Salinas Pueblo Missions "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions Historic Structures Report

In the 1580s, when the first Spanish explorers marched through the area, the Salinas pueblos were already large villages. They had grown up over the previous centuries, the inheritors of the cultures that for several thousand years had occupied the Salinas Basin and the surrounding mountains and deserts. The Spanish incorporated the Salinas area into their existing social and administrative structures: the Roman Catholic Church and the civil government.

The church established a series of outposts called missions along the west edge of the Salinas Basin. Using the missions as starting points, the church endeavored to convert all the Indians of the Salinas area to Christianity and a European life-style. The missions were the hands of the church, part of a hierarchy of authority and responsibility extending all the way to the pope in Rome. At the same time they were agents of the Spanish crown, part of the pacification mechanism used on new frontiers. They supplied moral teaching, pragmatic training in farming and ranching, new food plants and animals, and instruction in the ways of European culture. They demanded labor and obedience in return.

The civil government of the Province of New Mexico also extended its authority into the Salinas Basin. This authority ultimately derived from the king of Spain, who ruled by Divine Right. The governor, appointed by the king's viceroy, the political head of New Spain, established his headquarters in Santa Fe. He appointed prominent settlers as alcaldes mayores, the representatives of his authority in subdivisions of the province called jurisdicciones, or jurisdictions. The governor gave selected men of the province the right to collect tribute from the pueblos in the form of cloth and grain, in return for their promise to supply military service when it was needed. The privilege was called encomienda, and the men who received it encomenderos. The encomendero, and others, also acquired some control over land not legally used by the Indians. The Europeans settled in the Salinas area as they had in the Rio Grande Valley, establishing a subsistence economy dependent on sheep and cattle ranching and farming. [1]

The settlers brought ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, that differed from the teachings of the church. The encomenderos demanded their tributes, sometimes without regard for whether the Indians had enough to feed themselves. The alcalde mayor enforced the decrees of the governor, although sometimes they undermined the authority and image of the church. The result was conflict between the church and the civil government, the two authorities that claimed the right to rule the pueblos.

The daily life of the pueblos and missions, and the changes in that life resulting from the stresses between the church, the pueblos and the government, left their marks on the structures built by each group. In order for the origin, changes, and abandonment of the structures at the Salinas pueblos to be understood, the context within which these events occurred must be known.

THE ORIGINS OF THE SALINAS PUEBLOS

The springs and catch-basins around ancient Lake Estancia attracted visitors since human beings first moved through the Salinas Basin. Archeologists have found evidence of brief occupation as early as 6000 BC. Short-term visits continued until about 700 AD, when people settled permanently in the area and began to build pit-houses. Concentrations of population built up at the most favorable locations. [2]

In about the twelfth century, Early Puebloan cultures began to appear in the area. They may have developed from the earlier transient populations, settling permanently in the area. Early Puebloan cultures in the Salinas area show some indications of contact with the Anasazi of northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, and the Four Corners area. They built small "villages" of above-ground jacales, structures with cobblestone or masonry wall bases and superstructures of close-set vertical posts plastered with mud. Each village might also have a few pit-house-like structures. [3]

By the early fourteenth century, these groups had developed into Late Puebloan cultures. The Late Puebloan cultures built the large, integrated villages found by the Spaniards when they began to move into the area. [4] Late Puebloans, from whom modern Pueblo Indians developed, were composed of several major linguistic groups across the Southwest. The central group was the Anasazi, living in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. They may have spoken Keresan, a language with no known relationship to other Native American languages. Along the northern Rio Grande lived a group of Puebloans that may have been related to the Anasazi. The eastern Puebloans spoke several closely related languages, all variants of the Tanoan language group. South of the Tanoan speaking Puebloans, along the Rio Grande, lived another group of Indians. They spoke a language called Piro that may have also been part of the Tanoan language group. The Piro speakers had some contact with the Anasazi, but probably were not part of their interacting cultural association of the Four Corners area and northern New Mexico.

Tanoan is related to Kiowa, a Plains Indian language. Linguistic analysis suggests that about three thousand years ago Indians speaking the ancestral Kiowa-Tanoan language separated into two groups. One group became the Tanoan speaking Indians of New Mexico and the other the Kiowa speakers of the Great Plains. Tanoan further separated into several closely related languages: Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa. Today Tiwa is spoken at Taos, Pícuris, Sandía, and Isleta, Tewa at Santa Clara, San Juan, San Ildefonso, Nambé, Tesuque, and Pojoaque; and Towa at Jemez. Tewa speakers once lived in the now-empty pueblos of the Galisteo Basin, and Towa speakers at Pecos. Piro, spoken in the abandoned pueblos of the southern Rio Grande such as Senecú and Socorro, and Tompiro, the dialect spoken in the southern Salinas pueblos, may be related to the Tanoan family of languages, but not enough examples of Piro and Tompiro survive to allow a detailed analysis. The modern distribution indicates that the Tanoan speakers who settled along the northern part of the Rio Grande and the eastern plains developed the Tiwa-Tewa-Towa groups, while another group along the southern Rio Grande developed the Piro language. [5]

In perhaps the twelfth century, Tiwa speaking Indians from the Rio Grande Valley to the northwest and Piro speaking Indians from the Rio Grande Valley to the west moved into the Salinas area and established the small Early Puebloan settlements. The Tiwa speakers settled along the west side of the Salinas Basin at about the same time that Piro speakers settled the area along the south side of the basin from Abó Pass east and southeastward. Construction on the first permanent buildings at Abó began in perhaps the late eleventh or early twelfth century, while construction of the other Salinas pueblo sites did not begin until later.

