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14 - The Native Peoples of Northeastern Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Richard E. W. Adams
Affiliation:
University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio
Murdo J. MacLeod
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Summary

Around the year 1623 two Spaniards accompanied by their Mexicano servant set out to establish a sugar plantation in the new kingdom of Nuevo León, which for a generation had formed the northeastern frontier of New Spain. The place to which Pereyra and Pérez, the Spaniards, laid claim as their own happened to be occupied at the time by the ranchería of an Indian named Nacastlagua. Nacastlagua had his people help Pérez and Pereyra dig their irrigation ditches, prepare their fields, and plant their cane, as was expected of him and of them; yet, unexpectedly, Nacastlagua also assumed the right of sitting down first at the table every day when dinner was served. Pérez and Pereyra suffered from being so mocked by the shameless Nacastlagua, who seemed oblivious to his proper place in the Spanish scheme of things. Worse, they could think of no way to put him in that place.

But the overseer they hired for the new plantation, Antonio Durán, a bold man with no doubt some small experience in these frontier Indian affairs, soon decided to settle the matter. The day after Durán arrived, he stood waiting when dinner was served, fingering a club cut especially for the occasion. As soon as Nacastlagua sat down as was his custom, Durán set about beating the surprised and confused Indian to a pulp. The next day Antonio Durán, suspecting the denouement, packed up his household and left for the provincial capital of Monterrey.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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References

Alonso, León, “Relación y discursos del descubrimiento, población y pacificación de este Nuevo Reino de León; temperamento y calidad de la tierra,” in García, Genaro, ed., Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México (Mexico, 1909): XXV.Google Scholar
Barlow, R. H. and Smisor, George T.Relación de Pedro de Ahumada,” in, eds., Nombre de Dios, Durango: Two Documents in Nahuatl Concerning Its Foundation (Sacramento, CA, 1943).Google Scholar
José, Cuello, “The Persistence of Indian Slavery and Encomienda in the Northeast of Colonial Mexico, 1577–1723,” Journal of Social History 21 (1988):.Google Scholar
Powell, Philip WaynePetición ante el Virrey de los criadores de ganados vecinos y moradores de la frontera Chichimeca,” in, War and Peace on the North Mexican Frontier: A Documentary Record (Madrid, 1971).Google Scholar
Primo, Feliciano Velázquez, Historia de San Luis Potosí (San Luis Potosi, 1982), II.
Ruth, Behar, “The visions of a Guachichil witch in 1599: A window on the subjugation of Mexico’s hunter-gatherers,” Ethnohistory 34 (1987):.Google Scholar
Trimborn, H. Report from about 1572 by Gonzalo de Las Casas, “Noticia de los chichimecos y justicia de guerra que se les ha hecho por los españoles,” in, ed., Quellen zur Kulturgeschichte des präkolumbischen Amerika (Stuttgart, 1936).Google Scholar
Viceroy, Bernardo Gálvez, Instructions for Governing the Interior Provinces of New Spain, 1786 (Berkeley, CA, 1951).

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