The Persistence of Indian Slavery and Encomienda in the Northeast of Colonial
Mexico, 1577-1723
José Cuello
Journal of Social History, Vol. 21, No. 4. (Summer, 1988), pp. 683-700.
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THE PERSISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY AND
ENCOMIENDA IN THE NORTHEAST OF COLONIAL
MEXICO, 1577-1723
By Jose Cuello
Marquette University
Introduction'
The more historians study the social groups and institutions of Mexico's colonial
period, the more flexible, adaptable, and variable those groups and institutions
seem to become across time and space. The comfortable and immutable images
which dominated the historical literature a generation or two ago have been shown
to be extremely brittle and static. In no area is this more evident than in the
conceptual transformation of the hacienda. Once it was believed to have taken
shape in the seventeenth century and to have remained unchanged until the
Mexican Revolution. However, so many regional and temporal variations have
been found in recent decades, that one historian has been led to observe that an
"hacienda" has come to mean "virtually any market-oriented agrarian enterprise in
which the owners did not themselves constitute the primary labor f ~ r c e . Similar
"~
observations can be made about Indian communities and about a wide variety of
social types, especially colonial elites.'Generalizations are becoming increasingly
difficult to make as the historical model ofcolonial society becomes more and more
complex.
The evolution of the colonial rural labor systems is an area of study that has
lagged behind the others for a number of reasons. Rural labor is usually treated
indirectly as an aspect of hacienda or regional economic history. Rarely is labor
Itself the central focus of a study. Furthermore, within the literature on labor
systems, there has been an extraordinary fixation with hacienda labor dating from
the late eighteenth century onward. This has meant a concentration of focus on
some form of wage labor in a market economy, usually indebted wage lab~r.~Earlier
labor systems - like slavery, encomienda, and repartimiento - which proved to
have been transitional adaptations in the emergence of a mature colonial society
have drawn relatively little recent attention.'
The general model of how these labor systems functioned and evolved from one
to another that was so effectively synthesized by Charles Gibson still has widespread acceptance. According to the model, the catastrophic decline of the Indian
population and the growing competition for workers led to a transformation of the
ways in which Indian labor was recruited and employed. By 1550 Indianslavery had
been abolished in central Mexico and repartimiento had replaced encomienda as
the dominant labor system. By 1632, when repartimiento was itself abolished,
indebted wage labor, or debt peonage, had become the dominant ~ y s t e mThe
.~
model has been tested and refined only in a piecemeal fashion.' The most
significant work thus far has been James Riley's study of the rise and decline of
gaiiania in central Mexico and his suggestion that there were three or four regional
patterns of labor systems development in the core areas of the co10ny.~
684
journal of social history
There exists a north Mexican corollary to the model of labor systems derived
from the study of central Mexico. Beginning with the work of Fran~oisChevalier
or a least receiving its major impetus from it, the northern variant as accepted by
most historians is that conquest slavery quickly gave way to free wage labor due to
a scarcity of manpower. This northern corollary derives its force from the study of
mining centers and large livestock haciendas. The short-lived use of encomienda
in New Mexico before it was destroyed by the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 is considered
exceptional. Wages were the magnet that drew workers from central Mexico and
a few sedentary Indian groups in the North like the Yaqui to the mining-ranching
economy of the New Spanish North. This stripped-down, simplified version of the
central Mexican model is reinforced by the image of most of the North as a
violence-plagued, thinly-populated frontier whose native inhabitants were not
easily civilized, even by the specialized missionary agents of the Crown. The
northern corollary is only qualified by the appearance of debt peonage on some
large estates in the eighteenth ~ e n t u r y . ~
The northern model is incomplete because the transition from slavery to wage
labor was not always made quickly and because encomienda appeared more
frequently than is generally assumed. Geographical historians Robert C. West and
Peter Gerhard, along with anthropologist William B. Griffen, have noted the
existence of an encomienda or repartimiento type of labor system in the area of
Nueva Vizcaya dominated by Parral. It was used in agricultural production and
lasted at least until the late seventeenth century and probably into the early
eighteenth century.'@It is only now, however, that anyone has begun to study this
labor system in any detail or depth."
The seventeenth-centurycolonial MexicanNortheast, dominated by the Spanish towns of Saltillo and Monterrey, provides a similar case in point. Vito Alessio
Robles, Coahuila's most renowned historian, recognized the existence of encomienda in that territory, but believed it had not existed in Saltillo. This
misconception has been picked up by a modern synthesis of northern ~ o c i e t y . ' ~
Other Mexican regional historians like Andr6s Montemayor and Eugenio del Hoyo
have treated slavery and encomienda in Nuevo Le6n, but their work has not had
wide circulation or made an impact on the mainstream historiography on colonial
Mexico." As a consequence, our understanding of labor systems in the North
remains underdeveloped and fragmentary.
The purpose of this essay is to examine the incidence and longevity of slavery
and encomienda in the Northeast of colonial Mexico from the last quarter of the
sixteenth century to their replacement by wage labor as the dominant labor system
in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. After a brief background on
the colonization of the Northeast, I will first outline the history of the three labor
systems in the region to 1723. Then, I will discuss the structural reasons for the
longevity of slavery and encomienda in the region and compare encomienda there
to its variants inother regions of Mexico and Spanish America. The goal is to make
a contribution to the historical understanding of the adaptability of colonial labor
systems and the regional variations which characterized their evolution.
THE PERISISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY
Spanish Colonization of the Northeast
Saltillo and Monterrey, the main centers of Northeastern colonization, were
both founded in 1577 by veteran Indian fighters of the Chichimecan Wars on the
northern plateau. They penetrated the Northeast in search of additional slaves and
silver deposits. They initiated a generation of extreme violence not only between
Spaniards and Indians but also among Spaniards competing for territorial control
of the region. Monterrey, originally named Santa Lucia and then San Luis, was
abandoned twice before a third founding gave it its permanent name in 1596.
Saltillo, destined to become the chief agricultural center of the Northeast, was
never abandoned. Nevertheless, to secure its permanence it needed the founding
in 1591 of the Tlaxcalan ~ u e b l oof San Esteban in the Saltillo Vallev.14
When the dust of the conauest settled, the Northeast was left in a iurisdictional
tangle. Saltillo represented the northeastern point of Nueva vizcaya: San Esteban
de IaNueva Tlaxcala was a viceregal protectorate. Monterrey, sixty miles to the east
on the other side of the Sierra Madre Oriental, became the capital the Nuevo Reino
de Le6n. The territorv of Coahuila lav to the north and northwest of Saltillo and
Monterrey respectively. Both Nueva Vizcaya and Nuevo Le6n claimed jurisdiction
over it until it became a separate province in 1674. The mining town of Mazapil,
on the rim of the great Central Plateau less than a hundred miles to the southwest
of Saltillo, represented the northeastern point of Nueva Galicia.
