CHAPTER IV:
55While the life-way of the Indians of Tchoowaka had altered greatly since the coming of the white man in 1520, these aborigines still lived a free and politically independent life until their integration into the Jesuit mission system on the Spanish frontier.
The transition from independence to subjugation was a fairly gradual one, since the missionary approach to Tchoowaka was a time-consuming process and the conversion of the upper Santa Cruz River Valley natives was a cumulative shift rather than an abrupt breaking with the past.
The Christianization of the northern Pimans began in the middle seventeenth century as outlined in the previous chapter, starting with visits of northern Pimans to Jesuit missions among the Opatas. The opening move in Spanish assumption of sovereignty over the northern Pimans was the inauguration of a mission program aimed specifically at converting the northern Pimans. This beginning gambit in the great game of Spanish colonial expansion occurred when Father Eusebio Francisco Kino arrived at a southeastern ranchería of northern Pimans called Bamotze by its Opata-speaking neighbors or Cosari by its own Pimans, on March 13, 1687 (Bolton 1948:I:110).
56Before the mission of Our Lady of Sorrows was even established, Kino went off seeking additional concentrations of northern Pimans large enough to justify more missions (ibid., I:111). So swiftly did the local Jesuit organization move that four more missionary priests were assigned to the northern Piman project in January of 1689. The line of advance was westward across the southern tier of northern Piman settlement along the Magdalena and Altar Rivers. One priest went to the San Ignacio-Magdalena-Tupo area, on the Magdalena River; a second went farther west to the TubutamaOquitoa region of the Altar River, and a third went northwest to the Saric-Tucubabia highlands in the headwaters of those two streams. The fourth priest was assigned to the Cocóspera-San Lazaro-Santa María area north of the San Miguel River head-waters where Kino's visita called Remedios was located (ibid., I:116). Cocóspera lay in the highlands where the drainages divided, and the two visitas were on the northern Santa Cruz River drainage side of the divide which flowed northward past Tchoowaka. By 1699, then, Christian mission outposts of Spanish empire had been set up on the very doorstep of the upper Santa Cruz River Valley settlement complex which included the ranchería called Tchoowaka. Both the Saric and Cocóspera missions aimed at converting northern Pimans inhabiting the settlement complexes adjacent to that in the upper Santa Cruz River Valley. Inevitably the activities of the missionaries there tended to seep northward into the vicinity of Tchoowaka.
57Just two years later direct missionization of the upper Santa Cruz River Valley natives began with a personal visit from Kino and Father Visitor Juan María Salvatierra. Kino did not differentiate Tchoowaka from Tchookum kavolik at that time (ibid., I:119). Another Jesuit was installed at Cocóspera Mission at the end of this tour (ibid., I:120).
In the fall of 1694 another mission was added to the southern tier when Father Francisco Xavier Saeta went to Caborca (ibid., I:131), but the natives terminated his mission with his life on April 2,1695 (ibid., I:141-142) shortly after rebelling at Tubutama and putting the Jesuit there to flight (ibid., I:141). The harsh repressive measures of the frontier soldiery roused the Indians to further retaliation forcing abandonment of the San Ignacio-MagdalenaImuris mission (ibid., I:145). Its missionary administered the Cosari station while Kino went to the City of Mexico seeking reinforcements (ibid., I:161). In the spring of 1697 another missionary arrived to administer the Cocóspera outpost (ibid., I:166) when Kino passed through the upper Santa Cruz River Valley again (ibid., I:165). He traveled past Tchoowaka at the end of November of that year also (ibid., I:174), but the nearest mission at Cocóspera was burned by enemy Indians in February of 1698 and abandoned for a time (ibid., I:176).
This setback did not deter Kino from continuing his personal entries into the north country, and toward the end of October in 1699 he once again passed by Tchoowaka without mentioning it (ibid., I:204), sallying out again in April of 1700 through the upper Santa Cruz River Valley (ibid., I:233-234). Returning in a rush early in May, Kino hardly paused in the upper Santa Cruz Valley (ibid., I:259), and in April of 1701 he did not stop at all on his way back to his mision from explorations on the Colorado River (ibid., I:292).
Missionary reinforcements finally arrived in the north Piman country in 1701, when the Jesuits were able to send a priest to Caborca and Tubutama again, renewing the southern tier of missions. At the same time the Cocóspera highlands were bypassed to send missionaries directly into the Santa Cruz River Valley where Tchoowaka was located. One priest leapfrogged the upper valley to go to St. Francis Xavier at Bac, and the other undertook the conversion of the Indians at Guebavi, Tumacácori and Bacoancos in the upper valley (Bolton 1948:I:303). Father Juan de San Martin of the new Guebavi mission undoubtedly met the natives of Tchoowaka during his conversion attempts in the southern Santa Cruz River Valley. The Spanish frontier reached Tubac in 1701 and direct attempts to further alter the life-ways of the Tchoowaka Indians began.
The first Guebavi mission did not endure, however, for by the beginning of November of that same year Father San Martin had fallen ill and left his post for treatment (ibid., 1:307) when Kino traveled through the valley again headed northwest.
Missionaries were not the only Europeans the upper Santa Cruz River Valley Indians saw in their homeland during this 59period. The southern Athapascans let through the New Mexican barrier by the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 almost a generation earlier were becoming a considerable threat to the eastern marches of the north Piman country by the turn of the century. Spanish army officers were turning from their uneasy attempts to impress northern Pimans for mine labor during the 1600's to eager courting of the north Piman warriors as allies against the new southern Athapascan threat.
In April of 1701 the alcalde mayor-the highest civil official-of Sonora was resting at Guebavi when he wrote to Kino. He led an expedition of soldiery and citizens from the provincial capital at San Juan far to the south, and was happy to see all the warriors coming to visit him at Guebavi carrying scalp-locks. The Spaniards and Pimans were returning from defeating enemy Indians, to the great glee of the Spanish commander (ibid., I:293). The troop commandant had slaughtered some of Kino's livestock for food because he had started out too fast to collect adequate supplies. Since Guebavi and Bacoancos supplied sheep and cattle for the troops and Indian auxiliaries (ibid., I:296), it is clear that the Spanish force had visited the upper Santa Cruz River Valley before going into Apache country. Very likely the Tchoowaka Indians got a good look at Spanish miners and soldiers, and probably many of them joined the expedition. Kino had meanwhile added the reoccupied ranchería at Cocóspera to his own mission (ibid., I:378). Building programs at Cocóspera and Remedios absorbed much of Kino's energy for several years, 60but by April of 1706 he was ready to initiate construction of mission facilities farther north toward Tchoowaka at San Lazaro and Santa María on the Santa Cruz River head-waters (ibid., II:172).
Kino's traveling slacked off during his final years, leaving the upper Santa Cruz River Valley Pimans without much sight of a missionary, as the War of the Spanish Succession absorbed the energies of the central government as well as its funds, preventing the dispatch of new missionaries. After Kino's death in 1711, his fellow pioneer Joseph Agustín de Campos renewed his contacts with the northern natives. Campos had been at the San Ignacio-Magdalena-Imuris mission since 1693 (Libro de Entierros deste Pueblo de San Ygn.o nro P.e de la Pimería en.que tanbiem se ponen los del Pueblo de Sn Joseph de Hímuri) but in contrast to Kino he apparently preferred to carry out a thorough conversion of his own mission Indians before undertaking far-ranging travels. Nor was he the publicist Kino had been. By 1712 he had penetrated as far west as Tubutama (Libro de Entierros de Santa María Magdalena de 1702, p. 16), and in 1715 he went to the Gulf of California with Father Luís Velarde of Cosari (Libro de Entierros deste Pueblo de San Ygnacio...de 1697, f. 10). In 1720 he visited the western settlements to baptize children (Libro de Bautismos del Partido de San Ygnacio de Caburica, p. 3), and in the spring of 1722 he undertook a similar visitation north into the Santa Cruz River Valley, stopping at both Guebavi and Tumacácori (ibid., p, 20-22). Just two years 61later Campos passed through the upper valley again, offering comfort to the Indians during a smallpox epidemic (ibid., p. 44).
It was Father Campos who finally placed the small settlement at Tchoowaka on the pages of history when he stopped there on April 16, 1726, to take a siesta. He noted the place because he was cajoled into baptizing a nursing infant during his rest period (ibid., p. 60).
