Coahuila, the Nueva Extremadura (1677-1742): subsidised peace-pueblos, Tlaxcaltec co-settlers, a refuge town, and a jurisdiction case the audiencia lost
Two royal decrees of one date in 1677 record what the crown paid to settle Coahuila: four pueblos with resident clergy, each given a hundred and fifty fanegas of maize and five bullocks or ploughs for two years, and Tlaxcaltec families from Saltillo who bound themselves to live among the new settlers and teach them. Two years later the audiencia of Guadalajara lost the province to the viceroy in the Council of the Indies, and one of its own lawyers wrote up the defeat.
Why this wins its question: The settlement of Coahuila and Texas reaches English readers as mission history or as the prehistory of a United States border, and the administrative file underneath it - what was paid, to whom, on whose authority - is almost never quoted. This object gives that file from one eyewitness chapter: two royal decrees of 24 December 1677 with the establishment grant itemised down to a hundred and fifty fanegas of maize and five bullocks per town for two years; the Tlaxcaltec community of Saltillo contracting to settle among the newly reduced peoples on the same terms and counted where it settled; a protector's salary converted into a chaplaincy in the same approved package; the audiencia of Guadalajara losing the province to the viceroy in the Council of the Indies on 25 February 1679, written up by one of its own lawyers with both sides of the argument; a town founded in 1698 for Indians who had repeatedly fled an encomendero and been fetched back "contra su voluntad"; and a sustained 1742 argument that presidios are wasted money and settlement the cheaper instrument - made in a simile that compares the people to be settled with ants to be killed, which is printed here rather than dropped, beside the same author's statement that indigenous violence proves only "la inconstancia de la naturaleza humana… y entre los cristianos viejos tambien se experimenta".
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 documentary base is two royal decrees of one date and the chapter says so. Recounting how Coahuila, "que hoy se intitula la Nueva-Extremadura", came to be settled, the author says the audiencia of Guadalajara "fue la primera que dio providencias; dio cuenta a su Magestad; puso en ejecucion sus reales ordenes; dio comision al Illmo. Sr. Santacruz; le mando al protector o justicia del Saltillo ministrase a dicho señor obispo el socorro de gente que necesitase; proveyo de primer alcalde mayor a D. Antonio Balcalser y Riva de Neira, quien fundo los primeros cuatro pueblos"; and that this "se colige o prueba del contesto de dos reales cedulas, de una misma fecha (Diciembre 24 de 677)". The first thanks the alcalde mayor "por lo obrado en el reconocimiento, pacificacion y poblaciones"; the second records that the Council had been informed, by the audiencia, the bishop and the alcalde mayor together, that the province was fertile and mineral-bearing and that four nations had come to peace.
The settlement subsidy is itemised, and it is the most useful thing on the page. The second cedula records "que se hicieron cuatro pueblos con sus doctrineros; que se les dio por dos años a cada pueblo ciento cincuenta fanegas de maiz y cinco novillos, o instrumentos de arar, y a los doctrineros a quince cargas de harina". Two years of food, breeding stock or ploughing tools per town, and a flour allowance for the resident clergy: a costed establishment grant for new settlements, recorded in the decree that approved it. The nations named as having made peace are "boboles, catujanes, chichicales y salineros, siendo estos los mas feroces" - the chronicler's own epithet, kept here rather than smoothed.
Indigenous settlers were parties to the arrangement and were paid on the same terms. The same decree records "que los tlaxcaltecos del Saltillo se habian obligado a vivir entre ellos, dandoseles lo mismo para enseñarlos" - the Tlaxcaltec community of Saltillo binding itself to settle among the newly reduced nations as teachers, and receiving the identical grant of maize and stock. The chapter later counts them where they settled: the pueblo of San Francisco de Coahuila beside the villa of Monclova "componese el pueblo de 250 indios tlaxcaltecos", and San Bernardino de la Candela "tiene cuatrocientos indios, de los que cien son tlaxcaltecos; es el pueblo muy ameno y de gobierno muy politico, por lo que tienen su iglesia con todo aseo". This is a later chapter of the same policy whose 1591 beginnings another object in this corpus carries, and it shows the policy still running, and still being paid for, eighty years on.
