{ "id": "paz-chichimeca-y-poblaciones-tlaxcaltecas", "type": "entity", "name": "The Chichimeca peace and the Tlaxcalan settlements of the north (1590-1591)", "summary": "New Spain stopped buying soldiers for the Zacatecas road and started buying peace: capitulaciones negotiated by a mestizo captain who spoke Guachichil, four hundred married Tlaxcalan households moved north at the treasury's cost to live beside the people they had fought, and a crown allowance of meat and cloth. The Franciscan who records the policy records its price: the persecutions that helped bring the Chichimecas in, the refusal to intermarry, and seventy Tlaxcalans killed.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "new-spain", "mexico", "americas", "indigenous-peoples", "colonial-institutions", "frontier", "tlaxcala", "sixteenth-century", "spanish-empire" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "privilegios-de-tlaxcala" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "reducciones-y-congregaciones-de-indios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "republica-de-indios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "concilio-provincial-mexicano-iii-1585" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-1723" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "mendieta-historia-eclesiastica-indiana" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "tardes-americanas-1778" } ], "questions": [ "How did Spain end the Chichimeca war in northern Mexico?", "Who were the Tlaxcalan settlers of San Luis Potosi and Saltillo?", "Did the Spanish crown pay Indians to make peace?", "What were the capitulaciones made with the Chichimecas in 1590?", "Did the Tlaxcalan colonists and the Chichimecas intermarry?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The chronicle names the failure of the military answer before it names the settlement. Torquemada, opening libro V cap. XXXV on printed page 669, writes that under the viceroy Alvaro Manrique de Zuniga the Chichimecas \"hasta aquellos Dias avian sido Cosarios, por muchos Años, haciendo muchos daños por los Caminos de los Çacatecas, no valiendo los resguardos, Presidios, y Fuertes, que avia mandado hacer el Virrei Don Martin Enriquez, y otros antes, para defenderlos totalmente de estos Hombres Bestiales, y Carniceros\". The forts and garrisons of two previous viceroys are recorded as having been worth nothing on the silver road, and the epithets the chronicler uses of the Chichimecas in the same sentence are his own and are left standing here rather than paraphrased away.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The same sentence gives three causes for the Chichimecas coming in, and one of them is what the Spaniards had done to them. They \"llegaron à quietarse\" either \"tocados de la Mano de Dios\" or \"hostigados de tantos trabajos, como padecian, y persecuciones que los Españoles les hacian\". A Franciscan writing the credit of a royal policy records, in the clause that explains its success, that Spanish persecution was part of what produced it.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The negotiator was a man of both sides. The pacification \"se hiço por orden de vn Capitan, llamado Caldera, Mestiço, Hijo de vn Castellano, y vna India Chichimeca, el qual se avia criado toda su Vida en la Guerra, y sabia mui bien la Lengua Guachichila, que es de Gente mas Valiente, y que mas daño hacia\". The instrument of the peace is a mestizo raised in the fighting whose qualification is the language of the group that had done the most damage.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "The peace took the form of a negotiated instrument, not a surrender. The chronicle records that \"aviendo venido estos Indios Guachichiles à esta Ciudad à hacer las Capitulaciones, pidiendo el Bautismo, dióles Ministros Franciscos\". The Guachichiles travelled to Mexico City to make capitulations — the same word the crown used for its contracts with conquering captains — and what they are recorded as asking for in them is baptism and friars. The text of those capitulaciones is not printed here and has not been read for this entry, so what the Guachichiles asked for besides ministers, and what was promised them, cannot be stated from this source.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The settlement policy is stated with its reasoning attached. The viceroy Luis de Velasco the younger \"para mas seguridad, traçò como fuesen Indios de Paz à poblar entre estos Chichimecas, para que viendolos poblados, y en modo de Policia, ellos se aficionasen à lo mismo, y lo hiciesen\"; he \"Determinò ... que los Indios fuesen de la Provincia de Tlaxcalla (por estàr mas poblada, que otras)\". The device is settlement as demonstration — one indigenous people moved north so that another might see town life and want it — and the reason Tlaxcala was chosen, as the chronicle gives it, is simply that it had the people to spare.