Queen Essays

"This Evil Extends Especially… to the Feminine Sex": Negotiating Captivity in the New Mexico Borderlands

Author(s): James F. Brooks

Source: Feminist Studies , Summer, 1996, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 279-309

Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178414

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rTH IS EVIL EXTENDS ESPECIALLY… TO T'H FEMININE SEX":

NEGOTIATING CAPTIVITY IN THE NEW MEXICO BORDERLANDS

JAMES F. BROOKS

Late in the summer of 1760, a large Comanche raiding party besieged the fortified home of Pablo Villalpando in the village of Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. After a daylong fight, the Co- manches breached the walls and killed most of the male de-

fenders. They then seized fifty-seven women and children, among whom was twenty-one-year-old Maria Rosa Villalpan- do, Pablo's second daughter, and carried them into captivity on the Great Plains. Maria's young husband, Juan Jose Xacques, was slain in the assault, but her infant son, Jose Juliano Xac- ques, somehow escaped both death and captivity.

The Comanches apparently traded Maria shortly thereafter to the Pawnees, for by 1767 she lived in a Pawnee village on the Platte River and had borne another son, who would come to be known as Antoine. In that year, the French trader and co- founder of St. Louis, Jean Sale dit Leroie, visited the Pawnees and began cohabiting with Maria. About one year later, she bore Sale a son, whom they named Lambert. Perhaps this ar- rangement suited Sale's trading goals, for it wasn't until 1770 that he ended Maria's Indian captivity and brought her to St. Louis, where they married.

Jean and Maria (now Marie Rose Sale) had three more chil- dren, when, for unknown reasons, Jean returned to France, where he remained the rest of his life. Maria stayed in St. Louis to become the matriarch of an increasingly prominent family. Her New Mexican son, Jose Juliano, would visit her there, although we will see that the reunion proved bitter- sweet. Maria finally died at the home of her daughter, Helene, in 1830, at well over ninety years of age. For Maria Rosa Villal-

Feminist Studies 22, no. 2 (summer 1996). ? 1996 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 279

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James F. Brooks

pando, captivity yielded a painful, yet paradoxically successful, passage across cultures into security and longevity.l

Long understood as a volatile and complex multiethnic border- land, greater New Mexico presents an intriguing problem to scholars of Indian-Euroamerican relations. Despite the reality of Spanish colonialism and the notable success of the Pueblo Revolt (1680-93), the region remained a "nondominant fron- tier" in which neither colonial New Mexicans nor the numeri-

cally superior indigenous peoples proved able (or willing) to dominate or eject the other completely.2 This article takes one step toward a deeper understanding of the question, by explor- ing the role captive women like Maria Rosa played in promot- ing conflict and accommodation between colonial Spanish (and later Mexican) society and the indigenous people of greater New Mexico. During the Spanish and Mexican periods (c. 1600-1847), thousands of Indian and hundreds of Spanish women and children "crossed cultures" through the workings of a captive-exchange system that knit diverse communities into vital, and violent, webs of interdependence. These cap- tives, whether of Spanish origin, or Native Americans "ran- somed" by the Spanish at rescates (trade fairs), seem crucial to a "borderlands political economy" that utilized human beings in far-reaching social and economic exchange.3

Developing in the wake of Spanish slave raids and Indian reprisals, over time this commerce in captives provided the ba- sis for a gradual convergence of cultural interests and identi- ties at the village level, emerging in "borderlands communities of interest" by the middle years of the nineteenth century. Seen as both the most valuable "commodities" in intersocietal trade

and as key transcultural actors in their own right, captive women and children participated in a terrifying, yet at times fortuitous, colonial dialectic between exploitation and negotia- tion. Until now, their histories have lain in the shadows of bor- derlands historiography.4 Although firsthand accounts are rare, and other evidence must be used with caution, an exami- nation of their experience may contribute to our understanding of colonial processes in New Mexico and elsewhere in North America.

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Whatever the large-scale antagonisms between Spanish colonists and Native Americans, problems of day-to-day sur- vival required methods of cross-cultural negotiation. Pro- longed, intensive interaction between New Mexican pob- ladores (village settlers) and nomadic or pastoral Indian soci- eties required some mutually intelligible symbols through which cultural values, interests, and needs could be defined. Horses, guns, and animal hides spring immediately to mind as customary symbols of exchange, but women and children proved even more valuable (and valorized) as agents (and ob- jects) of cultural negotiations. In New Mexico, as elsewhere in North America, the "exchange of women" through systems of captivity, adoption, and marriage seem to have provided Euro- pean and Native men with mutually understood symbols of power with which to bridge cultural barriers.5

Rival men had seized captives and exchanged women long before European colonialism in North America. The exoga- mous exchange of women between "precapitalist" societies ap- pears to represent a phenomenon by which mutual obligations of reciprocity are established between kindreds, bands, and so- cieties, serving both to reinforce male dominance and to ex- tend the reproductive (social and biological) vigor of communi- ties.6 This article approaches the issue from a variety of sources and perspectives. Combining Spanish archival re- search with some of the classics of North American Indian eth-

nology, and viewing both through the lens of feminist critiques and extensions, I suggest that the capture and integration of women and children represented the most violent expression along a continuum of such exchange traditions. The patriar- chal subordination of women and children, it has been argued, served as a foundation upon which other structures of power and inequality were erected. Gerda Lerner contends that the assertion of male control over captive women's sexual and re- productive services provided a model for patriarchal owner- ship of women in "monogamous" marriages by which patrilin- eal bloodlines remained "pure." From this sense of proprietor- ship grew other notions of property, including the enslavement of human beings as chattels.7

In New Spain, under the Recopilacion of 1680 (a compendi- um of laws governing colonial/Indian relations), Spanish sub-

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James F. Brooks

jects had been encouraged to redeem indigenous captives from their captors, baptize them into the Catholic faith, and accul- turate them as new "detribalized" colonial subjects.8 These re- demptions occurred in roughly two forms-either through for- mal "ransoming" at annual trade fairs (ferias or rescates) or small-scale bartering (cambalaches) in local villages or at trad- ing places on the Great Plains. Trade fairs at Taos, Pecos, and Picuris Pueblos had long fostered the exchange of bison meat for corn, beans, and squash between Plains Indians and the Rio Grande Pueblos and had probably included some exchanges of people as well.9

These seasonal events continued after the Spanish recon- quest of New Mexico in 1692-96. Throughout the eighteenth century, Spanish church and secular authorities vied to gain control of this trade, variously blaming each other or local al- caldes (village mayors) for "the saddest of this commerce." In 1761 Fray Pedro Serrano chided Spanish governors, who "when the fleet was in" scrambled to gather as many horses, axes, hoes, wedges, picks, bridles, and knives in order to "gorge themselves" on the "great multitude of both sexes offered for sale."10 Fifteen years later, Fray Anatasio Dominguez reported that the Comanches brought to Taos for sale "pagan Indians, of both sexes, whom they capture from other nations." The going rate of exchange, which held quite steady until the mid-nine- teenth century, was "two good horses and some trifles" for an "Indian girl twelve to twenty years old." Male captive boys usu- ally brought a "she mule" or one horse and a "poor bridle … garnished with red rags." The general atmosphere, according to Dominguez, resembled a "second hand market in Mexico, the way people mill about.""

After 1800 these formal rescates decline, replaced with small- er, more frequent on-the-spot bartering. This seems due to sev- eral factors-Plains Indians wishing to avoid possible exposure to Euroamerican disease, a desire on the part of New Mexican villagers to escape taxation of their Indian trade, and a geo- graphical expansion of the borderlands economy. By the 1850s local traders like Jose Lucero and Powler Sandoval would pur- chase Mexican captives from Comanches at Plains outposts like "Quitaque" in Floyd County, Texas, giving, for example, "one mare, one rifle, one shirt, one pair of drawers, thirty small

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packages of powder, some bullets, and one buffalo robe" in ex- change for ten-year-old Teodoro Martel of Saltillo, Mexico.'2

Judging from extant New Mexican parochial registers, be- tween 1700 and 1850, nearly 3,000 members of nomadic or pastoral Indian groups entered New Mexican society as indios de rescate (ransomed Indians), indios genizaros ("slaves"), cria- dos (servants), or huerfanos (orphans), primarily through the artifice of "ransom" by colonial purchasers.13 Ostensibly, the cost of ransom would be retired by ten to twenty years of ser- vice to the redeemers, after which time these individuals would become vecinos (tithes-paying citizens). In practice, these people appear to have experienced their bondage on a continuum that ranged from near-slavery to familial incorpora- tion, an issue that will be addressed at length in this article.