The early geography of Spanish colonization in the Northeast was completed by
various reaks de minas surrounding Monterrey, most notably San Gregorio de
Cerralvo, and by the Chichimecan-Tlaxcalan pueblo of Parras eighty miles to the
west of Saltillo which began
- as a lesuit mission in 1598. All of these settlements
were linked to one degree or another by economic interdependency, trade routes
connecting them to the rest of the viceroyalty, extended family networks, and a
common northern frontier.15
The Spanish and Indian towns shared a highly-varied regional environment.
Saltillo's high water table and cool climate made possible its specialization in
irrigated wheat. The combination of water and a lower altitude made Parras the
wine-producing capital of the viceroyalty. The mountains of the Sierra Madre and
the rim of the Central Plateau shared by Mazapil, Saltillo, and Monterrey were
heavily-forested. The temperate climate of these highlands proved suitable for
apple and other European fruit trees. Monterrey and its surrounding mining
centers, which produced both silver and lead alloys used in the smelting of silver,
dominated Q coastal plain that received abundant rain and provided winter pastures
for huge sheep flocks from the Center and Near North of the colony. The semi-arid
Coahuilan lowlands west of the Sierra Madre merged into the badlands of the
Bolsdn de M a&~ i m.inorth
,
of Parras. The northern reaches of Coahuila and Nuevo
Le6n were made more hospitable to human habitation by numerous tributaries to
the Rio Grande which originated in the northwesterly flow of the Sierra Madre
Oriental.I6
The varied environments of the Northeast were inhabited bv hundreds of bands
of hunter-gatherers in pre-Hispanic times. Spanish intrusion into what is now
southern Coahuila and Nuevo Le6n destroyed the local bands or incorporated
them into the Spanish colonial system. The great number of bands that continued
686
journal of social history
to reside in the northern parts of these modern states, across the Rio Grande in
Texas and to the east and south of Monterrey, constituted a more than centurylong labor pool for the Saltillo-Monterrey-Parras core of Spanish settlement.I7
T h e Indian Labor Systems of the Northeast
In discussing slavery, encomienda, and their transition to wage labor in the
Northeast, two factors need to be underscored. The first is that local society in the
Valley of Saltillo was much more compact, stable, and peaceful than provincial
society in Nuevo Le6n. Saltillo's concentration on wheat agriculture and distance
from the aboriginal territories of most of the Indian groups in the Northeast meant
there was n o violence in the valley after the first decade of the seventeenth century.
In contrast, Nuevo Lecin remained a raw frontier throughout the century and its
residents had greater access to Indian groups. This made the labor systems in Nuevo
Le6n much harsher than in Saltillo. The second is that while the three labor
systems were different in theory, they blurred into each other in practice. In Nuevo
Le6n the violence with which slavery and encomienda were enforced made the two
systems almost indistinguishable. The line between encomienda and wage lahor
was in turn blurred by the need to provide the hunter-gatherers with a minimum
amount of food and clothing during the times they were employed within Spanish
society.
The three labor systems coexisted throughout most of the period between the
1570s and the 1720s, but each had its era of predominance. Slavery had its heyday
in the 1570s and 1580s when the conquerors of the Northeast were interested
almost exclusively in exporting slaves for profit. Thereafter, the export of enemy
Indians enslaved in "justified" wars continued to be a source of income for the
vecinos of the Northeast until the late seventeenth century. However, the local use
of Indian labor through encomienda and slavery became more important to
regional development. Captive Indians were used to resupply Spanish enterprises
and homes with workers and servants in Saltillo until the early eighteenth century
and in Nuevo Lecin until the mid-eighteenth century. Encomienda lasted from the
conquest period to the 1670s in the Valley of Saltillo and into the 1720s in the
Monterrey district. Changing Spanish-Indian relations and the efforts of the
viceroy and the Guadalajara Audiencia to enforce royal authority in the Northeast
were major factors in the decline of encomienda. Wage labor appeared soon after
the local conquest, but did not become the predominant system in the employment
of Indians until encomienda was no longer tenable. For the increasingly Hispanicized Indians, and for many of the growing number of castas who joined them in
the work force, wages meant indebted servitude since they were rarely enough to
pay for advances on credit.
Slavery
The widespread use of slavery was a systematic Spanish adaptation on the north
Mexican frontier wherever nomadic Indians were encountered. Almost at the very
moment that the New Laws (1542) made slavery illegal in Mesoamerican Mexico,
the Mixt6n War (1541-1542) in Nueva Galicia provided the initial reason for
THE PERISISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY
retaining the practice legally on the frontier for generations. The discovery of silver
at Zacatecas sealed the fate of S~anish-Indianrelations not onlv on the Gran
Chichimeca, but throughout moit of the North. The inevitable resistance bv
hunter-gatherers to sp;nish domination, the shortage of labor, and the semi:
autonomous political power wielded by provincial and local authorities insured the
survival of slavery and encomienda in northern New Spain into the eighteenth
centurv.
From the Indian perspective, of course, the Spanish definition of legal enslavement was absurd. Here was an alien invasion whose agents claimed as slaves Indian
resisters to the authority of a foreign crown. The heat of conquest and the lure of
profits led Spaniards to violate even the thin limits imposed on their predatory
activities by this conquest ideology. When the MarquCs de Villamanrique arrived
in 1585 to take over the government of New Spain, he found that the very soldiers
who were supposed to be pacifying the northern frontier were causing most of the
conflict in the Chichimecan Wars by enslaving pacific Indians. The following year
he prohibited the enslavement of Indians by any participants in the war. He
substituted a bounty for each hostile Indian captured or killed. Captives would be
sold into a type of encomienda to respectable persons in New Spain in order to
compensate the captors. He also reduced royal support for the war effort and turned
to a policy of pacification through gift-giving and subsidie~.'~
The conquest and early colonization of Saltillo and Monterrey was characterized by wholesale slave-hunting, a fact which contributed to Viceroy
Villamanrique's determination to stop the practice throughout the northern
frontier. In 1577 Alberto del Canto. the founder of Saltillo and Santa Lucia (later
Monterrey), led a group of Basque and Portuguese adventurers who terrorized the
hunter-gatherers of the Northeast. A vear later Canto had to flee a warrant issued
by the L d i e n c i a of ~uadalajaracharging him with illegal enslavement of peaceful
Indians. Luis Carvajal, the founder of Nuevo Lebn, led an even larger group of
slavehunters into the Northeast in 1582. They overran an area from the Rio
Grande to T a m ~ i c and
o from Saltillo to the Caribbean coast. Carvaial was arrested
in 1588 for his crimes, and Villamanriclue ordered the liberation of the slaves taken
by his army. The viceregal intervention reduced considerably the enslavement of
Indians, but did not eliminate it.I9
The profits of slave-hunting can be appreciated from documents of the era.
