coyota(a)

[gmccrary@...]

For Spanish terms in New Mexico church records go to:
http://www.genealogybranches.com/valencia/wordlist.html

Mestizo - mixture of Spanish & Mexican Indian
Coyote - mixture of Indian & Mestizo (may also denote a mixture of 
Spanish & New Mexican Indian)

So in New Mexico a Coyota(e) could be a person with blood 
mixture of half Spanish and half mestiza.  A mestiza is half Spanish 
and half Indian.  So that would be 3/4 Spanish and 1/4 Indian.   As  
always  it depended on the Priest's judgment.

* * * * * *
In Mexico, 
>From an email to me from John Schmal:
"I want to also tell you that there is a great degree of imprecision 
with priests classifying people according to color, dress, language, 
social status, customs, or according to their own perceptions and 
biases.  Thus, one priests' coyote may be another priest's lobo or 
another priest's mestizo or another priests's mulato libre...in fact, in 
the book I recently co authored with Donna Morales we discussed 
this problem and illustrated it.....these classifications cannot be 
taken too literally....Pedro Gabriel Valenzuela was born in Sonora 
in 1751 as a mulato, married in the 1770s as a mestizo, and in the 
1790 California census as español, primarily because had become 
a soldier, a rank earning respect in colonial Mexico, even if you 
were of "mixed origins."

So, always use caution...In our book, we showed the marriage of 
two Indians from Lagos de Moreno in the 1770s and then of the 
girl's parents in the 1740s, but the parents were two mulatos...two 
mulatos begat an Indian girl???? "

* * * * * *

Gloria