Franciscan Turnover

The viceroy sent Juan Antonio de Ornedal to Nueva México in 1750 to access the effectiveness of Franciscan missions. He reported there still were problems with communication between friars and members of the pueblos.

Carlos Delgado answered his criticisms by noting, "governors enjoy the royal patronage, whenever a religious begins to understand the language of the natives of a mission, they remove him to another and provide the mission with a different person, to whom the language is new and who needs some years in which to understand it and many more to speak it."

Turnover wouldn’t have mattered if friars only were expected to say masses and administer sacraments. Indeed, when there were vacancies or men were away, any ordained priest could fulfill the Tridentine requirements.

If men were transferred frequently, then the only way they could socialize Natives into Christian society was for everyone to speak one language. The need to rotate men on short notice, like cases of illness or death, meant Juan Miguel Menchero’s proposal that friars teach Castilian was more appropriate than Benito Crespo’s that friars learn native language. It also was more consistent with Philip V’s attempts to standardize the language spoken within Spain.

The extent turnover was a potential problem can be deduced from the list of names Angélico Chávez compiled from signatures in parish baptismal, marriage, and burial records. During this period, 54 men served in the missions of Nuevo México. Of the total, 16 were already here in 1730. They remained an average of 20 years after Crespo’s visit in 1730.

The longest serving when the bishop arrived was Pedro Montaño, who had come in 1710 and stayed until 1752. Second in seniority was Delgado himself, who first appeared in the record in Laguna in 1712 and was last known in Isleta in 1749. Between 1733 and 1760, 36 men were sent to the kingdom. Of those, twelve stayed six or less years.

While there was some stability within the Franciscan population as a group, there was little within the missions. The men who were here in 1733 were assigned to an average of 10 missions while they were in New Mexico, and spent an average of 2.7 years at each place.

Among those whose tenure coincided with the period and who stayed more than six years, the men were assigned to fewer places, an average of 5.8, but they also spent less time at each, an average of 2.25 years. Those who were still active in 1760, eventually worked in an average of 8.5 missions, and their average stay was 2.4 years.

Dates	Total Men in NM	Average Locations	Average Tenure
Before 1733	18	10	2.7
1733-1760	19	3.9	1.9
Stay 7+ yrs	8	5.8	2.25
After 1760	17	8.5	2.4

Compounding problems arising from aptitudes in linguistics was the temperament of the men sent to Nuevo Mexico. Ornedal claimed "most of the of the religious who cannot be controlled by their prelates are sent to those missions, and that they assign them to that province as a banishment and punishment."

Delgado, of course, demurred.

Jim Norris has exhumed biographical data about many who were mentioned by Chávez. Almost all came from merchant families in Mexico City, Puebla or Spain; a few were sons of military men or highly skilled metal workers. Few, if any, had lived in a rural or isolated area.

Most were trained in a Franciscan facility in Mexico City or Puebla. At some point, Norris said, some were selected to be missionaries. He found no information on the criteria used. Perhaps Ornedal was correct that the most promising candidates were groomed for other positions.

The would-be missionaries were sent to Santiago de Tlatelolco outside Ciudad de México to hone their preaching skills. That institution’s primary mission was preparing men for work with people who spoke Spanish or one of the native languages used by Aztecs or in the mining towns.

Menchero had been sent there in 1732 to determine what changes were needed in missionary education to improve the work in Nuevo México. He reported, men weren’t prepared for the psychological strains of mission work and noted the school only taught Nahuatl, Otomí, and Tarascán. Its rector saw no need to change. Even when friars who retired from Nuevo México were available, they weren’t used.

The Bishop of Durango inspected the missions in 1737. Martín de Elizacoechea alluded to another problem with the local friars when he suggested the men should "not be too young nor too old, but a mature age, sensible and prudent."

Norris found evidence that while men assigned to the north in the early years were between the ideal ages of 28 and 35, the age of first assignment fell in the 1730s, just prior to Crespo’s visitation. When Elizacoechea was here, men in their middle and late 40s were appearing. Only in the 1750s, were seasoned, but still vigorous men sent.