About 1300, Anasazi culture collapsed in the San Juan Basin. This may have been the cause of the migration of Keresan speaking Indians towards the south and east and may have been partly responsible for the development of Late Puebloan culture in the Rio Grande and Salinas basins. Keresans settled on the central Rio Grande, in the area presently occupied by the Keresan speaking pueblos of Zia, Santa Ana, San Felipe, Santo Domingo, and Cochiti. At roughly the same time, the occupants of the Salinas Basin built the first major structures on the sites of a number of Salinas pueblos, and expanded the construction at Abó. Nine of the pueblos eventually grew into the towns that played major parts in the history of the Salinas area during the seventeenth century. [6]

Tiwa speaking Indians established the northern three of the nine pueblos, later known as Chililí, Tajique, and Quarai, while Piro speaking Indians settled the other six, three of which were called Abó, Las Humanas, [7] and Tabirá by the Spanish. The remaining three are presently called LA 200, five miles west of Abó; Pueblo Pardo, three miles south of Las Humanas; and Pueblo Colorado, four miles southeast of Tabirá. These three were probably among the Piro speaking pueblos mentioned in the records from early Spanish exploration of the region east of the Manzanos. They undoubtedly figured in the exploration and first contacts of 1580-1598 but were abandoned in the early 1600s. They undoubtedly figured in the exploration and first contacts of 1580-1598 but were abandoned in the early 1600s. [8]

Figure 1. The Salinas Basin.
(click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

The separation of the southern pueblo sites from the Piro speakers of the Rio Grande, and their association with the Plains Indians eventually caused the Piro language of these six pueblos to develop into a variant dialect called Tompiro. [9] By the late sixteenth century, association with the plains Indians had increased the differences among the Tompiro pueblos themselves. When the Spanish arrived after 1580, they divided the Tompiro speakers of Abó and its associated pueblos from those in the area of Las Humanas, whom they called Jumanos, or rayados (striped ones). [10] The name indicates that at least some of the Indians of the eastern Tompiro pueblos resembled Indians to the southeast that the Spanish called Jumanos, who had the trait of tattooing or painting stripes on their faces. However, the non-Tompiro Indians that frequented Las Humanas were probably Apache, rather than Jumanos.

Chililí, Tajique, Quarai and Abó formed a line from north to south about twenty-five miles east of the Rio Grande, in the foothills of the east slope of the Manzano Mountains. The country here is rolling hills rising to the west towards the mountains, covered with juniper, piñon, and Ponderosa pine on the higher hills and mountain slopes. Streams flow down to the east from the Manzanos into the Salinas Basin, where they sink into the soil. The ground-water eventually reaches the salt lagoons covering the lowest areas. [11] The Tiwas built Chililí on Chililí Creek in what is now the southwest corner of Bernalillo County. A modern town covers the site today. Tajique, also a modern town now, lies on the Arroyo de Tajique, eleven miles south in northwestern Torrance County, in the Tularosa Basin. Another eleven miles south stands the mounds of the pueblo of Quarai, beside a group of springs in the Cañon de Sapato. The ruins of Abó are twelve miles farther south on the Cañon de Espinosa in Abó Pass, the main route from the southern pueblos of the Rio Grande, such as Senecú and Socorro, to the salt deposits of the Salinas Basin, more than twenty miles farther east. The mounds of Las Humanas, now called Gran Quivira, top a hill twenty-one miles southeast of Abó, on the south edge of Torrance County. Three miles south of Las Humanas is its neighboring pueblo called Pueblo Pardo. Tabirá, also known as Pueblo Blanco, is an isolated ruin fifteen miles northeast of Las Humanas.

Their location east of the mountains separating the Rio Grande valley from the plains, exposed the pueblos to the southern Plains Indians, most of whom were Apache. All the pueblos developed relationships with the plains Indians that were at least seasonally cordial. At Las Humanas and Tabirá, the most exposed, however, the relationship went beyond cordiality to virtual coexistence. By the late sixteenth century Plains Indians formed some part of the daily social life of these pueblos. This probably included family ties such as developed at Pecos and Taos pueblos, also on the edge of the plains to the north. Because of the association, the Spaniards differentiated between the western Tompiros at Abó and the eastern Tompiros at Las Humanas and Tabirá. The linguistic difference between the Tompiros and the Tiwas caused another, administrative separation between the two groups within the Salinas area. [12]

Because the language and culture of the Indians of the Tompiro pueblos did not survive into the present, little is known of their social structure. They probably lived in ways similar to the Tanoan speaking pueblos of the Rio Grande valley. Here the village leader and his council exercised strong, centralized political control, allocated land, and determined who could and could not live in the pueblo. Much of the social life of the pueblos revolved around the division of the people into various paired groups, called moieties, with duties associated with summer or winter. Responsibility for the cycle of ceremonies during the year moved back and forth between the two moieties according to the season. Moieties were usually established along the lines of kinship groups. [13] Although Puebloan society could appear remarkably homogenous, friction did occur within a given pueblo. The discord could result in the formation of opposing factions, probably also divided along the lines of kinship groups. The appearance of harmony or homogeneity could be deceiving. Faction differences apparently could cause the collapse of the social structure of a pueblo, resulting in the abandonment of the site. At a less disruptive level, factions or kinship groups may not have been as communal as is thought today. There is evidence, for example, that during a famine some families could do well while others in the same pueblo were starving. [14]

Abó

The first pueblo construction at Abó began about 1100 with work on what is now mound B, on the west side of Espinoso Creek. The inhabitants were attracted to the area by the springs that supplied them with water even during dry periods. One of these still flows on the east bank of the creek, southwest of the Eliseo Sisneros house. Abó probably had fields of maize and cotton on the nearby floodplain of Abó Arroyo and its side canyons, watered by the springs and occasional rainfall. [15]

Over the next several centuries, the Indians of Abó built additional blocks of houses. Most grew up to the north and south of block B from 1100 to the late 1500s. Around 1600 the residents began to build house block J, a long rectangular enclosure on the east side of the creek. By this time they had probably abandoned most of the earlier, western buildings, continuing to use only those along the banks of the creek. [16]