Since Campos had already been thirty-three years at his mission when he visited Tubac in 1726, his reduced activity in later years is quite understandable. Apparently Tubac remained unvisited by him or any other priest until new Jesuit forces arrived from Europe in 1731.
A. Tchoowaka becomes a Visitia
The priests who were sent to the northern missions in 1731 were recruits from the German provinces who spent about a year in established missions learning something of the Piman language before embarking on their independent careers. In 1732 the mission frontier finally encompassed the upper Santa Cruz River Valley Piman settlements, and permanent European settlement north of the present international boundary line in modern Arizona began-to be interrupted only briefly once more. The three new missionaries were sent into the Santa Cruz drainage in a long thrust northward. Father 62Ignacio Xavier Keller was stationed at Santa María Suamca near the source of the stream, with all the San Pedro River Valley rancherías in his charge (Hammond 1929:229, 231).
Next downstream and the first of the trio of missionaries installed in his new post was Father Juan Baptista Grazhofer, who was placed in charge of the Indians of Guebavi and its visitas on May 4, 1732 (ibid., p. 230). Thus the mission era opened at Tchoowaka in earnest. Among the visitas attached to the Mission of the Holy Angels Gabriel and Rafael of Guebavi was a place recorded as Jamac located three leagues north of Guebavi. Jamac is clearly a mistranscription of Tuvac. The other visitation stations of Guebavi were Sonoita in the uplands to the east, Aribaca to the west, and Tumacácori in the valley between Tubac and the mission proper (ibid., p. 229).
The third Jesuit, Father Phelipe Segesser, took on the task of converting the Pimans of Bac and the down-river rancherías of Tucson, San Agustín and Santa Catarina (ibid., p. 229-230).
The difficulty Europeans frequently experienced in adjusting physiologically-and probably psychologically-to lonely life grossly outnumbered by aborigines of a totally different cultural tradition hampered Father Grazhofer just as it had the majority of the Jesuits posted to the northern Piman establishments during Kino's time. Grazhofer died little over a year after arriving at Guebavi (Bancroft 1884:I:524). 63Evidently Father Segesser undertook to administer both missions during Grazhofer's illness, since he considered himself on a visit to his own parishioners at Tubac when he found that settlement abandoned and burned and its people relocated (Treutlein 1945:158).
In 1733 the Swiss Jesuit Gaspar Stiger replaced Segesser at Bac (Bancroft 1BB4:I:524). Segesser moved to Guebavi to carry on the work of the deceased Grazhofer, but within a few months he, too, fell victim to the local bacteria. Carried out to the old Eudeve mission at Cucurpe in a sedan chair carried by Indians and Spaniards including his fellow priest Keller, Segesser recovered after five months of sickness. Although Segesser had enjoyed perfect health at Bac, three months of life at Guebavi were enough to put him out of commission again, and Captain Juan Bautista de Anza (the elder) removed Segesser to his fort where his wife nursed the ailing Jesuit back to complete health with her home remedies (Treutlein 1945:142). At that point,the Jesuit Father-Visitor decided that Segesser had had enough of the northern Piman country and packed him off to the Lower Pima Mission of St. Francis Borgia of Tecoripa in 1734 (ibid., p. 143).
The bacteria of Guebavi delayed the final reckoning of the Tubac and neighboring Indians with the Jesuit mission system for a few years. Yet they were not tough enough to bring to earth the very resilient priest at Santa María, the same Keller who had been the first of the German priests taken 64ill in Sonora (Hammond 1929:229) but the first to recover. The indefatigable Keller relieved Jesuit journeys into the heathen north country, going to the Gila River in 1736 (Bancroft 1884:I:525). He stopped en route to baptize three children at the ranchería of Tuvag as his Germanic-trained ear heard the place name. It is interesting to note that Keller considered the mother of one of these children as a Christian, but not the father. This Juana Vigtoat became godmother of another of the children baptized (Libro de Baptismos de los Pueblos de S.ta María....desde 1732, p. 17).
Energetic Father Keller did not need the excuse of a long trip to bring the Indians living in the upper Santa Cruz River Valley under the disciplined regime of Christian mission life. On the twentyeighth of January of 1738 he returned to Tuvag where he baptized two more children of unconverted parents (ibid., p. 28), opening the wedge of Christianity there.
It was possibly Keller who established the first European settlers at Tubac in the final years of this decade as supervisors on a mission farm operated there as part of the little Jesuit empire on the Sonoran frontier. This economic outpost may have been founded in 1739 by the new missionary priest who came to Holy Angels Mission at Guebavi (Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libro de Casamientos p. 9).
While neither the Suamca nor Guebavi mission headquarters were at Tubac, the Indians there were placed in nearly the same situation as their relatives at the missions proper. Once the mission farm was established at Tubac, Spanish overseers lived at the Indian ranchería with their families. Whatever rigors of mission life the Tubac Indians escaped because no missionary priest resided among them, they still suffered tremendous adjustment to accommodate the Spanish supervisors who did live among them.
The Tubac and other northern Piman Indians were actually considerably better off under mission rule than they would have been under the alternative forms of frontier labor assignment and control. The knowledge of this fact-if and when they stopped to think about it-did little to make the harsh mission regime any easier to bear.
B. Forms of Indian Labor On the Sonoran Frontier of New Spain
The frontier of New Spain in Sonora, particularly in northern Piman territory where the effective military frontier arrived in 1752 and remained stalled until United States 66sovereignty in 1854, had in many respects a different social milieu than the earlier frontiers farther south in Mexico. The original frontier was characterized by a very small European population, almost entirely male, holding in subjugation millions of civilized Indians in what amounted to a substitution of Spanish for Aztec, Zapotec, Tarascan or other native overlords. The commonality of Indians was just as blatantly exploited by its Spanish conquerors as it had been before. The difference lay merely in the goals of exploitation. Aztecs required tribute in foodstuffs, cloth, bright feathers, gold and such, plus bodies suitable for sacrifice to the gods (Simpson 1950:viii), while the Spaniards continued the extraction of food, cloth and handicrafts while substituting human sacrifices to the secular god of gold for the more direct Indian practices. Ambitious Spaniards achieved upward social mobility in a dying feudal system at home by seizing control of a metallically richer feudal system overseas.
In order to regularize and legalize conqueror-subject relations in the New World, the Spanish crown and conquerors evolved a number of special social institutions. These ranged from the identical "peculiar institution" of the pre-War of the Rebellion South in the United States through a considerable spectrum of less overt forms of forced labor and involuntary servitude.
The fundamental social institution devised for regulating the relationship between a specific conqueror and subjugated 67Indians was known as encomienda. This consisted originally of a crown delegation of its power to collect tribute and use personal services of vassals (ibid., xiii), often a recognition of conquest after the fact. A more severe form of apportioning out Indian labor was repartimiento or mita. This was impressment of a number of Indians for labor for public purposes or in the mines (ibid., p. 10). For the Spaniards cared not one whit about working hours, wages (which is to say an adequate or inadequate food intake to maintain life), mine safety regulations and such-like later inventions of north Europeans. They were interested in one variable only: the amount of saleable metal produced by the miners.
These institutions actually represented attempts by higher authority to at least formalize existing conqueror-conquered relationships, and to ameliorate to some extent the worst abuses to which Indians were subjected (ibid., p. 14). They were in fact thin disguises for outright human slavery (ibid., p. 37), which also existed.
Human slavery was a Spanish institution inherited from Roman and perhaps earlier times, and kept very much alive by seven hundred years of constant warfare with the Moors which lasted into the period of exploding Spanish colonialism in the New World. The last Islamic stronghold in Peninsular Spain did not surrender until the same year Columbus discovered the Western Hemisphere. It had taken the Spaniards over seven hundred years just to win back their homeland from 68Islamic invaders. It was a war as bitter as long, both sides enthusiastically taking prisoners throughout the struggle. Since such captives were believers in a different and antithetical religious faith, the obvious thing to do them was to make them into slaves-chattels without any rights whatsoever and the duty of working their heads off for their masters.
Seven hundred years of habit is not easily discarded, so when the Spaniards reached the New World they continued to make slaves of captives taken in "legitimate" warfare, or "rebel" Indians (Simpson 1950:3) such as Admiral Christopher Columbus consigned to Spain for sale as slaves in 1495. At the same time the Spaniards continued making slaves of Moors captured in campaigns which were launched in North Africa once the Spanish Peninsula was firmly in Christian hands.
