the presidios and the military guard stationed at each mission. The common practice was to hire mayordomos (overseers) to be directly responsible for the day-to-day management of the different economic activities at the missions. The Franciscans recruited overseers from either the local settler population, or else from the soldiers. Members of the mission guard often doubled as overseers. Overseers earned a salary in addition to food rations.

Wheat, com, and barley were the most important crops grown at the missions. Cultural factors played an important role in the decision on the choice of crops grown. Spaniards and settlers in northern Mexico perceived com to be an inferior “Indian” grain, and preferred wheat. Even today, the population of northern Mexico consumes wheat tortillas, whereas the population of central Mexico eats com tortillas. However, com produced more grain per unit planted than wheat. At La Purísima, for example, the ratio of wheat harvested to planted ranged between 2 to 24 fanegas (2.6 bushels), but com ranged from a low of 1 to 333 fanegas, and was consistently higher than wheat. Production levels fluctuated from year to year, but the largest wheat harvest was 4,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Mission Economics
• 2. The Building of the Missions
• 3. Social and Cultural Change
• 4. Indigenous Resistance and Social Control
• 5. The Demise of the Indian Populations in the Missions
• 6. The Demise of the Mission System
• 7. Conclusions
• Bibliographic Essay
• Index