Enslavement as a result of canture in a "iustified" war was considered a criminal
sentence and was not permanent, although it might as well have been. Adult males
were usually sentenced to twentv-years
of service under their caDtors. Women and
. .
teenagers usually received a sentence of ten or fifteen
Children were
"deposited with Spanish masters for indefinite periods. These temporary slaves
could be sold to other Spaniards. A young adult male in 1575 was worth over 100
pesos. The average member of a band of hunter-gatherers was, therefore, worth
about seventy-five pesos. When Sebastih de la Rocha received eighteen Indians
in payment for his military services in 1575, he was essentially being paid 1,300
pe~os.~OIn
1592 Francisco de Urdifiola claimed that an Indian band he liberated as
a gesture of peace was worth 3,000 pesos. He was referring to an extended family
of forty people.*' Slavehunting was a risk venture that could yield a significant
amount of capital in a short period of time.
688
journal of social history
Despite viceregal prohibitions, enslavement of Indians for export eontinued at
least until the mid-seventeenth century and probably later. InNuevo Le6n, slaves
were sold at public auctions. Eugenio del Hoyo, one ofthe region's major historians,
found evidence of these auctions as late as 1652 and has concluded that slaves were
the chief export of the province in the first half of the seventeenth century. The
slaves were often destined for mining centers like Zacatecas, Fresnillo, and Sombrerete. However, they were alsosent farther away. In 1633 apetty merchant-miner
and future hacienda-owner, Vicente Guerrero, was arrested by authorities in
Monterrey for selling eight slaves at Guanajuato instead of taking them further
Authorities wanted some trouble-makers as far away as possible.
The slave trade was significant enough after mid-century to draw the attentlon
of higher authorities. In 1659 Viceroy Albuquerque and the Audiencia of
Guadalajara ordered the govemor of the northern provinces to enforce the laws
against Indian slavery. The Audiencia reissued the decree in 1671 after it came to
its attention that slaves from New Mexico and Nuevo Lecin were being transported
in the carts of the royal trea~ury.~'
Indian captives were also used to meet local labor needs. When the Audiencia's
decree of 1671 arrived in the Northeast, it set off an exchange of mutual
recriminations between the alcalde mayor of Saltillo and the governor of Nuevo
Lecin which revealed that slaves were being held forcibly by vecinos of both
jurisdiction^.'^ Indian women and children were especially in high demand as
house servants. In 1668, 1695, and 171 1 Saltillo's vecinos complained to the local
authorities that Indian males were luring female servants away from their homes
with promises of marriage. In the last two complaints the vecinos stated that the
servants had either been captured in war or had been raised in their homes from
childhood. Residents of Nuevo Le6n were making similar complaint^.^^
While slavery survived in the Saltillo jurisdiction until the early eighteenth
century, it was much more widespread and deeply-rooted in Nuevo Le6n where it
was intimately connected to the operation of encomienda and where the governors
and alcaldes mayores profited from the sale of encomienda grants. Throughout the
seventeenth century, Spanish residents paid fifty to one hundred pesos for licenses
to go out into the wilds and enslave groups of Indians on the pretext of bringing
them into Hispanic society for the purpose of civilizing and Christianizing them.
Expeditions to induct certain Indian groups into encomienda usually enslaved
additional groups in order to reward the participants in the expeditions as well as
the authorities who sanctioned them. The long-term contact situation between
Spaniards and Indians also produced Indians who were acculturated to one degree
or another and who could be tried as criminals for theft of livestock or highway
robbery. In the late seventeenth century the legal sentence for these crimes was six
years of service, although it is unlikely it was strictly observed in practice. Slavery
was so entrenched that, despite the termination of encomienda in the first quarter
of the eighteenth century, enslavement of Indians was reported as late as 1738 in
Nuevo L e t ~ n . ' ~
Encomienda
The legal origin of encomienda in the North dates from 1 562 when the Crown
THE PERISISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY
689
commissioned Francisco de Ibarra to found the Kingdom of Nueva Vizcaya and
empowered him to distribute encomiendas. Thereafter, the governors of Nueva
Vizcaya, Nuevo Lebn, and New Mexico assumed the power to continue granting
them. The institution received specific royal and viceregal sanction in Nuevo
Le6n. In 1625, seventy-five years after repartimiento replaced encomienda and
only seven years before repartimiento was itself outlawed in central Mexico, Philip
IV granted Nuevo Lebn's new governor, Martin de Zavala, the power to issue
encomiendas in return for the large financial investment his family made in
promoting the colonization of the province. Two years later Zavala published a
code regulating encomienda inNuevo Lebn that was approved by Viceroy Cerralvo
in 1630. As late as 1671, encomienda was still legal when the viceroy ordered the
governor of the Nuevo Le6n not to deprive encomenderos of their Indians
arbitrarily.17
The history of encomienda in Saltillo must be patched together from a very
scarce documentation on the institution. Alberto del Canto apparently issued
Saltillo's initial encomiendas along with the first land grants. There were ten
encomiendas in the valley, each associated with one of the valley's haciendas. The
encomiendas were treated as permanent, transferable grants and did not expire
after a given number of generations. There was no proliferation of encomienda
grants during the rest of the century as was the case in Nuevo Le6n. It is possible,
however, that Saltillo's encomenderos replenished their encomiendas with new
Indian groups from Coahuila or Nuevo Le6n as the original encomienda bands died
out or were integrated into Hispanic ~ociety.~"
Structurally, encomienda in the Saltillo was very different from the central
Mexican model. Encomenderos were assigned one or more bands of nomadic
hunter-gatherers. Each band was comprised of an extended family. An encomendero had to track down each group as it moved about living off the natural
environment within its aboriginal territory. The members of the band would then
be persuaded or forced to return with the encomendero to his farm, mine, or
household and labor for him during part of the year. In Saltillo it was particularly
important to have them available during the wheat and maize harvests. For the rest
of the year the band would be allowed to return to the wilds and follow its aboriginal
pattern of survival. Unlike the central Mexican model, or even those variants of
encomienda which characterized the Caribbean and other peripheral areas, the
hunter-gatherers were not paying tribute in surplus goods and labor. They did not
practice agriculture, even on a partial basis, except when they worked for their
encomenderos. They thus had to be given subsistence rations during their terms of
employment since their labor would ordinarily have gone to extract a living from
the environment.19
Saltillo's encomenderos treated their Indians as property in the same way they
treated land or movable goods. Whole encomiendas were sold, given, and left as
inheritances with and without land. Once the haciendas began to be subdivided,
portions of encomiendas were included in sales and inheritances as if part of the
improvements on the land. By the mid-seventeenth century, probably earlier,
Indian individuals and families were being detached from the encomienda bands
and partitioned to individuals and the Church, mostly in the form of inheritances.
