The Spanish settlers were from every region in Spain and from every walk of life. One thing that a great many of them had in common was the quality of being nephews, nephews of someone already in the Indies. It is not hard to imagine some of the elements of the pattern. The original settler would probably be a second son, leaving his older brother in Spain to inherit the family fortune. Young and unmarried at the time of his departure, he would stay unmarried in the Indies until he had made a good beginning (longer than that, in the case of Fernandez Cubero). Having affairs to manage, needing aid and company, and with no grown sons of his own, he would turn to the sons of his older brother back home, who would be just coming of age. However it may have worked in detail, the nephew was a key ftgure. Nor was the importation of nephews an ephemeral phenomenon; David Brading has established its importance in maintaining the continuity of Spanish-Mexican merchant houses as late as the latter eighteenth century.

In this volume we have already seen two appeals for nephews, and there will be more. To underline the importance of the topic we include here this maximum appeal, which wheedles and threatens, praises and taunts, using all the reasoning we have seen before, plus the new factor that Fernandez Cubero wants to have someone to whom he can leave his considerable wealth.

Nephew:

Many times I've written you telling of my life and the way in which, since coming to this country, I have managed this business and commerce and earned a living. Really, as this is a rich land and food is quite cheap, and I have continually lived alone, I have earned a great deal, as those gentlemen who have left here can very well tell you, having seen it with their own eyes, especially Mr Alonso Hernandez and Mr Alonso de Rivas, the one from Brihuega.