Ransomed captives comprised an important component in colonial society, averaging about 10 to 15 percent of the colo- nial population, and especially in peripheral villages, where they may have represented as much as 40 percent of the"Span- ish" residents.14 Girls and boys under the age of fifteen com- posed approximately two-thirds of these captives, and about two-thirds of all captives were women "of serviceable age" or prepubescent girls.16

This commerce in women and children proved more than a one-way traffic, however. Throughout the period under consid- eration, nomadic groups like Comanches and Navajos made regular raids on the scattered poblaciones (settlements), at times seizing as many as fifty women and children.'6 In 1780, Spanish authorities estimated that the Naciones del Norte (Plains tribes of the northern frontier) alone held more than 150 Spanish citizens captive, and by 1830 the figure for the Co- manches alone may have exceeded 500.1 Among the Navajos, as late as 1883 U.S. Indian agent Dennis M. Riordan estimated that there were "300 slaves in the hands of the tribe," many of whom were "Mexicans captured in infancy."8 Like their Indian counterparts, these women and children found themselves most often incorporated into their host society through indige- nous systems of adoption. As fictive kin, they too experienced a range of treatment. Although impossible to arrive at precise numbers of New Mexican captives in Indian societies, their representation becomes increasingly significant in a discussion

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of the workings of the captive system and the personal experi- ence of captives themselves.

The captive-exchange system appears overwhelmingly com- plex when examined through particular cases, but certain overall patterns seem consistent. First, captive taking and trading represented the most violent and exploitative compo- nent of a long-term pattern of militarized socioeconomic ex- change between Indian and Spanish societies. Second, it seems that New Mexican captives and indios de rescate gen- erally remained in their "host" societies throughout their life- times. Third, female captives often established families within the host society, and their descendants usually became full culture-group members. Male captives, on the other hand, suf- fered either a quick retributive death or, if young, grew to be- come semiautonomous auxiliary warriors within their new so- ciety. Finally, it appears that many captives found ways to transcend their subordinate status by exercising skills devel- oped during their "cross-cultural" experience. In doing so, they negotiated profound changes in the cultural identity of the so- cieties within which they resided, changes which continue to reverberate in the borderlands today.

THE CAPTIVE EXPERIENCE

Torn from their natal societies in "slave" raids, treated like piezas ("coins," a common term in New Spain for slaves, both Indian and African) in a volatile system of intercultural ex- change, and finally the "property" of strangers, captive and ransomed women seem unlikely subjects as historical actors. But the experiences recounted henceforth show these women and children negotiating narrow fields of agency with notewor- thy skill. From positions of virtual powerlessness, captive women learned quickly the range of movement allowed by the host culture, especially in regard to adoption and compadrazgo (god-parenthood) practices.19 This first phase of integration gave them "kin" to whom they could turn for protection and guidance. But this security remained limited, and many faced coercive conjugal relationships, if not outright sexual exploita- tion by their new masters.

Whether of Spanish or Indian origin, two factors are essen-

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tial to our understanding of the captive experience in greater New Mexico and perhaps to similar cases in other periods and regions. First, captives' status and treatment within the host society would establish the structural constraints (culturally specific customs and laws governing rights and obligations) within which individuals might pursue their goals.20 Second, sheer luck and the individual captive's personal resources de- termined much of her actual lived experience, ranging from terror and exploitation to a few remarkable cases of deft nego- tiation and good fortune, into which Maria Rosa Villalpando's story certainly falls. Overall, the interplay of structural con- straints, contingency, and skills can be seen in most captives' lives. Another captive woman, Juana Hurtado Galv6an, proved so adept at the cross-cultural enterprise that her story exem- plifies successful adaptation.

Early in the summer of 1680, shortly before the conflagra- tions of the Pueblo Revolt, a band of Apaches del Nabajo ("Na- vajos") swept down upon the rancho of Captain Andres Hurta- do and took captive his seven-year-old daughter, Juana.21 For the next twelve years, her life among the Navajos lies con- cealed, a blank in the historical record that can only be recon- structed by inference and imagination. But those years of cap- tivity seem to hold the key to understanding much of Juana's subsequent life, a long and controversial career that ended in 1753. When she died, Juana owned her own rancho with three houses and managed extensive herds and flocks. Her illegiti- mate son, Juan Galvan, served as the teniente (assistant mag- istrate) of the Zia district.22 Nativity had given Juana linkages to both Spanish and Pueblo society, and in her captivity she de- veloped linguistic and kinship ties with the Navajos. Through- out her life, her experience as a captive woman would afford her special negotiating skills with which she pursued security for her lineage.

Juana's mother had come from the Pueblo of Zia, probably as a criada (domestic servant) of Captain Hurtado, but we know little more about her life.23 No doubt sexually used by Hurtado, the daughter she bore in 1673 was just one among hundreds of such coyotas (children of mixed Spanish/Indian parentage) resulting from the Spanish colonization of New Mexico. The mother's connection with Zia Pueblo, however, re-

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James F. Brooks

mained central to her daughter's story. After Juana's half- brother, Martin, a soldier in the Spanish reconquista of 1692, ransomed Juana from captivity, the young woman petitioned for and received a private merced (land grant) at the northwest corner of the Zia Pueblo lands, near the village known today as San Ysidro.24 This rancho proved a key locus of trade among Navajos, Pueblos, and Spanish villagers for the next half-cen- tury and was the source of Juana's wealth and influence.25

Although restored to colonial society, Juana never severed connections with her onetime captors. Frequent visits by Na- vajos to her rancho suggest that she had experienced adoption into a Navajo clan. She may even have married in captivity, as she never formalized any future conjugal relationship. Kinship aside, her trilingual skills and cultural intermediacy facilitated economic exchanges between potential enemies. Her affinity with Navajos remained so close that Fray Miguel de Menchero commended her usefulness in assisting proselytization efforts: "They had kept her for so long [that] the Indians of said Nation make friendly visits to her, and in this way the father of the said mission has been able to instruct some of them."26

Juana's conduct, however, also attracted criticism from church authorities. Throughout her life, she persisted in main- taining a long-term liaison with a married man of Zia, presum- ably named Galvan. By 1727, this relationship had resulted in four children and charges of scandalous behavior leveled against her by Franciscan padres. When authorities sought to place Juana in stocks, however, the people of Zia "threatened that the whole pueblo would move to the mesa tops, rather than have her mistreated."27 Like the Navajos, the people of Zia apparently saw tangible benefits in the presence of this kinswoman on their borders. Defining kinship more broadly than did the Spanish, they seemed willing to provoke conflict in defense of their relationship with someone who provided a bridge across three cultures. As she drew upon her qualities and talents as a negotiator, Juana "La Galvana" utilized her experience as a captive to carve out an intermediate niche in the complex power relations of colonial New Mexico.

Juana's intermediacy was accentuated by her mixed-blood status, and her paternal linkage to a Spanish encomendero (holder of tributary rights to Indian labor) probably allowed

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her the opportunity to occupy a privileged niche compared with many captives. Because one side of the captive system origi- nates in indigenous, precontact exogamous exchange tradi- tions, we need to look at gender and social hierarchies within Native American societies to begin to understand the structur- al constraints that Juana and other captives might have expe- rienced. Although they display variation, women's and cap- tives' status within Indian societies of the borderlands (Navajo, Apache, Ute, and Comanche) may be generally described as subordinate to men and holders of the "cultural franchise" but

enhanced by traditions of matrilineality and social mobility.28 Navajo patterns of gender and social hierarchies show a

blending of southern Athabascan systems and cultural adapta- tions to Spanish colonialism near their homelands. Navajo women owned the flocks of sheep and wove the textiles that formed the core of their pastoral economy. Matrilineal descent, therefore, conferred important productive resources as well as kin-reckoning through women. Navajo men, however, pre- vailed in "public" decisions involving warfare and diplomacy.9

Captives taken in warfare with other tribes or raids on Spanish settlements again experienced a range of treatment. If not killed in vengeance satisfaction, the captive invariably suf- fered a period of harsh and terrifying ritual abuse. This "tam- ing" process probably formed the first phase in adoption ritu- al.30 After "taming," most captives became inducted into the clan of their captor, or the "rich man" who purchased them from the successful warrior. Once a clan member, it seems few barriers stood in the way of social advancement. The New Mexican captive Nakai Na'ddis Saal, raised in a clan on Black Mesa, "became a singer of the Nightway," an important Navajo ceremony. The Sonoran captive Jesus Arviso, taken by Chirica- hua Apaches in 1850 as a boy and traded to the Navajo Kla Clan, served as the principal interpreter for his host society throughout the Fort Sumner "Long Walk" era. Marrying into the Nanasht'ezhii Clan, he chose to remain a Navajo, welcom- ing a congressional delegation to Fort Defiance in 1919 and liv- ing at Cubero until his death in 1932.31

