Sunday, April 27, 2014
La Cañada - Francisco Gómez Robledo
Francisco Gómez Robledo’s encounter with the Inquisition arose from the feud between the Franciscans and Bernardo López de Mendizábal. Not content with having the governor removed from office in 1660, Alonso de Posada began collecting information on him and his wife, mainly from disgruntled servants and political allies of the friars.
In 1662 the Inquisition ordered the arrest of López, his wife, and his four closest aides: Gómez, Nicholas de Aguilar, Cristóbal de Anaya Almazán, and Diego Romero. The last three were accused of heresy, but charges against Gómez escalated for reasons far removed from the squabbles for power in Santa Fé.
He had the misfortune of being Portuguese at a time when anyone Portuguese was suspect. Spain had taken control of the country in 1580 and Portugal had successfully rebelled in 1640.
After some years of uneasy truce, the Spanish began attacking Portugal in 1659 and lost each time. In 1661, Charles the II of England married the sister of the Portugese king, reopening that conflict. Anxieties ran high among those attuned to the interests of the royal court until 1665, when Spain lost to Portugal one final time.
In 1662, Francisco’s sister’s husband, Pedro Lucero de Godoy, wrote his brother, Diego Lucero de Godoy in Mexico City, that one of the Franciscans, Juan Ramírez "was supported by royal provisions from the viceroy of New Spain, hinting at political connections within the viceregal court." Diego was a lay priest there.
Gómez’s father, Francisco Gómez, was born about 1587 near Lisbon and orphaned at an early age. Angélico Chávez says his brother, a Franciscan friar, placed him with the family of Alonso de Oñate y Salazar, who brought him to México around 1604 when he was about 17.
Alonso was the son of Cristóbal Pérez de Oñate, who had gone to México City when he was 20, and later married Catalina de Salazar, daughter of México’s treasury officer. There is some consensus that Catalina was the descendant of a prominent Burgos Jewish family.
Whether Juan or Alonso knew anything about their mother’s family or that of Gómez is speculation, but Juan apparently wasn’t concerned about excluding potential conversos or marranos when he recruited men to go north with him. Indeed that may have been implicit in his demand that he be able to enlist man from any part of the kingdom of Spain.
Young Gómez may have been brought north by Juan de Oñate’s son, Cristóbal de Oñate, on one of his many trips between the México and the colony before he took over as governor in 1608. The names of people in the Oñates’ personal entourages weren’t included in official manifests.
He maintained close ties with the governors and México City. He was the military leader of the supply train escorts in 1616 and 1625, and was the designated governor when Luis de Rosas’ replacement died in 1641. By then, Francisco had married Ana Robledo, the daughter of Bartolomé Romero and Luisa López Robledo.
The evidence against Francisco junior came from Tomás Pérez Granillo, a servant of Juan Manso de Contreras, who once heard his father was a Jew. Diego de Melgarego, a servant of López de Mendizábal, claimed he’d heard López say his dad had "died with his face turned to the wall."
Many of the charges against Francisco himself came from Franciscans. Antonio de Ybargaray, report a suspected Jew, Manuel Gómez, had stayed with him 28 years before, while Nicolas de Chaves claimed he’d been called a Jewish dog for years.
The most serious charge came from Domingo López de Ocanto, who said the boys with whom he’d bathed as a teenager all knew Francisco and his brothers had been circumcised. He added Goméz had a little tail protruding from his buttocks.
López de Ocanto bore a particular grudge against López de Mendizábal: the ex-governor had revoked the encomiendas for Nambé and Jémez he’d inherited from his father, on the grounds they should have gone to his older sister.
The inquisition ordered a medical examination of Francisco which confirmed the circumcision. He claimed the scar came from some small ulcers and requested a second examination in better light. That also suggested deliberate incision.
Meantime, his brother, Bartolomé Gómez Robledo was in México with Francisco’s horses and mules, as well as tribute from Ácoma, to provide necessary help. The accused brothers, Juan and Andrés, weren’t examined. For reasons unknown, Gómez was released in 1664. For whatever reason, the Inquisition in México had lost interest.
At the time of the Pueblo Revolt, he was still on active military duty, and involved in the response by the governor, Antonio de Otermin. He died in exile at Guadalupe del Paso.
Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Esquibel. José Antonio Esquibel. "Esta Gran Familia: The Genealogy of the Lucero de Godoy Family of Mexico City," El Farolito, winter 2003, paraphrase from a genealogical website.
Granillo, Luis. Report for 12 March 1695 describing the settlement of La Cañada, included in Blood on the Boulders: The Journals of Don Diego De Vargas, New Mexico, 1694-97, volume 2, 1998, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.
Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth, 2005.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
La Cañada - Encomiendas
Encomiendas evolved in the Caribbean from medieval Castilian roots. According to Robert Himmerich y Valencia, they began as rights to labor, repartimiento, but were expanded to include commodities in México where Aztec traditions of tribute were perpetuated.
