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Puro tlaxcalteca? Ethnic Integrity and Consciousness in Late Seventeenth-Century Northern New Spain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2017
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“The pueblo of San Estevan de Tlaxcala is inhabited by pure blood Tlaxcaltecan Indians who founded it during the conquest of this country. . . . These Indians speak Spanish and are civilized.” So observed don Nicolás de Lafora, a military engineer accompanying the Marqués de Rubí’s inspection tour of New Spain's northern presidios, as he approached San Esteban and the adjoining Spanish town of Saltillo, in present-day Coahuila, in June 1767. A decade later, fray Agustín de Morfi, chaplain to newly appointed commander general of the Provincias Internas don Teodoro de Croix, echoed Lafora's assessment, linking San Esteban's ability to preserve its privileges for the better part of two centuries to the community's pureza de sangre, preserved through the great care its residents took to avoid “mixing” with the castas (mixed races) that “infected” Saltillo.
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References
1. de Lafora, Nicolás, The Frontiers of New Spain. Nicolás de Lafora's Description, 1766–1768. Kinnaird, Lawrence, ed. (Berkeley: Quivira Society, 1958), 140 Google Scholar (emphasis mine); Alessio Robles, Vito, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1978), 407, 589.Google Scholar
2. The phrasing in the original speaks of “el gran cuidado de no mezclarse con la gente de castas de está inficionado el Saltillo.” de Morfi, Fray Juan Agustín, Viaje de indios y diario del Nuevo México. Noticia biobibliográfica y acotaciones por Vito Alessio Robles (Mexico: Bibliófilos Mexicanos, 1935), 245 Google Scholar. Morfi, a Franciscan, served as chaplain to don Teodoro de Croix during the latter's 1777-78 tour of those territories. Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas, 407, 423, 592–594.
3. “Blood purity” was of central concern to Spaniards as they encountered the peoples of the Americas, and particularly as Africans were introduced in increasing numbers after the mid-sixteenth century. See Elena Martínez, María, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. Lafora's phrasing equates the ability to speak Spanish with the attribute “civilized.”Morfi's use of the concept of infection attests to the presumed ethnic superiority of the Tlaxcalan community. By the time Lafora toured the region there appeared to be a high level of bilinguality in San Esteban; however, interpreters remained a fixture in court cases at least through 1810. Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, Presidencia Municipal [hereafter AMS, PM], c59, e22, 1810.
4. See for example several of the contributions in Matthew, Laura E. and Oudijk, Michel, eds., Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007)Google Scholar, especially those by Oudijk and Restall and Matthew. María Elena Martínez traces shifts in conceptualizations of blood purity from religion-based anxieties that emerged in mid-fifteenth-century Spain to one developed in New Spain that reflected a preoccupation with ethnic and racial “contamination” threatened by indigenous and African peoples. Peter Villella looks more closely at native nobles’ appropriation of the discourse of limpieza de sangre to achieve or maintain power in particular local settings. Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, especially chapt. 4, titled “Nobility and Purity in the República de Indios,” 91–122; Villella, “‘Pure and Noble Indians, Untainted by Inferior Idolatrous Races’: Native Elites and the Discourse of Blood Purity in Late Colonial Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 91:4 (November 2011): 633–663, and “Indian Lords, Hispanic Gentlemen: The Salazars of Colonial Tlaxcala,” The Americas 69:1 (July 2012): 1–36. Dana Velasco Murillo's recent monograph Urban Indians in a Silver City: Zacatecas, Mexico, 1546–1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016) and Laurent Corbeil's dissertation “Identities in Motion: The Formation of a Plural Indio Society in Early San Luis Potosí 1591–1630” (PhD diss.: McGill University, 2014) highlight the complex processes of community formation in regions receiving substantial in-migration of indigenous peoples from central and western New Spain. David B. Adams's 1971 dissertation established the broad parameters of Tlaxcalans' presence in the north, and their presence in the northeast after 1591. See Adams, “The Tlaxcalan Colonies of Spanish Coahuila and Nuevo León: An Aspect of the Settlement of Northern Mexico” (PhD diss.: University of Texas, Austin, 1971). Las colonias Tlaxcaltecas de Coahuila y Nuevo León: un aspecto de la colonización del norte de México (Saltillo: Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, 1991) is a Spanish translation of the dissertation. Patricia Martínez explores Tlaxcalan identities in late colonial San Esteban in “‘Noble’ Tlaxcalans: Race and Ethnicity in Northern New Spain, 1770–1810” (PhD diss.: University of Texas, Austin, 2004). My article “Defending Corporate Identity on New Spain's Northeastern Frontier: San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala, 1780–1810,” The Americas 64:3 (January 2008): 351–372, and the chapter “Women's Voices from the Frontier: de Nueva Tlaxcala, San Esteban in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico, Schroeder, Susan, Wood, Stephanie, and Haskett, Robert, eds. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 273–289 Google Scholar, examine aspects of late colonial interethnic relations in San Esteban.