Encomiendas and parts of encomiendas were also rented out, usually to perform
agricultural tasks.jO
690
journal of social history
Encomienda in Saltillo faded over the course of the seventeenth century. A key
year was 1643 when the doctrina payments made by the encomenderos were
abolished because the parish priest was neglecting his duties. This gave some
economic relief to the encomenderos, but it also removed the major ideological
support of the institution. There are fewer references to encomienda in the
documents over the next three decades and workers are increasingly referred to as
gente de servicio, indios de servicio,and indios de asiento. There is evidence from as early
as 1659 that although Indians bands were being persuaded or forced to work for the
farmers of Saltillo, they did have a choice of employers. In 1670 "new" bands were
"settled" in Saltillo but they were allowed to chose their employers and were paid
for their labor. They were also allowed to return to their homelands. Other
documents from the last quarter of the seventeenth century and first two decades
of the eighteenth century indicate that Saltillo's farmers depended increasingly on
their own children, resident hacienda workers, hired help from within the locality,
and individual migrant workers from outside the jurisdiction for their labor needs.''
There were various causes for the transition from encomienda and slavery to
wage labor in the Saltillo jurisdiction. A major reason appears to have been
Saltillo's demographic and economic trajectories. After two generations of conquest and post-conquest prosperity Saltillo experienced both a decline of its
Spanish population and an economic depression from the mid-1620s to midcen,
tury. During this time Saltillo's haciendas were increasingly divided among its
impoverished Spanish vecinos. Few had sufficient capital to work all of their land.
There was, therefore, little incentive to recruit more labor than was already
available through the original encomiendas. From midcentury, Saltillo recovered
and prospered, and its Spanish and casta populations grew in size. Most of Saltillo's
vecinos, however, were still small farmers and could not afford to sustain large
numbers of workers. Moreover, by then the time was past when encomienda could
be revived. There was an increasing competition for labor throughout the Northeast as the Spanish population grew in relation to the Indian population. Encomienda was impractical and inefficient as a formof labor distribution for Saltillo's
vecinos. This may have also been true for the vecinos ofNuevo Lebn, although they
retained a tenacious attachment to the institution until the early eighteenth
century.3z
Changing Spanish-Indian relations and the changing character of the Indian
population also accounted for the decline of encomienda. From the 1660s until the
early eighteenth century the bands of northern Coahuila and Nuevo Lebn became
more organized and violent in their resistance to Spanish aggression in recruiting
workers. Saltillo's vecinos joined those of Nuevo Le6n in several punitive expeditions, some of which reached beyond the Rio Grande. The growing acculturation
of the Indians not only gave them a greater knowledge of Spanish culture, but also
individualized them in their dealings with Spanish society.j3 Even in the early
seventeenth century, Chichimecan Indians were leaving their bands to migrate
over large areas under Spanish control seeking employment as individuals and
small groups.34
The nature of encomienda and slavery also promoted the disintegration of
encomienda and facilitated its transition to wage labor in the employment of
Indians since the encomenderos and slaveowners had to provide a minimum
69 1
THE PERISISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY
amount of food and clothing to the Indians under each of these systems. The
practice of dividing encomiendas into individuals and families accustomed Indians
to dealing on a personal basis with their employers. The transition to a wage system
bv which workers could be held in indebtedness was, therefore, relativelv easv.
' Wage labor had been used in Saltillo from the earliest times in the employment
of Spanish managers and artisans, mestizo and mulato workers, and Indian
naborias. There was no way that encomienda, even when complemented by
slavery, could have met all the labor needs of the Spanish populace. Not everyone
had encomiendas, and the hunter-gatherers were used primarily for unskilled
manual labor. From the 1660s the combined resident casta and His~anicizedIndian
population of Saltillo was roughly equal to the Spanish population. The lower-class
working population was augmented by impoverished Spaniards and by Tlaxcalans
who migrated from San Esteban into Saltillo as a result of population pressure in
the peublo. It is also likely that the Tlaxcalans were providing some form of wage
labor to Saltillo even before the limits of the carrying capacity of their community's
land was reached in the late seventeenth centurv. The transition to wage labor was,
therefore, an evolutionary process that reduced encomienda to a secondary role
before it finally di~appeared.~~
The efforts of the Crown, the viceroy, and the Audiencia of Guadalajara to
assert their authority in the Northeast also blocked the revitalization of encomienda in Saltillo. The Viceroy's decree of 1659 prohibiting forced labor of any
kind was cited bv one vecino in that year as his reason for transferring control of
his encomienda'to another vecino since the Indians preferred to wirk for the
second hacendado.j6 In 1671 and 1672 all three authorities issued new decrees
against forced labor in the Northeast. Other edicts followed in 1689, 1703, and
1709.37More effective than royal legislation were the foundings of Coahuila as a
separate province in 1674 and of its capital, Monclova, in 1689. These political
steps, resisted by Saltillo, interposed a new set of authorities between the vecinos
of Saltillo and the Indian groups which they were accustomed to dragooning into
service.38
Compared to Saltillo, the encomienda in Nuevo Le6n operated in an environment ofalmost pure lawlessness. The first known grants in ~ u e v Le6n
o
date from
1596 when Diego de Montemayor founded Monterrey permanently, but illegally,
and issued encomiendas to the colonists, also illegally. Legal grants began with
Martin de Zavala in 1626 and were made in the hundreds by the governors and
alcaldes mayores of Nuevo Le6n over the course of the next century. As indicated
before, the chief motive for the grants was the profit the officials made from these
grants. They were made possible by the hundreds of bands to which citizens of the
urovince had access in Nuevo Le6n, Coahuila, Texas, and the area that later
became T a m a ~ l i p a sAccording
.~~
to one prominent encomendero and chronicler
of the province, encomiendas were acquired as much to satisfy the vanity of the
Spanish vecinos as to extract labor from them.40Encomiendas were granted for
three "lives" or generations, but were easily reacquired or transferred through
various subterfuge^.^'
Like the encomiendas of Saltillo those of Nuevo Lebn were treated as real
property. They were transferred and subdivided through sale, inheritance, rental,
and whatever other means were available. By late seventeenth cenutry the subdir
,
692
journal of social history
vision was so advanced that encomiendas consisted of individuals and families
rather than bands. As a result, there emerged a counter-tendency towards reconsolidation or reformation through the combination of various encomiendas. This
pattern of division and reconsolidation characterized the ownership of the haciendas in the Saltillo V a l l e ~ . ~ '
The operation of the Nuevo Le6n encomienda was a major cause of the
perpetual turmoil that characterized the province through the beginning of the
eighteenth century. Encomienda Indians were treated like slaves. After the initial
grants, and every year thereafter, the bands assigned in encomienda were hunted
down in the countryside by their encomenderos leading groups of armed men and
Indian scouts. When the bands resisted, they were brought back in chains to work
in the fields, mines, or obrajes. The majority of the males were employed in
agricultural work. They were maintained on a minimum diet of a few ears of corn
a day. During the night they were kept chained up in barracks known as galeras.
