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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
One of the central problems of Spanish missionary activity in the New World was the translation of Christian concepts into native languages. The following document, housed in Rome’s Jesuit archives (ARSI), highlights both the concern and the controversy surrounding this issue in the audiencia of New Granada (modern-day Colombia). On 25 August 1606, audiencia president Juan de Borja issued a decree requiring all members of New Granada’s clergy to provide religious instruction in the Chibcha language. The recent arrival of a small group of Jesuits had intensified a long-standing debate over how best to explain the mysteries of the Christian faith in early-colonial New Granada. Almost three decades earlier, in 1580, the oidor Pedro de Zorrillo, complained to the Council of the Indies that the natives of New Granada were as ignorant (in spiritual matters) now as they had been before the conquest. This ignorance, according to Zorrillo, was the result of the recalcitrance of local priests, most of whom stubbornly refused to learn native languages. Few priests spoke Chibcha and therefore taught the doctrina in Spanish or in some cases, Latin, which the Indians simply repeated like parrots, “como papagayos.”
1 Pacheco, Juan Manuel, “La evangelización del Nuevo Reino, siglo XVI,” Historia extensa íle Colombia (Bogotá: Ediciones Lerner, 1971), Vol. XIII, Tomo I, p. 483 Google Scholar.
2 Bermúdez assisted with the compilation of the first Chibcha dictionary and it has been suggested that it was Bermúdez who was responsible for a translation of the catechism into Chibcha. Bermúdez continued to teach Chibcha until his death in April of 1625.
3 ARSI Novi Regni et Quito 14, 6v.
4 Humberto Triana, y Antorveza, , Las lenguas indígenas en la historia social del Nuevo Reino de Granada, (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1987), p. 414.Google Scholar
5 ARSI Novi Regni et Quito, Vol. 14, 6v-7r.
6 ARSI Novi Regni et Quito, Vol. 14, 6v-7r.
7 Claims of linguistic diversity in Muisca territory were later reinforced by two religious chroniclers of the seventeenth century. The Franciscan cronista Fray Pedro Simón wrote that there was no “common” language in the Muisca provinces of Bogotá and Tunja; rather, Simón claimed, natives from each town spoke their own language. Another seventeenth-century chronicler, the mestizo Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita, also suggested that there was no common language in Muisca territory, a problem that he blamed on the pre-conquest political fragmentation of Muisca cacicazgos. Unfortunately, archival evidence does not clarify the matter. It is common in the colonial visitas to find the same individual serving as lengua, or translator, throughout an entire inspection, without a single reference to regional dialects. However, one does encounter examples that seem to offer some credence to the arguments put forward by the mendicants. For example, in 1621 Francisco Beltrán, a mestizo who lived in the pueblo of Guatavita (in the province of Santa Fé), claimed that he could not serve as interpreter during Antonio de Obando’s inspection of Tenza (in the province of Tunja) because “the language that he speaks is different from the one spoken [in Tenza], and he can not understand it.” See AGNC Visitas de Boyacá 15, f. 195r(1621).
8 Triana, Las lenguas, p. 265.
9 Triana, Las lenguas, p. 180.
10 ARSI Novi Regni et Quito, Vol.. 14, 48r-48v.
11 For a brief, but succinct overview of’the conflict in New Spain, see Padden, Robert Charles, “The Ordenanza del Patronazgo of 1574, An Interpretive Essay,” The Americas 12, (1956), pp. 333–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 López, Alberto Lee, “Clero indígena en el Arzobispado de Santa Fé en el siglo XVI,” Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades 50, (1963), pp. 23–24 Google Scholar.
13 Triana, Las lenguas, pp. 456-457.
14 Triana, Las lenguas, p. 418.
15 Triana, Las lenguas, p. 418.
16 According to the President of the audiencia, Juan de Borja, in 1606 only a handful of mendicants had learned Chibcha. They were the Franciscans Luís de Mejorada and Nicolás de Troya; Gaspar de Alvarado and Vicente Mallol from the Order of St. Augustine; the Dominicans Juan de Avalos and Bernardo de Lugo, and the Jesuits Juan Antonio, Martín Vásquez, Father Joseph (probably José Dadey) and Juan Baptista. Borja also mentioned the secular priests Pedro Gutiérrez and Gonzalo Bermúdez, as well as the encomendero Diego Romero de Aguilar, and the interpreters for the audiencia, Juan de Lara and Juan de Sepúlveda, as those who were most capable of translating the doctrina into Chibcha.
17 Triana, Las lenguas, p. 167.
18 Although we have yet to uncover sufficient evidence to support such a conclusion, the linguistic changes were probably the result of a “massive borrowing” of Spanish nouns, a process so convincingly described in James Lockhart’s wonderful examination of Nahua society under colonial rule. See Lockhart, James, The Nahuas After the Conquest, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
19 Triana, Las lenguas, p. 167. Most Indians in the Province of Tunja continued to speak only Chibcha during the sixteenth century. As Juan Villamarín discovered for the Province of Santa Fé, the majority of Indians who testified during sixteenth-century visitations could only speak Chibcha and thus always had to testify with the assistance of a translator. See Villamarín, Juan A., “Encomenderos and Indians in the Formation of Colonial Society in the Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia, 1537–1740,” Ph.D. Dissertation. Brandeis University, 1972, p. 122 Google Scholar. And according to the 1610 Descripción de Tunja, “Spanish is generally spoken in this city, except amongst the Indians, who speak their own languages; and those I Indians] who serve Spaniards speak Spanish, some better than others, until they become ladinos.” See Gómez, Luís Duque, “Tribus indígenas y sitios arqueológicos,” Historia extensa de Colombia (Bogotá: Ediciones Lerner, 1967), Vol. I, Tomo II, p. 545 Google Scholar.
19 Triana, Las lenguas, p. 231. One of the reasons for the shift in policy by the middle of the seventeenth century is the dramatic demographic decline of Tunja’s native population, which at the time of the conquest exceeded 200,000. However, over the next century the Indian population suffered a precipitous decline, falling to about 65,000 by 1602. And unlike other regions of the New World that saw hints of population recovery as early as the final decade of the sixteenth century, Tunja’s Indian population continued to decline, falling to just below 50,000 when Juan de Valcárcel conducted his extensive inspection of the province in 1635-1636. For a detailed survey of demographic change in the province of Tunja between 1537 and 1636 see Francis, J. Michael “Población, enfermedad y cambio demográfico, 1537-1636. Demografía histórica de Tunja: Una mirada crítica,” Fronteras de la historia 7 (2002), pp. 15–95 Google Scholar.
21 Juan de Borja served as president of the audiencia of New Granada for more than two decades, from 1605 to 1628.