One office was liquidated in the same package, and it is worth naming because of what it was. The decree also records "que se propuso que el salario del protector del Saltillo, se convirtiese en pagar un capellan, y que se pusiesen veinte soldados y se quitasen los del Saltillo. Todo lo cual se aprobo por su Magestad." The protector of the Indians of Saltillo - the officer whose whole function was to represent indigenous parties against Spaniards, an institution this corpus carries in its own object - had his salary converted into a chaplaincy in the course of a settlement package that the crown approved entire. Nothing read here says whether another protector served that district afterwards.
The jurisdiction case is stated with both sides and a dated outcome, and the outcome went against the court the author served. Viceroy Fr. Payo de Rivera, "con acuerdo de la junta de la real hacienda, declaro tocar a aquel superior gobierno, en lo politico y militar, en la provision de oficios, presentaciones de curas, y todo lo incidente en aquella provincia. La audiencia de Guadalaxara tenia determinado lo contrario, en lo concerniente al gobierno politico y de justicia". The audiencia's reasons are given in full: that it had been first to act; that the missionaries' provincial and the bishop of the province both resided at Guadalajara; that news of Coahuila reached Guadalajara sooner than Mexico; and that a court "desembarazada… de las muchas intendencias que tienen los vireyes" would attend to the needs of pacification "con mas prontitud que los vireyes". The decision is dated: "en vista de la competencia, se aprobo por su Magestad (en 25 de Febrero de 679), lo determinado por el virey." A colonial high court contested a viceregal declaration, took the dispute to the Council of the Indies, and lost - and the record of the loss is written up sixty years later by one of that court's own lawyers, who accepts the reasoning.
The author's analysis of why the viceroy won is administrative rather than resentful. He judges it "seria sin duda por aquella razon, que en otra parte refiero, de ser incompatible tener mano en las cajas la audiencia y virey, y pues este entiende en todo lo que es guerra, solo el debe librar en las cajas"; he thinks the faculty could as well have been conferred on the audiencia or its president for the kingdoms surrounding Galicia, "en cuyo caso, no hay duda, se evitara la confusion de que hubiese dos manos en una caja, y dos providencias encontradas en un repentino caso", each authority competing "con emulacion loable" to enlarge the royal interests. Unity of the treasury, not the dignity of the viceroy, is the reason he accepts.
The chapter contains a sustained argument that garrisons are the wrong instrument, and it is argued on cost. To the west, he writes, "estamos viendo la provincia del Nayarit, las de Sonora y Sinaloa, y la isla de California, con capitanes y soldados que entienden en las armas, y no atienden a introducir el gobierno politico, poblar la tierra y formar pueblos; de suerte que si a un tiempo entendieran en uno y otro, se verificara en breve la no necesidad de presidios, con lo que su Magestad quedaria sin la pension de tantos miles que paga en sueldos." His simile is agricultural and it is also, read plainly, a dehumanising one: the presidios are like a farmer with leafcutter ants, who "paga salarios y ocupa operarios en matar hormigas; mas como no cava la tierra para buscar el criadero, no cesa la continua pension de matar"; the presidial soldiers "estan estirando sus sueldos", ride out after a raid, kill those who cannot escape, and the rest return to the crags, "sin arbitrarse el eficaz medio de seguir a los indios, poblarles la tierra, que de esta suerte, quedando sin madrigueras, no habra para que se paguen soldados, pues no habra nuevas hormigas que matar." The policy he is arguing for is settlement rather than war; the figure of speech he argues it in compares the people being settled to vermin, and both halves are here because both are on the page.
