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The Function of the Market in Changing Economic Structures in the Mission Communities of Pimería Alta, 1768-1821*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Cynthia Radding de Murrieta
Cynthia Radding de Murrieta*
Affiliation:
Centro Regional del Noroeste, I.N.A.H.—S.E.P., Hermosillo, Sonora, Mêxico
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Extract

The initial thrust of Spanish conquest and colonization in Northwest Mexico, as throughout the great Chichimec frontier, was centered in the mission. Under the terms of the patronato real, the mission served as an instrument of Spanish imperial policy, aimed to accomplish the pacification and acculturation to Christian and Hispanic norms of society, of the semi-nomadic peoples who occupied the vast regions of mountain barrancas, mesas and valleys, coastal plains and desert lands to the north of the Mesoamerican civilizations.

The mission communities were designed to place the Indians in fixed settlements, thereby preparing the way for civil colonization and further exploitation of the potential riches of these remote dominions of the Kingdom of Castile. The Indians gathered into the missions represented to the Crown a force for productivity as field and mine laborers. Although mission Indians were exempt from tribute, in the Northwest, the surplus produce from mission lands contributed to the economy of the region; and, as early as the seventeenth century, mission Indians appeared in the mines of Sonora and Chihuahua.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , October 1977 , pp. 155 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1977

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was made possible by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (I.N.A.H.—S.E.P.), Mexico

References

1 Bolton, Herbert Eugene, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution in the Spanish American Colonies,” Bannon, John Francis. ed., Bolton and the Spanish Borderlands (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), pp. 281–306.Google Scholar

2 See similar analysis for mission communities in Paraguay and portions of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay: Garavaglia, Juan Carlos, “Un modo de producción subsidiario: la organización económica de las comunidades guaranizadas durante los siglos XVII-XVIII en la formación regional altoperuana rioplatense,” Assadourian, Carlos Sempat, Cardoso, Ciro F. S., Ciafardini, Horacio, Garavaglia, J. C., and Laclau, Ernesto, Modos de producción en América Latina (Córdoba, Siglo XXI Argentina Editores S.A., 1973), pp. 161–191.Google Scholar For this region, Caravaglia differentiates between the Jesuit communities and those administered by other religious Orders or by the laity. In the latter, the encomienda was implanted alongside the mission. In general, Caravaglia affirms that the mission served to organize Indian labor “more rationally” for the Spaniards’ purposes.

3 Semo, Enrique, Historia del capitalismo en México. Los orígenes, 1521–1763 (México, Ediciones Era, 1976 5), p. 14.Google Scholar

4 This is a cautiously worded statement, inasmuch as nearly all the native groups were influenced by the missions. For example, the Papagos would migrate seasonally to the missions. A remnant of the Sobaípuri nation migrated from the San Pedro River to the pueblos of the Santa Cruz and Cocóspera Valleys in 1762. And, the trade items from the Yuma nations (including slaves) circulated in the mission pueblos.

5 See references in: Semo, 19765; Dobyns, Henry F., “Indian Extinction in the Middle Santa Cruz River Valley, Arizona,” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 38, No. 2, April, 1963, pp. 163–181 Google Scholar; Dobyns, , Spanish Colonial Tucson. A Demographic History (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Kessell, John L., Mission of Sorrows, Jesuit Guevavi and the Pimas, 1691–1767 (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Kessell, , Friars, Soldiers and Reformers. Hispanic Arizona and the Sonora Mission Frontier, 1767–1856 (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1976).Google Scholar

6 To name only a few of the classic studies: Bolton, , The Rim of Christendom: A Biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino, Pacific Coast Pioneer (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1936)Google Scholar; Dunne, Peter Masten, Pioneer Jesuits in Northern Mexico (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1944)Google Scholar; Spicer, Edward H., Cycles of Conquest. The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the U.S. on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–1960 (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Polzer, Charles W., Rules and Precepts of the Jesuit Missions of Northwestern New Spain (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Kessell, 1970, 1976; Dobyns, 1976.

7 See excellent summary in Kessell, John L., “Friars vs. Bureaucrats, The Mission as a Threatened Institution on the Arizona-Sonora Frontier, 1767–1842,” The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, April, 1974, pp. 151–162.Google Scholar The Opata and Pima Bajo Missions were placed under the care of the Franciscan Province of Xalisco.