Elisabeth Butzer's Historia social de una comunidad tlaxcalteca: San Miguel de Aguayo (Bustamante, NL), 1686–1820 (Saltillo: AMS, Austin: Department of Geography & the Environment, University of Texas; Tlaxcala: Instituto Tlaxcalteca de la Cultura; and Bustamante: Presidencia Municipal de Bustamante, 2001) offers a detailed look at aspects of the economy and society of one of the colonies founded by San Esteban Tlaxcalans. Cecilia Sheridan Prieto and Andrea Martínez Baracs have both examined Tlaxcalan colonization in the north. See Sheridan, “‘Indios madrineros’: colonizadores tlaxcaltecas en el noreste novohispano,” Relaciones 92 (Autumn 2002): 77–106, and Martínez Baracs, “Colonizaciones tlaxcaltecas,” Historia Mexicana 43:2 (October-December 1993): 195–250. See as well Martínez Saldaña, Tomás, La diáspora tlaxcalteca: colonización agrícola del norte mexicano (Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala, 1998)Google Scholar. McEnroe's, Sean F. From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico: Laying the Foundations, 1560–1840 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar studies the key role of Tlaxcalan colonists and their descendants in shaping concepts of community and nation in northeastern Mexico.
5. See Capitulaciones del Virrey Velasco favorables a los tlaxcaltecas para que emigren hacia el norte a fundar pueblos y ayuden a reducir a los chichimecas, AMS, PM, c11, e27, reproduced in Los tlaxcaltecas en Coahuila, Carlos Manuel Valdés Dávila and Ildefonso Dávila del Bosque, comps, Biblioteca Tlaxcalteca, 2nd ed. (San Luis Potosí: Colegio de San Luis, 1999), 71–81. The specific reference to infieles is on page 72 of the latter. Charles Gibson and Vito Alessio Robles both summarize the gist of the capitulations. See Gibson's Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952]), 183–184; and Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas, 124.
6. For a recent study of the Tlaxcalan nobility's efforts to secure these privileges, see Jovita Baber, R., “Empire, Indians, and the Negotiation for the Status of City in Tlaxcala, 1521–1560,” in Negotiation Within Domination: New Spain's Indian Pueblos Confront the Spanish State, Medrano, Ethelia Ruiz and Kellogg, Susan, eds. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2011), 19–44.Google Scholar
7. Gibson discusses the crown's long-standing interest in Tlaxcalan colonization in Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 181ff. The campaign for privileges is discussed in Gibson, 158–169, and itemized in his Appendix VII, “Royal Privileges Granted to Tlaxcala,” 229–234.
8. “Capitulaciones del Virrey Velasco favorables a los tlaxcaltecas . . .,” in Los Tlaxcaltecas en Coahuila, Valdés Dávila and Dávila del Bosque, comps., 71–81. Martínez Baracs argues that the only benefit to Tlaxcala itself was a slight reduction in the number of men owing personal service to the church in nearby Puebla de los Angeles, and notes that in 1592 Viceroy Velasco imposed on Tlaxcala payment of the servicio de tostón, a tax to offset the expense of religious wars in Europe. Martínez Baracs suggests that Velasco meant to humiliate Tlaxcalans for presuming to boast of their status and privileges as conquerors. In 1599, Tlaxcalan cabildo members were jailed and community properties embargoed for failure to pay the tostón. Martínez Baracs, “Colonizaciones tlaxcaltecas,” 211–212. See also Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 176.
9. The Guachichils, Borrados, and Rayados were among those subsumed under the broad term “Chichimeca.” They were to live under the tutelage of Franciscan missionaries for a period of three years, until they were sufficiently inculcated with Spanish and Christian values. Sheridan, “‘Indios madrineros,’” 31.
