186–188; Cheryl J. Foote and Sandra K. Schackel, “Indian Women of New Mexico, 1535–1680,” in Joan M. Jensen and Darlis A. Miller, eds., New Mexico Women: Intercultural Perspectives (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 17–40; David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 124–125, 411 nn. 13 and 15; Baker H. Morrow, ed. and trans., A Harvest of Reluctant Souls: The Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides, 1630 (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1996), 25–27; and Fray Alonso de Benavides’ Revised Memorial of 1634, 23–24. Osteological evidence also shows increased workloads for Pueblo Indians under the Spaniards. See Spielmann et al., “‘. . . Being Weary, They Had Rebelled,’” 102–125.
37. The entries come from Parral, baptismal records, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Los Angeles Family History Library, microfilm 162634, Bautismos 1662–1686, 1692–1744.
38. “Informaciones sobre los del Nuevo México y la saca que hacen de ganados en detrimento de los diezmos y venta de indios. Año de 1679,” Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de Durango, Archives and Special Collections Department, New Mexico State University Library, Las Cruces, New Mexico (hereafter cited as AHAD), reel 3, frame 429. The quote is from the deposition of Antonio García, San Juan Bautista de Sonora, January 12, 1679, AHAD, reel 3, frame 430. Parral’s power to attract free as well as coerced workers was hardly unique or unprecedented. Mexico’s silver economy expanded at a torrid pace through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, spawning mining centers small and large. Treasure seekers, merchants, and entrepreneurs of all stripes descended on all of these mining operations, bringing their own workers and turning to the surrounding Indians as a convenient source of additional labor. Local Indians were the first to be inducted into the mining economy, whether as encomiendas, repartimientos, servants of various kinds, convicts serving out their sentences, or salaried workers. When enough local Indians were not available to pull the silver from the ground, mine owners and labor recruiters simply extended their reach to more distant regions. Mines such as Zacatecas, Mazapil, Indé, Sombrerete, and many others tell the same basic story, as they drew men, women, and children, willingly or unwillingly, from large catchment areas. See Sempat Assadourian, Zacatecas; Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico; Valentina Garza Marínez and Juan Manuel Pérez Zevallos, El real y minas de San Gregorio de Mazapil, 1568–1700 (Mazapil: Instituto Zacatecano de Cultura Ramón López Velarde, 2004); and Erasmo Sáenz Carrete, Indé en la historia: 1563–2000 (Indé: Presidencia Municipal de Indé, 2004).
39. The mita system has been extensively studied. See Enrique Tandeter, Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993); Jeffrey A. Cole, The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985); and, more recently, Melissa Dell, “The Persistent Effects of Peru’s Mining Mita,” Econometrica 78:6 (2010), 1863–1903. For a broader consideration of labor arrangements in the mines of Latin America, see Brown, A History of Mining in Latin America, especially chaps. 3 and 4.
5. THE SPANISH CAMPAIGN
1. An antislavery crusade of this scope and ambition in the seventeenth century fits poorly with our current understanding of the history of human rights. The dominant view today is that human rights were a product of the Enlightenment. They were “invented” only in the eighteenth century, in time to spark the great Atlantic upheavals of the 1770s, when the French revolutionaries insisted that all men were “equal” and “born free” and the Founding Fathers in the United States were
37. The entries come from Parral, baptismal records, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Los Angeles Family History Library, microfilm 162634, Bautismos 1662–1686, 1692–1744.
38. “Informaciones sobre los del Nuevo México y la saca que hacen de ganados en detrimento de los diezmos y venta de indios. Año de 1679,” Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de Durango, Archives and Special Collections Department, New Mexico State University Library, Las Cruces, New Mexico (hereafter cited as AHAD), reel 3, frame 429. The quote is from the deposition of Antonio García, San Juan Bautista de Sonora, January 12, 1679, AHAD, reel 3, frame 430. Parral’s power to attract free as well as coerced workers was hardly unique or unprecedented. Mexico’s silver economy expanded at a torrid pace through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, spawning mining centers small and large. Treasure seekers, merchants, and entrepreneurs of all stripes descended on all of these mining operations, bringing their own workers and turning to the surrounding Indians as a convenient source of additional labor. Local Indians were the first to be inducted into the mining economy, whether as encomiendas, repartimientos, servants of various kinds, convicts serving out their sentences, or salaried workers. When enough local Indians were not available to pull the silver from the ground, mine owners and labor recruiters simply extended their reach to more distant regions. Mines such as Zacatecas, Mazapil, Indé, Sombrerete, and many others tell the same basic story, as they drew men, women, and children, willingly or unwillingly, from large catchment areas. See Sempat Assadourian, Zacatecas; Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico; Valentina Garza Marínez and Juan Manuel Pérez Zevallos, El real y minas de San Gregorio de Mazapil, 1568–1700 (Mazapil: Instituto Zacatecano de Cultura Ramón López Velarde, 2004); and Erasmo Sáenz Carrete, Indé en la historia: 1563–2000 (Indé: Presidencia Municipal de Indé, 2004).
39. The mita system has been extensively studied. See Enrique Tandeter, Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993); Jeffrey A. Cole, The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985); and, more recently, Melissa Dell, “The Persistent Effects of Peru’s Mining Mita,” Econometrica 78:6 (2010), 1863–1903. For a broader consideration of labor arrangements in the mines of Latin America, see Brown, A History of Mining in Latin America, especially chaps. 3 and 4.
5. THE SPANISH CAMPAIGN
1. An antislavery crusade of this scope and ambition in the seventeenth century fits poorly with our current understanding of the history of human rights. The dominant view today is that human rights were a product of the Enlightenment. They were “invented” only in the eighteenth century, in time to spark the great Atlantic upheavals of the 1770s, when the French revolutionaries insisted that all men were “equal” and “born free” and the Founding Fathers in the United States were
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