Native America-White Relations—Spanish Colonial

Tribes affected: Apache, Apalachee, Chumash, Pueblo, Timucua, Yuma

Significance: The Spanish Empire imposed a heavy cost on the Indian peoples of North America from the 1570’s until its collapse in the 1820’s, in spite of Native Americans’ valiant efforts to deal with its demands peacefully

The Indians of North America escaped the violence and disruption of the early Spanish conquest only to encounter later imperial thrusts that contained the seeds of conflict. From the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 to Hernán Cortés’ victory over the Aztecs in 1521, the Spanish established their control of the Caribbean area. The riches of the Aztecs inspired expeditions southward to conquer the Inca Empire, but probings into North America failed to locate concentrations of gold or large urban centers. Yet the 3,000-mile stretch of territory from Florida to California became a vital but vulnerable frontier for the Spanish. They wanted to defend the lifeline of their New World empire, which stretched from Mexico to Hispaniola and on to Spain, by the establishment of settlements along the southern fringe of what is now the United States. Relations between the Indians of North America and the colonists and institutions of the empire were characterized by periods of tentative harmony under Spanish domination followed by the growth of tension and distrust among the natives, which often resulted in alienation, rejection, and, in a few cases, open rebellion.

Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Native American peoples along the southern rim of North America had evolved a large variety of languages and cultures that, while lacking the urbanization and centralization of the Aztecs, had internal strengths of their own. From the Apalachees of what is now northern Florida to the Chumash along the California coast, life usually centered on the extended family and villages with various combinations of hunting, gathering, and small-scale agriculture to supply material needs. All was not harmony in pre-conquest North America, however, as the strained relationship between the Pueblos and Apaches revealed. The Pueblos of the upper Rio Grande Valley lived a sedentary existence in their multistory stone and adobe houses. Their agricultural practices gave them a fairly stable source of food in contrast to their neighbors, the Apaches, who were wandering hunter-gatherers. When the Apaches’ supplies ran short, they would sometimes raid the villages of the more prosperous Pueblos.

Spanish Institutions

These Apache-Pueblo conflicts were of limited duration, but the arrival of the Spanish brought major disruptions that would permanently change the lives of the Indians. The Spanish transplanted institutions previously established in Mexico, Peru, and other imperial centers. The encomienda, a type of land grant, was for many years their chief method of commanding Indian labor. The encomendero (holder of the encomienda) controlled Indian workers in exchange for a commitment to protect and to provide for them. A second system of labor supervision was the repartimiento, in which colonial officials assigned native workers to a particular settler for a certain amount of time. Although in theory these situations were regulated by colonial officials, in practice encomenderos and settlers took advantage of their Indian charges by requiring them to work beyond the original agreements. In addition to the encomienda and repartimiento, the Spanish enslaved natives as personal servants or as laborers in their agricultural or trading enterprises.

These labor practices, often harsh and exploitative, drew the protests of Catholic missionaries. The priests assigned to frontier areas from Florida to California brought with them an awareness of the ideals of Bartolomé de las Casas, who, from the 1520’s until his death in 1566, campaigned against the mistreatment of Native Americans. These missionaries, usually members of the Franciscan order along the North American frontier, attempted to convert the Indians to Christianity. Their missions often served the natives as havens from the demands of encomenderos, settlers, and even government officials.

The presidio, a small fort manned by a detachment of soldiers, generally accompanied the mission. The original purpose of these frontier forts was to protect the missionaries, settlers, and friendly natives from attacks by European rivals such as the British and the French and their Indian allies. As internal institutional and political disputes arose, however, these soldiers were sometimes deployed against the mission Indians to serve the demands of settlers and officials for additional land or native laborers.

Historical records of the interaction of the Indians and the Spanish tend to emphasize institutions such as the mission and the presidio, but the native response to the arrival of the Spanish was much more subtle than early studies limited to archives reveal. Spanish friars reported massive conversions of Indians to Christianity in remarkably short periods of time, but these apparent conversions may have been simply the natives’ way of attempting to develop good relations with the Europeans rather than the profoundly religious experiences often described in the reports. The Indians did not passively accept Spanish dominance but rather found ways to accommodate demands for conversion and for labor while, at the same time, preserving much of their own autonomy and tradition.

Florida

The Franciscans began their work in Florida in 1573 and within eighty years had erected more than thirty missions extending northward and westward in two chains from their base in St. Augustine. The Franciscans used music, paintings, and colorful ceremonies to attract the natives’ attention. They claimed that twenty-six thousand converts had accepted Christianity by 1655 (this claim is disputed by many historians). The Apalachees, Timucuas, and other nearby tribes were receptive to the missionaries in the early years in part as a response to the Franciscan appeals; however, the Indians also saw strategic advantages in an alliance with the missionaries for protection against Spanish settlers and soldiers. The natives’ selective acceptance of Catholicism was indicated by their placement of Christian images among their traditional religious symbols.