A town was founded in 1698 for people who had run away from an encomendero, and this is the strongest single fact in the chapter. Certain Indians, the author writes, "eran de un encomendero, de quien repetidas veces habian hecho fuga, y se acogian a Coahuila, de donde los sacaban contra su voluntad; y estando en su visita dicho señor obispo, se acogieron a su proteccion; y con acuerdo del señor virey, conde de Moctezuma, fundo con ellos un pueblo en un ameno pais, nueve leguas de Coahuila al Norte, en la junta de los dos rios, el de Coahuila y el de Nadadores, que es en el Valle de Candamo, y se le dio el titulo de San Antonio Galindo de Moctezuma, y fue el año de 698; tiene solo 132 indios". A bishop on visitation and a viceroy between them took a group of repeated fugitives out of an encomienda by founding them a town with a name and a jurisdiction of its own. The passage also states, without comment, that before that they were being fetched back "contra su voluntad" - the abuse and the remedy in the same sentence.
The villa of Monclova was founded for the same reason and by the same bishop, and its design is stated. Despite the presidio, "cada dia se ponian en fuga y apostataban los recientes cristianos, y se internaban en los montes", from where they attacked the pueblos; informed of it, bishop Juan de Santiago de Leon Garavito "solicito se fundase una villa en tiempo del virey conde de Monclova, y lo consiguio, intitulandose la villa de Santiago de Monclova, en memoria de dicho señor obispo y virey, y esta situada inmediata al pueblo de San Francisco de Coahuila, con lo que villa y pueblo se presidian; y asi, pueden unos y otros cultivar la tierra, cosechando sazonados frutos, y especialmente tienen muchas viñas de que hacen caldos, y se utilizan con su comercio". A Spanish town and an Indian pueblo placed next to each other so that each garrisoned the other, and both could farm: the settlement doctrine of the chapter applied to one site.
The cost is entered on the same pages and it is not softened. In 1693 the reduced town of Santa Rosa de Viterbo de Nadadores was invaded by unreduced people who "quemaron la iglesia y pueblo, y tomaron los padres salir con las vidas, que perdieron miserablemente cincuenta gandules y quince niños, todos cristianos"; Fr. Baltasar Pacheco, a native of Guadalajara, was hung from a tree with a fire laid beneath him; Fr. Juan Macias "quedo insensato los cuatro años que vivio"; Fr. Tomas Mateo and Fr. Juan de Liñan were carried off and eaten; Fr. Juan Guillermo was disembowelled alive and tied to a tree with his own entrails. On the other side of the ledger the same chapter reports that in one pitched battle "quedaron muertos todos los contotores, y de los cabezas quedaron muy pocos", the survivors withdrawing under two leaders named as D. Pedrote and D. Santiago to the pueblo of Parras. Both entries are the chronicler's and neither is checked here.
His ethnography is that of an advocate for reduction and is registered as such. The peoples of San Buenaventura, he writes, "tenian el detestable abuso de muchas mujeres, y frecuentaban los mitotes (que llaman a sus bailes), y se tomaban la bebida diabolica del peyote, que es una raiz que adormece a los que la beben", and he asserts that they ate human flesh. That is a hostile description of polygyny, dance and a plant used ritually, written by a man arguing that these nations needed to be reduced; the corpus records what he says without adopting it, and holds elsewhere the sources in which the same plant is described medically.
And then, at the end of the chapter, the same author makes the parity argument that his better-known chapter on armed pacification does not. Of the cruelties, deaths and robberies committed by the unreduced he writes that they rise and withdraw for fear of punishment, "pero esto no prueba mas que la inconstancia de la naturaleza humana, propensa a la maldad, y entre los cristianos viejos tambien se experimenta, y lo que ejecutan aquellos gentiles de atrocidades, no es en odio de la religion, sino por sus particulares intereses, y esto no quita el que alguna vez apetezcan el bien de sus almas". He adds, as evidence that they may want instruction, that "de Coahuila salieron indios a buscar religiosos que los instruyesen, y llevaron a su primer misionero, el padre Larios". The man who argues six chapters later that pacification by force works better than preaching alone here denies that indigenous violence is religious in motive, levels it with the conduct of old Christians, and credits the first mission of Coahuila to an indigenous delegation that went out and fetched a missionary.
