The other reason so little information exists is the priests and alcaldes mayores assigned to supervise the pueblos weren’t interested. In 1730, the bishop of Durango accused the two local Franciscans of negligence. Antonio Valverde had diluted the role of the civilian-military administrators, and Pedro de Rivera Villalón made the posts less lucrative in 1726.
There were two times governors did interfere in local affairs in these years, probably based on reports from other pueblos. In 1710, José Chacón moved to eliminate the surviving scalp dances and kivas. Oakah Jones found evidence the San Juan regretted the loss of both.
Juan Flores Magollón intervened in 1714 when he ordered "all married persons in towns to live together." Frederic Athearn said, he believed the "old way of Indian life, that is, living with one's parents would cause bad marriages and represented reversion to Indian habits that the Spanish were trying to break."
The impact of Flores’ action is harder to evaluate from contemporary evidence. Natives were exempt from pre-martial investigations by the church, according to Angélico Chávez. The only marital records that survived are 14 sacramental records beginning in 1726 at Santa Clara and 15 from San Juan beginning in 1727.
| Year | SC-SC | SC-Pueblo | SC-Other | SJ-SJ | SJ-Pueblo | SJ-Other |
| 1726 | 3 | |||||
| 1727 | 1 | |||||
| 1728 | 2 | 2 | ||||
| 1729 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | ||
| 1730 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| 1731 | 3 | 1 | ||||
| 1732 | 1 | 4 | ||||
| Total | 10 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 4 | 2 |
Total San Juan (SJ): 15
Juan Agustín de Morfi found evidence 210 souls lived in San Juan in 1707 and 272 in 1746. Assuming population growth was steady, there may have been 243 people in the pueblo in 1726, with two or three coming of marital age a year. If those numbers are reasonable, most people were married within the church.
At Santa Clara there were 400 people in 1708 and 70 families in 1744. If there were six in a household in the later year, that would have meant 420 people, or 410 in 1726 with ten coming of age a year. Morfi’s numbers may be doubted, since they indicated Santa Clara was twice the size of San Juan in 1708.
If his population statistics are useful, then more couples in the western pueblo avoided religious oversight. San Juan had a resident priest in these years, though he may have been absent in 1731 when no marriages were performed. He also had a fiscal mayor, Bentura, and a sacristan mayor, Diego. Santa Clara was served from San Ildefonso and no local ecclesiastic officials were mentioned in the marriage records.
It’s possible San Juan’s population actually was lower then. There were seven marriages with people outside the pueblo. Four widowers married widows from Pojoaque, Nambé or San Ildefonso, while two women wed Apache men. In addition, one man married a woman from Nambé in 1730, with no note either was previously wed. One widower married internally.
Perhaps a preference for women moving to the home of the husband may explain why no widows married men from other pueblos. The Apaches who married pueblo women may have been members of bands. Captives were often women used as domestic help.
Santa Clara recorded only one inter-pueblo marriage, one between a local man and a Tigua woman. There was also one union between a pueblo man and an Apache. Two marriages were sponsored by Españoles. One was an Apache ransomed by Cristóbal Tafoya. It’s not clear if either pair moved into the pueblo, or if they simply used the pueblo mission. Their surnames followed the local pattern.
One possible explanation for the differences in church sanctioned marriages between the two pueblos is that San Juan had been able to adapt the ceremony to indigenous traditions. In all but five of the ceremonies, 66%, all the witnesses were male. Two of those with female sponsors were in the early years, one in 1727 and one in 1729. A man and a woman stood with the bride and groom at all Santa Clara weddings.
All the 1730 marriages at San Juan were witnessed by either the governor, Francisco Oyenge, or the cacique, Juanchuelo. In 1732, both the governor, Diego Chinago, and the cacique, Juanchuelo, blessed the marriage of the capitán mayor of war, Antonio Catiz, with Isabel. Only one Santa Clara wedding was sponsored by a governor, that of Antonio Secabi and Ysabel Puechan in 1726. Joseph witnessed the ceremony with María Naranjo.
Naranjo was one of the few in either pueblo to have a Spanish surname. Diego Peña was wed at San Juan in 1732. The last name of Joan Auqebar, who married at Santa Clara in 1726, might have been derived from Aguilar. The rest of the second names may have been individuals’ actual native names. None appear today as last names on the web or in the local telephone book.
Almost everyone had a baptismal name. The only exception was the cacique at San Juan. The most common male name at San Juan was Diego, followed by Bentura/Ventura and Juan/Joan/Juanico. Juan/Joan was the most popular at Santa Clara followed by Antonio.
María was the most common female baptismal name at San Juan and Juana was second. At Santa Clara, the popularity of the two was reversed. Ysabel also was common at Santa Clara.
I don’t know if the cacique Juanchillo was the same man as the herbalist mentioned twenty some years earlier by Leonor Domínguez. The variations on Juan may have referred to Juan de Dios, a saint remembered as a healer.
Notes: The post for 28 June 2015 reported the bishop of Durango criticized Juan de la Cruz of San Juan and Manuel Sopeña of Santa Clara. Post for 24 May 2015 has more on the pueblo rituals. Post for 3 January 2016 has more on the alcaldes mayores. Juanchillo was mentioned in the entry for 19 April 2015.
Athearn, Frederic J. A Forgotten Kingdom, 1978.
Chávez, Angélico. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982.
Flores Magollón, Juan. Interrogatorio de 1711-1712 y respuestas de indios, 1711; cited by Jones.
_____. Bando, ordering all married persons in towns to live together, 30 April 1714; listed in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914.
Jones, Oakah L. Pueblo Warriors and Spanish Conquest, 1966.
Morfi, Juan Agustín de. Descriptción Geográfica del Nuevo México, 1782; translation in Alfred Barnaby Thomas, Forgotten Frontiers, 1932.
New Mexico Genealogical Society. New Mexico Marriages Church in Sam Juan Pueblo 1726-1776, 1831-1855 and Church in Santa Clara Pueblo 1726-1832, extracted by M. Eloise Arellanes and compiled by Margaret Leonard Windham and Evelyn Luján Baca, 1998.
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