By the time Juan de Oñate was proposing his contract for conquest, Himmerich y Valencia says encomiendas were declining in importance in México. Still Oñate asked for the right to grant them for three generations. At the time the viceroy controlled all grants made in México, including those transferred through death and marriage. He was only willing to allow Oñate the right of encomienda, if he agreed to submit all names of grantees to México City for his approval.
If any governors followed that stipulation, no one has found the documents generated by the approval process in the Mexican archives. The only sources on encomenderos seem to be Angélico Chávez’s Origins of New Mexico Families and Inquisition records published by early scholars.
Oñate is only known to have granted one encomienda, the Santiago de Jémez, to his new lieutenant, Juan Martínez de Montoya, in 1606. The reason may be the pueblos, unlike the Indians dominated by the Aztec in México, had no concept of tribute. Chávez says the governor in 1613, Pedro de Peralta, sent his immigrant ancestor, Pedro Gómez Durán y Chaves, to collect from Taos and he failed.
It’s possible the reporting requirement fell into abeyance when a new viceroy replaced the one who’d distrusted Oñate in the period before governors were able to execute their right of conferment. When they began is unknown, but Chávez says his ancestor had an encomienda by 1621 for the area around Sandía and Santa Ana.
It may also be the viceroys lost interest, once repartimiento and tribute were replaced by debt peonage on the large agricultural plantations that developed to supply food for México City and the mining town of Zacatecas. The transition was well underway by the time Oñate came north, according to Peter Bakewell.
The Mexican economy was then suffering from an increase in food prices and a decline in the supply of mine labor, factors which may have influenced adventurous men to enlist to avoid hard labor to eat. Oñate, after all, was offering men the opportunity to revive the success of the original conquistadors in a time of economic stagnation.
The number of encomiendas in New Mexico was officially limited to 35, the number of pueblos that might need military protection. David Snow has compiled a list of 41 men and women associated with 26 native communities through two generations.
One reason the number of encomenderos proliferated relative to the number of encomiendas is simple inheritance. Taos may have been granted to Pedro Robledo, who came with Oñate in 1598. All we know is Juan de Tapia, the husband of his daughter, Francesca Robledo, claimed a quarter share, and Francisco Gómez Robledo, his great-grandson through another daughter, Luisa Robledo, had 2 ½ shares. No one has mentioned the owners of the other share or shares.
Another reason for the increase in the number of encomenderos through time is grants were used by governors to reward or punish men who did or did not support them. Luis de Rosas and Bernardo López de Mendizábal were both accused of exercising the right of revocation.
In 1661, Andrés Hurtado, a young man of 31 from Zacatecas, had the encomienda for Santa Ana and neighboring pueblos. Chávez doesn’t mention how it transferred from his ancestor to Hurtado, but does say the latter fell into disfavor with López, who ordered him to move his young family from the Sandía pueblo area to Santa Fé in December.
In contrast, Gómez Robledo became one of the more dependable military leaders, serving governor after governor. He told the Inquisition in 1662 he’d been "undertaking many risks and enterprises, bearing the costs himself, without receiving any salary, serving as royal ensign of the aforesaid town of Santa Fé, captain of the infantry, sergeant major, and commander of the companies of New Mexico, and maestre del campo of the company."
By then, he’d accumulated an interest in at least seven encomiendas that had to have been granted at different times. The first would have been Tesuque and Taos. Next might have been Pecos and Sandía. The other pueblos, Abó, Ácoma, and the Hopi villages, were pacified later.
A more important reason for the increase in encomenderos is that, through time, the grants came to be seen as commodities to be traded, not feudal contracts requiring military service in return for pay. As the Apache became a greater menace in the later 1600's, Allen Anderson says many men were less willing to take time from their ranches to provide military service. Some argued they were only required to attend the governing council in Santa Fé, the cabildo.
Sales of encomienda in México in the first generation were rare, but not illegal, as they were in Peru. However, they had to be approved by the viceroy. Himmerich y Valencia says the changing attitude toward transfers came from a 1536 royal instruction, the Law of Succession, which defined encomiendas as property that could be inherited.
There was no way the viceroy could have foreseen how that concept of property would evolve in the northern province. When Gómez Robledo was arrested in 1662, the description of his rights to tribute was made more precise. They included:
* All of the pueblo of Pecos, excepting for twenty-four houses held by his brother-in-law, Pedro Lucero de Godoy
* Two and a half parts of the pueblo of Taos
* Half of the Hopi pueblo of Shungopovi
* Half of the pueblo of Ácoma, except for twenty houses
* Half of the pueblo of Abó, which he had received in exchange for half of Sandía* All of the pueblo of Tesuque, which for more than forty years neither he nor his father had collected because of services rendered on contract in lieu of tribute.