To some extent the encomienda and repartimiento systems in the Indian Hemisphere represented malaise of Spanish conscience after the decimation of the Caribbean Island populations, and the ethic pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church since the bulk of the Mexican Indians had not been captured in open, "legitimate" warfare. Having been subjugated by conquest of previous overlords or having voluntarily joined the Spanish cause, they could not in good conscience be treated simply as slaves.
On the other hand, the constant expansion of the area of Spanish sovereignty in New Spain afforded significant 6 9opportunities for taking slaves in open and legitimate warfare when frontier tribes resisted conquest. The overt slave raiding expedition of Nuño de Guzman and his followers in 1529-1531 could be rationalized if not condoned.
How much experience with this sort of extra-legal slave-raiding the northern Pimans had had by the time Jesuit missionaries reached their territory cannot be told in the absence of documentation. Slave-raiders, aside from being frequently illiterate and incapable of producing records, were sufficiently aware of their untenable ethical and moral position that they very carefully kept no records.
That the Northern Piman Indians had had some experience with slave raiding and forced labor in the mines is indicated in their behavior toward Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, the founder of the first northern Piman mission. When he tried to interest some Indians north of his mission in forming a visitation station, they refused. They as much as accused the Jesuit of being an advance-man for the mine operators seeking new labor. They had heard, they told him, that he carried a cedula from the king exempting the northern Piman converts from repartimiento. They did not believe him, they said, because if he had one he would have shown it to the civil officer in charge of the mine camp nearest them, Bacanuche (Bolton 1948:I:114).
This behavior on the part of the Indians is reasonable only in terms of their having been subjected to forced labor 70by the officials at Bacanuche, which was north of Kino's mission station and to the east. Moreover, it implies that the Indians had had considerable contact with Spaniards long before Kino arrived in order for them to have gained a clear grasp of the governmental structure in the mining settlements, the relative ineffectiveness of missionaries in opposing greedy miners backed by equally greedy poor officials after their fortunes, and the overriding authority of a royal edict.
As a matter of fact, Father Kino did carry the king's cedula exempting Indians newly reduced to mission life from forced labor for twenty years (ibid., I:107-109). So Kino hastened to Bacanuche with the royal edict to display it before the top official there and secure his ceremonial obedience to the sovereign resolution of His Majesty (ibid., I:114).
This royal protection over newly missionized Indians without a doubt played a very important part in the rapid acceptance of missions by the northern Pimans and their whole-hearted cooperation with Spanish frontier officials and even settlers.
After Kino's arrival with the royal edict in 1687 the energies of Spanish slave-hunters on the Sonoran frontier had to be directed elsewhere than against the northern Pimans yet the frontier was effectively stalled in the southern reaches of northern Piman country. In this situation, Spaniards 71were still able to find a source of Indian slaves to perform domestic and mine labor. In fact, they found two major sources. One was the cutting edge of the southern Athapascan advance into the population vacuum in southern New Mexico and northeastern Sonora. The Spaniards maintained a state of conflict with the Apaches for a century on this frontier, ensuring that "legitimate" warfare was usually going on somewhere on the frontier so war captives could be taken for conversion into slaves after the battle. The other source of Indian slaves was the number of Yuman-speaking tribes beyond Piman territory to the west and north who were aligned together in opposition to a Piman-Yuman military alliance friendly to the Spaniards. The enemy Yumans periodically suffered raids by the friendly Yumans who took captives-especially young women and children-whom they sold to the Pimans who then sold them to the Spaniards (Dobyns, Ezell, Jones & Ezell 1957). Since these captives had been taken in legitimate warfare, they were bonafide slaves, even though the Spaniards merely purchased them.
C. The Tubaca Mission Farm
The mission farm established at Tubaca in the late 1730's seems to have had a fairly large Spanish population during its earlier years. On St. Valentine's day in 1740 two couples were married by the priest at Guebavi who were identified as vecinos of Tubaca (Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libro 72de Casamientos, p. 9). Spaniards generally used this term vecino in much the same sense that United States pioneers employed the term "citizen"-that is, a "white man" with rights of self-government, as distinguished from Indians, colored men, or Chinese or other members of lesser races whose inferior caste was usually denoted with a specific identifying term denoting a member of subject group. Vecino will be translated as "citizen" throughout this report.
The fact that four unmarried Spaniards of marriageable age lived at Tubac in 1740 indicates that there was a sizeable Spanish population there to overawe the natives and change their heathen ways. None of the four newlyweds had the same surname, so at least four separate families were living at Tubac at that time.
One of the Spanish couples married early in 1740 proceeded to have a son who was baptized on November 12, 1741 (ibid., Libro de Bautismos, p. 6).
The first Spanish overseer of this mission plantation was very likely Francisco de Ortega, Luís Villela, or Roque Durán (ibid., Libro de Casamien-tos, p. 9). Miguel de Valenzuela may also have been an early worker there (ibid., Libro de Bautismos, p. 6). A decade later the Spanish settlement at the Tubac ranch was reduced to one family, that of ranch foreman Juan de Figueroa (Ignacio Oct. 15, 1754:77v).
Being close to Guebavi, the Tubac mission ranch was often visited by additional Spanish overseers on the mission staff.
73D. Spanish-Style Native Government
Spaniards, in common with most colonial rulers, had difficulty in conceiving Indian self-government as genuine government (Simpson 1950:46) largely because they could not envision any form of government save their own. Therefore they attempted to remake native government in the Spanish image or an idealized version thereof.
Any well-run Indian mission required native officials to convey the commands and ideas of the missionaries to the general populace (Bolton 1939:144-145). Therefore the people of Tubac acquired a mador at least as early as 1743 (Libro de Baptismos de los Pueblos de Santa María...desde 1732, p. 34).
Any properly run native settlement in a Spanish colony legally should possess a governor. Sure enough, an Indian named Joseph was "Governor" of Tubac early in January of 1748. Since he had a son baptized at that time (Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libro de Bautismos p. 83) he was probably not a very aged man. This Joseph was, in fact a redoubtable warrior very zealous in his pursuit of enemy Indians. So bitter against Apaches was Joseph that he defied the Jesuit missionary at Guebavi who forbade his accompanying an expedition against the Apaches in the Chiricahua Mountains. He fought with the great north-Piman leader Luís Oacppicagigua on this campaign, and suffered the consequences (Oacpicagigua Mar. 24, 1752:191).
74From the point of view of Spanish military officials on the frontier, one of the main purposes of sanctioning native officials was to facilitate raising levies of native auxiliaries to campaign against hostile Indians. The goals of missionary and administrator thus clashed and the church-state conflict between rival Spanish factions caught the northern Pimans between two powerful forces. Missionaries in New Spain enjoyed far more administrative power than missionaries ordinarily hold today. Governor Joseph very likely went off to fight Apaches in late 1748 when Spanish military authorities raised 300 Pimas and as many Opatas to fight Apaches during November and December. The net result of the great expedition was the death of a few enemy Indians and the capture of ten (Venegas 1759:II:208). Clearly Luís Oacpicagigua and Governor Joseph only obeyed orders when they departed on this campaign, and what got Joseph in trouble with the Jesuit priest was the latter's stiff-necked refusal to acknowledge civil authority over more-or less missionized Indians. This left Joseph in an untenable, and to him inexplicable, position between weak civil authorities and insubordinate missionaries.
In 1751, after Joseph was out of office, he participated in another campaign against the Apaches (Oacpicagigua, Mar. 24, 1752:191v).
A well run Indian community also had a captain who was generally a converted native war chief. Sure enough, a "captain of Tubac" existed by the spring of 1748 (Santos Angeles 75de Guebavi, Libro de Casamientos, p. 26), and probably some one had filled the office for some time previously.
The Spaniards also instituted the office of fiscal, a subordinate civil official under the governor. The incumbent in 1748 was called Christoval Babtuitoc (ibid., Libro de Casamientos, p. 26). A full complement of civil officials should include a temastian, and Tubac was provided with such by May of 1750 and probably long before. The 1750 office holder was known as Diego Quiumsa (ibid., p, 29).
Available records do not make clear whether these native officials changed annually as became the practice in many Indian communities where this Spanish colonial form of government became habitual and accepted. Office-holders at Tubac did change at least periodically. Possibly Governor Joseph was removed by Father Joseph Garrucho as part of his punishment for disregarding the priest's prohibition of his Apache pursuing proclivities and obedience to civil authority. At any rate by November of 1750, the Governor of Tubac was a man named Juanico (ibid., p. 30). His native cognomen known to the Spaniards was Jootctutuc (ibid., Librode Bautismos, p. 95). He remained in office on September 30, 1751. The office of captain of Tubac also changed hands, the incumbent in the spring of 1751 being one Fernando (ibid., Libro de Casamientos, p. 31).