The tensions in the Indian-Spanish relationships exploded in the early 1700’s under additional pressures from British settlements to the north. The British founded Charleston in 1670 and began to push to the interior, thereby posing a threat to the mission-presidio system stretching out from St. Augustine. The Charlestonians recruited nonmission Indians and welcomed the alienated natives who left the Spanish. The Indians, caught in the struggle between the two European powers, found it necessary to take sides or abandon the area. One Apalachee chief, Patricio de Hinachuba, urged Spanish officials to end their abusive policies in order to hold the support of his people and other nearby tribes. Patricio, a perceptive leader, attempted to represent the interests of the Apalachee while remaining within the Spanish orbit. Through personal diplomacy with the British in 1706, he managed to spare his village from attack and then led his followers toward St. Augustine for sanctuary. His hopes were dashed, however, when a group of pro-British Indians attacked his band just outside the large stone fortifications of St. Augustine. Patricio de Hinachuba perished along with his Apalachee community.

The defeat of the Spanish in the early 1700’s was a symptom of the decline of the missions. The British military attacks were important factors in the Spanish loss, but the defection of many of the mission Indians in this time of crisis was also important. As Patricio de Hinachuba attempted to explain to the Spanish, the onerous burdens of repartimiento and Native American slavery weighed heavily on many native communities. Apparently many Indians joined the British as an act of rebellion against the Spanish. Only a few Indians remained with the missions at the stronghold of St. Augustine and a handful of sites scattered across the northern part of Florida. These defections, however, brought few if any improvements for the Indians: The British also resorted to enslavement of the able-bodied natives and proved as aggressive as the Spanish in usurping land.

New Mexico

While different in many details, the Spanish colonial effort along the upper Rio Grande in what is now New Mexico and western Texas bore a resemblance to the rise and fall of the mission-presidio system in Florida. Although the New Mexico project may appear to have been a logical extension of Spanish settlements in northern Mexico, the expedition of explorer of Juan de Oñate in 1598 marked a significant leap for the Spanish across rugged deserts and through hostile Indian territory. New Mexico, like Florida, was isolated from the core areas of the empire and constituted not only an effort to bring Christianity and European civilization to the Native Americans but also a barrier to the occupation of the region by European rivals.

Oñate’s settlements took hold, and by the 1620’s New Mexico seemed to be a healthy and prosperous colony; particularly impressive was the work of the Franciscan missionaries. By 1629 they had established fifty missions that on a map formed the pattern of a cross running northward up the Rio Grande to the settlement in Taos; the arms of the cross extended westward to the Zuni and Hopi pueblos and eastward to Pecos. Father Alonso de Benavides’ report that the Franciscans had baptized eighty-six thousand Indians circulated not only in Mexico City but also in Madrid and Rome.

The actual relationship between the Pueblo Indians and the Franciscans was less dramatic than these early reports indicated. The Pueblos probably turned to the missionaries and the accompanying Spanish soldiers for security against their long-time neighbors and periodic adversaries, the Apaches. The Pueblos were impressed by the church’s religious ceremonies, the support that the clerics received from military and government officials, and the Franciscans’ presentation of Christian doctrine. The Pueblos, however, much like the Apalachees and Timucuas of Florida, accepted portions of the missionaries’ messages while retaining significant components of their own beliefs and customs.

Inevitably, the arrival of the Spanish took a toll on the natives. The initial excitement gave way to the more practical problems of work, food, and clothing. Oñate secured imperial approval for encomiendas for himself and a few of the prominent early settlers. These grants placed certain Indian villages under a legal obligation to pay tribute (a tax) to the encomenderos. Soon colonial officials established the repartimiento as a means of supplying young Indians to work for settlers. Colonial governors of New Mexico often used the repartimiento—and even illegal slave labor—in agricultural and commercial enterprises to augment their salaries. Pueblo communities, with this loss of the labor of many of their vigorous males and females, experienced not only an indignity but also a growing difficulty in feeding themselves.

The natives’ frustrations with these conditions erupted in small rebellions as early as 1632 at Zuni and 1639-1640 at Taos, but the Spanish seemed to ignore these ominous signs. Crop losses from bad weather in the 1660’s and 1670’s and intensified Apache raids added to the Pueblos’ difficulties. A leader capable of unifying Indian resistance appeared in the person of Popé, a Pueblo religious mystic punished by the Spanish for alleged sorcery. In August and September of 1680, Popé led a large portion of the seventeen thousand Pueblos in an uprising known as Popé's Revolt that killed more than four hundred of New Mexico’s twenty-five hundred Spanish settlers and sent the survivors fleeing down the Rio Grande to El Paso. After the expulsion of the Spanish, the native leadership openly rejected Christianity and discouraged the use of the Spanish language. Although the Spanish returned to New Mexico in the early 1690’s, the growth of the colony was slow, and its reputation as a center for peaceful conversion was discredited.

