Kachina and the Cross (2 page)

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Authors: Carroll L Riley

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BOOK: Kachina and the Cross
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Study of the early historic Southwest has been largely in the domain of historians and has tended to concentrate on the Spanish presence in this region. As an anthropologist I am also very interested in the Native Americans, and I believe that any comprehensive study of the Southwest must take account of the lifeways of the various indigenous populations as well as the newcomers. The seventeenth-century Southwest cannot be understood only in Spanish or only in Indian terms. Much of the social energy of that century resulted from the complex interaction between these culturally distinct peoples. In this book I offer a new interpretation of the first century of Spanish control of the upper Southwest; that is to say, the Franciscan mission area of Pueblo New Mexico and Arizona. The extension of the Southwest, southward into Sonora and Chihuahua (what our Mexican colleagues call "el norte [or noroeste] de México") will be touched on only as it relates to the province of New Mexico.
In order to provide context to the reader, I begin by surveying the "Spanish century" in the New World, a period when Spanish arms and missionary effort created a vast new empire for the Spanish Crown. It was at the end of this period of heroic and legendary expansion that the colonization of New Mexico took place. I shall then give a brief sketch of Pueblos and pre-Pueblos in the prehistoric Native American world of the Southwest. A third chapter will be devoted to the pre-seventeenth-century Spanish penetration of the Southwest. The balance of the book basically concerns the seventeenth century in the Southwest (or more exactly, the final years of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth).
The Spanish movement into the Greater Southwest began at a time when Spain's period of military and economic greatness had passed and the Spaniards at home and abroad were increasingly being challenged by other, rising European powers. The settlement of New Mexico as a Franciscan mission establishment took place over several generations, paralleled by the slow movement of Jesuit missionaries and their military support groups up the coast and into the interior valleys of Sonora. About the time that Spain established a more or less firm control over Pueblo New Mexico and Arizona, the Jesuits had finished their major penetration of the northern Sonoran heartland. The two conquest agendas, utilizing different strategies and somewhat diverse missionization aims, operated side by side but with relatively little interaction throughout the seventeenth century.
The seventeenth century in the province of New Mexico saw rapid, often forced acculturation of Native Americans. That very acculturation, however, created ripples of resentment that, as the century went on, became massive resistance, at first mainly passive, but with growing activism. This active resistance
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fed on the increasingly draconian Spanish reaction until in 1680 the province exploded into war. For a dozen years the Indians were independent, and even after the Spaniards returned in 1692, there was resistance and a second rebellion four years later. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the Spanish government was again in reasonably complete control of the Rio Grande Basin. The western portion of the province never again became a firm part of the Spanish imperium, and the Hopi people were able to remain completely outside it.
The history of seventeenth-century New Mexico, as suggested by the title of this book, was first and foremost a product of missionization and Native American reaction to this intense and sometimes ruthless missionizing effort. It was at the center a struggle of two very different religious ideologies: the religion of the Pueblos, symbolized in Spanish minds by the kachina cult, and the zealous Christianity of the Franciscans. In large part (though by no means totally) because of this struggle, the colony's first hundred years were very troubled, not only in comparison to the quieter years of eighteenth-century New Mexico, discussed below, but also compared to contemporary history in other parts of New Spain. The unique set of circumstances in seventeenth-century New Mexico (considered in chapter 7) produced levels of disquietude that simply were not matched in other provinces. The nineteenth-century Southwest was also a time of troubles, but in this case the problems were external rather than internal. Early in that century, there began a sea change, an actual shift of governments from Spaniard to Mexican, and then (a few decades later) to American.
The eighteenth century, largely beyond the purview of this book, saw different problems and different solutions. The chances of another successful rebellion, at least on the Rio Grande, became increasingly remote. Still, the Pueblos had won a partial victory. The religious heart of Pueblo culture was no longer under direct attack; more and more the missionaries turned a blind eye to what they chose to characterize as "harmless superstitions." The complex accommodation in Pueblo culture of native and Spanish ideas was largely bonded in the eighteenth centuryand it contained the basic elements of Pueblo religious and political life. To that extent the great rebellion of 1680 was not in vain.
