Irrigation improvements, like the settlement of the Santa Cruz valley, did not stop when Juan de Oñate was recalled in 1607 and Pedro de Peralta moved the colony to Santa Fé in 1610. However, it’s difficult to recover the history.
Official sources that survive in México are probably distorted by the legal expectations that governors and alcaldes ensure adequate water resources for land grants. If the 1681 Law of the Indies decreed they provide a "good and plentiful water supply for drinking and irrigation," then that was what would be in the record.
The reality may have been different. San Gabriel was not self sufficient by 1601 when a Franciscan, Juan de Escalona, wrote the viceroy all the corn the natives "had saved for years has been consumed, and not a kernel is left over for them. The whole land has been reduced to such need that the Indians drop dead from starvation wherever they live; and they eat dirt and charcoal ground up with some seeds and a little corn in order to sustain life. Any Spaniard who gets his fill of tortillas here feels he has obtained a grant of nobility."
He also noted, without more support from the viceroy, "it will be impossible to live here or remain in ths land, for it is very sterile and cold." He didn’t know the years from 1598 to 1601 were "exceedingly dry years" with unusually severe winters. Good rains didn’t appear until 1609.
When you look at the backgrounds of the settlers and soldiers who came with Oñate in 1598 you wonder who among them would have had any idea how to establish a farm, let alone an irrigation system. The roster lists used by Angélico Chávez to compile his Origins of New Mexico Families didn’t give occupation, beyond military status, but they did often list place of birth.
Of those born in Europe, twelve came from Anadalucía, but only one from an agricultural area. Six were from the Basque and Galician north; four from the Estramadura, which was cattle country, and four from the area of Madrid and Toledo, which also favored cattle. In addition, five came from the Canary Islands where there are no rivers for irrigation.
The others whose origins could be identified were from Mexico City or Zacatecas. José Rivera and Thomas Glick think the last may have been the most important because "they brought with them their rich and diverse experiences with irrigation development in Mesoamerica and the Islamic-Iberian Mediterranean world."
Oñate’s father, Cristóbal Pérez de Oñate arrived in México City in 1524 from the Basque region of Álava. In 1525 he was given the encomienda of Culhuacan by Cortés and in 1528 the tribute from Tacámbara. After the conquest of New Galicia he was given more land in the area where he founded Zacatecas in 1547 after silver was found.
The mine town imported its food, corn for the Indians and mules, wheat for the Spanish and mestizos. The nearest sources were river valleys on high plateaus where irrigation was possible. Later observers noted that crops in New Galicia were sown in the fall for spring harvest with irrigation, while crops sown in the spring required no irrigation.
The younger Oñate could have learned a great deal about the acquisition and distribution of food from his father, but very little about its production.
After he left, the food supply for the mining towns became more reliable, but also more distant. Records for 1635, the first year for which they are available, indicate Bajío had become the major supplier of wheat, which required irrigation to grow. Landholdings in that area had been consolidated to justify the cost of labor for irrigation. Large suppliers included the Carmelite farms in Salavatierra and Augustinian ones in Celaya and Michoacán.
Almost all religious members were from Europe where concepts for water management had been evolving. After some technological advances in 1570, the Netherlands began massive wetland reclamation projects with improved dikes and canals. Skilled Dutchmen were sought by the Prussians, Swedes, Danes, and French. Anyone interested in advanced farming in those years would have been studying their work.
The most likely diffusion route for new irrigation ideas into the Santa Cruz valley was probably the one group Chávez didn’t mention because they founded no recognized families: the Franciscan friars who were closely associated with the Carmelites in México. It only took the implementation of a few new ideas, like long distance transport and distribution grids, to form the acequia system people remember.
Notes:
Bakewell, Peter John. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700, 1971.
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition; the ones who came after 1598 were primarily military, those who came with Oñate in 1600 and escorts with the supply trains.
Escalona, Juan de. Report to the Viceroy Regarding Spanish Rule in New Mexico, 1 October 1601, included in George P Hammond and Agapito Rey, Don Juan de Oñate, Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595-1628, 1953.
