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Demographic Change in Northwestern New Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Robert H. Jackson
Robert H. Jackson*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley, California
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Extract

The process of Spanish colonization in Northwestern New Spain, here roughly defined as Sonora and the Californias, set into motion a complex set of factors that contributed to demographic change; absolute population decline among the Indian groups involved, the growth of a largely mestizo settler population, and a number of different types of social and economic interactions between the two populations. Scholars in recent years have debated the causes and the nature of change. Alfred Crosby established a framework for the debate in his provocative book entitled The Columbian Exchange, which discusses, as the sub-title implies, the consequences of interaction between the Old and New Worlds after 1492. In a recent study Henry Dobyns elaborated on one of Crosby's principal themes, the introduction and impact of Euro-Asiatic diseases, and prepared a chronology of epidemics between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries that affected Native American populations. Dobyns applied his “epidemic mortality” model to Florida and calculated both a high contact population and the rate of population loss due to each of the major epidemics. The model when applied to all of North America has major implications for our understanding of the course of Native American history. In a recent bibliographic article historical demographer Shelia Johansson cast doubt on the high contact population estimates and the degree of demographic collapse.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , April 1985 , pp. 462 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1985

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References

1 Crosby, Alfred The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

2 Dobyns, Henry Their Number Became Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics In Eastern North America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

3 Johansson, Shelia “The Demographic History of the Native Peoples of North America: A Selective Bibliography,” Yearbook Of Physical Anthropology 25 (1982), 133–152 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For examples of studies of Meso-America see Cook, Sherburne and Borah, Woodrow Essays In Population History, 3 volumes (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971–1979)Google Scholar; and for David Cook, Peru Noble Demographic Collapse Indian Peru, 1520–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar. For more general overviews see Albornoz, Nicholas Sanchez The Population of Latin America A History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and two useful collections of essays: Denevan, William editor, The Population of the Americas in 1492 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976)Google Scholar, and Robinson, David editor, Studies in Spanish American Population History (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981)Google Scholar. The “Spanish Borderlands” has been the Latin American frontier region most closely studied. Sherburne Cook identified the different factors that contributed to Indian depopulation in Alta California in The Conflict Between The California Indian And White Civilization (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), and in volume three of Essays in Population History, Cook co-authored a detailed study of the sacramental registers of eight of the Alta California missions. Dobyns, Henry has a useful 1963 article entitled “Indian Extinction In The Middle Santa Cruz Valley, Arizona,” New Mexico Historical Review 38 (1963), 163–181 Google Scholar; and a longer monograph entitled Spanish Colonial Tucson: A Demographic History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976). In an unpublished PhD dissertation Mardith Schuetz studied the five San Antonio, Texas missions in some detail: “The Indians of the San Antonio Missions, 1718–1821,” PhD Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1980. These titles in no way exhaust the list, but are representative.

5 Hastings, James ably summarizes the colonization of Sonora in an article entitled “People of Reason And Others: The Colonization of Sonora to 1767,” Arizona and the West, 3 (1961). 321–340 Google Scholar.

6 Ms. Cucurpe Mission Baptismal Registers, Magdalena Parish Archive, Magdalena de Kino, Sonora.

7 Jackson, Robert H. “Demographic and Social Change in Northwestern New Spain: A Comparative Analysis of the Pimería Alta and Baja California Missions,” unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of Arizona, 1982,Google Scholar chapter 6.

8 Ibid., p. 159.

9 Ibid., p. 47.

10 Luis, Gonzalez R., editor, Etnología Y Mision En La Pimería Alta, 1715–1740, (México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1977), p. 82 Google Scholar.

11 Ms San José de Tumacacori Mission Baptismal, Burial, and Marriage Registers, Diocese of Tucson Chancery Archive, Tucson, Arizona.

12 Mark Laudenslager and Martin Reite, “Losses and Separations: Immunological Consequences and Health Implications,” forthcoming in Shaver, P. editor, Review of Personality and Social Psychology volume 5: Special Issue on Emotions, Relationships, and Health, (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984)Google Scholar. I would like to thank Shelia Johansson for calling my attention to this article.

13 Flinn, Michael The European Demographic System, 1500–1820 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, summarizes European vital statistics from family reconstitutions.

14 Jackson, , “Demographic and Social Change … ,” pp. 103–108 Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 178.

16 Ibid., p. 57.

17 Ibid., p. 192.

18 Jackson, Robert H. “Epidemic Disease and Population Decline in the Baja California Missions, 1697–1834,” Southern California Quarterly 63 (1981), 308–346 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Ibid., pp. 321–322.

20 Ibid., p. 316.

21 Jackson, Robert H. “Demographic Patterns in the Missions of Central Baja California,” to appear in the forthcoming Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology.Google Scholar

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Jackson, , “Demographic and Social Change. …” p. 65 Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 155, note 107.

27 Robert H. Jackson, “An Introduction to the Historical Demography of Santa Cruz Mission and the Villa de Branciforte, 1791–1846,” unpublished manuscript.

28 Ibid., pp. 49, 53–54.

29 Ibid., pp. 51–52.

30 Jackson, Robert H. “Disease and Demographic Patterns at Santa Cruz Mission, Alta California,” forthcoming Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology.Google Scholar

31 Ms. San Antonio Mission Baptismal and Burial Registers, Diocese of Monterey Chancery Archive, Monterey, California (hereinafter cited as DMCA); and Zephyrin, Englehardt O.F.M., San Antonio de Padua. The Mission In The Sierras (Ramona: Ballena Press, 1972), pp. 93–94 Google Scholar. I tested Engelhardt’s population figures against a sample of contemporary censuses.

32 Ms. San Juan Bautista Mission Baptismal and Burial Registers, DMCA; and Engelhardt, Zephyrin O.F.M., San Juan Bautista: A School of Church Music (Santa Barbara: Mission Santa Barbara, 1931)Google Scholar.

33 Jackson, “Disease and Demographic Patterns …”

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 Sales, Luis O.P., Observations On California, I772–1790, translated and edited by Rudkin, Charles (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Bookshop, 1956)Google Scholar, especially letter one.

38 Archaeologists who excavated Quarai pueblo in eastern New Mexico in the 1950s, for example, found a Kiva in the convento of the seventeenth century Franciscan mission. The archaeologists argued that the Kiva had been built following or during the construction of the convento. Spicer, Edward outlined the elements of Yaqui religion in The Yaquis: A Cultural History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980).Google Scholar

39 For a discussion of the nature of exploitation of the Indians in Central Mexico see Gibson, Charles The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule A History Of The Indians Of The Valley Of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

40 Two new studies deal with changes in religion and social organization: Spalding, Karen Huarochiri. An Indian Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Farriss, Nancy Mayan Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.