The value of the rights to tribute depended on the number of people living in a pueblo who could pay. In México, Himmerich y Valencia said a man needed at least two to survive. According to John Kessell, the most valuable here was Pecos. Gómez Robledo could have collected corn and blankets from 340 households there, but only from 110 in Taos, 80 from Shongopovi, 50 from Ácoma, and 30 from Abó.
The association of encomiendas with wealth came from the right to repartimiento which was sometimes exercised in place of tribute, and sometimes, extralegally, in addition. Many encomenderos acquired large land holdings next to pueblos, then coerced local men, women, and children to work for substandard pay. In some cases, they also meddled in intertribal trade with plains Indians for goods like hides that could be resold in México.
It was López’s attempt to reform repartimiento, not the encomiendas, that united the colony against him. On his journey north to take command in 1659, the new governor heard reports of abuses and sensed growing unrest among the southern pueblos. When he arrived, France Scholes says he decreed the daily wage would double from half a real to a real and would include meals.
In 1661, estancia owners claimed "they had suffered heavy losses because they had been obliged to do without Indian laborers in harvesting crops and herding livestock" while nine of the Franciscan missions said they "had suffered a loss of more than six thousand head of stock because they had been deprived of the labor of Indians as herdsmen."
As an aside, Bakewell says the economic problems in México began, not with the conversion to wage labor, but with the epidemic of 1576-1579 that contributed to the need to pay higher prices for scarcer Indian labor. Here men were blaming the governor for a loss of income which probably was caused by dry weather that was leading to famine, epidemics and raids by nomadic Indians on the pueblos. When the native population began dropping, the available labor would have decreased, leading to the unrest López detected. The arid conditions would have affected crop and herd sizes, while the value of encomienda tribute also would have fallen with the population.
The association of encomiendas with status probably arose in the second and third generations of the colony when their economic value was declining, but new settlers, like Hurtado, were coming north with the supply trains and mestizo children of the first generation, like the son of Juan Griego, were rising. Then it was not enough to be the son or grandson of a conquistador, but one needed to have been signaled out as a conquistador of the first order.
And so, vague claims have been handed down. Chávez’s family knows that Pedro’s son, Fernando Durán y Chaves, "inherited Don Pedro’s estancia of El Tunque and his encomienda." They know the location of Fernando’s later land holdings, but all they know of the encomienda is that they had inherited it from the first generation, they didn’t have to earn it like Gómez Robledo.
They were hereditary encomenderos.
Notes:
Anderson, H. Allen. "The Encomienda in New Mexico, 1598-1680," New Mexico Historical Review 60:353-377:1985.
Bakewell, Peter John. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700, 1971. The pathogenic cause of the matlazahuatal pandemic is not known; it affected pure blooded Indians, not mestizos or Spaniards.
Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989; the descendants’ claim to the Santa Ana encomienda was consolidated when Hurtado’s daughter, Lucía de Salazar, married Fernando’s son, also Fernando Durán y Chaves.
_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Himmerich y Valencia, Robert. The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555, 1991.
Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth, 2005; the quotation from Gómez Robledo had a different purpose than indicated here.
Kessell, John L. Kiva, Cross and Crown, 1995,
Scholes, France V. Troublous Times in New Mexico 1659-1670, 1942.
Snow, David H. "A Note on Encomienda Economics in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico" in Marta Weigle, Hispanic Arts and Ethnohistory in the Southwest, 1983.
By the time Juan de Oñate was proposing his contract for conquest, Himmerich y Valencia says encomiendas were declining in importance in México. Still Oñate asked for the right to grant them for three generations. At the time the viceroy controlled all grants made in México, including those transferred through death and marriage. He was only willing to allow Oñate the right of encomienda, if he agreed to submit all names of grantees to México City for his approval.
If any governors followed that stipulation, no one has found the documents generated by the approval process in the Mexican archives. The only sources on encomenderos seem to be Angélico Chávez’s Origins of New Mexico Families and Inquisition records published by early scholars.
Oñate is only known to have granted one encomienda, the Santiago de Jémez, to his new lieutenant, Juan Martínez de Montoya, in 1606. The reason may be the pueblos, unlike the Indians dominated by the Aztec in México, had no concept of tribute. Chávez says the governor in 1613, Pedro de Peralta, sent his immigrant ancestor, Pedro Gómez Durán y Chaves, to collect from Taos and he failed.
It’s possible the reporting requirement fell into abeyance when a new viceroy replaced the one who’d distrusted Oñate in the period before governors were able to execute their right of conferment. When they began is unknown, but Chávez says his ancestor had an encomienda by 1621 for the area around Sandía and Santa Ana.
It may also be the viceroys lost interest, once repartimiento and tribute were replaced by debt peonage on the large agricultural plantations that developed to supply food for México City and the mining town of Zacatecas. The transition was well underway by the time Oñate came north, according to Peter Bakewell.
