Spanish Presence in the Southwest

Between 1540-42 another group of strangers appeared in the southwest, much lighter in complexion, wearing heavy armor and riding strange looking four legged animals (large dogs) seeking the elusive “Seven Cities of Gold.”  This expeditionary force was led by Coronado, a Spanish soldier of fortune, who traveled   from Mexico to Arizona/New Mexico, reaching indeed to the plains of Kansas before returning empty handed and dying in Mexico. In his search, many Pueblo villages were sacked and destroyed including the alleged Zuni "golden village" of Cibola. Ironically Coronado on his way to Cibola would pass through Cochise country including Sulphur Springs, Dragoon and Chiricahua Mountains.  The Dragoon and Chiricahuas today make up part of the Coronado National Forest in Arizona. For the natives of the southwest, Coronado’s expedition was nothing more than a passing dark cloud with little lasting impact.  

Spanish presence in Mexico begins with Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs in 1520 and the destruction of the beautiful Aztec capitol of Tenochtitlan with a population of 200,000. Tenochtitlan was described by one eye witness, Bernard Diaz, as breathtaking in its beauty; architect and water ways. It was twice as large as London, Rome or Venice. Though Spanish steel and arms made the Spanish conquest possible it was primarily white man’s diseases, measles, smallpox, influenza that brought Aztecs to their knees. It's estimated that native populations throughout the Americas experienced a population collapse of ninety percent by 1600. Such a loss was destructive of native culture. The Apaches too would fall victim to these diseases often seriously weakening their bands leadership and impacting their knowledge, ceremonies and ritual. 

Like Coronado the Spanish Conquistadores were motivated by “gold” and “god”. It is estimated that between 1500 and 1650, Spain extracted 20.000 tons of silver and 200 tons of gold from the “New World." This treasure house of bullion made Spain the paramount European/Global power and laid the basis for a money economy. The Presidio or military garrison was the main vehicle of controlling the indigenous populations of what later became known as “New Spain”. The Church was the other institution of control and through its Missions/missionary effort sought to exercise the indigenous populations of their "paganism" by conversion, often forceful, to Christianity. Native people were declared pagans- soulless and sub-human by the Papal Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 which divided South America between Portugal and Spain. This prejudice led natives to be ruthlessly exploited and abused by state in the mines/estates exemplified by the Encomienda system and by the Church in the Missions. Native demonization was intensified by racism and it was so destruction of Native populations that Spanish/Portuguese had to turn to the African slave trade in which millions of Africans were packed into slave ships only to perish on the Middle Passage. Historians estimate that 15-30 million people died of disease, malnutrition and chains.

Spanish North America became part of the vice royalty of “New Spain” administered from Mexico City. Spanish Conquistadores and their wealthy Rancheros counterparts, who established the great cattle ranches and sugar/cotton plantations, established by the seventeenth century a rigidly stratified social hierarchy based on the example of Madrid in which power, status and position were based on color/blood and ancestry. At the top of the social pyramid were the Peninsulares, Spaniards born in Spain, who controlled New Spain as viceroyals or governors. Closely aligned to them were the Crillos, Spaniards born in the new world, who occupied this second tier of power as mayors, military commanders, bishops and great ranchers/plantation owners. The next class in the colonial hierarchy was the Mestizos, peoples of mixed blood. Primarily European/Indian, but in some cases European/African called mulattoes. Mestizos were to be found as craftsmen, traders, merchants, shopkeepers and many as vaqueros/cowboys who worked on the large cattle haciendas. Last were the peons, mainly Indian, who had no personal property or were in debt and worked on the great estates or haciendas for paltry wages or food. Another segment of peons were zambas of Indian-African ancestry. Zambas were the most discriminated group of people in Mexico.  The power elite were fairer in complexion, blonde with blue eyes, whereas the Mestizos and peons were darker in color with brown eyes, and often experienced terrible discrimination and prejudice because of color from their ruling counterparts. Mixing of the races was an outcome of conquest and the inability of Spanish entrepreneurs/explorers to persuade Spanish women to come and build a home in the New World. The example was set by Cortez who married La Manche who some consider to be the “Mother Metaphor” for Mestizos Mexico. The Apaches certainly experienced this centuries old Spanish racial prejudice, but in their case they would be described as “los barbarous”.

In 1598, Juan de Onate inspired by the “Seven Cities of Gold” mythology led another expedition north arriving at what later would become the capitol city of New Mexico, Santa Fe. The Territory of New Mexico also included western Texas, southern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle and southwestern Kansas. It was pretty desolate area except for the various tribes that inhabited it: Puebloans, Apaches, Comanche, southern Cheyenne, Arapahos, and the Buffalo herds which grazed across the southern Plains. The Spanish sought to win the support of the Puebloans by offering protection to them from the marauding Apaches in exchange for their accepting Spanish rule/ Christianity. The Spanish colony at Santa Fe saw a dramatic increase in Pueblo conversions from more than a 100 to 20,000 by 1626. Christian conversion, however, meant incessant labor on church lands at the expense of their own livelihood. By the1670’s, drought, disease and Church teaching began to alienate the Puebloans who believed that the hereafter was below, not in the heaven, and ultimately everyone, and not just baptized persons, returned to the underworld. The Franciscans, however, brooked no compromise in doctrine and targeted Puebloan medicine men that were flogged, imprisoned and executed for their recalcitrance leading to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in which the Spaniards were driven out of Santa Fe fleeing to El Paso. The Spanish defeat was the only time that North American indigenous peoples succeeded in forcing Europeans to return large areas of territory. The Pueblo victory was pyrrhic as the Spaniards and Friars soon returned in 1692. They quickly re-established their control by appealing to the former Christian members who felt bad about their betrayal and participating in the Pueblo uprising showing how easily Westernization could break tribal unity into traditionalists and moderns.