Appointment of a full slate of village officials at Tubac implies that its population was large enough to justify treatment as a self-governing settlement.
76E. Transculturation in Ritual
Implied in the above discussion is Piman acceptance of Spanish baptismal names to some extent, at least. Probably the missionaries simply assigned familiar saints' names which they could at least pronounce to adults who had not been baptized. Some had certainly been baptized, and the priests were making progress with the baptism of children whom they christened with Spanish names.
The Tubac Pimans, like other northern Pimans, very likely regarded baptism as a magical curing rite performed by the Spaniards' black-robed shamans, and were therefore more receptive to this rite than any other.
The number of marriages performed at Tubac by a priest in the seven year period 1745-1751 is more puzzling. Christian burial was clearly much less attractive to the Tubac Indians than baptism and marriage. They very likely felt that once a person died, there was nothing the Spanish shamans could do to help, and their interference with traditional burial practices was probably regarded as a hindrance to the soul of the departed. During the same seven year period that saw eighteen baptisms and fourteen marriages at Tubaca, only two individuals were buried by the church, in 1745 (Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libro de Entierros, p. 49) and 1750 (ibid., p. 53). These two Christian burials stand in stark contrast also to the continued high mortality from infectious epidemics which further reduced the Tubaca and neighboring77populations between the first recorded identification of the place in 1726 and the winter of 1751.
ROMAN CATHOLIC RITES OF PASSAGE
AT TUBAC RANCHERIA, 1745-1751
|
Year |
Baptisms |
Marriages |
Burials |
|
1745 |
2 |
0 |
1 |
|
1746 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
1747 |
4 |
1 |
0 |
|
1748 |
5 |
3 |
0 |
|
1749 |
3 |
2 |
0 |
|
1750 |
2 |
5 |
1 |
|
1751 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
|
Total |
18 |
14 (persons) |
2 |
(Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libros de
Bautisoms, Casamientos, y Entierros)
F. Prelude to Disaster
The conversion period of northern Piman missionization came to a complete and horrible halt on November 21, 1751. On November 20 mission affairs and ranching, farming, and mining under Spanish auspices were proceeding apace in the northern Piman country, and Spaniards there felt that it was a secure frontier and even a rather nice place to live with 78the easy-going, amenable northern Pimans. By the morning of November 21 scores of Spaniards and their Indian slaves and serfslay weltering in their own blood or roasted to death inside incinerated houses where they had been trapped from Caborca to Saric. By the end of November not a single Spaniard remained in all northern Piman territory outside Santa Ana and San Ignacio and the San Luís Valley at the southern margin. The only Yaqui and Níxora serfs and slaves left alive north of those outposts were captives of rebel northern Pimans. Luís Oacpicagigua of Saric, recently named Captain-General of the northern Piman nation for his loyal and very effective services with a Spanish expedition against the hostile Seris on the Gulf of California Coast, was firmly in command of the successful rebels, and massing warriors to resist any Spanish attempt at reconquest. Moreover, rumors spread among the frightened Spanish survivors that Captain-General Luís was preparing to launch his Indian legions to toward either San Ignacio or the fort of Terrenate to throw the Spaniards back even farther. Other rumors said he was planning a diabolical alliance with the Apaches, or the Seris. Spanish reinforcements were days away.
In one week, the Spanish frontier had been thrown back over one hundred miles, and old northern Pimería hands doubted that it could be stabilized there for very long.
A colonial disaster of such magnitude could not have been engineered by a subject people without painstaking preparation and planning. Such groundwork would not have been 79laid without very great motivation on the part of the Indians. Examination of the motives which drove the northern Pimans to revolt November 21, 1751, reveals the sort of life they led in the Jesuit missions with considerable clarity. Voluminous documents Spanish officials assembled in attempting to assess the responsibility for the rebellion provide exceptionally detailed information on the lives and times of key Indian leaders in the revolt.
F. 1. Prelude Theme: Malaise Over Resource Loss
During early Jesuit missionization of the northern Piman Indians Spanish civil settlement within Piman territory began. Although the Pimans were protected from repartimiento by royal edict, their land resources proved an irresistible lure to Spanish capitalists who were able to use Níxora labor in lieu of grants of Piman serfs.
a. Missions. The Jesuit mission establishments were themselves anything but simply one-man shows. They were, in fact, large scale industrial enterprises as well as religious missions, and must have seemed slightly overwhelming to the rustic northern Pimans (Bolton 1939:134, 139). Besides the Jesuit missionary, they included a supervisory staff of Spaniards and imported Indian converts in charge of such diverse activities as church, quarters, and warehouse construction, vineyard, orchard and field crop production, cattle and horse ranching, food processing (drying, salting, fermenting, etc.) and storage-all involving technical 80knowledge and day to day supervision of work crews of Indians who had to be taught these operations from the simplest step to the most complex operation (ibid., p. 141-142).
The mission included not only these large self-sufficient or sufficiency-seeking economic enterprises but also similar operations at some or all of its visitation stations. Thus Tubaca was a stock ranch and farm for the mission a few miles south at Guebavi farther up the Santa Cruz River.
In their exemption from repartimiento the northern Pimans escaped the worst experiences of forced labor in Spanish private enterprises. As a result the worst working conditions they did experience were those in the mission establishments, and there is excellent evidence that these aroused bitter Piman resentment.
Any industrial enterprise of such size and complexity must necessarily operate on bureaucratic lines of authority and the northern Pimans had never before mission times (or at least not for at least a generation since their abandonment of their large sedentary communal villages) experienced bureaucratic authority. Furthermore the Spaniards in supervisory positions were extremely impatient of Indian resistance to immediate, unquestioning compliance with orders. This attitude was compounded from many causes: the Spaniards lived in great geographic isolation from their fellow-countrymen among Indians of very alien culture who far outnumbered them-a sufficient source of unease in itself. Moreover the Spaniards viewed themselves, like Christian mission staffs 81everywhere to this day, as engaged on the Lord's work of conversion, and looked upon the Indians as worthless heathens whose only salvation and value lay in conversion to Christianity. And Christianity meant Spanish Christianity: this attitude is ingrained in the very language of Spain where "to speak in Christian" means to speak Spanish! (Treutlein 1949: 4). Like missionaries everywhere and to this day, the Spaniards confused many of their own national customs and ideals with core doctrines of their religion, so the Indians had to learn and practice these or suffer evil consequences. The worst disciplinarians in the missions on this score were the black-robed missionaries themselves. The Holy Office-the infamous Spanish Inquisition-was still in enthusiastic operation. Infidels were still cheerfully committed to rot in dungeons or to roast at the stake by the fanatical legions of God. The Jesuit shock troops on the Indian frontier were neither better nor worse than other priests of their time. They simply accurately represented them.
This rigid, caste and class conscious society whose members used corporal and capital punishment as a matter of course was totally outside the previous experience of the northern Pimans. While they tried wholeheartedly to adjust to it and gain a rewarding place in it during the early mission period, the strains of striving for recognition or even acceptance in a rigid and exclusive social juggernaut proved too much for the loosely-structured personality of the northern 82Pimans, and ultimately contributed heavily to the blow-up in Piman-Spanish relations in the fall of 1751, as Captain-General Luís Oacpicagigua himself testified (Ewing 1945:275).
b. Ranches. Besides the sizeable contingents of Spaniards and acculturated Indians from the south required to operate the mission stations, additional Spaniards settled in northern Piman territory with large work forces of Indian slaves and servants. Although some measure of crown protection was extended to Piman territory in the sense that it was regarded as more or less royal property, it could be colonized and a significant number of wealthy or wealth-seeking Spaniards entered the newly missionized areas to exploit land and water resources there. The economy of the frontier being primarily a rural extractive one, these captains of private enterprise sought primarily recoverable minerals, grasslands for stock ranching and irrigable river bottoms for farming.