Date Arrive	Average Age	Number in Sample	Age Range
1710-1719	32.25	4	28-35
1720-1729	28.5	4	23-34
1730-1739	38.5	4	28-46
1740-1749	39.7	9	28-49
1750-1759	36	5	29-38

With such prior experiences, little changed. In 1760, Santiago Roybal told another bishop, Pedro Tamarón, "that none of the friars, old or new, apply themselves to learning the native language, nor, in my opinion, would they do anything about it even if further precepts were applied. They are little inclined to be studious, and therefore they continue as always with their fiscals and interpreters."

Notes: The proposals of Menchero and Crespo were described in the post for 3 April 2016. Philip’s attempts to standardize the Castilian language were discussed in the post for 28 June 2015.

Chávez, Angélico. Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, 1678-1900, 1957.

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; in Adolph F. A. Bandelier 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.

Elizacoechea, Martín de. Report, 1737, quoted by Norris.

Norris, Jim. After "The Year Eighty," 2000.

Ornedal y Maza, Juan Antonio de. Informe sobre el lastimoso estado y decadencia en que se encuentran las misiones de Nuevo México, to Francisco de Güemes, 26 July 1749, El Paso. Paraphrased by Delgado; no one has admitted or otherwise shown evidence he read the original.

Roybal, Santiago. Quoted by Pedro Tamarón y Romeral in The Kingdom of New Mexico, 1760; translation in Eleanor B. Adams, Bishop Tamarón’s Visitation of New Mexico, 1760, 1954.

Tables
1. Data from Chávez.

2. Data from Norris. He included men serving at El Paso. I selected only those named by Chávez and used the latter’s dates to define the decade when men entered. Norris was able to find the age and date men professed for about half the men. Those numbers were used to calculate a birth date and age of first assignment in Nuevo México.

Franciscans and Native Languages

Franciscans were successful in the early years in Nueva España, in part, because they were following Hernán Cortés through lands already subdued by the Aztec. Everyone spoke, or at least understood, some form of Nahuatl.

When settlement moved north with the mines, David Brading said, Franciscans "took the lead in learning native languages, publishing vocabularies, grammars and catechisms" in Tarascán, Mazáhua, and Otomí.

Their successes stopped when they reached the hostile, nomadic Chichimecas beyond Zacatecas. Michael McCloskey suggested, one reason was the sheer "diversity of languages."

Jesuits didn’t become active in the area until 1594, but they were able to establish ten missions and more smaller casas de doctrina in what today are "Sonora, western Chihuahua, northern Sinaloa, Durango, and a small part of Coahuila."

Franciscans retreated to serving the growing urban populations, both native and Spanish-speaking. McCloskey noted, two men usually were assigned to missions and three to eight were needed in the doctrinas they established to serve the surrounding pueblos. In the early years, they went everyday to teach, but, once most people had been instructed in the faith, they began only going on Sundays and feast days.

By 1680, both the advisors to Charles II and the Pope’s Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith were unhappy with Franciscans. The obispo de Durango was no happier with their activities in Nueva México in 1730.

Benito Crespo expected lay members to follow the sacraments defined by the Council of Trent, especially baptism and mass. He expected the clergy who were supported by the state to transform heathens into useful members of society. This meant they not only forsook all forms of religious observance except those sanctioned by the church, but also accepted their roles in the local economy.

He reported local Franciscans did neither. He wrote the viceroy, "all the pueblos of said missions remain in their paganism and idolatry, as the fathers themselves affirm, and they apostatize daily." He believed the only reason they didn’t revolt was the presence of the presidio.

Crespo emphasized communication was the problem. Friars didn’t understand the languages spoken in the pueblos, and Natives didn’t understand Castilian. The failure made Franciscans "as alien as if they had had no dealings with the said Indians." He was appalled that, since 1696, "there is no case when there has been a minister who knows the languages of the Indians."

The next year, the commissary general for the Franciscans, Juan Miguel Menchero ordered "the teaching of Spanish at every mission through the use of catechisms and readers."