The frontier as he describes it in 1742 is thin, and the detail that matters is who was armed. Fifty leagues north of Monclova stands the presidio of San Juan Bautista on "el rio Grande del Norte"; the rio de Medina is "termino divisorio de dicho reino y de la provincia de Texas"; eight leagues beyond it is "el presidio de San Antonio de Bejar, que es ya provincia de Texas, y tiene dos pueblos de indios de las naciones mezquites, payaguas y aguastayas, administrados por religiosos apostolicos, uno de Queretaro y otro de Guadalupe de Zacatecas"; then the presidio of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de los Texas at a hundred and fifty-four leagues further, and beyond it Nuestra Señora del Pilar de los Adaes, "el ultimo que por aquel viento tenemos". And sixteen leagues before the Texas presidio, brigadier Pedro de Rivera on his inspection was visited by "cincuenta indios de la nacion nechas, armados de fusiles franceses, frascos de polvora y bolsas de balas, como las mas expertas tropas". French muskets in indigenous hands, reported by the crown's own inspector, are the measure of how little of that country the Spanish presidios actually held.
His remedy is immigration and trade rather than more soldiers, and it is costed as an investment. He is persuaded "a que si por la Florida u otro puerto entrasen familias que poblasen en aquellas costas, y se internasen a entregar los presidios, llegaran a unirse las poblaciones de Coahuila y reino de Leon, con la provincia de Texas, y todos tres reinos se comerciaran, por ser el temperamento muy semejante al de la Europa, la tierra muy fecunda", so that it could supply "el reino de la Vizcaya, que carece de tierras de labor". And he argues the outlay is recoverable: even if nothing came of it but the reduction of so many, "podian dar por bien empleados los costos que en sus principios tuviera el poblar; digo en sus principios, porque dentro de pocos años la misma tierra produjera, no solo para la precisa manutencion, sino para abundante regalo". Settler families, civil government and inter-provincial trade, argued in 1742 against the standing presidio, by a man who expected the frontier to pay for itself within a few years.
The source calibrates itself on the same pages, in both directions. On the one hand the author names his authorities - "todo lo dicho refiere en su cronica el padre Fr. Nicolas de Ornelas, y otras noticias he recogido del contesto de las reales cedulas citadas, y de otros papeles" - and the 1870 editor footnotes two personal names against the manuscript copies of "el Sr. Garcia" and "el Sr. Chavero". On the other, the same chapter reports as fact that the men who dressed themselves in the vestments and used the chalices were left crippled in foot, hand or mouth and "fueron conocidos por los patulecos", and closes with a skull that spoke to a newly ordained friar from the province of Guadalajara and asked for baptism. A chapter that cites its decrees by date and its chronicler by name, and prints a talking skull two columns later, has to be read a sentence at a time; that is the reason every quantitative claim above is attributed rather than asserted.
The limits of this entry. All of it is read from pages 379 to 385 of the 1870 Mexico printing of a manuscript finished at Guadalajara in 1742, by a lawyer of the audiencia that lost the jurisdiction case described in claim c5 and that is the hero of claim c1. Neither royal cedula of 24 December 1677, nor the approval of 25 February 1679, nor any account of the maize, cattle and flour actually issued was seen here; the dates printed without their century - "677", "679", "693", "698" - are as the edition gives them. Nothing read here shows whether the two-year grants were paid in full, what became of the protector of Saltillo's office, how the pueblo of San Antonio Galindo de Moctezuma fared after 1698, or what the peoples named in this chapter said about any of it: no indigenous testimony, no mission report, no presidio muster and no encomienda record was opened for this entry.