Frontier Struggles of the Eighteenth Century

The Indians’ defections and rebellions in Florida and New Mexico did not force the Spanish to abandon the northern edge of their American empire, but these events dramatized the need for new approaches in their relations with American Indians. Also, the 1763 acquisition of the vast territory of Louisiana placed new pressures on Indian-Spanish relations. Imperial defense policy called for control of the Apaches and other mobile tribes of Texas because they threatened access to Louisiana by land from northern Mexico.

The Apaches roamed the large area between New Mexico and the small group of missions precariously planted around San Antonio in eastern Texas. The basic unit of Apache social organization was the extended family, and for their material existence, they relied on hunting and gathering, limited agriculture, and, when shortages developed, raids on nearby sedentary Pueblos. In their small, migratory groups, the Apaches confused the confounded Spanish officials, who, in spite of the efforts of missionaries and soldiers, found it impossible to bring them into the colonial system.

The most intensive effort to deal with the Apaches came in the initiatives of José de Galvéz, a powerful colonial official in the 1770’s and 1780’s. Galvéz continued military actions against the Apaches but also incorporated the French and British strategies of stimulating trade with the natives along the northern frontier to undermine tribal autonomy. Galvéz authorized the sale of alcohol and poorly made firearms to the Apaches. The alcohol was intended to create a dependency among the natives on their merchant-suppliers, and the firearms would require frequent repair and replacement. Historian David J. Weber summarized the new policies as the adoption of “tried and true English and French practices to destroy the basis of native culture” in order to achieve with “the iron fist and the velvet glove what missionaries had been unable to do through less violent and cynical means.” Galvéz’ changes came too late for the Spanish Empire, however; within a generation, the expansion of the United States and the independence of Mexico would remove Spanish control from the borderlands area.

California

Galvéz also pushed Spanish settlements into Alta California (the present state of California) in response to the rumored encroachments of the Russians moving down the Pacific coast from Alaska. Galvéz did not like the flawed mission-presidio system, but financial problems forced him to implant a variation of this approach in California in 1769. Franciscans led by Junípero Serra recaptured some of the enthusiasm of the first generations of missionaries in Florida and New Mexico. Within five years they had nearly five thousand Indians living on their missions. Mission life for the Chumash and other tribes, while pleasant at first, became another disastrous encounter with Europeans. Epidemic diseases and crowded living quarters brought high infant mortality rates and a rapid decline in the Indian population of California, from about 300,000 in 1769 to perhaps 200,000 in 1821. Many natives eventually fled the missions, but except for the Yumas’ attack on the settlements along the California side of the lower Colorado River in 1781, Indian violence against the Spanish was rare. Although these desertions and the decline of the native population strained the Indian-Spanish relationship, the missions enjoyed some prosperity and were among Spain’s most viable settlements in California in 1821 when Mexican independence brought an end to the empire in the borderlands.

While Indian-Spanish relations were generally dominated by the Europeans, the natives were resourceful in many of their earlier efforts to limit foreign influences. They had their greatest successes with subtle, diplomatic adjustments to the peaceful methods of the missionaries. The influence of these missionaries, however, survived for only a few decades. Eventually the trauma of epidemic diseases and the burdens of forced labor, tribute payment, and cultural-religious impositions kindled hostile reactions among many native groups. In the borderlands areas, the Spanish were often motivated by strategic factors in response to the expansive actions of their European rivals. These strategic concerns frequently placed military policies at the forefront in Indian-Spanish relations, especially in response to native unrest and rebellion. The ultimate outcome of the clash between Native Americans and the Spanish favored the latter; Native Americans paid an immense price in terms of life, culture, and property.

Bibliography

Hanke, Lewis. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1965. Historical study of the Spanish debate concerning the treatment of Indians, with emphasis on the work of Bartolomé de Las Casas.

Hann, John. Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1988. An in-depth synthesis of a crucial area in Indian-Spanish relations based on thorough research and thoughtful analysis.

John, Elizabeth A. H. Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of the Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540-1795. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975. Readable overview of the confrontations involving the Indians, Spanish, and French in the American Southwest from 1540 to 1795. Heavy emphasis on the Native Americans’ responses.

McAlister, Lyle. Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Includes a clearly written account of Spain’s general imperial policies such as the encomienda and the repartimiento.

Sandos, James. “Junípero Serra’s Canonization and the Historical Record.” American Historical Review 93 (December, 1988): 1253-1269. An important article on the controversies surrounding the early California missions.

Spicer, Edward H. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1553-1960. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962. Broad study of the impact of several generations of outside cultural, economic, and military invasions on the Indian peoples. Somewhat dated by more recent research but contains much useful material.

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992. Excellent detailed synthesis of Spanish imperial efforts from Florida to California based on a comprehensive survey of the research in the field. Includes historical, ethnographic, and archaeological sources to provide a balance of European and Native American points of view. Extensive footnotes and lengthy bibliography provide the reader with valuable citations for further research.