By Keli Holt
In the last two issues, we explored the Spanish entry into New Mexico and the missionary system that Spain established to assert control over the Native Nations it called Pueblos. While these Pueblos were in fact different Nations with a variety of economic, religious, and social differences, they were all mostly sedentary farmers. This was a lifestyle the Spanish understood. Spain’s policies from 1540 to roughly 1700 were designed to turn the Pueblos into Christian tax-paying Spanish citizens. Unlike their French and English colonial counterparts, Spain wanted to incorporate the Pueblos directly into their empire, with or without their assent.
Some Pueblos were amenable at first to living in missions, as this offered protection from nomadic Nations like the Navajo and provided access to Western technology and animals. To protect its missions and control access to the rich silver mines of northern Mexico, Spain completely closed New Mexico to all foreign trade, especially banning the trade of guns and horses. To supply New Mexico, a ship would dock at Veracruz (Atlantic coast of Mexico), march over the mountains and across the desert to New Mexico. This mercantilist system (a closed economic system) stifled growth and kept Spanish America impoverished.
Unlike their English and French rivals, Spanish citizens had to have royal permission to immigrate to Spain’s “New World.” The economic poverty and lack of royal permission ensured that few Spanish settlers came to New Mexico. This sometimes encouraged greater cooperation among the Spanish and Pueblos who relied upon each other for protection. However, it also encouraged exploitation. The economy was so poor that the only way to obtain wealth in New Mexico was to exploit the labor of missionary Pueblos. Spanish friars, soldiers, and settlers competed vigorously for forced Pueblo labor, greatly offending the Pueblos upon whom Spanish survival depended.
While Spain’s mercantilism ensured that few valuable goods arrived in New Mexico, those that did make it were prohibited from being traded to non-mission Native Nations. Initially this made it difficult for Nations like the Navajo, Utes, and Apaches to obtain guns and horses. By 1700, however, French and English traders and settlers had inched closer to New Mexico, and they had no qualms selling guns and horses to Native Nations which adapted Western technologies to suit their own purposes. These well-armed and mobile Nations increasingly raided Pueblo missions and Spanish settlements.
In the face of French and English encroachments and increased raids, Spain adapted its policies towards New Mexico. No longer could Spain exploit the Pueblos with relative impunity as it had done from 1540-1700, when Spain controlled trade and access to weapons (although Pueblos had successfully revolted against Spanish rule in 1680). Increasingly, Spain negotiated with the Pueblos on more equal terms, gradually decreasing its forced Christian conversions and increasing acceptance of Pueblo traditions.
Throughout the 1700s, French traders marched down from French Canada, trading furs all along the Mississippi River Valley. They eventually settled New Orleans, while the English increasingly populated the 13 colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. It was at this time that Spain established missions in Texas, including San Antonio. New Mexico now served as a defensive frontier, protecting Spain’s silver mines in Mexico. By the 1760s, Spain established a ring of military bases, or presidios, from the Gulf of California to the Gulf of Mexico. Not surprisingly, violence increased with the larger presence of soldiers. Spain, however, could ill afford the increased expenses of protecting its American outposts.
By 1786, Spain shifted its policies again with a new set of Instructions that called for maintaining strong military pressure on nomadic Nations. They went so far as to pursue a policy of extermination against the Apache Nation while building alliances with “friendly” Nations for mutual defense. Gifts and expanded trade were now the linchpin keeping Native Nations allied. It was a policy the French and English had been using for decades.
The Spanish Instructions of 1786 marked a political milestone in that Native Nations were no longer viewed as simply vassals of the Spanish King but independent Nations with whom treaties and alliances could be made. Spain made alliances with the Comanche, Navajo, and segments of the Apache Nation in the waning years of Spanish rule. The years 1786-1810 were relatively peaceful, and trade and Spanish immigration increased.
However, this relative peace proved fleeting when Mexican rebels launched the Mexican Wars for independence in the 1810s. As Spanish control over Mexico and its American provinces crumbled, Native Nations raided the remaining Spanish outposts. When Mexico finally won its independence from Spain after 300 years in 1821, the Mexican Republic inherited Spain’s violent frontier.
Keep an eye out in Prime Time’s next issue, where we will explore how an independent Mexico City tried to assert control over Texas, New Mexico, and California in the face of American westward expansion.
