Horses represented an expensive and logistically challenging aspect of early expeditions, as they had to be brought by boat and then bred in colonial settlements to aid in expansion. This scarcity only elevated the cultural and political significance of horses, evident in the narratives of early Spanish or Indigenous chroniclers and also in strategic efforts to breed horses in colonial settlements, despite the challenging and varied new environments. Beyond the military lore of conquest, horses literally and materially served as the measure for establishing social status, access to political office, and territorial control by colonial representatives, shaping the structure and strategy of colonial expansion in powerful ways.

Chapter eight explores the social legacy of the prior two decades of conflict. The obstinate refusal of the archbishop and cathedral canons to receive a mestizo into the church cabildo had two important outcomes. First, the prejudicial treatment of the mestizos likely led to the closure of the colony’s first seminary. Secondly, it contributed to the emergence of a mestizo consciousness in New Kingdom colonial society among young men from mixed-ethnicity households. In the subsequent decades, this social group began to integrate into many privileged spaces in colonial society. Showcasing major archival discoveries, this chapter makes the case that by the end of the sixteenth century, mestizos already occupied a significant plurality of colonial bureaucratic and ecclesiastical offices.

Chapter six opens onto a tense confrontation that led the Spanish colonies in the New Kingdom the edge of civil war. As the colonial ideal of two ethnically-pure “republics” for Spaniards and for Indians had already begun to fracture, two indigenous communities identified the mestizo (mixed-ethnicity) sons of indigenous noblewomen as rightful successors to their outgoing caciques (indigenous chieftains). This decision inadvertently set off a chain of events that led to two decades of legal and political challenges. Through analysis of a cluster of legal cases involving aspiring caciques who were legitimate mestizo inheritors according to indigenous custom, this chapter explores the different bodies of law that informed Crown magistrates and administrators as they divided human communities and assigned their human subjects to categories and spaces. Here I also pay close attention to the legal implications of the rhetoric employed by different social factions as the legal cases in the colonies made their way to the Council of the Indies in Spain.