Grist Mills and Captives

Captive labor is expensive. One wonders why settlers in Nuevo México were willing to risk their very survival by trading ammunition in the 1690s, then later their transportation and work animals, to obtain it. In 1720, the use of slaves, rather than servants, as a marker of wealth hadn’t yet percolated north from the sugar colonies.

My guess is Nuevo México used captives to tend livestock and prepare food. The first could be done by children, the second by women. Only large landowners like Sebastían Martín and others in Taos had so many head of cattle they needed outside help. Everyone ate.

Wheat may have been the preferred food, but corn was the reality. In New Spain, commercial wheat growing was capital intensive. Zacatecas was a mining town dependant on the Bajío between the Ríos Lerma and Grande de Santiago south of Mexico City where 28 inches of rain fell most years. By 1600, the newer mining areas of New Galicia obtained most of their wheat from irrigated labores in the Zapotepec valley.

In both regions, religious orders and wealthy men amassed large tracts of land. Grain was sold to urban cabildos on contracts that financed irrigation and storage facilities. Wheat became capital intensive, while maize did not. Corn was grown on small plots by natives, and came to market through small trades.

The northern part of Nuevo México was too dry to support wheat without large irrigation projects, that could only have been undertaken and maintained by captive labor. Even in South Carolina, as mentioned in the post for 2 January 2011, slaves resented time spent on ditches, and refused to do it when they were free.

Every family could grow corn if it had a small ditch. Maize was also cheaper to store. People only had to remove the husks. Cobs could be stacked on roofs or above ceilings where they were relatively safe from vermin.

The ways to prepare it were learned from natives in México. After kernels were removed from ears, they either were ground, two or three times, or boiled. Native American women used stone manos and metates, and so did the Españoles.

In New England, men transferred the technology of grinding wheat to corn very early. Plymouth was founded in 1620. Women used wooden mortars until a beating mill was built in 1633. Massachusetts Bay Colony was formed in 1628. It had a wind-driven grinding mill in 1632, and a water-driven one in 1634.

The erection of mills wasn’t left to chance. "Buhrs to make mill-stones" were purchased from Edward Casson, a London merchant tailor, in 1628. The colony’s organizer, John Winthrop, asked his son to bring millstones "with bracings ready cast, and rings, and mill-bills" from England in 1631.

The availability of water to drive a mill was a prerequisite for establishing a town. Colonists looked for places where they could quarry millable stones. John Winthrop, Jr, established the iron works at Saugus in 1645 to produce parts for Massachusetts and Virginia.

Mills weren’t just a Yankee introduction. Antonio de Arriaga, who came from Badajoz in the Estremadura, established a grist mill on the Río Tacubaya for Mexico City in 1526. Cristóbal García de Zúñiga established a mill on the Río Atoyac in Vera Cruz in the late 1500s.

At Cahokia, in Illinois country, French settlers had two windmills by the 1720s, and the Jesuits another. They probably hadn’t dragged millstones down river from Canada, but found useful rock in the area. Even though most who entered the area were coureurs, they included men who could prepare stones and build mills. They were growing wheat, and not depending on their native wives or other women to grind it by hand.

Mills don’t have to have to be water powered. They can be run by wind or animals. They do need capital to purchase parts. It was easier to ship millstones and iron fittings from London to Boston that it was to haul them from New Spain. Much of the mountainous territory where stones might have been found in Nuevo México was still controlled by hostile bárbaros.

Cristóbal de Velasco did recruit some millers from Mexico City in 1693, but they didn’t work follow that trade in the north. Juan Romero joined the group in Zacatecas, but fled before it reached Santa Fé. Francisco Xavier Romero became a shoemaker in Santa Cruz. Gabriel Anzures moved to Santa Cruz, where his daughter Juana married Diego Martín Serrano, son of Hernán Martín Serrano. There’s no notice of his son, and nothing on his work. He also had been a cart maker.

More than operators and stones were needed to support milling. Decent roads were needed if ox-pulled carts were to bring corn, containers to hold it on the return trip, and ways to store it at home. Millwrights and cartwrights were required to build and repair equipment.

In the absence of automation, servants were the first people called upon to do the more monotonous and physically strenuous household tasks. In 1708, Leonor Domínguez said "the wife of Peter de Avila, alias ‘the louse,’ told her while this declarant was grinding corn kernels." María Domínguez said she "had met the said Leonor Domínguez when she was grinding corn kernels [...] this declarant said that as to have been together grinding corn kernels [...] it is true."

The pronouns are confusing, but they would not have been together if they weren’t in the same household, or if the one wasn’t helping or working for the other.

With the elimination of encomenderos and the limits on repartimiento, women from the pueblos could not be requisitioned to grind corn without being paid. That led to a greater demand for female servants than had existed before the Revolt.

Notes: I haven’t found anyone who discusses why slaves were purchased. This posting is an informed guess.

Bakewell, P. J. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, Zacatecas 1546-1700, 1971.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Cushman, James M. Cohannet Alewives and the Ancient Grist Mill at the Falls on Mill River, 1895.

Daniels, Christine and Michael V. Kennedy. Negotiated Empires, 2013; on García.

Domínguez, Leonor. "New Affidavit and Declaration," 22 May 1708, in Twitchell.

Domínguez, María. "Declaration," 22 May 1708, in Twitchell.

Farfán, Francisco. "List of New Mexico Colonists, Mexico City," on or before July 1693, in Kessell.

Himmerich y Valencia, Robert. The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555, 1991; on Arriaga.

Hockensmith, Charles D. The Millstone Industry, 2009; quotations from Winthrop and Casson invoice.

Kessell, John L., Rick Hendricks, and Meredith Dodge. To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995.

Miller, LaDeane. "Descendants of Gabriel Anzures and Maria Francisca," 2002, Denver Public Library Digital Collection.

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Sandoval Silva y Mendoza, Gaspar de. Directive, Mexico City, 4 September 1693, in Kessell.

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