The Spanish population center when missionization began among the northern Pimans was located at Santa Ana, actually within northern Piman territory where the Magdalena River bends from its southward course to flow west. This was primarily a ranchers' supply and recreation and social centre. From there Spaniards advanced northward into the central part of northern Piman territory reinforced by additional Spaniards from the San Miguel River Valley around Opodepe and other Opata Indian settlements which had been integrated 83into the frontier mission system some years previously. The main goals of these Spanish settlers were Aribaca west of Tubac and the San Luís Valley-that loop of the stream known today as the Santa Cruz River which turns south from the Huachuca Mountains through northern Sonora and curves west and finally north to recross the international boundary and flow toward the Gila River past Guebavi, Tubac, Bac, and Tucson. The San Luís Valley was also accessible to Spanish settlement from the old forts at Corodeguachi and Terrenate. It became the primary centre of Spanish population within northern Piman territory prior to 1751.
c. Mines. Recoverable minerals were found in northern Piman country on a grand scale in 1736 (Hammond 1929:237-238). Giant nuggets of pure silver weighing over 5,000 pounds were discovered on the surface at a place christened Planchas de Plata near Arizonac (Ali shon-"Little Spring") just south of the modern international boundary west of Nogales a few miles. This discovery precipitated a large-scale silver rush, and a large mine camp population mushroomed into existence in a few weeks, only to disappear gradually as the silver was quickly located and claimed. By 1741 the initial boom was over (Bancroft 1884:I:527).
From time to time Spanish prospectors found other ore deposits of high enough grade to be profitable even using inefficient Spanish recovery techniques. One of these prospectors whose success undoubtedly played some part in 84persuading the northern Pimans to revolt against the Spaniards was a native of New Mexico named Francisco Padilla (Olguin Feb. 15, 1752). He was the first developer of record of the rich Santa Rita mines (Padilla Feb. 3, 1752:20). He worked the Realito de Santa Rita or small mine at Santa Rita with a crew of at least two, probably Indians from New Mexico, from an unknown date until the outbreak of the revolt.
The use of subject Indian labor within their territory was probably another cause of malaise among the northern Pimans. It is problematical whether they fully understood the socio-political structure of the Spanish mines and ranches operating within their territory. They could, however, see very easily that Spaniards with non-Piman Indians were encroaching upon their tribal lands, seizing springs and flowing streams and throwing cattle onto rich grasslands which furnished the natives with a variety of edible food products.
d. Fort. Available documentation does not clarify entirely whether the northern Piman Indians were afflicted with a Spanish fort in the 1740's or not. Nearly contemporary historians wrote that a fort was founded at Guebavi (Venegas 1759:II:202) but they wrote far removed from the frontier and could have erred on location. Certainly colonial officials intended that the cavalry troop whose patron was San Felipe de Jesús or Gracia Real should be garrisoned at Guebavi. Created at Terrenate in 1741 (Escalante Apr. 22, 1752:90v), the unit was soon called by the Guebavi name, and Kings 85Phelipe V (June 15, 1746) and Fernando VI (July 2, 1747) commissioned commanding officers for the unit so designated as the Company of Guebavi. Its authorized strength was forty-seven enlisted men besides the sergeant, plus the usual three officers- captain, lieutenant and ensign (Venegas 1759:II:203).
The troop in question was certainly stationed close to northern Piman territory at Terrenate, if not for a time at Guebavi. In 1743 Father Ignacio Keller from Suamca Mission baptized a child at the "Fort of St. Matthew" whose godfather was the Terrenate Post Comandant, Captain Joseph Gomez de Silva (Libro de Baptismos de los Pueblos de Santa María...desde 1732, p. 40), but the missionary was visiting and his baptismal record fails to reveal how far he went. The Governor of Sonora received orders in 1744 to abolish a thirty-man unit at Terrenate, but protested and postponed execution of the order with apparent success (Bancroft 1884:I:530), In 1745 the post was referred to under its Guebavi title with a fifty-man complement (ibid., I:531). Thus it remains uncertain whether the garrison was actually located at Terrenate or at Guebavi at this period. The difference in strength mentioned suggests that the troop may have been split with thirty men holding the Terrenate post and an advance party of twenty men encamping at Guebavi among the upper Santa Cruz River Valley Pimans. If troops actually spent a few years at Guebavi during the middle 1740's, their presence served as an additional 86irritant to the hitherto free and easy northern Pimans, making the Spanish threat to their land use more apparent than ever.
2. Prelude Theme: Resentment of Arbitrariness
a. Governor Joseph's Flogging . The one-time governor of Tubac mentioned in the preceding discussion of rancheríagovernment suffered treatment at the hands of Father Joseph Garrucho which cannot be explained on any rational basis even today. When the civil authorities called for Piman auxiliaries in late 1748 when Joseph was Governor and could not but feel responsible for the welfare of his people, he applied to Garrucho for permission to leave Tubac to take part in the campaign against the Apache enemy. His reason was to him perfectly logical and valid: he simply wanted to go with the tribal leader Luís Oacpicagigua to fulfill his military duty as defined by civil authority. It must have seemed to Governor Joseph that he would serve both his own people and 87 his foreign masters by helping Oacpicagigua and the other Piman auxiliaries fight the Apaches. For whatever reasons, Garrucho refused Governor Joseph permission to depart from Tubac on this campaign. Placed in an impossible position, Joseph followed the dictates of his upbringing and followed Luís off to the war. Returning to Tubac flushed with vic-tory, Governor Joseph undoubtedly expected to receive the plaudits of his people and the grateful thanks of the Spaniards, although he did return fearful of Garrucho's reaction to his disobedience. Hoping to placate the peppery priest, Governor Joseph presented him with a suit of leather armor plundered from some unfortunate Apache. This peace offering Garrucho accepted, but then he struck the surely astonished Governor and beat him with a stick "as though it were a crime to go to pursue the enemies of the land. His action seemed bad to the Indians who resented it greatly" (Oacpicagigua, Mar. 24, 1752:191-191v).
In 1749 Joseph was ordered by the same Luís Oacpicagigua to accompany him on a campaign against the Seri Indians of the Gulf of California coast. This time, again, Luís was acting on orders from the governor of Sonora in gathering a Piman force to fight as auxiliaries with the Spanish expedition against the Seris, so poor Joseph must have felt every justification for marching off to fight the good fight. Yet his reward for his participation in the Governor's campaign was a flogging administered by order of Garrucho ( ibid ., f. 192)!
88 It becomes apparent that the eager warrior Joseph must have been caught in forces far beyond his control, or even more important, his understanding. Either he was a helpless pawn in a running fight for domination between the Jesuit missionaries and Spanish civil officials, or the relatively uncurbed authority missionaries enjoyed over their neophytes had gone to Garrucho's head to a point somewhat past rationality.
In either case Garrucho was indulging himself in a type of behavior extremely risky in any social situation including individuals of two racial groups and differing cultural traditions, especially when one of the races attempts to dominate the other. Since the northern Pimans had never really been conquered by the Spaniards, they did not yet share the resigned docility of conquered tribes, and their memory of Spanish military atrocities in 1688 and 1695 had dimmed over half a century. Under such conditions, it ill behooved the dominant Europeans to indulge in a church-state quarrel dividing their own ranks. Nor was Garrucho in any objective position to let his apparently absolute powers corrupt him to the extent Lord Acton's famous axiom implies such powers do.
b. Lancing Prisoners-The Squash Squabble . Other incidents which roused the resentment of the upper Santa Cruz River Valley Pimans against the Spaniards in their midst were simply results of poor communication between dominant and 89subordinate group. Such faulty communication is inherent in the early years of bi-societal contact, especially before either group has time to acquire facility in the language of the other.
In the fall of 1751, either in October or November, such a failure in oral communication set off the "Squash Squabble" between three Piman men and three Spanish overseers of the Guebavi Mission.
Father Joseph Garrucho again set in motion a train of events which added fuel to the fire of Piman resentment of him and his underlings. He ordered his general foreman, Juan María Romero, to apprehend some Indians. Romero picked up Joseph de Nava and Manuel Bustamante to accompany him, and found the Indians at their ranchería near the mission ranch at Tubac. Two of the captives were a father and his son; the third was another older man (Oacpicagigua, Mar. 24, 1752:195v). The other four were women.
The Spaniards set out for the Tubac ranch with their prisoners, and Romero happened to spy a squash plant growing in the path which bore some appetizing looking squash. Although this plant grew near some thatched huts of some other Indians, Romero ordered his prisoners to cut some squash for them to eat. The Indian youth replied that the squash on the path were still green, adding that there were ripe ones stored inside the huts and suggesting that these would be better to eat. At that point communication failed.
