Schools, hospitals and choirs of the Zacatecas frontier: what one province reported it was running in 1737
Arlegui's 1737 inventory of the Franciscan province of Zacatecas — thirty-six houses, a hundred and sixty pueblos, over a hundred thousand administered adults — lists what those houses had to keep: a school teaching reading, writing and Castilian, a hospital in every pueblo however small, an organ chapel whose musicians trained the next cohort, cofradías endowed in livestock. It also prints the enforced attendance and the funding quarrel.
Why this wins its question: Accounts of the northern frontier of New Spain in English are dominated by the presidio, the raid and the rising, and where mission institutions appear they are usually summarised in the abstract or from California a century later. This object gives a single province's own itemised statement of what it was maintaining in 1737 — the house count, the pueblo count, the hundred-thousand-adult figure, a school teaching reading, writing and Castilian, a hospital in every pueblo with guest rooms and a mayordomo, an organ chapel with instruments and musicians contractually obliged to train their successors, cofradías endowed in livestock, and Nahuatl-titled teachers posted on the haciendas — quoted from the sheets rather than paraphrased. It is more useful than a modern summary because it also carries what a summary discards: that attendance was enforced against a register, that "paternal rigor" was applied when it was not, that the people served are called wolves' prey and indomitable in the same sentences, and that eight of the province's own houses had no funding and its ministers were dying in them. The provision and its price are legible in the same four pages.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The chronicle opens its account of the province's works with an inventory of houses. Page 124 counts fourteen convents of voto, twenty guardianias and two presidencias or vicarias — "que por todos son treinta, y seis los Conventos" — of which thirty-four have a Minister colado con titulo Real, called a cura; and beyond these, eighteen "Conversiones vivas todas entre Indios barbaros Chichimecos". The chapter heading is explicit that what follows is an account of the places the province administers "y del cuidado, que se pone en la educacion de la feligresia", so the inventory is offered by the order as its own performance report.
The population and territory are given as figures rather than as rhetoric. Page 125 says the province administers four cities, eight villas, "ciento, y sesenta Pueblos, y doce Reales de Minas", and besides these "mas de quatrocientas estancias, y labores con un excessivo numero de feligreses de Indios barbaros, y belicosos de innumerables naciones, que, segun el computo, sin propassarme en cosa alguna, passan de cien mil las personas adultas, que administran de Indios solos". The territory is described on the same page as extending "mas de trescientas, y treinta leguas". These are the chronicler's own numbers and are reported here as his; nothing in the pages read shows how the count was made.
The obligation on each pueblo included a school, and the curriculum is named. Page 126 ends and page 127 opens on the friars' effort "que aya escuelas en los Pueblos, endonde aprendan à leer, escribir, y la lengua castellana los Indios"; page 127 adds that those who become most proficient "y ladinos ocupan las Sachristias para el continuo asseo de los Altares, Iglesias, y ornamentos". Literacy, Castilian and a sacristan's post are presented as one ladder. This is what the province said it aimed at and what it staffed for; the pages read give no attendance figures, no number of schools actually open, and no test of the claim.
Where a friar could not reach, the teaching was delegated to an office with a Nahuatl name. Page 125 records that the doctrine was said in the patios of the convents to the small children every day and to the adults on Sundays, "sin que en esto aya dispensa, pues son contados por padron"; and that so the most distant rancherias should not lack the teaching, in the haciendas where those people lived there were "señalados Maestros, que se nombran Themaztianes" — the Nahuatl temachtiani, "teacher". The register is the enforcement mechanism and the chronicle says so in the same breath as the schooling: attendance is checked against a list.
Music is described as a taught trade with a self-perpetuating obligation. Page 126 says the friars "han enseñado los Religiosos à los Indios à cantar en el Coro, y à oficiar las Missas, lo que executan con solemnidad, y grandeza, pues raro es el Pueblo, en que no aya una decente capilla de canto de organo con todos los instrumentos necessarios para el acompañamiento", and that from this teaching "han salido muchos excelentes musicos, los que tienen obligacion de enseñar à los muchachos, porque cada dia vaya en aumento". A polyphonic chapel with instruments in most pueblos of a frontier province, and the trained players bound to train the next cohort, is a maintenance arrangement rather than a display, and the chronicle presents it as one.