Himmerich y Valencia, Robert. The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555, 1991, on Oñate senior.
Rivera, José A. and Thomas F. Glick. "1600 - The Iberian Origins of New Mexico’s Community Acequias," Economic History Congress, 2002; quote Law of the Indies.
Scurlock, Dan. From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin, 1998, on tree ring and climate history, including quotations.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Sunday, July 07, 2019
The Ditch - Origins
[I originally wrote this in February 2012, but never posted this series on the local ditch]
Impoundment dams like the one on the Santa Cruz river may have been an Anglo introduction to the area, but the ditches have a more cosmopolitan background.
When Juan de Oñate arrived at the confluence of the Chama with the Río Grande on 11 July 1598 with 130 soldiers, their families, some Mexican Indian servants and eight Franciscans, he came with an awareness he needed to build an irrigation ditch. In August, he announced his intent and expected the pueblo he called San Juan to provide the labor.
The Tewa speaking group was divided into two groups, the winter people at Caypa to the east of the Chama who were responsible for hunting, and the summer people at Yunque to the west who were responsible for farming. The ones he called San Juan were the winter people.
When his plans failed to materialize, Bradford Pince says Oñate moved into Yunque with its 400 rooms, and forced the two moieties to share the same space. José Rivera and Thomas Glick suggest all he had to do at Yunque was "reconstruct an irrigation ditch sufficient to irrigate the fields to be cultivated in the fertile valley between the two rivers." The San Gabriel ditch still exists as the Acequia de Chamita.
Local people were already irrigating the land. However, according to Dan Scurlock, they were flooding their fields directly from the creeks rather than building long distance delivery systems with their grid of laterals and head ditches.
Before they planted in the spring, farmers would bring water through wide, shallow canals. When they needed water later in the season, they would construct temporary dams of brush and logs to back water into the canals.
The methods were adequate for their populations in good years. When there was a short drought, they might make a temporary shift. When the drought lasted more than three years, they began moving to new locations. With the migration of new people into the area, the methods probably weren’t up to the increased demands on the available water.
Rivera and Glick say people commonly look to Spain for the source of local ideas about irrigation. After all, many of the most important conquistadors, as well as some of the original settlers, were from the Estremadura where the Romans built two aqueducts at Merida to support a colony of retired soldiers of the Fifth and Tenth Legions in 25bc.
However, after the Moors conquered the city, Merida was virtually abandoned until the 1500s when people were migrating to the New World. During the Moorish occupation, the area had become more dependent on pastoralism than agriculture.
Moorish irrigation was concentrated in Valencia and Murcia, in the southeastern part of Spain. A number of Oñate’s forces came from Andalucía, but mainly the port cities of Cadiz and Cartaya. The only one from Murcia was Juan de Escarramad.
The more important Moorish contribution was the body of laws governing water, including the idea that water must be made available to everyone, that there were limits on how much people upstream could take, and that communal groups determined the distribution of water through their selected leaders.
When Christians drove Moors from an area of the Iberian peninsula, the rulers usually decreed that people should continue to "irrigate in accordance with ancient custom" or as "established and customary in the times of the Muslims." The word acequia is derived from the Arab word "sagiya."
One would guess that under threat of starvation the settlers blended their memories of what they had seen from a distance in México and Spain with the techniques used locally.
Alvar Carlson found construction methods remained primitive into territorial times. An ox was used to begin a ditch by pulling a wooden scraper. Men deepened it with hand tools, dumping the dirt onto the embankments. Dams were made of logs and brush, flumes from hollow logs. Rather than remove large trees, men routed ditches around them and trial and error usually defined the final paths.
It was enough so long as the population remained small. When settlements outgrew the existing resources, the solution was always to send groups looking for new land, first up the Santa Cruz, then along tributaries to the Chama and Río Grande. From Santa Fé they moved south.
Notes: San Juan is now called Ohkay Owingeh.
Carlson, Alvar W. The Spanish-American Homeland, 1990.
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition, on number and characteristics of men who came with Oñate.
Prince, L. Bradford. Spanish Mission Churches of New Mexico, 1915.
