Schools for Indian girls in New Spain and the indigenous matronas (1530–c.1596)
In 1530 the Empress Isabel sent six beatas to New Spain and ordered the Audiencia to build houses out of royal revenue where the daughters of Indian principals and commoners would be taught. The chronicler who records the order also records that it "no duró muchos años" — and that the women who came out of it, called beatas, went on to teach doctrine, run confraternities and serve hospitals for two generations, until depopulation and tribute ended that too.
Why this wins its question: The 1530 mission of six beatas is usually a clause in a footnote, and where English-language coverage mentions schooling for indigenous girls in New Spain it mentions the foundation and stops. This object gives the order's actual terms from the page — royal revenue, daughters of principals *and* commoners, doctrine plus Spanish women's domestic offices — puts next to it the sentence from the same chapter that the scheme "no duró muchos años", and then follows what survived it: the indigenous matronas named by town, running the confraternities, teaching in Nahuatl in the patios, and the friar's own explanation of why they vanished, which is depopulation and tribute. It also states, and demonstrates by comparing the two printings, that its two chroniclers are one witness and not two.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
A crown order of 1530 established the scheme, and its terms are specific. The Empress sent to New Spain "seis Dueñas, Beatas, exercitadas en mucha virtud", commanding the president and oidores of the Audiencia of Mexico that at the cost of the royal revenues — "à costa de sus Rentas Reales" — they have suitable houses built "para recoger en ellas las Niñas, Hijas de los Indios Principales, y otras de Populares, y enseñarles, juntamente con la Doctrina Christiana, los Oficios Mugeriles de las Españolas, y manera de vivir honesta, y virtuosamente". The intake was expressly not confined to the daughters of the indigenous nobility.
The same chapter states the outcome, and the failure is not hidden by the source that reports the foundation: "Esto se cumpliò luego, y puso por obra; puesto, que no duro muchos Años: mas con todo eso, de las Indeçuelas, que allì se criaron, salieron muchas buenas Mugeres, que quedaron con el nombre de Beatas, y aiudaron mucho à los Frailes en las cosas de la Doctrina, y Policia Christiana." The institution was short-lived; what outlasted it was a cohort of indigenous women who kept teaching.
The girls' schools were one item in a package of crown grants to the mission listed in the same chapter, which allows the scale to be judged: a thousand pesos de minas a year for certain years to the Colegio de Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco "donde se enseñaban en la Latinidad"; three hundred ducats for some years to those who taught in the chapel of San José "à Leer, y Escrivir, Cantar, y Tañer Instrumentos de la Iglesia"; six arrobas of oil a year to each monastery for the lamp of the Sacrament; an arroba and a half of wine a year for each priest; a hundred pesos a year for the infirmaries of San Francisco de México and the convent of Los Ángeles; and the order to build "vn Hospital Real, junto à San Francisco de Mexico" expressly "porque los Indios Enfermos no quedasen desamparados".
The scheme the girls' schools replaced had been abandoned because indigenous families experienced it as abduction, and the source says so in those terms. A cédula given at Granada on 9 November 1526 ordered that up to twenty boys, "Hijos de los mas Principales Indios, y de los mas habiles", be shipped to Spain to be raised and taught in monasteries and colleges so that on returning they should instruct their own, "pues de ellos tomarian mejor qualquier cosa, que de otros estraños". When the Franciscans began designating and collecting the boys, "fue tanto el sentimiento, que sus Padres, y Deudos hacian (pareciendoles, que se los llevaban Cautivos, para nunca mas verlos) que los huvieron de dexar, y dàr cuenta à su Magestad", and the aid was redirected to schools inside New Spain.
What was actually taught to girls in the towns, once the houses had gone, was catechism and not letters. All girls, "así hijas de mayores como de menores, indiferentemente", were taught the Christian doctrine in graded circles in the church patio, moving up as they mastered each stage — per signum, Pater noster and Ave María; then Credo and Salve Regina; then the commandments; then the articles of the faith, the commandments of the Church and the sacraments — "todo esto en su propria lengua". They continued in the patios "hasta que se casan, ó poco menos".