The year after Martín de Elizacoechea followed Crespo as bishop of Durango silver was discovered at Planchas de Plata near modern Nogales in 1736. Overnight, the far western Zuñi and Moqui pueblos were reimagined from places too remote to be worth the cost of reconquering into population centers that might secure the northern treasure frontier from hostile raids. When Elizacoechea visited the kingdom in 1737, the bishop included the Zuñi on his itinerary.

In Ciudad de México Franciscans were lobbying for permission to revisit the Moqui, but the Jesuits already had successful missions near the mines. They were awarded jurisdiction, with the associated funding, in 1741.

By then fundamental differences existed between Franciscans and Jesuits. From the beginning the latter valued an educated clergy. They trained their priests for ten years, and operated secular schools. Franciscans were more ambivalent about learning. Some recognized the need for knowledge, especially of church teachings and canon law, to be effective. Others saw it as a distraction from meditation and preaching.

The different styles of the two orders attracted different sorts of noviates. Both were attractive to young men in these years. In 1715, there were 30,000 Observant Franciscan friars worldwide, and 39,000 in 1762. The number of Jesuits in 1749 was 22,589.

The problem was partly one of self-selection. Those who had an inclination to learning and languages would have become Jesuits, not Franciscans.

Notes: Chichimeca was a generic term used to refer to all the hostile tribes north of Zacatecas. With time, more specific identifications were made.

Archdiocese of Puebla. "Excmo. Sr. Don Benito Crespo (1734-1737)," their website.

Bihl, Michael. "Order of Friars Minor," The Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6, 1909; includes statistics on membership.

Brading, D. A. Church and State in Bourbon Mexico, 1994; quotation.

Chávez, Angélico. Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, 1678-1900, 1957.

Crespo y Monroy, Benito. Letter to the viceroy, Juan Vásquez de Acuña, 8 September 1730; translation in Eleanor B. Adams, Bishop Tamarón’s Visitation of New Mexico, 1760, 1954.

Delcorno, Pietro. "‘Quomodo discet sine docente?’ Observant Efforts towards Education and Pastoral Care," James D. Mixson and Bert Roest, A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, 2015.

Encyclopædia Britannica. "Jesuits," online edition, attributed to the editors; includes statistics on membership.

McCloskey, Michael B. The Formative Years of the Missionary College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro 1683-1733, 1955; quotation on extent of Jesuit missions.

Naylor, Thomas H. The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain, volume 1, 1986; on Menchero.

Secularization

Philip V’s attempts to modernize lands remaining under Spanish control often met with hostility from members of the upper classes whose parents were born in the New World. His problems were greater in Perú, but there was a burgeoning criollo elite in Nuevo España as well.

The conflict was nearly as old as the second generation. The usual solution was a system of quotas imported from Spain where alternativa had been used to resolve problems uniting formally independent states like Castilla, Aragón, and Andalucía.

In the viceroyalties, the group in the minority, the Spanish appointees and migrants, argued it was needed to maintain Iberian standards. The majority criollos believed qualifications, as they defined them, were appropriate criteria for the highest offices in religious orders. Since many of the changes in routine came from serving Indian parishes, the Spaniards also recommended such missions be turned over to bishops.

In 1614, Augustinians in Nueva España were forced to institute a formal policy that alternated the two groups in their highest offices. Only 50 of the 630 Franciscans friars at the time were from Spain. In 1627, they demanded equal access to office.

The policy moved to Perú, where Franciscans resisted its imposition. Their appeals to Pope Innocent XI were overridden by Philip IV who saw them as a threat to his power. Alternativa was imposed by force in 1679.

In 1683, Franciscans established a college in Querétaro to direct preaching missions in settled towns and to pagans. The original group had come mainly from Catalonia and Majorca. Within a decade, there was some attempt to introduce alternativa to balance power between the immigrant founders and the local recruits.

Smoldering resentments flared again when Philip’s appointments constrained ambitions of local men. Benito Crespo was promoted from Durango to the see of Puebla in 1734. His replacement, Martín de Elizacoechea, was from Navarre and educated at Universidad de Alcalá. He moved to México in 1716 where he managed incomes and collected tithes for the university.