10. The population figures come from Cuello, José, Saltillo colonial: orígenes y formación de una sociedad mexicana en la frontera norte (Saltillo: AMS, 2004), 57 Google Scholar, cuadro 2-1. While Sheridan mentions that three-quarters of the water was designated for San Esteban and one-quarter for Saltillo, she does not specify whether the allocation of agricultural land and house lots also reflected a three-quarter/one-quarter division, which seems entirely plausible. Further, it is not clear whether the lands designated for the settlement of band Indians were included within this allocation. Sheridan says only that the original plan was to establish a town of indios nativos in the vicinity of the Tlaxcalan settlement. Sheridan, “‘Indios madrineros,’” 31–32.
11. See Cuello, Saltillo colonial, 91–92; Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas, 396–397; Adams, “The Tlaxcalan Colonies of Spanish Coahuila and Nuevo León,” 237–267; and Susan Deeds, “Escaseses y disensiones: la historia de agua en el noreste colonial,” unpublished ms., 13.
12. Cuello, Saltillo colonial, cuadro 2-1, 57. Cuello locates as many as 1,200 Chichimecas in the Saltillo Valley in the period from 1577 to 1591, and suggests that at San Esteban's founding in 1591 some 600 fell within the pueblo's purview.
13. AMS, PM, c3, e7, 1677, in Temas del virreinato: documentos del Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, Silvio Zavala y María del Carmen Velázquez, recopiladores (Saltillo: Gobierno del Estado de Coahuila, 1989), 34. At issue most specifically was San Esteban's assertion that Spaniards were intruding in those lands by building houses, damaging San Esteban's interests as the Indian town struggled to provide resources for its own growing population. See in particular the case of Saltillo resident Alonso de Castro, who had allegedly laid claim to “mucha tierra” in the initial Guachichil grant and built a house on that property. AMS, PM, c3, e3, 1677.
14. Deeds, “Escaseses y disensiones,” unpublished ms., 16.
15. AMS, PM, c3, e7, 1677, in Zavala y Velázquez, Temas del virreinato, 34.
16. See Cuello, Saltillo colonial, 207–208.
17. In Saltillo colonial, Cuello focuses primarily on Saltillo's responses to the Indian threat and only cursorily refers to “Tlaxcalan allies from San Esteban” (207). San Esteban's certifications offer more detail on those allies, the numbers dispatched at particular points, and the various reasons San Esteban forces were mobilized. See in particular AMS, PM, c1, e32, d2, 1666-1670.
18. Over a period of four years (from July 11, 1666 to August 31, 1670), 51 men participated in expeditions. Of those, 28 participated in one expedition, 12 in two, five in three, three in four, one in five, one in six, and one in seven. Among those who participated most frequently are the few who were identified by military title, suggesting that the core of experienced defenders was quite small. AMS, PM, c1, e32, d2, 1666-1670.
19. Cuello, Saltillo colonial, 207. The unsettled conditions in Coahuila and Nuevo León are attested to by contemporary Bautista Chapa, Juan in his Historia del Nuevo Reino de León de 1650 a 1690, preliminary study and notes by Cavazos Garza, Israel (Monterrey: Gobierno del Estado de Nuevo León, 1990), 68.Google Scholar
20. AMS, PM, c1, e32, d2, July 11, 1666. A year earlier Nicolás Carretero, with some 300 followers, had joined a Spanish force operating against hostile Indians in Nuevo León. Chapa, Historia del Nuevo Reino de León, 68. Cuello identified a Juan Carretero who in 1665 had allied with Spaniards and recruited hundreds of followers to join him in that alliance. By 1669, according to Cuello, Juan Carretero was involved in a widespread conspiracy planning a region-wide rebellion. Later references to Nicolás Carretero's “brothers” suggest a possible familial link between Nicolás and Juan Carretero. Cuello, Saltillo colonial, 208.
21. Relación de los servicios prestados a la corona por los tlaxcaltecas en funciones de Guerra, AMS, PM, c1, e32, d2, November 15, 1669.
22. Relación de los servicios, AMS, PM, c1, e32, d2, January 29, 1669.
23. Relación de los servicios, AMS, PM, c1, e32, d2, June 7, 1667.
24. Relación de los servicios, AMS, PM, c1, e32, d3, May 17, 1665, and December 22, 1682. This document and the previous three are included in a compilation of certifications requested from Saltillo's cabildo by San Esteban's cabildo in 1760. AMS, PM, c1, e32, d25, April 24, 1760.