Quarai

The earliest known occupants at Quarai constructed several masonry pueblo buildings beginning around 1300. [17] One was the group of structures that later became mound A near the springs at the south side of the site of Quarai. [18] This may have been a round pueblo similar to the earliest structure under mound 7 at Gran Quivira. A second pueblo structure later became mound X, the site selected by the Spanish for the church and convento of Concepción de Quarai. [19]

The Indians abandoned mounds A and X about 1425. By this time they had already begun the buildings grouped around plaza D. These buildings became mounds B, C, D, E, and the south half of G. [20] About 1500 the Indians built the room blocks of mound F and the north half of mound G around plaza C. The buildings may have reached three stories in some parts of the pueblo. This was the pueblo of Quarai as seen by the first Spaniards to visit the area. [21] Quarai may have originally been named Acolocu or Agualacu, and was usually called Cuarac by the Spaniards. [22]

Quarai and the other two Tiwa pueblos, Tajique and Chililí, spoke the same language, shared social connections, occupied similar locations on spring-fed streams, and apparently had areas of farmland that they worked in common, probably on the smooth flats east of the three pueblos where the mountain streams flowed out onto the floor of the Estancia Basin. The Franciscans saw these pueblos as a perfect missionary opportunity.

Las Humanas

About 1300, the Indians began the construction of a large circular pueblo on the present site of mound 7 at Gran Quivira. About the same time they built a second circular pueblo south of the first, under mounds 7 and 8. The mound 7 pueblo was similar to Tyuonyi on Frijoles Creek in Bandelier National Monument and to the circular structure perhaps underlying mound A at Quarai.

About 1400, the Indians had abandoned most of the rooms in the round structure and had built several rectangular room blocks adjacent to them. These rooms were occupied from 1400 to about 1515. From 1515 to 1545 no one lived in the rooms of mound 7, but probably continued to occupy other nearby room blocks.

Beginning about 1545, the residents of Las Humanas began to expand the house block of mound 7. As of 1598, they probably lived in houses composing mounds 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 18. [23]

EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION OF NEW MEXICO

As Francisco Vasquez de Coronado tried to deal with the upper Rio Grande pueblos in 1540 through 1542, he heard of the Salinas pueblos, but apparently none of his party had the opportunity to visit them. The first Spaniards to see the Salinas area were the Chamuscado-Rodriguez and Espejo expeditions of the early 1580s. In the winter of 1581-82 the expedition lead by Captain Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado and Fray Agustín Rodriguez entered the Salinas Basin from the north and visited five pueblos. In Abó, the southernmost of these, the explorers heard of the three pueblos of the Jumanos to the southeast, but were unable to visit them because of the deep snow. [24]

In 1583 Captain Antonio de Espejo's expedition visited two pueblos just across the Manzano Mountains from the Rio Grande. One of these may have been Abó and the other the site now called LA 200, but Espejo was too vague about his location for this to be certain. [25] There is some disagreement about the place presently called LA 200, about four miles west of Abó. It has attracted attention because it is one of the two large sites in the Salinas area that were occupied after 1600 and for which no other historical association can be suggested. The other site is LA 83, also called Pueblo Pardo, about three miles south of Las Humanas. The archeological evidence for occupation of LA 200 after 1600 is not well documented. Based on his visits to the site, however, Alden Hayes has no doubt that LA 200 was occupied until at least the mid-1600s. [26] H. P. Mera decided that parts of the site were in use until almost 1700, based on a surface collection of ceramics. No surveys or excavations more recent than Mera's have been published. The Site Survey files of the Laboratory of Anthropology add little information to Mera's statements, but do not contradict them. One structure excavated within LA 200 was described in these files as a "Spanish structure, probably a chapel," but this claim has since been abandoned.

Bandelier and others after him have assigned the name "Ténabo" to LA 200. "Ténabo" is an almost mythical place whose existence derives entirely from two statements by Fray Agustín de Vetancurt in 1698. [27] Vetancurt described Ténabo and Tabirá as small pueblos that were visitas of Abó, and stated that Fray Francisco de Acevedo built churches at the two places. His phrasing implied that Ténabo was almost as far east as Tabirá.

Reference to a "Pénabo" (possibly the same village as the Ténabo mentioned by Vetancurt) associated with Abó appeared in a letter by Fray Alonso de Peinado dated October 4, 1622. [28] Peinado stated that Abó and Pénabo had recently been reduced to faith and obedience. The construction of the first church at Abó probably started in that year; it is possible that a similar start was made on a visita chapel at "Pénabo." It would be difficult to attribute such a chapel to Acevedo, who did not arrive at Abó until seven years later. Perhaps the first missionary visits to "Pénabo" began in 1622, but no visita chapel was built until Acevedo did so sometime after 1629. Pénabo is not mentioned again in contemporary records and Ténabo is never mentioned at all before 1698, unless Vetancurt miscopied Peinado's 1622 reference or saw other statements about Ténabo, presently unknown.

There are also two tantalizing mentions of a "second Abó" in the available records. These may be construed as references to "Ténabo." The first was a mention in 1598 of a "second Abó" one and a half leagues (between three and ten miles) from Las Humanas. [29] The second was 250 years later, when in 1846 Lieutenant James W. Abert mentioned his encounter with a tradition in the Manzano area that there was a second Abó much further off than the site now known as Abó, and that it was located in an area where there was "no water, no pasture, no sign of a road, [and] no people . . . ." [30] Such a description would fit a site located near Las Humanas better than one near Abó.