The Mexican economy was then suffering from an increase in food prices and a decline in the supply of mine labor, factors which may have influenced adventurous men to enlist to avoid hard labor to eat. Oñate, after all, was offering men the opportunity to revive the success of the original conquistadors in a time of economic stagnation.
The number of encomiendas in New Mexico was officially limited to 35, the number of pueblos that might need military protection. David Snow has compiled a list of 41 men and women associated with 26 native communities through two generations.
One reason the number of encomenderos proliferated relative to the number of encomiendas is simple inheritance. Taos may have been granted to Pedro Robledo, who came with Oñate in 1598. All we know is Juan de Tapia, the husband of his daughter, Francesca Robledo, claimed a quarter share, and Francisco Gómez Robledo, his great-grandson through another daughter, Luisa Robledo, had 2 ½ shares. No one has mentioned the owners of the other share or shares.
Another reason for the increase in the number of encomenderos through time is grants were used by governors to reward or punish men who did or did not support them. Luis de Rosas and Bernardo López de Mendizábal were both accused of exercising the right of revocation.
In 1661, Andrés Hurtado, a young man of 31 from Zacatecas, had the encomienda for Santa Ana and neighboring pueblos. Chávez doesn’t mention how it transferred from his ancestor to Hurtado, but does say the latter fell into disfavor with López, who ordered him to move his young family from the Sandía pueblo area to Santa Fé in December.
In contrast, Gómez Robledo became one of the more dependable military leaders, serving governor after governor. He told the Inquisition in 1662 he’d been "undertaking many risks and enterprises, bearing the costs himself, without receiving any salary, serving as royal ensign of the aforesaid town of Santa Fé, captain of the infantry, sergeant major, and commander of the companies of New Mexico, and maestre del campo of the company."
By then, he’d accumulated an interest in at least seven encomiendas that had to have been granted at different times. The first would have been Tesuque and Taos. Next might have been Pecos and Sandía. The other pueblos, Abó, Ácoma, and the Hopi villages, were pacified later.
A more important reason for the increase in encomenderos is that, through time, the grants came to be seen as commodities to be traded, not feudal contracts requiring military service in return for pay. As the Apache became a greater menace in the later 1600's, Allen Anderson says many men were less willing to take time from their ranches to provide military service. Some argued they were only required to attend the governing council in Santa Fé, the cabildo.
Sales of encomienda in México in the first generation were rare, but not illegal, as they were in Peru. However, they had to be approved by the viceroy. Himmerich y Valencia says the changing attitude toward transfers came from a 1536 royal instruction, the Law of Succession, which defined encomiendas as property that could be inherited.
There was no way the viceroy could have foreseen how that concept of property would evolve in the northern province. When Gómez Robledo was arrested in 1662, the description of his rights to tribute was made more precise. They included:
* All of the pueblo of Pecos, excepting for twenty-four houses held by his brother-in-law, Pedro Lucero de Godoy
* Two and a half parts of the pueblo of Taos
* Half of the Hopi pueblo of Shungopovi
* Half of the pueblo of Ácoma, except for twenty houses
* Half of the pueblo of Abó, which he had received in exchange for half of Sandía* All of the pueblo of Tesuque, which for more than forty years neither he nor his father had collected because of services rendered on contract in lieu of tribute.
The value of the rights to tribute depended on the number of people living in a pueblo who could pay. In México, Himmerich y Valencia said a man needed at least two to survive. According to John Kessell, the most valuable here was Pecos. Gómez Robledo could have collected corn and blankets from 340 households there, but only from 110 in Taos, 80 from Shongopovi, 50 from Ácoma, and 30 from Abó.
The association of encomiendas with wealth came from the right to repartimiento which was sometimes exercised in place of tribute, and sometimes, extralegally, in addition. Many encomenderos acquired large land holdings next to pueblos, then coerced local men, women, and children to work for substandard pay. In some cases, they also meddled in intertribal trade with plains Indians for goods like hides that could be resold in México.
It was López’s attempt to reform repartimiento, not the encomiendas, that united the colony against him. On his journey north to take command in 1659, the new governor heard reports of abuses and sensed growing unrest among the southern pueblos. When he arrived, France Scholes says he decreed the daily wage would double from half a real to a real and would include meals.
In 1661, estancia owners claimed "they had suffered heavy losses because they had been obliged to do without Indian laborers in harvesting crops and herding livestock" while nine of the Franciscan missions said they "had suffered a loss of more than six thousand head of stock because they had been deprived of the labor of Indians as herdsmen."
