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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
It is not an easy matter to disentangle the motives lying back of any great enterprise such as the Spanish conquest and colonization in the Americas. The idea has been very generally held, even among historians, that the Spaniards were universally obsessed with a lust for gold, and however much or little other motives may have entered in, that this lust for gold was the motive above all others which inspired them to feats with few if any parallels in all history for courage and endurance and achievement. “Tell your master,” Cortés is reported to have said to the emissaries of Moctezuma, “that we Spaniards have a fever in our blood which can be cooled only by gold.”
The Mexican of today is proud of his Indian descent, and the heavy discount which he places on what the Spaniard has done for him is typified, for example, in the imposing statue to Cuauctemoc which was given one of the points of greatest prominence on the stately Paseo of Mexico City. One of the large bronze tablets on the base of that statue portrays Cortés and his captains putting the Aztec princes to the torture, roasting their feet to compel them to reveal their hidden treasure; and at that statue today centers the national Fiesta de la Raza.
1 A third name, “Fray Juan do la Cruz,” appears first in writings of the eighteenth century. This name is not found in contemporary sixteenth century records; J. G. Shea, Bandelier, Otto Maas, and other authorities agree that there were but two with Coronado in the land of Cibola. One explanation offered is that this was the name “in religion” of Fray Luís de Escalona.
2 Many of the original documents relating to these applicants are found in A.G.I., Sección de Patronato, but many others have been found in A. G. I., Sección de Audiencia de Mexico, and Sección de Indiferente de Indias. Bound volumes of photostat facsimilea are in the University of New Mexico, Coronado Library. Of course, many of the documents have long been in print in various ways, Spanish and English, but too often the editing and proof-reading have been poor. Anyone who doubts it might collate, for example, the text as found in Volume I of Bandelier: Historical Documents relating to New Mexico, etc., edited by C. W. Hackett (Carnegie Institution, 1931) with facsimiles of the originals.
3 An interesting payment was made to his brother, Don Alonso, by the audiencia in Mexico City (26 Oct., 1604), the balance due him of 1,500 ducados which the king (Valladolid, 8 Sept., 1603) had granted him to aid in paying ship passage and expenses of forty musketeers, a number of shipcarpenters and two pilots whom Don Alonso was to bring from the kingdom of Castile and send on the “Jornada de Nuevo Mexico” to his brother Don Juan. Part of the money he had already received from treasury officials in Vera Cruz. Incidentally, six of the men deserted en route—one of the pilots at San Lucar and five men at Santo Domingo where they stopped for water. A.G.L., Contraduria 707, Oct. 26, 1604.
4 For a detailed account of this period, see Hammond, G. P., Don Juan de Oñate and the Founding of New Mexico (N. M. Hist. Soc., Santa Fé, 1927). From a petition to the king, made by Oñate in 1622 when seeking reinstatement in royal favor, it appears that his nephew and maestre de campo (while in New Mexico), Vicente de Zaldivar, had married his daughter and only heir. Oñate asserts that his own mines, with those of his father-in-law and of his son-in-law, had paid the greater part of the quinta (a mining tax) which the king had received from all of New Spain. A.G.I., Guadalajara 1, July 1, 1622.Google Scholar
5 A.G.I., Aud. de Mexico, 1065, El Rey a Velasco: sobre que aga que cese … el descubrimiento (Valladolid, Sept. 13, 1608).
6 Ibid., El Rey a Salinas: aprouándole el no Hauer desmandado la conuersion … de Nueuo Mexico (San Lorenço, Nov. 1, 1609).
7 Scholes, France V., “The supply service of the New Mexico missions in the seventeenth century,” in N. Mex. Hist. Rev., V, 93, citing Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana (ed. 1723), I, 678.Google Scholar
8 The disgruntled former governor of New Mexico, Don Diego de Peñalosa, was intriguing in London as early as the summer of 1669, and from 1673 he was similarly engaged in Paris; but the English were not interested in his proposals, and the La Salle expedition did not arrive on the Texas coast until 1685. A.S. (Archivo de Simancas), sección de Estado, correspondence of Spanish ambassadors, passim. The earliest intimation at Santa Fé of French approach by way of the plains was in 1695.
9 An interesting example is the libranza of salary settlement with Gov. Pedro de Peralta, based in part on evidence submitted that on the afternoon of May 12, 1614, he turned over the office to his successor “in the Villa of Santa Fé.” A.G.I., Contaduría 723, June 27, 1620.
10 This was the media annata, which was figured variously at from a tenth to a fourth of the first year’s salary. See, e.g., A.G.I., Contaduría 760, Mar. 8, 1669; ibid., 767, Dec. 10, 1675.
11 Peralta was appointed by the viceroy on March 3, 1609, but his salary was dated from April 16, the day on which he left Mexico City. He was still in Zacatecas at the beginning of October, engaged by a multitude of details in the securing of equipment, supplies, frailes, soldiers, servants, carts, oxen, mules, etc., etc., and it was probably late in February 1610 before he reached San Gabriel (the then capital). A.G.I., Contaduría 711–716, 850; Audiencia de Mexico, 27, 29, 73, 120; Patronato 22.
A quaint illustration of this dating of salaries is the case of Captain Juan Francisco Treviño to whom a payment was made on August 14, 1675, among the supporting documents for which was the affidavit of an escribano in Mexico City. This official testified that on January 30, 1674, “he was on the paved way leading from this city to the hermitage of Our Lady of Guadalupe when he saw Don Juan Francisco Treviño pass on the road, who said to him that he was leaving for the kingdom of New Mexico under appointment as governor of that [kingdom] and its provinces.” Ibid., Contaduría 766.
12 The contract signed on May 6, 1631, with Fray Tomás Manso was made retroactive to August 3, 1630, the beginning of that triennium. See Scholes, loc. cit., 113.
13 This is the date at which the long series of annual reports from the treasury officials ends. And it carries beyond the reconquest which was effected in 1691–93, with a final flare-up which was crushed in 1696.
14 A.G.I., Contaduría 770, Mar. 20, 1681.
15 Ibid, Contaduría 774, 848B, 850, various dates.
16 These figures are from the contract of May 6, 1631. The original is in A.G.I., Patronato 244; a translation may be found in Scholes, op. cit. Later, the freightage allowance was reduced to three missionaries to the wagon.
17 This is a conservative estimate, because in later years the number of missionaries was increased to sixty-six, and for a few years it rose to seventy.
18 This economy was more theoretical than actual. Thirty-five of the original colonists became encomenderos, with the right to exact tribute from the Pueblo Indians allotted to them. When called upon, they were obliged to do escort duty with supply-trains and for the frailes traveling on mission work. For the former service, a colonist without encomienda received travel-pay of 300 pesos for a round-trip to Mexico, with an absence from his home of at least two years; whereas an encomendero for the same service received 200 pesos. A.G.I., Contaduría 726, Jan. 21–28, 1625.
As to the other form of service, it was one of the complaints made by the frailes in 1620 that the encomenderos were trying to make them pay for such escort. L. B. Bloom, “The royal order to Governor Juan de Eulate,” in N. M. Hist. Rev., III, July 1928.
19 Scholes, op. cit., p. 114.