Where was the place called Ténabo? If the references to Ténabo, Pénabo, and "a second Abó" all refer to the same place, that place must have certain characteristics. It should be smaller than Abó, should be between three and ten miles from Las Humanas (perhaps in the general area of Tabirá), and should have been abandoned between 1629 and about 1641. There are two sites that fulfill these characteristics: LA 476, known as Pueblo Colorado, and LA 83, Pueblo Pardo. The artifact collections from these two pueblos contain very few sherds that date after 1600. It is generally accepted that Pardo was abandoned between 1600 and 1650 and Colorado perhaps before 1600. So far no chapel has been recognized at either Pueblo Colorado or Pueblo Pardo, but this may indicate only that the ruins still wait to be found. On the other hand, if Schroeder's arguments about the "second Abó" are correct, then the location would be near Abó, but all the other characteristics would be the same. The only certain identification of Ténabo would come by finding a visita chapel in the ruins of LA 83 or LA 200.

It is possible, therefore, that the pueblo of Ténabo has yet to be recognized, and that Pueblo Pardo is a strong candidates for that name. LA 200 is a more likely candidate, but archeologists and historians should remember that it is only thought to be Ténabo. Repetition of the name does not make it correct. [31]

The Establishment of the Colony of New Mexico

In 1598, Don Juan de Oñate established a permanent Spanish settlement in New Mexico. In September he located the capital of the new province at the pueblo of San Gabriel on the west side of the Rio Grande across from Pueblo San Juan, a few miles north of present Española. It remained there until late 1610. During the first year of the colonization, Oñate visited most of the pueblos of New Mexico to establish in their minds that they were a conquered people. As part of this political tour of conquest, he had each pueblo indicate their agreement to the "Act of Obedience and Vassalage," which in effect legalized the ownership of each pueblo by the king of Spain. It is, of course, unlikely that the Indians understood the import of their agreement. Oñate covered the Salinas area in late 1598. Ayquian and Aguim, the village leaders of the pueblo of Acolocu, probably later known as the pueblo of Cuarac or Quarai, signed the "Act of Obedience" on October 12, 1598. On October 17, the three "captains" of the villages of the Jumanos or Rayados, signed at Cueloce (probably Las Humanas). They were Yolha of Cueloce, Pocaetaqui of Genobey (perhaps Pueblo Pardo), and Haye of Pataoce (perhaps Tabirá). [32]

The status of the Salinas pueblos as "vassals" was not so easily assured, however. In late 1600, the Indians of Abó attacked a party of five Spanish soldiers, apparently deserters, who were on their way from provincial headquarters at San Gabriel to Mexico City. Two of the soldiers were killed in the attack. When word of the deaths reached San Gabriel, along with rumors of an Indian revolt against the authority of the Spaniards, the Franciscans and soldiers demanded that the rebellious Indians be punished to insure the security of the small colony. Oñate dispatched a troop of soldiers under the command of Captain Vicente de Záldivar from San Gabriel to punish Abó. The troop was attacked near Acolocu. In the course of the battle, the Indians retreated into the houses of the pueblo. During the siege that followed, Záldivar killed a number of Indians and burned a major section of Acolocu. The Indians soon rebelled again, but by the end of 1601 peace returned to the Salinas area. [33]

The Founding of the Mission System

The central missions of New Mexico were founded between 1598 and 1615. After a brief flurry of mission establishment from 1598 to 1600, the Franciscan effort slowed from 1601 to 1609. During these years only ten friars served in New Mexico. An increase in the number of missionaries and a reorganization of the provincial government around a new capitol town called Santa Fe allowed active development of the mission system outside the area of the upper Rio Grande in 1610. [34] A convento founded about 1600 at the pueblo of Santo Domingo, a few miles north of present Bernalillo, became ecclesiastical headquarters for the region in 1610, at the same time as the provincial capital was being established. [35]

The Salinas area was included in this developing mission system. In 1598, Fray Francisco de San Miguel was assigned to begin the conversion of Pecos and the Salinas pueblos, but apparently never visited the Salinas area during the first faltering years of the colonization effort. [36] Salinas was, however, an important part of the new effort that began in 1610. Fray Alonso de Peinado established the first mission in the Salinas area at Chililí in 1613 or 1614. Abó received a mission in 1622. It was probably administered by Fray Francisco Fonte, who arrived in New Mexico in late 1621, and was the missionary at Abó in January, 1626. [37] Fray Juan Gutiérrez de la Chica, who arrived in the province in December, 1625, was probably assigned to convert Quarai beginning in early 1626. Tajique received a mission in 1629, administered by Fray Francisco de la Concepción. At the same time Fray Francisco Letrado was assigned to Las Humanas. Within five years the Las Humanas mission was changed to a visita of Abó and Letrado was transferred to Hawikuh. [38]

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COLONY

In the seventeenth century, New Mexico suffered from serious administrative problems. Many of these problems derived from conflicts between the two major powers in the colony: the governor and the custodian of the missions. Each of these men had extensive authority. Unfortunately, their areas of authority overlapped in several ways. This frequently led to direct conflict between the two offices.

One of the main reasons for the existence of the colony was to support the missionary effort of the Franciscans. Among his other duties, the governor of the province was intended to act as police force, judge and jury for the missions when needed. In many cases, however, the Franciscan establishment in a pueblo was isolated from the civil government by a considerable distance. To compensate for this, the viceroy gave the Franciscans wide judicial authority in the early years of the colony. They became accustomed to judging violations of civil law as well as church law, to punishing crimes as well as sins. Such authority inevitably brought them into conflict with the governors of New Mexico, who were technically the highest civil authority in the province. The governors attempted to restrict the judicial authority of the Franciscans to church matters alone, while the missionaries continued to punish Indians for any violation of the law, regardless of whether the law being broken was church law or civil law. The Franciscans fought back against the power of the governor with the weapons available to them, the powers of excommunication, of withholding the sacraments from the colonists, and of the Inquisition. [39]

The conflict continued through the seventeenth century and colored all other aspects of colonial life in New Mexico. The level of animosity between the governors and the Franciscans directly affected the fortunes of the missions.