90 The foreman either did not understand the Indian boy's reply which was uttered in Piman-this was the Indian opinion of the matter-or if he did he took umbrage at having his sovereign Spanish will questioned by a mere Piman stripling. Opining that the boy had spoken badly to him (a U. S. southerner would say that a Negro had "sassed" him), the infuriated Romero began caning the youth about the head and body. The boy's father, seeing how Romero mistreated his son, decided this ornery Spaniard wanted to start a fight. He grabbed his bow and an arrow and let fly at Romero, but missed in his excitement. The other man also took a defensive stance, but Joseph de Nava drove his horse at that Indian and upset him, wounding him with his lance. This ended the Squash Squabble and the prisoners were conducted to Tubac with dire threats of deportation to summary court martial before the Governor and even the viceroy ( ibid ., f. 196)-a rather unrealistic menace in view of the prevailing lack of cooperation between Jesuits and Sonoran Governors!
The psychological stress the Pimans labored under during this period may be gauged from the fact that they were not sure even after the Squash Squabble ended what occasioned Garrucho's order in the first place. At first they apparently concluded that the priest had ordered their arrest merely because they had walked across the mission ranch at Tubac and he did not want them to do so because they frightened the colts (Fontes Mar. 9, 1752:87v). Later the Indians attributed 91 Garrucho's order to his belief the Indians were eating yearling calves belonging to the mission (Oacpicagigua Mar. 24, 1752:195v).
c. Durance Vile . Very likely the northern Pimans arrested by Father Joseph Garrucho for trespass on "his" Tubac mission farm were incarcerated for a period as punishment. Imprisonment frightened and upset the northern Pimans: a measure of their distaste for incarceration is the fact that they did not borrow it as a social sanction for their own use. Whipping they adopted (Underhill 1939:86-87) but imprisonment they did not.
Imprisonment of northern Pimans for contravening Spanish laws or regulations undoubtedly contributed heavily to the frustrations leading up to the Pima Revolt. For one thing, prisoners tended to die in prison. For another, they were often removed from their home towns to distant prisons at or near San Ignacio Mission. Moreover, men from the home town of Captain-General Luís of Saric were imprisoned (Libro de Entierros deste Pueblo de San Ygnacio desde 1697, f. 25), bringing the lesson of Spanish capriciousness home to the most capable leader in north Piman country. Most important of all, perhaps, was the Spanish tendency to throw native medical practitioners into prison as sorcerers ( ibid ., f. 26). The missionaries, products of medieval Europe and its firm belief in the Devil incarnate, witchcraft, spells, etc ., were honestly convinced that the Indian curers were in league with the Devil and should be treated as the Inquisition 92 treated any heretics. The Swiss Father Gaspar Stiger and his Jesuit colleagues were sure that the medicine men at San Xavier del Bac had bewitched him when he fell ill there repeatedly between his arrival in 1733 and his transfer in 1736, and that he had been saved only through the hard-won knowledge Father Joseph Agustín de Campos possessed of northern Piman witchcraft, which enabled him to identify the guilty witches and force them to remove their spells. The honesty of the missionaries' convictions contributed not at all to easing Spanish-northern Piman relations, since it led them inevitably into grave conflict with one of the most powerful elements of northern Piman society.
Like any other group of human beings, the northern Pimans were extremely dependent upon their medical practitioners, and those individuals enjoyed high social status, economic wealth and political power. Therefore the Indian curers had to lead native opposition to Spanish attempts to repress their activities, out of self interest if nothing more. Even more important in creating the widening rift was the great importance of curing in native religious belief and practice. A very large amount of northern Piman time was devoted to ceremonial activities aimed at insuring good health. Such ritual was interwoven through most other aspects of northern Piman culture. Therefore, imprisonment of native medical practitioners not only alienated these individuals and their families, but posed a very upsetting threat to the whole religious sphere of northern Piman culture and belief, the 93 basis of psychological security in regard to well-being. Intolerably acute anxiety resulted.
3. Prelude Theme: Psychology of Despair
Available records of burials by priests in the missions of the Tubac area during the decade prior to the Pima revolt provide a significant clue to the general psychological state of the Indians when they rebelled. They must have been plunged into a state of despair, general and nonspecific dysphoria as a result of the very high mortality rate from endemic and epidemic diseases during the decade immediately prior to the revolt. While this cause of the revolt is not mentioned in the documents collected by Governor Diego Ortiz Parrilla and others in seeking to explain the revolt, there can be little doubt in view of the evidence that the despair of the northern Pimans existed, and was a significant although hidden cause of the nativistic revolt.
The Pimans themselves very likely firmly believed that Father Ignacio X. Keller's insult to Captain-General Luís Oacpicagigua and the other cases of missionary maltreatment of Indians such as Tello's killing a pregnant woman in the stocks at Caborca "caused" their rebellion. They would not have been able to recognize that their own psychological state was distinctly abnormal and dangerous to peace and rational behavior by the fall of 1751, after long deterioration. Their analysis was correct to this extent: the occurrences they gave as "causes" were clearly triggering events which actually did 94set off the revolt. But it is to be doubted that those events would have been sufficient in themselves to trigger the revolt had the northern Pimans not already been plunged into a state of despair and despond by the very great psychological stresses of their situation, the most severe of which was the continual and frequent loss of loved relatives and friends to disease. In logical terms, infectious epidemics were a necessary condition for the revolt, although not a sufficient condition. The incidents of missionary maltreatment were not in themselves necessary conditions, but combined with the pre-existing psychological state became then sufficient condition to set off, to "cause", the Pima Revolt of 1751.
a. Infectious Epidemics in Mission Times. The evidence of the affliction of the northern Pimans with infectious epidemics following establishment of Spanish missions in their territory is only too abundant. After the refounding of Guebavi Mission in 1732, there were at least five infectious epidemics among the mission population before the Pima Revolt in 1751. The upper Santa Cruz River Valley settlements which were visitas of this mission, Tubac included, were so much a part of one settlement complex there can be little doubt that all shared the health disasters which struck the mission community proper.
In terms of the high level of psychological stress which led to the revolt, it is significant that four of the five recorded major infectious epidemics at Guebavi Mission between 1732 and 1751 occurred from 1744 to 1751-every other year.
b. Matlazahuatl Epidemic of 1736-1737. The deadly matlazahuatl which had devastated Mexico's Indian population in 1545 and 1576 reappeared in August of 1736 at Tacuba, spreading swiftly through the country (Bancroft 1883:III:353). The contagion-probably typhus-reached the City Of Mexico toward the end of November. Poorer people suffered greater fatalities from this virulent fever (Alegre 1841:111:262). Nearly all the Jesuit missionaries in New Spain fell ill from this disease (which says something about their personal hygiene if the epidemic were typhus!). The mortality in the City of Mexico was given as 30,000 by the official publication of the government, but the Jesuits estimated it was nearer 40,000. Over 50,000 died in the city of Puebla, and over 20,000 in Queretaro and environs (ibid., III:267). Farther from statistically minded royal officials, mortality estimates are lacking, but the death rate was undoubtedly high throughout New Spain.
Specific data for Tubac are lacking since the Santa María Suamca Mission was still too new for its missionary, Father Ignacio X. Keller, to have made much progress in changing the burial customs of the Tubaca Pimans.
Magdalena--Data are available from the visita of Santa María Magdalena some eighty miles south of Tubac. There the epidemic struck during January of 1737. Epidemic mortality extended for twenty days from February 4 through 24 when forty per cent of all the deaths recorded during the year occurred (Libro de Entierros de Santa María Mag-dalena de 1702, p. 26-07). 96These epidemic fatal-ities alone were as numerous as the entire mortality for the next year 1738 (ibid., p. 27-28).
San Ignacio--At the mission headquarters of San Ignacio a few miles north of Magdalena no real fatal epidemic seems to have occurred during 1737. The greatest number of deaths in any month came during January but mortality was not very high, only twenty per cent of the year's total deaths. Furthermore, matlazahuatl may have been the killer elsewhere, but not at San Ignacio. The only cause of death identified was smallpox. Smallpox fatalities were reported on June 6 and 10 and again on December 18. The San Ignacio data suggest a long-continued smallpox epidemic or a very high fatality rate from endemic smallpox. Still, the total 1737 death toll was about fifty per cent higher than during the following year when an acute epidemic did occur in October (Libro de Entierros deste Pueblo de San Ygnacio...desde 1697, f. 19v-23v).