The new bishop reasserted his authority over the Franciscans of Nuevo México when he entered the kingdom in 1737. Local priests then were fighting with Juan Bustamante for supremacy. He yielded to their complaints, and returned Santiago de Roybal as his vicar.

Pedro Anselmo Sánchez de Tagle was named obispo de Durango in 1745 when Elizacoechea moved to the bishopric in Michoacán. He was from Cantabria, perhaps the same area as Bustamante’s ancestors, and had moved to México in 1726.

Again, the Franciscan overseer, Juan Miguel Menchero, demanded Roybal be removed. Angélico Chávez noted, when they were refused, there was "no evidence of further demands."

Franciscans soon had larger problems. Philip died in 1746 and his son was crowned. In 1749, Ferdinand VI ordered all parishes administered by religious orders within the jurisdictions of Ciudad de México and Lima be turned over to secular clergy and supervised by archbishops.

When his command met with no resistence, except from the orders themselves, he extended the receipt to all parishes in the New World. Theoretically, that would have included Santa Cruz, Santa Fé, and Albuquerque.

His policy primarily affected Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians. Only a few Jesuits administered parishes. Other religious orders, like Los Hermanos de San Juan de Dios who provided medical care, weren’t impacted.

Serious disruptions followed, as secular clergymen who didn’t speak native languages were sent to Indian villages, and displaced friars crowded into urban areas with no support. Augustinians prepared legal cases.

In 1749 the Franciscan missionary college in Zacatecas was reprimanded for not requesting more recruits from Spain. The colleges had strict membership limits, and only accepted one or two novices a year. While the communities in Querétaro and Mexico City did still request new men from Iberia, Zacatecas had become the "exclusive preserve of creoles" and was intent on remaining so.

In Nuevo México a messenger sent by the viceroy in 1749 reviewed the status of the missions. Juan Antonio de Ornedal repeated Crespo’s recommendation that the missions of San Ildefonso, Santa Clara and San Juan de Caballeros could be combined because "of the short distances that he believes to exist between" them.

Carlos Delgado was assigned the Franciscan rebuttal. He wrote, Ornedal must have traveled along "the camino real in a carriage or on horseback" and that he must have passed "over them by day, at his convenience" with "an escort to guard him." In fact, he said, friars were "exposed to great danger and peril at all times, having to cross rivers in canoes and often at night, and at time when their waters are in flood and very rapid."

With a new king, the Jesuits renewed their efforts to evade paying tithes with another proposal after the end of the War of Austrian Succession. This time they won a reduction in the rate in 1750. Then, they apparently based their payments on net revenues not gross that the state assumed.

The order was in trouble again in 1754 when it opposed a treaty between Ferdinand and his father-in-law, João V of Portugal. The territorial exchange along the Rio de la Plata involved ceding land where Jesuits had missions. Ferdinand fired his primary advisor. Zenón de Somodevilla had supported both the Jesuits and the reorganization of missions in the New World.

Ferdinand modified his secularization policy in 1757. He allowed those friars who, in fact, had been appointed by bishops to continue until they died. Each order in each province was allowed to operate two parishes for income. All priories with at least eight members could remain open, but all the smaller ones that had been opened without licenses in Indian villages remained closed.

To handle the sudden surplus of clergymen, Ferdinand told the orders in 1754 to limit the number of new novices, and to prepare them for work in frontier missions. The Franciscans already had their colleges that trained men for work in Tejas. They concentrated their new efforts in the Bajio region around Querétaro.

That same year, Tagle was moved to Michoacán, and Pedro Tamarón was sent as his replacement in Durango. He was from Toledo and, like Elizacoechea, had been educated at Alcalá.

Roybal was still in Santa Fé when Tamarón made his formal inspection in 1760. Franciscan Juan Sanz de Lezaún wrote his own "account of lamentable happenings in New Mexico," but took a more conciliatory tone than had Delgado. "I am persuaded, in view of the report of the most illustrious señor, the Bishop of Durango, who has obtained information of all this from his experience during his visitation, that he will remedy all that I have described."

As Chávez noted on Roybal, "perhaps with the passing of the old friars who had known greater episcopal immunity in days gone by, or on receipt of more definite decrees from the Crown and Council of the Indies, the old animosities died away."

