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

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COLONY (continued)

Ecclesiastical Administration

The establishment of ecclesiastical headquarters at Santo Domingo, where it remained for most of the rest of the seventeenth century, allowed the organization of the Franciscan administrative structure to operate virtually unchanged throughout the life of colonial New Mexico. The areas that are now New Mexico and northern Arizona were then the Santa Custodia de la Conversión de San Pablo de Nuevo Mexico, the "Holy Custodia of the Conversion of Saint Paul of New Mexico," under the authority of the provincial, or chief administrator, and the directing council of the Provincia de Santo Evangelio de Tampico y Nuevo Mexico, the "Province of the Holy Gospel of Tampico and New Mexico," in Mexico City. The provincial and council selected the custodio, the supervisor or custodian of the custodia of San Pablo. Under the custodio was the difinitorio, a governing committee that aided him in managing the affairs of the custodia. There were usually four members, called the difinitors, on the committee. They were elected every year at the annual meeting of the custodial chapter, at the same time that many other business matters of the custodia were attended to. [64]

The chapter meetings, held usually in August or September at Santo Domingo, or at San José de Giusewa near present Jemez Springs after about 1660, were attended by as many of the Franciscans of the custodia as could make the trip. Frequently no more than the custodio and the difinitors attended. Among other things, the chapter meetings determined at which mission a friar would serve. The first chapter meeting after the arrival of a group of new friars with the triennial supply train usually saw a great deal of activity. New missions were established then, or new friars assigned to already-established missions, while veterans were either continued at their present locations or moved to other missions. [65]

In the field, the general unit of administration was called a misión. The misión was, in this context, an established missionary activity in a given pueblo. Misión activities were of several types. They usually began as conversiones or reducciones, depending on whether the Indians to which the misión was sent were all of a single pueblo (the conversión), or were being gathered, or "reduced," into one pueblo by the missionary (the reducción). [66]

The pueblo apparently became a conversión when one or several major factions in the pueblo agreed to allow the friar a site on which to build a church, and to help with church construction. Usually, the conventos, or mission establishments, in major pueblos became cabeceras, or "head missions," with a resident friar. Church establishments in lesser pueblos in the area normally became visitas, having a small church visited at intervals by the friar from the nearby cabecera. The word "convento" also referred to the friar's residence, built next to the church in the main pueblo. Visitas usually had no convento. This situation was not static, however. Depending on the fortunes of the custodia, some missions became visitas and some visitas became missions. Usually, though, the primary pueblos stayed missions with resident friars, while the status of smaller or more distant pueblos fluctuated. For example, Abó, Quarai, and Tajique became missions and remained so, while Las Humanas began as a mission, but was soon demoted to a visita of Abó. It eventually became a mission again, with a resident friar and a visita of its own at Tabirá. Chililí, on the other hand, began as a mission and was eventually made into a visita of Tajique.

The number of friars in a given convento varied according to the total number available in the custodia and the relative importance of the convento. For example, in the triennium from 1663 to 1666, the convento of La Concepción in the provincial capital of Santa Fe and the headquarters convento at Santo Domingo each had three friars. Seven other conventos had two friars, and sixteen had only a single friar. At missions with more than one friar, at least one was an ordained priest and one was usually a lay brother (a brother who had not taken final vows). The more distant conventos, such as those in the Salinas area, rarely had more than one friar in residence, but even there the situation varied according to the number of friars available and the political climate. On several occasions more than one friar was in residence at one or another of the Salinas missions. [67]

The Revival of the 1650s in Las Salinas

After a vigorous beginning in the late 1620s, the missionary effort in New Mexico fell on difficult times during the 1630s and 1640s. From 1645 to 1655 political disruptions and Indian dissention marked the decade. During the period from 1632 to the early 1650s, the number of friars in the province fell from the authorized level of 66 to a low of about 45. [68]

Beginning in the mid-1650s, however, a new interest in repair and improvement began to appear in the missions of New Mexico. France V. Scholes called this "a general resurgence of missionary activity and zeal that characterized the late 1650's and the 1660's." Viceregal support for Franciscan activities on the New Mexican frontier increased. An immediate effect of the support was to return of the number of friars assigned to New Mexico to 66, the number established by the contract of 1631. This number allowed the reopening of several conventos that had been closed because their missions had been reduced to visitas. One of these was Las Humanas. The vigor of 21 new friars in the province had a number of repercussions, both politically and in terms of construction. One product of the influx of new blood was a renewed interest in building programs in the newly created Salinas Jurisdiction. These included the beginning of construction on a major new church and convento at Las Humanas in 1660, the reconstruction of the visita chapel at Tabirá, and an extensive modification of the convento at Quarai. [69]