Captive women usually became clan members and married exogamously. Even if not inducted into clan membership, their children by Navajo men were considered members of the fa-

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James F. Brooks

ther's clan.32 Although we can only speculate, these clan and kin affiliations probably provided Juana Hurtado with the net- works that allowed her to act as an intermediary between Zia Pueblo and Spanish society. Indeed, Juana seems noteworthy among captives for having chosen to return to her birthright, for some sources indicate that most captives, when "set free… immediately took the shortest trail back to the hogans of their masters."33

Captives seem to have fared less well among the Jicarilla Apaches, a semisedentary people who practiced a seasonal economy that balanced hunting and collecting with extensive horticulture. Apache women, however, benefited from matrilin- eality and ownership of fields and crops which "were planted, weeded, and harvested by the joint labors of the entire family." This gender-integrated labor diverged when men hunted or raided and women engaged in the life-cycle labor of family re- production. Although subordinate to men, women made impor- tant ritual contributions to the success of hunters: "a man and

his wife pray together and smoke ceremonially before the hus- band leaves for the hunt. After his departure the woman con- tinues a series of ritual duties." Similarly, before men departed for warfare or raiding, "a woman [was] chosen to represent each man to serve as proxy in group decisions, [and she] obeyed many restrictions in matters of dress, food, and behavior to en- sure his safe return."34

Warfare among the Jicarillas often involved the seizure of captives, either for vengeance satisfaction or cultural integra- tion. Adult male captives "were tied to posts and slain by women with lances," but captive women and children found themselves incorporated into the band. A captive woman "could not be molested until she had been brought back and a ceremony … performed over her," probably some form of adop- tion that established her subordination within the Apachean levirate. Even with this adoption, captive women "were not considered fit wives. They were sexually used, and sent from camp to camp to do the heavy work. Their children by Apache men, however, were recognized as Jicarilla" and "accepted into Apache life."35 We shall see that this second-generation inte- gration appears nearly universal among the indigenous groups in question and provides another constraining structure in

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captive women's decisions to remain within the host society even when offered their "freedom."

These patterns of gender and social subordination, mitigated by adoption and generational enfranchisement, are reiterated in an examination of Comanche society. Drawing largely upon ethnographic data gathered in the 1930s, Jane Fishburne Col- lier has argued that women's status in prereservation (c. 1875) Comanche society, as reflected through the dynamics of bride- wealth marriage, "may best be understood in the context of re- lations between men."36 Certainly, the Comanches seem to rep- resent the most noteworthy case of Plains Indian individualism and status competition between men, where wifestealing often served as an intraband expression of a general cultural pat- tern. One of Collier's sources (E. Adamson Hoebel), pointed out, however, that although "before the law, [the] Comanche woman was a quasi-chattel," social custom allowed women a consider- able degree of choice in extralegal activity37

Surprisingly, first Hoebel then Collier overlooked evidence of women-centered status competition, a stretching of patriarchal structural constraints. In one-half of the marital disputes Hoebel recorded, women had left their husbands for other men, often joining their lovers on war parties. In one case, the couple stayed away from the band for two years, and when they returned, the woman had fifteen horses in her personal string.38 Women could also obtain horses (next to captives the most prestigious "commodity" in Comanche society) through the institution of the "Shakedown Dance," whereby successful raiders were shamed into giving a part of their herd to young, unmarried women.39 Status and prestige also accrued to wom- en through the matrilineal transfer of medicine powers, as in the case of Sanapia, a Comanche Eagle Doctor.40 These exam- ples suggest that within male-defined cultural limitations, Co- manche women exploited opportunities for competitive mobili- ty and status enhancement. Captives, although initially lower in status, appear to have negotiated similar avenues toward social mobility.

No other Plains society engaged in captive raiding as vigor- ously as did the Comanches. This seems a result of both indi- vidual status competition and the need to replace a population ravaged by warfare and epidemic disease.41 Comanche society

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offered several social locations into which captives could be in- tegrated, ranging from chattels to kinsmen and women.42 Ralph Linton suggests that the prestige value of captives re- flected their "importance in the social and economic life of the tribe. Mostly Mexican, they tended the horse herds and prac- ticed most of the specialized industries such as gun repairing and saddle-making." The honored position of center-pole cutter in the Comanche Sun Dance went either to a "virtuous Co-

manche woman, a virtuous captive woman, [or] a captive man who had a number of war-deeds to his credit."43 Among the Kiowas, a Plains people closely allied with the Comanches af- ter 1805, captives like Loki-Mokeen, a Mexican mulatto, could become officers of the Sun Dance and protectors of the sacred Taime Bundle.44 Andres Martinez, called by the Kiowa "An- dali," was seized from his family's pastures near Las Vegas, New Mexico, and grew to adulthood as a Kiowa warrior. In 1889 he converted to Methodism and told his story to the Rev- erend J.J. Methven.45 Similarly, the "captive-friend" who fought alongside his Comanche warrior-brother, appears prominently as a type in Hoebel's ethnography.46

Captive women often found themselves under the protection of Comanche women. Rosita Rodrigues, writing in 1846, re- ported she "remained a prisoner among the Comanche Indians about one year, during which time I was obliged to work very hard, but was not otherwise badly treated as I became the property of an old squaw who became much attached to me."47 Similarly, Sarah Ann Horn, taken captive in 1837, reported that she was taken in "by an old widow woman … a merciful exception to the general character of these merciless beings." Although she was "set to work to dress buffalo hides," she did not suffer sexual abuse.48 It appears that at least some captive women were informally adopted by older women, by which ac- tion they received the protection of the Comanche incest ta- boo.49 By extension, it bears consideration that in some cases, Comanche women may have identified and acted upon inter- ests counter to those of Comanche men, protecting captive women either for their value as "chore sisters" or through basic empathy.

Rodrigues and Horn are among the very few women who, when repatriated, wrote of their experiences among the Co-

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manche. Most captive women seem to have remained with their captors, marrying and establishing families in the host society.50 Rodrigues herself left a son behind among the Co- manche, reporting that she "heard from him a short time ago- he is well and hearty but he is pure Indian now."51 Josiah Gregg noted the presence of Mexican women among the Co- manche when he began traveling the Santa Fe Trail in the 1830s. He remarked with surprise that some of these "pre- ferred remaining with [their captors], rather than encounter the horrible ordeal of ill-natured remarks on being restored to civilized life." One woman refused to return even after the offer

of $1,000 for her ransom. She sent word that the Comanche "had disfigured her by tatooing; that she was married, and per- haps enceinte (pregnant), and she would be more unhappy re- turning … under these circumstances than remaining where she was."52

These women had good reason to fear social opprobrium if they returned to Spanish society. When authorities introduced an alms-gathering plan in 1780 to raise funds for the ransom of Spanish captives, Teodoro de Croix declared with alarm that "this evil [captivity] extends especially … to the feminine sex … on account of the lascivious vice of sensuality in which they are now afforded the greatest liberty to indulge them- selves."53 This may have been a rhetorical flourish to heighten interest in the plan, but it suggests that the conjugal arrange- ments of Comanche women might entail certain attractions to captive Spanish women as well.

Spanish concerns about the influence of Indian lifeways on their subjects went beyond anxieties about the behavior of "their" women in captivity. The simple fact that thousands of Indian captives and their descendants now resided in "Span- ish" society stimulated a growing polemic of caste-conscious distancing by elite espanoles vis-a-vis the culturally mixed peo- ple in the border villages. Elite anxieties were provoked by evi- dence that border villagers often exhibited behavior and pur- sued interests more in tune with their Indian neighbors than those contained in policy directives from Santa Fe or Mexico City. Gradual movement toward "borderlands communities of interest" linking New Mexican villagers with contiguous Indi- an groups emerged as one consequence of the presence of cap-

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tive Indian women in colonial New Mexico.

Recently, Ram6n Gutierrez addressed one aspect of this cul- tural complexity, arguing that eighteenth-century New Mexico developed as a "timocracy," where "differences between aristo- crats and landed peasants were of degree rather than kind. Spaniards, whatever their estate, were men of honor in com- parison to the vanquished Indians." Gutierrez contends that the genizaro (slave) caste, formed from the mass of indios de rescate obtained by the Spanish through ransom, constituted a "dishonored" status against which all Spanish, regardless of economic position, could define their calidad (rank).54

Although Gutierrez offers strong evidence for this honor/dis- honor distinction among elite espanoles, his use of prescriptive sources generated by these elites tends to leave on-the-ground relations between mestizo pobladores (mixed descent settlers) and their genizaro neighbors somewhat obscure. As we will see, by the end of the eighteenth century, Spanish ecclesiastics and administrators spoke of their colonial villagers in terms usually associated with los indios bdrbaros, often referring to them as "indolent," "rude," "independent," and "lewd." Captive exchange lay at the heart of this blurring of cultural boundaries.