Notes: The post for 27 March 2016 discusses the beginning of this dispute over diezmo. Bancroft and Twitchell identified Ornedal as Ordenal. The viceroy in 1749 was Francisco de Güemes.

Bishop Tagle’s grandparents were Andres Sanchez Tagle, and Maria Pérez de Bustamante. The former governor, Juan de Bustamante, was the son-in-law and likely nephew of the earlier governor, Antonio Valverde y Cosío, whose Cantabrian background was discussed in the post for 23 August 2015. The vicar’s grandparents were Juan Antonio de Bustamante y Tagle and María Antonia Bracho Bustamante. Chávez didn’t know the relationship between the governor and the vicar’s father.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of Arizona and New Mexico, 1530-1888, 1889.

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.

Brading, D. A. Church and State in Bourbon Mexico, 1994; quotation on creole composition of college in Zacatecas.

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

ChihuahuaMexico.com. "Pedro Tamarón y Romeral" section on "Historia" on its website.

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. The quotation on floods previously appeared in the post for 24 February 2016.

Gutiérrez Torrecilla, Luis Miguel. "Martín de Elizacoechea, Un Navarro Obispo en América (1679-1756)," Príncipe de Viana 55:391-406:1994.

Konrad, Herman W. A Jesuit Hacienda in Colonial Mexico, 1980.

McCloskey, Michael B. The Formative Years of the Missionary College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro 1683-1733, 1955.

Ornedal y Maza, Juan Antonio de. Informe sobre el lastimoso estado y decadencia en que se encuentran las misiones de Nuevo México, to Francisco de Güemes, 26 July 1749, El Paso.

Rojas y Contreras, José. Historia del Colegio Viejo de S. Bartholomé (Salamanca), volume 1, 1768; on Tagle and Bustamante.

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.

Tibesar, Antonine. "The Alternativa: A Study in Spanish-Creole Relations in Seventeenth-Century Peru," The Americas 11:229-283:1955.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 1, 1914.

Franciscans and the Bishop

Franciscans were not beyond Bourbon reforms that emphasized accountability and metrics for measuring success. Along with financial support came audits and inspections to verify report accuracy.

Ferdinand of Aragon had negotiated control of church moneys in 1502 when pope Alexander VI "conferred the tithes of all the Indies on the king on condition that he should endow the churches and provide an adequate maintenance for their ministers." This bull coincided with the onset of Columbus’s fourth voyage, and ensured the church’s standing in the New World.

He already had been granted the power to nominate high ecclesiastical leaders during the conquest of Granada in 1486. Julian II extended patronato to the New World in 1508. The two agreed any proposal for a new mission would be reviewed by the audiencia, the viceroy, and the bishop before being presented to the Consejo de Indias. In return, the Vatican gained control of the Papal States on the Italian peninsula.

Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV of France, used patronato real to nominate religious leaders in the New World who appreciated the need for centralized secular power. He appointed Juan de Vizarrón arzobispo de México in 1730. The Andalusian had studied in Rome at the College of San Clemente before serving in Seville where he was Philip’s chaplain.

In 1734, Vizarrón renewed the church’s efforts to collect diezmo from Jesuit haciendas. The order proposed a "temporary arrangement" to the audiencia, who rejected it. The members felt both they and the archbishop/viceroy had been "insulted." They ordered full payment of tithes from 1734, and forwarded the paperwork to Madrid. According to Hubert Howe Bancroft, the "king’s council" ordered payment and demanded "sworn statements" declaring the value of the order’s estates.

In Nuevo México, subordination of religious orders to secular clergy was more important than tithes. The mere fact the obispo de Durango visited Santa Fé in 1730 was seen as an affront. Benito Crespo’s ensconcement of Santiago de Roybal as Vicario y Juez Esclesiástico was taken as provocation. The Franciscan’s local custodio, Andrés Varo, considered himself to be the legitimate local vicar.

Philip had appointed Crespo in 1722. Born in a small village in Castile near the border with Estremadura, he had trained at San Marcos de León in Salamanca and was a knight of Santiago. That military order had been under crown control since Ferdinand asserted his authority in 1499.