In writing this book, I have relied heavily on the rich published materials: the Oñate documents edited by G. P. Hammond and A. Rey, the C. W. Hackett three-volume publication of the Bandelier collection from the Seville Archives, and the R. E. Twitchell two-volume compilation of the Spanish Archives of New Mexico. I have drawn extensively on the massive published contributions of F. V. Scholes, mentioned aboveworks that include both analysis and transcriptions of original documents. In that same period (1920s to 1950s) scholars such as E. B. Adams, L. B. Bloom, and Fray A. Chávez, among others, contributed to the base-
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line studies of Spanish and Pueblo life. Chávez, especially, pioneered genealogical studies of seventeenth and eighteenth-century New Mexico. There were, of course, important writers of the colonization era, especially Torquemada near the beginning of the seventeenth century and Vetancurt and Sigüenza y Góngora at the end of it. The two Memorials of Benavides and the work of Zárate Salmerón shed light on the earlier decades of the century. There are also narrative poems from this era. One of these, alas containing very little real information, was commissioned by Juan de Oñate as tribute to his dead son, Cristóbal. Fortunately, the other poem, a famous epic description of the first days of the New Mexico colony by Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, is filled with information on the nascent province. A splendid, heavily annotated new edition of this important work, with the Spanish text and English translation in parallel columns, was produced in 1992 by M. Encinias, A. Rodriguez and J. P. Sánchez. Another printed but strangely underutilized source for the period around A.D. 1600 is the two-volume work of Captain D. Bernardo de Vargas Machuca,
Milicia y descripción de las Indias.
Also valuable was the
Extracto de noticias
of Fray S. Vélez de Escalante, which I had available in a transcription from the Center for Southwestern Research (CSR) as well as in a translation by Eleanor Adams.
For the revolt and reconquest period there are several fine studies, especially those by C. W. Hackett and C. C. Shelby, and by J. M. Espinosa. No one writing on this period should be without the masterful multivolume study of de Vargas by J. L. Kessell and his associates R. Hendricks and M. D. Dodge. For the archaeology, genealogy, and history of the pre-revolt seventeenth century, I have greatly benefited from the various writings of, among others, J. A. Esquibel, R. A. Gutiérrez, S. M. Hordes, J. E. Ivey, F. Levine, M. Simmons, C. T. Snow, D. H. Snow, and L. Tigges.
I have also utilized the extensive Scholes collections at the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque; the New Mexico State Archives, Santa Fe; and the Documentary Relations of the Southwest (DRSW) collection at the Arizona State Museum and University of Arizona in Tucson. I also had available the microfilm collection of New Mexico Spanish archives, and microfilm of the Parral archives at New Mexico Highlands University, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) project transcription and translation of the New Mexico archives at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. In addition, the Museum of New Mexico History Library kindly made the collection of Martínez de Montoya papers available to me.
The general task I have set myself is to interpret seventeenth-century New Mexico as an anthropologist would see it. This was a land where several major
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ethnic groups cooperated and competed. There was a swirl of relationships among Pueblos, nomads and Spaniardsrelationships that changed over time and differed from one part of the province to another. What really happened in New Mexico can only be understood as a nexus of these interacting forces and the dynamic that they produced.