Civil Administration

The governor of the province of New Mexico had specific duties and authority. The principal duties were to promote the general welfare of the province, to defend the province from internal revolt and outside attack, to foster and protect the missions, to protect the settled Pueblo Indians from abuse and exploitation, and to secure the administration of justice. [40]

In order for the governor to carry out these duties, the Spanish administrative system gave him a wide range of authority. This included, for example, the power to issue ordinances and decrees, to supervise the government of the Villa of Santa Fe, to select new sites for settlement, to supervise the assignment of land and water rights, and to maintain the roads of the province, especially the Camino Real, the principal route from Santa Fe to the supply centers of northern Mexico.

The governor was the commander of the military forces of the province and was responsible for ensuring that those forces were sufficient for the protection of the people. Since there was no formal military establishment, the army was made up of militia, or citizen-soldiers. Because the governor could not pay these men, he compensated them by granting them an "encomienda," the rights to the tribute taken from a conquered Indian pueblo.

An important part of the governor's authority was the right to divide the province into lesser administrative districts, to appoint officials to administer these districts, and to supervise their administration. It was this authorization that permitted the establishment of regional jurisdictions such as that of Las Salinas, each administered by an alcalde mayor, or chief judge.

The requirements that the governor aid the missionary program and that he protect the Indians from abuse sometimes conflicted with each other. Aid to the missionary effort usually came in the form of military escorts for the supply trains, protective detachments for missionaries entering potentially dangerous Indian pueblos, and displays of force at already converted pueblos when the demands of the mission led to opposition and protest by the populace. Frequently governors would donate goods and supplies to an individual mission for aid in its construction or for furnishings and vestments. However, many governors adopted an antagonistic role toward the missionary system in the area of Indian protection. The source of the antagonism lay in the overlapping areas of the judicial authority of the governor and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the missionaries.

As part of his duties, the governor had direct judicial authority over:

1) Cases of military discipline and privilege;

2) Cases of sedition;

3) Cases involving questions of encomienda and allocation of the revenues from pueblos;

4) Cases dealing with Indians in the Villa of Santa Fe; and

5) Appellate jurisdiction in cases appealed from the magistrates of the Villa of Santa Fe and in cases referred from the judges of the rural subdivisions of the provinces--the alcaldes mayores and Indian alcaldes mayores of the rural jurisdictions. [41]

The jurisdiction structure, a standard management system in New Spain, divided New Mexico into regions, each with a civil administrator, the alcalde mayor, who was appointed by and acted for the governor. Each Indian Pueblo within the jurisdiction had its own "district," or area controlled by the pueblo, wherein justice was administered by the Spanish alcalde of the town. Controversial decisions of the Spanish alcalde of a town would be brought to the alcalde mayor of the jurisdiction for an opinion. The decisions of the alcalde mayor could be appealed to the governor of the province. [42]

The Indian population of the jurisdiction had a similar judicial structure. Each pueblo had an Indian alcalde who administered justice to the Indians within the community's district. His decisions could be reviewed or reversed by the Indian alcalde mayor of the jurisdiction of Salinas. As in the Spanish legal system, decisions by the Indian alcalde mayor could be appealed to the governor. The Indian alcalde represented the continuing effort of the Spanish to include the Indians, however arbitrarily, in the governmental processes of the province. [43]

The governor probably did not establish the jurisdictions of New Mexico until several decades after the founding of the province, perhaps as late as the 1650s. Although the Royal instructions to the governors of New Mexico had always contained provisions for the establishment of jurisdictions, there had been no need for them during the early years because the province had few colonists, most of which were concentrated near Santa Fe. The church administered ecclesiastical justice everywhere else. By the late 1640s, however, settlements of Spanish citizens had grown up in various parts of the province, usually in direct association with a group of pueblos or in areas where farming and ranch land were available. [44] This shift in the distribution of the population away from Santa Fe, and the conflicts between the governor and prominent citizens of the province, apparently resulted in the establishment of rural jurisdictions about 1650. [45] The changes decentralized political authority somewhat, reducing the extreme concentration of power in the hands of the governor alone. At the same time it brought civil justice to the pueblos, until then presided over entirely by the local missionaries. The "intrusion" of civil authority into areas that the missionaries considered entirely ecclesiastical intensified the conflict between the Franciscans and the governor. [46] After 1659 the additional practice of appointing a lieutenant governor who was responsible for the southern half of the province became a standard procedure in New Mexico, further diluting the authority of the governor. [47]

The governor established the headquarters for the Jurisdiction of Las Salinas at Tajique before 1656. The jurisdiction included the three Tiwa pueblos of Chililí, Tajique, Quarai, the Tompiro pueblos of Abó, Las Humanas and Tabirá, and all Spanish estancias, or ranching and farming establishments, in the same area. As in other jurisdictions, each pueblo had a Spanish alcalde, or magistrate, who administered the law in the district of the pueblo. The alcalde mayor of Las Salinas seems also to have been the alcalde of the district of Tajique. The references to this arrangement imply that some land rights to property near Tajique were included with the office. The Tompiro speaking pueblos were included in the jurisdiction of Las Salinas, but were frequently spoken of as though they were a division separate from the three Tiwa pueblos. [48]

Captain Pedro de Leiba is the earliest known alcalde mayor of the Salinas Jurisdiction. He was apparently appointed by governor Juan Manso de Contreras in 1656, but governor López de Mendizábal replaced him about 1660 because Leiba was "partial to the affairs of the Church." Pedro de Leiba apparently stayed on his estancia near Tajique until the abandonment of the jurisdiction of Salinas. He became field commander of New Mexico under Governor Don Antonio de Otermín, and distinguished himself during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and its aftermath. His wife and children were killed at Galisteo during the revolt. [49]

Nicolás de Aguilar became the new alcalde mayor of Las Salinas in late 1660 and moved from his estancia near Chililí to the district of the alcalde mayor at Tajique. [50] He was arrested by the Inquisition in 1662, along with governor Bernardo López de Mendizábal, and taken to Mexico City. He never returned to the province of New Mexico.