If the contagion could play such odd tricks on communities only a few miles apart in close communication, it could have done almost anything by the time it reached Tubac.
c. Epidemic of 1744. During the next decade missionization had been sufficiently successful among the northern Pimans in the vicinity of Tu-baca for useful records of mortality patterns to exist in the registers of burials at the missions. While Tubaca was seldom mentioned, its proximity to the Guebavi and Suamca headquarters insured its 97sharing in the epidemics which struck those missions during the years of despair preceding the Pima Revolt.
Guebavi--During December of 1744 residents of Guebavi suffered from an epidemic which carried off seventy-two and two-tenths per cent of all those who died there all year.
d. The Epidemic of 1747. During October of 1747, Guebavi Mission suffered an epidemic during which ten infants died-forty-three and a half per cent of all the deaths recorded there during that year (Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libro de Entierros). This appears to have been a local epidemic, however, for no such malady struck the inhabitants of San Ignacio Mission during 1747 (Libro de Entierros deste Pueblo de San Ygnacio de 1697, f. 29-30).
e. The Epidemic of 1749. While the 1744 and 1747 epidemics may have been local outbreaks of contagion in the upper Santa Cruz River Valley, the epidemic which struck in 1749 was a widespread phenomenon. All of New Spain was plagued by misfortunes at this time, including rare frosts in many areas which produced famine. The area governed by the Audiencia of Guadalajara-which included Sonora and the northern Piman country-suffered an epidemic in addition (Bancroft 1883:III:359). It was apparently measles (Libro de Entierros de Santa María Magdalena de 1702, p. 42).
Magdalena--Like most of the infectious epidemics which swept the Piman country, this one spread northward. Its progress can be traced by the periods of epidemic mortality at various settlements. At Santa María Magdalena, a visita of 98Mission San Ignacio de Caburica which is about seventy miles south of Tubac, the period of epidemic mortality appears to have begun on January 24 and continued until March 20, nearly two months. During that period eighty-one and one-half per cent of the total mortality for 1749 occurred (Libro de Entierros de Santa María Magdalena de 1702, p. 42-44). The 1749 epidemic-year death rate at Magdalena increased fifty-nine per cent over the non-epidemic year 1748.
San Ignacio--At the mission proper the epidemic fatality period seems to have started February 1 and ended April 6, a period of some nine weeks starting and finishing a few days later than at Magdalena. During those somber weeks sixty-three per cent of the total mortality for 1749 occurred. The epidemic toll was appalling: some days during February as many as four persons died, two and three deaths a day were common. Only eight days of February were passed without a death. After about the eleventh of March the death toll slackened, but for six weeks San Ignacio Mission must have been hell on earth.
The deaths at San Ignacio during 1749 increased 409 per cent over the previous year as a result of the epidemic. In 1750 the total mortality fell even below the 1748 figure-as might be expected because of the tremendous loss of population during the epidemic.
This epidemic decimated the youth of the mission. Children five years of age or younger made up fifty-five per cent of the epidemic mortality, with three boys dying to two girls 99in this age group. Older children suffered about half as much. Twenty-eight per cent of the fatalities were unmarried individuals over the age of five, three boys dying to every girl in this age category! Only eleven per cent of the fatalities occurred among married couples, and the sex-ratio of mortality in that age group sharply reversed, with three women of child bearing age dying to every man in the same age bracket. There was no sex difference in fatality among widows and widowers, who suffered only five and a half per cent of the total mortality. Thus the Indians at San Ignacio Mission watched their future dying as the desert warmed in the early spring of 1749.
Guebavi--In the upper Santa Cruz River Valley, epidemic mortality did not begin until February 8 and was over by March 15 at Mission Santos Angeles de Guebavi, indicating the northward spread of infection. At Guebavi eighty-one per cent of the total mortality for 1749 occurred during the five weeks of epidemic fatalities. The close coincidence of this mortality rate with that at Magdalena is very striking.
Sonoitac--At the visitation ranchería of Sonoitac farther northeast, epidemic mortality did not begin until either March 8 or 21, ending April 11, and accounting for all or all but one of the deaths recorded there during 1749, when the death toll was nearly double that of 1748 and 1750 combined (Santos Angeles do Guebavi, Libro de Entierros).
f. The 1751 Smallpox Epidemic. The third epidemic to strike after only a two-year interval assaulted the Indians 100of northern Piman country during the summer of 1751, and it must have appeared to the staggering survivors as almost the final blow to their sagging population.
Imuris--At Imuris, visitation station of Mission San Ignacio and a few miles north of it, epidemic fatalities began in the middle of May and continued until the end of June. During those five to six weeks, fifty per cent of the year's fatalities at Imuris occurred, probably all from smallpox and half of them so recorded. All but one of the victims were children. In fact, 1751 was a year of child-mortality at Imuris. Eighty-one per cent of the deaths during the year were children (Libro de Entierros deste Pueblo de San Ygnacio....desde 1697, f. 40-41v). The mortality at Imuris in 1751 was 229 per cent that of 1750, an increase of 129 per cent over the previous year. The epidemic fatalities alone were a fourteen per cent increase over the total deaths during 1750! The following year the death rate dropped drastically at Imuris, to six per cent of the 1751 total (ibid., f. 42).
Guebavi--As usual, this epidemic was spreading northward into Piman territory, and the epidemic mortality period at Guebavi Mission fell between July 23 and August 21, about one month during which sixteen persons died. This epidemic toll represented fifty-three per cent of the total fatalities during 1751 at Guebavi, up to the Pima Revolt in November (Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libro de Entierros).
Duration--This epidemic may actually have continued right up to the time the Pimas revolted late in November. At 101any rate the Spaniards in the frontier military posts were suffering from an epidemic when the revolt occurred, complicating their manpower problem (Ewing 1945:265) especially at Fronteras.
g. Population Decline--There can be no doubt that epidemic mortality caused a large and psychologically upsetting decline in northern Piman population during the decade prior to the Pima Revolt. Fragmentary as surviving mission burial records are, they still yield a clear picture of high death tolls and inevitable diminution of an already declining population.
The evidence of devastating epidemic mortality in the upper Santa Cruz River Valley settlements may be summarized using the Guebavi Mission population as an index of the whole settlement complex.
During the three-year period 1743-1745, the basic death rate at Guebavi, as recorded (Libro de Entierros, Santos Angeles de Guebavi), was 4.7 persons per year. The epidemic which struck in December of 1744 raised the toll to nine persons per year, nearly doubling the basic rate. By that time the basic death rate was already much higher than in aboriginal times due to endemic infection from introduced European diseases.
During the next three-year period 1746-1748, the basic death rate at Guebavi was seven per year, but the epidemic in October of 1747 raised the actual recorded death rate to 10.1 102per year, nearly a fifty per cent increase.
In sum, for this nine-year period 1743-1751, the basic non-epidemic death rate was 8.1 persons annually in Guebavi, but recurrent epidemics in 1744, 1747, 1749 and 1751 raised the actual death rate to 15.7 persons per year, or very nearly double the basic rate. This ratio of epidemic to other deaths is further bolstered by figures for the visita at Sonoitac during the 1748-1750 three-year period. There the basic death rate seems to have been two per year for that triennium, but the epidemic (which reached there somewhat later than Guebavi) of 1749 raised the actual death toll to 4.1 persons annually-just over a one hundred per cent increase.
With the mortality rate doubled by four epidemics within eight years, the northern Pimans could not have helped feeling bad over the deaths of many loved relatives and friends, and seriously insecure over their own prospects for survival.
Over a somewhat longer period of years, from 1743 when burial records for Guebavi mission are available through 1766103when the Jesuit record ends, a rough estimate of the magnitude of population decline is possible. During that twenty-four year period, estimations by varied techniques indicate a population of approximately 250 persons living at the beginning of 1743. This period is used for estimation also because an officer of the inspection team of the Marqués de Rubí reported in his journal for December 19, 1766, that the population of Guebavi was fifty northern Pimans (Lafora 1939: 126). If his figure and the estimate are correct, where five Indians had lived in 1743 only one remained alive in 1767. If there was a population decline of this magnitude over a quarter of a century of mission conversion, there is every reason to believe that the entire population decline from 1520 to the beginning of population recovery was even greater than the decline of eighty to ninety per cent in all of New Spain (Simpson 1950:xi).