As an aside, Bakewell says the economic problems in México began, not with the conversion to wage labor, but with the epidemic of 1576-1579 that contributed to the need to pay higher prices for scarcer Indian labor. Here men were blaming the governor for a loss of income which probably was caused by dry weather that was leading to famine, epidemics and raids by nomadic Indians on the pueblos. When the native population began dropping, the available labor would have decreased, leading to the unrest López detected. The arid conditions would have affected crop and herd sizes, while the value of encomienda tribute also would have fallen with the population.
The association of encomiendas with status probably arose in the second and third generations of the colony when their economic value was declining, but new settlers, like Hurtado, were coming north with the supply trains and mestizo children of the first generation, like the son of Juan Griego, were rising. Then it was not enough to be the son or grandson of a conquistador, but one needed to have been signaled out as a conquistador of the first order.
And so, vague claims have been handed down. Chávez’s family knows that Pedro’s son, Fernando Durán y Chaves, "inherited Don Pedro’s estancia of El Tunque and his encomienda." They know the location of Fernando’s later land holdings, but all they know of the encomienda is that they had inherited it from the first generation, they didn’t have to earn it like Gómez Robledo.
They were hereditary encomenderos.
Notes:
Anderson, H. Allen. "The Encomienda in New Mexico, 1598-1680," New Mexico Historical Review 60:353-377:1985.
Bakewell, Peter John. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700, 1971. The pathogenic cause of the matlazahuatal pandemic is not known; it affected pure blooded Indians, not mestizos or Spaniards.
Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989; the descendants’ claim to the Santa Ana encomienda was consolidated when Hurtado’s daughter, Lucía de Salazar, married Fernando’s son, also Fernando Durán y Chaves.
_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Himmerich y Valencia, Robert. The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555, 1991.
Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth, 2005; the quotation from Gómez Robledo had a different purpose than indicated here.
Kessell, John L. Kiva, Cross and Crown, 1995,
Scholes, France V. Troublous Times in New Mexico 1659-1670, 1942.
Snow, David H. "A Note on Encomienda Economics in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico" in Marta Weigle, Hispanic Arts and Ethnohistory in the Southwest, 1983.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
La Cañada - Encomenderos
An encomienda was more important to defining a family’s social status than land. Its owner, an encomendero, was required to be a citizen of Santa Fé where he was usually on the governing council, the cabildo. He was also required to provide military service, which made him part of the officer corps. They became the functioning shadow government that ruled the colony through the triennial changes in governors sent from México City. Indian labor, tribute, land and wealth followed.
Juan de Herrera came with the reinforcements sent in 1600 when he was twenty, and lived in Santa Fé where he married Ana López del Castillo, a granddaughter of Asencio de Arechuleta. He was granted the encomienda of Santa Clara pueblo for his lifetime.
When Luis Pérez Granillo surveyed La Cañada in 1695 he noted Marcos de Herrera had a hacienda with “only enough land for one citizen with his family” and across the arroyo he had “another suerte and some agricultural fields.” Not only was the land separated but the location may have been less than prime. Granillo said the “house, because it was next to the arroyo or stream, was carried away by a great flood that occurred.”
The most important thing about his land was that it was next to ‘another suerte of agricultural lands follows that the convento of Santa Clara Pueblo owned and held.”
Angélico Chávez could find no tie between Marcos and Juan or his children. From the location, one may guess Marcos was an agent of the family who lived near the Santa Clara pueblo to collect tribute and otherwise oversee family interests.
Chávez noted in his own family, that the family name was often given to Indian servants or their children. He recognized some were illegitimate babies the family was willing to raise and give some position as adults.
Marcos married Francisca Gutiérrez, whose origins are equally obscure. She could be descended from Domingo Gutiérrez, one the Canary Islanders in the 1600 group, or related to Gonzalo Hernández de Benhumea who came at the same time. He brought his wife, Juana Gutiérrez, daughter, Isabel Gutiérrez, and a mulatto named Isabel. Juana’s father, Hernán Gutiérrez, lived in Morón, now part of Tamaulipas which wasn’t conquered until 1554.
The Montoya family is another with encomiendas and obscure descendants. Granillo said the “hacienda that belonged to Bartolomé Montoya is next to the arroyo. Only the ruins of the house in which he lived can be seen. It also has lands for only one citizen.”
Bartolomé Montoya arrived with the reinforcements that arrived in 1600. He had been born near Sevilla and married María de Zamora, whose father, Pedro de Zamora, had been alcalde mayor of Oaxaca. They had two daughters, three sons, and servants.
His son, Diego de Montoya lived in Santa Fé where he married Ana Martín. Her mother was supposedly poisoned by her father’s mistress, María Bernal, a granddaughter of Juan Griego. They had three children, before she died, and he remarried a widow with three girls who sometimes took his name.
Diego’s son Bartolomé inherited the encomienda of San Pedro Pueblo. Chávez believes he’s the same Bartolomé Montoya who escaped the revolt and was described as destitute in 1680. He had seven children, but Chávez couldn’t trace them from there.