The teaching was largely done by the pupils themselves and by indigenous women, not by friars. The same Franciscan writes as an eyewitness: "Yo he tenido (siendo guardian en algun pueblo) mas de trescientas doncellas casaderas, juntas en el patio de la iglesia, enseñándose unas á otras con la mayor sinceridad y honestidad que se puede imaginar." The figure is his own recollection and no independent count was available.
The organisation had a name and a structure of its own. Every group of girls had "sus matronas ó madres espirituales (que así las llaman ellas), señaladas por sus barrios, que las traen á la iglesia y las guardan, y las vuelven á sus casas", each bringing half a dozen or one or more according to the size of the barrio, with church alguaciles deputed to watch over them in addition.
The matronas were a lay institution and their range of work was wide. They took no public vow — they persevered in continence "á manera de beatas, no porque ellas hiciesen algun voto (á lo menos público), mas de que voluntariamente se ofrecieron al Señor" — and they taught doctrine and prayers to other women, guided as mothers the confraternities of the Santísimo Sacramento and of Nuestra Señora, served in the hospitals and with the sick, prepared the ignorant for confession and communion, and took in single women. In some towns the confraternities "se rigen tan principal y aun mas principalmente por medio de estas matronas, que de los hombres". They were most notable at Xochimilco, Texcoco, Cuautitlán, Tlalmanalco and Tepepulco, and towards Tlaxcala at Cholula, Huejotzingo, Tepeaca and Tehuacán.
One is named. "Entre las demas fué señalada una Ana de la Cruz, natural del pueblo de Tlatelulco (que es como barrio por sí de la ciudad de México), india devotísima y bienhechora de la órden del padre S. Francisco", in whose time, by her industry and diligence, the things of Christianity went forward with much fervour in that town.
The end of the institution is stated by its own advocate, and the two causes he gives are colonial ones. "Ahora en muy pocas partes hay de estas matronas ó beatas que se ejerciten en semejantes obras espirituales, por haberse disminuido mucho la gente que solia haber, y porque dicen tienen harto que hacer en buscar lo que han menester para su sustento, y para pagar su tributo y otras imposiciones que siempre les van añadiendo." The demographic collapse and the rising fiscal burden are named by the friar as the reasons the women's teaching network disappeared.
The two printed witnesses used here are not independent, and this was checked page against page rather than assumed. The 1723 Madrid printing of the Monarquía indiana carries the paragraph on the decline of the matronas almost word for word from the Franciscan history written a generation earlier — "Aora en mui pocas partes ay destas Matronas, ò Beatas, que se egerciten en semejantes Obras Espirituales, por averse disminuido mucho la Gente, que solia aver, y porque dicen tienen harto, que hacer, en buscar lo que han menester, para su sustento, y pagar su Tributo, y otras Imposiciones, que siempre les han añadido". Where the two agree they count as one source; the 1530 mission and the list of grants are cited here only from the later work, and the patio teaching only from the earlier one.
The curriculum and the praise both carry the assumptions of the men who wrote them down, and the object does not launder them. What the crown ordered taught alongside the doctrine was "los Oficios Mugeriles de las Españolas" — Spanish women's domestic work, held up as the model — and the eulogy of indigenous women's virtue is devotional and providential in register, explaining their aptitude by Augustine on the "devoto sexo feminil" and by "el principal planeta que en esta region reina", and written to answer Spaniards who doubted that the Indians were truly Christian.
The cédula dates and terms reported here come from a friar's inventory of what the crown gave his own order's mission, not from the cédulas themselves; the originals were not reachable for this object and the figures should be read as an interested chronicler's record. The same chapter's other datings — the cédula of Valladolid of 20 November 1536 compelling encomenderos to keep ministers in their towns, and that of Monzón of 2 August 1533 assigning a quarter of the tributes to churches and their ministers — are recorded here on the same footing.