New Mexico appears similar to other colonial borderlands, where patterns of cultural accommodation appear ongoing be- neath longer-term themes of cultural conflict, and the exigen- cies of day-to-day survival promoted periods of relatively peace- ful coexistence.55 Always uncertain, and often punctuated by vi- olent exchanges, relations between village-level New Mexicans and their nomadic-pastoral Indian neighbors may be viewed in like terms, but with heightened focus on exchanges of women and children as central objects and agents of intercultural ne- gotiation. Locally constructed communities of interest were de- signed to foster mutual exchanges (economic and cultural) with a minimal loss of life. By late in the eighteenth century particu- lar aspects of these relations received higher recognition in for- mal negotiations surrounding Spanish, Comanche, Ute, and Navajo peace treaties. The movement toward local mixed-cul- tural communities, however, distanced the village people of New Mexico from their colonial administrators, a trend that would lead to internal conflict by the nineteenth century.

Foreshadowing this turmoil, in 1794 Don Fernando de la

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Concha complained to incoming Governor Don Fernando Cha- con that the village people of the province seemed "indolent": "They love distance which makes them independent; and if they recognize the advantages of union, they pretend not to un- derstand them, in order to adopt the liberty and slovenliness they see … in their neighbors, the wild Indians."56 Concern on the part of Spanish administrators had increased throughout the preceding decades. In 1776 Antonio de Bonilla had found the "settlements of the Spaniards . . . scattered and badly de- fended," protecting neither themselves nor "contributing to the defense of the province."57 Two years later, Fray Juan Augustin de Morfi attributed this situation to the fact that the "pobla- dores liked to live apart, far from the prying eyes of neighbors and the restraining influence of authorities," where they could "commit with impunity all manner of immoral and criminal acts, and … were not ashamed to go about nude so that lewd- ness was seen here more than in the brutes."58

Like Morfi, Concha felt that social intercourse with the In- dios barbaros lay at the heart of this problem. Life in the vil- lages, he told his successor, had become so distanced from colo- nial control that he recommended "the removal of more than

two thousand [villagers]," whose "bad upbringing results from . . . the proximity and trade of the barbarous tribes." This trade appears to have become increasingly a part of the bor- derlands economy in New Mexico and one which villagers sought to conceal from colonial control. Concha complained that the villagers, "under a simulated appearance of ignorance or rusticity … conceal the most refined malice."59

A decade later, Chac6n would note that the villagers were "little dedicated to farming," surviving instead on a vigorous trade with nomadic Indians. In exchange for the settlers' man- ufactured goods and agricultural products, nomads like the Co- manches gave them "Indian captives of both sexes, mules, moc- casins, colts, mustangs, all kinds of hides and buffalo meat."60 As the Bourbon Reforms brought efforts to incorporate New Mexico within the economic sphere of New Spain, especially in a developing sheep and textile industry, the informal economic autonomy of villagers seemed a barrier to progress.61

Tensions between administrators in Santa Fe and their

backcountry subjects exploded in August 1837. The villagers of

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Rio Arriba descended upon the villa and seized the govern- ment, executing Governor Albino Perez in the process.62 Infuri- ated by rumors of direct taxation under Santa Ana's centraliz- ing Constitution of 1835, which threatened to interfere with their autonomous indigenous trade, the rebels identified them- selves "with the savage tribes . . . making the same cause and their same interests."63 Mexico restored central authority by 1838, but communities of interest between New Mexican vil- lagers and their Native neighbors persisted. In 1847 the vil- lages again rose in rebellion, this time against the American military government of occupation. Pueblo Indians and New Mexican allies killed Governor Charles Bent in Taos, while Manuel Cortes of Mora joined with Apache and Cheyenne al- lies to raid U.S. military and commercial supply lines on the eastern frontier.64 This ability to build strategic linkages across cultural boundaries was a consequence of long experience in economic and human exchange.

The seeds of these linkages were both cultural and biologi- cal, which we see revealed in a village-level intermingling of status groups. In Ranchos de Taos, for example, the Spanish census of 1750 reported nine Spanish households of fifty-seven persons, six coyote households of fifty-five persons, and eight genizaro households of twenty-five persons. Even the Spanish households showed a blurring of caste category; the house of Antonio Atiensa included his coyota wife, Maria Romero; their castizo (espanol and coyota) son, Domingo Romero; and the widow, Juana, with her daughter, Manuela, no doubt criadas. Similarly, the house of Juan Rosalio Villalpando, an important espanol, included his wife, Maria Valdes, and their six chil- dren, all of whom are termed coyote, suggesting that Maria may have been an india de rescate. Pablo Francisco Villalpan- do's household, from which Maria Rosa would be seized ten years later, contained three female and two male servientes, two of whom carry the family name. Mixing may have crossed class as well as caste lines in some village families.65

The fact that the census arranged households by caste cate- gory reveals a conscious concern about caste status on the part of Spanish administrators, but the data also demonstrate how informally these categories might be arranged at the village level. Census findings from a cluster of Plazas at Belen show a

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somewhat different, yet consistent, pattern. In 1790 the third Plaza, "Nuestra Sefiora de los Dolores de los Genizaros," con- tained thirty-three households, all designated as genizaro, a strong indication that in some cases true communities devel- oped among some indios de rescate. But the adjacent second Plaza of Jarales held thirty Spanish, twelve mestizo, four coy- ote, and two genizaro households. The marriage patterns from these communities reveal little caste-anxious endogamy; of the twenty-eight unions, only one is espanol-espanola. Six mar- riages involved genizaro-genizara, and five mestizo-mestiza. The remaining sixteen show a crossing of caste lines. In most of these, hypogamy seems the rule, with women marrying men of "lower" status. Children of these unions, for example, geni-zaro- coyota, follow the father's status and are later enumerated as genizaros.66

By the late eighteenth century, however, this designation for children born of captive Indian women may not have carried only the "dishonored" quality that Gutierrez proposes. Instead, it may indicate a movement toward identity formation on the part of the genizaros. As early as 1744, sources report that genizaro men played an important role as military auxiliaries for the Spanish.67 By 1780, a group of thirty-three genizaros ne- gotiated with Spanish authorities from a position of some pow- er, threatening that if their lands in the Barrio de Analco in Santa Fe were not protected, they might go "in search of relief to our lands and nation."68 Governor Joaquin del Real Alen- caster organized an official Tropa de Genizaros (militia troop) in 1808 to patrol the eastern frontier of New Mexico, in re- sponse to Zebulon Pike's adventurism of the previous year.69 And in 1837, following the Rio Arriba rebellion noted earlier, the revolutionary government elected Jose Gonzales, a cibolero (bison hunter) from Taos who may have been a genizaro, as their new governor.70 As subordinate, yet militarily skilled members of New Mexican society, genizaro men found them- selves valued in a colony always in need of men-at-arms. Once established on the outer marches of the province, they man- aged to assert an intermediate negotiatory identity.

Initially little more than pawns in a distinctive "slave trade," captive Indian women and children established families within New Mexican society whose members eventually owned land,

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served in the military, and even led major rebellions. In their cases, maternity provided avenues of agency, especially as they manipulated structural constraints to establish increasing se- curity for their offspring and, consequently, for themselves.