Roybal had been ordained in México by Crespo. He, no doubt, was selected because he was the son of Francesca de Gómez Robledo and Ignacio de Roybal. They had sent the boy to Mexico City for his education.

On his way back to Durango Crespo wrote the viceroy that the Franciscans were collecting fees for 40 friars, but only had deployed 33. The Santa Cruz parish was included in the endowment for Santa Clara, "where he has never resided." He recommended transferring Santa Cruz, along with the other Spanish-speaking parishes, to his jurisdiction, and consolidating Santa Clara and San Juan de Caballeros into the mission at San Ildefonso.

The Franciscan’s immediate response was to send Juan Miguel Menchero north in 1731 to develop a counterstrategy. Soon after, Santa Cruz began keeping better baptismal records that would prove they were serving the villa and would document the numbers of souls brought into the church. They had kept reasonably complete records from 1710 to 1714. After that only chance notes survived.

In a separate letter to the viceroy, Crespo criticized the fees charged by friars for baptisms, burials and other sacraments because they were "so high and exorbitant that there were no fixed schedule except the will of the father missionaries." To encourage more participation by parishioners and natives, he fixed price schedules. He cited a royal order from 1725 as his justification.

Menchero countered with an order that "no friar was to charge an Indian any fee whatsoever for administering the sacraments."

Year	Baptisms	DM's	Marriages
1710	2	1
1711	8	1
1712	8	1
1713	43
1714	12	5
1715	3	3
1716		4
1717		4
1718		8
1719		5
1720	2	5
1721	27	1
1722		2
1723		6
1724
1725		4
1726	1	3	4
1727		6	6
1728		3	7
1729			1
1730		1	12
1731	3		4
1732	50		1
1733	35		16
1734	62		7
1735	38		6
1736	26		9
1737	2		15
1738	48		8
1739	19		10
Santa Cruz de la Cañada

Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, and San Juan de los Caballeros were given bound books in 1726 for recording baptisms, marriages, and deaths. They’re our only detailed record of the population between then and 1760. The diligencias matrimoniales are missing. Angélico Chávez believed Roybal, "kept or removed only the DMs pertaining to his term," but suggested no motive. It also may be the Franciscans refused to forward them to him, and they subsequently were lost.

With a forgivable bias towards the Franciscans, Chávez believed Roybal, "with the brashness of youth, had continued enraging some of his adversaries," and was moved to El Paso in 1733.

That didn’t relieve Menchero of secular oversight. Crespo sent Juan Bustamante in his place.

He was another second generation migrant from northern Spain who had ties with the local elite. Chávez believed he was the son, nephew or brother of the earlier governor from El Paso, Juan Domingo de Bustamante.

Notes: The New Mexico Genealogical Society began transcribing and translating the sacramental books in 1976. They’ve published their extracts for Santa Cruz baptisms and marriages, and for Santa Clara and Juan de los Caballeros marriages. Microfilms of the originals are available.

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

Archdiocese of Puebla. "Excmo. Sr. Don Benito Crespo (1734-1737)," their website.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of Mexico, Volume III, 1600-1803, 1883.

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

_____. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982; on missing diligencias matrimoniales.

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition; on Bustamante.

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

_____. Letter to the viceroy, Juan Vásquez de Acuña, 25 September 1730; translation in Adams; on fees for services.

Crivelli, Camillus. "Mexico," The Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10, 1911; quotation summarizing bull of Alexander VI.

Kessell, John L. Kiva, Cross and Crown, 1995; Menchero quotation.

Traboulay, David M. Columbus and Las Casas: The Conquest and Christianization of America, 1492-1566, 1994.

Wikipedia. Entry for Juan Antonio de Vizarrón y Eguiarreta."

Table: Data from New Mexico Genealogical Society.

New Mexico Baptisms, Santa Cruz de la Cañada Church, Volume I, 1710 to 1794, transcribed by Virginia Langham Olmstead and compiled by Margaret Leonard Windham and Evelyn Luján Baca, 1994.