25. Information on colonies established by San Esteban Tlaxcalans comes from a variety of sources. AMS, PM, c1, e32, d. 36–38 refers to the foundation of San Juan del Carrizal (1687), Nuestra Señora de la Purificación (1715), Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (1698), and San Francisco de Coahuila (or “de la Nueva Tlaxcala”) (1676). The best source for Santa María de las Parras (1598) is Sergio Corona Páez, La vitivinicultura en el pueblo de Santa María de las Parras: producción de vinos, vinaigres, y aguardientes bajo el paradigma andaluz (Torreón, Coahuila: Ayuntamiento de Torreón, 2004), chapt. 1. For San Miguel de Aguayo (1666), see Elisabeth Butzer, Historia social de una comunidad tlaxcalteca. Both Cecilia Sheridan, “‘Indios madrineros,’” 37–38, and Martínez Saldaña, La diáspora tlaxcalteca, 83, list colonies founded by San Esteban Tlaxcalans.
26. Sheridan, “‘Indios madrineros,’” 38.
27. The potential wealth lay in mineral resources in areas of Nuevo León. Tlaxcalans were central actors in the exploitation of silver deposits in the vicinity of San Miguel de Aguayo (specifically at Boca de Leones). See Butzer, Historia social de una comunidad tlaxcalteca, chapt. 3, 59–84 and elsewhere. See as well McEnroe, From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico, 37–43.
28. AMS, PM, c1, e32, d36, 1749. Barbadillo's work in northeastern Mexico is discussed in McEnroe, From Colony to Nationhood, 63–70.
29. The document refers to the ‘tlascaltecas naturales’ of “Gran Tlascala de la Puebla de Los Angeles y a los que de ellos desienden,” AMS, PM, c10, e42, 1725.
30. Biblioteca del Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. Fondo de Documentación para la Historia del Noreste de México. Rollo 921. Camera Z. Bustamante, NL (San Miguel de Aguayo); Archivo Municipal, Documentos Diversos, Vol. 1, 1694-1775 (unnumbered document dated March 13, 1755).
31. McEnroe makes this point particularly well in From Colony to Nationhood, 40–41.
32. Santa María de las Parras and San Miguel de Aguayo are the best documented examples of “mixed” pueblos founded with a core group of Tlaxcalan pobladores from San Esteban. See Corona Páez, La vitivinicultura en el pueblo de Santa María de las Parras, 37–40; and Butzer, Historia social de una comunidad tlaxcalteca.
33. Cuello, in Saltillo colonial, argues that for the majority of Saltillenses, the period from 1650 to 1725 was one of involution, of increased impoverishment for all but the highest levels of society. San Esteban appears to have been less negatively affected by the economic troubles Saltillo experienced. In part, Cuello argues, this was due to San Esteban's ability to “shed” excess population through the founding of colonies and to the impact of epidemic disease in the 1690s (168). Regarding population growth in this period, see Cuello, 153–156, cuadro 2-1, “La población de Saltillo y San Esteban, 1577–1833,” 57. The Saltillo region suffered major droughts in both the 1660s and 1690s; see Villanueva-Díaz, José, Stahle, David W., Luckman, Brian H., Cerano-Paredes, Julián, Therrell, Mathew D., Cleaveland, Malcom K., and Cornejo-Oviedo, Eladio, “Winter-Spring Precipitation Reconstruction from Tree Rings for Northeast Mexico,” Climate Change, 83:17 (2007): 123 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. fig. 3. For late eighteenth-century demographic and climatic challenges facing San Esteban, see my “Defending Corporate Identity,” esp. 365–374.
34. Marriage records from San Esteban survive from at least June 1675. I have utilized microfilmed records of the parish of San Esteban Protomártir, available from the Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and cited here as Archivo Parroquia de San Esteban [hereafter APSE]. Marriages from 1675 through 1710 are included in Bautismos, Vol. 1, 1673-1710, and begin on fol. 123r. San Esteban's marriage entries generally recorded a couple's names, their barrios of residence, and the witnesses who affirmed the legitimacy of the union. While entries in the record were mediated by the parish priest, they nonetheless offer a means of understanding from inside San Esteban how its citizens viewed themselves in relation to peers, neighbors, and municipal authorities.
