I tried getting into the site,
sometimes I can get in, sometimes I can't. Anyway here, in verbose, is
what I was remembering - unfortunately, my memory was inaccurate - the term
coyote refers to meztizo and Indian.
Esperanza
RACIAL MIXTURE IN COLONIAL NEW
MEXICO
Like California and Texas, the
Spanish-speaking population of New Mexico was of diverse racial origins.
In the account below historian J. Manuel Espinosa, describes the emergence of
that population and one example of its consequence, the role of blacks and
mulattos in the famous Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1696
Among
the colonists, those of predominately Spanish blood dominated the patterns of
social life and customs. In the beginning there was clearly a considerable
number of Spanish-born citizens, with a handful of non-Spanish Europeans.
By 1680 most of the population had been born in the province itself. Over
the years, blood mixture was inevitable in an isolated community which lived as
neighbors among sedentary Indians who outnumbered them and on whom they were
dependent economically. Moreover, many of the first colonists were
themselves mestizos. The colonists, therefore, although a homogeneous
group, were made up of Spanish-born Spaniards, American-born Spaniards,
mestizos, and a variety of ethnic mixtures. The servants, muleteers, farm
and ranch hands, and menial workers were mestizos, New Mexican and Mexican
Indians, Negroes, mulattoes, and a mixture of those in varying degrees of racial
predominance. There was a high proportion of lower-class elements and even
some fugitives from justice.
With
the existence of a large proportion of persons of mixed blood, some obtained
prominence who were referred to as mulato pardo, pardo,
mestizo-amulatado, or mulato, including captains in the Spanish
military forces and at least one alcalde mayor. From the
mid-seventeenth century on there were Pueblo Indian leaders who were mestizos,
mulattos, coyotes (mixture of Indian and mestizo), and lobos
(mixture of Negro and Indian) and there were ladinos among them who were
quite proficient in speaking, reading, and writing in the Spanish
language. There were some local admixtures across the whole
spectrum. In general, however, social distinctions were simpler than those
in New Spain. Certainly no difference was made between Spaniards and
creoles, and the position of mestizo in New Mexico was apparently better than in
the more densely settled areas of New Spain.
* *
*
Pueblo
Indian medicine men, who were unwilling to give up their traditional influence,
backed by many of the Pueblo Indian chiefs and warriors, were always a threat to
the authority of the friars at the missions by stirring up trouble among
peaceful mission converts. Some of the most troublesome were a small group
of renegades of racial mixture, including mistreated mulattoes and Negroes,
originally from New Spain, who had gone to New Mexico from areas north of Mexico
City in the hope of escaping from a life doomed to lowly servitude and who had
taken up residence with the Indians....
J. Manual Espinosa, ed.,
The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1696 and the
Franciscan Missions in New Mexico: Letters of the Missionaries and Related
Documents
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), pp. 11-13,
24-25.
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