Two such constraints applied particularly to women in colo- nial New Mexico: marriage and compadrazgo (godparent) rela- tions. For Spanish women, and mixed-blood or captive women who had internalized their conversion to Christianity, the dic- tates of the Catholic Church structured their agency within marriage. Gutierrez has shown how caste-endogamous mar- riages served to "purify" the bloodlines of New Mexico's ruling elite.71 The gender hierarchy of the church also firmly estab- lished women's subordination as dependents under the patri- archal authority of husbands and the church, with preserva- tion of family honor through legitimate offspring their princi- pal social role. Unlike women in the English colonies, however, Spanish women maintained separate property throughout their marriage(s) and could bequeath their estates indepen- dent of their husbands' wills.72

Spanish women's "property" often included indias de rescate, who found themselves transferred to daughters as servants, or "emancipated" with the condition that they continue to "watch over and assist my daughter as if she were her mother."73 Oth- ers received clear title to parcels of land "in appreciation of years of service to me without salary."74 When Jose Riano con- tested the will of Gregoria Gongora in 1739, he explicitly ex- cepted from the disputed property "a piece of land for the india who raised my youngest and other children."75

Although these cases suggest a familial quality to the rela- tions between Spanish and Indian women, few masters or mis- tresses actually formalized this quality in godparent relations. Of the 3,294 "slave" baptisms in New Mexico between 1693 and 1849, only 14 percent feature "owners" as padrinos (god- parents), and the vast majority (65 percent) show "no apparent relationship," simply members of the local Spanish community. Gutierrez argues that these figures reflect the internal contra- dictions between the benign character of compadrazgo and ex- ploitative character of master-slave relations.76

An alternative explanation, and one more in keeping with the argument herein, might see these baptismal data as repre-

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sentative of mutually supportive relationships between the New Mexicans and indios de rescate, a variation upon tradi- tions of adoption that we have seen as ubiquitous in nomadic and pastoral Indian society. Frances S. Quintana argues that in New Mexico, compadrazgo relations show two patterns, an "old world" tradition that "intensified existing kin relation- ships" among colonial elites, and a "new world" innovation that "helped to stabilize relationships between native Indian popu- lations and Spanish and mestizo groups."77

In addition to the baptisms of indios de rescate noted above, during the same period we see the baptism of 1,984 "illegiti- mate" children born of the women of the genizaro caste. In fact, Gutierrez has recorded only twenty church-sanctioned mar- riages among members of this group and suggests that this re- veals the continuing control of masters over the sexual services of "slave" women.78 Certain of his cases support Gutierrez's conclusion, but we should also recognize that refusal to "conse- crate" a conjugal union also served as an act of resistance among both Pueblo and nomadic Indian groups.79 At Zia Pue- blo, and among the Navajo, a refusal to name the parents of "illegitimate" children continually frustrated Spanish authori- ties.80 It seems reasonable to conclude here a mixed pattern of sexual exploitation of indias de rescate by Spanish masters, and a collective strategy of identity maintenance that, by re- fusing Catholic structures, retained the offspring of those and voluntary unions with Indian men as members of the cultural community.

Although conceived in grossly unequal relationships, the children who resulted from unions with captors often served to strengthen the status of captive women. As full culture-group members of either Indian or genizaro communities, these daughters and sons provided social access and security to their mothers. As Marietta Morrissey has found for slave women in the Caribbean, concubinage with dominant men often involved a painful balancing of shame and hope. If they acceded to sexu- al relations with masters, their children were born free, and in a position to assist in the dream of manumission.81 In some cases as well, real bonds of affection and respect developed be- tween sugar planters and slave women, a factor that seems likely in some of the New Mexican examples.

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Although the creation of kinship seems the primary avenue by which captive women sought security and identity, we may also discern other facets of their lives from within the histori-

cal record. In addition to the life-cycle labor of family repro- duction, these women engaged in subsistence and market pro- duction. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw dramat- ic shifts in the status and work of Plains Indian women as

peoples like the Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes began participating in the European fur and hide trade. With the horse and gun, one Indian man could procure fifty to sixty buf- falo hides per season, twice as many as one Indian woman could tan for use or exchange. An increase in polygamy, and raiding for captive women, served to counteract this labor shortage.82 The captivity narratives quoted earlier make it clear that captive women were "set to work to tan hides" al- most immediately. The appearance of polygamous households probably made this work more efficient, for "cowives" might process hides while the "first-wife" performed higher-status production and distribution like cooking, clothing manufac- ture, and ceremonial activities.

Indias de rescate appear most often as household servants, but to consider their work entirely "domestic" is probably mis- leading. Because both Apache and Navajo captive women came from societies in which women were the principal horticultur- ists, they may have found themselves gardening and even tending flocks in New Mexican villages. We are only beginning to develop an understanding of women's economic life in colo- nial New Mexico, but Angelina F. Veyna's work with women's wills suggests that both Spanish and Indian women may have been more involved in farming than previously thought. The fact that women owned rejas (ploughshares) and willed them not to their sons but to their daughters suggests either a farm- ing orientation or a means of attracting potential husbands.83

Navajo and Apache women held captive in New Mexican households also worked as weavers, both of basketry and tex- tiles. H.P. Mera has described the nineteenth-century "Slave Blanket" as a crossover style between Navajo and New Mexi- can techniques, using New Mexican yarns and designs, but produced on the distinctive upright looms of Navajo women.4 These early New Mexican serapes became important trade

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items at rescates, given in exchange for buffalo hides and dried pemmican. Although today in villages like Chimayo, men weave the distinctive Rio Grande blankets, this seems the re- sult of a concerted effort early in the nineteenth century to de- velop a commercial textile industry.85

Captive women and children played important roles in one last area, that of Spanish-Indian diplomacy. Their cross-cultur- al experience made them valuable as interpreters, translators, and envoys for Spanish military leaders. By 1750 the Co- manche had obtained French guns, and Governor Velez de- clared that unless a peace were negotiated they might prove "the ruin of this province." In order to communicate with sever- al Comanche hostages held in Santa Fe, Velez utilized the in- terpretive services of a Kiowa woman who had been captured by the Comanche, lost to the Utes in a raid, then purchased as a criada by Antonio Martin. This negotiation resulted in a temporary truce, sealed by the exchange of several prisoners.86

When the peace collapsed in 1760, captive women again served in a diplomatic capacity, this time as emissaries. Un- able to find the appropriate Comanche leaders with whom to bargain, Velez "dispatched six Comanche women prisoners as ambassadors to their nation." Within a month, four of the women had returned, along with nine Comanche captains, and another truce was affirmed by the return to the Comanche of "thirty-one women and children, among whom, fortunately, were their relatives."87 Similarly, when Governor Juan Bautis- ta de Anza and Ecueracapa (Leather Jacket) negotiated the Spanish-Comanche Peace of 1786, which lasted until 1846, they sealed their agreement by exchanging a Comanche boy, "Jose Chiquito," for Alejandro Martin, "eleven years a captive among the band of Captain Tosapoy."88

NEGOTIATING CAPTIVITY IN THE NEW MEXICAN BORDERLANDS

Often deemed invisible commodities in the "slave trade" of the

Spanish borderlands, the captive women and children dis- cussed here emerge as human actors engaged in a deeply am- bivalent dialectic between exploitation and negotiation. Their stories begin in a moment of abject powerlessness, where subor-

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dination serves as a substitute for violent death. But from that

moment forward, we see them taking tentative steps toward autonomy and security. Captive women worked within the lim- its set by their captors, yet through the creation of kinship, their daily labors, and their diplomatic usefulness, they man- aged to carve out a future for themselves and their lineages. Al- though fewer in number, captive boys became men who utilized their military skills to attain status and limited autonomy.

Beginning with an indigenous tradition of captive taking, and intensified by Spanish military and economic exploitation, the captive-exchange system developed as one important com- ponent of a borderlands political economy that produced con- flict and coexistence. Maria Mies has conceptualized the inter- linkage of men's militarism and the forcible exchange of wom- en as a universal "predatory mode of appropriation," a para- digm for "all exploitative relations between human beings."89 In New Mexico, Spanish and Indian men found that even more than horses, guns, or hides, their counterparts valued women and children; and they established some nominal agreement that these would serve as objects and agents of intersocietal exchange. Conflict and accommodation patterns, therefore, be- tween these rival societies may represent attempts by differing forms of patriarchal power to achieve external economic and military objectives while reinforcing the stability of internal so- cial and gender hierarchies.