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Acknowledgments
A work such as this relies on many people with differing areas of expertise. Individuals who have read parts of the manuscript and given sage advice include Richard and Shirley Cushing Flint, Villanueva, New Mexico; James E. Ivey, National Park Service, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Edmund Ladd, Curator of Ethnology, Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; Charles H. Lange of Santa Fe; Richard V. Lee, Flagstaff, Arizona; Curtis F. Schaafsma, Curator of Anthropology, Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe; and Margaret Vazquez-Geffroy of New Mexico Highlands University. Nancy P. Hickerson of Texas Tech University was most generous in sharing materials from the western Plains. Cordelia T. Snow of the Archaeological Records Management Section (ARMS) of the Laboratory of Anthropology, and David H. Snow of the Cross Cultural Resources Center, Santa Fe, read the entire manuscript, and their detailed and incisive comments were of great benefit. Other thanks go to John Kessell, director of the Vargas Project, for his generosity in sharing copies of the Extracto de noticias, and for giving me other timely advice and information. Stanley M. Hordes, former New Mexico State Historian, kindly shared his research on seventeenth-century New Mexico with me, as did genealogist José A. Esquibel of Santa Fe. Marianne L. Stoller, Colorado College, generously allowed me to use student papers from her research on the Sánchez site (LA 20,000). Dody Fugate at the Laboratory of Anthropology contributed from her vast store of information on dogs in the Southwest. Laura Holt and Orlando Romero, librarians respectively at the Laboratory of Anthropology and the History Library of the Museum of New Mexico, offered splendid and sustained assistance as did various members of the ARMS staff at the Laboratory of Anthropology. Louise Stiver, Curator of Collections at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology (MIAC/LA), was most generous with her time and advice.
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Dianne Bird, archivist at MIAC/LA, and Louanna L. Haecker of ARMS gave good advice on illustrations, and Richard Rudisill and Arthur L. Olivas, Museum of New Mexico Photo Archives, supplied many of the plates. Rowyn L. Evans of Tucson, Arizona, assisted with maps. I very much appreciate the insights provided by reviewers for this book: Patrick H, Beckett, Rick Hendricks, and Charles W. Polzer, S.J.
Ornithologist Charmion R. McKusick advised me on various aspects of macaw and parrot trade into the Southwest as well as the religious implications of such trade. I also appreciate the generous help of Superintendent Duane Alire and his staff at Pecos National Historical Park. I wish to thank my colleagues, Jay (Courtway) Jones of Las Vegas and Virgil Wyaco of Zuni Pueblo, for their critiques of work on early historic Zuni, and Nancy Brown of the Center for Southwestern Research, Zimmerman Library, Albuquerque, for help with archival sources.
I greatly benefited from discussions with my wife, Brent Locke Riley, and my daughter, Victoria Riley Evans, both experts on various aspects of Southwestern archaeology and history. As always, any errors and misinterpretations in the book are my sole responsibility.
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Chapter One
Spain at the Flood
Spain's entry as a world power can reasonably be said to date from 1492, the year that the Muslims of southern Spain were finally defeated and, more important, that Columbus sailed to the New World. Of course, there was, technically speaking, no single political entity called ''Spain'' in 1492. Instead there were two more or less independent states, Aragón and Castile, united in the persons of their rulers, a married couple, Ferdinand and Isabella. Ferdinand (Fernando), the king of Aragón, also ruled Catalonia and Valencia on the east coast of Spain, while Isabella (Isabel), queen of Castile was the ruler of León, Asturias, and Galicia. Navarre, too, was to be incorporated into the Crown of Castile in 1515. The Islamic Kingdom of Granada, ruled by Abu Abd-Allah Muhammad (Boabdil), eleventh sultan of the Nasrid dynasty, surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella in January 1492 ending almost eight hundred years of Islamic political power in Spain.
Under Ferdinand and Isabella's grandson, Charles I of Spain (Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire), the peninsula was largely united; only Portugal in the westfor the time beingmaintained its independence. Greater Castile was the dominant partner from the beginning. With three times the area of Aragón in A.D. 1500 (225,000 square miles compared to 60,000) and more than six times the population (six and a half million to one million people), Castile was a dynamic warlike state honed by the long struggle with the Moorsaustere, narrowly religious, and parochial.
Under Charles and, to a lesser degree, his son Philip II (the latter reigning from 1556 till his death in 1598), the Spanish Empire continued to grow. Portugal, along with its own large overseas domain, was added in 1580. At the time of his death Philip II ruled over all of South and much of North America, and indeed claimed both continents. His period in power had been marked by considerable military success including a major naval victory at Lepanto over the

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