After the harvest they were freed to return to their homeland without pay tosubsist
on the natural environment. More often then not, women and children were kept
hostage as domestic servants4j
There were two distinctions between encomienda and slavery. Under encomienda, Indians were technically free part of the year until they were needed
again and they were kept together partially and temporarily as groups. Under
slavery, individual Indians were singled out for several years of continuous forced
service and could be exported to other areas of northern and central Mexico. The
other difference was the legal, paper distinction under which these overlapping
forms of human exploitation were authorized. In neither case did the Indians
receive the fruits of their labor. The profits went to the captors, the authorities, the
middlemen, and the buyers and renters. In both cases Indian families and hands
were broken up and destroyed. Alienated, acculturated Indians turned on Spanish
society, raided livestock, robbed travelers, and killed encomenderos and slavehunters.44
Competition for Indians was the source of frequent legal conflict and physical
violence among Spaniards. Encomiendas were assigned in such frequent numbers
and with such imprecision to anyone who could pay the fee that there were many
overlapping claims. Encomenderos also lured Indians away from each other's
encomiendas with tobacco and cloth. Eugenio del Hoyo and Andres Montemayor
have found hundreds of legal suits per year among encomenderos competing for
control of Indians. Usually the suits were made at the beginning of the harvest
season. When encomenderos went off to fetch their Indians and enslaved others to
pay their armed retinues, they usually wound up raiding someone else's en,
comienda. In the first half of the seventeenth century, encomienda Indians were
branded, often several times by a succession of claimants to their persons. Inevitably, Spaniards wound up killing each other over their I n d i a n ~ . ~ '
Royal authorities had to exert a much greater effort to end encomienda and
slavery in Nuevo Le6n than in Saltillo. The stream of royal and viceregal cedulas
aimed specifically at ending forced labor in Nuevo Le6n had no effect. In the late
seventeenth century the Spaniards simply adopted the titles of "protectors,"
changed the name of encomienda to congrega, and continued their old ways. One
appointment ofa protector for a congrega of Indians dating from 1709 does indicate
THE PERISISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY
693
that some employers may have started paying their Indians wages of two reales per
day, at least in theory, but it is difficult to tell how extensively this was actually
practiced. By the early eighteenth century the spiraling cycle of violence had
reached crisis proportions. From 1709 to 1714 two hundred shepherds were killed
and 40,000 sheep were stolen while Monterrey and the other small Spanish
settlements were under siege by hostile I n d i a n ~ . ~ ~
After a Junta de Guewa in 1714, Viceroy Linares sent Alcalde de CorteLicenciado don Francisco Barbadillo y Victoria, with full authority to take
whatever steps were necessary to end the chaos. In a miracle display of power and
a diplomacy Barbadillo abolished encomienda and established six mission towns
with thousands of Indians that he either liberated or persuaded to come in from the
wilds. The missions were supplied with livestock, seeds, and agricultural implements. The Indians were allowed to work for Spaniards, but only for wages and on
a voluntary basis. The system worked remarkably well until Barbadillo left Nuevo
Le6n in 1716 after a six-month stay. O n his departure the former encomenderos
fell on the missions and provoked a war to justify a renewed cycle of enslavement.
The governor requested a war subsidy from the new viceroy, the MarquCs de Valero.
Instead, the viceroy sent Barbadillo back as the new governor. Between 1719 and
1723 Barbadillo repacified the province and brought a permanent end to encomienda. After his departure, however, the vecinos of Nuevo Le6n revived the
practice of slavery. By 1775 exploitation, acculturation, and disease had wiped out
the aboriginal bands in the pr~vince.~'
An Evaluation of Northeastern Labor Systems
The evolution of labor systems in the colonial Mexican Northeast was radically
different from the conventional central Mexican and north Mexican models in
chronology, sequence, structures, and functions. Enslavement as a result of the
justified war doctrine took deep legal and illegal root in the North just as it was
abolished in central Mexico. In Saltillo it lasted from the last quarter of the
sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, while inNuevo Le6n it may have
lingered on to the middle of the eighteenth century. Enslavement in war was
complemented in the Northeast by enslavement as a result of a criminal sentence.
This second form was, of course, well-known and widely-practiced throughout
colonial Mexico as part of the justice system.48In the Northeast, however, the clash
of cultures produced many more prisoners and the system was subject to much
abuse. The evidence from the Northeast also shows that while central Mexican
Indians may not have been enslaved from the 1540s, Indian slavery itself did not
totally die out in the core region. Like Saltillo it was a market for slaves from Nuevo
Lec51-1.~~
Slavery lasted for so long in the Northeast for the same reasons that encomienda
lasted into the third quarter of the seventeenth century in Saltillo and the first
quarter of the eighteenth century in Nuevo Lebn. The northern and northeastern
conquests began at later dates than the central Mexican conquest. Slavery and
encomienda sewed the reward and capital-accumulation functions which they did
in other conquests. However, the Northeast proved to be quite different from the
Gran Chichimeca where, as result of the Zacatecas silver strike, the bands of
694
journal of social history
hunter-gatherers were made to disappear completely through war and incorporation into Hispanic society. Spaniards and their creole descendants were never
attracted to the Northeast in sufficient numbers to occupy or pacify the regions
either quickly or completely. In fact, it was in the interest of the small number of
Spanish colonists to maintain an open frontier. The hundreds of bands of huntergatherers which lived off the land represented a vast labor pool that the Spaniards
could exploit in piecemeal fashion as their needs dictated. The religious missionary
effort was extremely weak in theNortheast andcame mostly late in the seventeenth
century. The vecinos of the Northeast did not welcome even these efforts at Christianization because they saw the missions as a threat to their free labor supply.i"
Another important factor was the inability or unwillingness of royal authorities to
take the necessary actions to end the most blatant systems of forced labor in the
Northeast until the late seventeenth century.
The very structure ofencomienda in the Northeast which resulted from Spanish
labor needs and the nature of aboriginal culture also accounted for its longevity.
The Spaniards used the Indians primarily for seasonal agricultural labor and
secondarilyfor unstable, low-capital lead and silver mining. They needed only a few
year-round permanent workers, which they obtained through the complementary
labor recruitment devices of slavery and wages. Like Cuban sugar planters or
California fruit and vegetable growers, Northeastern Spanish agriculturalists did
not want to support a work force during the times of the year when it was idle. Thus,
it was economically important for the Spanish employers to keep band culture alive
as much as possible. This adaptation gave them the benefits of having an abundant
labor supply in a market economy that could be tapped at times of peak labor
demand. However, in order toderive those benefits, they had to use lahor recruiting
devices that were more characteristic of a labor-scarce economy.