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The recruitment, the number and the payer are all on the same page. Fray Geronimo de Çarate and a companion carried the commission, were remitted to the Spanish juez gobernador of Tlaxcala to solicit and assist it, and with the help \"de el Padre Frai Geronimo de Mendieta, que à la saçon era Guardian de el dicho Convento\" they \"alistaron, y enpadronaron mas de quatrocientos Hombres casados, sacaronse de su Ciudad, y Provincia con grandes Costas de la Caxa, y Hacienda Real, y fueron llevados à las Çacatecas\". Four hundred married men with their households, enlisted and entered on a padron by friars working with a Spanish magistrate, and moved at the cost of the royal treasury; the Mendieta named here is the author of the Historia eclesiastica indiana this corpus holds separately.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "The settlements are named and placed. The Tlaxcalans \"se repartiò por los Sitios mas convenientes de aquella Tierra\": one at what \"agora es las Minas Ricas de San Luis de Potosì\", another three leagues away at \"San Miguèl Mezquitic, porque aqui era donde se rancheaban, y fortalecian estas Quadrillas Chichimecas, por ser Sitios Fuertes, y rigurosos para andarlos\", another at Colotlan sixteen leagues from Zacatecas on the Guadalajara road \"por ser tambien aquel paso peligroso, y mui necesario\", and another sixty leagues beyond Zacatecas called San Andres. The third tome of the same chronicle adds the ones the first leaves out and gives the crown's bill: the same four hundred married Tlaxcalans produced settlements at San Luis, at Mezquitic, at \"el Agua, que dicen de el Venado\", at Colotlan and at San Andres near Chalchihuites, in each of which \"se edificò Convento, ò Monasterio de Frailes Franciscos\", and \"Todas estas Casas, è Iglesias, se hicieron à costa del Rei, y se gastò en ella mucha Hacienda\". It also records the resettlement of the Saltillo, \"bolviendolo à poblar, como estaba de antes, para maior seguro de aquel parage, y reducir en èl à los Indios de Guerra\". The two tomes were printed together and their lists differ in detail, which is why both are quoted rather than merged.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i", "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-iii" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "The policy's own chronicler records that it did not do what it was designed to do. On the same page as the list of settlements: \"aunque los Chichimecas han poblado con los Indios Tlaxcaltecas, no casan, ni cohabitan con ellos, porque ni los vnos ni los otros quieren\". The refusal is mutual and it is stated flatly, without excuse, by the writer whose order administered both peoples. The demonstration-settlement produced neighbours and not the fusion its designer had in mind.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "Peace was also being bought outright, and the chronicle says so in the vocabulary of a subsidy. The Chichimecas live \"en Casas Pajiças, y muchos en vna; y hasta aora los sustenta el Rei, dandoles Carne, que coman, y Ropa, que vistan; porque como estaban hechos à vida suelta, y ociosa, ni saben sembrar, ni hilar Ropa, que vistan, porque siempre andaban desnudos, y embixados\". A standing issue of meat and cloth from the treasury, still running at the time of writing some twenty years later, is the mechanism; the explanation offered for it, that the recipients neither sow nor spin, is the chronicler's judgement of a hunting people and not a finding of this entry.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "What the settlements cost the settlers is recorded in the third tome, in one sentence, and it is not small. The Tlaxcalans of San Andres were withdrawn five leagues to Chalchihuites, and \"Esta reduccion, y retirada, se hiço, por aver muerto los Chichimecas setenta Tlaxcaltecas de los que allí estaban, do hirieron à Fr. Juan de Herrera, su Ministro, en la Iglesia donde se avian hecho fuertes todos para defenderse: comieronse muchas Mugeres los Barbaros, y llevaronse otras\". Seventy of the transplanted colonists killed, their friar wounded, the church used as a strongpoint, and an accusation of cannibalism and abduction that is the Franciscan's and rests on nothing this entry can check — which is why it is quoted as his charge rather than reported as fact.