Of course, the social consequences of exchanging women and children across ethnic boundaries proved difficult to con- tain, and both New Mexicans and their Indian neighbors found customary relations unsettled by cultural hybridity. In time, the mixed-blood descendants of captive women and chil- dren exhibited new collective interests that influenced their choice of cultural identification. The collective interests of sec-

ond- (and subsequent-) generation descendants blurred the boundaries between New Mexican villagers and their Indian neighbors. Plains Indian societies became increasingly milita- rized and market oriented during this period, and New Mexi- can villagers increasingly mobile. By the 1830s, New Mexican cibo-leros (bison hunters) and comancheros (traders and raiders) appeared regularly in travel accounts.90 Plains Indian societies displayed new forms of collective action, and villagers

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rose in radically democratic rebellions. Despite the exploitative quality of the captive-exchange sys-

tem, its victims found ways to exercise agency and achieve some measure of security and comfort for themselves and their descendants. Within the structural constraints considered

here, there lay some opportunity, especially when captives found it possible to use newly acquired cross-cultural skills to their advantage. For example, Juana Hurtado received the support of the Zias and Navajos in her role as cultural center- person. A Crow woman might be sold at a rescate by some Co- manches, escape to find her way homeward, and end up lead- ing a French trading expedition back to New Mexico.91 A Pawn- ee woman in Santa Fe could discover that her master had set-

tled land upon her in his will, for the consideration that she continue to serve as criada to his son.92 Finally, Maria Rosa Vil- lalpando of Taos, whose story opened this article, found herself traded to the Pawnee, married there, then remarried to become the "matriarch" of a French fur-trading enterprise in St. Louis. Her New Mexican son, Jose Juliano, visited her there in 1802 and attempted to establish a claim as her heir. Perhaps con- flicting maternal sentiments forced Maria into a hard choice- she paid Jose Juliano 200 pesos to relinquish his claim and sent him packing. Jose Juliano took a long route home, for in 1809 New Mexican authorities contacted Spanish administra- tors in San Antonio, Texas, and suggested Jose be forcibly sent home, for he had a wife and children "without support" in the village of Ojo Caliente.93

Although the American conquest of 1846-48 resulted in the erosion of shared values and interests between New Mexicans

and southwestern Indians, vestiges of the borderlands commu- nities of interest still survive. Miguel Montoya, historian of the village of Mora, defines the historical identity of his neighbors in this way: "We were Spanish by law, but Indian by thought- world and custom. We respected los viejos (the elders), who looked after our spiritual health. We have relatives in the Pueb- los, and out there, in Oklahoma (pointing east, to the reser- vations of the Comanches, Kiowas, and Southern Cheyenne).94

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NOTES

This article has been modified for publication in Feminist Studies. The original ver- sion will appear in Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage, eds., Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West (Norman: University of Okla- homa Press, forthcoming 1997). I wish to thank the editors and publishers of that volume for graciously agreeing to allow this version to be published here. I also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of California, Davis, and the Phillips Fund for Re- search on Native American Ethnohistory of the American Philosophical Society, to- ward the creation of this article. I thank as well faculty and student colleagues at the University of California at Davis whose criticism has contributed to its refine- ment, including Vicki L. Ruiz, Susan Mann, and Cynthia Brantely. This version has benefited from questions posed by Natalie Alexia Lopez, great-granddaughter of the captive Jesus Arviso; the insightful criticisms offered by the anonymous reviewers of Feminist Studies, and from Rebecca Anne Allahyari, who guided me through its many revisions.

1. Jack B. Tykal, "Taos to St. Louis: The Journey of Maria Rosa Villalpando," New Mexico Historical Review (April 1990): 161-74. 2. Frances Swadesh (Quintana) first proposed the "nondominant frontier" concept in her "Structure of Hispanic-Indian Relations in New Mexico," in The Survival of Spanish American Villages, ed. Paul M. Kutsche (Colorado Springs: Colorado Col- lege Press, 1979), 53-61. For a recent synthesis of the Spanish Borderlands that re- flects similar thinking, see David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). 3. As used here, "borderlands political economy" indicates that despite profound and continuing cultural differences in the region, Native Americans and New Mexi- cans came to share some common understandings of the production and distribution of wealth, as conditioned by the social relations of power. 4. Treatments of "slavery" in New Mexico are L.R. Bailey's The Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1966), which contains no analysis of gender differentiation or captivity among Indian groups; David M. Brugge's Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico, 1694-1875 (Tsaile: Navajo Community College Press, 1985), an important piece of documentary research upon which this essay relies heavily but which does not attempt a unifying analytical framework; and the recent work of Ram6n Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), whose analysis relies on an exploita- tion paradigm drawn from chattel slavery in the southern United States. Gutierrez does not consider the experience of Spanish captives in Indian societies. 5. For an in-depth treatment of this question of the meaning of the exchange of women, see the author's Ph.D. dissertation, "Captives and Cousins: Violence, Kin- ship, and Community in the New Mexico Borderlands, 1680-1880" (University of California, Davis, 1995). 6. Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884; rpt., New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972); Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patri- archy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Claude Levi-Strauss, The Ele- mentary Structures of Kinship (1949: rpt., Boston: Beacon Press, 1969); Gayle Ru- bin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex" in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R[app] Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975); Verena Martinez-Alier, Marriage, Class, and Colour in Nineteenth-

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Century Cuba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Jane Fishburne Col- lier, Marriage and Inequality in Classless Societies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988). 7. Lerner; Martinez-Alier applies this argument to nineteenth-century Cuba. Claude Meillasoux makes the case for the patrimony-to-property transition in his synthesis of indigenous/domestic African slave systems in The Anthropology of Slav- ery: The Womb of Iron and Gold (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 8. While reiterating the ban on Indian slavery first set forth in 1542, the Recopi- laci6n reinforced the "just war" doctrine, whereby hostile Indians might be enslaved if taken in conflict. Indios de rescate (ransomed Indians), on the other hand, were "saved" from slavery among their captors and owed their redeemers loyalty and ser- vice. See Silvio Zavala, Los Esclavos Indios en Nueva Espana (Mexico City: El Cole- gio Nacional, 1967), for a complete treatment of these policies. 9. For theoretical and empirical cases, see the essays in Katherine Spielmann, ed., Farmers, Hunters, and Colonists: Interaction between the Southwest and the South- ern Plains (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991). 10. Report of the Reverend Father Provincial, Fray Pedro Serrano … to the Mar- quis de Cruillas . . . 1761, in Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, trans. and ed. Charles Wilson Hackett (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1937), 486-87. 11. Fray Anatasio Dominguez, The Missions of New Mexico, 1776, ed. and trans., Eleanor B. Adams and Fray Angelico-Chavez (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1956), 252. See also "Las Ferias hispano-indias del Nuevo M6xico," in La Espana Illustrada en el Lejano Oeste, ed. Armando Represa (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y Leon, Consejeria de Cultura y Bienestan Social, 1990), 119-25. 12. James S. Calhoun to Commissioner Brown, 31 Mar. 1850, in The Official Cor- respondence of James S. Calhoun, Indian Agent at Santa Fe, ed. Annie Heloise Abel (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1915), 181-83. For the archaeology of comanchero sites on the Plains, see Frances Levine, "Economic Perspectives on the Comanchero Trade," in Farmers, Hunters, and Colonists, 155-69. 13. Because only about 75 percent of baptismal registers still exist, the actual fig- ures are probably somewhat higher. Brugge, 2; for breakdown by tribal derivation and date, see 22-23. 14. "Analysis of the Spanish Colonial Census of 1750," Eleanor Olmsted, comp., New Mexico State Records Center, indicates a rural village population of 1,052, of whom 447 are recorded as having some Indian blood. In the "urban" areas of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, a total population of 2,757 contains only 400 individuals simi- larly designated. For a more detailed demographic analysis, see Brooks, chap. 2. 15. Brugge (116), estimates a sixty-to-forty female-male ratio for the Navajo cap- tives he has studied. Working again with the Spanish Colonial Census of 1750, where individuals are designated either by proper name, or by a gendered noun (cri- ada/o, genizara/o, india/o), I find that women total 153 of 282 individuals, or 54 percent. Because some bondwomen, for example, are designated simply "cinco in- dias criadas y ocho coyotitos" (Spanish Archives of New Mexico [hereafter SANM], New Mexico State Records Center, Santa Fe, series 1, roll 4, frame 1175), we cannot determine a precise gender breakdown. Nineteenth-century figures demonstrate continuity: Lafayette Head's 1865 census of Indian captives held in Costilla and Conejos Counties, Colorado Territory, shows women numbering 99 of 148 captives (67 percent), with children under age fifteen 96 of those 148 (65 percent) National Archives, New Mexico Superintendency, microcopy 234, roll 553. Microfilms in the Center for the Study of the Southwest, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado. In 1770, Don Augustin Flores de Vargara donated "for the sermon of the day" at the Chapel of San Miguel in Santa Fe "one Indian girl of serviceable age valued at 80

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pesos." See "Certified copy of the Expenditures made by Captain Don Augustin Flo- res de Vargara for the Chapel of Glorious San Miguel.. .," Crawford Buel Collection, New Mexico States Records Center, Santa Fe. 16. In 1760, a Comanche band attacked what is now Ranchos de Taos and carried fifty-seven women and children into captivity. See "Bishop Tamar6n's Visitation of New Mexico, 1760," in Historical Society of New Mexico Publications in History, vol. 15, ed. and trans. Eleanor B. Adams (Albuquerque: National Historical Society of New Mexico, 1954), 58. See also a raid on Abiquiu in 1747, where twenty-three women and children were carried off: "An Account of Conditions in New Mexico, written by Fray Juan Sanz de Lezuan, in the year 1760," in Historical Documents, vol. 3, 477. 17. "Bando of Don Phelipe de Neve, Governor and Commander-General of the Inte- rior Provinces of New Spain, May 8, 1784," Bexar Archives, University of Texas, Austin. For the 1830s' estimate, see Jean Luis Berlandier in The Indians of Texas in 1830, ed. John C. Ewers (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969), 119. The 1933 Comanche Ethnographic Field School in Oklahoma estimated that 70 percent of Comanche society at that time were mixed-bloods, of primarily Mexican- Comanche descent; see E. Adamson Hoebel, "The Political Organization and Law- Ways of the Comanche Indians," Memoirs of the American Anthropological Associa- tion, 54 (Menasha, Wis.: American Anthropological Association,1940). 18. Dennis M. Riordan to Commissioner, 14 Aug. 1883, Annual Report of the Com- missioner of Indian Affairs for the Year 1883 (U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.); it should be noted that here, twenty years after the Emancipa- tion Proclamation, U.S. officials were still attempting to extinguish Indian "slavery" in New Mexico.