For the Indians the encomienda seemed to have been the best of a bad situation.
Band-life had its inherent and binding attractions to those who were born within
it and were conditioned in its ways. Since the hunter-gatherers were unable to
liberate themselves completely from Spanish service, they welcomed the opportunity to return temporarily to the social milieu of band-life with its specific family
relations, rituals, and celebrations. Even acculturated Indians found it difficult to
resist the chance to enjoy the freedom from the personal domination of paternalistic and tyrannical Spaniards. Encomienda alsogave Indians at least some minimal
access to the material benefits of Spanish culture, specifically: cloth, food, and
metal products. Acculturated Indian individuals and groups learned to function
within two societies, taking the best that was accessible to them from each.
The band also served important protest and vengeance functions. It permitted
Indians to resist even the temporary enslavement of encomienda and to raid
Spanish society for livestock and other movable goods. It promoted the emergence
of synthetic personality types alternative to the ones available to Indians solely
within Hispanic society. Individual encomienda bands survived as long as their
members could keep procreating themselves, in spite of the limits imposed by
contact with Spanish society, and as long as they did not become too serious a
military threat. In the peculiar tension between cultures and societies on the
frontier the most aggressive hands were led by ladino Indians. Aggressive bands
forced the balance away from encomienda because they provoked punitive Spanish
THE PERISISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY
expeditions to enslave or destroy them.51
Northeastern conditions produced an encomienda that was almost unrecognizable by central Mexican or Peruvian standards. Encomiendas were very small,
consisting of one to three bands at the most. Martin de Zavala's ordinance for
Nuevo Le6n enomiendas set a minimum of forty and a maximum of 150 persons.52
However, by the end of the seventeenth century many were much smaller.
Encomienda Indians were not "reduced" to permanent agricultural settlements as
in the Caribbean or elsewhere, but allowed, even required, to pursue a migratory
life. There was never any possibility of a transition to a tributary or monetary
encomienda in which Indians delivered goods and cash to their encomenderos.
Northeastern encomiendas were labor-based to the end. In fact, the flow of goods
took place in the opposite direction from what it did in central Mexico since encomenderos in the Northeast had to feed and clothe their Indians during the times
of the years when they employed their personal services. The superstructure of
intermediaries as well as the geo-political distance separating encomendero and
Indians that characterized the mature central Mexican encomienda were also
absent in the North. Encomenderos dealt directly with Indian leaders and bands.
Some of the characteristics of the Northeastern encomienda were attributable
to the absence of effective royal authority as much as to the other factors in the local
and regional environments. They included the branding of Indians, the competition and turnover in encomiendas, the almost total lack of religious indoctrination,
and the treatment of encomienda Indians as personal property. In other words, the
absence of a more humanitarian law and order allowed patterns of behavior to
persist in the Northeast that were characteristic of encomienda in the Center only
during the Conquest and immediate post-conquest p e r i ~ d s . ~ ~ abuses
T h e were not
unique to the frontier, but their duration was.
The Northeastern encomienda was similar in size, longevity, and personal
nature to encomiendas in other peripheral regions of Spanish America. However,
it was also significantly different. In the Caribbean, Tucumk, Paraguay, and
Venezuela the peripheral-area model of encomienda was imposed on Indians who
were at least partially agricultural and could be reduced to sedentary life if they were
not already practicing it. Historians have generally concluded that encomienda
was not feasible among hunter-gatherers who were enslaved, incorporated into
Hispanic society,wiped out, or who adopted a permanent mode of guerrilla warfare.
The northeastern model shows that Spanish institutions and native peoples were
even more plastic in the variety of their encounters than previously belie~ed.~4
Conclusion
What has been said of colonial land tenure systems in general, and of hacienda
specifically, can be said of the labor systems as well, particularly encomienda.
Spanish culture gave its conquerors and colonists in America a much more varied
cultural baggage than could ever be used in any one specific circumstance. The
people - Spanish, Indian, African, and others who inhabited the colonial realm
-were as adaptable and imaginative as their institutions. Different circumstances
and different times called for different combinations of the specific elements of
culture. This assumption is at least partially implicit in the recognition by other
696
journal of social history
historians that in some parts of the North, like Zacatecas, slavery gave way to wage
labor directly and bypassed encomienda and repartimiento. In the Northeast,
repartimiento was bypassed and a greatly-modified encomienda was applied. T h e
bulk of hacienda workers were not the permanent resident dependents envisioned
in the Chevalier model. Furthermore, even within the Northeast, variants of the
peripheral-area models of slavery and encomienda appeared in Saltillo and Nuevo
Le6n.
What was common about all labor systems, including wage labor, was that
Spaniards got the labor they wanted in what they perceived to be the least
expensive and most efficient ways possible. Only a Bartolome de las Casas or a
disinterested observer could have pointed out to the Spaniards of the Northeast the
moral, economic, and social costs of their self-interested and short-sighted methods. In Nuevo Ledn the brutality of encomienda and Indian slavery produced a n
endemic violence that stunted the development of a stable and peaceful society
until the middle of the eighteenth century. Still, the Spaniards exhibited a
remarkable flexibility in their stubborn insistence on exploiting the Indians of the
Northeast. They were perfectly able and willing to pull out previously unused
variants of institutions from their cultural baggage or create new variants when
circumstances required it. In Nuevo Le6n, when encomienda came under royal
attack, the local powers changed its name to congrega. When this was abolished,
the vecinos resorted to the old device of slavery. When a variety of circumstances
demanded it, vecinos in both Saltillo and Nuevo Le6n turned increasingly to wage
labor, a system that was theoretically free but that in practice was just another form
of indentured servitude.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
FOOTNOTES
1. 1 want to thankGilbert0 M. Hinojosa, Gerald E. Poyo, and the anonymous reviewers oitheJoum1
of Socid History for t h e ~ hr elp in revising this essay for publicat~on.
2. John E. Kicza, "Economic Forces and Social Development in Colonial New Spain," Lann Amencan
Research Review 25 (1985): 176-180.
3. O n Indian communit~es,see particularly the works of W ~ l l ~ aTaylor,
m
Landlord and Peasant In
Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, 1972) and Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexlcan VtUagec
(Stanford, 1979) as well as the more recent study by Nancy Farris, Maya Society under Colonlal Ruk.
The Colkctive Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, 1984). O n el~tes,see Doris M. Ladd, The Mexican
Nobility at Independence, 1780-1826 (Austin, 1976) and John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs: Famihes
and Business In Bourbon Mexico (Albuquerque, 1983).