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-iii" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "The same viceroy and the same chapter carry a measure of Indian justice that belongs beside the frontier policy. Against the marginal year 1592, Torquemada records that Velasco \"proveiò (casi en conformidad de lo que antes tenia mandado su Padre, siendo Virrei) que en las Causas Civiles de los Indios, no se hiciesen largas averiguaciones, ni Procesos, ni informaciones, y que lo que pasase de diez Pesos, se le remitiese para averiguarlo, y concluirlo, aunque en las cosas Criminales no se puso limite, por ser diferentes las vnas de las otras, y pedir diferente remedio\". Summary procedure below ten pesos, referral above it, and no such limit in criminal matters: the administrative habit out of which the Juzgado General de Naturales grew, dated by the chronicle to the same government that moved the Tlaxcalans north.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c12", "text": "What these sources cannot supply should be said plainly. Both are the same Franciscan chronicler, printed together in 1723 from a work finished about 1615, writing the record of an order that administered every settlement named here; there is no treasury account, no muster roll, no text of the capitulaciones, and not one word from a Guachichil or from a Tlaxcalan colonist. The privileges the Tlaxcalan settlers are usually said to have negotiated for the move — exemption from tribute, hidalgo status, arms and horses — are not in these pages at all, and this entry therefore makes no finding about them; what it establishes is the policy, its cost to the treasury, its designer's reasoning, and the two failures its own chronicler chose to print.", "sources": [ "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-i", "torquemada-monarquia-indiana-madrid-1723-tomo-iii" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "The Chichimeca war is told in English, when it is told at all, as forty years of slaving raids that ended when the frontier moved on, and the Tlaxcalan colonies of the north survive mostly as a line about the founding of Saltillo and San Luis Potosi. The policy that actually ended it — capitulations negotiated by a mestizo captain who spoke Guachichil, four hundred married Tlaxcalan households moved at the treasury's expense to live beside their former enemies, convents and churches built at the king's cost, and a standing ration of meat and cloth — is almost never quoted from a source. This entry quotes it from the two tomes of Torquemada that carry it, page by page, and it prints the four things that make the story credible rather than promotional: that the presidios of two viceroys had failed, that the chronicler names Spanish persecution among the causes of the peace, that the two peoples refused to intermarry and he says so, and that seventy of the transplanted colonists were killed at San Andres. It then names what the pages do not contain, including the Tlaxcalan privileges that every retelling asserts.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-08-18", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/paz-chichimeca-y-poblaciones-tlaxcaltecas", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/paz-chichimeca-y-poblaciones-tlaxcaltecas.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "The Chichimeca peace and the Tlaxcalan settlements of the north (1590-1591)", "description": "New Spain stopped buying soldiers for the Zacatecas road and started buying peace: capitulaciones negotiated by a mestizo captain who spoke Guachichil, four hundred married Tlaxcalan households moved north at the treasury's cost to live beside the people they had fought, and a crown allowance of meat and cloth. The Franciscan who records the policy records its price: the persecutions that helped bring the Chichimecas in, the refusal to intermarry, and seventy Tlaxcalans killed.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/paz-chichimeca-y-poblaciones-tlaxcaltecas", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-18", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Tercera parte de los veinte i un libros rituales i Monarchia Indiana, con el origen y guerras de los Indios Ocidentales, de sus Poblaçones, Descubrimiento, Conquista, Conversion y otras cosas maravillosas de la mesma tierra", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=3lZfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA208" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Los veinte i un libros rituales i Monarchia Indiana, con el origen y guerras de los Indios Ocidentales, de sus Poblaçones, Descubrimiento, Conquista, Conversion y otras cosas maravillosas de la mesma tierra — first tome", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=dwdCAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA669" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Chichimeca peace and the Tlaxcalan settlements of the north (1590-1591)" } }