8 Spicer, 1962: pp. 281–306.

9 Polzer, 1976: pp. 66–75 , 88, 98–99; and personal communication. In a contrasting view, the Noticia del estado actual de las misiones que en la gobernación de Sonora administran los padres del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, of July 1772, by Fr. Antonio de los Reyes, suggests that private agricultural enterprise among the Indians was rather encouraged by the missionaries. ( de la Nación, Archivo General, Misiones 14, published in Documentos para la historia de México, Serie III, I, pp. 724–765.)Google Scholar

10 Canedo, Lino Gómez, ed., Sonora hacia fines del siglo XVIII. Un informe del misionero franciscano Fray Francisco Antonio Barbastro, con otros documentos complementarios (Guadalajara, Librería Font, 1971), p. 64.Google Scholar

11 McCarty, Kieran Robert, Franciscan Beginnings on the Arizona-Sonora Desert, 1767–1770 (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington, D.C. The Catholic Univerity of America, 1973) pp. 73–86 Google Scholar; Kessell, 1976: pp. 3-9; Polzer, 1976: 66–75; Gómez Canedo, ed., 1971: pp. 54–55.

12 Commerce was an important part of aboriginal cultural patterns. The market referred to here indicates an exchange of Indian produce for merchandise of European or creole origin—that is, for goods which the Indians did not make.

13 Archivo Histórico del Estado de Sonora (AHES) 1-2: 1. 1772. Anonymous, rough drafts of reports sent to the Viceroy. Internal evidence suggests that the author was Pedro Corbalán, who in 1772 held the office of Intendente de Hacienda in the Province of Sonora-Sinaloa (essentially a fiscal post) separate from that of Governor. The title of Intendente was recognized in Sonora prior to the establishment of Intendencies throughout New Spain, in 1786. Further references in the text are taken from this document, and will not be footnoted separately. Gómez Canedo, ed., 1971.

14 The Spanish terms vecino and gente de razón are generally interpreted here as non-Indian settlers of Spanish, mestizo and mulatto origin. The mulattoes and poorer mestizos would more often occupy the role of laborers, whereas “gente de razón” implies a higher status associated with property holders.

15 Gómez Canedo, ed., 1971: pp. 55, 63.

16 This observation is confirmed in a later period, by one of the last Franciscan missionaries to serve in the Pimería Alta, Fr. Faustino González, AHES 1–2: 97.

17 See Kessell, 1976, and Dobyns, 1976.

18 This rather deceptive definition of the Indians’ freedom in terms of their faculty or ability to work for the Spaniards is, nevertheless, explicitly contrasted to chattel slavery. The various arrangements governing Indian labor in the frontier provinces require further study, notwithstanding West’s pioneer study on Parral. This researcher cannot offer at this time data concerning this question; however, it is assumed that wage labor frequently deteriorated into debt peonage. (Robert Cooper West, Mining Communities in Northern New Spain, Ibero-Americana 30. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1949.)

19 McCarty, Kieran, Desert Documentary (Tucson, Arizona Historical Society, Historical Monograph 4, 1976), pp. 23–4.Google Scholar References to Archivo General de la Nación, Provincias Internas, 247: 359–361, 350–351.

20 Gómez Canedo, ed., 1971: p. 63.

21 Gómez Canedo, ed., 1971: pp. 63–65.

22 Ibid., Barbastro served in Ures (Pimería Baja), Tubutama (Pimería Alta), Banámichi and Aconchi (Opatería).

23 Gómez Canedo, ed., 1971: pp. 71–72, 75–76. See translation and commentary in Kessell, 1976: p. 174, and similar observations in Conde de Revillagigedo, Informe sobre las misiones, 1793, e Instrucción reservada al Marqués de Branciforte, 1794, José Bravo Ugarte, ed., (México, Editorial Jus, S.A., 1966) p. 38.

24 Kessell, 1976: pp. 207, 213. Revillagigedo, 1966: p. 31. Also Semo, 19765 : 70–71, in relation to Indian communities in central New Spain.

25 Kessell, 1976 : 88-89, 170, 206-214, 257–258. Archivo del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, Cartas de Sonora, Vol. 2, Doc. #5, 11, 12. ACQ materials consulted in transcription through the generosity of Kieran R. McCarty.

26 See Kessell, 1970, 1976; Dobyns, 1976; McCarty, 1976.

27 Of interest here are generalized observations in regard to changing economic structures in the Indian communities, in Semo, 19765 : pp. 56–59.