After Aguilar, Joseph Nieto served as alcalde mayor of Las Salinas from 1662 until at least April, 1668, and possibly until Tajique was abandoned in late 1677. Nieto lived one league (about 2 1/2 miles) south of Tajique on the road to Quarai, in the area of the present town of Torreon. His brother and family lived near the pueblo of Quarai at the same time. In late 1677, with the abandonment of the last pueblo of the Salinas jurisdiction, Joseph Nieto moved to Galisteo. He and his family were killed there during the Pueblo Revolt. [51]

Spanish Construction In The Pueblos

At the three major pueblos of Quarai, Abó, and Las Humanas, the direct structural influence of the Spanish presence was recorded in construction carried out during the active life of the Salinas missions. At Quarai the Indians constructed mounds H, I, and J, laid out so that they formed an enclosed plaza, plaza A, on the west side of the church, with the north and south rows of houses aligned with the north and south sides of the mission complex. The masons also constructed a large Spanish-style building at the east end of mound J, adjacent to the church. This structure was probably the casa real, the Spanish government's official offices and travelling official's dwelling in the pueblo. [52] At Abó, an almost identical complex was built on the west side of the church, with several courtyards enclosed by Indian dwellings and a Spanish structure at the east end of the south side, adjacent to the church. At Las Humanas a similar plaza has been identified on the north side of the church of San Buenaventura, but no excavations have been conducted to date the buildings. However, with the example of the other two major missions of Salinas to go on, it is probable that future work will confirm that the plaza buildings were built after 1660 as the beginnings of a Spanish enclosure.

These compounds, belonging more to the Spanish government and civil authority than to the church or the pueblo, appear to have been a common feature at the mission-controlled pueblos of the seventeenth century. Similar structures have been found immediately north of the church at Pecos, at Hawikuh, and some indications at Awatovi. The available evidence suggests the hypothesis that all missions of seventeenth-century New Mexico had a civil compound near the church on the opposite side from the convento.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COLONY (continued)

The Private Sector: Estancias and Encomiendas

Estancias

As part of the advancement of the province of New Mexico, the governor encouraged the controlled development of empty land by the colonists. The number of privately-owned estancias increased rapidly during the mid-1600s. Most were in the valleys of the Rio Grande and its tributaries between San Juan Pueblo on the north and Socorro Pueblo on the south. By 1640 about eleven privately-owned estancias and twenty-five mission-owned estancias had been established along this part of the river. By the 1660s there were nearly sixty mission-owned estancias. Of these, forty-six stood between Sandía and Isleta Pueblos, where only fourteen had been in 1640. [53] The number of private estancias in this area in the 1660s is presently unknown, but could have increased by the same proportion. In 1665 the European population of New Mexico numbered more than two thousand people. A little more than a hundred of these lived in Santa Fe--most lived on estancias and in smaller settlements near major pueblos. [54]

Privately owned ranches or estancias made use of the land and water, and could legally use Indian labor only on a daily-wage basis, an arrangement called repartimiento. They had no direct claim on the products of nearby pueblos except by purchase, and technically could not encroach within 3 leagues (about 9 miles) of them. [55] This regulation was frequently ignored, and it may be that the governor of New Mexico had established a regulation allowing civil settlement as close as one league (about 2.6 miles) from a pueblo. One of the earliest references to an estancia in the Salinas area illustrates this situation. In 1633, while serving as the missionary at Quarai, Fray Estévan de Perea wrote that the governor allowed colonists to set up farms and ranches on the fields of the Indians. In some cases he even permitted encroachment on land used by the conventos. For example, a colonist had established a ranch near Quarai. He built corrals and his residence on the cotton fields shared jointly by the "three neighboring pueblos," and ran his cattle and sheep in the area. [56] The "three neighboring pueblos" were probably Quarai, Tajique, and Chililí. Perea's letter may refer to the founding of the ranch of don Luis Martín Serrano or his wife, Doña Catharina de Zalazar, perhaps where the town of Manzano is now located. [56]

Most historical studies have left the reader with the impression that, other than the pueblos with their missions, the Salinas area was empty. This is not the case. Mission records mention at least six estancias between Quarai and Chililí, those of Captain Leiba, Nicolás de Aguilar, Alonso Barba, two branches of the Nieto family, and Doña Zalazar. There were undoubtedly other families making use of the rich farmland and dependable water of the streams and springs along the eastern slopes of the Manzano Mountains. As yet, no ranchers are known in the areas around Abó and Las Humanas. It is likely that some Spanish settlers homesteaded in the district of Abó, but the lack of water in the territory around Las Humanas probably prevented their settling there. [58]

The Encomienda

The rights to the tribute collected from the "conquered" pueblos were assigned by the governor, as the agent of the king, to those persons who had entered into an agreement with the provincial government to provide military service in return for those rights. The system of paying for military service with the goods produced by a specific pueblo was called "encomienda."

Encomienda was derived from earlier service arrangements common in Spain during the Reconquest. The government of New Spain established the practice soon after the conquest of Mexico in 1521. In the early days of the encomienda in Mexico, labor could be substituted for tribute by the encomendero, but eventually the abuses of the system became so great that king Carlos I ruled against tribute by labor. His "New Laws" of 1542 caused a tumult of opposition from most authorities, including the missionaries, in New Spain, leading the king to moderate the laws. The end result was a set of ambivalent regulations controlling Indian tribute labor. These regulations fixed the relationship between the Spanish and the pueblos of New Mexico. [59]

In New Mexico, the letter of the law permitted encomenderos to take tribute only in the form of goods such as blankets, hides, and corn. Requiring tribute in the form of labor was illegal. A separate legal provision called repartimiento, however, allowed the governor, the missionaries, and the encomenderos to force the Indians to work for them, so long as the Indians were compensated for their time. Frequently, however, such compensation never occurred. Repartimiento became a point of contention between the governor and the missionaries during the severe church-state conflicts of the 1660s. The governor claimed that the Franciscans should compensate the Indians for the work they did for the missions, while the missionaries insisted that the work was part of the process of conversion, so that the Indians required no pay.