Conflicts Between Church and Civil Authority

The structure of the administrative organization of New Mexico and the history of its formation left many opportunities for misunderstanding and even direct conflict between the church and the governor of the province. The transcripts of the trials of Governor López de Mendizábal and Alcalde Mayor Nicolás Aguilar before the Inquisition in Mexico City made it clear that Mendizábal was convinced that he was justified in his actions toward the Franciscans from 1659 to 1662. The controversy turned on a central issue: the limits of "ecclesiastical jurisdiction," the authority of the missionaries to force the Indians to comply with the strictures of Catholicism. [70]

In New Mexico, the Franciscans interpreted their rights to ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Indians in physical terms. They could demand physical labor from the Indians for farming, ranching, construction, and the needs of the convento without paying them. Furthermore, the friars could mete physical punishment for violations of the laws of behavior they had imposed on the Indians. For example, on one occasion the missionary at Quarai ordered that a woman of that pueblo be given four lashes for adultery. [71]

The governor, on the other hand, saw the Indians as subject to civil law, not ecclesiastical. At one point in his trial, for example, López de Mendizábal was accused of saying that "the religious who administered [the Indians] could not beat them or punish them for their faults; and that he had no other function than to say mass for them and administer to them the holy sacraments; and that they, as mere parishoners, had no obligation to obey the religious in anything . . . ." In an attempt to define the limits of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the missions, Mendizábal had initiated an inquiry to determine under what authority the custodio "exercised jurisdiction against seculars." [72]

In Mendizábal's view, the Indians were seculars or parishoners, and the church had no physical authority over them. This meant that the church should pay the Indians for labor required of them, and if the friar found that an Indian was violating a law of behavior, he could not himself have the Indian punished, but could only turn him over to civil authority for judgement and possible punishment. Since the church wished to punish many violations that the state did not consider subject to punishment by law, such as missing mass or confession, the church refused to accept the governor's position. The Franciscans insisted that the Indians were still as children under their control as parents, and therefore they had the right of any parent to punish and to command.

The views of the two parties depended ultimately on their views of the legal status of the Indian pueblos. The church occupied an ambiguous position. By 1640, all pueblos with missions or visitas had legally become doctrinas, apparently on the decision of the government of New Spain and in spite of the opposition of the church. The term "doctrina" usually indicated that the pueblo was capable of handling its own internal affairs; that is, it had an Indian alcalde who was the direct equivalent of the Spanish alcalde of the area. It meant that the friar was responsible only for the spiritual welfare and training of the Indians, not every aspect of their lives, as was the case when the pueblo was still only a conversión. During this earlier phase of conversion, the missionary "wanted his Indian charges in a wholly segregated community, one free of the taint of worldly civilians or Spanish troops." [73] In reality, of course, both were always present in the form of encomenderos. When advanced to the status of doctrina, a pueblo theoretically would come under the authority of the bishop responsible for the area, would begin to pay taxes to the crown and tithes to the bishop, and would be subject to civil law like any other village. However, in the late 1630s the viceroy determined that: 1) the pueblos were indeed doctrinas because of their advancement as self-administered, Christian villages; but 2) the pueblos could not be required to pay taxes because they already paid tribute to the encomendero; 3) no bishop should be placed in authority over New Mexico because it was too far from the nearest center of episcopal authority and because spiritual guidance was already present in the form of the Franciscan missionary system; and 4) the pueblos could not be required to pay tithes because they did not actually control the products of the fields on which tithes would be levied, [74] and further, they paid tribute to the encomenderos, who then paid tithes on that tribute to the Franciscans, who supervised much of the planting and herding of the pueblo in the first place. [75] Needless to say, this hopelessly complicated situation had no simple legal resolution satisfactory to both the Franciscans and the governor.

The church attempted to retain the authority and benefits they possessed over the pueblos as conversiones, while the state attempted to exercise some of the responsibilities and rights it customarily held for doctrinas. The trouble was that New Mexico came into existence at the end of the sixteenth century, while the laws allowing encomienda were still in force. Later, during the seventeenth century, the laws governing encomienda and the status of conquered Indians were being reevaluated. The very base of the conflict rested on the ambiguity of the laws themselves. In other words, both factions were equally right, or wrong, and neither made much effort to compromise or conciliate. Consequently, the Indians were treated to the spectacle of their two dominating authorities fighting each other with no sign of "Christian" charity or respect. It was the Indians themselves, the only major natural resource in New Mexico, who paid the costs for both sides of the conflict. Eventually, the Indians demanded repayment, in the form of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.