The magnitude of population decline at Guebavi and in the adjacent area including Tubac can be verified to some extent from other sources. In 1699 Father Kino estimated a population of ninety persons at Guebavi (Bolton 1948:I:204). This was a small settlement in comparison with Bac, for example, and indicates the Tubac population of that time was even more insignificant. The following year, however, refugees from the upper San Pedro River towns had moved into the upper Santa Cruz River drainage, then Kino estimated that the population of Guebavi had more than doubled to over two hundred (ibid., I:233).
104After Guebavi Mission was established, the local population was boosted by the immigration there of the missionary, his Spanish supervisors of economic activities, and Indian converts from farther south. Moreover, the declining native population of Guebavi was reinforced by Pimans from at least three other rancherías. Some people from Sopori on the creek of that name which empties into the Santa Cruz a few miles north of Tubac had moved to Guebavi by August of 1747 (Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libro de Entierros, p. 51). Probably all the Sopori natives had emigrated to the mission by 1757 (ibid., p. 110), and certainly its abandonment was completed prior to 1762 (Nentvig 1951:141). Sometime before 1749 Luís Oacpicagigua induced the people of Concuc and Upiatuban to congregate in Guebavi (Oacpicagigua Mar. 24, 1752:189). Data on the original populations of Sopori, Concuc and Upiatuban are lacking, but the accretion of their inhabitants to Guebavi meant that the fifty residents of that mission remaining in 1766 represented the pitiful remnants of at least five pre-Spanish northern Piman settlements-Guebavi itself, Sopori, Concuc, Upiatuban, and one or more of the San Pedro River Valley towns! In other words Sopori and at least three other settlements had died completely to maintain the Guebavi population at little more than half of its 1699 level.
Similar figures for the north Piman settlements on the middle Santa Cruz River north of Tubac provide some further evidence of general and pronounced population decline. At 105Mesquite Mountain (Cuitoac) north of Tucson Kino estimated a population of over 1,000 in 1699 (Bolton 1948:I:206). In Franciscan times the remaining residents were reluctant to join their fellow-townsmen in the mission at Bac for fear of dying there (Arricivita 1792:416). There were only thirty houses here by 1775 (Coues 1900:I:84) inhabited seasonally by Papagos who would have numbered merely 150 if each household consisted of five persons.
At Bac itself, Kino had estimated over 800 people lived in 1692 (Bolton 1948:I:122), but after the revolt of 1751 only 167 individuals were enumerated in the spring of 1752 (Díaz del Carpio, Apr. 14, 1752:94-95). Later Bac received heavy reinforcements from the east following the Sobaipuri abandonment of the San Pedro River Valley in 1762. Some 250 Sobaipuris settled at Tucson in the spring of that year (Elías Gonzalez, Mar. 22, 1762). Yet in the early years of Franciscan administration the population at Bac had climbed again only to 270 (Reyes July 6, 1772:756).
Mortality Rates. The decline in population in the Santa Cruz and San Pedro River Valleys hinted at in the preceding discussion required a very high death rate in the native population. Fortunately, the relatively precise information available from Guebavi Mission permits at least an estimation of crude death rates there.
The reported 1766 population of fifty persons at the end of the year, plus burial records for Guebavi during 1766, 106allow a computation of the mortality rate at this mission for that year. All the nine recorded deaths occurred before mid year (Libro de Entierros, Santos Angeles de Guebavi, p. 72-74). This meant a total population of fifty-nine at the beginning of the year, or fifty-eight if there had been one birth at the mission during the year. (The surviving Jesuit baptismal records are incomplete, ending early in 1763. In the first six weeks of 1763 only one Spanish child was born at Guebavi (Libro de Bautismos, Santos Angeles de Guebavi, p. 132) and during all of 1762 only two Indian children were baptized there (ibid., pp. 130, 132). With a declining population, especially a drop in the number of women of childbearing age, more than one birth in 1766 was unlikely.)
Ignoring the possibility of births during 1766, and taking the maximum possible population at the beginning of the year-fifty-nine-the crude mortality rate among Guebavi Mission Indians was fifteen and one-quarter per cent. Converting this into more familiar expression, the crude mortality rate was 152.2 deaths per 1,000 population during 1766.
Projecting backward the population figure for 1766, it is possible to estimate with somewhat less surety the crude mortality rate for 1764. Ignoring any births which may have occurred (which would have the effect of raising the mortality rate), the beginning of 1764 population was approximately sixty-four Indians. Five burials were recorded during 1764 (none during 1765) indicating this total maximum possible 107population. The five deaths recorded constituted a crude mortality rate of 68.1 per 1,000 population, an absolute minimal estimate.
The extremely fast rate at which Guebavi, and the other upper Santa Cruz River Valley Pimans, were dying may be grasped, perhaps, by comparing these high mortality rates with that in the contemporary United States. "The crude death rate, based on the estimated midyear population residing in the United States, was 9.4 per 1,000 population" (Dunn 1958:I:LIV). In 1955 it had been 9.3, in 1954 it was 9.2, and during the five previous years had stabilized at 9.6 or 9.7 deaths per 1,000 population (ibid.). The wide difference between the United States and Guebavi mortality rates illustrates the difference between a growing and a dying society.
4. Prelude Theme: Spaniards Are Not Invincible
On the receiving end of Spanish slave raids, as recipients of Spanish summary judgement and savage reprisals for the abortive uprising in 1695, the northern Pimans gained a conception of Spanish military prowess as invincible. In general, the northern Pimans seem to have decided to cast their lot with these powerful Europeans between 1695 and 1751, and attempted to change themselves to coincide with the Spanish image as rapidly as possible. The effective leaders of northern Piman communities in particular set themselves to cooperate as much as seemed feasible with the Spaniards. They 108consolidated their settlements to form larger mission and visitation station populations at Spanish urging (Oacpicagigua, Mar. 24, 1752:189). They accepted the titles and roles of Spanish civil office as governors, captains, fiscales, temastianes, madores, etc. (Santos Angeles de Guebavi, Libros de Bautismos, Casamientos y Entierros). They provided willing auxiliary troops to campaign with Spanish forces fighting the vanguard of the southern Athapascan hordes, and celebrated the resulting successes with traditional victory ceremonies (Bolton 1948:I:169).
Then in the late 1740's the northern Piman image of Spanish invulnerability was shattered on the arid shores of the Gulf of California, after having been brought into doubt during the Apache campaign in November-December of 1748. The Sonoran Spaniards, faced with hostile Indian enemies on both flanks, turned serious attention to an attempt at neutralizing the Seris of the Gulf Coast in order to gain complete freedom to throw men and material into the struggle to stem the onrushing Athapascan barbarians. To mount the maximum possible force the Spaniards called upon their northern Piman admirers to provide a large scouting and fighting force to aid in the campaign against the Seris. The willing northern Pimans responded to the call with alacrity, furnishing 400 men to the Spaniards' seventy-five (Bancroft 1884:1:536). The political dynamo of Saric, Luís Oacpicagigua, had recruited these Piman warriors himself, and led them in person (Ewing 1945:268).
109The Seri campaign of 1749 terminated with the same result as every other Seri campaign during historic times, even though the Tiburon Island stronghold was breached. The ponderous attacking forces killed, wounded or captured only a few weaker or less alert Seris, and the bulk of that refugee amalgam dispersed. The Spaniards suffered from lack of water and fresh rations. Their Piman Indian allies, more accustomed to campaigning in semi-arid terrain and possessing more knowledge of existing water sources and willingness to drink unpalatable liquids, and with a cultural heritage of guerrilla warfare, actually proved more efficient than the vaunted Spaniards, taking most of the captives who were corralled (ibid.).
The northern Pimans, returning home laden with Spanish praise and rewards in the form of honorific titles and honorariums, carried the important knowledge that under certain geographic and climatic conditions they were better fighters than the Spaniards, man for man. The northern Piman notion of Spanish invincibility was shattered.
This lesson seems to have been learned by no northern Piman better than Luís Oacpicagigua of Saric who came out of the nearly futile campaign with the title of Captain-General of the Pima Nation, a baton of office, a new uniform, and the hard realization that Spaniards could be defeated in battle by Indians the northern Pimans could themselves defeat. Luís had learned that Spanish boot-licking was not the only course open to a stress-ridden northern Piman suffering the agonies of social and cultural adjustment to a tyrannical foreign elite: there was an alternative. Spanish blood ran red, too!