35. One caveat in focusing on marriage records for evidence of endogamy or exogamy in a particular community is that such records do not reflect the extent of ethnic mixture resulting from non-marital or extramarital unions. An examination of San Esteban's baptismal records between 1675 and 1681, however, reveals that virtually every hijo de la iglesia, or illegitimate child, brought to the baptismal font was identified as Tlaxcalan. The basis on which the priests determined the ethnicity of these infants is not known.
36. For the larger project of which this article is a part, I explore three periods—1675 to 1692, 1735 to 1750, and 1790 to 1810—chosen both for completeness of the corresponding marriage records and because these periods encompass moments of particular stress in San Esteban. At those times, the community contended with an uptick in challenges to its lands and waters, Indian raids, and in the middle period at least, with questions of precedence in public displays of authority. For this last, see Adams, “The Tlaxcalan Colonies of Spanish Coahuila and Nuevo Leon,” 237–267.
37. Marriages of Miguel Rodrigues, son of parents “de nación otomites,” and Juana Hernandes, “india tlaxcalteca,” Febuary 27, 1685; Simon Sireneo, son of “indios residentes en la misión de Coaguila,” and Francisca Theresa, “india tlaxcalteca,” January 10, 1690, APSE, Bautismos [sic], Vol. 1, 1673-1710. Peter Gerhard notes that a garrison was established in 1675 at San Francisco de Coahuila, and locates a Franciscan establishment there by early 1698. That it was a settlement comprised at least in part of Tlaxcalans is attested to in his later citation of it as San Francisco de Coahuila de la Nueva Tlaxcala; Martínez Saldaña unequivocally identifies the settlement as part of the “Tlaxcalan expansion from San Esteban de la Nueva Tlaxcala.” See Gerhard, The North Frontier of New Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 329–332; and Martínez Saldaña, La diáspora tlaxcalteca, 83.
38. Marriages of Pedro de Avila, “mulato domiciliario del Pueblo de Santa María de las Parras, criollo de la ciudad de México” and Josefa, “india tlaxcalteca,” October 30, 1690, and Joseph, “de nación Guachichila” and Margarita, “de nación Guaguila,” June 6, 1675, APSE, Bautismos [sic], Vol. 1, 1673-1710.
39. Although Santa María de las Parras was officially a pueblo de indios, by the late seventeenth century it was in fact mixed, and included Spaniards and various castas (coyotes, mulattoes) in addition to its core Tlaxcalan population. Corona Páez notes that Parras's Tlaxcalans maintained strong ties to San Esteban through both migration and marriage. Corona Páez, La vitivinicultura en el pueblo de Santa María de las Parras, 39–40. The six Parras men who wed San Esteban women in the 1670s and 1680s thus could conceivably have been of mixed ethnicity. However, given the strong historic connections between Parras and San Esteban, evidence in Parras's parish marriage records of an influx of new residents from San Esteban beginning in the early 1660s, and Parras's successful assertion of its privileged status by virtue of its foundation as a colony of San Esteban, it is most likely that the Parras grooms marrying San Esteban women were in fact Tlaxcalan. We can safely deduce that the father of one of those six was Tlaxcalan; he was designated “don,” an honorific reserved to Tlaxcalans by virtue of the privilege of hidalguía included in the original capitulations of 1591. See APSE, Bautismos [sic], Vol. 1, 1673-1710, marriages of Antonio Hernandes,“indio natural del pueblo de Santa María de las Parras,” son of don Lorenzo Martín, “indio,” and Polonia María, daughter of don Bernardino Ramos, “indio” of San Esteban, February 4, 1688; Pedro Miguel, “natural y vecino del pueblo de Santa María de las Parras” and María “de nación tlaxcalteca,” February 6, 1679; Francisco Xavier, “natural y vecino del pueblo de Santa María de las Parras” and Luisa María “de nación tlaxcalteca,” February 13, 1679; Santiago Joseph, “indio natural del pueblo de las Parras” and Agueda, “india tlaxcalteca,” April 26, 1682; Diego Gerónimo, “indio natural del pueblo de Santa María de las Parras” and Agueda, “india,” February 4, 1688; Luis Redondo, “del pueblo de Santa María de las Parras,” and Úrsula, daughter of “indios tlascaltecos,” January 24, 1689.