Encomenderos were persons of influence in the economic structure of New Mexico, because they had some control over one of the major sources of wealth in the province: the Indian pueblos. Because the Franciscans also had some control of this resource, the opportunities for conflict between encomenderos and Franciscans were numerous. However, both groups were dependent on the pueblos for their economic well-being and generally tended toward a wary co-existence.

The encomienda system had stabilized in New Mexico by the 1630s. The governor had established a limit of thirty-five on the number of encomiendas. Because the privilege could be handed down to heirs for three generations, the tributes of a given pueblo were apparently soon divided among two or more persons. [60] Tribute was usually figured as one manta, or blanket, about fifty inches square, and one fanega of corn, or about 1.6 bushels, [61] per household of the Pueblo. This was calculated to have a value of ten reales. Fray Juan de Prada remarked in 1638 that the practice of assessing tribute by house rather than by family led to a reduced income for encomenderos because three or four families lived in each house. [62]

Encomenderos, because of their relative wealth, frequently owned ranches and farms in the area of their encomienda. Undoubtedly there were several estancias operated by encomenderos in the Salinas jurisdiction. The majority of estancias, however, were owned by ordinary settlers with no other source of subsistence. These settlers formed a reservoir from which encomenderos could draw manpower to create the military forces they had agreed to supply. A dependency system was created, where the average settler augmented his living from his own estancia with support from an encomendero. In return for this the estanciero was available for military service under the encomendero as needed.

Only a few of the encomenderos of the Salinas pueblos are known. These date from the period from 1660 to 1665, when the majority of the available documents dealing with Salinas were written. Francisco and Cristobal de Anaya Almazán owned the encomienda of Quarai in 1662. Hernando and Miguel de Hinojos, possibly father and son, owned Las Humanas. After them, the encomienda from Las Humanas divided among Alonso Rodriguez Cisneros, Sebastian Gonzales Bernal and his son Juan Gonzales Bernal. In 1662, Francisco Gomez Robledo held one-half of the encomienda of Abó. [63]

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COLONY (continued)

Ecclesiastical Administration

The establishment of ecclesiastical headquarters at Santo Domingo, where it remained for most of the rest of the seventeenth century, allowed the organization of the Franciscan administrative structure to operate virtually unchanged throughout the life of colonial New Mexico. The areas that are now New Mexico and northern Arizona were then the Santa Custodia de la Conversión de San Pablo de Nuevo Mexico, the "Holy Custodia of the Conversion of Saint Paul of New Mexico," under the authority of the provincial, or chief administrator, and the directing council of the Provincia de Santo Evangelio de Tampico y Nuevo Mexico, the "Province of the Holy Gospel of Tampico and New Mexico," in Mexico City. The provincial and council selected the custodio, the supervisor or custodian of the custodia of San Pablo. Under the custodio was the difinitorio, a governing committee that aided him in managing the affairs of the custodia. There were usually four members, called the difinitors, on the committee. They were elected every year at the annual meeting of the custodial chapter, at the same time that many other business matters of the custodia were attended to. [64]

The chapter meetings, held usually in August or September at Santo Domingo, or at San José de Giusewa near present Jemez Springs after about 1660, were attended by as many of the Franciscans of the custodia as could make the trip. Frequently no more than the custodio and the difinitors attended. Among other things, the chapter meetings determined at which mission a friar would serve. The first chapter meeting after the arrival of a group of new friars with the triennial supply train usually saw a great deal of activity. New missions were established then, or new friars assigned to already-established missions, while veterans were either continued at their present locations or moved to other missions. [65]

In the field, the general unit of administration was called a misión. The misión was, in this context, an established missionary activity in a given pueblo. Misión activities were of several types. They usually began as conversiones or reducciones, depending on whether the Indians to which the misión was sent were all of a single pueblo (the conversión), or were being gathered, or "reduced," into one pueblo by the missionary (the reducción). [66]

The pueblo apparently became a conversión when one or several major factions in the pueblo agreed to allow the friar a site on which to build a church, and to help with church construction. Usually, the conventos, or mission establishments, in major pueblos became cabeceras, or "head missions," with a resident friar. Church establishments in lesser pueblos in the area normally became visitas, having a small church visited at intervals by the friar from the nearby cabecera. The word "convento" also referred to the friar's residence, built next to the church in the main pueblo. Visitas usually had no convento. This situation was not static, however. Depending on the fortunes of the custodia, some missions became visitas and some visitas became missions. Usually, though, the primary pueblos stayed missions with resident friars, while the status of smaller or more distant pueblos fluctuated. For example, Abó, Quarai, and Tajique became missions and remained so, while Las Humanas began as a mission, but was soon demoted to a visita of Abó. It eventually became a mission again, with a resident friar and a visita of its own at Tabirá. Chililí, on the other hand, began as a mission and was eventually made into a visita of Tajique.

