SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COLONY (continued)

The Private Sector: Estancias and Encomiendas

Estancias

As part of the advancement of the province of New Mexico, the governor encouraged the controlled development of empty land by the colonists. The number of privately-owned estancias increased rapidly during the mid-1600s. Most were in the valleys of the Rio Grande and its tributaries between San Juan Pueblo on the north and Socorro Pueblo on the south. By 1640 about eleven privately-owned estancias and twenty-five mission-owned estancias had been established along this part of the river. By the 1660s there were nearly sixty mission-owned estancias. Of these, forty-six stood between Sandía and Isleta Pueblos, where only fourteen had been in 1640. [53] The number of private estancias in this area in the 1660s is presently unknown, but could have increased by the same proportion. In 1665 the European population of New Mexico numbered more than two thousand people. A little more than a hundred of these lived in Santa Fe--most lived on estancias and in smaller settlements near major pueblos. [54]

Privately owned ranches or estancias made use of the land and water, and could legally use Indian labor only on a daily-wage basis, an arrangement called repartimiento. They had no direct claim on the products of nearby pueblos except by purchase, and technically could not encroach within 3 leagues (about 9 miles) of them. [55] This regulation was frequently ignored, and it may be that the governor of New Mexico had established a regulation allowing civil settlement as close as one league (about 2.6 miles) from a pueblo. One of the earliest references to an estancia in the Salinas area illustrates this situation. In 1633, while serving as the missionary at Quarai, Fray Estévan de Perea wrote that the governor allowed colonists to set up farms and ranches on the fields of the Indians. In some cases he even permitted encroachment on land used by the conventos. For example, a colonist had established a ranch near Quarai. He built corrals and his residence on the cotton fields shared jointly by the "three neighboring pueblos," and ran his cattle and sheep in the area. [56] The "three neighboring pueblos" were probably Quarai, Tajique, and Chililí. Perea's letter may refer to the founding of the ranch of don Luis Martín Serrano or his wife, Doña Catharina de Zalazar, perhaps where the town of Manzano is now located. [56]

Most historical studies have left the reader with the impression that, other than the pueblos with their missions, the Salinas area was empty. This is not the case. Mission records mention at least six estancias between Quarai and Chililí, those of Captain Leiba, Nicolás de Aguilar, Alonso Barba, two branches of the Nieto family, and Doña Zalazar. There were undoubtedly other families making use of the rich farmland and dependable water of the streams and springs along the eastern slopes of the Manzano Mountains. As yet, no ranchers are known in the areas around Abó and Las Humanas. It is likely that some Spanish settlers homesteaded in the district of Abó, but the lack of water in the territory around Las Humanas probably prevented their settling there. [58]

The Encomienda

The rights to the tribute collected from the "conquered" pueblos were assigned by the governor, as the agent of the king, to those persons who had entered into an agreement with the provincial government to provide military service in return for those rights. The system of paying for military service with the goods produced by a specific pueblo was called "encomienda."

Encomienda was derived from earlier service arrangements common in Spain during the Reconquest. The government of New Spain established the practice soon after the conquest of Mexico in 1521. In the early days of the encomienda in Mexico, labor could be substituted for tribute by the encomendero, but eventually the abuses of the system became so great that king Carlos I ruled against tribute by labor. His "New Laws" of 1542 caused a tumult of opposition from most authorities, including the missionaries, in New Spain, leading the king to moderate the laws. The end result was a set of ambivalent regulations controlling Indian tribute labor. These regulations fixed the relationship between the Spanish and the pueblos of New Mexico. [59]

In New Mexico, the letter of the law permitted encomenderos to take tribute only in the form of goods such as blankets, hides, and corn. Requiring tribute in the form of labor was illegal. A separate legal provision called repartimiento, however, allowed the governor, the missionaries, and the encomenderos to force the Indians to work for them, so long as the Indians were compensated for their time. Frequently, however, such compensation never occurred. Repartimiento became a point of contention between the governor and the missionaries during the severe church-state conflicts of the 1660s. The governor claimed that the Franciscans should compensate the Indians for the work they did for the missions, while the missionaries insisted that the work was part of the process of conversion, so that the Indians required no pay.

Encomenderos were persons of influence in the economic structure of New Mexico, because they had some control over one of the major sources of wealth in the province: the Indian pueblos. Because the Franciscans also had some control of this resource, the opportunities for conflict between encomenderos and Franciscans were numerous. However, both groups were dependent on the pueblos for their economic well-being and generally tended toward a wary co-existence.

The encomienda system had stabilized in New Mexico by the 1630s. The governor had established a limit of thirty-five on the number of encomiendas. Because the privilege could be handed down to heirs for three generations, the tributes of a given pueblo were apparently soon divided among two or more persons. [60] Tribute was usually figured as one manta, or blanket, about fifty inches square, and one fanega of corn, or about 1.6 bushels, [61] per household of the Pueblo. This was calculated to have a value of ten reales. Fray Juan de Prada remarked in 1638 that the practice of assessing tribute by house rather than by family led to a reduced income for encomenderos because three or four families lived in each house. [62]

Encomenderos, because of their relative wealth, frequently owned ranches and farms in the area of their encomienda. Undoubtedly there were several estancias operated by encomenderos in the Salinas jurisdiction. The majority of estancias, however, were owned by ordinary settlers with no other source of subsistence. These settlers formed a reservoir from which encomenderos could draw manpower to create the military forces they had agreed to supply. A dependency system was created, where the average settler augmented his living from his own estancia with support from an encomendero. In return for this the estanciero was available for military service under the encomendero as needed.

Only a few of the encomenderos of the Salinas pueblos are known. These date from the period from 1660 to 1665, when the majority of the available documents dealing with Salinas were written. Francisco and Cristobal de Anaya Almazán owned the encomienda of Quarai in 1662. Hernando and Miguel de Hinojos, possibly father and son, owned Las Humanas. After them, the encomienda from Las Humanas divided among Alonso Rodriguez Cisneros, Sebastian Gonzales Bernal and his son Juan Gonzales Bernal. In 1662, Francisco Gomez Robledo held one-half of the encomienda of Abó. [63]