Wayfinding, tracking and weather-reading on the northern frontier, as a Franciscan chronicle records them
Arlegui's 1737 chronicle sets out, chapter by chapter, what the peoples of the northern missions could do that the Spaniards could not: forecast rain and frost from birds and stars "con mas verdad, que los reportorios", hold a course over hundreds of leagues where Spaniards died of thirst on the royal roads, and follow a trail over grass and stone. The proof he offers is captive children walking home.
Why this wins its question: Indigenous wayfinding and tracking in northern Mexico are usually reached through nineteenth-century Apache-campaign literature or modern ethnography, both far downstream of the practice and both with their own frame. This object goes to a 1737 Mexican imprint that devotes a numbered chapter to the proposition that these peoples exceed the Spaniards in sight and hearing, and quotes what it actually says: forecasting from birds, animals and stars that beats the printed reportorios; a letter carried three hundred leagues on a bearing and nothing else; trailing over grass and stone; and the use the province made of that skill against fugitives. It is built to be usable in both directions at once. The proof the chronicle offers for the wayfinding is captive children escaping and walking home over two hundred leagues, so the achievement cannot be read without the raid that produced it; and every ability conceded is credited on the same page to animal instinct, under "Natura brutorum Mater, hominumque noverca", with the neighbouring chapter headings calling the same people barbarous. Each is bound to its page, so neither the admiration nor the contempt has to be taken on trust.
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 chapter is announced in the chronicle's own tabla, and the heading is the claim: "Exceden los Indios barbaros à los Españoles en la perspicacia de la vista, y del oído, en cuya comprobacion se refieren casos prodigiosos", pages 174 to 179 of the Chronica de la Provincia de N.S.P.S. Francisco de Zacatecas, printed at Mexico in 1737. It is the eighth chapter of the second book, set between chapters on abuses and on impious customs; the comparison is the chronicle's, not this corpus's.
The sensory claims are practical and are given with their uses. From a height they make out the roads and read whether the people coming are armed or unarmed, "y lo registran todo con tanta certeza, como sino huviera distancia"; and on a night too dark for sight, to know whether companions they are waiting for are near, "pegan el oido en la tierra, y en distrito grande oyen las pisadas, y reconocen venir ya cerca, los que aguardan".
The most striking sentence in the chapter is a comparison the chronicler had no reason to make and made anyway. They are great observers of the stars because they always sleep under an open sky and are used to watching it; and they observe the weather "ò ya por las diversas mociones de las aves, y animales, ò por otras naturales observaciones, pronosticando con mas verdad, que los reportorios, quando ha de aver lluvias, ò tempestades; y quando seran los yelos mayores". The reportorios de los tiempos were the printed Spanish almanacs; a Spanish chronicle prints that indigenous forecasting beat them.
The land-knowledge claim is stated as a comparison of failures. "En lo que toca al conocimiento de tierras, rios, montes, y distancias son aventajadissimos los Indios de esta Provincia, porque, donde nosotros, con seguir caminos reales, y llevar buenas guias, nos perdemos, ellos jamas se pierden, y tienen grande comprehension de los parages, y rumbos, donde se hallan." Page 176 supplies the cost on the Spanish side: "cada dia se experimentan en este Reyno lastimosas perdidas de hombres, que de sed, y hambre perecen en estos desiertos".
The evidence he offers for it is a passage that indicts his own side, and the object keeps the two together because the chronicle does. When Spaniards assault rancherias "en castigo de sus crueldades, è insultos", they take the people prisoner and carry off all the small children of both sexes to the cities, "para criarlos, y enseñarles à vivir en nuestra Ley Christiana, criandolos politicamente, para que olviden la barbaridad, en que nacieron"; and many are taken to Mexico City, more than two hundred leagues from their country. The removal of children is stated by the chronicle as ordinary practice and given a purpose.
The demonstration is that the children go home. Those who can escape after some days, "en medio de ser pequeños se huyen, y fuera de los caminos sustentandose de sylvestres raizes, y sufriendo la sed algunos dias, se vuelven à sus tierras, llevando fixo el rumbo adonde intentan, sin que tanta multitud de leguas los haga perder el tino, cosa, que admira à los Españoles". The chronicle offers the escapes as proof of a skill; what it also records, and does not comment on, is that the children ran.
A second case is given as routine rather than prodigious, which is what makes it useful. Tell an Indian of the missions of Nueva Vizcaya to carry a letter to Mexico, three hundred leagues away, and although he has never left the mission, on being told that the bearing of Mexico is the east "no necessita de otra prevencion para su viage" — no guide and no provisions. The chronicle adds that this "por experimentada cada dia, no hace en esta Provincia novedad alguna".
Tracking is described as a technique and then as an instrument of the state. They find by the trail whatever they are looking for, man or animal, "aunque camine sobre hierbas, y sobre piedras, donde no puede estampar sus vestigios, ni resquicio, por donde pueda conseguirse, lo que se busca"; and the chronicle records the use plainly: "Esta noticia ha sido, y es muy proficua en este Reyno, assi para librarse de sus hostilidades, y crueles asechanzas, como para encontrar muchos, que despues de aver cometido algunos delitos, salen huidos, para donde no sean conocidos." Indian trackers were how the province caught fugitives.
Every one of these abilities is explained away in the same chapter, and the explanation is the frame the object exists to show. Their senses are compared to scent hounds following their masters "por su natural instinto"; the divine letters are cited to say that we should go to learn in the schools of the ants and the bees; and the tag is printed in capitals: "Natura brutorum Mater, hominumque noverca" — nature is mother to the brutes and stepmother to men, because instinct was given many things "que no las llega à imaginar nuestro entendimiento". The skills are conceded in full and credited to instinct rather than to intelligence.
The chronicle also supplies one first-hand observation of technique, from page 182, and says where the writer was standing. For deer they take the head of a dead one, set a berry in the eyes so that it looks alive, hide among the tall grass showing only the head, and imitate the animals' call so exactly that the deer come to the decoy and are shot; "en una ocasion, que fui à la Sierra de Durango, à cortar madera, para entarimar la Iglesia, y hacer la mayor parte del Convento, vi la destreza de los Indios en cazar estos animales, y en menos de una hora entre pocos mataron cinco Venados". This is the chronicler as eyewitness rather than as compiler, and the object marks the difference.
The same chapters print what the chronicle judged worthless in the same peoples, and it belongs here: they are said to be excessively agoreros, to conceive some ill success on hearing the tecolote and to try to exterminate the bird; and the tabla's own headings for the neighbouring chapters read "de sus abominables, y rusticas ceremonias", "otros abusos, y procederes barbaros" and "sus indignas adoraciones". The chronicle that admits indigenous forecasting beat the almanacs is the same chronicle, on facing pages.
The limits of this entry. Everything above is read from pages 175, 176 and 182 and the tabla at PT9 of the Mexico printing of 1737. Arlegui writes of "los Indios de esta Provincia" and of the missions of Nueva Vizcaya without naming, in the pages read, which nations he means in each case, and this corpus attaches the claims to no named people. Nothing here establishes how the forecasting was actually done, how often it was right, how many children were taken or how many returned, or how indigenous trackers were paid or compelled. The chapters on the languages of the frontier nations, and the account of the risings from page 187, were not opened.