The only Montoya he finds associated with the villa of Santa Cruz after the reconquest is Felipe Montoya who settled in Bernalillo after the reconquest. His daughter, María, married Cristóbal Martín Serrano, son of Hernán Martín Serrano and nephew of Luis.
Felipe’s son, Clemente, married Josefa de Herrera (Luján) in Santa Cruz in 1701 and died in 1753. The only Josefa de Herrera he mentions is the daughter of Juan de Herrera, who married Domingo Martín Serrano, the probable brother of Marí’s husband.
Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989.
_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Gordejuela, Juan de. “Women Who Joined Don Juan de Oñate’s New Mexican Settlement; The Gordejuela Inspection, 1600,” available on Southwest Crossroads website.
Granillo, Luis. Report for 12 March 1695 describing the settlement of La Cañada, included in Blood on the Boulders: The Journals of Don Diego De Vargas, New Mexico, 1694-97, volume 2, 1998, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.
Juan de Herrera came with the reinforcements sent in 1600 when he was twenty, and lived in Santa Fé where he married Ana López del Castillo, a granddaughter of Asencio de Arechuleta. He was granted the encomienda of Santa Clara pueblo for his lifetime.
When Luis Pérez Granillo surveyed La Cañada in 1695 he noted Marcos de Herrera had a hacienda with “only enough land for one citizen with his family” and across the arroyo he had “another suerte and some agricultural fields.” Not only was the land separated but the location may have been less than prime. Granillo said the “house, because it was next to the arroyo or stream, was carried away by a great flood that occurred.”
The most important thing about his land was that it was next to ‘another suerte of agricultural lands follows that the convento of Santa Clara Pueblo owned and held.”
Angélico Chávez could find no tie between Marcos and Juan or his children. From the location, one may guess Marcos was an agent of the family who lived near the Santa Clara pueblo to collect tribute and otherwise oversee family interests.
Chávez noted in his own family, that the family name was often given to Indian servants or their children. He recognized some were illegitimate babies the family was willing to raise and give some position as adults.
Marcos married Francisca Gutiérrez, whose origins are equally obscure. She could be descended from Domingo Gutiérrez, one the Canary Islanders in the 1600 group, or related to Gonzalo Hernández de Benhumea who came at the same time. He brought his wife, Juana Gutiérrez, daughter, Isabel Gutiérrez, and a mulatto named Isabel. Juana’s father, Hernán Gutiérrez, lived in Morón, now part of Tamaulipas which wasn’t conquered until 1554.
The Montoya family is another with encomiendas and obscure descendants. Granillo said the “hacienda that belonged to Bartolomé Montoya is next to the arroyo. Only the ruins of the house in which he lived can be seen. It also has lands for only one citizen.”
Bartolomé Montoya arrived with the reinforcements that arrived in 1600. He had been born near Sevilla and married María de Zamora, whose father, Pedro de Zamora, had been alcalde mayor of Oaxaca. They had two daughters, three sons, and servants.
His son, Diego de Montoya lived in Santa Fé where he married Ana Martín. Her mother was supposedly poisoned by her father’s mistress, María Bernal, a granddaughter of Juan Griego. They had three children, before she died, and he remarried a widow with three girls who sometimes took his name.
Diego’s son Bartolomé inherited the encomienda of San Pedro Pueblo. Chávez believes he’s the same Bartolomé Montoya who escaped the revolt and was described as destitute in 1680. He had seven children, but Chávez couldn’t trace them from there.
The only Montoya he finds associated with the villa of Santa Cruz after the reconquest is Felipe Montoya who settled in Bernalillo after the reconquest. His daughter, María, married Cristóbal Martín Serrano, son of Hernán Martín Serrano and nephew of Luis.
Felipe’s son, Clemente, married Josefa de Herrera (Luján) in Santa Cruz in 1701 and died in 1753. The only Josefa de Herrera he mentions is the daughter of Juan de Herrera, who married Domingo Martín Serrano, the probable brother of Marí’s husband.
Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989.
_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Gordejuela, Juan de. “Women Who Joined Don Juan de Oñate’s New Mexican Settlement; The Gordejuela Inspection, 1600,” available on Southwest Crossroads website.
Granillo, Luis. Report for 12 March 1695 describing the settlement of La Cañada, included in Blood on the Boulders: The Journals of Don Diego De Vargas, New Mexico, 1694-97, volume 2, 1998, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.
Sunday, April 06, 2014
La Cañada - Juan Griego’s Children
The most important thing about Juan Griego’s children is that they were mestizos and legitimate in a generation when mestizos were primarily servants or unacknowledged bastards. As a result, their marital choices were limited. After Isabel Bernal married Sebastián González, their cousins referred to their descendants "for generations" as "los Griegos" according to Angélico Chávez.