100 Years of Marriages, 1726-1826, Santa Cruz de la Cañada, New Mexico, extracted and compiled by Henrietta Martinez Christmas and Patricia Sánchez Rau.

A number of Apaches were baptized in 1713.

Entrepreneurs in the South

Jean l’Archevêque was with another Frenchman when he was ransomed by the Spanish in 1688. Jacques Grollet had been born in the Huguenot port of La Rochelle. Little is known about his family. Stanley Hordes said his particular neighborhood was one where conversos settled in the 1500s. Grollet described himself as an "experienced sailor," and indeed sailed on a fishing voyage with the Saint Jacques in 1682. Two years later he was with La Salle when his flotilla embarked from La Rochelle.

There’s no reason to believe Grollet and Archevêque were close before La Salle was murdered. Grollet had deserted earlier to live with the Tejas and Cenis tribes, but rejoined the survivors after La Salle died. Later he and Archevêque abandoned the group to live with the Hasinai.

When they heard Spaniards were in the area, the two sent a message asking to be rescued. They then spent years in jail together in México and Spain. When the men finally were released to Nuevo México, the one stayed in Santa Fé while the other moved to the Río Abajo.

Grollet married Elena Gallegos in 1699. Her brother’s daughter married Felipe Silva in 1722. He was the man who first was reported selling wool in 1734 to the commander of the presidio at Jano in Sonora in the post for 6 March 2016.

Elena’s cousin, Josefa Baca, never married, but had several sons. In 1745, Manuel Sáenz de Garvisu financed a partido contract with Capitán José Baca. This son of Josefa Baca received 417 young sheep, and committed to deliver 160 lambs and 150 fleeces each year for three years.

Sáenz was from Navarre and serving in the presidio under Gaspar de Mendoza. He probably met the Bacas through his wife’s uncle. Diego Lucero was married to Margarita Baca, who was the first cousin of Josepha and Elena. A year after his contract with José, Sáenz had enough money to buy property in Santa Fé from Maria Gómez de Robledo.

As the market for fleeces developed, the use of partido spread, and with it economic stratification. The business relationship had originated in Spain in the 1300s when it had been used as a way to pay shepherds. John Baxter said, it was in México that it became "a way of lending capital at interest."

The older usage survived in the north. When Lugarda de Quintana died in Santa Cruz in 1750, she had just inherited 110 sheep from her father who died the year before. She had some sons still at home, but her husband was "absent and I do not know where." All the children without parents whose baptisms she sponsored were girls. She had animals, little available labor, and mentioned no grazing land.

She said she first traded some sheep for some cattle. She apparently loaned them out on unspecified terms. She only stipulated what she was owed. Some may have been studs sent out in return for payment in kind. Miguel Trujillo owed her two rams while Miguel Martín and Eusebio Durán each owed her one. Juan Esteban owed a three-year-old bull.

Except for the last, these men were relatives or men of substance. Trujillo’s sister was married to Lugarda’s husband brother, Hilario Archuleta, and he himself was wed to María Antonia Archuleta. If Durán were Eusebio Durán y Chaves, he was born in the Río Abajo and would marry Vibiana Martín Serrano in 1752 in Alameda.

Antonio Martín died in 1749, and his estate still owed her a lamb. An indio who worked for him, Gerónimo, owed 10 animals. Antonio’s and Miguels’s relationships to the Martíns weren’t clear to Angélico Chávez. That means no records survived or they were captives or meztisos given the Martín name or they were descended from one of the wayward branches.

Several of the other people who owed her livestock were indios like Gerónimo, or lived in a pueblo. She said the cacique owed her a yearling sheep and a goat. An Indian woman named Magdalena, who may have been the Apache baptized by Antonio Bernal in 1732, owed a goat. So did Juan, who was ransomed by Marcos Martín.

This sharing a few animals, either as studs or with poorer individuals, was very different than the economy in Santa Fé where Cristóbal Baca, a brother of Josefa, left more than 900 ewes when he died in 1739. When Ignacio de Roybal died in 1756 he left fewer animals - 350 sheep and goats - but they were "loaned at interest on partido for 30% of the wool, lambs and kids produced annually."

