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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