One son of Griego and Pascula Bernal, Francisco Bernal, married Bernardina Morán, who married Pedro de la Cruz when Francisco died. Catalina Bernal married Juan Durán, also called Juan de la Cruz, while Juan Griego married Pedro’s sister, Juana de la Cruz. María Bernal married Juan Gómez Barragán, who served as a Tewa interpreter, and Juana Bernal wed Diego de Moraga, a jailor whose house was near a spring by the Santa Fé swamp. The other son, Lázaro Griego, left no record.
If you took this list of names literally, you might think the Griegos were close to the Cruz family, especially since Luis Pérez Granillo says in 1695 Pedro La Cruz had a house that "is found to consist of only one room. It has lands for only one citizen and his family" while Nicolás de la Cruz had a surviving dwelling "and the lands are only those necessary to maintain his family, with pastures of the same quality."
You may even think Juan Griego had accumulated a larger than normal estate to help support his extended family because Granillo said there "is a larger suerte of land than any of the others and is very extensive. Thus, two families will be able to live here, dividing the agricultural land and pastures between them."
You would be right and wrong. When Angélico Chávez was researching his own family, who first settled in the area of the modern Santa Ana pueblo, he discovered when the father of an illegitimate child had some status, the baptismal certificate said parentage unknown. In many cases, the infant was baptized as de la Cruz, from the cross.
The usage preceded Oñate. One of the men in his expedition, Juan de la Cruz, was described as the quadroon son of Juan Rodríguez born in the valley of Toluca.
The only Nicolás de la Cruz Chávez could identify was the governor’s town crier and he may actually have been Sebastian Rodríguez, a Loandan referred to as "de nación Angola." He returned with Diego de Vargas from Guadalupe del Paso, settled in Santa Fé and married Juana de la Cruz in 1697. Only she may have been Juana Apodaca and was accused of sorcery in Santa Fé in 1712.
The association of the Juana de la Cruz name with witchcraft goes back to the wife of Juan Griego junior. Her mother was Beatriz de los Ángeles, who came with Oñate in 1595, as the Indian servant of Cristóbal de Brito, a man from the Canary islands. She married the Juan de la Cruz from Catalonia and was in demand as someone who knew herbal medicines.
When the Inquisition first became active in 1626 as the result of a Franciscan, Esteban de Perea, feuding with the governors, one of Perea’s complaints was that the current governor, Felipe de Sotelo Osorio, had brought some one from San Juan "versed in magic and black art to Santa Fé to try to save the life of a soldier who had been bewitched."
The soldier was Juan Diego Bellido, the lover of the widowed Beatriz who had beaten her. It was said she had given him a potion that ultimately killed him. During the investigation, the Inquisition representative, Alonso de Benavides, was told many women consulted her because their husbands were unfaithful, that she had magically cured María Granillo, in 1628, that Bartolomé Romeo claimed his wife and her daughter, María Pérez Granillo del Moral, had been bewitched by Beatriz’s daughter Juana, and that Hernando Márquez Sambrano had been bewitched by Juana when he beat her and that Beatriz had killed him.
When Perea reviewed the evidence years later and found it didn’t implicate a governor or raise serious issues of faith, he chose not to pursue the charges. He noted many of the witnesses were simple women, mulattos and mestizos, whose testimony could not be trusted to reveal anything more than jealousies and intrigues existed at every level of the small society of northern New México.
Juan junior knew both Tewa and Nahuatl, and served the governors and army as an interpreter. His family had acquired some social status. His mother-in-law’s husband had had the encomienda of Cuquina. His sister Isobel’s husband had the right to tribute from Humanas. By 1628, José Antonio Esquibel says he had a home in the capital, the place in La Cañada, and inherited land in Mexico City, as well as commercial contacts there.
Juan and Juana’s children should have had more marital opportunities than they had had, but their children still seem to have stayed within the neighborhood. Graciana married Francisco Xavier, Nicolás married Antonia Martín, Juan married the sister of Francisco Sáez, Juliana, Agustín married Josefa Luján and María de la Cruz Alemán married her cousin María Barragán’s widower, Diego López del Castillo.
After the reconquest, Agustín’s widow returned, remarried and feuded with her children over rights to Griego land. His son Pedro married Juana Mestas and was living in Santa Cruz in 1726.
Juan Griego the grandson and Juliana Sáez started over in Albuquerque where their son Joaquín Griego married Francisca de la Luz Candelaria. Los Griegos is now a neighborhood of the North Valley.
Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989.
_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Esquibel, José Antonio. "The Griego-Bernal Family," La Herencia, Fall 2008
Granillo, Luis. Report for 12 March 1695, included in Blood on the Boulders: The Journals of Don Diego De Vargas, New Mexico, 1694-97, volume 2, 1998, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.
Scholes, France V. "The First Decade of the Inquisition in New Mexico," New Mexico Historical Review 10:195-241:1935.
