By Keli Holt
For the past few months, this column has been exploring the political history of New Mexico, beginning with the Spanish Entrada in 1540. For the next 280 years, Spain tried to exert political control over New Mexico as the northernmost boundary of Spain’s empire. Initially, the Spanish came into New Mexico in search of gold and silver like they had discovered in South and Central America. While the Spanish found no mineral wealth, they met a variety of Native nations whom they exploited for their benefit.
Spain differentiated between the Native nations by their lifestyles. The Spanish called all non-nomadic nations “Pueblos,” although the Pueblos were actually many diverse nations with different languages, religions, and culture. The Spanish recognized in the Pueblo farming lifestyle something akin to life on the Iberian Peninsula. Spain sought to “Hispanicize” the Pueblos by forcing them into missions run by Catholic Friars. The ultimate goal was to convert the Pueblos into Christian taxpaying citizens.
Initially, the Spanish made some inroads among the Pueblos, some of which viewed the Spanish and their weaponry as useful allies in their wars with powerful nomadic nations like the Navajo. The Spanish never understood the nomadic way of life. Recognizing that nomadic nations would never move into missions, Spain sought to contain them by denying them access to weapons and horses.
However, the Spanish overreached when they tried to force the Pueblos to give up their traditions and culture in favor of Catholicism and Spanish laws. In the absence of mineral wealth, Spanish soldiers and friars alike exploited the labor of the Pueblos, forcing many of them into a form of slavery. Forced labor was the only way for the Spanish to make money.
Several times throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the Pueblos united and kicked out the Spanish. Even though Spain would reconquer New Mexico repeatedly in this period, Spain never had enough men or military equipment to force the Pueblos, much less nations like the Navajo, to entirely alter their ways of living. In response to these realities, by 1700 Spain lessened its labor exploitation of the Pueblos and eased up on forced Christian conversions.
While the Spanish were in New Mexico, they tried to dominate its economic system by employing a mercantilist model banning all foreign trade. Initially only missionary Pueblos had access to Spanish weapons and horses. Spain tried, and ultimately failed, to keep weapons and the horse from the nomadic nations. These strict economic policies also kept New Mexico impoverished, and any goods that did arrive were prohibitively expensive.
By 1700, the missionary Pueblos and Spanish increasingly relied upon each other for security from three sources: nomadic nations and the encroaching British and French. As the French traded furs down the Mississippi River Valley and as Britain pushed westward from the 13 colonies, neither shared Spain’s hesitancy in trading weapons and horses with Native nations. The adoption of guns and horses revolutionized native warfare and allowed already powerful nations like the Navajo and Comanche to raid Pueblo missions more effectively.
To combat increased raiding and to protect the silver mines of Mexico from Britain and France, throughout the 1700s Spain built a ring of military forts extending from California to the Gulf of Mexico. However, the Spanish were few in number compared to the exploding population of British, and then after 1783, American settlers. (France abandoned its American Empire after defeat in the French and Indian War in 1763).
By the late 18th century, Spain had almost completely given up its attempts to convert missionary Pueblos to Catholicism. Forced to bow to the reality that Spain could not control the Pueblos, much less the nomadic nations, Spain altered its policies and enacted a series of treaties with Pueblos, Apaches, Navajo and Utes. These treaties ushered in a period of relative peace from roughly the 1780s until the Wars for Mexican Independence in the 1810s once again increased the violence.
In 1821, Mexico won independence from Spain, and New Mexico was now ruled by an independent Mexico City. To shore up its northern frontier, Mexico abandoned the mercantilist Spanish policies and welcomed trade with an expanding America. It is at this time that the Santa Fe Trail was created to try to make Mexico’s northern territories more profitable and to entice more Mexican citizens to move there. The American Stephen F. Austin even went to Mexico City and received permission to bring thousands of Americans to settle in Mexican Texas. Mexico wanted to use these American citizens as a buffer between them and nations like the Apaches, Comanches, and Navajo who had used the chaos of the Mexican Wars for Independence to increase their raids into Texas and New Mexico.
In the next issue we will explore how Mexico’s attempts to control its northern borders ran into American expansion under President Polk who had won the presidency by promising to extend America’s western borders.