19. The best discussion of origins and functions of compadrazgo relations remains that of Sidney W. Mintz and Eric R. Wolf, "An Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo)," in Southwest Journal of Anthropology 6, no. 4 (1950): 341-68. In New Mexico, important new work is being done by Sandra Jaramillo Macias; see her "Bound by Family: Women and Cultural Change in Territorial Taos" (paper pre- sented at the Carson Foundation, 30 July 1994, Taos, New Mexico), and "The Myth of High Skirts and Loose Blouses: Intercultural Marriage in the Mexican Period" (paper presented at the thirty-fifth Annual Conference of the Western History Asso- ciation, 12 Oct. 1995, Denver). 20. My thinking on culturally specific structural constraints was inspired by Nancy Folbre, who in her work on the organization of social reproduction, defines "struc- tures of constraint" as "sets of assets, rules, norms, and preferences that shape the interests and identities of individuals or social groups." In doing so, they "define the limits and rewards to individual choice." This conceptualization allows us to recog- nize the simultaneity of exploitation and agency, a key element in this essay. Nancy Folbre, Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint (New York: Routledge, 1993). 21. See Fray Angelico Chavez, Origins of New Mexico Families (1954; rpt., Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1992), 49-50, for reference to Hurtado's en- comienda holdings, including Santa Ana Pueblo. 22. "Inventory and settlement of the estate of Juana Galvana, genizara of Zia Pueblo, 1753," SANM 1, no. 193. I thank Frances Swadesh Quintana for suggesting Juana Hurtado as a case study in captivity and for sharing her notes with me. Her essay, "They Settled by Little Bubbling Springs," El Palacio 84 (autumn 1978): 19- 49, treats the history of the Santisima Trinidad Grant at Los Ojitos Hervidores. 23. SANM 2, no. 367, reel 6, frames 1010-23. 24. The journal of Don Diego de Vargas records Martin ransoming Juana at the Zuni Pueblo of Halona, along with her fourteen-year-old daughter Maria Naranjo,

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as well as a younger daughter and a son "about three years-old." This raises some confusion as to Juana's age at her capture in 1680 and suggests that at least one, and probably two, of her children were born to her during her captivity. As we will see, if true, this would have given Juana and her "Navajo" children membership in a Navajo clan and may help explain her long-term good relations with Navajos in the years to come. See J. Manuel Espinosa, trans. and ed., First Expedition of Var- gas into New Mexico, 1692 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1940), 237.

25. Archdiocesan Archives of Santa Fe (hereafter AASF), Burials, reel 43, frame 371, New Mexico State Records; see also SANM 2, no. 406. 26. "Declaration of Fray Miguel de Menchero, Santa Barbara, May 10, 1744," in Historical Documents, vol. 3, 404-5. 27. Abandonment of the Pueblo for defensible mesa-top positions often preceded Pueblo-Spanish conflict. See Swadesh, "They Settled … " See SANM 2, no. 345, for details of the incident. For a treatment in broader historical context, see Swadesh. 28. See Morris E. Opler, "The Kinship Systems of the Southern Athabascan-Speak- ing Tribes," American Anthropologist, n.s., (1936): 622-33, and "Cause and Effect in Apachean Agriculture, Division of Labor, Residence Patterns, and Girl's Puberty Rites," American Anthropologist 74 (1972): 1133-46; also Harold E. Driver's reply to Opler ibid., 1147-51; Jane Fishburne Collier. 29. See W.W. Hill, "Some Navaho Culture Changes during Two Centuries, with a Translation of the Early Eighteenth-Century Rabal Manuscript," in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 100 (1939): 395-415. For Navajo kinship and marriage systems, see David F. Aberle, "Navaho," in Matrilineal Kinship, ed. David M. Schneider and Kathleen Gough (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), 96- 201; and Gary Witherspoon, Navajo Kinship and Marriage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). 30. For Navajo warfare, and raiding/assimilation patterns for captives and live- stock, see W.W. Hill, "Navaho Warfare," Yale University Publications in Anthropolo- gy, no. 5 (1936): 3-19. See Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1909; rpt., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), for a treatment of the cross-cultural at- tributes of integration rituals. 31. Brugge, 138, citing a conversation with Bruce Yazzi, a son of Nakai Na'dis Saal. See appendix B, 175; David M. Brugge, "Story of Interpreter for Treaty of 1868 …," Navajo Times, 21 Aug. 1968, 22B. 32. Ibid., 139. This seems an anomaly in the matrilineal reckoning of kin by Navajo clans, but given the nonkin status of an unadopted captive, it would be the only method of integrating her progeny. 33. "Agent Bowman to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 3 Sept. 1884," in An- nual Report of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs for the Year 1884, quoted with extensive corroborative evidence in Brugge, 142. 34. Morris E. Opler, "A Summary of Jicarilla Apache Culture," American Anthro- pologist, n.s., 38 (1936): 206, 208, 209. 35. Ibid., 213. This information, gathered by Opler in the 1930s, may reflect an in- tensification of social stratification following the American conquest of the 1850s. 36. Collier, 23. 37. See Adamson Hoebel, 49ff. 38. Hoebel, 51, 62. Absconding cases accounted for twenty-two of the forty-five mar- ital disputes recorded by Hoebel. 39. See Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanche: Lords of the Southern Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952), 72. 40. David E. Jones, Sanapia: Comanche Medicine Woman (1972; rpt., Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1984). Sanapia received her medicine powers through

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her mother and maternal uncle, consistent with the Shoshonean levirate. They be- came fully developed only after she experienced menopause. 41. Stanley Noyes, Los Comanches: The Horse People (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993); Brooks, 133-35; also Dan Flores, "Bison Ecology and Bi- son Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800-1850," Journal of American History 78 (September 1991): 465-85. 42. Wallace and Hoebel, 241-42. 43. Ralph Linton, "The Comanche Sun Dance," American Anthropologist, n.s., 37 (1935): 420-28. 44. For Loki-Mokeen's story, and others, see Maurice Boyd, "The Southern Plains: Captives and Warfare," in Kiowa Voices: Myths, Legends, and Folktales (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1983), 2: 155-82. 45. For Andres Martinez' life story, see James F. Brooks, ed., Andele: The Mexican- Kiowa Captive (1899; rpt., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996). 46. Hoebel, 68. 47. Rosita Rodrigues to Don Miguel Rodrigues, 13 Jan. 1846, Bexar Archives, Bark- er History Center, University of Texas, Austin. 48. "A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Horn and Her Two Children" (St. Louis, 1839), reprinted in C.C. Rister, Comanche Bondage (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clarke Co., 1955), 157. 49. On the incest taboo, see Hoebel, 108. I am indebted to Tressa L. Berman for suggesting the association between captive women's low incidence of sexual abuse and the adoptive incest taboo. For similar examples among other Indian groups, see James Axtell, "The White Indians of Colonial America," William and Mary Quarter- ly 32 (January 1975): 55-88. 50. Cynthia Ann Parker, the mother of Quanah Parker, the last Comanche war chief, is the most famous example of women who remained with their captors. See Margaret Schmidt Hacker, Cynthia Ann Parker (El Paso: Texas Western Press, University of Texas at El Paso, 1990). Parker lived thirty-four years among the Co- manche and died "of heartbreak" shortly after her "rescue." 51. Rodrigues letter. 52. Josiah Gregg, The Commerce of the Prairies, ed. Milo Milton Quaife (1844; rpt., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 208. 53. "Expediente of de Croix, June 6, 1780; Bonilla's Certification of June 15, 1780," Bexar Archives.