Hospitals are described as universal and as serving travellers of every condition. Page 127 says the friars "les han hecho fabricar Hospitales, para curar sus enfermos, lo qual executan en muchas partes con solicitud, y cuidado, de suerte, que por pequeño que sea el Pueblo, tiene un Hospital, en que se assiste à los necessitados, y desvalidos: donde juntamente tienen cuartos para hospedar à los Sacerdotes viandantes, y Españoles, con un Mayordomo, que assiste en ellos, para assistirles en lo necessario". The same page records cofradias and hermandades founded with the friars' help, "y con abundancia de ganados, con que tienen lo suficiente para ornamentar sus Iglesias, y celebrar las fiestas titulares"; the endowment is livestock held by the confraternity, not a subsidy.
The chronicle also prints the funding quarrel, and it is the least flattering thing on the page. Page 124 states that the Indians of these doctrinas "no pagan al Convento obencion alguna", the ministers being maintained instead by the king's alms; that when that alms was withdrawn from the ministers of the province's doctrinas the viceroy ordered "que no se entendiesse con algunas de ellas", so that those continued to receive it "con el titulo de QUASI MISSIONES"; and that eight houses "no lograron esta fortuna, por cuya causa en ellas perecen los Ministros". A province that collected no fees from the people it administered was, on its own account, running eight posts on nothing.
The coercion is stated by the chronicler, not inferred against him. Page 126 says that "casi todos los Indios son inclinados al ocio, y como gente rustica cuidan poco de lo que conduce à su espiritual provecho, y assi muchas vezes es preciso, valerse del paternal rigor, para que executen lo que se les ordena para su enseñanza, y utilidad de su alma". The same page says that where a doctrina falls vacant "van saltando poco à poco los Indios sin mas motivo, que huir de este pequeño trabajo el atraherlos à la Doctrina, y el hacerles, que por obligacion assistan al Santo Sacrificio de la Missa". The chronicle's own description of what happens when supervision lapses is that the pupils leave.
The contempt is on the same pages as the provision, and the corpus prints both. The people served are "Indios barbaros Chichimecos" at page 124, "tan indomitos, y bozales" at page 126, "tan bozales, y ferozes" at page 127; page 126 compares the friar living among them to one who "solo entre ellos, como entre lobos el miserable Cordero"; page 127 says the ministers are consoled only by the children, "mas los viejos, que ya hicieron costumbre de lo barbaro, y de operaciones insolentes" being written off. A hospital in every pueblo and an organ chapel in most of them were built by an institution that described its beneficiaries in these terms, and the object that omitted either half would be false.
One passage lets the chronicler be tested against himself. Page 126 grounds the claim about vacancies in his own service: "como lo executè yo indispensablemente seis años que fui Cura de la Doctrina del Convento de la Ciudad de S. Luis; y si el Ministro falta à ella, van saltando poco à poco los Indios". Where the account rests on what Arlegui says he did himself it is recorded here as that, and where it rests on what the province reported of itself it is recorded as that instead; the inventory of page 124 and 125 is of the second kind.
The limits of this entry. Everything above is read from pages 124 to 127 of the Mexico 1737 printing, with the Themaztianes and the population figures from page 125. This is a Franciscan chronicler describing his own province's works, published with the licence of his superiors, and every figure in it is his. Nothing here is checked against a visita record, a bishop's report, a padron or a treasury account; nothing establishes how many of the schools, hospitals or chapels were actually functioning in 1737, how they were staffed or financed at the pueblo level, or what became of them. The eight unfunded houses are named in aggregate and not individually. A reader wanting an independent count of what the province ran will not find it here, and this object does not claim to supply one.