Even larger numbers of animals were available for loan down river. In 1760, Capitán Juan Vigil gave Ignacio Jaramillo 605 pregnant ewes. He was expected to make yearly payments of 130 wethers and fleeces. While Vigil’s return was greater than his investment, he agreed to share the costs of losses to native raids. Jaramillo’s incentive for managing the animals was he enjoyed the sales of 80% of their fleeces for four years and owned the flock outright after five years.

The drought years accelerated economic trends in the second and third generations after the Reconquest. At the top were families and military men who shared an entrepreneurial attitude with the rising merchant classes in La Rochelle, Bristol and London. Beneath them were men like Jaramillo who could use other men’s capital to create their own wealth. And beneath them were men like Francisco Sáez who didn’t pay his share because he had used some animals to pay existing debts and gambled away the others, or like the former captives who owed Quintana one or two animals.

Origins of Men Involved in Wool Trade, Río Abajo

Cristóbal Baca, son of Antonio, son of Cristóbal
	Manuel Baca
		Josepha Baca
			José Baca contract with Manuel Sáenz de Garvisu (Navarre)
			Antonio Baca
		María Magdalena Baca marry Jose Vásquez de Lara (México)
			María Vásquez Baca marry Diego de Padilla
		Cristóbal Baca
	Catalina Baca marry Antonio Gallegos
		Elena Gallegos marry Jacques Grollet (La Rochelle)
		Antonio Gallegos
			Juana Gallegos marry Felipe de Silva
			Felipe's sister Gertrudis marry Gerónimo Jaramillo
	Ignacio Baca
		Margarita Baca marry Diego Lucero

Notes: Most of the details on the growth of the wool industry came from Baxter; most about the families came from Chávez. Sáez was discussed in the post for 6 March 2016. Jaramillo probably was related to Gerónimo, who married a sister of Felipe Silva, or to Francisco Silva who married an aunt of Garvisu’s wife. Vigil may have been the son of Manuel Montes Vigil, a soldier in the presidio who died before Garvisu arrived.

Antonio Baca, another son of Josefa Baca, married Mónica de Chaves. Two of their sons later married daughters of Sáenz. Diego Padilla, also mentioned in the post for 6 March 2016, was Josefa’s nephew-in-law by her sister María Magdalena. Grollet’s captivity was mentioned in the post for 14 May 2105.

The two translations that exist for Quintana’s will differ in their understanding of her livestock. Lomelí translated the phrase "declaro tener ciento y diez cabezas de ganado menor que de unas reses que traje de herencia de mi padre" as "110 head of goats and cattle from my father’s inheritance." Christmas made it "110 head of sheep, for which I traded some cattle." "Ganado menor" was a generic term for small livestock that included both sheep and goats.

Baxter, John O. Las Carneradas, 1987.

_____. "The Ignacio De Roybal House," The Historic Santa Fe Foundation, Bulletin, January 1980; on his estate.

Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989.

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Grollet, Jacques. Testimony, published on "La Salle: Building a French Empire in the New World," University of North Texas website.

Hendricks, Rick. "Wills from El Paso del Norte, 1754-1817," Nuestra Raíces 6:161-167:1994.

Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth, 2005.

Maldonado, Gilbert. Maldonado Journey to the Kingdom of New Mexico, 2014; on descendants of Catalina Baca.

Migrations.fr website. Département de La Rochelle, "Le St Jacques of La Rochelle Bound la Pêche à la Morique, 14 Mars 1682."

New Mexico Genealogical Society. New Mexico Baptisms, Santa Cruz de la Cañada Church, Volume I, 1710 to 1794, transcribed by Virginia Langham Olmstead and compiled by Margaret Leonard Windham and Evelyn Luján Baca, 1994.

Quintana, Gertrudis Lugarda de. Will, 12 May 1749; original in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914; English and Spanish versions in Francisco A. Lomelí and Clark A. Colahan, Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico, 2006; English translation available at Henrietta M. Christmas, "(Getrudis) Lugarda Quintana - Will 1749," 4 August 2014 posting on 1598 New Mexico website.