54. Guti6rrez, 190, 206. The genizaros remain the center of scholarly debate around their true status in New Mexican society, focusing on whether they constituted a caste category, defined from without, or if in time they developed as an "ethnogenet- ic" identity group. See Tibo Chavez, chap. 10, "The Genizaro" El Rio Abajo (Albu- querque: Pampa Print Shop, n.d.); Fray Angelico Chavez, "Genizaros," in The Hand- book of North American Indians (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1980), 198-200; Robert Archibald, "Acculturation and Assimilation in Colonial New Mexi- co," New Mexico Historical Review 53 (July 1978): 205-17; Steven M. Horvath, "The Genizaro of Eighteenth-Century New Mexico: A Re-Examination," Discovery (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1977), 25-40; Russel M. Magnaghi, "Plains Indi- ans in New Mexico: The Genizaro Experience," Great Plains Quarterly 10 (spring 1990): 86-95. 55. See Richard White's Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1640-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Gre- gory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); and Daniel H. Usner Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

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1992), for new, sometimes divergent, conceptualizations of these relationships. Oth- er authors preceded White and Dowd in stressing the importance of intermarriage in patterns of accommodation, principally Sylvia Van Kirk in her Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society in Western Canada, 1670-1870 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980); and Jennifer S.H. Brown in Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980). 56. Donald E. Worcester, trans., "Don Fernando de la Concha to Lieutenant Colonel Don Fernando Chac6n, Advice on Governing New Mexico, 1794," New Mexico His- tor-ical Review 24 (1949): 236-54, quotation on 250. 57. Alfred B. Thomas, ed. and trans., "Antonio de Bonilla and the Spanish Plans for the Defense of New Mexico, 1777-1778," in Alfred B. Thomas, New Spain and the West (Lancaster, Penn.: Lancaster Press, 1932), 1: 196. 58. Fray Juan Augustin de Morfi, " Des6rdenes que se advierten en el Nuevo Mexi- co, 1780," Archivo Generale del Nacion (Mexico City), Historia, 25: 288. 59. "Don Fernando de la Concha to Lieutenant Colonel Don Fernando Chac6n," 251.

60. Marc Simmons, ed. and trans., "The Chac6n Economic Report of 1803," New Mexico Historical Review 60 (1985): 81-83, quotations on 83, 87. 61. The economic "modernization" of New Mexico has usually been attributed to the influence of the St. Louis-Santa Fe-Chihuahua trade that began in 1821. For a much earlier emergence, see Ross H. Frank, "From Settler to Citizen: Economic De- velopment and Cultural Change in Late Colonial New Mexico, 1750-1820" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1992); for this aspect in the sheep com- merce, see John O. Baxter, Las Carneradas: Sheep Trade in New Mexico, 1700-1860 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987). 62. Janet Lecompte has collected and interpreted most of the primary source mate- rial on this revolt, in Rebellion in Rio Arriba, 1837 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985). Her class-conflict interpretation stressed tensions between ri- cos and pobres and neglects to consider the cultural issues at work. 63. Governor Manuel Armijo, "Diario del Gobierno de la Republica Mexicana," Nov. 30, 1837, translated ibid., 139. 64. For the extensiveness of the 1847 "Taos" Revolt, see U.S. Senate, 56th Con- gress, 1st sess., Document No. 442 (1900), Insurrection against the Military Govern- ment in New Mexico and California, 1847 and 1848; Michael McNierney, ed. and trans., Taos 1847: The Revolt in Contemporary Accounts (Boulder: Johnson Publish- ing Co., 1980); James W. Goodrich, "Revolt at Mora, 1847," New Mexico Historical Review 47 (1972): 49-60. 65. See the Spanish Colonial Census of 1750, Eleanor Olmsted comp., New Mexico State Records Center, 47, 48. 66. See Horvath.

67. Fray Miguel de Menchero claimed in 1744 that the "genizaro Indians … engage in agriculture and are under obligation to go out and explore the country in pursuit of the enemy, which they are doing with great bravery and zeal." See Declaration of Menchero, in Historical Documents, 3: 401. 68. See "Appeal of Bentura Bustamante, Lieutenant of Genizaro Indians," SANM 1, no. 1229, roll 6, frames 323-35, 20 June 1780. 69. "Jose Manrique, draft of a Report for Nemesio Salcedo y Salcedo, Nov. 26, 1808," Pinart Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 70. Lecompte, 36-40, n. 54. 71. Gutierrez, chap. 7-9. 72. Angelina F. Veyna, "Hago, dispongo, y ordeno mi testamento: Reflections of Colonial New Mexican Women" (paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the

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Western History Association, October 1991, Austin, Texas). 73. SANM 1, no. 344, cited in ibid. 74. "Testament of Don Santiago Roibal, 1762," fragment in New Mexico State Records Center, Santa Fe. 75. SANM 2, no. 427, roll 7, frames 1023-25. 76. Gutierrez, 182. 77. Frances S. Quintana, Pobladores: Hispanic Americans of the Ute Frontier (Aztec, N.M., 1991 [originally published as Los Primeros Pobladores: Hispanic Americans of the Ute Frontier (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974)], 206-10.

78. Guti6rrez, 252. 79. As early as 1714, Spanish authorities ordered "married" couples in the Rio Grande Pueblos to establish neolocal households, rather than residing with their parents, a clear attempt to break matrilocal residence patterns and assert colonial control over the institution of marriage. See SANM 2, reel 4, frame 1014, as an ex- ample. 80. Swadesh, 44. 81. Marietta Morrissey, Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification in the Caribbean (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1989), 13-15. See also Bar- bara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). The ambiguous benefits of maternity to women held cap- tive in patrilineal societies is borne out by looking at women under indigenous African systems of captivity and slavery. Among the Margi of Nigeria, for example, social integration of captive-descended children could result in the elevation of mothers, if those children achieved social prominence in trade or warfare. See James H. Vaughan, "Mafakur: A Limbic Institution of the Margi," in Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 85-102. 82. Alan M. Klein, "The Political Economy of Gender: A Nineteenth-Century Plains Indian Case Study," in The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women, ed. Patri- cia Albers and Beatrice Medicine (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), 143-74; for a study of the bison economy, see Flores, 465-85. 83. Veyna, 9. Veyna also notes that "when tools were distributed to the settlers of Santa Cruz de la Cafiada in 1712, only women were allotted rejas." 84. H.P. Mera, The Slave Blanket, General Series Bulletin No. 5 (Santa Fe: New Mexico Laboratory of Anthropology, 1938). 85. See Lansing Bloom, "Early Weaving in New Mexico," New Mexico Historical Re- view 2 (1927): 228-38; Baxter, 60. See also Suzanne Baizerman, "Textile Traditions and Tourist Art: Hispanic Weaving in New Mexico" (Ph.D. diss., University of Min- nesota, St. Paul, 1987), esp. 76-79; 130-31. 86. General Campaign: Report of Governor Velez Cachupin to Conde de Revilla Gigedo, Nov. 27, 1751," in Alfred B. Thomas, The Plains Indians and New Mexico, 1751-1778 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1940), 74. "Juan Jose Lobato to Velez, August 28, 1752," ibid., 114-15. 87. "Report of Governor Velez to Marques de Cruillas, 1762," ibid., 152-53. 88. "Abstract of Report Offered by de Anza, as Written by Pedro Garrido y Durran, Chihuahua, December 21, 1786," in Alfred B. Thomas, Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, Governor of New Mexi- co, 1777-1787 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932), 296; Elizabeth A. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men's Worlds (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 732. 89. Maria Mies, "Social Origins of the Sexual Division of Labor," in Women: The Last Colony, ed. Maria Mies, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Claudia van Werlhof

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(London: Zed Books, 1988), 67-95, 87. 90. See Gregg, 86, 208, 219. 91. The French traders Jean Chapuis and Luis Fueilli were guided to Santa Fe in 1752 by "an Indian woman of the Aa tribe, who had fled to the house of her master [in Santa Fe] four months before and was following the road to her country." See "Velez to Revilla Gigedo, Sept. 18, 1752," in Thomas, Plains Indians and New Mexi- co, 109. 92. See SANM 1, no. 657, "Demanda puesta por Lucia Ortega contra Roque Lovato sobre una Donacion-Ano del 1769," New Mexico State Records Center. 93. See Tykal; "Report of Governor Velez to Marqu6s de Cruillas," in Thomas, The Plains Indians, 151. Velez had asked the Comanche leader Nimiricante of the whereabouts of the women and children seized at Ranchos de Taos in 1760, Nimiri- cante replied that "they might have died, or been traded to the French and Ju- manos." For Jos6 Juliano's problems in San Antonio, see Salcedo to Manrique, 27 July 1809, SANM 2, no. 2239. 94. Author's field notes, 17 Aug. 1990.

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The Southwest Borderlands