One son of Griego and Pascula Bernal, Francisco Bernal, married Bernardina Morán, who married Pedro de la Cruz when Francisco died. Catalina Bernal married Juan Durán, also called Juan de la Cruz, while Juan Griego married Pedro’s sister, Juana de la Cruz. María Bernal married Juan Gómez Barragán, who served as a Tewa interpreter, and Juana Bernal wed Diego de Moraga, a jailor whose house was near a spring by the Santa Fé swamp. The other son, Lázaro Griego, left no record.
If you took this list of names literally, you might think the Griegos were close to the Cruz family, especially since Luis Pérez Granillo says in 1695 Pedro La Cruz had a house that "is found to consist of only one room. It has lands for only one citizen and his family" while Nicolás de la Cruz had a surviving dwelling "and the lands are only those necessary to maintain his family, with pastures of the same quality."
You may even think Juan Griego had accumulated a larger than normal estate to help support his extended family because Granillo said there "is a larger suerte of land than any of the others and is very extensive. Thus, two families will be able to live here, dividing the agricultural land and pastures between them."
You would be right and wrong. When Angélico Chávez was researching his own family, who first settled in the area of the modern Santa Ana pueblo, he discovered when the father of an illegitimate child had some status, the baptismal certificate said parentage unknown. In many cases, the infant was baptized as de la Cruz, from the cross.
The usage preceded Oñate. One of the men in his expedition, Juan de la Cruz, was described as the quadroon son of Juan Rodríguez born in the valley of Toluca.
The only Nicolás de la Cruz Chávez could identify was the governor’s town crier and he may actually have been Sebastian Rodríguez, a Loandan referred to as "de nación Angola." He returned with Diego de Vargas from Guadalupe del Paso, settled in Santa Fé and married Juana de la Cruz in 1697. Only she may have been Juana Apodaca and was accused of sorcery in Santa Fé in 1712.
The association of the Juana de la Cruz name with witchcraft goes back to the wife of Juan Griego junior. Her mother was Beatriz de los Ángeles, who came with Oñate in 1595, as the Indian servant of Cristóbal de Brito, a man from the Canary islands. She married the Juan de la Cruz from Catalonia and was in demand as someone who knew herbal medicines.
When the Inquisition first became active in 1626 as the result of a Franciscan, Esteban de Perea, feuding with the governors, one of Perea’s complaints was that the current governor, Felipe de Sotelo Osorio, had brought some one from San Juan "versed in magic and black art to Santa Fé to try to save the life of a soldier who had been bewitched."
The soldier was Juan Diego Bellido, the lover of the widowed Beatriz who had beaten her. It was said she had given him a potion that ultimately killed him. During the investigation, the Inquisition representative, Alonso de Benavides, was told many women consulted her because their husbands were unfaithful, that she had magically cured María Granillo, in 1628, that Bartolomé Romeo claimed his wife and her daughter, María Pérez Granillo del Moral, had been bewitched by Beatriz’s daughter Juana, and that Hernando Márquez Sambrano had been bewitched by Juana when he beat her and that Beatriz had killed him.
When Perea reviewed the evidence years later and found it didn’t implicate a governor or raise serious issues of faith, he chose not to pursue the charges. He noted many of the witnesses were simple women, mulattos and mestizos, whose testimony could not be trusted to reveal anything more than jealousies and intrigues existed at every level of the small society of northern New México.
Juan junior knew both Tewa and Nahuatl, and served the governors and army as an interpreter. His family had acquired some social status. His mother-in-law’s husband had had the encomienda of Cuquina. His sister Isobel’s husband had the right to tribute from Humanas. By 1628, José Antonio Esquibel says he had a home in the capital, the place in La Cañada, and inherited land in Mexico City, as well as commercial contacts there.
Juan and Juana’s children should have had more marital opportunities than they had had, but their children still seem to have stayed within the neighborhood. Graciana married Francisco Xavier, Nicolás married Antonia Martín, Juan married the sister of Francisco Sáez, Juliana, Agustín married Josefa Luján and María de la Cruz Alemán married her cousin María Barragán’s widower, Diego López del Castillo.
After the reconquest, Agustín’s widow returned, remarried and feuded with her children over rights to Griego land. His son Pedro married Juana Mestas and was living in Santa Cruz in 1726.
Juan Griego the grandson and Juliana Sáez started over in Albuquerque where their son Joaquín Griego married Francisca de la Luz Candelaria. Los Griegos is now a neighborhood of the North Valley.
Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989.
_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Esquibel, José Antonio. "The Griego-Bernal Family," La Herencia, Fall 2008
Granillo, Luis. Report for 12 March 1695, included in Blood on the Boulders: The Journals of Don Diego De Vargas, New Mexico, 1694-97, volume 2, 1998, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.
Scholes, France V. "The First Decade of the Inquisition in New Mexico," New Mexico Historical Review 10:195-241:1935.
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