Franciscans and Society

Nueva México society was divided into four estates: Natives, Spanish-speakers, government employees, and the clergy. The first included those living in pueblos who still spoke one of several languages, nomadic groups like the Jicarilla and Navajo, and captives mainly from the plains. Spanish speakers were stratified by wealth, while the government was represented by short-term governors, longer-term appointees like alcaldes, and paid soldiers in the presidio.

Loyalties between groups were weak. Franciscans, like governors, were always outsiders who rarely heard the truth. Their relations with other groups were treacherous because none could be trusted. The appointees represented the local equivalent to the conflicts elsewhere between criollos and Spaniards.

Governors were expected to implement orders from the viceroy, while defending the kingdom’s boundaries. They knew there were rewards if they succeeded, and penalties if they didn’t. From at least the time of Diego de Vargas they wrote glowing, if misleading, chronicles of their deeds.

Viceroys learned to be suspicious, and instituted verification procedures. Each new governor was expected to canvass each of the towns and pueblos to learn if there were unreported problems from the previous administration. Of course, they never found any.

It isn’t clear if men with land or those in the pueblos were willing to make public complaints. The governor only stayed a few years, but each new man might regard anyone who criticized his predecessor with suspicion.

A bigger concern may have been members of governors’ administrations who would have been implicated in complaints. Soldiers in the presidio and alcaldes stayed in their communities. Angélico Chávez said, the Franciscan custos didn’t critize the secular clergyman, Santiago Roybal, "for fear that Roybal would avail himself of an excuse to set the military on the Religious."

The alcaldes were described by Franciscan Carlos Delgado as men who took the positions "solely for the purpose of advancing their own interests and acquiring property with which to make presents to the governors." Another friar, Juan Sanz, noted appointments went to those "who gives the most mules or sheep."

Pedro de Rivera probably was responsible for the regression of alcaldeships into the sinecures purchased in hopes of profit that were common in Nuevo España. In 1726, he had curtailed appointing men who were enlisted in the presidio because he believed alcalde mayores "had the privilege of retirement and who received a fixed salary from the king." Whoever held the position still had the same responsibilities, but suddenly had less income.

Franciscans found the pueblos equally unreliable. They had accepted missionaries under threat of force by Diego de Vargas, and used every tool available to them to keep both them and the alcaldes as distant as possible.

When the bishop of Durango talked to them in 1730, they told Benito Crespo what they thought he wanted to hear. They intimated the only reason they didn’t confess at least once a year was they had to use interpreters, and would do so more often if the fathers spoke their language. One suspects the real reason they didn’t confess was that it violated some basic norm. Language was simply a useful subterfuge.

After Juan Antonio de Ornedal made the same indictment in 1750, Delgado observed the Natives "know how to lament and complain in a language, or idiom, in which their laments may be understood and comprehended" and yet they are supposed to be "mute in Castilian."

Simultaneously, pueblo representatives were telling friars the reasons they didn’t covert was because of bad things the governor and his representatives had done to them. Then, they told the alcaldes negative things about the friars.

It may well be the reason the friars were transferred so often, especially if they began to understand the local language, was some comment made to the authorities to have them removed before they could be effective. The men who stayed the longest at San Juan and Santa Clara, Juan de la Cruz and Manuel Sopeña, were ones mentioned by Crespo as among the most negligent.

Reports from the colonists were equally suspect. They wanted the presidio to protect them, but didn’t like paying taxes or going on campaigns. Philip V and his viceroys wanted tax and tithe collection to be more efficient. Sanz believed that, since governors had become responsible for collecting the tithe, "the country has been even worse off. Formerly the settlers exerted themselves to sow because the governor bought everything from them in order to supply the presidio, but now it taxes them to be able to sow enough for their own sustenance."

At the same time, the settlers wanted the friars to pacify the pueblos they didn’t want them interfering in their own affairs, any more than was necessary to legitimatize marriages. Crespo indicated that, when he suggested the churches in Albuquerque, Santa Fé and Santa Cruz could be transferred to his jurisdiction, he was told "the citizens desire this with all eagerness, and they asked me to seek it."

Notes: Crespo comments on Juan de la Cruz and Manuel Sopeña were described in the post for 28 June 2015. Rivera’s directive on alcaldes was discussed in the post for 3 January 2016. Friar transfers between missions were discussed in the post for 6 April 2016. The post for 27 March 2016 discussed Benito Crespo’s proposed mission transfers.

Adams, Eleanor B. Bishop Tamarón’s Visitation of New Mexico, 1760, 1954.

Bandelier, Adolph F. A. and Fanny R. Bandelier, Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, volume 3, 1937, translated and edited by Charles Wilson Hackett.

Chávez, Angélico. "El Vicario Don Santiago Roybal," El Palacio 65:231-252:1948.

Crespo y Monroy, Benito. Letter to the viceroy, Juan Vásquez de Acuña, 8 September 1730; translation in Adams; recommended secularizing villa missions.

_____. Letter to the viceroy, Juan Vásquez de Acuña, 25 September 1730; translation in Adams; discussed reasons for not confessing.

Delgado, Carlos. Report to our Reverend Father Ximeno concerning the abominable hostilities and tyrannies of the governors and alcaldes mayores toward the Indians, to the consternation of the custodia, 1750; translation in Bandelier.

Delgado [Esp Hist I17 p427] alcades; p439 - language

Rivera Villalón, Pedro de. Proyecto (inspection report), 1728, in Thomas H. Naylor and Charles W. Polzer. Pedro de Rivera and the Military Regulations for Northern New Spain, 1724-1729, 1988.

Sanz de Lezaún, Juan. An account of lamentable happenings in New Mexico and of losses experienced daily in affairs spiritual and temporal, 4 Novwmber1760; translation in Bandelier.