The number of friars in a given convento varied according to the total number available in the custodia and the relative importance of the convento. For example, in the triennium from 1663 to 1666, the convento of La Concepción in the provincial capital of Santa Fe and the headquarters convento at Santo Domingo each had three friars. Seven other conventos had two friars, and sixteen had only a single friar. At missions with more than one friar, at least one was an ordained priest and one was usually a lay brother (a brother who had not taken final vows). The more distant conventos, such as those in the Salinas area, rarely had more than one friar in residence, but even there the situation varied according to the number of friars available and the political climate. On several occasions more than one friar was in residence at one or another of the Salinas missions. [67]

The Revival of the 1650s in Las Salinas

After a vigorous beginning in the late 1620s, the missionary effort in New Mexico fell on difficult times during the 1630s and 1640s. From 1645 to 1655 political disruptions and Indian dissention marked the decade. During the period from 1632 to the early 1650s, the number of friars in the province fell from the authorized level of 66 to a low of about 45. [68]

Beginning in the mid-1650s, however, a new interest in repair and improvement began to appear in the missions of New Mexico. France V. Scholes called this "a general resurgence of missionary activity and zeal that characterized the late 1650's and the 1660's." Viceregal support for Franciscan activities on the New Mexican frontier increased. An immediate effect of the support was to return of the number of friars assigned to New Mexico to 66, the number established by the contract of 1631. This number allowed the reopening of several conventos that had been closed because their missions had been reduced to visitas. One of these was Las Humanas. The vigor of 21 new friars in the province had a number of repercussions, both politically and in terms of construction. One product of the influx of new blood was a renewed interest in building programs in the newly created Salinas Jurisdiction. These included the beginning of construction on a major new church and convento at Las Humanas in 1660, the reconstruction of the visita chapel at Tabirá, and an extensive modification of the convento at Quarai. [69]

Conflicts Between Church and Civil Authority

The structure of the administrative organization of New Mexico and the history of its formation left many opportunities for misunderstanding and even direct conflict between the church and the governor of the province. The transcripts of the trials of Governor López de Mendizábal and Alcalde Mayor Nicolás Aguilar before the Inquisition in Mexico City made it clear that Mendizábal was convinced that he was justified in his actions toward the Franciscans from 1659 to 1662. The controversy turned on a central issue: the limits of "ecclesiastical jurisdiction," the authority of the missionaries to force the Indians to comply with the strictures of Catholicism. [70]

In New Mexico, the Franciscans interpreted their rights to ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Indians in physical terms. They could demand physical labor from the Indians for farming, ranching, construction, and the needs of the convento without paying them. Furthermore, the friars could mete physical punishment for violations of the laws of behavior they had imposed on the Indians. For example, on one occasion the missionary at Quarai ordered that a woman of that pueblo be given four lashes for adultery. [71]

The governor, on the other hand, saw the Indians as subject to civil law, not ecclesiastical. At one point in his trial, for example, López de Mendizábal was accused of saying that "the religious who administered [the Indians] could not beat them or punish them for their faults; and that he had no other function than to say mass for them and administer to them the holy sacraments; and that they, as mere parishoners, had no obligation to obey the religious in anything . . . ." In an attempt to define the limits of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the missions, Mendizábal had initiated an inquiry to determine under what authority the custodio "exercised jurisdiction against seculars." [72]

In Mendizábal's view, the Indians were seculars or parishoners, and the church had no physical authority over them. This meant that the church should pay the Indians for labor required of them, and if the friar found that an Indian was violating a law of behavior, he could not himself have the Indian punished, but could only turn him over to civil authority for judgement and possible punishment. Since the church wished to punish many violations that the state did not consider subject to punishment by law, such as missing mass or confession, the church refused to accept the governor's position. The Franciscans insisted that the Indians were still as children under their control as parents, and therefore they had the right of any parent to punish and to command.

The views of the two parties depended ultimately on their views of the legal status of the Indian pueblos. The church occupied an ambiguous position. By 1640, all pueblos with missions or visitas had legally become doctrinas, apparently on the decision of the government of New Spain and in spite of the opposition of the church. The term "doctrina" usually indicated that the pueblo was capable of handling its own internal affairs; that is, it had an Indian alcalde who was the direct equivalent of the Spanish alcalde of the area. It meant that the friar was responsible only for the spiritual welfare and training of the Indians, not every aspect of their lives, as was the case when the pueblo was still only a conversión. During this earlier phase of conversion, the missionary "wanted his Indian charges in a wholly segregated community, one free of the taint of worldly civilians or Spanish troops." [73] In reality, of course, both were always present in the form of encomenderos. When advanced to the status of doctrina, a pueblo theoretically would come under the authority of the bishop responsible for the area, would begin to pay taxes to the crown and tithes to the bishop, and would be subject to civil law like any other village. However, in the late 1630s the viceroy determined that: 1) the pueblos were indeed doctrinas because of their advancement as self-administered, Christian villages; but 2) the pueblos could not be required to pay taxes because they already paid tribute to the encomendero; 3) no bishop should be placed in authority over New Mexico because it was too far from the nearest center of episcopal authority and because spiritual guidance was already present in the form of the Franciscan missionary system; and 4) the pueblos could not be required to pay tithes because they did not actually control the products of the fields on which tithes would be levied, [74] and further, they paid tribute to the encomenderos, who then paid tithes on that tribute to the Franciscans, who supervised much of the planting and herding of the pueblo in the first place. [75] Needless to say, this hopelessly complicated situation had no simple legal resolution satisfactory to both the Franciscans and the governor.

The church attempted to retain the authority and benefits they possessed over the pueblos as conversiones, while the state attempted to exercise some of the responsibilities and rights it customarily held for doctrinas. The trouble was that New Mexico came into existence at the end of the sixteenth century, while the laws allowing encomienda were still in force. Later, during the seventeenth century, the laws governing encomienda and the status of conquered Indians were being reevaluated. The very base of the conflict rested on the ambiguity of the laws themselves. In other words, both factions were equally right, or wrong, and neither made much effort to compromise or conciliate. Consequently, the Indians were treated to the spectacle of their two dominating authorities fighting each other with no sign of "Christian" charity or respect. It was the Indians themselves, the only major natural resource in New Mexico, who paid the costs for both sides of the conflict. Eventually, the Indians demanded repayment, in the form of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.