40. APSE, Bautismos [sic], Vol. 1, 1673-1710, marriages of Francisco Daniel, “natural de este pueblo y domiciliario del pueblo de San Francisco de la Coaguila” and Luisa Theresa, daugher of “indios tlascaltecas,” January 26, 1690; Simon de Jesús, “natural de este pueblo y domiciliario del nuevo pueblo del Carrizal” and Rufina María, daughter of “indios tlascaltecas,” February 18, 1688; Francisco Xavier, son of “indios feligreses del pueblo de Coaguila y naturales de este pueblo,” and Theresa Marta, daughter of “indios tlascaltecas,” February 20, 1691; Pedro Morales, “de nación tlaxcalteca y vecino del pueblo de San Sebastián del Venado,” and Josepha Maria, “de nación tlaxcalteca,” October 10, 1678; Miguel Xabier, “del pueblo de San Francisco de Coaguila,” son of “indios tlaxcaltecos,” and Beronica Juana, daughter of “indios tlascaltecos,” January 30, 1690; Joseph Villegas, “de nación Tlaxcalteca y residente en el pueblo de Santa María de Parras,” and Magdalena, “de nación tlaxcalteca,” January 17, 1679; Pedro Gonzales, “indio tlascalteco del pueblo de Santa María de las Parras” (whose father is designated “don”), and María Juana (whose father is also “don”), daughter of “indios tlascaltecos,” January 10, 1689; and Salbador Juan, son of “indios tlaxcaltecos vecinos del valle de Parras,” and Juana de la Rosa, daughter of “padres no conosidos,” January 10, 1692. San Francisco de la Nueva Tlaxcala was founded in 1675, and San Juan de Carrizal in 1687, according to Martínez Saldaña, La diáspora tlaxcalteca, 83.
41. Cuello charts the population increase for both Saltillo and San Esteban from the late sixteenth century through the independence period, drawing data from a variety of sources. His figures reveal an increase in the Spanish sector relative to the Tlaxcalan over the course of the eighteenth century, with the most significant rebalancing occurring between 1791 and 1813. As San Esteban's population remained steady at around 3,000, the Spanish population jumped from around 6,000 to nearly 22,000. Cuello, Saltillo colonial, cuadro 2-1, 57, 61.
42. Lockhart, James, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 367, 370–371Google Scholar; Restall, Matthew, The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550–1850 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 57–58.Google Scholar
43. This is a shorter time period than I treat in my examination of marriage choice above. From July 1681 through October 1692 references to cabildo officers as marriage witnesses cease, and each nuptial is generally witnessed by three individuals listed without official title. The practice of community witnessing resumes again between 1735 and 1750, which I explore in the larger project of which this article is a part. In that period the governor consistently appeared as a witness, joined frequently by an alcalde and occasionally the fiscal.
44. See for example the phrasing in the August 1675 marriage entry of Grabiel Francisco and Joana Christina, “ambos de nacion Tlaxca . . . selebrase este matrimonio en presencia del gobernador, alcaldes, cabildo y demas vecinos y naturales de este pueblo y doctrina.” APSE, Bautismos [sic], Vol. 1, 1673-1710, Aug. 27, 1675.
45. Lockhart, The Nahuas After Conquest, 367, 370–371; Restall, The Maya World, 57–58; Restall, “Interculturation and the Indigenous Testament in Colonial Yucatan,” in Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes, Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall, eds. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998), 150–151. See as well Pizzigoni, Caterina, Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 31 Google Scholar and elsewhere (examples from numerous wills).
46. The phrasing differs slightly among three late seventeenth century wills. The phrase ymixpan in mochi justisiapixque, “in the presence of all those in charge of justice,” appears in Juana Isabel's 1659 testament, and a variant, ymixpantzinco omochiuh Justici, “it was done in the presence of all the justices,” appears in the 1676 will of Francisca. Elena Francisca's 1683 will makes specific reference to the cabildo as a body (omochiuh ymixpan cabildo yhuan yei testigos, “it was done in the presence of the council and three witnesses”). AMS, Testamentos [hereafter cited as AMS, T], c1, e54, 1659 (Juana Isabel); AMS, T, c2, e16, 1676 (Francisca); AMS, T, c2, e36, 1683 (Elena Francisca).
47. See for example Sebastián de Ramos's 1616 testament where, following the phrase “testigos yn imixpan omochiuh ynin testamento” (“witnesses in the presence of whom this testament was done”) the governor, two alcaldes, and two regidores sign, in addition to the notary. AMS, T, c1, e18, 1616.