4. It is not my purpose here to list all the relevant studies. Among the more important hisroriographical essays on the subject are Magnus Morner, "The Spanish American Hacienda: A Survey of
Recent Research and Debate," Hispanic Ame~icanHistorical Review (HAHR) 53 (May, 1973): 183-216;
Frederich Katz, "Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mex~co:Some Trends and Tendencies,"
HAHR 54 (Feb., 1974), and Arnold Bauer, "Rural Workers In Span~shAmerica: Proklems of Peonage
THE PERISISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY
and Oppression," HAHR 59 (Feb., 1979):34-63. Also see three recent collections of essays: Elsa Cecilia
Frost, et al., El aabajo y los aabajadores en la historia de Mexico (Mexico, 1979); Enrique Florescano, ed.,
Haciendas, latifundios, y plantmiones en America Latina (Mexico, 1975); and Kenneth Duncan and Ian
Rutledge, eds., Land and Labour in Latin America (London, 1977).
5. For a recent overview of the changing relationship between land and labor in colonial central
Mexico, which points to the lack of studies for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see John
Tutino "Urban Power and Agrarian Society: Mexico City and its Hinterland in the Colonial Era,"
forthcoming in Roberto Moreno and Eric Van Young, eds., The City, the Country, and the Frontier in
Mexican Histmy (Mexico, UNAM).
6. Charles Gibson, Spain in America (New York, 1966), 48-67, 136-159. In his study on The Aztecs
Under Spanish Rule (Stanford, 1964), published two years earlier, Gibson noted that indebtedness by
itself was not enough to bind workers to haciendas and that the pos~tiveattractions of credit and
employment security were even more important (pp. 252-256). The thesis of positive attractions had
been earlier advanced by Woodrow Borah in New Spain's Centuy of Depression (Berkeley, 1951).
These views were a modification of the classic short study by Silvio Zavala on the ""Origenes coloniales
del peonaje en Mexico," El Trimesae Ecndmico X:4 (Enero-Marzo, 1944): 71 1-748.The most complete
study of the early central Mexican ecnomienda is still Lesley Byrd Simpson, The Encomienda in New
Spain (Berkeley, 1950), revised and enlarged for the 1966 reprint.
7. In Yucatan, encomienda lost its importance in the late seventeenth century and was not actually
abolished until 1785. Encomienda and servicio personal (the equivalent of repartimiento) lasted
longer in Yucacan than in the Valley of Mexico because of the smaller population and relative isolation
from the commercial market. See Marta Espejo-Ponce Hunt, "The Process of the Development of
Yucacan, 1600-1700," in Ida Altman and James Lockhart, Provinces of Early Mexico (Los Angeles,
1976), 33-62, and Farris, Maya Society under Colonial Rule, 47-56, 358. Farris attributes the survival
of servicio personal beyond the end of the colonial period to a pre-capitalist mentality among the
Spaniards. J. Benedict Warren, The Conquest ofMichoaccin (Norman, 1985),73-80,157-210,has three
chapters which deal wlth encomiendas in the period 1521-1530, but the study contributes little to the
understanding of the institution.
8. James D. Riley, "Landlords, Laborers, and Royal Government: The Administration of Labor in
Tlaxcala, 1680-1750,"in Frost, El aabajo y los trabajadores, 221-241, and "Crown Law and Rural Labor
in New Spain: The Status of Gafianes during the Eighteenth Century" HAHR 64 (May, 1984): 259285. Riley shows that a straight line between two conceptual points is not always the right line. He
found that there was a period between 1630 and 1687 when the colonial authorities treated gaiianes
as free residents on haciendas, a development Zavala and Gibson missed because their documentation
came from the early seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries.
9. An excellent synthesis of this perspective is Ignacio del Rio, "Sobre la aparicidn y desarrollo del
trabajo libre asalariado en el norte de Nueva Espafia (siglos XVI y XVII)," in Frost, El aabajo y los
trabajadores, 92-111. For the tremendous number of ways in which diverse Indian groups in the
Mexican Northwest and United States Southwest interacted with Spaniards, Mexicans, and AngloAmericans, see Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest (Tucson, 1962). For evidence of debt peonage,
see the often-cited work by Charles Harris, A Mexican Family Empire: The Latifundo of the Sdnchez
Navarros, 1765-1867 (Austin, 1975). For a late-eighteenth century view of peonage on north Mexican
haciendas, see Fray Juan Agustin de Morfi, Dinrio y derrorero (1777-1781) (Monterrey, 1967).
10. Robert C. West, The Mining Community in Northern New Spain: The Parral Mtning Dismct
(Berkeley, 19491, 72-74, 125. Peter Gerhard, The Northern Frontier of New Spmn (Princeton, 1982),
164-165. William B. Griffen, Culture Change and Shifting Populations in Central Northern Mexico
(Tucson, 1969) and Indian Assimilation in the Franciscan Area ofNuevaVizcaya (Tucson, 1979).Charles
Gibson, Spain in America, 66, noted that encomienda lasted much longer in peripheral areas of the
Spanish empire, like Paraguay and Venezuela, but did not extend the generalization to the Mexican
North.
698
journal of social history
11. Susan M. Deeds, "The Persistence of the Labor Repart~mientoIn Eighteenth-Century Nueva
Vizcaya" and Cheryl English Martin, "Labor Relations and Socral Control in Eighteenth-Century
Chihuahua," Papers read at the 1986 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association,
Chicago, December 1986.
12. Vito Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la tpoca colonial, 2nd edition (Mexico, 1978), 189-200;
Oakah L. Jones, Jr., Los Paisanos: Spanish Settkrs a the Northern Frontier of New Spain (Norman, 1979),
23.
13. AndrCs Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda en el Nuevo R e n o de Ledndesde hnalesdel siglo
xvr hasta el siglo xviii," Humanitas I1 (1970): 539-575. Eugenio del Hoyo, Historia del Nuevo Remo de
Le6n (1577-1723) 2 vols. (Monterrey, 1972), I, 64-173, 311-333,II, 398-401,433-449,486-500
14.The description of the Northeast and ~ t searly hrstory given here 1s synthes~zedfrom Cuello,
"Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century: Local Socrety on the North Mex~canFront~er,"(Ph.D. D~ss.,
UC-Berkeley, 1982); and Hoyo, Historia.
15. Cuello, "Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century", 43-73
16. Ibid.; IsraelCavazosGarza, ed., Historiade NuevoLe6n (Monterrey, 1961); AlessioRobles, Coahuila
y Texas en la tpoca colonral.
17. Cuello, "Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century," 228-283
18. Ph~lipWayne Powell, Mexico's Mrguel Caldera: The Tamingof America's First Frontier (1548-1597)
(Tucson, 1977), 107-115.
19. Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas desde la consumacidn de la independencia hasta el matado de pa? de
Guadalupe Hidalgo, 2 vols. (Mexico, 1946), 11, 419; Hoyo, Historia, 1, 86-101.
20. Philip Wayne Powell, ed., War and Peace on the North Mexican Frontier: A Documentary Record, I:
"Crescendo of the Chichimeca War" (1551-1581) (Madr~d,1971), 185-190.
21. Vrto Aless~oRobles, Francisco de Urdifiola y el norre de la Nuewa Espaiia (Mex~co,1931), 77-78.
22. Hoyo, Historia, 11, 398-400. Israel Cavazos Garza, Catcilogo y sintesu de 10s protocolos del archrvo
municipal de Monterrey luol. 11, 1599-1700 (Monterrey, 19661, 49-50.
23. Saltillo, Arch~vodel Ayuntam~ento(SAA), Ramo General (RG), leg. 1, exp. 21-R (Dec. 20,
1659); leg 2,exp. 37 (Oct. 21, 1671).
24. SAA RG, leg. 2, exp. 47, Item 48, ff. 30-31 (Jan. 7, 1672)
25. SAARG, leg. 2,exp. 19, item 16 (no mo.orday, 1668);leg. 3, exp. 75, Item 7 (May9,1695);Actas,
leg. 1, l ~ b r o1 (1701-1726), ff. 238-241 (Feb. 20, 171 1).
26. Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda;" Hoyo, Historla, I, 64,173,311-333, 11, 398-401,433449, 486-500; SAA RG leg. 2, exp. 47, Item 48, ff. 30-31 (Jan. 7, 16721, leg. 3,exp. 1, item 6, ff. 2124 (Aug. 9, 1677), exp. 75, itern 4, f. 4 (Apr. 24, 1687).
27. Montemayor, "La congrega o encomrenda," 544-546, 551
28. The portrayal of encomienda in Saltillo In t h ~ esssay is a hrghly-condensed verston extracted from
the chapter entitled, "Integration of the Band People Into Hispan~cSociety" in Cuello, "Saltillo in the
Seventeenth Century," 228-259. It is impossible to cite all the sources used In the original manuscript,
but I do ~ncludethe most important ones. SAA RG, leg. I , exp. 3 (Acras, 1608-1643).ff. 137-139 (Feb.
THE PERISISTENCE OF INDIAN SLAVERY
20,1617), ff. 151-152 (Nov. 3,16181, ff. 156-157 (Apt. 7,1619), ff. 288-289 (Oct. 17,1640),ff. 294295 (Apr. 25, 1642); leg. 1, exp. 8, item 27 (May 4, 1615).
29. Ibid.; SAA RG, leg 4, exp. 84 (May 16, 1607).
30. SAARG, leg 1, exp. 8, item 10, f. 8 (Jan. 15, 16151, item 37, f. 24 (July 1, 1615), item 27, ff. 1718 (May 4, 1687), exp. 21-B (Dec. 20, 1659); leg. 2, exp. 16 (June 15, 1669); Leg. 4, exp. 8 (Mar. 11,
1686), f. 17 (no mo. or day, 1650), exp. 23 (1687), f. 1 (Feb. 20,1645); SAA Protocolos, leg. 4 (17541758),unnumbered exp., f. 1 (Nov. 13, 1658), f. 3 (Sept. 9,1658), ff. 8-9 (Oct. 31, 1658),f. 22 (Aug.
26, 1659).
3 1. SAA RG, leg. 1, exp. 3 (Actas, 1608-1643), ff. 302-303 (Mar. 5, 16431, exp. 29 (June 22, 16661,
leg. 2, exp. 16 (June 15, 1669), exp. 9, item 16 (Mar. n.d., 1668), leg. 3, exp. 75, item 7, f. 10 (May 9,
1695), leg. 4, exp. 67 (Sept. 24, 1689); Protocolos, leg. 4 (1754-1758), misfiled, unnumbered exp., f.
22 (Aug. 26, 1659); Actas, leg. 1, libro 1 (1701-17261, ff. 238-241 (Feb. 20, 1711).
32. Cuello, "Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century," 228-283
33. Ibid.
34. Archivo Municipal de Monterrey (AMM), Ramo de Causas Criminales (RCC), tomo 1, exp. 1
(Sept. 17, 1626), exp. 4 (July 6, 1627), exp. 11 (Dec. 19, 1633).
35. Cuello, "Saltillo in the Seventeenth Century," 43-73, 74-102, 228-283.
36. SAA RG, leg. 1, exp. 21-B (Dec. 20, 1659).
37. SAA RG, leg. 2, exp. 37 (Durango, Nov. 24, 1671). Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda,"
564,566.
38. Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Tern en la ipoca colonial, 189-247, 351-368.
39. Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda"; Hoyo, Historia, 11, 433-442.
40. Alonso de Le6n, "Relaci6n y discursosdel descubrimiento, poblaci6n y pacificaci6n de este Nuevo
Reino de Le6n," 1-124, in Cavazos Garza, ed., Histmia de Nuevo Ledn (pp. 70-71,98-99).
41. Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda," 552-554. For a discussion of the complexities and
subterfuges involved in the granting of encomiendas for longer periods of time than the life of the
original holder, see Gibson, Spain in America, 60-63. For a related discussion of the efforts by the
dependents of encomenderos to insure that encomiendas went to the "right" successors, see James
Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532-1560: A Colonial Society (Madison, 1968), 17-18.
42. Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda," 555-557; Hoyo, Historia, 11,435-439;Cuello, "Saltillo
in the Seventeenth Century."
43. Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda," 558-562; Hoyo, Histmia, I, 316-317.
4 4 H o ~ oHistoria,
,
1, 316-321; LeBn, "Relaci6n," 65-70, 107.119,
45. Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda," 547-551,559-562; Hoyo, Historia, 11,433-444,
46. Montemayor, "La congrega o encomienda," 565-575; Hoyo, Historia, 11,493-500.
47. Ibid
48. Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Ruk, 243-244.
700
journal of social history
49. Ibid., 244, Gibson notes some obraje workers In the Valley- of Mexico were Chlchimeca sl,~vrs
captured o n the frontier.
50. Alessio Robles, Coahuih y Texas en la ipoca colonial, 226-230; Montemayor, "La conjirega o
encom~enda,"570-575.
51. Cuello, "Saltillo In the Seventeenth Century," 259-283; Hoyo, Histona, I, 318-321
52. Montemayor, "La conyrega o encom~enda,"546.
53. Simpson, The Encomienda In New Sparn
54. For the most recent synthesis on the incidence and evolution of encomiendas in the peripheral and
frontier regions of the Spanish Empire, see James Lockhart and Stuart Schwartz, Early Latin America.
A Hrstmy of Colonial Spanish Amenca and Brazil (Cambridge, 19831, 253-304.