Rivera, José A. and Thomas F. Glick. "1600 - The Iberian Origins of New Mexico’s Community Acequias," Economic History Congress, 2002.
Scurlock, Dan. From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin, 1998.
Impoundment dams like the one on the Santa Cruz river may have been an Anglo introduction to the area, but the ditches have a more cosmopolitan background.
When Juan de Oñate arrived at the confluence of the Chama with the Río Grande on 11 July 1598 with 130 soldiers, their families, some Mexican Indian servants and eight Franciscans, he came with an awareness he needed to build an irrigation ditch. In August, he announced his intent and expected the pueblo he called San Juan to provide the labor.
The Tewa speaking group was divided into two groups, the winter people at Caypa to the east of the Chama who were responsible for hunting, and the summer people at Yunque to the west who were responsible for farming. The ones he called San Juan were the winter people.
When his plans failed to materialize, Bradford Pince says Oñate moved into Yunque with its 400 rooms, and forced the two moieties to share the same space. José Rivera and Thomas Glick suggest all he had to do at Yunque was "reconstruct an irrigation ditch sufficient to irrigate the fields to be cultivated in the fertile valley between the two rivers." The San Gabriel ditch still exists as the Acequia de Chamita.
Local people were already irrigating the land. However, according to Dan Scurlock, they were flooding their fields directly from the creeks rather than building long distance delivery systems with their grid of laterals and head ditches.
Before they planted in the spring, farmers would bring water through wide, shallow canals. When they needed water later in the season, they would construct temporary dams of brush and logs to back water into the canals.
The methods were adequate for their populations in good years. When there was a short drought, they might make a temporary shift. When the drought lasted more than three years, they began moving to new locations. With the migration of new people into the area, the methods probably weren’t up to the increased demands on the available water.
Rivera and Glick say people commonly look to Spain for the source of local ideas about irrigation. After all, many of the most important conquistadors, as well as some of the original settlers, were from the Estremadura where the Romans built two aqueducts at Merida to support a colony of retired soldiers of the Fifth and Tenth Legions in 25bc.
However, after the Moors conquered the city, Merida was virtually abandoned until the 1500s when people were migrating to the New World. During the Moorish occupation, the area had become more dependent on pastoralism than agriculture.
Moorish irrigation was concentrated in Valencia and Murcia, in the southeastern part of Spain. A number of Oñate’s forces came from Andalucía, but mainly the port cities of Cadiz and Cartaya. The only one from Murcia was Juan de Escarramad.
The more important Moorish contribution was the body of laws governing water, including the idea that water must be made available to everyone, that there were limits on how much people upstream could take, and that communal groups determined the distribution of water through their selected leaders.
When Christians drove Moors from an area of the Iberian peninsula, the rulers usually decreed that people should continue to "irrigate in accordance with ancient custom" or as "established and customary in the times of the Muslims." The word acequia is derived from the Arab word "sagiya."
One would guess that under threat of starvation the settlers blended their memories of what they had seen from a distance in México and Spain with the techniques used locally.
Alvar Carlson found construction methods remained primitive into territorial times. An ox was used to begin a ditch by pulling a wooden scraper. Men deepened it with hand tools, dumping the dirt onto the embankments. Dams were made of logs and brush, flumes from hollow logs. Rather than remove large trees, men routed ditches around them and trial and error usually defined the final paths.
It was enough so long as the population remained small. When settlements outgrew the existing resources, the solution was always to send groups looking for new land, first up the Santa Cruz, then along tributaries to the Chama and Río Grande. From Santa Fé they moved south.
Notes: San Juan is now called Ohkay Owingeh.
Carlson, Alvar W. The Spanish-American Homeland, 1990.
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition, on number and characteristics of men who came with Oñate.
Prince, L. Bradford. Spanish Mission Churches of New Mexico, 1915.
Rivera, José A. and Thomas F. Glick. "1600 - The Iberian Origins of New Mexico’s Community Acequias," Economic History Congress, 2002.
Scurlock, Dan. From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin, 1998.
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